Antiques Roadkill

by Barbara Allan

  I let that pass, and got back on point: “Tanya could be the key to this whole mess. Can you think of anyone who’d know more about Carson and his business?”

  And we both knew that the call that had begun all this, left on our answering machine, was left by either Tanya or someone claiming to be Tanya.

  Mother perked up. “Shall we go talk to her?”

  I laughed humorlessly. “Oh, sure. We’ll go do that right away—only, we don’t know where she lives, or if she’s even still around town. She could’ve blown this pop stand, particularly if she was involved with Carson’s meth biz.”

  Mother was thinking again; not always a good sign. “I’m not so sure, dear. Remember, I ran into her at Carson’s store, not so long ago.”

  “Sure, but that was right after … You’re not saying the store is still open, are you?”

  Mother explained patiently: “Not ‘open,’ per se. But some of the merchandise was on consignment, and therefore not part of Carson’s estate—I understand Tanya has been contacting those people to come by and pick up their antiques.”

  I just looked at her. “How do you know these things?”

  Mother seemed shocked. “Dear—I’m Vivian Borne! What goes on in Serenity that I don’t know about isn’t worth knowing.”

  Maybe Peggy Sue could sew that on one of her samplers. I looked at my wrist and realized my watch was one of the many casualties in the house explosion.

  “Mother, what time is it?”

  Mother checked her watch, which (like her) had survived the blast intact. “Two PM.”

  I stood. “Well—what are we waiting for? We’re the Snoop Sisters, aren’t we?”

  “I prefer to think of us as the Borne to Win Detective Agency.… I’ll just get my hat and parasol.”

  “Do you really need those?” I asked, wincing as I took in the items hanging on the end of the clothes rack—the wide-brim hat smaller than a tractor wheel (just), loaded with faded silk flowers of every variety and color, and covered with white netting. The parasol was pink and was, well … a parasol!

  “Of course, dear,” Mother said, grandly patient. “The hat makes the outfit, and, anyway, I heard it was going to rain.”

  I sighed. “Well, all right … but hanging around with you, I feel underdressed.…”

  My eyesore of a car—my only insured possession, and unharmed in the blast (damn!)—was hidden away in the Hastings family’s third garage. I told Peggy Sue that Mother and I were going out to run a few errands, which she was fine with as long as we weren’t late for supper. So now my older sister had taken on the role of my mother and her own mother’s mother. Please God, make our stay here short.…

  The warm, sunny morning had surrendered to a cloudy, dark afternoon, cool wind whipping in from the north. Big drops of rain had begun to fall, just the occasional warning pellet, but enough to prompt turning on the car’s wipers, which sounded like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard. When we cruised slowly by Carson’s store, I noted that the heavy wooden and very much tightly shut front door wore a CLOSED sign, visible behind its etched glass.

  I swung my Taurus around the corner, then drove down a narrow alley behind the building, where a sky-blue Mercedes sat in an alcove adjacent to the back door of the shop.

  Mother and I exchanged raised-eyebrow looks.

  “Tanya must be doing well,” said I.

  “Very well, indeed,” said she.

  I parked, purposefully blocking the Mercedes; then we got out and went to the door. I knocked.

  Nothing.

  I knocked again, really, really loud.

  Really, really nobody answered.

  “Might be unlocked,” Mother said.

  “Isn’t that breaking and entering?”

  “It’s entering,” she said with an innocent little shrug, “but not breaking.”

  The door, indeed, was unlocked, almost as if Mother had willed it so.

  The air within was oppressively dust-laden as Mother and I climbed a flight of wooden steps that led to the first floor. We arrived and promptly announced ourselves by sneezing three times each (mine: chipmunk; Mother’s: moose in labor).

  After this unintentional proclamation of our presence, I expected a glaring Tanya to greet us as we emerged onto the main floor, perhaps with a weapon in hand, to ward off intruders; but neither woman nor weapon appeared.

