A Penny Urned

by Tamar Myers

  “Wynnell, dear, at least let me get the tip.”

  “Sure, Abby, that would be fine. In fact,” she thumbed through a sparsely populated wallet, “why don’t you just take care of the whole thing this time?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The hedgerows fused. “Do you know how expensive a last-minute ticket to Tokyo is? And since I wasn’t expecting to come back so soon, I didn’t have a round-trip ticket.”

  I sighed and began rummaging through my purse for my wallet. Mama claims Jimmy Hoffa is in there somewhere, and she might be right. I found a can of hair spray, a stack of programs from Ovens Auditorium, a paperback book with dog-eared pages, an empty tube of hand lotion, a fistful of stale Savannah pralines, but no wallet. After a while I got just plain irritated and starting dumping the contents of my bag willy-nilly on the table.

  Let me tell you, it was a frightening experience. Things materialized that I had long since given up on. Some items, I swear, I’d never seen before. But I was more annoyed than surprised when the ugly pink bust of a dead composer bounced off the table, landed on the floor, and cracked wide open.

  I’ll let you imagine how I felt when I saw the glint of a silver coin.

  About the Author

  TAMAR MYERS is the author of six previous Den of Antiquity mysteries: Larceny and Old Lace; Gilt by Association; The Ming and I; So Faux, So Good; Baroque and Desperate; and Estate of Mind. Also the author of the Magdalena Yoder series, she is an avid antiques collector, and lives in the Carolinas.

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  Other Den of Antiquity Mysteries by

  Tamar Myers

  from Avon Books

  BAROQUE AND DESPERATE

  ESTATE OF MIND

  GILT BY ASSOCIATION

  LARCENY AND OLD LACE

  THE MING AND I

  SO FAUX, SO GOOD

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A PENNY URNED. Copyright © 2000 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: 9780061843457

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