Antiques Bizarre (7 page)

She nodded. “Both boy and girl.”

When she didn’t provide the prospective monikers, I raised my eyebrows in question. Anything went these days, as names for offspring; I just hoped it wasn’t anything
too
weird….

Tina smiled again, warmly now. “Kevin and I have agreed that…if it’s a girl…we’ll name her Brandy.”

“And…if it’s a boy?”

“
Brandon
, for a boy.”

Tears sprang to my eyes—heartfelt, not hormonal. “Oh, Teen,” I said softly, “that is so sweet. I’d be honored, of course. You are the best.”

She shook her head, a little embarrassed. “We always planned on doing that…even before the surrogate thing.”

Our food arrived, and I immediately took a big bite of the cheeseburger and swallowed before my stomach had a chance to know what hit it. Then I followed with a large dose of vanilla malt to show my tummy who was boss.

That tactic worked for a while, but then I had to quit eating, when my stomach warned of impending disaster, should I continue.

“Anything wrong?” Tina asked.

“Just had a big breakfast,” I lied. “This on top of that….”

While my gal pal worked on her fries, I excused myself to use the ladies’ room, because…Why do you think? I was pregnant! I had to pee a lot….

I used the bathroom, then took a different route back, passing a private dining room, where a small group of people were in the midst of a party, being serenaded by some of the female waitstaff. (Imagine alley cats meowing “Happy Birthday,” with somebody tugging on tails to help them hit the high notes.)

I stopped to watch the guest of honor, stocky Sergei Ivanov, blow out the candles on a huge, quadruple banana split sundae with all the trimmings, sending some of the whipped cream across the table. As solemn as a priest preparing to give communion, he grabbed up a spoon and dug in, not sharing with the other guests, although utensils and plates had been brought for them.

The other guests included his fellow Fabergé bidders, as well as
American Mid-West Magazine
publisher Samuel Woods. If I wasn’t going to be involved in this mystery, the suspects simply couldn’t go around having group meetings like this.

While I stood there gaping with the manners of a goldfish, they morphed into Mother’s game pieces: bald Sergei
“Cootie Head” Ivanov; blond, slender, handsome Don “Leg Bone” Kaufman; curvaceous, sophisticated brunette Katherine “Candlestick” Estherhaus; boyish, bespectacled, British John “Ninja Turtle” Richards; and of course nattily-attired Samuel “Top Hat” Woods.

As the waitstaff filed out, I stepped in and said, “Well, I see
someone
has something to celebrate.”

And was greeted with a horde of hostile eyes.

“Brandy Borne?” I prompted. “I assisted my mother, Vivian, who brought all of you together?”

Cootie-Head Ivanov slammed down his spoon and flecks of whipped cream flew. “
You!
” His Russian accent couldn’t have been thicker if he’d been a local actor Mother was directing. “You have
nerve
to crash party!”

“Actually, no. I was just using the rest room. I wasn’t expecting to come upon the cast party for
Murder on the Orient Express
.”

This crack earned alarmed expressions from one and all, which they traded amongst themselves like kids swapping baseball cards.

Only birthday boy Ivanov wasn’t speechless: “You, Miss Borne, are
reason
we cannot return home! You and that
stupid
woman.”

I went on the defensive—nobody calls
my
mother stupid! Besides me.

“My mother and I aren’t the reason you’re still in Serenity, having birthdays and ice cream…. You know, you
could
share a little with the other children, Sergei. Has the Communist spirit totally died in you? Anyway, it’s the police who are keeping you here, because of at least one suspicious death. And it could be that someone in this room is the
real
person keeping you here—if one of you nice people shoved Louis Martinette over the staircase railing.”

Have I mentioned I was off the Prozac?

Leg Bone Kaufman was patting the air. His expression was conciliatory as he said, “I’m afraid—
what’s
your name again?”

“Brandy Borne. You can call me Brandy. We’re all friends here, right?”

