Antiques Disposal

by Barbara Allan

Sis glared at Mother. “Where on earth did you get his private number?”

  Mother folded her hands. Looked at the floor. Then sneaked a glance at me.

  Eyes wide, I spread my arms. “I didn’t give it to her! I swear. She must have gotten it off my cell phone.”

  Mother’s smile was girlish. She raised a single hand and said, “Guilty as charged.”

  “Get out!” Peggy Sue shouted. “Both of you!”

  And with her I.V.-free hand, she grabbed the pillow and threw it. The thing sailed between us and plopped off the wall onto the floor.

  “Out!”

  As Mother and I beat a hasty exit, a tissue box hit me in the back. (Could have been worse—could have been a bedpan.)

  Out in the hall, Sergeant Grady gave us a quizzical look, as if we were two junior high kids who had turned up a block away from a storefront window breaking. “Everything all right, ladies?”

  “Why, couldn’t be better,” Mother declared. “It would appear that our darling Peggy Sue is back to normal.”

  After dropping Mother off at the house, I steered the battered Buick downtown to keep my late-morning appointment with Brian at the police station.

  Downtown proper was four streets, cut into a grid by four intersecting streets, containing just about every kind of business a modest community like ours might need. The main thoroughfare was (natch) Main Street, regentrified Victorian buildings with little bistros, specialty shops, and antique stores.

  The modern redbrick building of the combination police station / fire station perched at the outer edge of the grid, kitty-corner from the courthouse, that grand old Grecian edifice Mother heartily defended whenever the powers-that-be threatened to tear it down.

  “Over my dead body!” was her battle-cry, and to some a tempting offer. In any case, she would inevitably swing into action—action that more than once had landed her in the county jail.

  I pulled into a visitor’s spot in the HQ’s parking lot, walked through an open atrium to the front entrance, and inside the small waiting room, approached the female dispatcher, sequestered behind bulletproof glass. I spoke into the little microphone.

  “Brandy Borne, to see Chief Cassato—I mean, Chief Lawson ... er ... Acting Chief or Interim Chief—Brian Lawson.”

  This flustered speech made no discernible impression upon the fortyish woman (short brown hair, glasses), who merely told me to take a seat. She would let the chief know I was here.

  I took my usual chair next to the corner rubber tree plant, whose care and grooming had come to rely upon regular visits by Mother and me. The only difference between us was that I did not sing the appropriate excerpt from Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes” while doing my pruning.

  But I had barely begun my dead-leaf-picking when the dispatcher announced that the chief would see me. Soon I was buzzed through the steel door into the inner police sanctum, where I walked down the beige corridor, its walls lined with photos of boys-in-blue of bygone days, passing the detective’s room, the interview room, and other offices. All of which had become way too familiar to me in the last eighteen months or so... .

  Whenever Mother made it past the steel door, she was escorted by one of the officers. Out of respect, she would say. To keep you from snooping, I would reply.

  The chief’s office was the last room on the left, next to an outside door (for a speedy exit, I supposed), and across from the break room (to keep an eye on the men, I figured); but it was odd, even strange, approaching the office where Tony Cassato had dwelled the last few years.

  I half expected him to be sitting behind the desk, with his barrel chest, square jaw, gray temples, those bullet-hard eyes boring into mine as if to say, “Why don’t you grow up?”

  But sometimes those eyes would soften, as he handed me his handkerchief to wipe my tears and blow my nose. It was then I could see a different man behind the cold steel exterior of Tony Cassato. Yet I loved—and needed—them both.

  “You doing all right, Brandy?” Brian asked, his brown eyes filled with concern.

  He met me at the door, wearing his own take on the top-cop’s uniform: light blue shirt (not Tony’s white), pattern tie (not Tony’s solid), black slacks (not Tony’s gray), casual shoes (not Tony’s Florsheims). Do you think I still had Tony on my mind?

  “I’m fine,” I said from the hall.

