We just sat there a while and he even slipped an arm around my shoulder. No more talk of murder or anything else. We just enjoyed the fire and each other’s company. I fell asleep briefly, nestled against his shoulder.
Then I woke up, feeling a little embarrassed, yawned and stretched, and said, “It was a lovely supper, Tony. A lovely evening. But Mother will be worried—you better run me home.”
He did.
But I sat in the front seat this time.
A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip
Bidding at auction is not for the shy. Hold your card up high, or speak loudly when you bid. Mother can go too far in this regard, however, jumping up and blocking other bidders. It’s just remotely possible that she does this on purpose.
Chapter Six
Walking on Eggshells
At around nine o’clock that evening, Tony dropped me off at my house. He pulled up at the curb, turned, and asked me if I had my cell phone with me.
“Sure,” I said. “Why?”
“I want to give you my unlisted number. You have any problems, of any kind, day or night—just call.”
I didn’t quite know what to say, but finally mumbled, “Thanks,” and he gave me the number and I entered it on my contacts list.
He gave me a crisp nod, and a nice sort of asexual Lone Ranger smile, hands on the wheel, as I said good night and got out. Then he was gone and I was heading for the front steps, wondering why the front light wasn’t on for me, when I noticed the familiar shape seated on the top step that led to the enclosed porch.
Mother.
Okay, so she was sitting in the dark, her pink fuzzy robe over her pajamas, shod in matching pink slippers. Why was that a biggie? Vaguely nutty behavior on Mother’s part was par for the course, and the night was pleasant enough to be sitting out in it. Still, an ominous vibe shimmered my way….
“Is he gone?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
I was at the bottom of the several steps looking at where her eyes were, able only to make out the big glasses in the dark. “Of course he’s gone. You saw him go. Mother, is something wrong?”
She sprang to her feet, looming over me like a gargoyle. A gargoyle in a pink bathrobe and slippers, that is.
“There’s something you must see,” she said portentously.
And she floated down the steps and moved past me down the walk toward the street.
“Mother!”
“Come along, dear!” She gestured back with a crooking finger.
Suddenly I felt like Scrooge following the Ghost of Christmas Future into the graveyard for some bad news.
There were halfhearted streetlights along Elm and part of a moon, too, which conspired to make Mother look even more ghostly as she took a right and headed down the sidewalk.
I fell in along beside her and asked, “Mother! Where are we going?”
“To see Mrs. Mulligan, dear.”
“Is that wise?”
“There’s something you must see.”
Mrs. Mulligan lived just two and a half blocks down from us. Mother was a fairly frequent visitor, though she professed not to care for the woman, condemning her as the worst gossip in town. She denied that she dropped by Mrs. Mulligan’s once or twice a week to catch up on the juiciest tidbits.
“What’s going on, Mother?”
“This is my second visit tonight.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
We were at the shared driveway that separated Mrs. Mulligan’s yard from her next-door neighbor’s. Her well-maintained two-story clapboard house was yellow with blue trim, though the moon washed both colors out. Lots of shrubbery hugged the front of the house, and four front steps went up to a cement stoop. No light shone above the stoop, but lights were on behind drapes in the living room, and another light was on upstairs.
Mother was trotting down the driveway, where the lawn sloped, and seemed clearly headed for the side stairway up to the kitchen entrance. We were ignoring the front door, and I wasn’t surprised—Mother and Mrs. Mulligan would sit in the kitchen together and share secrets (not their own—everybody else’s).
No light was over this side door, either, but one was on in the kitchen. I followed Mother as she padded up the flight of wooden steps and bent to pluck a hidden key in a potted plant on the landing. The screen door onto a small back porch was open, and I trailed after Mother as she unlocked the door onto the kitchen.
She went in, and so did I. A light over the sink on the driveway side was burning, but the overhead one wasn’t. The kitchen was neither spacious nor small, but did have room enough for a round maple table with four chairs. A counter with cupboards was next to us where we’d entered, and the refrigerator was opposite. At right was a stove and oven, a small pan on a burner, switched off.
Mrs. Mulligan, in a plaid flannel robe but with her red fright wig on, was slumped at the table, her head on her folded arms like a grade-school student taking a nap at her desk. On the table nearby was a large ceramic cup that said IOWA STATE FAIR ’66 on it. Also her glasses.
“Is she…asleep?” I asked.
“No, dear. She’s dead.” She turned to me and the eyes behind the big lenses would have been huge even without the magnification. “This is what I wanted you to see.”
I went over and checked—the shrunken old lady looked strangely peaceful, if pale as, well, death. I felt guilty for once thinking she resembled an orangutan, though truth be told she still did. I couldn’t find a pulse in either her wrist or throat.
Mother came close and said, “I did what Archie Goodwin always does, dear! In the Nero Wolfe books? I got some fabric threads from my bathrobe, and held them under her nose, and they didn’t flutter. Then I got a makeup mirror from the bathroom and held it under her nose and it didn’t fog up at all.”
