“Of course. Lovely gal—she bought a Dale Evans Little Golden Book from me, once. Enjoy your drinks.” The owner retreated to her fortress of pop memorabilia.
We sat in silence, sipping from the glasses. After fifteen minutes, though, I became worried that Della wasn’t here yet—she had suggested the place, after all—and that maybe something had happened to her.
I was just getting antsy when the beaded curtain parted, revealing the woman. She wore a light blue blouse, an artsy glass-beaded necklace, dark jeans, white tennis shoes, and carried a tan handbag. I am omitting brand names because (a) it irritates some people, and (b) I had no idea what they were.
I got up and pulled over a red chair in the shape of lips, so Della could join us.
“Something to drink?” I asked her.
“No,” Della said, seated, if somewhat uncomfortably. “I already told Renny I wasn’t having anything.”
“Now, then, dear,” Mother said, “what was so urgent?”
Della stared at her hands in her lap. Her sigh was endless, despite Mother not having caused it. “I just don’t know where to begin.”
“Take your time, dear,” Mother said patiently, but I could feel her tapping her foot next to me as if keeping time to “Tiger Rag.”
Della took a deep breath and let it out. “Well, ever since I found out that Dad had sold that Wyatt Earp poster, I just can’t get it out of my mind. Just doesn’t ring true!” She paused, her eyes going to Mother. “Tilda Tompkins told me that sometimes she helps you remember details through hypnosis. I’m in her tantra sex class, you see.”
I had a momentary brain freeze trying not to picture Della as one of the students.
She was saying, “This afternoon Tilda regressed me back to the morning of the day Dad died, when I last went to see him. She asked me if the Earp poster was still on the wall.”
“And?” Mother asked excitedly.
“I said yes, it was there that morning. But later, when she took me back to when . . . ”—her voice cracked—“to when I returned to Dad’s house to identify his body, the poster was missing from its spot.”
I asked, “Was the sheriff’s department the first responder that night?”
“Yes. And I know what you’re thinking . . . that Daryl Dugan had taken it . . . but he wasn’t there—only Sheriff Rudder and the paramedics.”
Mother said, “It’s obvious now that Blake Ferrell took the poster along with the knife and pipe.”
Della shrugged, shook her head.
“Then,” I asked Mother, “how did Daryl end up with Wyatt?”
“There are but two possibilities,” Mother said. “Mr. Ferrell either sold it to Daryl, whose desire for the antique poster was enough to make him abandon his sense of duty . . . or Ferrell was directed by the deputy to steal it for him in the first place.”
I nodded, eyes narrowing, picking up on the latter theory. “With the proviso that Blake could help himself to any cash he found.”
Mother raised a finger. “Then, when things went awry, Blake pressured Daryl to help get him a job at Sunny Meadow.”
Della’s frustration was obvious. “But how can any of that be proved?”
Mother said, “We have to get our hands on the letter of provenance your father wrote that came with the poster. Dollars to donuts the part that said Daryl was the new owner was forged.”
I caught Mother’s eyes. “We could compare it to the one that came with the picture of Gabby Hayes. That’s authentic.”
“Good heavens!” Mother exclaimed. “That must be why Harriet gave me the photo. Cariboo Trail my caboose! She somehow knew, or suspected, that Daryl was connected to Judd’s murder and knew that was a clue.”
Della raised a finger. “Keep in mind Dad’s handwriting will be shakier on the poster’s letter of provenance, written a year before his death.”
I was nodding. “As compared to the Hayes letter, written years before.”
“Still,” Mother said, “any forging should be easy enough to tell.”
I frowned at her. “So how do we get our hands on the poster to make a comparison? Breaking into Blake’s apartment was one thing, but the home of a deputy? We could get arrested . . . or shot.”
Della lifted a forefinger. “There’s one thing Dad had that Daryl wanted even more than that poster—the Smith and Wesson Model Three that Wyatt Earp used in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”
“Do you still have it?” Mother asked excitedly.