  That the other ex-beau of the last several years had taken over Tony’s job made this all the weirder. Wasn’t having Vivian Borne in my life enough surrealism for one girl to stand?

  He gestured to the visitor’s chair in front of the desk. “Please, have a seat... .”

  As I did so, he got behind the desk, settling into the swivel chair. But it didn’t squeak when he did, like for Tony.

  “I’m glad the reports on Peggy Sue are so encouraging,” he said, businesslike but not without warmth. “How’s Sushi?”

  “She dodged a bullet, too. The vet says she can come home tomorrow.”

  “Dr. Tillie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good man. If he ever retires, Serenity will be the lesser for it.”

  “No question.”

  His expression turned serious. “We interviewed Peggy Sue earlier this morning, when she first came around, and apparently she didn’t see who hit her.”

  “You think she was hit from behind?”

  “Yes. That means whoever did it realizes Peggy Sue didn’t see him, or her. So ... with any luck, your sister isn’t in any danger of retaliation.” He paused, adding, “Still, we’ll keep an officer at the hospital until she’s released.”

  “Thanks. Maybe a car outside the house, too, for a day or so?”

  “We can manage that.”

  “I realize Peg probably poses no threat to the assailant, but thank you for the added protection.”

  He nodded.

  I shifted in the chair. I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. Was it simply being in Tony’s old office ... or because Brian and I had once been an item? And yes, before Mother asks, I will tell you right out—we had been intimate.

  He was saying, “Brandy, you have to promise me you’ll stay out of this matter. None of this silly Murder, She Wrote stuff from you or Vivian.”

  I didn’t answer immediately. If Mother had been here, she’d have been defensive, reminding Brian that we had helped clear up a number of matters that the Serenity PD otherwise might have fumbled.

  But I merely said, “I can try, Brian ... but I can’t promise. You know Mother.”

  He cocked his head, and a lock of sandy hair fell across his brow. He was a cutie-pie. Sorry if that makes you sick, a woman my age thinking about a man in such childish terms. But he was. A cutie-pie.

  “You mean,” he said delicately, “because your mother will get you involved whether you want her to or not?”

  In the past I would have said, “Or whether you want her to or not ... but I’ll try.”

  But instead I replied, “Brian, someone almost killed Peggy Sue, and Sushi. Which Jaws movie was it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where the poster said, ‘This time, it’s personal’? Well, this time, I’m afraid it is. Personal.”

  Brian’s puppy dog eyes tightened into a pit bull’s, and he leaned forward. He shook a finger. “Listen, Brandy, you just stay out of it. Whoever killed Jim Bob, and broke into your home, is obviously a very, very dangerous person.”

  All I could manage was “Yeah, well.”

  “You and your mother have been so damn lucky in the past, not getting yourselves killed, meddling in police business.”

  Now I cocked my head, ignoring being called a meddler, instead thinking about what he’d said before. “Sounds like you think the events were connected. Almost like ... Brian, do you already know who it was?”

  He held up a crossing-guard palm. “I don’t know who it was... .”

  “Brian ...”

  “But ... I do know the kind of company Jim Bob Mc-Roberts kept, back in Texas, before he returned to Se
renity.”

  “What kind of company is that?”

  He shrugged. “What do you think? Bad company.”

  “Maybe a little more specific?”

  Now a sigh. “Drug dealers, petty thieves, ex-convicts... .”

  “So ... something from his past came home to roost?”

  I took Brian’s silence as a yes.

  “But what would the killing have to do with our break-in?” I frowned. “There has to be a connection... .”

  “Does there?”

  I leaned forward. “Maybe the killer thought we’d seen something the morning of the auction—something that meant we could later identify him.”

  Brian winced. “Such as?”

  Such as a white utility van. But I didn’t say it.

  “Brandy, are you holding something back?”

  I just shrugged.

  A guy Brian’s age shouldn’t have been able to summon such a weight-of-the-world sigh. “Brandy, for God’s sake ... for your own sake ... please, please stop playing detective. Let the professionals handle it. Please?”

