“You know . . .” (Sorry, Mother.) “. . . enough time has gone by that those items just might surface.”
“Been known to happen,” Tony said with another nod. “Perp might think it’s safe now, and be stupid enough to want a few bucks for ’em. Not that items like that would get him or her anything but pocket money.”
“Who reported the knife and pipe missing?”
“Pickett’s daughter.” Tony checked his watch. “Sorry, honey, but I’ve got to go. If you want to know more, you might try asking Rudder.” He chuckled. “But I doubt, with his history with you and your mother, that he’ll be forthcoming. After all, you won’t be bribing him with chicken casserole and chocolate-chip cookies.”
“I’ve had nicer thank-yous for lunch.”
He got up, leaned over, and gave me a slightly choco-lately kiss. “Are you sure?”
I accompanied Tony to the door, where he slipped his arms around my waist.
“So,” he said lightly. “When exactly are we going to get married, anyway? Haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“Of course not! Only . . . I’d like to wait till after the election. Mother’s pretty much certain to lose, and she could take it hard.”
“She might go reeling at that,” he admitted.
“When her life calms down, we can get serious about tying the knot.”
His smile was sad. “Brandy, Vivian Borne’s life never calms down. You know that.”
He chuckled to himself, kissed me on the forehead, and left.
I relocked the door, then returned to the counter where I reached Mother on her cell.
“Mother,” I asked, “how can I get in touch with Judd Pickett’s daughter?”
“Della Pickett? But why, dear?”
“Never mind. I’ll fill you in later.”
“Well, all right. I believe she still works at that artists’ gallery on Fourth Street. Dear, can’t you give me a reason?”
“In a hurry!” I said, and ended the call.
I got my purse, picked up Sushi, locked up, and headed out.
* * *
The gallery—a retail shop where local artisans consigned everything from jewelry to pottery to photography and more—was one of several businesses in a former funeral home, an old, white, stucco, two-story structure with phony facades and fake balconies lending it an eerie aura of unreality.
I’d only been inside the building once, to visit the clock repair shop run by the owner of the building, Mr. Timmons, who rented out the four visitation rooms. His shop was in back, housed in the one-time “preparation room” (feel free to shudder) where the man blithely used the ancient embalming tables as workbenches (and shiver).
I had avoided the art gallery till now, not so much due to the structure’s creepy atmosphere, but because I felt that when I stopped by a shop like this, I should really purchase something. I mean, I knew what it was like to run a shop, and have a potential customer come in and get your hopes up, before dashing them.
And between Mother and me, we already had enough stuff in our house (and our garage, which hadn’t had room for a vehicle in recent memory) that buying anything that wasn’t an antique earmarked for Trash ’n’ Treasures resale just didn’t make sense.
The gallery was in the first grieving parlor to the left, and I entered the spacious room with Sushi in my arms. She was sniffing some ghost of terrible fluids that still faintly floated through the rooms.
Glass display counters, curios, and Grecian exhibit columns helped disguise the origin of the space, but a few telltale signs remained, such as the small alcoves for urns and church-like stained-glass windows.
A middle-aged woman appeared from behind a heavy velvet curtain in a back corner, approached, then asked pleasantly, “May I help you?”
Fashionably dressed in a pale pink suit with gold buttons and beige patent leather pumps, she had a nice figure and sleek shoulder-length brown hair, making the most of her attributes because, unfortunately, she had inherited the angular face of her father, as seen in the obit.
I introduced myself.
“I know who you are,” Della said with a smile. “Your mother and my father were old friends.”
How old and how friendly? I had long since learned not to inquire about such things.
She asked, “Is there a particular artist or item you’re interested in?”
“There are a lot of lovely things here,” I said, not lying (entirely), “but I’m hoping you might be willing to let me ask you a few questions about what happened to your father.”
Her expression registered surprise, then clouded. “Well, what happened to my father was that he was murdered.”
I nodded awkwardly.
She said, “I suppose everyone in town knows that you and your mother have a . . . an unusual hobby, looking into this sort of thing. But I guess I don’t mind talking to you. Why don’t you give me a call—I’ll give you my cell number.”
“I thought maybe . . .”
“You mean here? Now?”
I glanced uncomfortably around—tumbleweed.
“Well . . .” I said.
Della gestured with a flip of a hand. “Never mind. Now is fine. You and your cute little dog are the first customers I’ve had today, and talking to anybody, even about that, will break things up a little. But let’s sit.”
She led me to a pair of chairs that had been splashed with glistening, colorful paint. “I use these for the husbands of wives that’re looking,” she said. “Not a lot of guys are into local arts and crafts, unless they make them themselves.”
“I can imagine,” I said, as we sat.
I settled Sushi on my lap, fully expecting to rise with a rainbow of paint smears and a sprinkling of sparkles on my behind.
“Now,” Della said, as pleasantly businesslike as if I really were a customer, “why do you want to know about Dad? The police seemed to abandon the case ages ago. Has something new come to light?”
“Not that I know of,” I admitted.
“Oh,” she replied disappointedly.