“It’s in my safe deposit box,” Della replied.
“Would you trust us with it?”
“Yes. But be careful, it’s loaded. My father said the weapon was fully functional, and he fired it occasionally. Said he got a charge out of shooting the same gun Wyatt used at the O.K. Corral.”
“Near the corral,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
I might have explained, but was too busy keeping my head from spinning at the thought of Mother at large with a loaded gun. But of all the weapons in the world, why did it have to be this one? A valuable antique that only an old collector nut like Judd Pickett would have dared fire?
Mother raised her Bugs Bunny glass as if in a toast. “Then I have a cunning plan.”
She delivered this in her British accent, which I hoped was only due to her quoting the BBC Blackadder TV show. Because I had a feeling things were going to get dodgy enough without having to endure that.
A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip
Never attend a sale with a disinterested person (or even semi-disinterested) who will ruin the hunt and want to leave before you’ve searched every nook and cranny. Mother will abandon her best friend on the off-chance of discovering midcentury ceramic cowboy-and-horse salt and pepper shakers.
Chapter Eleven
Pistol- Packin’ Mama
Mother, Sushi, and I were at the Playhouse Theater, about five or six miles out in the country, a repurposed old barn where once-upon-a-time community actors would gather and perform on a makeshift stage to the delight (and forbearance) of family and friends. Even now you could almost hear Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney calling out, “Come on, gang . . . let’s put on a show and save the farm!”
Over the years, largely thanks to Mother’s tenacious fund-raising, the barn had been transformed into a modern theatrical facility, with new additions and a state-of-the-art auditorium. All these years later, the only thing left of the original structure was its rooster weather vane.
Late afternoon on a Monday, the theater was dark—both in theatrical terms and illumination-wise—and Mother had let herself and her own personal Gabby Hayes–type sidekick (me) in through the side stage door with a key granted her as one of the theater’s board of directors.
At the moment, she and I were in the star’s dressing room, Mother seated at the makeup table, me standing behind her but leaning in; Sushi was off exploring, as she loved to do in these environs—especially the prop room with its various items and their many smells. (Sometimes the prop manager would find a mysterious bite taken out of a taxidermied animal, the little mutt unable to contain her primitive impulses.)
Right now Mother was applying latex skin to her face in order to change its contour.
“This plan is neither cunning,” I said, “or workable.”
“That’s nor workable, dear,” she said, frowning at me in the mirror. “And of course it’s workable. Must you always be such a Debbie Downer?”
I’ll let you be the judge. Is this cunning? Or workable?
Mother planned to pose as a male collector of western memorabilia by the name of Tex Ranger, from the great state of, yes, Texas, having contacted Deputy Dugan with an offer to trade the Earp O.K. Corral gun for the Earp for Sheriff poster. That would put the latter’s letter of provenance in our possession, so we could check its authenticity against the one we had with the Gabby Hayes photo.
Might there have been an easier way to accomplish that? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But d
o you really think you or anyone could convince Vivian Borne of that?
It wasn’t the trade aspect that concerned me—Dugan had agreed to the exchange readily enough, probably fine with ridding himself of evidence that could connect him to Blake Ferrell, and thus the death of Judd Pickett, and accomplishing that while acquiring an even more valuable western antique than the one he was giving up.
Convincing the deputy of the gun’s authenticity was no problem, as he had been referred by Tex to Della Pickett, who assured him that the gun had indeed belonged to her father, and was sold to Ranger some years ago; nor was it difficult to convince Dugan of the existence of this unlikely named Tex, because Joe Lange had concocted a fake website for the collector, along with planting several glowing articles about him on the Internet.
So maybe the plan was cunning at that. But workable?
My concern was with Mother’s disguise, which I imagined would wind up looking like something Inspector Clouseau might have dreamed up. What worked on stage, from the back of the house—or even the front row for that matter—seldom convinced up close and personal.