  In fact, as we moved deeper within the first floor of the venerable building, Tanya was nowhere in sight.

  The shop was still full of antiques, primarily furniture but also occasional display cases of collectibles; here and there outlines in the dust spoke of consignment items that had been carried off by their owners.

  I walked over to the raised cash-register island and peered over the counter. A computer monitor had gone into screensaver mode, indicating that Tanya had been away from it for at least a while. Resting by the feet of the office chair was a brown Gucci hobo bag. So the woman hadn’t left the store. Briefly I had a flash of that tale of the woman declared missing because her purse had been left behind; suddenly it seemed less ridiculous.…

  Walking around big old empty buildings has a certain built-in creep factor, but—despite a core skepticism of anything mystical—I had a real sensation that something was wrong here, that something (all right, I’ll say it) sinister was in the dust-mote-floating air.

  And a sense that we were not alone.

  I turned to speak to Mother, but she had disappeared.

  At least she’d taken her purse with her.

  Fighting panic, knowing Mother was as capable as any small child of wandering off unattended, I nonetheless ran to the back where I had seen her last, my footsteps echoing off the hardwood floors like machine-gun fire.

  “Mother! … Mother!”

  Suddenly a door next to the stairs flew open, and Mother stood framed in the archway, adjusting her girdle.

  “Well, the girl’s not in here,” she announced, adding, “By the way, I wouldn’t use the toilet—it doesn’t flush.”

  I waited for her to approach me; then I took her by both arms, firmly, and my eyes locked on her buggy ones. “Mother … please stay with me … don’t go wandering around.”

  “Of course, dear. But you can’t blame a girl for having to tinkle.”

  I let go of her. “Well, you didn’t have to scare the piss out of me doing it!”

  She gave me the reproving “language!” look.

  I sighed and said, “Okay, now you’ve tinkled—any other urges or impulses, check with me, first, before acting on them.”

  “You’re treating me like a child!”

  “Right … now stay with me.”

  And admittedly there really was little difference in taking Mother out these days and Jake at age three—I’d have been better off with Sushi.

  I sighed. Swallowed, not relishing the dust taste. Then I said, “Let’s check upstairs.”

  Taking the lead, I navigated the narrow paths between antiques, some stacked on top of each other. We were nearly to the stairs when Mother shrieked.

  I spun, hair on the back of my neck standing up straight. “What is it, Mother? What’s wrong?”

  Mother pointed to a particularly ugly bowl on a table. “That carnival glass—it’s marked at seventy-five dollars! Anyone can see that it’s chipped.”

  My eyes tightened to where I couldn’t see much, and what I could see was red. “Mother—can you please behave?”

  Mother frowned, half cross, half hurt. “Have you been taking your medicine?”

  “Have you?”

  Mother, indignant, snapped, “Certainly,” sounding just a little like Curly in The Three Stooges.

  I let out yet another sigh, a very, very long one. Then I said, “Okay—okay. We’re both properly medicated. So let’s both just settle down.…”

  We climbed the stairs, which were wide enough for us to do so side by side.

  Near darkness awaited. The second-floor ceiling lights were off, and with th
e storm brewing outside, the row of windows facing the street offered little help for our vision. Those windows rustling with wind, however, did aid and abet our fear.

  Up here, very little of the merchandise had been cleared out, a looming armoire looking like a large tombstone, and an ornate floor lamp a skeleton. A row of grandfather clocks stood like weird figures staring at us from the darkness, waiting to strike. Suddenly this was a graveyard of antiques, and I shivered.

  “Tanya?” I called out.

  Silence.

  “ Tanya!”

  Mother, her eyes searching the vast, dim expanse of furniture, said, “Maybe she’s in the basement.”

  “But we came in that way.”

  “We didn’t look around, though … and there are lots of rooms down there.”

  She had a point.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, fighting crankiness and not succeeding terribly well.

  As Mother moved away from me, I asked, “Where are you going now?”

  “The basement.”

