Antiques Chop (A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery)

by Barbara Allan

  If Bruce Spring was a celebrity, I was Lady Gaga.

  “And I must admit,” Mother rambled, “that in retrospect it would have been wiser to discuss our potential business with Brandy on the way here in the car. But we got talking about other things and—”

  “And besides,” Jake said to Bruce Spring, “we didn’t think Mom would come if we told her.”

  Bruce’s eyes were fastened on me in an intense but friendly manner, as we stood there by the table, awkwardly frozen on our feet. “Whatever the case, Miss Borne . . . Brandy . . . I hope you’ll stick around. I’ll buy you lunch and make you a Godfather offer.”

  “One I can’t refuse, huh?” I shrugged. “Well, I am hungry.” I pulled out the chair across from him, and plopped down.

  “Fine,” he said with a white smile against the Hollywood tan. He waited until Mother had settled next to him on the right, and Jake on the left, before returning to his chair.

  While I studied a menu, Mother made small talk.

  “Bruce, dear,” she said, looking coyly over the top of her menu, “ ‘Spring’ seems an unusual last name. Whatever is its origin?”

  The TV star, uninterested in his menu, said, “It’s really Springstein. For obvious reasons, I thought it wise to shorten it.”

  Mother’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses; in that green pantsuit, she looked like a surprised bullfrog. “Wise indeed! One mustn’t get on the wrong side of the Boss!”

  The waitress returned for our order.

  Since “Bruce, dear,” was paying, I began with a cup of homemade spinach and cheese soup, followed by turkey and mashed potatoes with chives, topped off by French apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. I’d actually gotten a little too thin of late and could indulge. Mother ordered just the soup (bowl), and Jake, a cheeseburger (rare) with American fries, plus chocolate layered cake. Our host wimped out with a small garden salad, sans dressing.

  After the waitress left, Bruce got down to business.

  “I’ve just stepped down from hosting shows on Discovery to act as both on-air talent and a producer for the new Extreme Interests channel. My current mission is to find fresh talent to feature in reality shows. Extreme won’t have a single focus, but will look at various hobbies, sports, and professions . . . but ‘extreme’ examples.”

  “We write books,” I said, “and have a booth at a local antiques mall. That doesn’t strike me as very extreme.”

  He raised a forefinger, politely indicating I should wait. “I happened to catch Vivian on CNN a few weeks ago, and thought she handled herself very well.”

  A barrage of reporters and camera crews had shown up on our doorstep to cover the startling news that Senator Clark had fathered a love child (me) in the early days of his political career. Mother, thinking they’d come to cover us about the string of murders we had solved in Serenity over the past year or two, had babbled on incoherently until realizing her mistake.

  Mother took a dainty sip from her water glass, pinkie extended as if dining with royalty. “Unlike some theatrically trained performers, I have no difficulty appearing before the camera. One simply dials it back a shade, as it were.”

  Gag me with a spoon. And my soup spoon was handy. . . .

  “You’re a natural, all right,” Bruce said, with a straight face. Was he an escapee from an asylum, I wondered? A very cute one with a great tan? “You are very much at ease in front of a camera—which is important.”

  Relieved that I was out of the mix, I said to the producer, “Hey, if you want my blessing for Mother to appear on one of your existing shows, I think that’s just peachy.”

  Reaching for my water glass, I managed not to add, “We could use the money.” Or that it would also keep Mother busy and out of trouble.

  Bruce gave me the kind of smile a runaway gets from a guy she just met outside the bus depot. “Not an existing show, Brandy, but a new one. And not just Vivian, but you.”

  Mouth full of water, I nearly did a spit take. I was doing show biz shtick already!

  I managed to swallow and say, “You can’t be serious. I have the stage presence of a potted plant.”

  Mother, eyebrows hiked above her thick eyeglass frames, said, “Why not? I have a lifetime of stage experience, and can carry a potted plant around with me, if I so choose.”

  Really? She had trouble lifting Sushi.