As Mother applied a fake bulbous nose, I idly commented, “‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’”
“Brandy!” she practically screamed, fake flesh hanging off her face like a melting Oz witch. “You’ve quoted from the Scottish play!”
“I have?” I always get my Shakespeare mixed up.
She pivoted in the chair to face me. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
I did.
Or anyway I knew what she thought I’d done. Quoting from Macbeth was bad luck for an actor, even worse than just speaking the play’s forbidden name. Using lines from the Bard’s masterpiece was only permissible during a rehearsal or an actual performance. And it was a really, really bad thing to do in a dressing room.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry indeed! You may have jinxed my meeting. You know what you must do.”
I’d seen the ritual performed by others who had made such a mistake.
I went out of the dressing room door into the hall, shut the door, knocked two times, opened the door, came back in, spun around three times, spit on the floor, and said a swear word.
Mother nodded her approval of my performance, but chastised me for the swear word, which she claimed “didn’t have to be that foul.”
Hers was a mild piss pot, but still within the accepted parameters of curse words by theater folk when trying to dispel the Macbeth jinx. The real reason she disapproved of my choice of swear word was that it seemed to be an editorial comment on my part (the first syllable was bull).
She swiveled back to the mirror and picked up a scrap of paper. “Here . . . make yourself useful. Find me these clothes.”
I took the list.
Wardrobe was next door to the prop room, and I called, “Sushi! Wardrobe!”
She scurried out from somewhere to join me—not because she missed me, but because Shoosh had been forever banned from wardrobe after shredding a white feather boa used in Gypsy, which had cost her mistresses a pretty penny.
I said, as if she could understand (and maybe she could), “We’re looking for men’s western clothes,” and we proceeded to that section of the room.
Ten minutes later I had made a pile of clothing possibilities on the floor, an assortment of western shirts, vests, jackets, trousers, scarves, string ties, belts, hats, and boots (ones roomy enough so that La Diva Borne’s recently operated-upon feet, sans the medical shoes, would be relatively comfortable). Only one item on Mother’s list was not among the western wear—the padding an actress would strap around her waist to look pregnant (in Mother’s case, creating a potbelly)—which I retrieved from another section.
Then I couldn’t find Sushi.
I called for her. And called again. Slowly the pile of clothes began to move as if with a life of its own, and she crawled out from underneath, tangled up in a shirt, a red-and-black-and-white paisley bandana around her neck. I got Sushi loose from the shirt, but when I tried to take away the scarf, she growled, so I left it on her. Maybe she was Gabby Hayes. But what did that make me—Trigger?
I found a small, portable rack on which to hang the clothes, putting the boots on the shelf below, and the hats on the one above, and wheeled it out of the room, Sushi with the scarf trotting happily behind.
At the dressing room door, just as I was about to come in with the rack, Mother called out, “Just leave it, dear! Go out to the auditorium and await my entrance.”
She wanted to surprise me with her new persona.
Do I really have to report my sigh?
Sushi came along with me, anticipating a game we would sometimes play among the rows of seating—mostly her hiding and me seeking. She always had to give me help via a little yip or yipe, but then by the time I got to where she was, she’d be somewhere else.
Pooped, I was ready to call it quits when the stage lights above the closed velvet curtains came on. Then the curtains parted in the middle, and Tex Ranger himself stepped through, walking confidently out to the apron of the stage and into the pool of the center light.
Tex was sporting a tan Stetson hat with a black band, wisps of silver hair peeking out from beneath, complementing the silver handlebar mustache. He wore a brown leather vest over a blue shirt, a brown belt with silver buckle, and tan slacks, the legs tucked in to the tooled leather shaft of black cowboy boots.
I had expected an over-the-top Buffalo Bob Smith or maybe Slim Pickens, but Tex’s attire was both expensive-looking and tasteful.
But could his/her face pass the Noxzema close-up test?