  “The stairs are over there …”

  Mother’s condescending expression granted me dispensation for being young and foolish. “Why climb down two flights of stairs, when we can take the freight elevator?”

  “Maybe … because we don’t know how to use it?”

  But Mother had already disappeared into the darkness, her voice emerging to say, “I do, dear. Nothing to it!”

  Managing not to bump into anything, moving down an aisle of strange shapes like Snow White through the scary forest where the wicked witch sent her to die, I caught up to Mother at the elevator as she was about to enter.

  “Mother! Stop!”

  As she took a step into dead air, I grabbed her arm, and for one heart-stopping moment, I thought we were both going to tumble down the shaft!

  But I also had hold of the retracted wooden gate, and with some difficulty pulled us back, where we collapsed on the floor in an undignified (but at least alive) pile.

  I squawked at her: “You can see a chip in some carnival glass at fifty feet—but you couldn’t see that elevator wasn’t there?”

  Mother, alarmed, said, “But … but the gate was open! The gate shouldn’t be open if the elevator’s not waiting.…”

  I spotted a mag-light hanging on a nail, got up, and fetched it. Then I knelt on my still-shaking knees by the edge of the elevator shaft and beamed the flashlight upward.

  “There it is,” I said, “just above us—I think it’s stuck in between floors.”

  Mother, still seated on the floor, huffed, “Whoever used that elevator last should have been more careful. It would have served them right if I’d fallen!”

  Deciding not to dignify that with a response, I couldn’t help directing the beam downward into the yawning mouth of our near-fate, to morbidly assess what would have been waiting for us.

  For one thing, we would have had company.…

  “And when I see that Tanya,” Mother railed on, “I’m going to give her a stern talking—”

  “I wouldn’t bother, Mother.” I gulped. “She … she’s down there.”

  “Where?”

  “Right where you said she was—the basement.”

  Mother crawled over and looked down the shaft where the flashlight’s beam revealed the limp, twisted body of the store clerk.

  “Oh dear,” Mother gasped, and touched her bosom delicately. “She must have made the same mistake I almost did … fell down there by accident.”

  “Accidental, like Clint Carson’s body waiting in the road for one of us to run over … accidental like our gas fireplace getting turned on in the summer and our house blowing up … accidental like my hospital roommate dying after I traded beds with her … that kind of accidental, Mother?”

  Mother thought for a moment, then, absurdly, “You’re suggesting she was pushed, aren’t you, Brandy?”

  “Yeah,” I said dryly. “That’s what I’m suggesting. And I’d suggest, now, we call the police.”

  “That,” came a deep voice from the darkness, startling us, “won’t be necessary.”

  Officer Brian Lawson emerged from the gloom and stood a few yards away; his gun was drawn—not quite pointing at us, but not quite not pointing at us.

  Where he had come from, I couldn’t say. I certainly hadn’t heard him approach. Maybe he’d been hiding in the dark the whole time; if so, he knew how to minimize his breathing.

  And yet I’d had that sensation that we weren’t alone here.

  Several things clashed in my mind, not completely formed thoughts, just snippets: Wild Cat Den, Mia, meth, Carson, Lawson …

  Had my knight in blue armor had something to do with the death of Tanya?

  Mother said, “Thank goodness you’re here, Officer! That poor woman is lying at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”

  I got to my feet and helped Mother up. “Yes, it’s a good thing you happened to be here,” I said, putting no suspicion in my voice, but remembering that he’d happened to be patrolling in the area at the very time our house blew up.

  Taking Mother’s elbow, I gently guided her away from the open mouth of the shaft.

  Lawson, his gun still aimed in our general direction, wore a decidedly nasty expression—damn near a sneer. “You girls just can’t stay out of trouble, can you? Had to continue sticking your noses in.”

  I huffed with forced indignation: “I don’t know what you’re talking about! We’re here on business … to pick up some antiques we had here on consignment.”

  He was at the edge of the elevator now, body turned so that his torso faced us while he looked down, grimly. “Looks like somebody consigned Tanya to the bottom of this shaft.”