  He was begging. This is a place where Tony wouldn’t have gone, and it wasn’t particularly attractive, cutie-pie or not.

  But it worked on me, at least a little.

  “Okay,” I surrendered. “I’ll try.” Then, “Is there anything else?”

  “No, Brandy.” Another sigh. Merely weight-of-Serenity this time. “That’s all.”

  I stood.

  Brian left his chair, came around the desk, and faced me.

  “Actually,” he said, “there is one other thing... .”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  He gave me that boyish smile—the one with the dimples. “What would you think about having dinner with me sometime?”

  I thought it over.

  “How about it, Brandy? Old times’ sake?”

  “Just dinner? Nothing more?”

  “Nothing more.”

  But I knew what would happen. I’d drink too much wine, and then we’d go back to his place, where I wouldn’t be able to resist those dimples, and ...

  “When?” I asked.

  I got home around noon, finding Mother in the kitchen making egg-salad sandwiches.

  I sat on a red 1950s step stool and told her about my meeting with Brian (but not our as yet unspecified dinner date, knowing she would view that primarily as an opportunity for me to wheedle info out of the acting chief).

  Mother said thoughtfully, “You were correct to wonder about Big Jim Bob’s past, my dear. Why did he come back to Serenity? Perhaps he was running from something.”

  “Or someone. Maybe someone who caught up with him.”

  Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Mother said, “Come ... I want to show you what I found.”

  I followed Mother to the music room, where in my absence she had repacked the storage unit items, except for the stack of correspondence, which she now held in her hands like a devout churchgoer with a hymnal.

  “Your instincts were correct, dear,” she said, underplaying for once. “These have proved most interesting reading.”

  “Really? What are they, letters?”

  “Got it in one, dear. Mostly love letters, yes—written during the Vietnam war ... to ‘Anna’ from ‘Stephen.’ But that’s not the most important discovery.”

  She wanted me to ask.

  So I did. “Okay, Mother, what was the most important discovery?”

  “Thank you for asking, dear. Among the missives was a contract for a storage unit.”

  That perked me up. “A storage unit? Her storage unit? Our storage unit?”

  She nodded, smiling in that cat-that-ate-the-canary way of hers.

  “So do we have a last name, to go with Anna?”

  Mother nodded again, eyes and nostrils flaring. “And an address.”

  “In Serenity?”

  “No. But nearby.”

  “Where?”

  Why was she dragging this out? But I knew—Mother was an unbridled ham, and I was her audience.

  “The Quad Cities, dear. We’ll leave right after lunch.”

  Anna Armstrong’s address was in Davenport—one of the five large burgs that made up the Quad Cities (don’t ask). Specifically, we were heading to an area just east of the downtown, known as the Gold Coast.

  On the half-hour ride, Mother gave me chapter and verse regarding this historic neighborhood of once-grand homes with magnificent views of the Mississippi River, established during the Civil War by wealthy German immigrants who had played such a large part in shaping the city.

  During the 1970s, this fabled area began to lose its luster as the wealthy moved to greener pastures in the suburbs. The predictable steady decline followed, the once-grand homes left to rot and crumble, many becoming tenements, with (as Mother put it) “an unsavory, even criminal element” moving in.

  In the last decade, however, various restoration and historical groups had begun buying back the properties, giving the old homes much-needed facelifts, and finding new owners who could restore the neighborhood to the magnificence of its past and its Gold Coast name.

  “Turn left here, dear,” Mother said.

  I steered the Buick away from the downtown, up an incline lined with shade trees whose leaves shimmered in the early-afternoon sun with vibrant reds, oranges, and golds.

  At the top of the hill, I turned right and drove along a similarly tree-lined street, passing refurbished homes of grandeur—some, still works in progress.

  “Slow down!” Mother commanded, sitting up with the enthusiasm of Sushi out for a drive. “I want to see, I want to see!”

