Estate of Mind
Page 21
“I know all about you, buster. I know, for instance, that y’all’s last name isn’t Trap, but Westerman.”
Three pairs of eyes widened. “Okay, so it was Westerman,” Johnny said, “but I wanted a pen name.”
I turned to his brother. “And what was your excuse, Albert?”
Albert Westerman, alias Mouse Trap, could sound tough if he wanted, but he was powerless to stop his ears from turning bright red. “How the hell do you know that?”
“I don’t reveal my sources. Now give me Dmitri.”
“We get the painting first.”
I pried Field of Thistles loose from under my arm and, using every last ounce of strength, handed it to Johnny.
He smiled. “Thanks, Abigail. I tried to warn you to stay away from my brother, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Thanks, nothing,” I hissed. “Y’all owe me ten million dollars. Now where’s my cat?”
Mouse Trap laughed. “Maybe she ain’t even here.”
“Dmitri’s a he, you nincompoop! Dmitri! Dmitri!”
Hortense put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. You’ll wake Mama.”
“Too late,” I said.
Three heads swiveled. Adele Sweeny was standing in the semi-lit corridor that led to the sleeping rooms. She was dressed in the same blue chenille robe and blue, fussy slippers she’d worn at my last visit, but she didn’t look at all the same. This woman had fire in her eyes, and there was still a spring in her step. Somehow, I was not surprised.
“It’s about time you joined us,” I said.
“What day is it?”
“Drop the act, Adele. I know your game. You’re not the confused old woman you pretend to be.”
“Don’t you be calling me by my given name!”
“Sorry,” I said instinctively. As a custom, I defer to octogenarians. “Now, where’s my cat?”
“That sweet little thing is curled up fast asleep on my bed.”
“Mrs. Sweeny—”
“Don’t you be calling me that, either. The name is Trap. Mrs. Trap, to you.”
“Mrs. Trap?”
“You don’t think I’d keep the name Sweeny, do you? Gilbert Senior was a real wienie.”
They all laughed, including Johnny.
“Gilbert Junior was a wienie, too.”
I gasped again. “You killed your own son?”
Adele stepped out of the shadows. “Stepson, and the man was a menace. You can’t keep a business going with a weak link like that in the chain of command.”
“Face it, Auntie Adele,” Mouse said. “Gil was plain stupid.”
“He had scruples,” Hortense said in disgust.
“Just look at the walls!” Adele Trap waved her arms like a chenille-clad conductor. “He actually thought I would never miss it. He really wanted to raise money for a church van. Can you imagine that?”
Hortense snorted. “It was just dumb luck that he picked the best painting. He had no idea what was really behind that frame.”
I stared at the awful collection of what passes for art in far too many homes. “There are real paintings behind those?”
“The da Vinci is a sketch. The rest are paintings.”
“You have a da Vinci hidden somewhere behind a paint-by-number?”
Hortense chortled. “And a Renoir and a Rembrandt. Mama, do we still have a Monet?”
The shock was almost too much for me to bear. My heart was racing like it did during the early days of my marriage to Buford. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again.
“You’re supposed to be a helpless little old lady,” I finally wailed. “How can you be the ringleader of an art-smuggling gang?”
Adele perched on the arm of the couch next to Johnny. “I am an old lady—I was eighty last birthday. But don’t get me wrong; I still have my wits about me.”
“My aunt’s as sharp as a tack,” Mouse said proudly.
Adele smiled. “Thank you. Now, boys, y’all know what to do with her.”
“Do with me?” I echoed.
“Auntie Adele,” Johnny said quietly, “do we have to?”
Hortense stood. “Well, I’m out of here. Y’all know how I feel about violence.”
Mouse snickered. “Good one, cuz. I suppose poisoning Her Majesty doesn’t count.”
“You poisoned Priscilla Hunt?”
“Nosiest woman who ever lived,” Hortense said. “I did Rock Hill a favor.”
I caught my breath. “Of course, the malathion! You are Hortense Scissorhands, after all.”
“I’m a Master Gardener,” Hortense huffed. “I make things grow. Johnny was happy to do the honors for me.”
Johnny Trap beamed. “She owed me one, for making me write that awful book.”
Hortense rearranged herself on the couch between her big-eared cousins. “Hey, it was a best-seller.”
“Thanks to Oprah.” Johnny turned to his aunt. “Let me have Abigail. Please. She’s a feisty little thing, but I could tame her. And she likes to read, Auntie Adele. We were made for each other.”