  I kept working at indignation, but it wasn’t flying. “We just happened to find her, Officer—right now. You must’ve seen us!”

  Lawson stepped a few feet away and talked into his shoulder—some of it was official numbers that I frankly can’t remember, sort of Adam-12 cop-speak; but he seemed to be calling the death in.

  Then he swung back toward us. “You two’re coming with me.”

  “Where?” Mother and I asked.

  He didn’t answer, but motioned again with the gun. “Get going.”

  Was Mother as afraid as I was?

  If so, she hid it well, demanding, “Young man, are you arresting us? If so, on what charge?”

  He ignored this and just said, “Move.”

  “Move where?” I asked.

  “Downstairs,” he said, and thankfully holstered the gun. “My car’s in back.”

  I took Mother’s hand. Were we going back to the station—for another round in the “Interview Room"? Or was Lawson a dirty cop, up to his badge in meth and other drugs and the murder of Clint Carson?

  Either way, I didn’t know what to do about getting Mother and me out of this situation. One could be answered with a call to Mr. Ekhardt; the other didn’t present any solution at all, unless I wanted to tackle him or something, wrest that gun on his hip out of his holster.…

  I was still frantically thinking it through when we were outside, where Lawson put us once again in the backseat of the police car, which was blocking mine, blocking Tanya’s.

  He stayed outside the vehicle talking into his shoulder again, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying to whoever was on the other end of the radio. After a good minute or even two, Officer Lawson got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and we headed down the alley.

  Mother and I were quiet on the short ride along Fifth Street to the Safety Building. But when the car went on by, we both broke out in protest.

  Fear spiked through me. “Where are you taking us?”

  Mother shouted at the wire separating us from Lawson and the front seat, “I demand to see my lawyer!”

  Banging on that wire with both hands, I yelled, “This is kidnapping! We haven’t been charged! You won’t get away with this!”

  Mother’s cries were overlapping mine: “If you don’t pull over, young man, we’
re going to sue the city of Serenity for every cent in its coffers!”

  Lawson said nothing.

  Not a peep.

  At the end of Fifth, we bumped over some train tracks, sped down a dirt road between a defunct tool factory and a condemned grain silo, and came to a dusty halt in front of an abandoned warehouse.

  My heart was pounding.

  Lawson got outside the vehicle.

  “Mother,” I whispered, “after we get out, I’m going to rush him—I’m going to grab his gun and toss it to you and then I’m going to claw his eyes out.”

  “Well … it’s a little rash … but—”

  “But nothing—if he gets us inside that warehouse, we’re finished. He’s the one behind all this—he’s a dirty cop.”

  Mother looked out the window at him, frowning, as if looking for dirt smudges and finding none. She turned to me. “A small suggestion, dear? You kick him in the nuts, and I’ll gouge his eyes out. Two are better than one.”

  “Okay. Okay, Mother. We’ll go with your plan.…”

  Lawson was about to open the door with his left hand, his gun out again, in his right.

  Mother said hurriedly, “Brandy, there’s something I should tell you … something about Peggy Sue.…”

  “Another time, Mother.” Lawson had his hand on the back door handle. “Get ready. …”

  But my blue knight played it smart.

  After opening the car door, he backed away as we climbed out, letting his gun do the talking.

  “After you, ladies.”

  Mother and I clutched hands as we walked slowly, tremblingly toward the warehouse, Lawson bringing up the rear, keeping a safe distance.

  “Inside,” he ordered.

  We could do nothing but obey.

  The building we stepped into—once owned by a company that made office furniture—was now neglected and empty. Rusty, bleeding pipes ran the length of the high metal ceiling, the concrete walls peeling green paint.

  “Mother,” I said, “I’m sorry for every lousy, selfish thing I ever did or said, and for any trouble I’ve caused you.”

  “Brandy, dear, don’t talk like that. Perhaps Officer Lawson will listen to reason.”