Wincing in rage, doubting that Archie Goodwin had ever plucked fibers from his pink bathrobe, I walked her by the arm into the nearby dining room, where a table was stacked with mail and obviously hadn’t been used for company for some time. Mrs. Mulligan had no living children and her best friend had been the telephone, where she gathered and passed along gossip. For a woman who had thrived on the misfortunes of others, her house had (to me anyway) a creepy cuteness—lots of worthless knicknacks and curios, frog and kitty and puppy collections on display.
“Talk,” I said, holding on to her arms.
“I came over to see how Mildred was doing.”
Mildred Mulligan.
“Keep talking,” I said. “Make it fast.”
“Some girls I spoke to on the phone today said Mildred was down in the dumps because everybody was blaming her…well, her stew…for the outbreak at the church! A woman died, after all.”
Now another one had.
“And you haven’t called the police?”
“No, dear.”
“Or 911?”
“Obviously not, dear.”
“Instead you just sat on the porch and waited for me?”
“That’s right, dear.”
“Because no doctor was needed, since you’d determined by means learned from old mystery novels that she was likely dead.”
“She is dead, dear.”
“Well, she is now! Maybe if you’d…”
That was when Mother started to cry. There was nothing theatrical about it, nothing fake at all. I helped her to a chair and went to the bathroom off the kitchen and brought her some Kleenex.
Snuffling, she managed, “You’re saying I…I killed her?”
“No, Mother.”
“She was gone. She was already gone. There was nothing that could be done!”
“I’m sure you’re right, Mother.”
“I’m such a stupid, stupid, stupid woman….”
I said nothing. Just patted her back gently.
“Three people are dead, Brandy! Three people! All because I tried to do a good deed.”
All because you wanted to star in a big-time auction and appear in a regional magazine, I thou
ght, but was not cruel enough to say.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, pretty much meaning it. “But we have to call the police. Right now.”
Her tears stopped, though their trails glistened on her cheeks. “We could just go home. What good will it do if we’re here and just make your friend the chief mad at us? We can go home and make an anonymous phone call!”
The only light in the dining room spilled in from the kitchen and the shadows on her face made her crazy. More crazy.
“Mother, I’m pretty sure the police have caller I.D. This isn’t a Boston Blackie movie from 1945. Anyway, your fingerprints are all over the place! And as we know, the Serenity P.D. has your prints on file.”
“Oh, please, can’t we just go home and call from there, and not wait here?”
This from the woman who was making her second trip to the crime scene.
“No,” I said, and I got my cell phone out of my purse. I dialed the number and got Tony.
I said, “I’m afraid you’re not going to be very happy with me….”
We didn’t wait inside the house, but I have to admit we lingered in the kitchen for a while. I was curious about a couple of things.
Mother stood behind me as I positioned myself between the late Mrs. Mulligan and her stove. I pointed to the little pan on the burner. “That looks like broth. Chicken broth?”
Nodding, Mother said, “Mildred had trouble sleeping. It was her habit to have a cup of broth before bedtime.”
“You knew this how?”
She shrugged. “Everyone who knows Mildred knows her routine. Never went out much—people came around to talk to her, share the latest, uh, news.”
“What did she do before she had her cup of broth?”
“She showered at bedtime.” Mother gestured to the bathroom off the kitchen. “She was always in bed by ten o’clock. Like clockwork.”
“So if someone who knew Mrs. Mulligan’s habits wanted to sneak in here, and doctor her broth,” I said, remembering the key in the potted plant, “that would be child’s play.”
“Oh yes, dear. Is that what you think happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. Just trying to think it through.” I went to the cupboard. Touching the lower handle carefully, I opened the door and saw two well-stocked shelves, with the two higher shelves empty. The lower shelf had household cleaning products and their ilk; the upper shelf held food items.
“How was Mrs. Mulligan’s eyesight?” I asked.
“Why, not good. She has cataracts.”
“I notice she’s consolidated her items onto two shelves, so she didn’t have to get up on a stool or ladder to reach the higher ones.”
Mother’s head bobbed. “Yes, and of course her flour and sugar and other canisters are out on the counter.”
Not wanting to get Mother going, I did not point out that among the items on the lower shelf was a box of rat poison.
We exited the kitchen and went around to the front and sat on the steps, much as Mother had back home when she’d been waiting for me. A squad car with two young officers I didn’t recognize arrived first, and I gave them a brief rundown of the events, and they told to us to wait while they entered the crime scene.
Five minutes or so later Tony arrived. He was in the sport coat again and the tie was snugged—which meant he’d gotten all the way home before I’d called him. He looked pale and I don’t think it was the moonlight.
I got to my feet and allowed Mother to remain seated and met him halfway up the walk.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said.
His eyes were unblinking and cool. Make that cold. “What does it look like?”
“We live just down the block, you know…”
“Yes, I remember.”
“And Mother was a friend of Mrs. Mulligan’s. She regularly dropped over, and just stopped by to check up on her. There’s been some nasty talk around town, because of the stew and all, and Mother was just being a good friend.”
Briefly I explained that Mother had come home and taken me to Mrs. Mulligan’s, but did not mention that she’d been waiting for me in the dark when he dropped me off. I thought we might get away with being a trifle loose about the timing of events….
