Antiques Chop (A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery) (21 page)

Too late to hide, we froze, as the legs that belonged to the well-shined shoes revealed themselves.

“Well, well,” Samuel Wright said coldly, coming into full view.

He was one of those skinny older men with a little pot belly, with thinning hair and stooped shoulders, in a preacherlike dark suit and tie.

“I
thought
I heard rats rustling around down here,” he said. “I tend to take rather extreme measures with vermin.”

Just a skinny old man . . . with a gun. A revolver in a fist that had more than its share of age spots, but wasn’t old-man shaky at all.

Mother blurted accusingly, “
You’re
not supposed to be back yet!” As if she thought he should explain his presence in his own home.

So he did: “Choir practice got out early, Vivian. I’m so glad it did. Now I can entertain my guests.”

He was almost at the bottom, him and his gun.

In a rush of words, I said, “We don’t have any right to be here, but I have a friend in jail, so we got a little desperate and came looking for evidence. But we didn’t find a thing. I wouldn’t blame you for turning us in to the police.”

“Skip it,” he said, at the foot of the steps now. “I didn’t just get home. I’ve been listening from up there.” He jerked his head toward the door above. “Now, empty your pockets—everything on the floor. Carefully.”

We set down both our cell phones and flashlights; the paper bag I held onto, at my side.

Wright was studying Mother. “What’s that by your ear?”

“What, dear? You’ll have to speak up . . . I have a new hearing aid, and it doesn’t seem to be working so well.” She tapped the camera with a finger and continued conversationally, as if his gun were a party favor he was about to hand her. “Darn thing is expensive, too.”

His eyes narrowed. “You weren’t wearing it the other day. Didn’t seem to need any damn hearing aid.”

“You would be surprised how well I’ve learned to read lips, dear.”

This bit of nonsense apparently passed muster, because Wright—if I was reading him correctly—seemed to have moved on from harboring any suspicions to the next pertinent topic: deciding what to do with us.

And—if I
was
reading him correctly—he had come to a decision that wouldn’t be mutually beneficial.

Mother was saying, “Sam, if you killed Bruce Spring, it had to have been self-defense. He attacked you and you defended yourself, simple as that.” Then she added with a shrug, “I grant you it’s difficult to strangle someone in self-defense, and of course, it doesn’t account for why you chopped him up.”

Mother just never knew when to quit.

Wright said dispassionately, “I’m glad you brought up that brutal murder, Vivian. It’s gotten people awfully skittish in this neighborhood.” He moved forward to kick our cells and flashlights off to one side.

“I came home tonight,” he went on clinically, his gun trained on Mother, then me, “only to find the gate open, a broken window in back, and two intruders in the basement, dressed in black. Who could blame me for defending my hearth and home?”

Mother stepped in front of me.

Then I stepped in front of her.

Which brought me closer to Wright. Close enough, I thought, to throw the sack of ashes in his face . . . a waste of good evidence, maybe, but a necessary sacrifice....

Before I had the chance, a blur of white hit Wright from the behind, knocking him down. Then Rocky’s powerful jaws clamped down on the man’s forearm, a savage snarling echoing off the cement, Wright howling in pain as the gun tumbled from his hand.

“Good
boy,
Rocky!” I said, retrieving the weapon.

Rocky
hadn’t
run off—he’d hidden, then followed us! The devil. The angel.

“Steak for you tonight!” Mother said, retrieving the gun. “Eat your heart out, Rin Tin Tin!”

I let the snarling Rocky enjoy a taste of Wright for a while—well, he
was
going to shoot us!—but with the frightened, hurting deacon hollering again and again, “Get him off,” I finally ordered the dog to stop.

Then I used the rope around my waist to tie the man up.

Mother had been right—it did come in handy.

I called the police and they quickly came. Brian himself was in the lead, backed up by Munson and that new cop, Horton. Mother had already told Wright that we had everything on HD (“Captures video even in low light!”), so our reluctant host didn’t bother trying to explain why a couple of burglars had tied him up and called the cops on themselves.

We turned over the ashes to Brian, and showed him the ax, and he said to us, “You girls are pretty proud of yourselves, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” Mother said, but there was something about the way he said it that I didn’t like.

Rocky was behind the furnace, pawing at the floor, barking, making a real racket.