Adele cocked her head, apparently giving it some thought.
I needed to distract her. “What are y’all? Nazis?”
Everyone laughed.
“It isn’t funny! Those paintings were stolen from their rightful owners by Nazis. Is that what you were, Mrs. Trap? A Nazi? You’re the right age.”
“My daddy was no Nazi!” Hortense was red in the face.
“Yeah? Well, I know for a fact that there is a private detective hot on the trail of paintings the Nazis stole, and Field of Thistles is one of them.”
“Auntie Adele, let me off her now,” Mouse begged.
Adele frowned at her eldest nephew. “Be patient.” She turned to me. “My first husband, Leonard Trap, was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He found these paintings in a German schloss.”
“Bull,” I said.
Adele stared at me.
“You see why I want her,” Johnny whined. “Abigail lights my fire.”
I glared, first at him and then at his gaping aunt. “Even if your husband did find them in a schloss somewhere, he had to have known they were taken from Jews and others who were sent to concentration camps.”
“He knew no such thing.”
“Then he was just as stupid as you.”
I heard a metallic click and glanced at Mouse. For the first time, I noticed that he was holding a small handgun. Perhaps he had just pulled it from a holster. At any rate, I know next to nothing about weapons, but I knew all I needed to know about this one. It was pointed directly at my head.
Adele smiled. “That’s my nephew. Take her outside first, Mouse. Pinky has enough work around here. And you might wake the ladies.”
“I’m not going without my baby,” I wailed. “Dmitri!”
Meow. My precious pussy appeared out of nowhere and began rubbing his cheeks against one of Mouse’s shoes. Mouse looked down in surprise.
I still don’t know why I did it, but in that split second when Mouse was distracted, I leaped from my chair, straight at his aunt. And I can only guess that Johnny intended to cooperate because he leaned to one side, allowing me to tackle the old biddy.
Yes, I realize that tackling an elderly woman—knocking her off the couch arm and onto the floor—is not something one should normally brag about, but surely there are exceptions. Adele went down cleanly, and I landed neatly on top of her.
“Mama!” Hortense shrieked.
The next thing I heard was the crack of gunfire.
28
“That shot,” Mama said proudly, “was fired by Freddy.”
There were ten of us sitting around Mama’s dining room table, polishing off what had been a magnificent late breakfast. Besides Mama and myself, the ten included Greg, C. J., Sergeant Bowater, Wynnell, both Rob-Bobs, the lovely Marina, and, of course, Freddy.
“And it was a good shot,” I said. “It knocked the gun right out of Mouse Trap’s hand, but the bullet never touched him. Too bad it to
re a hole clean through a Cezanne.”
Rob moaned.
“So, Abby,” Bob boomed, “what were they going to do with you if Freddy hadn’t showed up?”
“Plug me with the pistol and then plant me in a cotton field.”
“Some fanner would have had a bumper crop,” Greg said. Everyone laughed.
“I planted a feather once,” C. J. said, “and it grew into a chicken. Or did I dream that?”
“You dreamed that!” we all chorused.
I helped myself to another slice of Mama’s bacon, crisp on the ends but with a little play in the middle. “I guess it pays to have the U.S. Customs Service tailing you.”
Freddy grinned. He was still wearing a studded leather vest. Seated next to Mama, he looked positively boyish, too young even for my daughter, Susan.
“You’re a hard one to keep up with, Ms. Timberlake. But the department is grateful that you discovered the van Gogh. And I bet Ms. Weiss is grateful as well.”
“You bet,” she said, her lovely mouth full of Mama’s cinnamon toast.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Freddy said.
Marina swallowed. “Freddy and I both knew the missing paintings were in the Charlotte area. We also suspected that Adele Trap was involved, but that was getting very difficult to prove. We’d both been grabbing at straws, and then we—well, Freddy—observed the suspect’s stepson removing a painting from the nursing home. So we followed it to the auction.”
Mama put a biscuit on Freddy’s plate and smothered it with red-eye gravy. “What made you suspect Adele? Isn’t she senile?”
“Far from it,” I cried. “The woman is craftier than a sailboat regatta. She was the brains behind the whole thing. Did you know that she owns Pine Manor nursing home, lock, stock, and barrel?”
Greg cleared his throat. “From what I can share of the police report, she handpicked the elderly women who reside there. None of them knew what was going on, of course—none of them was capable of knowing. None of them had any living relatives, either. It made an excellent cover for her operation.”
