Antiques Chop (A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery)

by Barbara Allan

  “That was pigs-in-a-blanket,” I corrected. “An old Borne family recipe, and anyway, I’d forgotten you’d invited them. Besides, they loved them!”

  “Lori’s a great lady. But you? You make me laugh.”

  “I do, huh?”

  His face was inches from mine.

  I kissed him. He kissed me back. It was just a tender little thing that lasted maybe five seconds. But my heart was racing like I hadn’t stopped hiking.

  “That’s another thing,” Roger said. “No spontaneity.”

  “Lori, you mean.”

  “Lori,” he said, and he kissed me.

  This one lasted a little longer and things were heating up. That was when I said something that cooled us off.

  “I guess I had too much spontaneity,” I said.

  I was referring to my one-night stand with an old high school flame at my ten-year class reunion. For what it’s worth, many a night had been spent crying into my pillow about that big, damn, stupid mistake.

  Roger said softly, “I forgave you for that a long time ago.”

  “You never said.”

  He leaned back against the bench. Sighed. “Well. Maybe not forgive, exactly . . . more like, I understand it. We were at different points in our life—you, young and wanting to have fun. Me, older and ready to settle down into boring middle age. I only wish . . . nothing.”

  “What? Tell me, Roger.”

  “I only wish that you’d told me something was wrong.”

  I said, “I didn’t know myself.” I shook my head, my hair bouncing everywhere. “Not till it was too late.” Then I took his hand and looked right into his eyes. “It’s not an excuse, Roger. What I did to you—and Jake—was reprehensible, and I get sick to my stomach when I think about it.”

  His smile was small but it was there. “Then we won’t talk any more about it.”

  We fell silent.

  Then Roger said, “By the way . . . that was a selfless thing you did for your friend, and I’m very proud of you.”

  Not long ago I’d been a surrogate mother for my BFF Tina (who’d had cervical cancer) and her husband, Kevin.

  Roger squeezed my hand. Then we kissed again.

  Could we get back together? Would it work this time? Or did I just want him to take care of me?

  Hadn’t I learned by now that the only person who could really take care of me was me?

  “Hey, you guys!” Jake said, wearing a very self-satisfied smirk. “Chop, chop! I thought we were goin’ on a hike.” He was standing a few yards up the path, the dogs circling around him like he was an embattled wagon train and they were Indians.

  Roger and I pulled apart, embarrassed.

  Jake jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve been waitin’ forever for you guys up at Fat Man’s Squeeze.”

  “Okay,” I said, “we’re coming.”

  Roger’s cell phone buzz-vibrated in his pocket.

  “Come on, Dad!” Jake whined. “No business, you promised!”

  My ex, who was frowning, checked the caller. “Sorry, son, I’ve just got to take this.”

  But the signal wasn’t strong enough.

  “Look,” I said, “why don’t you go back down to the clearing. You might get a better signal down there. And, uh . . . while you’re down there—”

  “Bring the Hummer around to the top?”

  I shrugged. “Why should we all suffer? If we aren’t waiting by the time you get there, meet us at the Bowl.”

  Not the Sadness Bowl—the Devil’s Punch Bowl.

  Cell in hand, Roger went back down the path, and I started upward with Jake. But maybe three minutes later, I tired of the steep climb, and got to thinking about how well Roger and I had been connecting.

  “Look, I’m gonna go keep your dad company,” I told Jake. “See you and the dogs at the Punch Bowl.”

  “Okay,” he said with an evil grin, “but don’t you two do anything in public you can get arrested for.”

  “Try not.”

  I retreated, my feet lighter now, my journey going downhill but my spirits rising.

  Through the trees, I could see Roger at the bottom, walking briskly.

  And I stopped in my tracks.

  Because he was approaching a familiar vehicle, and it wasn’t his Hummer.

  Rather, a red Toyota.

  I stood frozen there, watching, agape as Roger withdrew his wallet and handed a pile of green money to the cigar-puffing Froggy.

  I retreated, quickly catching up with Jake.