Brian went back there and I followed him. While we did this, Wright was trading in his ropes for a pair of handcuffs courtesy of Munson.

Rocky looked up at us, whining terribly.

“What’s his problem?” Brian asked.

I remembered the women’s clothing upstairs, dating to about the time Sam Wright’s mother disappeared.

Brian was kneeling. “Some of this cement seems newer than the rest. I don’t think this section is original to the house.”

From where he stood, getting his hands cuffed behind him by Munson, Samuel Wright seemed suddenly interested.

“I think,” I said, “Rocky may have just found Mrs. Gabriel Wright.”

“
No!
” Wright said. “No! He wouldn’t do that! He didn’t do that! She left town! Papa said she left town! Papa said . . .”

Brian said to me, “What’s that about?”

But it was Mother who answered him: “I think Sam just figured out his father killed his mother. Has to come as a shock.”

And Wright had dropped to his knees, head hung, weeping, in a prayerful posture, only I didn’t think he was praying.

Mother said, “Elsie Wright had been having an affair with Archibald Butterworth, and they both had to die for it—according to the Bible, anyway.”

Brian said, “What are you
talking
about, Vivian?”

“Leviticus twenty-ten,” she said. “ ‘The adulterer and the adulteress shall
both
be put to death.’ ”

The sobbing deacon had obviously not fully understood the significance of that passage himself, until just now.

 

 

If you rent out space to other dealers, they should understand that what they display (and how their booth looks) reflects on you—don’t let junk or mess define your store. Where did I get this advice? From anyone who has ever rented space to Mother and me.

Chapter Twelve

Chopping Block

I
’m having to finish this last chapter in longhand, on my cot, because the “screws” (as Mother calls the guards—more UK speak) won’t allow me to have a laptop in jail.

Mother’s cell is next to mine. That’s one small blessing, that we aren’t sharing space—surely any court in the land would consider putting me in with Mother cruel and unusual punishment. (Just the same, a simple foot of concrete is not enough to protect me from her snoring.)

Brian, true to his word, carried out his threat of “throwing the book at us,” and, backed by Judge Jones (whose patience had been exhausted by Mother over the course of several arraignments) charged us with breaking and entering, for which
we were remanded to the county jail for thirty days.

Samuel claims not to know that his mother was buried in the basement (the body had been recovered, with much difficulty) and, having seen his reaction to Rocky’s discovery, I tend to be
lieve him. Still, if he did know, that might help explain why Samuel Wright refused to leave the ancestral home, even at the cost of his marriage.

A few other details have come to light. According to Mother’s new snitch, Heather, the DCI in Des Moines was able to extract from the incinerator ashes evidence of the bloody clothes; and while it would take several weeks for a DNA match on Spring to come through, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. The recovery of the missing Butterworth ax, stored beneath the workbench, would go a long way toward clearing up that first, long-ago murder and the suspicions whose shadow had for decades been cast upon Andrew.

As for Andrew, he and Sarah have consented to allow us to use the old murder house for an antiques shop, whether the Antiques Sleuths show ever happens or not. Sarah, who has decided to move back to Serenity and live with her brother, expressed her gratitude for restoring the Butterworth name by looking after our house while we are “in stir,” as Mother likes to put it. Me, I prefer “in the slam.”

Tina, my BFF, and her husband, Kevin, have taken Sushi and Rocky into their home, even though they have their hands full with baby Brandy. Sushi adores Tina, who has an especially good touch at administering the doggie’s insulin shots. Meanwhile, Kevin and Rocky are caught up in a major bromance.

And you know what? It’s not so bad in here, not anything like the British series Bad Girls (a guilty pleasure for both Mother and me). The cells are new and clean, and I’m getting plenty of rest; but the food is fattening and bland, and the orange outfits we wear are as scratchy as they are baggy.

Other than that I can’t complain.

On our first day in, Mother was welcomed back with open arms by the female inmates, many of whom she knew from a recent solo stay (Antiques Knock-off).

You longtime readers may recall Mother’s jailhouse repertory company that performed for other prisons. Well, the two women who escaped during a production at the Ft. Dodge pen are back, and once again there is talk (spearheaded by Mother, natch) of reviving the theater program, though Sheriff Rudder so far isn’t terribly supportive.