I went on, “But I am curious about a few things, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Especially if you and Vivian get involved. With the police off the case, you’d be . . .” I think she was about to say “better than nothing,” but instead she added: “. . . welcome.”
“I can’t promise anything. It’s just an unsolved killing with a vague connection or two to the recent death of Harriet Douglas.”
“That was accidental, wasn’t it?”
“Well, Mother has her doubts. But again, I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
Della nodded. “I understand. You’re both busy with the upcoming election—she has my vote, by the way.”
“Mother will appreciate that,” I replied. People were continually saying that to me, and I was always surprised. I wasn’t even sure I’d vote for her, and I was her campaign manager.
Della settled back in the chair. “So. What do you want to know?”
“I understand your dad had a big collection of western memorabilia. Was there an inventory that told you only a knife and pipe were taken?”
“No. I wish there had been, but Dad was such an inveterate collector, his personal museum was always on the grow.”
“Yet you felt it was only those two items.”
“I suppose there could have been other things. But I saw Dad that morning and he had those two pieces set out on the table. He’d mentioned he was going to contact the Buffalo Bill Museum in Wyoming about donating them. Well, Dad wouldn’t have had time to make the arrangements, let alone send them off.”
I frowned. “If they were museum quality, they must have been worth something . . . but the police circular didn’t mention values.”
Pickett’s daughter shifted in her chair. “No. I didn’t let out what they were worth for fear of never getting them back.” She paused, obviously weighing whether or not to share more with me, and then did: “The knife
, in fact, had belonged to James Bowie himself—one of the few known. And the peace pipe was similarly significant, having been given to Buffalo Bill by Chief Sitting Bull.”
“Good heavens,” I gasped. “Insured, I hope.”
“Afraid not. Dad had a funny attitude about insurance. Nearly everything in his collection was irreplaceable—one of a kind—and he felt that if something was lost or stolen, what good would the insurance money do? He couldn’t buy the exact same thing again. Besides, the premiums would have been sky high.”
Mother harbored the same attitude about insurance—maybe it was a generational thing. I had to make sure the car, house, and shop always had coverage.
I asked, “If your father didn’t keep an inventory of his collectibles, how about a record of what he bought and sold?”
Della shook her head. “Any time Dad would sell something, it would be for cash. He never wrote out a receipt. What the buyer got with the item was a letter of provenance written by Dad giving a description of that item, where it came from, and his signature. Then when he sold or traded it, he would add a sentence that its ownership was being transferred to so-and-so, and sign that.”
“No mention of what money exchanged hands?”
Della shook her head. “And, remember, sometimes he was trading for another rare item, not buying. A collector might have to give something more precious than what he or she is after, to shake an item loose from another hard-core collector.”
I knew all about that kind of thing. I said, “I understand your father sold Daryl Dugan a particularly rare Wyatt Earp poster.”
“Yes. I didn’t know about that. In fact, Dad parting with the poster surprised me, because he only got it a year before he died. On the other hand, he and Daryl were close, what with their mutual interest. But shortly after Dad’s death, Daryl dropped by my house, concerned—we both live in Stoneybrook—to make sure I knew the transaction was legitimate.”
“He showed you the letter of provenance?”
She nodded. “It was in Dad’s handwriting, I’m sure of that, saying Daryl was now the owner.” She paused, then added, “Even though Dad’s writing had gotten a little shakier with age, it was definitely his.”
“Would your father have deposited a large sum of cash into a bank account around that time?”
She laughed. “I told you how Dad felt about insurance—take a wild guess how he felt about paying income tax on collectibles he’d sold.”
“What did he do with the cash?”
“Wall safe.”
Most likely what the intruder was after.
Della was saying, “And yes, it was still loaded with money—the thief must have been interrupted, or lacked safe-cracking skills. But I couldn’t tell you where any of it came from.”
We fell into silence.
Then I said, “I don’t think I have anything else. I hope I haven’t caused you too much pain.”
“It still hurts,” she admitted. “Losing a loved one is never easy, and Dad was no spring chicken, as he’d have put it. But dying like that?” She shook her head. “And I miss Dad every day.”
I thanked the woman for her time, and left.
The afternoon was still young, so I decided to pay a visit to Serenity’s oldest established hock shop, From Pawn to King, which occupied the first floor of a restored redbrick Victorian building on Main Street.
Every so often, Mother and I could snag an undervalued antique there, put out on the floor after nonpayment of a loan. But such bargains were becoming increasingly rare—over 80 percent of people pay back their loans and reclaim their property, plus the shop’s owner, Mr. McElroy, had begun concentrating his trade mostly on electronics, sports gear, guitars, tools, and jewelry (he didn’t deal in guns).
I left an unhappy Sushi in the car, windows cracked, and entered the barred-windowed pawnshop, an electronic buzzer announcing my arrival. Mr. McElroy—who used to run a junk shop back when junk was just that—was busy sorting a stack of DVDs behind a glass counter, and looked up.
He was an ex-Marine, having served in the Korean War, and still looked formidable with his white crew cut, thick neck, and stocky but still muscular trunk stretching the fabric of a black T-shirt with store logo. Anyone would think twice before tangling with him.
