Antiques Maul: A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery

by Barbara Allan

  Going…Going…Gone Wild for Barbara Allan!

  ANTIQUES MAUL

  “Antiques addicts will enjoy the ‘trash ‘n’ treasures tips.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Charming…a laugh-out-loud-funny mystery.”

  —Romantic Times (four stars)

  “A delightfully charming cozy…Barbara Allan is a terrific storyteller who knows how to grab and keep reader interest.”

  —Harriet’s Book Reviews

  ANTIQUES ROADKILL

  “Brandy, her maddening mother, her uptight sister, and all the denizens of their small Iowa town are engaging and utterly believable as they crash through a drugs and antiques scam on the Mississippi. Anyone like me, who’s blown the car payment on a killer outfit, will love the bonus of Brandy’s clothes obsession.”

  —Sara Paretsky

  “If you’re either a mystery reader or an antiques hunter, and especially if you’re both, Antiques Roadkill is your book! This is the start of what’s sure to be a terrific new series. Grab it up!”

  —S.J. Rozan

  “Cozy mystery fans will love this down-to-earth heroine with the wry sense of humor and a big heart.”

  —Nancy Pickard

  “With its small town setting and cast of quirky characters, Antiques Roadkill is fun from start to finish. Dive in and enjoy.”

  —Laurien Berenson

  “Brandy and her eccentric mother, Vivian, make a hilarious and improbable team of snoops as they encounter the seamier side of the antiques trade in this delightful debut. Antiques Roadkill will certainly make you think twice about those family treasures in your attic.”

  —Joan Hess

  “Terrific. It’s funny, witty, irreverent. From the opening page to the very last, the distinctive voice in Antiques Roadkill pulls you in and never lets go.”

  —T. J. MacGregor

  “Acclaimed husband-and-wife mystery writers Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins create a fabulous and intimate voice for this novel’s heroine, a flawed but funny 30-year-old who takes us on a spirited journey to a place where family wishes are honored, no matter how eccentric the request, and offbeat characters are the norm.”

  —Romantic Times (4½ stars)

  “Enormously entertaining.”

  —Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (3 stars)

  Antiques Maul

  By Barbara Allan:

  Antiques Roadkill

  Antiques Maul

  Antiques Flee Market

  By Barbara Collins:

  To Many Tomcats

  (short story collection)

  By Barbara and Max Allan Collins:

  Regeneration

  Bombshell

  Murder—His and Hers

  (short story collection)

  Antiques Maul

  A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Mystery

  Barbara Allan

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For the Mull siblings,

  in lieu of royalties

  “Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come home.”

  Bill Cosby

  “Double, double toil and trouble;

  Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

  William Shakespeare

  The Witches in “the Scottish play”*

  *Mother refuses to call it by name—bad luck in the theater, you know

  Contents

  Chapter One: Them’s the Rakes

  Chapter Two: A Piece of the Auction

  Chapter Three: A Hunting We Will Hoe

  Chapter Four: Close But No Cigar Store Indian

  Chapter Five: Teacher’s Pet

  Chapter Six: Let Sleeping Dogs Die

  Chapter Seven: Assault and Pepper Shakers

  Chapter Eight: Throw in the Trowel

  Chapter Nine: Hike-and-Seek

  Chapter Ten: Fire Urn and Cauldron Bubble

  Chapter Eleven: In the Kill of the Night

  Chapter Twelve: Down by the Old Mill Scream

  Chapter Thirteen: Eat, Sink, and Be Merry

  Chapter One

  Them’s the Rakes

  With me toting the box of collectibles, Mother and I entered the unlocked back door and stepped into the darkness of the antiques mall. We had set up our booth yesterday and were here, bright and early, to do some pricing on the various treasures and trash we were foisting upon an unsuspecting public.

  I moved to an electric panel on the wall nearby and began switching switches, illuminating the large room, section by section. When I turned back to Mother, she was heading up the center aisle toward the front of the store.

  Soon I was hurrying after her and then, as I rounded the row, bumped full-force into Mother, who had doubled back, knocking the wind out of both of us.

  “Dear, please,” she said gasping for breath, “please don’t…”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t look. It’s horrible. Simply grotesque.”

  Despite her agitated state, and the melodramatic words, Mother seemed atypically untheatrical.

  Now, I ask you…if somebody tells you not to look, especially if it’s “horrible,” and “simply grotesque,” what is any reasonable person going to do?

  Right.

  Not only are you going to look, but you have to look, you must look….

  Murder wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was on a lovely afternoon, not long before. Autumn in Serenity is my favorite time of the year, and this particular autumn was living up to all my expectations.

  The trees lining the streets and dotting yards are at their most brilliant—leaves of scarlet, orange, and golden yellow, shimmering in the warm afternoon sunlight. We were in the throes of a glorious Indian summer, yet the nights were cool enough to wear the new fall fashions (specifically, a recently purchased bronze leather jacket from Bernardo).

