Antiques Chop (A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery) (18 page)

But a few minutes into the scene, Mother suddenly sat up straight, eyes riveted to the screen.

“That’s
it!
” she exclaimed.

“
What’s
it?”

“The key to the murder of Bruce Spring!” Still seated on the floor, she shook a fist at the screen, where the boy’s classmates were rushing to the window to see their fellow student stuck to that pole. “And perhaps even to the murder of Archibald Butterworth!”

Her level of excitement either meant she was really on to something, or had been off her meds for maybe a week without my knowing.

So, calmly as possible, I said, “Mother, perhaps you could explain what a little boy getting his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole has to do with the price of tea in China.”

“It has nothing to do with China, dear, and anyway, there just isn’t time to explain. We need to see Tilda
right now
, before it’s too late. Shake a tail feather!”

Matilda Tompkins—Tilda to her friends—was Serenity’s resident New Age guru and part-time hypnotherapist.

“Too late for what?” I asked, helping Mother to her feet.

“Why for the leetle peenk cells!” she said, lapsing into her idea of a French accent (actually Belgian), little brain cells, pink or gray, being the province of Agatha Christie’s prissy detective, whose adventures she’d been reading lately in her Red-Hatted League mystery book club.

But as she moved into the living room, the accent disappeared by the time she ordered, “Now get our coats, dear. It’s getting chilly out there.”

 

Tilda lived and toiled across from Serenity’s main cemetery in an old, white two-story clapboard house of the sort that people nowadays call shabby-chic. Originally more shabby than chic, the house had seen enough repairs and remodeling to put the emphasis on chic. This was thanks to an uptick in Tilda’s business—she taught various New Age classes out of the bungalow.

Three o’clock was approaching when Tilda answered Mother’s insistent knock, and—though we hadn’t called ahead (just not Mother’s way)—the guru seemed not a bit surprised to see us. Maybe she’d had a psychic vision.

Pushing fifty, Tilda could have passed for far younger, thanks to her slender figure and long golden-red hair, translucent skin, and freckles. Her attire was strictly latter-day hippie—patchwork peasant skirt, funky necklace (her own creation), white gypsy blouse, and Birkenstock sandals (brown suede for fall).

“Ladies, come in,” she said in her husky, sensual voice. “Your timing is impeccable. My Tantric Sex Class isn’t for another hour.”

Tilda has assisted us on several investigations in the past, using hypnosis to reveal information locked in a subject’s mind. Early on, we’d been greeted about as warmly as a bill collector, but now she welcomed us as loyal students in her classroom of greater enlightenment. And like all classrooms, there was inevitably a registration fee.

Mother and I followed Tilda into her small living room, a mystic shrine of soothing candles, healing crystals, and swirling mobiles of planets and stars—much of it for sale. Incense hung heavy as a curtain in the air, and from somewhere drifted the tinkling, mystical sound of New Age music. This was an odd combination living space, waiting room, and gift shop.

At the moment, we were the only students/customers present, but we weren’t alone. There were also Eugene Lyle Wilkenson, Constance Ruth Penfield, and Franklin “Frankie” Carlyle, who took up the floral couch.

They were Tilda’s cats—and not just any old cats, but reincarnates (reincatnips?) (sorry) of people whose spirits had (she assured one and all) floated across the street to take up residence in her rescued felines. With all of the great unknown to explore, why these spirits had made such a short trip to their next life remained unexplained.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to a new addition, a small black kitten, sunning itself on a windowsill.

“That’s Cheryl Jean Stewart,” the woman said, beaming. “She showed up on my doorstep a few weeks ago.”

That was around the time the real Cheryl Jean Stewart, a young fifty-five, had died of a heart attack. I had known Cheryl, who worked at a local bank. We weren’t close, but I gave the cat a nod and smile, just in case.

At the same time I made a mental note to make sure my will stipulated that under no circumstances was I to be buried in the cemetery across from Tilda. Just not that wild about incense....

Tilda was trying unsuccessfully to shoo the reincarnates off the couch to make room for us, but Mother said, “There’s no time for further pleasantries, my dear—we simply must get to it.”