  “Be that as it may,” I countered, “what kind of show could possibly interest an audience in us? I’m not into eating worms, or jumping off a cliff. And if a bachelor handed me a rose, I guarantee I’d bleed to death from the thorns.”

  Okay, maybe I had watched a little reality TV. . . .

  Jake piped up. “Mom, just listen to the pitch, will ya?”

  The pitch? So Jake was show biz now, too?

  I sighed and sat back, arms folded. “Okay. Why not? As long as it doesn’t involve Donald Trump, I’m listening.”

  Bruce, elbows on the table, hands folded as if in prayer, said, “The reality show I have in mind will be about antiques—similar to Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Auction Hunters—but with a heartland twist . . .”

  He made us wait for it.

  “. . . murder.”

  Mother clapped her hands, like a little girl getting a pony for Christmas. “I love it already!”

  Bruce continued. “It will be called Antique Sleuths, and—”

  Mother, her giddy grin turning to a frown, interrupted, “Could you call it Antiques Sleuths? ‘Antique’ makes it sound as if Brandy and I are antiques, and that hardly applies to either of us.”

  “Fine. Antiques Sleuths it is.” Bruce, having lost his momentum, asked, “Where was I? Oh, yes. Antiques Sleuths, starring Vivian and Brandy Borne, who run an antiques store, and—”

  “We don’t have a store,” I interrupted.

  “We’ll get you one,” Bruce said, with just the teeniest bit of irritation.

  “Rent or buy?” Mother asked.

  “We’ll lease a building, with an option to buy, if the pilot is picked up. You’ll have a budget, to be determined, to fill that store with items to supplant what you already have in your booth.”

  “But what’s the format?” I asked. “If it’s reality TV, we can’t solve murders. There may not be any more in Serenity, and anyway, the police are unlikely to cooperate.”

  “And,” Mother said, “a few of my investigatory techniques might not be anything I’d want recorded by a camera crew.”

  Not a few—most.

  “We understand that,” Bruce said. “We’ll do periodic little minidocumentaries on the murders you’ve already solved . . . which will increase your book sales, I might add. The format of the show will be about ‘sleuths’ in the sense that people come in with antiques that you evaluate. On-the-spot evaluations, or you can research those pieces that are outside your existing areas of expertise.”

  I said, “We just sit around and wait for customers to bring stuff in?”

  Bruce grinned. “When we announce this show, people will be lining up to haul in their latest finds. It’s basically the Antiques Roadshow/Pawn Stars format. If it goes, we’ll only be shooting thirteen weeks a year . . . and the rest of the year, you’ll just be two very famous TV personalities with an antiques shop that customers will flock to. Just selling T-shirts alone will make you girls very, very flush.”

  Mother banged the table with open palms, startling the silverware. “Then it’s settled.... I’m in. Bruce, I assume you have a standard contract? Naturally, our legal representation will want to see it. I’ll give you the contact information. In other words, have your people talk to my people.”

  Mildly amused, the producer turned to me. “Vivian’s given her answer—what about you, Brandy?”

  “Oh, I’m in,” I said with a smile.

  Not just because doing the pilot would keep Mother happily occupied, but because not doing the pilot would make her unbearable to live with. Besides, I’d take perverse pleasure in subjecting millions of viewers t
o her antics.

  And I certainly wasn’t bothered by playing second fiddle. My participation would be relegated to playing Ethel Mertz to her Lucy Ricardo.

  Our food arrived, and the conversation thereafter consisted of Jake asking Bruce questions about his other reality shows, and Mother giving advice on how they could be improved. By the time dessert was finished, the producer looked thoroughly exhausted, and I wondered if he was having second thoughts.

  Bruce informed us that tomorrow we’d be meeting with our new show’s line producer, Phil Dean, who was also the director of photography.

  With that, we parted company, Bruce staying behind to settle up with the bill.

  Climbing into our car at the curb, Jake said, “Know what? We should do some, uh, what do they call it? Location scouting. You know, for the antiques shop?”

