Antiques Wanted Page 4

  “All right, dear. Sleep tight!”

  Mother had stopped adding, “And don’t let the bedbugs bite,” after she’d brought home an infested patchwork pillow from a garage sale.

  Upstairs, I took a hot shower, got into some comfy pajamas, and—in my Art Deco bedroom with its 1930s matching bird’s-eye maple furniture—crawled under the sheets. I was about to drop off when my cell phone on the nightstand pinged.

  * * *

  Want some company? Tony texted.

  Thanks, but I’m in bed, I texted back.

  Wish I could join you.

  I smiled. That was about as racy as Tony got.

  Me, too. Call me tomorrow. Love you!

  Someone in history must have slept more soundly than I did that night, but I don’t know who it would have been. Maybe Queen Anne.

  * * *

  The following morning, Tuesday, I felt rested enough to work with Mother at our antiques shop, Trash ’n’ Treasures, located in a turn-of-the-last-century, two-story white clapboard house downtown, where the business district ended and a residential area began to climb East Hill.

  Before we bought the vacant property, it was known around town as “the murder house,” after a notorious ax killing happened there (Antiques Chop—okay, so our titles aren’t subtle). Mother had no qualms about moving in, and my qualms were somewhat eased after Father O’Brien blessed the house, even if we weren’t Catholic. (By the way, should these parenthetical asides be getting on your nerves, best buckle up—they’re not going to disappear anytime soon.)

  The house worked well to showcase our wares—we had arranged everything according to the room in which the antique or collectible might normally have been found. Living room furnishings in the living room, dining room items in the dining room, ditto the kitchen, bedrooms (one a nursery with children’s things), hall linen closet, and bathroom with claw-foot tub. The attic held old junk, from ancient steamer trunks to salvaged doors, and the basement contained “mantiques,” like old tools and beer signs.

  Sometimes Mother and I would have an argument over which room should be a new old item’s home, like the oil painting of a vase of flowers, which I thought would go better (and sell better) in the dining room, while she wanted it in the living room. When such squabbles happen, we let Sushi decide—whichever of the two rooms she goes into first gets the item. So far, Soosh has always gone with my pick. Perhaps the little angel has good instincts . . . or maybe she just knows how to sniff out a little doggie biscuit somebody had hidden....

  Customers, by the way, were always telling us that their trip to Trash ’n’ Treasures was like visiting a favorite elderly relative (hopefully one who hadn’t been dispatched with an ax). Maybe that was because, in the kitchen, free goodies were always waiting—hot coffee and cookies baked fresh every day in the working stove, their aroma wafting throughout the house.

  At the moment I was seated at the small checkout counter in the foyer, making sales entries in the computer. Sushi, who always came to work with us, slept behind me in a leopard-print doggie bed on the floor. Mother was in the living room, dusting.

  When the little bell above the front door tinkled, signaling a customer, I looked up from the screen, while Sushi gave a sharp bark from her bed, just in case I hadn’t heard it.

  As long as we’d been in business—and since having a cable reality show, short-lived though it was—all kinds of folks ventured to our shop . . . but none surprised me more than the person who just walked in.

  “Good morning, Deputy,” I said.

  Daryl Dugan was about forty, just under six feet, with short dark hair, chiseled features, and muscles stretching the fabric of his tan shirt. What kept him from being a hunk in my book were close-set eyes that gave him a mildly dim-witted look. The extent of what I knew about him was that he’d been in the service before entering law enforcement, and had recently married a woman my age, who had two ex-husbands.

  The deputy approached the counter. “You’re all right?”

  “Doing fine, thanks.”

  He let out some air. “I’m glad,” he said, with seeming sincerity.

  “I’m so sorry about your aunt,” I replied, meaning it. “She was a sweetheart.” Even if she had ordered me around like a top sergeant.

  He nodded. “She was very special to me.”

  “This kind of thing . . . it’s always hard.”

  This kind of thing? What was I saying? Was it usual for a room at a nursing home to blow sky high?