Our hostess half bowed. “I am not surprised. I had a premonition all day that you may need my help.”

“You must put me under immediately so that I may recall certain details about our current case, before they are lost forever.”

Like Mother had ever forgotten anything, except maybe that she wasn’t supposed to drive without a license.

“Very well, Vivian,” Tilda said, with another little nod/bow. “We’ll go into the hypnosis chamber.”

As we followed Tilda, she moved with ethereal, dreamy grace, leading us back to the kitchen, off of which was a small, dark, claustrophobic room, its single window shuttered. The only source of light came from a table lamp, the revolving shade with its cut-out stars sending its own galaxy swirling on the ceiling.

Mother stretched out on a red-velvet Victorian fainting couch (as they are called) while Tilda took an ornate straight-back chair next to her. I stood behind Tilda, with my hand-held tape recorder ready to capture Mother’s every utterance.

Tilda took Mother’s handwritten instructions on what to ask, and then began the session by reaching to the lamp table for a long, gold-chained necklace with a round shiny disc. Dangling the jewelry before Mother’s face, Tilda started to swing it, pendulum-like.

“Watch the medallion, Vivian,” Tilda said softly.

As if at a tennis match, Mother’s eyes moved back and forth.

“You feel relaxed . . . so very relaxed. You’re getting sleepy . . . so very sleepy.” This she repeated, progressively slower, ever more soothing.

Mother’s eyelids fluttered.

“Your eyelids are heavy . . . very heavy . . . so heavy . . . so heavy you can’t keep them open. . . .”

Mother’s eyelids closed.

“I’m going to count backward, from ten to one. When I say ‘one,’ Vivian, you will be asleep, completely, deeply asleep. Ten . . . nine . . . eight. . . .”

At “five,” Mother’s body went limp, but Tilda finished the count.

“Now, Vivian, I want you to go back in time.”

But before Tilda could provide the exact
point
in time, Mother began to speak in a somber yet fluid manner. “My name is Iras. I was first handmaiden to Cleopatra, and in charge of her asps—the care and feeding thereof, that is. Cleo thought Mark Anthony had the hots for her, but it was me he used to meet secretly beneath a fig tree in the garden, after Miss Eqypt 44 B.C. had gone to sleep. The way that woman snored, wow, what a racket! You could hear her all the way from Alexandria to Rome. And she had quite the big honker on her, too, I have to say. Greatest beauty of the ancient world, my asp—”

“No, no, dear,” Tilda said gently, “not back
that
far. . . .”

But once again, before Tilda could be more specific, Mother began. “My name is Matoaka, younger sister of Pocahontas. It ’twas I—not that Poca face sis of mine—who saved the life of the captured Captain John Smith. Pocahontas didn’t throw herself upon him, at all! As if! She tripped and fell—clumsy oaf! My sister was always taking credit for—”

Again Tilda interrupted Mother. “No, no, Vivian. I only want you to go back in time a few days—to the night of the murder.”

“Oh.” She grunted. “You might have said so.”

I was smiling. This tape would make excellent blackmail material. But right now I was doubting that
A Christmas Story
, Cleopatra’s handmaiden, and Pocahontas’s younger sister could provide much traction for our murder inquiry.

Tilda consulted the paper Mother had given her. “It’s the night of Bruce Spring’s murder. You are at the scene. The police cars have just arrived. You are waiting outside the old Butterworth house . . . neighbors are beginning to gather, because of the commotion. Who are they?”

Mother’s eyeballs began moving back and forth beneath their lids. “Ken and Joanne Fisher . . . Jerry and Marilyn Truitt . . . Jeff Lee . . . John and Carolyn Deason.”

Did I mention that Mother knew everyone in town?

“Anyone else?” Tilda asked.

Mother frowned in deep thought. Then: “No.”

“In the neighborhood, lights go on in houses up and down the street. Are there any exceptions?”

“Yes. One house, across the way.”

“Directly across?”

“No. Up one house. No lights on. Just darkness.”

“All right,” Tilda said. “Now it’s a little later, and you and Jake are in the police car, waiting for Brandy. Has anyone else joined the crowd?”

