Antiques Fruitcake

Going . . . going . . . gone wild
for the
Trash 'n' Treasures
Mysteries!

 

Antiques Con

 

“Antiques Con is an entertaining novel filled with humor, popular culture innuendo, romance, antiques tips, and comic books.”

—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

 

“This is a fun, fast mystery that shows Allan is at the top of her game.”

—Romantic Times

 

“Fans of the series will enjoy the banter between this pair of engaging characters, and the insider look at convention politics makes a fine backdrop.”

—Booklist

 

“The seventh series entry is a hilarious collaborative effort by Barbara and Max Allan Collins.”

—Library Journal

 

“The exploits of the ditzy heroines remain endlessly amusing.”

—Kirkus Reviews

 

Antiques Chop

 

“It's show time for Brandy and Vivian . . . the seventh entry in the lighthearted cozy series.”

—
Library Journal

 

Antiques Disposal

 

“The book is so funny, I honestly couldn't put it down. It's so entertaining, pages simply fly by. Hey, did I mention there are recipes for chocolate brownies in it? Now how can you go wrong with that?”

—
Pulp Fiction Reviews

 

“A zany antiques mystery . . . A classic gathering of suspects leads to an unexpected denouement.”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“Breezy, written with admirable wit . . . .a wacky, lightweight romp perfect for an evening's escapism. This series is just pure fun, and the humor is a treat. Fans of ‘Storage Wars,' take note.”

—
Somebody Dies

 

“Treasure, yes. Trash, no. A madcap adventure; a bright, funny, and fast-moving mystery; all good fun and well-played . . . another charmer for Mr. and Mrs. Collins.”

—
Jerry 's House of Everything

 

“Here's something to brighten your day . . . very funny, with lots of great dialogue. There's even a Nero Wolfe homage, along with a cliffhanger ending . . . good news for us fans.”

—
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine

 

“This humorous cozy is framed by life in small-town Iowa and teems with quirky characters. It will appeal to readers who enjoy Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow mysteries.”

—
Booklist

 

Antiques Knock-Off

 

“If you like laugh-out-loud funny mysteries, this next Trash 'n' Treasures installment will make your day.”

—
Romantic Times Book Reviews
, 4.5 stars

 

“An often amusing tale complete with lots of antiques-buying tips and an ending that may surprise you.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

 

“Quirky . . . a sure-fire winner.”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“Stop shoveling snow, take time to chuckle:
Antiques Knock-Off
is a fitting antidote to any seasonal blues. Plan to shelve this one next to your Donald Westlake caper novels or just before Lawrence Block.”

—
Kingdom Books

 

“Scenes of Midwestern small-town life, informative tidbits about the antiques business, and clever dialogue make this essential for those who like unusual amateur sleuths.”

—Library Journal

 

Antiques Bizarre

 

“Auction tips and a recipe for spicy beef stew enhance this satirical cozy.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“You'll laugh out loud at the screwball dynamics between Brandy and Vivian as they bumble their way through murder investigations.”

—
Mystery Scene

 

“Genuinely funny . . . another winner! The funniest mystery series going.”

—
Somebody Dies

 

“If you need a laugh and enjoy a neatly plotted mystery with a lot of engaging characters and lots of snappy patter, not to mention a little romance, read
Antiques Bizarre
.”

—
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine

 

Antiques Flee Market

 

“Fast-paced . . . plenty of humor and tips on antiques collecting will keep readers engaged.”

—
Library Journal

 

“Top pick! This snappy mystery has thrills, laugh-out-loud moments and amazingly real relationships.”

—
Romantic Times BOOKreviews

 

“This is surely one of the funniest cozy series going.”

—
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

 

“Marvelous dialogue, great characters, and a fine murder mystery.... I couldn't put [it] down.”

—
Reviewing the Evidence

 

Antiques Maul

 

“Charming . . . laugh-out-loud funny.”

—
Romantic Times

 

“The writers do a great job in developing the characters.”

—
Reviewing the Evidence

 

Antiques Roadkill

 

“Engaging and utterly believable.”

—Sara Paretsky

 

“A terrific new series. Grab it up!”

—
S.J. Rozan

 

“[Readers] will love this down-to-earth heroine with the wry sense of humor and a big heart.”

—
Nancy Pickard

 

“Fun from start to finish.”

—
Laurien Berenson

 

“Funny, witty, irreverent . . . the distinctive voice pulls you in and never lets you go.”

—
T.J. MacGregor

 

“Hilarious.”

—
Joan Hess

Also by Barbara Allan :

 

ANTIQUES ROADKILL
ANTIQUES MAUL
ANTIQUES FLEE MARKET
ANTIQUES BIZARRE
ANTIQUES KNOCK-OFF
ANTIQUES DISPOSAL
ANTIQUES CHOP
ANTIQUES SLAY RIDE (e-novella)
ANTIQUES CON
ANTIQUES FRUITCAKE (e-novella)
ANTIQUES SWAP

 

By Barbara Collins:

 

TOO MANYTOMCATS

(short story collection)

 

By Barbara and Max Allan Collins:

 

REGENERATION
BOMBSHELL
MURDER—HIS AND HERS
(short story collection)

KENSINGTON BOOKS

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Brandy's quote:

 

Revenge is a dish best served before it goes off.

