Antiques Frame

by Barbara Allan

  Mother was asking, “Are you in touch with Tony?”

  “We talk on our cells about once a week.”

  “And he knows what Mrs. Cassato’s been doing?”

  Mother made “Mrs.” sound like a swearword.

  “Yes,” I said. “And he’s asked her to stop bothering us, hounding us . . . but she’s told him it was none of his business, and she wasn’t breaking any law.”

  Mother’s chin went up. “It’s blatant harassment, dear. Stalking!”

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid it isn’t, Mother. Camilla’s merely showing up at auctions and outbidding us. And she does have her own antiques shop to run.”

  Mother harrumphed. “It sounds like you’re defending the vile creature.”

  “Just stating the facts.”

  I turned off the two-lane onto a gravel road, the Ford’s tires kicking up dust. I was glad I’d procrastinated about washing our ride.

  Mother ventured, “Do we know anything about the current status of the Cassato divorce?”

  “Not really.” That came out harsher than intended, so I added, “Just that Tony says Camilla refuses to even discuss it.”

  “Well, she was certainly ready to divorce him before.”

  “Before I came along, you mean.”

  We fell silent for a few moments.

  Then Mother said, “Tony could take matters into his own hands—although such an action might not sit well with the good people of Serenity and could hurt his career.”

  “There’s that.”

  Mother reached over and patted my knee. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, dear.”

  The great Vivian Borne, reduced to dispensing homilies.

  I said, “The only way I can think is . . . nothing.”

  “You mean, if the woman should . . . pass away?”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, you must admit she’d relinquish her hold on your beau, in that case. And there’d be a will. The reading of?”

  “Don’t uptalk, Mother. Doesn’t become you.” To get off this subject, I asked her about Mrs. O’Grady, one of countless friends of hers whom I knew nothing about.

  “Well, dear, Alma has been a widow for several years and has decided to put the farm up for sale—along with its contents—and move to Arizona to live closer to her daughter and grandchildren. The daughter lives in Phoenix. Or is it Scottsdale? Anyway—”

  That’s all I can report of that, since I stopped listening, just glad to have her off the subject of Tony and his wife.

  Alma O’Grady’s farm was down a long dirt lane, a neat white clapboard two-story with latticework and a wide front porch, with an adjacent red barn complete with rooster weather vane. Turned out I hadn’t been lying: this was a picturesque location, worthy of a heartwarming Thomas Kinkade print over your hearth.

  The private auction would not begin for another hour, but already a dozen or so cars were parked on the still-green lawn, among a few bare fruit trees and beds of hardy fall mums that had somehow survived the frosty nights.

  I found a spot for the car, and we got out. Suddenly a diminutive woman came rushing toward us, her apple-cheeked face flushed. She wore an autumn-theme dress festooned with plump pumpkins and fallen leaves that might have made a nice Thanksgiving tablecloth.

  Mother turned to me and said softly, “Our hostess.”

  The small figure grabbed Mother’s hand and began shaking it up and down like it was an old-fashioned water pump. “Vivian, I can’t tell you how exciting this is! To be on your show, I mean. Just imagine!”

  “Think nothing of it,” Mother granted regally.

  Mrs. O’Grady, releasing Mother’s hand, turned to me. “You must be Brandy. We haven’t met.”

  “I must be,” I said pleasantly, “and now we have.” I pressed my hands to my breast in hopes of avoiding the pump-handle handshake. “Thank you so much for allowing us to film here today, and at such short notice.”

  I thought it should be said, since Mother apparently wasn’t going to.

  “My pleasure!” The tiny woman gestured to the barn; her eyes were a little wild. “Come along and I’ll introduce you to the tool club. Most of our members are here by now.”

  I followed Mother and Mrs. O’Grady to the barn, its heavy wooden double doors opened wide, revealing a rustic interior. Folding chairs had been arranged in rows on the dirt floor and faced a card table on which a bidding gavel rested.