  Dugan shifted his stance. “Sheriff mentioned Aunt Harriet had given you something of hers.”

  Uh-oh. “She did. We asked her if she was sure no family member wanted it, and she said—”

  He silenced me with an upraised palm, as if taking the oath in court. “I understand. It’s just that, well, everything was destroyed in the explosion and fire, and I might like to have it to remember her by. I’d pay you for it, certainly. What was it?”

  Mother, who’d almost certainly been listening from the living room, popped in. “It was a lamp, Mr. Dugan, a replica of an original Tiffany. Do you know of what I’m speaking?”

  The deputy nodded. “Yes. Not exactly the kind of family memento I was hoping for. Was that all she gave you?”

  “That’s all that was in the box,” Mother said.

  Which wasn’t a lie, because she’d hand-carried the photo of Gabby Hayes. Such nuances were important to her. And since the deputy collected western stuff, he might have asked for that back. And Mother did have a thing about Gabby Hayes. . . .

  Mother moved behind the counter to stand next to me. “So do you want the lamp or not?” she asked Dugan, rather bluntly.

  He nodded. “It was my aunt’s after all—I’ll pay for it, as I told Brandy. But I’d appreciate it if I could do that now.” A wry smile. “Would be a little embarrassing to go to your sale and be seen giving money to your campaign.”

  “Four hundred dollars,” Mother said.

  I gave her a gentle kick.

  “Oh, I’m just a sentimental soul,” Mother said, reaching a leg up to rub where I’d kicked. “Make it two hundred.”

  She raised a hand to stop me from kicking her again.

  The deputy was frowning. “Well, uh . . .”

  “Make it fifty,” Mother said, “between friendly rivals.”

  I said sweetly, “Of course the lamp is yours.” I turned to Mother and gave her a look that would have frozen water. “Where is it?”

  Her magnified eyes behind the impossibly large glasses threw daggers at me. “In the back. With the other white elephant items.”

  My sweet tone took on sour edges. “Why don’t you get it, Mother, since you know right where it is?”

  After she’d left in a huff, I said to Dugan, “I need to talk to you in private—will you be home tonight around seven?”

  He reared back just a little. “Ah . . . I could be. What’s this about, Brandy?”

  “I’d rather not get into it here. Will you be there?”

  “Yeah, okay. Sure. Glad to.”

  “Good. Where do you live?”

  He told me.

  Mother appeared with the lamp, still packed in the box the deputy’s aunt had provided.

  He took it, thanked us for our generosity, then left.

  For a long moment after the door had closed, Mother said nothing. Then, angrily, she said, “That money is going to come out of your end.”

  “Look, a little goodwill coming in to this election can’t hurt. Besides, no doubt you’ll spread the story of your magnanimous gesture all over town.”

  Mother harrumphed. “You mean your magnanimous gesture.” She suddenly softened. “Well, perhaps it will generate some good karma. You were right to give him that lamp. And we’ll both absorb the loss.”

  “We didn’t pay anything for it!”

  “But we’ll never know what it might have raised for the campaign, will we? Anyway, I have a way for you to pay me back.”

  “I don’t o
we you anything.”

  “Of course you do. Don’t forget, I have a stump speech to give at two o’clock this afternoon. And you will be there, cheering me on!”

  The Serenity League of Women Voters had invited Mother to address them after their luncheon at the Grand Queen Hotel.

  While Mother returned to her dusting, I sat feeling guilty about my clandestine meeting tonight with her foe.

  A little guilty.

  A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip

  There are no set rules for a white elephant sale. Sometimes an admission is charged, other times attendance is free; some have set prices, others are auction format. Knowing what guidelines apply before going will make your experience more satisfying and fun. Mother is often on top of such guidelines, having muscled her way onto the committee that makes the rules.