  Still, fall has its inherently melancholy side, a bittersweet, contemplative time—mulling what might have been…and then the realization that, given a second chance, you’d probably do the same dumb things all over again….

  After ten years of marriage, I was recently divorced (my bad), and had come home to live with my seventy-plus-year-old mother in the small midwestern town on the banks of the Mississippi River where I’d grown up. I had brought with me my share of the spoils of the marriage: Sushi, a white and brown shih tzu, who was spoiled. Roger had custody of ten-year-old Jacob back in Chicago, also spoiled.

  Some might think that our newly formed household unit made quite the dysfunctional family…Mother bipolar, Sushi blind with diabetes, me zoned out on antidepressants. But I think we functioned just fine…as long as we all took our medication.

  On my return to Serenity several months ago, we’d become unexpectedly involved in a couple of juicy local murders and performed what my mother insisted on describing as “amateur sleuthing.” On this fall day, thoughts of that remarkable set of experiences were among my contemplations, sure; but I figured that adventure was a one-shot.

  I had no idea, on that crisp autumn afternoon, that a sequel was looming….

  Dressed in a brown Juicy Couture hoodie and Blue Cult jeans, orange Puma running shoes, my honey-blonde hair in a ponytail, I leaned on my rake, inhaling deeply, taking in the crisp, clean, humidity-free air, then exhaling with a self-satisfied sigh. Slacking on the job, I listened to the tuneless high-pitched song of the cicada bugs while watching an ever-growing number of birds perched on an electrical wire argue over who was going to lead them south for the winter.

  Robin chirped, “I have seniority, so I’m most qua
lified.”

  “Hell you say!” Bluebird retorted. “You got us lost over Arkansas last year, remember? Practically got sucked into that jet’s nether regions!”

  Swallow interjected, “Well, I’m not flying all the way to Capistrano again. That about busted my feathers! I thought my darn wings would fall off…. Cancún is far enough.”

  Blackbird scoffed, “It’s still hurricane season down there, you dolt…. You wanna get blown into raven munchies?”

  Crow crowed, “Think I’ll fly to Miami, then catch a steamer across the Atlantic to Europe. Heard those Italian birds are swee-eeet….”

  Swallow was saying, “Hey, Robin! What’s the matter? Suddenly you don’t look so good….”

  “Yeah,” Robin answered, “I don’t feel so good either. Maybe I’m gettin’ that bird flu that’s been going around.”

  “Yikes!”

  “Let me outta here!”

  “Been nice knowin’ ya!”

  And the fine-feathered friends scattered in a flap of wings.

  Here I thought my life was stressful.

  Sushi, stretched out lazily under a nearby oak, lifted her small furry head and yapped at me, as if to say, “Get back to work!” While Sushi couldn’t see, she could hear my inactivity.

  “Yeth, Maaath-tur,” I said in my best Midnight Movie manner, and proceeded to corral some sneaky leaves with my rake, foiling their escape on a lucky puff of wind.

  A gray squirrel (meaner than their brown cousins) decided to come down from its nest at the tippy-top of the oak. The squirrel planted itself a short distance from Sushi and—thinking the little fur ball no threat—began to taunt her.

  “Na-na-na-na-na-na,” the squirrel chattered, dancing back and forth just out of Sushi’s reach.

  “I wouldn’t go there,” I warned.

  Sushi sat up slowly, resting on her back legs, head tilted to one side.

  The taunter danced closer.

  “Na-na-na-na-na-na.”

  With lightning speed, Sushi struck at the source of the noise; as the startled squirrel whirled to retreat, the canine caught that long bushy tail with her little sharp teeth and clamped.

  The squirrel screeched (wouldn’t you?) and I commanded, “Let him go, Soosh.”

  She reluctantly obeyed, and the squirrel scurried back up the tree to its nest—a little bit wiser, I think.

  Mother—wearing a voluminous blue caftan and one of her large red hats to protect her delicate Danish skin from the rays of the sun—made a typically grand entrance (even though, technically, it was an exit) as she floated down the front porch steps, one part apparition, one part aberration.

  “My goodness,” she asked, “what’s all the ruckus?” Her eyes, already magnified by her large thick glasses, were owl-wide.

  I told her.

  Mother gazed up, waggling a finger in the squirrel’s general direction. “You’d better spend more time gathering acorns and not picking on a poor defenseless little doggie.”

  Soosh looked toward Mother’s voice with a cocked head.

  Then Mother added upward, “The winter of your discontent is coming, you know!”

  The squirrel said nothing; he was just a bit player in Mother’s production.

  “Brandy,” Mother said, eyes narrow yet huge, “how does a nice glass of chilled apple cider sound?”

  I despise cider. “Great!”

  I was not trying to make Mother feel better. I was merely willing to take any excuse to forestall further raking. Already I had a blister going between my right thumb and forefinger. Besides, the wind was picking up and all the leaves would blow into the neighbors’ yards if I could just be patient.

  I leaned the rake against the tree, retrieved Sushi, and followed Mother up the wide steps, across the expansive porch, and inside.