  A short time later, after Jake, our canine contingent, and I met up with Roger at the Bowl, I said nothing about what I had seen. I kept things light, if not affectionate.

  Funny thing—only Sushi sensed something was wrong. On the ride back she didn’t yap when we drove by the park ranger’s cabin, and instead of facing forward on my lap, she curled toward me, her furry head resting on my chest.

  At home, no sign yet of Mother. Jake disappeared upstairs, and I went into the kitchen.

  At the sink, as I drew a glass of water, Roger came up behind me, and put his arms around my waist.

  Without turning, I said, “So. You hired a private detective?”

  He dropped his arms.

  I turned.

  Looking sheepish, he said, “A bodyguard. Somebody my company uses for background checks in Chicago.”

  “So you’re checking my background now?”

  “No. Don’t be silly. You’re a parent.”

  “Why, yes, I am.”

  “Then try to see it from my side. That was the call I got at the park—my guy thought he should split, since you—you know . . .”

  “Your guy thought. After I confronted him. After he scared me and Mother and Jake. So you paid him off and sent him packing. Some pretty clumsy talent you got there back in the Windy City.”

  His eyes were moist. “Please. Brandy, please . . .”

  Coldly I said, “You didn’t trust Jake in my care.”

  He gestured with one hand. “It wasn’t a matter of trust. . . .”

  “What was it then?”

  He shrugged; his eyes were tight, his forehead furrowed. “Just with these damn murders you and your mother have got involved in, it seemed like the responsible thing for a parent to do. You do understand, don’t you?”

  I did, actually. All too well.

  He added, a little defensively, “And as it turns out, I was right to take that precaution. There was another murder. My God, it’s crazy in this lousy little town! It’s the apocalypse around here!”

  Good place to open a branch office in the investment game.

  I said, “Was it Jake who first told you about Bruce Spring’s murder?”

  He shook his head. “My guy.”

  Of course. Which explained how and why Roger arrived in Serenity so fast.

  “How mad at me are you?” he asked, rather pitifully. “I was only thinking of you and Jake.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  Disappointed, saddened. It was no fun to be deceived. I’d taught him that. Now he’d taught me.

  Roger risked a shaky smile. “I’m glad this came to light. I hated keeping it from you.”

  I managed to return his smile, but could think of nothing to say.

  He touched my shoulder gently. “I’m going back to the hotel for a shower.” He cocked his head. “Will you let me take you and Jake out to dinner later? You can even bring your mother along.”

  “Sure.”

  That pleased him.

  After Roger left, I went into the music/library room, pulled out the blackboard, and erased the red Toyota from the list of suspects.

  Just like I erased from my mind any notion that Roger and I could ever get back together.

  A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

  Make the entrance to your store inviting, with eye-catching antiques in the window and interesting merchandise displayed in the front. “Interesting” is a subjective term, of course. My idea of interesting is a mannikin dec
ked out in vintage 1940s clothing. Mother’s is a stuffed grizzly bear with bared fangs and claws.

  Chapter Eight

  Stop and Chop

  Yes, my dears, it is Vivian back again, poised to sate your curiosity over the loose ends left dangling in Chapter Six. But first . . . previously on The Mysterious Adventures of Vivian Borne—

  (Brandy to Mother: There will be no “previously.” This is a novel, not a television show. If readers wish to refresh their memories, they can thumb back a few pages and do so. Anyway, it hasn’t been long enough for a reader to have forgotten your last chapter, try as they may.)

  (Mother to Brandy: First of all, the intention was to plant the idea in the mind of any producer who might be reading this novel while jetting to Cannes or heading for location in Bermuda that these novels of ours would make an excellent film or television series. Second, you used “previously” yourself, previously . . . refer to Chapter One! Third, to spare the reader the trouble of flipping back pages, I should probably include just the itty-bittiest recap.)

  (Brandy to Mother: Fine. Up to you. Of course, you’ll be eating into your word count doing so.)

  (Mother to Brandy: Good point. Readers, circumstances require that you fend for yourselves.)