  Chapter Three

  Paint Your Bandwagon

  Leaving Sushi behind in the shop with kibbles and water and her comfy bed, Mother and I departed at a quarter to two, pausing on the stoop long enough for her to tape a note she had written to the locked front door:

  CLOSED FOR STUMP SPEECH

  LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS

  2 PM, GRAND QUEEN HOTEL BALLROOM

  ALL WOMEN* WELCOME

  (*includes transgenders but not transvestites)

  (the latter welcome at Trash ’n’ Treasures always!)

  (The former, too.)

  Okay, so it wasn’t a note—more like a sheet. And, no, I didn’t try to stop her; I had a bigger concern at the moment: what Mother was going to say to the good women of Serenity.

  Earlier, when I had asked to see her speech, she blithely told me she’d written nothing down—it was all “safely and securely ensconced in the old noodle.” Now, on the three-block walk to the hotel, I tried to get her to un-ensconce it and share whatever exactly was rattling around in there.

  “Dear,” Mother replied, “I don’t know precisely what words will come trippingly off my tongue. I am well-versed in improv, as you well know. Further, I am a thespian—more at ease in front of an audience than most are in the privacy of their own homes.”

  True. But the words spoken on stage at our local community theater came from the likes of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wilde, and Coward. Or at least John Patrick, author of Everybody Loves Opal and its five sequels.

  As the hotel came into view, Mother paused to soliloquize. “Behold the Grand Queen in all her splendor! And to think she could have been lost.”

  Two decades ago, the eight-story Victorian edifice, situated on a bank of the Mississippi, had been slated for demolition, when the wealthy publisher of the Serenity Sentinel bought the building and gave it a much-needed three-million-dollar face-lift. The publisher also boldly implemented a (then) innovative concept of guest rooms in the form of fantasy suites. People came from far and wide, and still do, to experience the way-out moon room complete with space-capsule bed, or decadent Grecian playground with unlikely hot tub, or to spend the night on the bridge of the starship Enterprise (or the newer Next Generation bridge, so popular with bald bridegrooms).

  But a few suites had gotten the ax after giving guests nightmares instead of fantasies—like the too-realistic claustrophobia-inducing submarine suite, also responsible for heart palpitations when the “dive” horn (auugh-OOGAH!) unexpectedly bleated. Also controversial were the captain’s rustic pirate-ship cabin with its seasick-inducing motorized floor, and Tarzan’s tree house, from the bed in which tumbled an acrobatic honeymooning couple, breaking various limbs—tree and human.

  Mother and I entered the hotel via a side door, then followed a marbled hallway to an elevator, which took us up to the third floor. Her chin high, her smile confident, her magnified eyes half-lidded, Mother was obviously not at all nervous about this new theatrical venue.

  As the doors swished open, we were greeted with boisterous after-luncheon chatter accompanied by the clanking and clinking of glasses and dishes as waitstaff cleared tables. We stepped into the elegantly appointed ballroom, its decor reflecting a recent remodel, yet in keeping with the hotel’s Victorian-era history.

  A few things remained original—the shimmering center ceiling chandelier, for example, and beautiful dark oak wainscoting. The iris-patterned wallpaper by nineteenth-century English artisans Morris and Crane had also been salvaged, its faded beauty only enhanced by the newer touches.

  Before us stretched at least a hundred women ranging from early twenties to late eighties, seated at dozens of linen-covered tables seating four, enjoying after-dinner coffee along with assorted petits fours. A similarly linen-dressed head table with a podium at its center stretched along the far wall where windows looked out on the sparkling river.

  Mrs. Snydacker, president of the league, came from that table to rush up to us. She was a handsome woman in her fifties, though an overzealous plastic surgeon had done her no favors; she wore a none too subtle patriotic ensemble—navy dress, red scarf, white shoes.

  “I was afraid you’d be late!” the woman said irritably.

  This had been directed at Mother, who calmly intoned, “My dear, I’ve never been late to a performance.”

  Apparently, the opening night of Everybody Loves Opal had slipped her mind. Remember the earlier reference to Mother driving through a cornfield? That occurred when, trying to make curtain, she had collided with a combine. (And as I indicated, not every play Mother appeared in was by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wilde, or Coward.)