I ascended the side steps to the stage, walked toward Tex, and stood right next to him/her. Try as I may, I could not detect Mother anywhere behind the mask of prosthetic nose, makeup, and facial hair, all skillfully applied.
She even passed the Sushi test, the little dog, having joined us onstage, treating Mother (her own natural scent masked by all that makeup and worn-by-many theatrical clothing) as a stranger—whether friend or foe yet to be determined.
But what about Mother’s voice? Earlier, she had called Dugan as Tex using Della’s phone, to set up the meeting, and did it rather well, I thought. But could she be convincing in person?
Mother, as if reading my mind, launched into a dialogue; her voice lowered, but not ridiculously so, dialect southern, but not too good-old-boy.
“Ah remembah the first cattle drive of mah storied youth,” she began, in an easy drawl. “How the smell of Arbuckle’s coffee wafted from the chuck wagon as the campfires glowed in the night, and the doggies stirred gently in the moonlight. . .”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. The doggie at my feet stirred, finally recognizing Mother. “But don’t go off script at the meeting.”
Mother’s voice came out of the man’s mouth. “Dear, I never go off script.”
I had seen her go off script countless times, particularly in comedies when she got wind of what made the audience laugh. But this was no comedy.
“You ready for this?” I asked her.
In Tex’s voice, she said, “Ah was born ready, little lady.” Then in her own voice, she cackled, “Vivian Borne ready!”
I could have sworn I heard Sushi sigh.
* * *
The meeting for the trade had been set for eight o’clock this evening, at the riverfront, on a park bench next to a bronze statue of an Indian chief whose tribe had once ruled the area.
Dusk would be settling in, providing some cover for Mother, and foot traffic in the park should be minimal. Plus, seated next to Mother, Dugan wouldn’t be able to study “Tex” quite as closely as he might across a table in some restaurant or other better-lit meeting place.
I had a part to play in tonight’s performance as well, as did Della.
Hers was to be at her house in Stoneybrook, her home near the only entrance/exit to the housing development, where the Dugans also lived. There she would watch the deputy’s comings and
goings, keeping us posted via cell phone.
My role was to be stationed near the bench, in case something went wrong—exactly what I was to do in that circumstance wasn’t clear—and the only hiding place available to me was inside a garbage can across from the bench along the river walkway.
At least the can had been kept fairly clean, thanks to a plastic liner, which I removed with its half-full contents and transferred in a wad to another receptacle. The space inside the now-empty can should be large enough for me to crouch within, without being seen, though the bouquet of eau de garbage still lingered.
The can also had the added benefit of little slits at the top that would allow me a straight-on view of the bench. Still, I was less than thrilled by my hidey-hole—I doubted Gabby Hayes or Smiley Burnette had ever been subject to such humiliation—and would stay out of the can until the last minute.
My cell sounded at seven-thirty. Della had told me that her cell ID was blocked, but I recalled the number she’d given me, and answered.
“He’s on the move,” she reported.
Since it was a fifteen-minute ride at best to the riverfront, where parking was ample, the deputy apparently planned on beating Tex to the park, perhaps wanting time to watch Ranger roll in and run the plate number on his vehicle.
But there would be no car, ours being parked behind the shop just a few blocks away. And we’d already beaten him here.
We took our places—Mother on the bench, the antique weapon inside a wooden, red-velvet-lined box on her lap; me in the can, with the cell phone now switched off.
As the minutes dragged by, I became aware of voices, one male, one female, and through the slats saw a young couple strolling along the walkway, coming our way. As they passed by the can, a hand hovered over the top, and then I was clunked in the head by a large plastic cup, showered in ice, and sticky, syrupy soda.
After the pair moved out of earshot, I whispered harshly, “Why didn’t you stop that?”
It wasn’t Tex who replied. “How, dear? Do you expect me to blow my cover?”
“I don’t know how! But remind me to kill you later.”
Antiques Wanted Page 17