Mother rattled off the names of a few more people I didn’t know, and included the nameless detective in the red Toyota (Froggy to me). Finally, when Tilda had wrung every bit of information out about the murder night from Mother’s “little pink cells,” she brought her subject out of the trance.

“Well,” Mother said, looking first at Tilda, then me. “How did I do?”

“Just great,” I said. “We got the inside dope on two boyfriends of yours I never knew about.”

She goggled at me. “What? Who?”

“Mark Anthony and Captain John Smith.”

She began to nod. “I was in high school with them. No, wait, there was one boy named Mark, another named Anthony, and John Smith. Captain of the basketball squad! But what does that have to do with the Bruce Spring murder?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But we do have a laundry list of everybody who lives up and down West Hill.”

Mother’s smile was mysterious. “Everybody?”

I didn’t bother answering that. We bid Tilda and her reincarnate cats good-bye, getting out of there before we had to deal with whoever was signed up for her Tantric Sex class.

In the car Mother had me play back the tape, fast-forwarding through the Cleopatra and Pocahontas stuff, and at the conclusion of what I felt was a fairly boring account of the murder evening, she said, “
Bon
.”

That was Hercule Poirot for “Good,” the equivalent of “Satisfactory” from Nero Wolfe, and the extent of what Vivian Borne had to say on the subject.

Starting the engine, I said to my uncharacteristically silent (and characteristically smug) passenger, “You know, Hastings wouldn’t be such an imbecile if Poirot would clue him in, once in a while.”

“All in good time, Hastings,” she said.

“That’s
Brandy
.” At least the French accent was gone. Belgian. “What is going on, Mother?”

“All will be revealed.”

Soon we were in the library/music room; me on the piano bench, Mother at the blackboard, a teacher ready to enlighten her pupil.

She picked up the eraser from the ledge, then with great sweeping motions wiped the board clean.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Disposing of red herrings.” She turned around to face me so quickly, I about jumped out of my skin. “None of these suspects is the killer.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because of the movie we watched, my dear, and of course, my session with Tilda.”

I clapped my hands, once, hard, loud, and this time
she
jumped.

“Okay, lady,” I said, “that does it. No more cutesy stuff. No more diva dopeyness. You are going to cut the subterfuge and tell me what that kid getting his tongue stuck on a cold flagpole has to do with the price of beans.”

“Flick.”

“Say what?”

“The unfortunate boy in
A Christmas Story
. His name was Flick. Everyone remembers that scene. Do you know how they pulled off that effect? It’s really quite interesting. They rigged a suction device up the pole and—”

“Could we stay on point? What does Flick, the pole, and his tongue have to do with the murder!”

“You don’t have to be rude,” Mother said, folding her hands in front of her like a stern schoolmarm; if she’d had a ruler, I’d have gotten my knuckles rapped. “And it has nothing to do with anything—not Flick, the pole or his tongue.”

“Kill me now,” I said to the universe. “Kill me now.”

“It wasn’t what was happening
outside
in the schoolyard that provided the key clue,” Mother explained, finally. “Rather, what was taking place
inside
the classroom.”

I frowned, recalling the scene from the movie. “Everyone was at the window, looking out at the kid . . . at Flick . . . with his tongue stuck to the pole.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, everyone except for a couple of boys.”

“Ralphie and Schwartz.”

“Yeah.”

She got a crinkly smile going. “And why, pray tell, did they not rush to the window?”

“Because they were trying to be inconspicuous about it, which wound up being actually more suspicious. They’re the ones who put Flick up to it. Anyway, what was there to see? They already knew what had happened.”

Mother’s smile was really quite lovely. “Precisely, dear. Just as when
all
the neighbors came out the night Bruce was killed, to see what was going on. All but one, that is.”

I squinted at her. “You mean, the murderer.”

“Yes, dear. Trying to be inconspicuous and ultimately tipping his guilt. A man who already knew exactly what was being discovered across the street.”

Mother turned back to the board, picked up the chalk, and wrote a name.

I simply sat there and stared, agape. It had all sounded so good until she had written that name, writ large where all the other suspects previously had been.