  In the chairs sat a dozen or so people, waiting for the auction to begin. Another dozen or so bidders were on their feet, viewing the various items displayed along a long workbench—vintage tools for sale.

  Mrs. O’Grady clapped her hands. “May I have everyone’s attention, please?”

  The little woman had summoned a big voice.

  Heads swiveled our way.

  “I have a wonderful surprise! Many of you may know Vivian and Brandy Borne from Serenity’s very own reality show, Antiques Sleuths.... Well, they are going to be filming our auction this afternoon.”

  A murmuring rolled across the crowd, which mostly consisted of men over fifty, with a few wives scattered in, but, basically, no one seemed overly excited about us being there, one way or the other.

  Which I could tell irked Mother (the white was showing all around her magnified-behind-her-oversize-glasses eyes). Didn’t these hayseeds know they were in the presence of a star?

  So I took her hand. “Let’s go have a look at the tools and decide what we want to bid on.”

  Bidding was expected of us as part of the TV show. The precedent in other on-location segments was that we each would be featured bidding on something at an auction or buying something at a flea market, swap meet, estate sale, or the like. We had a budget of a thousand dollars per episode and were able to keep whatever we bought and sell it in our shop, but we had already used six hundred of this episode’s budget that morning on the items Joe and the others had brought in.

  So if we bid over four hundred dollars on antique tools, it would come out of our own collective pocket.

  With this in mind, Mother and I skirted around the folding chairs and headed for the long workbench where the tools were neatly arranged, each having a lot number tag attached. A second tag gave a brief description of the item.

  Mother started at one end, and I at the other. I walked slowly along, taking in the hay knives, hand rakes, coupling hooks, horse hoof picks, cowbells, turnip choppers, branding irons, and barn lanterns, each highly polished. Then my eyes fell on a rare (according to its tag, anyway) corn husker, which (again, according to the description) removed the husks from ears of corn. The hand tool looked like a wicked oversize wrench with razor-sharp teeth and a spike with which to hold the corn.

  Even though a sign was posted to remind everyone not to pick up the tools, I discreetly did so with this one in order to gauge the metal and determine its heft, the corn husker being cast iron. Then I quickly put it back.

  Mother, having determined what she wanted to bid on, came rushing over, any thought of being taken for granted by the crowd long gone now.

  “I’m going for the bushel and peck!”

  She meant two wooden measuring buckets sold as a set.

  Then Mother began to sing the Frank Loesser song from Guys and Dolls, which she’d directed and starred in some years ago at the Serenity Playhouse, including every last “doodle oodle.” And at least now she got some attention from her audience.

  Phil, Jamal, Steve, and Jena arrived, hauling in their equipment, preventing Mother from continuing with “A Person Can Develop a Cold” (aka “Adelaide’s Lament,” her Guys and Dolls character’s other big tune), and we went to join them.

  Phil, taking in the surroundings, said to us, “I like it. Very manageable, even with a small crew. Good call, Vivian. There’s enough natural light coming in the barn doors that we don’t need anything else.” Then to Steve, “Where do you want to set up?”

  The soundman gestured to an out-of-the-way spot. “How abou
t there?”

  Phil nodded. He turned to Jena. “Got the release forms?”

  “Right here.” She patted a messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

  “All right, let’s do this.... Jamal, put the camera on sticks just over there. We’ll move to handheld later.”

  Jamal nodded and set about doing that.

  While Mother and I stood awaiting our marching orders, Phil strode to the front of the now seated crowd, positioning himself behind the auctioneer’s card table.

  “Hello, everybody. I’m Phillip Dean,” he said affably. “And I’d like to express my gratitude to the Serenity Antique Tool Club for letting us shoot here this afternoon. I want to assure all of you that we’ll be as unobtrusive as possible. Just pretend we’re not even here. I only ask that you don’t look at the camera. Oh . . . and we request that you sign the release form that Jena—she’s the attractive young woman with the clipboard there—will be passing among you, getting permission from you to use you in the show.” He paused. “Does anyone have any questions?”