“Did you touch anything?” he asked.
“Mother did. She found a makeup mirror to try to check for breathing. She may have absentmindedly touched other things in the house. I don’t think I touched anything.”
I told him what Mother had said about Mrs. Mulligan’s habit of having broth just before bed, to make her sleep. And that she showered before bedtime, and that a key to the house was in a potted plant by the side door.
His sigh started at his toes. “Go home.”
“You don’t need us anymore tonight?”
“You’ll hear from me if we do.”
“Okay.”
“Go. Home.”
We went.
Home.
The next morning, Mother was suspiciously chipper. She was in a pale blue velour pants suit (cousin to her green one) and we had English muffins and jelly and hot tea on the porch. Neither of us was very hungry.
“In all the excitement last night,” she said, “I failed to get a report.”
“Report?”
“Were your rights abused by that brute?”
After a good night’s sleep, or anyway a night’s sleep, she was ready to get the skinny on my evening with the chief.
“He spared me the rubber hose and fingernail pulling,” I said, nibbling at a toasty edge. “As a matter of fact, we didn’t even go to the police station.”
“If you weren’t at the station, where were you?”
She used to ask something similar when I was eighteen: “If you weren’t at Tina’s, where were you?” (Probably in the park drinking champagne.)
“The chief was very sweet, really. He drove me to his house and made me dinner.”
For a while Mother just goggled at me, then eventually regained her powers of speech. “I simply must hear all about it!”
No surprise there.
“After breakfast,” I said.
Back in the house, I let Sushi in—I’d put her out in part so that I could enjoy my muffins without her begging—but she smelled the food in the air and started dancing and pawing at me, as best she could, as chubby as she’s gotten.
I filled her bowl, dry and wet, and refreshed her water dish, and was further going about my business when Mother materialized like a movie monster and grabbed my arm.
She steered me into the living room and over to the high-back Queen Anne armchair with the needlepoint flowers in rich colors of brown, burgundy, and gold. It was her throne, and neither I nor Sushi could sit there without getting a disapproving look from the Queen.
She pushed me down. “Comfortable?”
Now, I have yet in my time on Planet Earth found a comfortable “Queen Anne” anything. That style of formal furniture was designed to discourage Victorian Age visitors and suitors from overstaying their welcome.
“My back hurts,” I complained. “I’m expecting, remember?”
Mother rushed off, then returned with a small velvet pillow, which she stuffed behind me.
“How’s that? Comfy now?”
I crinkled my nose. “I’m a little dry. A little thirsty….”
“You just had tea, dear.”
“But hot chocolate would be so very nice.”
“Hot chocolate, of course.” Her smile seemed no more forced than Dick Cheney’s at the Obama inauguration.
“With marshmallows.”
She hurried off again. Soon the microwave dinged, and Mother returned, handing me a warm mug.
I slurped, then frowned. “Thanks. But these marshmallows are kind of on the stale side….”
Mother stomped one foot. “Brandy Ingrid Borne! Stop toying with me and tell me what happened last night at the chief’s!”
I smiled smugly; for once I was in the cat-bird seat!
By the way, what the heck is a cat-bird, anyway? And what seat is the cat-bird sitting in? (Certainly not a Queen Anne.) Honestly, if an old saying doesn’t make sense anymore, it should be lost to the ages. Now that barbershops are all but extinct, isn’t it time we stopped hippity-hopping down to them?
Anyway, with new intel on the chief, let’s just say I had Mother over a barrel. Wait a minute…what does that mean? Did I have the old girl bent over a barrel? Was she going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, maybe? Or was that just wishful thinking…?
Finally I set my mug on an end table. I folded my arms. “No info until we have a few changes around here.”
Her eyes were narrow, wide slits behind the big lenses. “What kind of changes?”
“For one thing, no more bursting into my room in the morning, singing, ‘Uppy-uppy-uppy,’ like I was still three years old.”
Mother guffawed. “Oh, I don’t do that. I didn’t ever do that.”
“Yes. You did. You do.”
She frowned in thoughtful consideration. “What if instead I sing, ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’?”
“No. No singing whatsoever.”
“Fine,” Mother said. “Anything else, my pet?”
“No more ‘borrowing’ my car in the middle of the night to run and buy chocolate-mint ice cream at Wal-Mart.”
Mother gasped. “However did you know?”
“Are you kidding? I can hear that old muffler a mile away.” I waggled a finger at her, relishing this reversal of roles. “You’ll go to jail next time they catch you driving without a license, you know.”
“You win,” Mother said dramatically. Arms high. “I surrender, dear!”
“I said no singing….”
“All right. Is there…anything else?”
And here’s the heartbreaking part, folks—I couldn’t think of one other thing.
So I let Mother off the hook. (Once again—was she a fish? Or a slab of beef in a meat locker maybe?)
“No,” I said magnanimously. “That’s all I ask…with perhaps one small exception.”
“Yes, dear?”
“No amateur sleuthing…”
Her face fell.
“…without telling me what you’re up to, first.”
Antiques Bizarre Page 9