  Mother, fastening her seat belt, said. “No need, dear. I already know just the perfect place.”

  “Where, Grandma?”

  “Why, the murder house, of course.”

  A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

  Location, location, location! When starting an antiques business, your store should be in a high-traffic area, easily accessible, with good parking. A notorious murder having once occurred there is optional.

  Chapter Two

  Chop Talk

  Mother’s news that the perfect location for our antiques reality TV pilot was “the murder house” got the following response from me: “You’re going to have to be more specific—we have plenty of those in our little burg lately.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said to me, “ever since you came back.”

  He was in the backseat of the Buick, with me behind the wheel, and Mother riding shotgun.

  “That’s not very nice!” I said to my son, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “Anyway, that’s just a coincidence.”

  “Yes, dear,” Mother said to Jake. “National crime statistics have finally caught up with our sleepy little town.”

  Or had they? Maybe me moving back in with Mother had created a kind of perfect psychoneurotic storm, making me a lightning rod for the deaths that had happened here in the past few years.

  Silly as that might sound, at the very least I’d been a catalyst for Mother’s tenacious sleuthing—and an unwilling catalyst, at that. Mostly unwilling, anyway. Now and then I did get caught up in Mother’s Murder, She Wrote melodramatics....

  But all I wanted right now was a nice, quiet week with my son, free from talk of murder and mayhem—was that too much to ask? And for that son not to needle me with gratuitous digs?

  Mother, twisted around in her seat, was saying to Jake, “Anyway, murder is nothing new in Serenity.”

  His eyes were bright; nothing like a little mayhem to get a boy’s attention. “Really? No kidding?”

  “Kid you not, kiddo. Why, have I ever told you about the ax murder that happened here when I was but a young lass?”

  “Must you?” I moaned. “Maybe he’s not interested.”

  “Ax murder!” Jake blurted. “Wow, none of you guys’ murders were ever that cool. Go on, Grandma, go on. Who hacked who?”

  “Jake!” I blurted back. “Will you listen to yourself?”

  My son’s grandmother (okay, great-grandmother) gazed back at him with an unconvincing frown. “Your mother’s quite right, dear. That’s who hacked whom . . .”

  She took a deep breath, summoning the concentration of Olivier about to perform Hamlet’s soliloquy.

  “It was nineteen-fifty—and one of the hottest summers on record. A person could literally fry an egg on the sidewalk. Though why one would want to, I couldn’t say. Not terribly appetizing.”

  She did so love to set the stage.

  “I was eight,” she went on, “still in pinafores and bloomers, when—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Pinafores and bloomers in 1950? And if you were eight in 1950, you’d have been born, when? 1942?”

  “That’s not relevant, dear.”

  “So then you had Peggy Sue when you were in junior high?” I gave her an evil grin. “How old were you really? Twelve? Thirteen?”

  “Oh!” Mother clapped her hands and beamed the phoniest of smiles. “Here we are, home already.... Jake, darling, I’ll tell you all about the ax murder later . . . without unwanted interruptions.”

  Wheeling the car into the drive, I smirked. “What a great bedtime story that’ll make.”

  “Come on, Mom,” Jake chided. “Can’t be that gory. Nothing compared to Saw or Friday the 13th.”

  I suppose, actually, it wasn’t—as ax murders go. On the other hand, that long-ago murder had been real, not special effects. But by the time Mother exercised her “artistic license,” there would surely be buckets of blood.

  Inside the house, on the foyer floor, we quickly found a “welcome home” present from one of the two dogs in residence: a little brown carrot. And since it wasn’t a bratwurst, the culprit was obvious.

  Yet Rocky was the canine that trotted over, hanging his head, while Sushi remained curled up oh-so-innocently on the Queen Anne settee.

  “Really?” I said to her, hands on hips. “You’re going to let him take the blame?”