Kaufman’s smile was as crinkly as wadded-up paper. “I’m afraid, Brandy, meaning nothing personal, that we
all
feel that way about your mother, and the incompetent way she conducted this event. There
should
have been more security.”

“As is all too obvious after the fact,” Ninja Turtle Richards said, his British accent as crisp as Sergei’s Russian one was thick. “You and your mother knew that you had a precious object that would go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You should have known what kind of people that would attract—and you should have known what kind of sideshow the auction would create.”

It seemed to have attracted a roomful of self-righteous snobs, who were having ice cream at the carnival.

Candlestick Katherine snorted in a most unfeminine manner for such a beauty. “Come
on
, guys—we all craved the publicity. Even for the losers, it created attention for our clients.”

“Clients?” I asked. I was still just standing there. For some reason, no one had invited me to sit down at the table with them.

“Yes,” the sophisticated yet down-to-earth brunette said. “We aren’t employees of Christie’s or Sotheby’s or Forbes. We’re independent agents, who took on these roles as freelancers. Any publicity brought to our clients would be viewed as positive, whoever won the bid.”

“Not just
any
bloody publicity,” Richards said snappishly. “This kind of publicity—people retching, people dying, the precious art piece poached…. This is
hardly
the kind of event that will lead to further assignments.”

“It’s not the kind of event,” I said, “that Mother and I planned or intended. When
can
you go home?”

“When the police give us the go-ahead,” Kaufman said with a pitiful shrug. “Whenever
that
is.” The good-looking blond seemed the least combative of the lot.

“Then—you’ve not given your formal statements?”

Katherine shook her head. “Just preliminary ones, at the church. We’ve been dealing with small-town police and they are horribly understaffed and in over their heads. They were hardly expecting anything like this.”

“Somebody was,” I said.

This sank the little group into gloomy silence. The Russian Cootie Head returned his attention to his melting dessert, regarding it like a sculptor who didn’t know what to do next.

Their silence said I’d been dismissed, but I had more to say.

“I guess most of you are out a hefty commission,” I said.

The agents for Christie’s and Sotheby’s exchanged glances.

Katherine said, “In an auction situation, my dear, there is always that strong possibility. We receive a flat fee and expenses for our trouble, and a potentially high commission is the brass ring we all reach for…knowing only one of us can snag it.”

“I see.”

“But we’re
all
suffering, because this job, this auction, is over…and we’re captives here in Podunk-land. Prisoners. It’s hard to imagine a more bitter fate.”

“Not
that
hard,” I said with a shrug. “There’s dying of food poisoning, or falling from a high place. Were any of you poison victims at the church, by the way?”

No one said anything.

“Well?”

Head shakes all around.

“
None
of you?”

Kaufman said, “We ate together at our hotel, before going to the auction. None of us wanted to take, uh…”

“Potluck?”

“Yes.”

Richard pitched in. “One never knows what is in the food at such functions.”

“I guess not,” I admitted. “But it’s interesting to note that this group, one and all, did not partake of food that no one knew would be off. Maybe you were psychic.”

Or maybe this really
was
the cast party of
Murder on the Orient Express
. This little knowledgeable group would have known full well the extreme value of that egg to a private collector—a million or more dollars would divide up handsomely among a handful like this.

One of them might have poisoned a certain dish at the potluck dinner, or even provided a doctored dish…and another could have been assigned the task of snatching the egg from the winning bidder. Perhaps the group had inside knowledge that Martinette intended to outbid them….

But these thoughts I did not share with them. At the same time, I knew I had best not do so with Mother, either, or she would really be off and running. Make that flying. Maybe I’d have the chance to share my notions with Chief Cassato, somewhere along the line.

“Yo
u
should be happy,” I said, looking at Top Hat Woods, the Yuppie-ish magazine publisher, “because now your publication won’t have to cough up any matching funds.”