  A middle-aged woman in the back asked, “When’s this going to air?”

  “Sometime in January. Anyone else?”

  A grumpy guy up front said, “What if I don’t feel like bein’ on TV and don’t give you permission? I got as much right to be here as anybody.”

  “Yes, you do. And if you don’t sign off on appearing, you will appear, anyway, as a bunch of scrambled pixels. And I don’t think the grandkids’ll wanna see that!”

  General laughter and even a smile from Grumpy Gramps.

  Phil slow-scanned the audience. “Anyone have anything else?”

  No one did.

  An arrangement was made with the auctioneers—husband- and-wife team Gerald and Loretta Klein—to move the items Mother and I would be bidding on to the front of the schedule.

  The Kleins had been at this for a while. Both in their midforties, Gerald was skinny, with shaggy white hair, a leathery tan, and cowboy boots and hat; and Loretta was of medium height, big boned in a curvy way, with brassy blond hair and heavy make-up that stopped just shy of clownish, and a dress with petticoats straight out of a square dance.

  For years, the pair had run an auction house along the nearby bypass, and both had been very kind to Mother and me after I moved back home and discovered that Mother had gone off her bipolar medication and had sold nearly all our antique Queen Anne furniture, some of which turned up for sale at one of their auctions. And the Kleins had helped us get back our heirlooms (to say more might take us into spoiler country where Antiques Roadkill is concerned).

  After a brief sound check—Mother and I wore clip-on microphones and small transmitter packs, as did the auctioneers, while Steve’s boom mic would pick up anything the audience might contribute—the auction officially started with Mother’s pick: the bushel and peck wooden buckets.

  Mother had scant competition from other bidders—whether out of respect to her or shyness because of the camera—and she easily won the items for two hundred dollars. That left me two hundred from our episode budget for my pick.

  While their attire might have been corny, the Kleins displayed real showmanship, and I knew Mother had really added some spice to this episode with her idea.

  As Loretta held up the tool, Gerald announced, “Next is a rare hand corn husker that’ll take you right back to the golden age of Iowa farmin’. Let’s pay our respects with an openin’ bid of seventy-five dollars.”

  I held up my hand.

  The auctioneer began his hypnotic spiel: “Seventy-five-dollar bid, now one hundred, now one hundred. Will you give me one hundred?”

  A man seated in front of me gestured.

  “One-hundred-dollar bid, now one-twenty-five, now one-twenty-five. Will you give me one-twenty-five?”

  I signaled.

  “One-twenty-five bid, now one-fifty, now one-fifty, will you give me one-fifty?”

  My competition dropped out.

  Gerald looked my way. “One-twenty-five going once, one-twenty-five going twice . . .”

  “Five hundred dollars!”

  I turned in my seat to see Camilla Cassato standing at the back. The tall, slender woman in her early fifties, with dark hair, an olive complexion, and deep-set eyes, wore a smirk that undercut her attractive features.

  How could she know we were here?

  Gerald’s eyes returned to me. “Five-hundred bid, five-twenty-five, now five-twenty-five. Will you give me five hundred and twenty-five?”

  Reluctantly, I shook my head.

  “Five hundred going once, five hundred going twice . . .” The gavel came down with gun-crack finality. “Sold for five hundred dollars!”

  Mother was out of her chair and striding back to Camilla with purpose.

  Facing the woman, she demanded, “Must you persecute my daughter? You know that you grossly overpaid for that item just to embarrass us and demean her!”

  Camilla tossed her head, and her dark hair did a gypsy dance. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean, you unpleasant woman. As it happens, I’ve always wanted a hand corn husker.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” Mother blurted, making it sound like swearing. “You’re just jealous!”

  “Jealous of what? That scrawny daughter of yours?”

  “My scrawny daughter has your husband’s affections, and you do not! All you have is a corn husker you paid a small fortune for!”

  I was at Mother’s side now.