  Leaning forward, she peered through the windshield, pointing at each passing house. “Greek Revival ... Second Empire ... Italianate ... Queen Anne ... Gothic Revival.. . .”

  Mother was an acknowledged expert on architecture (acknowledged by her).

  Suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh, a stick!”

  I slammed on the brakes. “What stick?”

  Was there a tree branch in the road?

  “No, dear, upper-case Stick ... not lower-case stick ... as in architecture. It’s a Stick-style house. Pull over!”

  I eased the car to the curb. We got out, then positioned ourselves on the sidewalk to best stare up at the old mansion. With its towers, turrets, and balconies, the place looked like a combination Swiss chalet and medieval castle.

  I said, “I’ll bite—why is it called ‘Stick?’ ”

  “Because of its stickwork, dear. The exposed wood and timber?”

  Which indeed gave it that Swiss chalet look.

  Mother was saying, “Do you see that scaffolding on the side? Some nincompoop had dared to desecrate this work of art with”—she had trouble getting the word out, spitting it like a seed—“siding.”

  Only the one side remained to be restored.

  Mother went on. “Whoever did that should be taken behind the barn and horsewhipped!”

  She was old-school. But I saw her point.

  Impatient to get on with the investigation, I asked, “Are we just admiring the architecture, or is this actually the right address?”

  Mother shot me a look of rebuke. “Dear, it’s not every day one has the opportunity to see the outside of a Stick house, let alone get inside one.” She started up the old cracked steps. “But yes, yes, yes—this is the address in question ... right here on West Seventh Street.”

  I followed her to a cement stoop with latticework overhang, where a weathered wooden door greeted us. Next to the door, on an exposed timber, were four black mailboxes with corresponding buzzers. No names were affixed to the boxes, just the street number, followed with letters A–D.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “C.”

  But when I moved my finger to the correct buzzer, Mother grasped my hand and pulled it down like a lever.

  “Let’s just try the front door, dear.”

  She was afraid we might get turned away, and then she wouldn’t get to see the insi
de.

  “But that’s breaking and entering... .”

  “Not if it’s unlocked.”

  So I tried the knob. It turned, and I pushed the door open.

  We stepped into a large entryway, originally used as a receiving hall, and I guess serving that same purpose again.

  To the left—perhaps leading to the home’s former parlor—was a newer door, marked “A.” To the right, a similar door, “B,” which could once have opened to the library. Ahead, a wide staircase with ornately carved banister yawned up to a windowed landing, then continued to the level where apartments “C” and “D” awaited.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I asked, “Mother, would you like me to see if anyone’s home in ‘C’?”

  “A few stairs won’t hurt me, dear—I’m not an invalid.”

  But when a winded Mother leaned on the wall at the landing, I hurried on ahead.

  And what I saw at the top stopped me in my tracks.

  “I’m afraid we’re too late,” I told Mother as she reached me.

  Because while the letter on the door of Anna’s apartment was indeed “C,” it had been revised to an “X” of crime-scene tape.

  A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

  To find out where and when storage unit auctions are to be held, check local newspapers, Internet Web sites, and the schedules of individual auctioneers. Or—like Mother—you could phone the owners of the storage facilities, daily . . . at least until, like Mother, you get on their do-not-call lists.

  Chapter Five

  Good Neighbor Policy

  As Mother and I stared in disbelief at the yellow-and-black tape, someone behind us spoke, and we turned to see a tall, slender man framed in the apartment doorway across the hall.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, repeating himself pointedly.

  Anna Armstrong’s across-the-way neighbor was about fifty—judging by the gray hair winning over the brown—with an oblong face, long nose, and bushy eyebrows overhanging puffy-pouched eyes. Conservatively dressed in brown slacks and an argyle yellow-and-navy sweater, he regarded us with understandable suspicion.

  Mother said, “We stopped by to see our dear, sweet Anna”—she gestured to the tape, then touched her bosom—“... only to find this disturbing sight.”