  Mrs. Snydacker escorted Mother to the head table where a microphone awaited on a podium. I stayed put at the rear, safely out of range for flying petits fours, should the audience become riled by her speech. Everybody may love Opal, but everybody in Serenity definitely did not love Vivian.

  The league’s president tapped the microphone, then said, in a too loud, slightly shrill voice, “Ladies, I’d like to introduce Vivian Borne, who is running for county sheriff.”

  And she stepped aside, giving Mother a slight nod and slighter smile.

  Even from the back of the room, I could tell Mother was miffed by the miserly introduction. But, ever the eager performer, the diva smiled graciously and took her place, standing straight, standing tall. Maybe not as tall as Buford Pusser, but tall enough.

  In the overly formal tone she reserved for impressing people—thankfully absent any trace of her mock-British accent—Mother began, “I’d like to thank the Serenity League of Women Voters, and Mrs. Snydacker in particular, for allowing me to speak to you this afternoon.”

  From somewhere—like Bugs Bunny producing an anvil—Mother conjured a sheaf of paper.

  She did have her speech written down, the big fibber!

  “But before I begin my oration,” Mother said, “or as we say in the Midwest, my spiel . . .”

  Mother smiled and waited for a laugh that never came. I swear I heard a cricket.

  She continued, unswayed: “In the spirit of complete transparency, I should like to produce several documents.”

  Say what?

  She held up one paper. “This is my birth certificate, which proves without a doubt that I was born in America—the, uh, smear at the birth date appears to have been an unfortunate slip-up on the registrar’s part—still, there can be no doubt whatsoever that I am indeed a U.S. citizen.”

  I had a hunch I wasn’t the only one in this crowd whose mouth had dropped open. But all I saw were the backs of heads. I was pretty sure the front view was the audience at Springtime for Hitler during the opening song.

  Mother waved another paper, like Joe McCarthy producing a list of Commies in government. “And this is a copy of my recent physical, showing that I am in excellent, A-plus condition! Blood pressure and cholesterol within normal range, no heart disease, or diabetes. Though, uh . . . full disclosure! I do have bothersome bunions—but a little pad on them seems to do the trick.”

  A smattering of laughter.

  Okay, I thought. Better. She wasn’t joking, but at least she got a laugh....

  “Concerning m
y e-mails,” Mother continued in earnest, leaning over the podium, “I will readily make them available to all and sundry who are interested. I have nothing to hide—no classified information there!”

  Ripples of laughter. Again, not really a joke, but she was winning them over in spite of herself.

  “Plus, for your consideration, I will also make public my tax returns. Unfortunately my records only go back three years.... I assure you no attempt to conceal anything from the public is my intention! The earlier ones were simply lost when our house blew up.”

  Louder laughter. But I promise you that was no joke—the house really did blow up! Of course, Mother just had it rebuilt from the original plans in our safe deposit box.

  “And finally, there is no Vivian Borne Foundation . . . no oil-painting portrait of me bought with foundation money, and no pay-for-play deals between myself and any foreign entity.”

  Raucous laughter.

  Obviously, the audience figured Mother was poking fun at a certain presidential election. But, by her dawning look of puzzlement at these reactions, I could tell she’d been serious. A lesser female showman would have been thrown. Not Mother.

  She embraced it. Her head went back and her smile was endless, wider than the Cheshire cat’s. “It’s nice to see we can at long last laugh at that most contentious time!”

  Enthusiastic applause.

  When the clapping had died down, Mother launched into her extemporaneous speech. “If elected sheriff of this great county, I vow to replace the department’s old communications system with a new state-of-the-art one, improving both efficiency and accuracy.” She raised a finger. “And this can be done with no cost to the taxpayer!”

  Skeptical murmurs.

  “As many of you know, I have been most successful in obtaining grants for various community causes, such as the new wing for the library, and funds to improve conditions at the shelter for battered women.”

  True. Grant givers quickly learned that Mother was relentless in her quest for free money and had learned to just pony up.