  (Editor to Vivian and Brandy: Where are those CENSORED pencils I sent you?)

  (Vivian and Brandy to the reader: We have taken the liberty of editing an offensive word out from our editor’s previous note. Doesn’t she want us ever to be sold in Walmart?)

  Upon completion of our secret footage session with Andrew and Sarah Butterworth, cameraman Phil Dean and I drove the short distance down West Hill to the murder house, where we hoped to get some outside shots before the wrecking ball came, per Andrew’s threat. I still held out hope that Antiques Sleuths could be salvaged, but in any case there was a heck of a true-crime documentary my new partner Phil and I could put together.

  I did so hope that Phil didn’t turn out to be the murderer, because that could require some very complicated post-production negotiations. How helpful would a partner likely be, once you had landed him in the slammer?

  Somehow the old Butterworth family home looked even more dilapidated under the unrelenting scrutiny of the afternoon sun. Not just the front door, but the entire yard was rather festively blocked off with yellow-and-black crime scene tape stuck to plastic sticks shoved in the ground. In places, the tape had snapped—had media locusts moved in, despite Chief Lawson’s best efforts?—the ends flapping in the breeze. Through one of these breaches, Phil stepped onto the lawn, camera hoisted on his shoulder.

  I positioned myself across the street, watching, ready to give a warning whistle with thumb and forefinger should a police car appear.

  Phil had finished with front and side views, and was heading around the back, when I noticed an elderly gent out on the porch of a nearby Gothic Revival house, watering some hardy plants.

  I walked over—it was not directly across from the old Butterworth place, rather one house up, up the hill. At the bottom of a flight of cement steps, I gazed up at the open, pillared porch.

  I called out, “Well, Sam Wright! How are you?”

  The deacon of the Amazing Grace Church was a few years older than moi—he’d been in the same high school class as Andrew Butterworth—and had once cut a dashing figure; but time had taken its toll, bestowing him a little pot belly, rounded shoulders, jowls, bags, and thinning hair, which he tried unsuccessfully to hide in a comb-over.

  Nonetheless, the old boy wasn’t hard on the eyes, at least not the eyes of a woman of a certain age. I had even considered dating him after his divorce from Ruth—a scandalous event, considering Sam’s close identification with the church. But the ex-wife departed town before I could find out exactly why she had left him. Rumor had it she hated living in the old gothic house, and Sam had no interest in selling the ancestral home.

  (Note: A wise woman will always take lunch with the ex of a man in whom she is interested. Best to find out from the most reliable source if he’s a philanderer—or even worse, a cheapskate.)

  Despite his advanced years, Sam had the energy of a much younger man. But then he would have to, as deacon of the popular, even powerful Amazing Grace Church. (Which was, I suppose, another good reason for nixing any potential Borne/Wright union—a church man’s wife plays but a supporting role, while Vivian Borne is at her best in the lead.)

  Amazing Grace boasted a large congregation, even bigger than the Methodists, which was saying something in this neck of the woods. The church had been established in Serenity back in the early 1940s by Gabriel Wright, Sam’s fire-and-brimstone preacher father. After the elder man’s death in the1980s, Sam followed in his footsteps.

  Under Sam’s steerage, Amazing Grace had only grown in both size and esteem, even possessing political clout, what with so many of the church’s members in local government from school board to the mayor’s office. Sam had never been a preacher like his pop; he had majored in business in college, and ran the church accordingly, carefully selecting a succession of popular pulpit pounders to keep Amazing Grace lively. But Sam’s growing child began questioning its parental Baptist authority and, by the mid-nineties, had severed all ties to its national alliance.

  From time to time, Brandy and I would attend Sam’s church, especially relishing the wonderful musical services, which were held in a state-of-the-art theater. And we liked the church’s practice of giving most of its tithing to help local charities. But the Hell-and-damnation sermons were too much for the Borne women, one on bipolar medication and the other on antidepressants, so we settled elsewhere, at the New Hope Church (or as Brandy calls it, The Church of Mild Admonishments and Common Sense).