  Some months ago, I had tried to talk Mother into building a ranch-style house after our old three-story stucco had been destroyed (which is another story) (available at your favorite bookseller’s), pointing out that in the days to come she might find the steps a hardship.

  Mother flatly refused.

  “A ranch-style?” Mother screeched. “Here? On this property? Why, that would be committing architectural blasphemy!”

  “Huh?” I asked. Okay, I’m not quite as articulate as Mother.

  Mother gazed at me with haughty sympathy and benign contempt, as if I had a can of spaghetti on my face and was using the meatballs for brains.

  “Because, my dear girl, that style would not complement the array of structures along our street.”

  “Array of structures—other houses, you mean.”

  Mother puffed up. “Why, a single-story home among these two-and three-stories would look like a…a stumpy, filed-off tooth next to the other teeth in the block’s bright, shining smile.”

  I didn’t point out that the logical extension of her metaphorical spiel indicated that many other teeth in that “bright, shining smile” could stand some veneers or capping, or even a few Crest bleach-strips.

  But Mother was on a roll. “And as for climbing the stairs when the distant day arrives that I am indeed old and gray…”

  She was old and gray! Indeed!

  “…should the effort take me half an hour to accomplish, what then? What else would I have to do?”

  For a romantic, Mother could be awfully pragmatic.

  The new house—a virtual replica of the original three-story one—went up in record time. I asked around and found the fastest and best builders, hired them, and unleashed my secret weapon: Mother hanging around the construction site, driving the contractors crazy.

  You’d have been done in six weeks, too. Maybe five.

  I trailed Mother into the house and on through to the kitchen—the only room that had been modified and modernized from the old blue-prints—and put Sushi down, watching her find her way to the water dish.

  Mother, getting the apple cider out of the fridge, asked, “Brandy, darling, when can I expect these clothes to come down?”

  She was referring to a new pair of Citizens of Humanity jeans, a plaid L.A.M.B. jacket, and a tight Theory pencil skirt (all a size smaller than I had on), which were hanging on various cabinet doors, blocking the way to forbidden foods.

  “Five more pounds from now,” I said.

  “Good,” she sighed. “Because it’s most inconvenient to get into the cupboards.”

  “Which,” I said, “is the point.”

  Mother continued: “And last night I came downstairs for a glass of warm milk, turned on the kitchen light, and nearly fainted from fright! Why, in my sleep-addled state, I thought we had burglars!”

  Albeit chic, female ones. Standing on the kitchen counter.

  “Although, Brandy, I must admit, this new diet method of yours does seem to be working.”

  I beamed. “Good! Then you can tell I’ve lost some weight?”

  Mother frowned, as if my question had been a non sequitur. “Not you, dear, me…I’ve shed ten pounds.”

  Here I’d dropped only a measly three.

  Bottom line on dieting: After age thirty (which I had just reached) the only way to lose weight is to go through a divorce (not recommended) or finally get around to having your impacted wisdom teeth taken out.

  To drop the poundage, and keep it off, you must make a “lifestyle” change: i.e., You can no longer eat as you used to. And the sooner you get that through your thick skull (and thicker waist-band) the better.

  Here’s what I do now (besides hanging too-tight clothes over Temptation’s Portal): I eat what I want, but only half portions. Get it? Half a steak, half a baked potato, half a roll, half a piece of pumpkin pie with half a dollop of whipped cream…

  “Getouttamyway!”

  I pushed Mother aside and lurched for the blue-jeans-covered cabinet that contained the sweets.

  “Brandy, no!” Mother said, in that firm voice I’d heard a thousand times; she raised a properly scolding finger. “Stick to your guns.”

 
“Just half a cookie!” I pleaded.

  After all, I knew she didn’t care about my weight. She just wanted me to lose poundage so she could have her precious kitchen cupboards unblocked.

  Mother patted my arm. “Come now, dear…drink your apple cider…that will fill you up. Let’s go out on the porch.”

  I scowled……but followed her.

  We sat in white wicker chairs, our drinks resting on a matching wicker table between us. Sushi trotted over and got up on her hind legs to sniff at what we were having. No fool, she turned up her little wet nose, then found a pool of warm sunshine on the porch floor to settle down in.

  I broached a touchy subject with Mother. “Have they decided who’s going to be the next permanent director of the Community Theater Playhouse?”

  “Permanent” directors at the playhouse came and went.

  Mother—after a lifetime of performing on the stage, and decades as Serenity’s Community Theater doyenne—had begun to direct a play now and then, and had thrown her red hat into the ring of contenders.

  Mr. Manley had been the director for several years until he ran off recently with the Serenity Symphony’s lady bassoon player in the middle of the run of South Pacific (rumor had it they went to the South Pacific) (nothing like a dame) (nothing in the world), leaving their respective spouses adrift. Not to mention a big hole in the wind section.

  Mother’s sky-blue eyes turned cloudy gray. She said softly, “I’m afraid Bernice Wiley got the position.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted it….”