“Your mother must not share all her responsibilities with you,” Woods said patronizingly. “If she did, you’d know our commitment to match auction funds was capped at $100,000. That was in
writing
, Ms. Borne. But you’re correct that we are now no longer obligated, since the arti
fact will surely be returned to the estate, and the auction, if there is another, will start from scratch at some other time and date.”

“And what about you?” I asked the Russian Cootie Head. “How disappointed are
you
not to return to Mother Russia with the Tsar’s grade A egg?”

He pushed his banana split aside, the dessert having gotten the better of him, the contents of the dish looking like Vincent Price at the conclusion of a sixties horror film.

“I am disappointed,” Sergei said with strained dignity. “But if this foul egg is mine? I
not
return it to Russia.” He made a fist with one bearish paw. “I
crush
the shell in my hand…like
this!
”

That revelation left me slack-jawed. But the collective eye-rolling from the others around the table told me the Russian’s plan was anything but news to them.

Kaufman explained, “Sergei’s great-grandfather died in prison, thanks to the Tsar.”

“Brother,” I said, “do you Rooskies hold a grudge!”

The Russian’s chin rose and he oozed pride, much as his dish oozed melted ice cream.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “If you had won the egg, Sergei—you’d have destroyed it?”

“Da.”

The Brit with the dark-framed glasses sniffed at that. “That’s an easy claim to make, when the egg is not in one’s grasp. I have enough faith in what remains of the Capitalist system to think anyone at this table would do the right thing…and sell the damned bauble to the highest bidder!”

“But that,” I reminded them all, “was Louis Martinette. And where did it get
him?
”

I was my Mother’s daughter—I knew a curtain line when I heard it, and got off stage.

Back at the booth, Tina was miffed by my long absence, which I deflected by telling her I’d run into some friends, and then giving her the news about an online-only sale on Kate Moss Topshop.

Soon, we split the check and left.

The next hour was spent in the baby department of Ingram’s department store, and I have to admit, I was miserable, although I tried hard not to show it. You may have already discerned that I am not the most noble human on the planet, and I admit that the person I really love to shop for most is…you guessed it…
moi.

What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I share in my best friend’s joy? Was I putting up an emotional wall of protection, since the baby wasn’t mine? Or wouldn’t be, after I delivered? Or was I just being my usual selfish self?

No answers are required—these are what we call rhetorical questions. You don’t need to post at Amazon about what a bad person I am.

Thankfully, our baby shopping excursion came to an end, and we hauled our purchases—mostly little unisex outfits the size of doll clothes—out to my car.

After dropping Tina off, I drove home in a funk. I felt I’d made a fool of myself in front of that room of suspects, right down to thinking of them that way. I was no more Nancy Drew than Mother was Jessica Fletcher. Couldn’t I get real?

But my thoughts screeched to a stop when I spotted Chief Cassato’s unmarked car parked in our drive.
Why was
he
here?
To get our official statements maybe? Or had Mother gotten into (more) trouble…?

As I wheeled into the drive, Mother rushed out the front door and down the porch steps.

I got out, and met her halfway on the sidewalk.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

Mother was breathing hard, her face flushed. “Dear, he
insists
on seeing you. I’ve
told
him you shouldn’t be interrogated in your tender condition…. She’s
expecting
, you brute!”

I looked behind her to where the roughly handsome fortyish, barrel-chested chief now stood on the porch, having followed Mother out. His arms were folded, his expression probably the same as Sitting Bull surveying the aftermath of Custer’s Last Stand.

“Interrogated about what?” I frowned. “I gave a statement at the church. What more can
I
tell?”

Tony Casatto, stony-faced, moved to take my arm. “It’s not called interrogation anymore, Vivian—it’s a simple interview. But you do need to come with me, Brandy.”

I gaped at him. What had
I
done? Or what did he
think
I had done? Good Lord, had the birthday party called and complained about me harassing them? Can you call the cops and complain about
civilian
harassment?

We were moving toward the unmarked car, his hand on my elbow, Mother on our heels. This was what walking the Last Mile must have felt like for Death Row inmates. (Well, okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration….)