“Well, Brandy,” he said. “I’d been meaning to call you and Vivian. I’m stuck with an old milkshake mixer that I know won’t sell with my crowd.”
“Hamilton Beach?” I asked.
He nodded. “Green. One spindle. Interested?”
I was very interested. The vintage mixer would go great in our shop’s kitchen, and if we couldn’t unload it, I could always make myself a malt on the coming hot summer days!
But I knew not to look too excited.
I shrugged, then fibbed, “Vintage kitchen electronics haven’t been selling for us, either.” Big sigh. “But go ahead and send us a photo, and I’ll have Mother take a look at it.” She was the horse trader. “You have our shop’s e-mail?”
He did.
“Mr. McElroy . . .” I began.
“Brandy, I think we’ve known each other long enough for you to call me Tom.”
“Tom.”
“What’s on your mind, girl, besides gyping me out of that mixer?”
“You knew Judd Pickett?”
“Sure did. Nice fellow. Terrible what happened.”
I’d brought along the police notice of the missing knife and peace pipe, and slid the paper on the counter toward him. “Do you remember seeing this?”
Tom picked the notice up, ran his eyes over it.
“Vaguely,” he said, frowning. “Mostly I recall thinking these items were nothing I’d be interested in either loaning money on or buying.”
“You might have thought different if you’d known what they really were.”
“Huh?”
I told him.
Tom emitted a long, low whistle. “I knew Judd had some valuable western stuff . . . but, good Lord! Why was this kept a secret?”
I gave him Della’s reasoning that the knife and pipe might surface if no one—including the killer—knew their worth.
I asked, “Wasn’t there another pawnshop in town for a while?”
“Out of business,” he said. “The pawn trade is tough, what with all the regulations—federal, state, and local.”
“What happened to their stock?” I asked.
“I bought it for peanuts. Mostly crap, which tells me why they went out of business.” He gestured with his head toward the back of the store. “It’s still in boxes I haven’t had time to go through.”
“How soon might you get around to that?”
“With valuable western antiques like that maybe back there? Pretty darn quick. Don’t worry, I won’t pull anything. I didn’t stay in business this long dealing in stolen property.”
“You don’t have to convince me.”
“But, Brandy, less than one tenth of one percent of stolen items ever turn up in pawnshops.”
“I know. Because of the photo ID that’s required, and the databases that can be checked.”
Tom gestured to the police notice. “I’ll take a picture of this, just in case.” Which he did with his cell phone, then handed me back the paper.
I thanked him and left.
When I got into the car, Sushi, in the passenger seat, wouldn’t look at me. She hated to be left behind, even for a short time.
So I said, “Let’s go out to Sunny Meadow and see Mother,” a sentence that had two words she loved to hear—go, and Mother.
Soon we were tooling south along scenic Mississippi Drive, the river to our left sparkling in the afternoon sun, a strong breeze making little whitecaps. A big barge loaded with cargo—probably grain—was making its way slowly downstream, headed to destinations like Natchez and New Orleans. For some reason, I started whistling the theme to the old Maverick TV show.
Sushi crawled over and stuck her head out my powered-down window (I had a good grip o
n her) and the fur on her face flattened in the wind, pink tongue flapping to one side of her mouth.
Soon we were on the bypass, then making an exit into the majestic rolling hills. In a few minutes, Sunny Meadow came into view, perched high on one of those hills.
As I approached the entrance leading up the steep drive to the facility, a bicycle tire suddenly bounced across the road in front of the car, and I slammed on the brakes, thankful I had a good hold on Sushi.
At least, I had thought it was a bicycle tire until I saw what came next: a careening one-wheeled wheelchair carrying Mother, doing a balancing act that once upon a time could have gotten her on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Which back in the day was on opposite Maverick, which hardly seemed the point at the moment.
A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip
Check out all areas of a white elephant sale. Sometimes people carry around an item for a while, then decide against the purchase (or see something they like better) and abandon it where they happen to be. If someone has something in hand that Mother really wants, she will follow the person around in case that might happen. In that case, I find myself trailing her, humming the Jaws theme to myself. Softly.
Chapter Seven
Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’
With my windshield like a personal movie screen, I watched helplessly as the runaway wheelchair carrying Mother on a single wheel raced across the road, the single free-range tire bouncing down into the ditch.
Quickly, I pulled the C-Max off the highway, gave Sushi a command to stay inside, got a “who do you think you’re talking to” look (but she obeyed), jumped out, and ran to the top of the ravine.
Mother was sitting at the bottom, in the tall grass, legs extended. To her left lay the single tire; to her right, the tipped-over wheelchair, attached wheel still spinning like a roulette wheel on the Lady Luck riverboat.
“Mother!” I cried, quickly descending. “Are you all right?”
She looked up. “Quite so, dear—thanks to a soft landing. Those Danish curves do come in handy, from time to time!”
I crouched next to her. She somehow looked both dazed and alert.
I said, “You shouldn’t move until the ambulance comes.”
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