  Sam, glancing up from his plants, smiled, and called back, “Vivian Borne! Well, don’t you look fresh as a daisy.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please do.”

  I climbed the cement steps to the porch of the Gothic Revival house, which was fittingly churchlike in appearance if somewhat medieval. A beautiful, gloomy thing to behold, the three-story stone structure had pointed arch windows, cross-gables, and a steeply pitched roof.

  I had only been inside a few times, as a young girl, when the rather scary Gabriel Wright allowed Andy and Sarah and me to play with Sam, but we’d been restricted to the damp and cold basement. Since my mother was content to let us kids swing from the rafters, our house soon became the Musketeers’ hangout.

  Sam, looking fairly jaunty in a light navy jacket and casual brown slacks, sat in a well-worn rocker, and I took the porch swing, testing it first for strength, as ours had come crashing down last month, leaving me with a black-and-blue polka-dotted posterior.

  “I heard you were going in across the street,” he said, “with an antiques shop. But after that unpleasantness the other night . . .”

  I nodded, swinging just a little. “Unpleasantness” was an understatement, of course, but then Sam would only know what he’d read in the papers, so the ax murder aspect of that “unpleasantness” would be unknown to him.

  He was saying, “The whole neighborhood is on edge. But the police have someone in custody, I understand.”

  “They do indeed. It’s been kept out of the papers so far, but I can tell you who it is.”

  “Not unless you’re comfortable doing so, Vivian. It’s not really any of my business, and it’s hardly Christian to traffic in gossip.”

  Was that a dig? Didn’t seem to be.

  “Well, Sam, do keep it to yourself, but . . . it’s Brandy’s friend, Joe Lange.”

  “Oh, dear. That poor troubled veteran. He and his mother go to Amazing Grace, you know. She’s so very sweet, and he’s so very . . .”

  “Odd? Yes.” I paused for effect. “But I don’t believe he did it.”

  Sam leaned forward in the rocker, and it creaked. Or he creaked. Couldn’t be sure. “Really? And how did you come to that conclusion?”

  “Well, I can’t really say without violat
ing Chief Lawson’s request for confidentiality about the crime itself. But let’s just say that Joe didn’t have nearly enough blood on him.”

  That gave him a start. He sat back, and began rocking slowly. “Well. If Vivian Borne thinks the murderer is still out there, then most likely he is.”

  “Or she,” I reminded him.

  I sat forward and almost slid off the swing. I caught myself with a hand on the nearby chain. Good thing, too—my polka dots had almost faded, and it would be a shame to serve up another nether design.

  I said, “How would you like to help me catch the killer?”

  He blinked, then seemed almost amused. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline, Vivian. Assisting you in your amateur sleuthing is hardly appropriate for a man in my position.”

  I waved that off and giggled girlishly. “I don’t mean anything so overt, Sam! I just thought you might let me know what you remember about”—and I gave this the appropriate dramatic inflection—“the night of the murder.”

  Sam frowned in thought. “Afraid I don’t know anything that would be very useful.”

  “Well, do try. Please?”

  “Okay. Let’s see. Probably like everybody else on this block, I was in bed and got woken up by a siren. I thought it might be an ambulance—a neighbor up the street has heart trouble, and six months ago or so was rushed off to the hospital. There were sirens then.”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, figuring that’s what it was, and wanting to offer my help if it was needed, I got out of bed, put on my robe, went downstairs, turned on some lights, and went out on the porch.” He paused. “But the ambulance hadn’t pulled up in front of my neighbor’s house, up the street . . . instead, the flashing lights were across the way in front of the old Butterworth place. And it wasn’t an ambulance at all, but a police car.”

  He stopped rocking, leaned forward. “Like I said, I knew you were renovating the house—rumor was you and your daughter were opening up a shop. There was talk of a reality TV show, too, which sounded unlikely to me. But the paper said the murder victim was a TV producer. Is that the connection?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re still hoping to do the show, actually, but first things first. There’s a murder to solve.”