Mother is working on a letter to Mel Brooks with an idea for building an all-jailbird musical around his song “Prisoners of Love” from his great movie, The Producers. She has taught the catchy ditty to her “posse” and their surprisingly in-tune harmonies echo off the walls during evening free time.

When lock-up is over, I head out into the common room to hang with “the girls.” Mother originally introduced them to me by their court charges: “This is Aggravated Assault, dear, and this is my sista from anotha mutha, Embezzlement, and shake hands with Grand Larceny. . . .“

And so forth. She was afraid that her own charge of Breaking and Entering (quite a comedown from her previous stay as Felony Murder) would diminish her big-house stature. But she was instantly embraced by her old pack and appointed Top Dog of the block, once again. (I’m happy to be Bottom Dog, and have no aspirations to climb the jail hierarchy.)

In the outer room, Mother often holds court at one of the plastic, bolted-down picnic-style tables with some of the others: Sarah, midtwenties, tall, shapely, with shoulder-length red hair and green eyes; Angela, thirties, dark-complected, short curly black hair; Carol, early forties, husky, crew-cut; and Jennifer, young, rail-thin, blond. (Carol and Jennifer, an item, were the aforementioned escapees.)

Mother was saying, “After Sam’s trial, the footage that I shot will be returned, and my shooter Phil Dean and I are going to use it for the Antiques Sleuths pilot . . . No, Angela, not that kind of shooter. . . .”

La Diva Borne still holds out great hopes for our TV show, but I figure her footage is probably more likely to turn up on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Jennifer said, “Girlfriend, if that pilot sells, I’ll have somethin to brag about! We all will—we’ll have served time with a couple of real-life reality TV stars!”

I wasn’t so sure that was all that special, since a lot of reality TV show stars have done jail time; but I didn’t burst anybody’s bubble. Bottom Dog keeps a low profile.

I was just sitting watching Mother hold court when guard Patty approached. Patty’s on the uphill slope of forty, with dull, short, blond hair and an apparent hatred for her job.

“You have a phone call,” she sighed, the inconvenience of carrying this message such a terrible burden for her.

We are allowed three such calls per week. I had already heard from Jake and Roger—the former thought my incarceration “very funny and kinda cool,” while the latter displayed a different “kinda cool” that indicated any thoughts he might have had about getting back together had, well, cooled. As for Tina, she always came in person (bringing Sushi), so I couldn’t imagine who the call could be from.

I walked over to the alcove and picked up the receiver on the wall phone, then waited while Patty returned to her station to patch me through.

“Hello?”

“Brandy?”

“Yes.”

“It’s . . . it’s Tony.”

Tony Cassato! Ex-boyfriend, ex-Serenity police chief, current Witness Protection Program enrollee. I nearly dropped the receiver. How had I not recognized his voice?

“Tony, thank God,” I blurted. “Where are you?”

A pause. Then: “You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh . . . yeah. Well, of course. Duh. But how did you know I was here?”

“Can’t tell you that either.”

Probably from someone in WITSEC, or maybe Brian.

“You always did know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

I loved his laugh.

I asked, “What can you tell me?”

“Just that I’m grateful to you for taking care of Rocky. I hope he’s getting along with Sushi.”

“He is. Did you know that his police training saved my life? Mother’s, too.”

“I heard. How is Vivian? I almost miss her.”

“Never better. Lording it up ‘in stir’ as ‘top dog’. . .”

That earned me some more musical, baritone laughter.

Then silence.

“Tony?”

“Yes, Brandy?”

“How are you doing? Really?”

“All right, considering.”

“I miss you.” It just came out.

“I miss you, too.”

“I mean . . . well, you know what I mean.”

“Me too, you.” Then: “Brandy? Do me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Try not to be a repeat offender, okay?”

“See what I can do.”

“Really. Stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try.”

He said good-bye and I said good-bye and that was all. But I was floating. You know that expression, short but sweet? That was that phone call. That was exactly that phone call.

I returned to the common area, taking a seat next to Mother,
who interrupted her performance to ask me why I looked like the cat that ate the canary.

 

 

It’s important that your store offer discounts, not just to other dealers, but to customers who spend a certain amount. Everyone likes a bargain. Mother once bought one hundred antique potato mashers for a dollar a piece. She sold two at fifty dollars each and recouped her investment. Uh . . . anybody interested in picking up ninety-eight antique potato mashers?