  Camilla’s sneer was dismissive and patronizing. “I heard you were a delusional madwoman, Mrs. Borne. I thought surely everyone was exaggerating. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. You really are a lunatic!”

  That was it. I can insult Mother all I want, but nobody else better!

  And I gave Camilla a shove.

  Just the tiniest little shove, really, but—as if I had really given her a push—she fell backward onto an empty folding chair, and they collapsed together with a metallic wham.

  Of course, I immediately regretted my actions, particularly since if she wanted to press charges, the entire altercation had been videotaped by Phil himself.

  And I couldn’t be sure, but I thought our cameraman /director was smiling.

  I guess he knew good footage when he caught it.

  A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip

  Before bidding, have a set amount you are willing to pay and don’t go over it, even if it hurts to lose the item. Better to moan in disappointment once at a sale than every day, when you pass the item in the hall—like Mother’s three-hundred-seventy-five-dollar butter churn.

  Chapter Two

  It Takes Two to Tangle

  With the filming of Antiques Sleuths: Season One completed, Mother and I settled back into the routine of running our shop, which seemed to me (and Mother, too, I’m sure) painfully dull after the past few hectic months. Even Sushi acted a little bored due to the lack of action and screen time.

  Truthfully, though, I didn’t mind having the show “wrapped” for the season. I was not cut out to be a star, like Mother. And Sushi.

  Phil Dean remained in Serenity—Jena, Steve, and Jamal having departed—the producer busy completing the final episode in a local editing suite, which was deemed more cost-effective than him returning to Los Angeles. This way, in case he needed retakes or extra footage, his “cast” was easily accessible.

  Late Tuesday morning—just two days after the dustup between Camilla and yours truly—the little bell above the door tinkled and Tony walked in, bringing a chill wind with him. He was wearing his normal uniform of tan trench coat, blue shirt, navy-striped tie, gray slacks, and black Florsheim shoes, but his stern expression told me that this was not a routine friendly visit.

  I was behind the counter, casually, even sloppily, dressed (now that I was blessedly not in front of a camera) in a gray sweatshirt and jeans and sipping a cup of hot coffee.

  As Tony came toward me, Mother, in navy slacks and a navy sweater with sparkly white snowflakes, appeared fr
om the living-room area, where she had been cleaning, a feather duster in hand.

  Before I had a chance to speak to Tony, Mother chirped, “Well, hello, Chiefie dear. To what do we owe this honor?”

  “Vivian,” he said with a grudging nod, otherwise not answering her.

  Sushi had trotted out from behind the counter to investigate the bell and, finding Tony, began to paw at his legs. He was her favorite man, too.

  Tony bent to give Soosh a quick scratch on the head, then straightened, eyes returning to Mother. “Could I have a private moment with Brandy?”

  A moment? Was that all I rated?

  Mother gave Tony her best stage smile, the one with all the teeth that registered in the back row, and said, “But of course! I am never one to intrude or to wear out my welcome.” Both highly inaccurate statements. Also, she didn’t go anywhere, until my sharp look sent her retreating into the other room.

  Tony really needn’t have bothered asking her to leave. I knew darn well she was not only listening from around the corner but watching, as well. How so?

  Well, having taken a page out of Nero Wolfe, Mother had arranged a framed picture on the adjacent living-room wall, where she could see through to the counter; but instead of Wolfe’s painting of a waterfall, this was a Keane print of a sad, big-eyed boy. He may have been sad because he had a hole for one eye.

  Of course, she’d done Nero Wolfe one better: on my side of the same wall was a similar Keane print—this one of a crying girl—also missing an eye, which not coincidentally lined up with the boy’s, enabling Mother to observe the living room from the counter, as well. Took her all afternoon to line those two up.

  Everyone clear? Two paintings, one in the living room, one facing the counter, shared hole between their missing eyes. And Mother’s magnified peepers behind her large lenses made a perfect match for either print.

  I said to Tony, “Why so serious?”