  Next to me, Jake offered, “I’ll get a paper towel,” and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Mother, stepping over Sushi’s latest indiscretion, said to me, “Dear . . . don’t get too settled—we’ll be off in a moment, as soon as I use the little girl’s room. A mature woman’s bladder is unmerciful, as you’ll one day learn.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. While my bladder was merciful enough, my stamina wasn’t; I could use a nap.

  She waggled a finger. “We must pay Andrew Butterworth a visit, lovey, straightaway.”

  Mother had been watching a lot of British TV mysteries lately, and had adopted many of their expressions. At least she was sparing me the hoity-toity English accent she sometimes fell into, when in sleuth mode.

  I sighed. “I don’t suppose we could give him a call, and let him know we’re coming . . . ?”

  She laughed merrily. “Don’t be a silly goose.”

  Mother was strictly a drop-by kind of gal, which I accepted because 1) there was no arguing with her, and 2) I derived a wicked pleasure out of seeing people’s faces when they unwittingly opened their door onto Vivian Borne’s shining countenance.

  Leaving Jake behind to play with the dogs—and forestall further “presents”—Mother and I headed back out to the Buick. This time it took more than a little coaxing to get the beast going . . . but soon we were once again tooling toward the downtown.

  On the way, Mother filled me in on the details of Andrew Butterworth’s life since the death of his father. Like most residents of Serenity, I knew quite a bit about the ax murder, but very little of the aftermath.

  Seemed after being acquitted of the murder, Andrew (at the suggestion of his lawyer) left Serenity for a military school in the east, where he finished high school, then entered college.

  But the day he turned twenty-one, Andrew inherited half of his father’s fortune—the rest going to sister Sarah, unmarried and living in Chicago—and dropped out of college. He took off for Europe, finding a new life in the south of France, only occasionally returning to his hometown to check on his rental properties . . . which included the so-called “murder house.”

  For many years the notorious Butterworth family home remained vacant, boarded up, but in the 1970s, the property had been rented by a series of businesses: a hippie “head” shop; then (after the hippies got busted) a camera store; next (when the camera store went bust) a greeting card shop; and (most recently and successfully) a mystery bookstore.

  Considering the house’s history, Scene of the Crime made both a clever and tasteless name for the shop, which was run by an eccentric woman named Mary Beth Beckman (and if Mother thinks you’re eccentric, you are way eccentric).

  But now the bookstore, too, was gone, the lease having run out. Andrew had r
efused to renew it, much to Ms. Beckman’s displeasure at having her thriving business interrupted. Rumor had it that Andrew was disgusted that Mary Beth had exploited the unsavory history of the house for gain and profit. This was not hard to believe since an ax was part of the store’s logo, and little ax pins had been offered in a point-of-purchase display at the register.

  Mother and I had had several successful book signings at Scene of the Crime, and were sorry to see the store leave that prime downtown location. While Mary Beth Beckman did manage to relocate her store in a strip mall, her business took a severe hit.

  “According to the rumor mill,” Mother said, and she would know as she was head miller, “Andrew kicking that bookstore out of the house where the murder happened was a virtual admission of guilt, after all these years.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous,” I said, turning right on red.

  “Anyone in Andrew Butterworth’s place wouldn’t like having that tragedy dredged up for fun and profit.”

  “I know, dear, I know. And don’t look at me like that— that was one rumor I had no part of spreading.” She leaned toward me with narrowed eyes behind her magnifying lenses. “But the same can’t be said for Mary Beth Beckman. . . .”

  We cruised along Main Street, passing the trendy shopping block of Pearl City Plaza, which signaled the end of the business section, and began the slow-but-steady climb up West Hill.

  At the base of the hill were a few moderate homes—including the former bookstore/“murder house,” a two-story white clapboard with a cement front stoop—but as we ascended, the residences became bigger and better, increasing in grandeur, and value, commensurate to their view of the scenic river.

  At the top of the hill was an impressive array of mansions, many built in the 1800s by city founders—lumbermen, bankers, and pearl button makers—exquisite examples of Baroque, Queen Anne, Gothic Revival, Greek Renaissance, each a work of art determined to outshine the other.