“She nearly froze the poor dears,” I cried. “Kept them sluggish that way. Meanwhile, the old biddy was wearing long johns under her chenille robe.”
Mama shook her head. “And to think that was going to be my final earthly home.”
“Mama!”
Wynnell poured herself a second glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “How’s Dmitri?”
“Don’t ask!” I wailed.
Wynnell’s eyebrows met in a hedgerow. “He’s not…I mean…he didn’t—”
“He’s fine! He’s asleep on Mama’s bed. For all I know, he had been sleeping on her chest. I hope he put his foot in her mouth. I hope she gets some horrible litter box disease. Maybe they’ll all catch it.”
“Abby!” Mama said, genuinely shocked.
“Well, they’re wicked people—except for Johnny.”
Greg reached for his coffee. “How’s that?”
“Well, he didn’t really fit in. He really was a writer, and he lived modestly. Besides, he could have stopped me from tackling Adele.”
“But he killed Mrs. Hunt. Surely you don’t condone that.”
“No. I forgot about that. I guess Johnny just seemed nicer than the rest.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Mama said, shamelessly making goo-goo eyes at Freddy.
I turned to C. J. “You know, I really didn’t believe you at first, but you were right. The Trap brothers were from Shelby. Only I don’t think they killed their parents.”
“They didn’t,” Greg said. “I already checked that out. Their parents died in a plane crash.”
C. J. didn’t hear us. She was too busy nibbling on a sausage that Sergeant Bowater was Hand-feeding her.
Bob leaned to one side as Rob poured him a second cup of coffee.
“Let me get this straight. Lieutenant Trap found a cache of the world’s finest paintings and kept them for his personal enjoyment?”
Rob sighed. “Can you blame him?”
Freddy frowned. “They weren’t his to keep. At any rate, after Trap died Adele began selling them off—a little bit at a time in order to avoid suspicion. That was clever on her part. However, when her second husband, Gilbert Sweeney, Sr., died five years ago, she got greedy and sold three paintings in a short period. That was her first mistake.”
“What was the second?” I asked.
“The second was that these last three were all major works.”
“As important as Field of Thistles?”
Marina shook her braids. “No. Very few paintings can compare with that. My clients—the rightful owners—expect it to bring fifteen million at Sotheby’s. And that’s without the Japanese.”
Rob moaned again.
“Well, I think my Abby should get a reward,” Mama said loyally.
“She will,” Marina said softly.
“How much?” Mama demanded.
Marina looked at me.
“Go ahead; you can tell them,” I said. Marina, who’d been on the phone much of the night, had in fact just told me minutes before we sat down.
“One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Is that all?” Mama wailed.
C. J. stopped sucking sausages and came up for air. “Ooh, Abby, what are you going to do with all that money?”
I smiled. “Well, for one thing, the youth group is going to get a van.”
“And?”
“And Mama is getting a trip to Africa.”
Mama gasped. “I am?”
“Yes, Mama, but a photo safari. You don’t have to be a missionary to get to Africa, you know.”
“And?” C. J. was relentless.
“Y’all get to go with her if you want.”
“Ooh!” C. J. wasn’t the only one to squeal with delight.
“Look,” I said, when everyone had quieted down, “I’m really sorry for being such a jerk.”
“That’s okay,” C. J. said. “We love you anyway.”
“Thanks.” I reached for Greg’s hand. “But there is one more thing—if there is any money left.”
“What?” the group demanded in unison.
“I’ve decided to take a vacation.” I squeezed Greg’s hand. “How does Maui sound?”
Greg squeezed back.
About the Author
Tamar Myers is the author of five previous Den of Antiquity mysteries: Larceny and Old Lace; Gilt by Association; The Ming and I; So Faux, So Good; and Baroque and Desperate. Also the author of the Magdalena Yoder series, she is an avid antique collector and lives in the Carolinas.
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Den of Antiquity Mysteries by
Tamar Myers
from Avon Books
BAROQUE AND DESPERATE
ESTATE OF MIND
SO FAUX, SO GOOD
THE MING AND I
GILT BY ASSOCIATION
LARCENY AND OLD LACE
A PENNY URNED
NIGHTMARE IN SHINING ARMOR
SPLENDOR IN THE GLASS
Copyright
This book is a work offiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ESTATE OF MIND. Copyright © 2007 by Tamar Myers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2007 ISBN: 9780061
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