 

—Brandy Borne

 

 

Mother's quote:

 

If you prick us, do we not bleed? . . .
If you poison us, do we not die?

 

—
The Merchant of Venice

Act Three, Scene One

Christmas had come to Serenity, Iowa, the downtown windows decorated, lampposts wrapped in evergreen, shoppers laden with packages, snow dusting the sidewalks. Everyone in the land, or at least our little river town, was having a holly jolly holiday season . . . except me. Brandy Borne.

I was miserable.

Why? Because Mother had roped me into helping her with the annual Christmas play at the Playhouse.

(
Mother to Brandy
: Dear, your opening is a little cheerless for a Christmas story, don't you think?)

(
Brandy to Mother
: It's a Christmas story with a murder in it. What do you expect?)

(
Mother to Brandy
: What
I
expect isn't the issue. And, yes, the
readers
expect some mischief and mayhem. But what they
don't
expect is you throwing yourself a pity-party instead of a Christmas one. Are you current on your Prozac, dear?)

(
Brandy to Mother
: Are you current on your lithium?)

(
Editor to Vivian and Brandy
: Ladies, are we going to have an issue again with these asides?)

(
Brandy to Editor
: She started it.)

(Vivian to Editor:
I think the asides add flavor! And character!)

(
Editor to Vivian and Brandy
: I think it's annoying. And any further extracurricular squabbling between you two will be deleted from the text. But I must agree with Vivian. Brandy, please rewrite the opening.)

 

 

Christmas had come to quaint Serenity, nestled along and above the banks of the mighty Mississippi like the star atop a tannenbaum. Ye olde Victorian shop windows were festively decorated, lampposts wrapped in evergreen, twinkling lights strung hither and yon, cheerful shoppers laden with colorful packages frolicking down snow-dusted sidewalks . . . and me?

Why, I was as rosy-cheeked as Old Saint Nick, feeling positively joyous. After all, Mother had been kind enough to allow me to help her put on the annual Christmas play at the Playhouse.

Better?

But before we go merrily Christmas-ing into our murder mystery, let's introduce our cast, or anyway, the two leads. Brandy Borne (me), thirty-two, divorced, bottle-blonde, blue-eyed, and Prozac-popping since coming back to live with her mother. Think Kristen Bell. Mother (her), Vivian Borne, seventies, bipolar, widowed, Danish stock, local thespian, and amateur sleuth. Think Meryl Streep (if Mother herself isn't available).

Of course, actors are cattle, as Hitchcock said. It's the play that's the thing, and the thing in this case was
The Fruitcake That Saved Christmas.

The play (written by Mother) is based on a true slice of Serenity history dating to the early 1930s during the worst winter of the Great Depression. Most local men had been thrown out of work as business after businesses went bust. One firm that did manage to keep head at least temporarily above water was the Serenity Fruitcake Factory. It, too, seemed about to go down for the third time, when a Christmas miracle occurred.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, newly elected but not yet in office, took a whistle-stop tour across the country in early December to calm a jittery nation—a tour that included a brief no-speech stop at the train station at the riverfront in Serenity. The president-elect was standing at the railing of the caboose, waving to the crowd of well-wishers, when the owner of the fruitcake factory, Mrs. Hattie Ann Babcock, took the opportunity to rush forward and present him with one of her signature fruitcakes. Roosevelt sampled the cake on the spot and declared it to be the best he'd ever tasted—“Simple with integrity!” —and promptly ordered several hundred as holiday gifts for cronies and constituents.

After the story in the
Serenity Journal
was picked up by the Associated Press, thousands of orders began pouring in from all across the country. Soon the factory began churning out fruitcakes day and night, the expanded shifts putting darn near every able-bodied man in Serenity back to work just in time for Christmas.

Mother—not just the playwright but the director—insisted on using the original factory recipe for her play, and went to some trouble getting it. After all, the Serenity Fruitcake Factory had devolved into a bakery in the 1940s and by the '60s was just a fondly remembered wisp of our community's collective memory.

But after locating a descendant of Mrs. Babcock's on an Internet ancestry site, Mother hounded the poor elderly man by phone till he finally coughed the recipe up. Coughing it up is, coincidentally, what I want to do every time I have a bite of
any
fruitcake.

Thursday morning, for the evening's dress rehearsal, Mother baked two prop fruitcakes: one for Hattie Ann Babcock (Act One), and the other for President Roosevelt (Act Two). Ever thoughtful, Mother wanted fresh fruitcakes for the actors who'd be sampling them onstage.

After supper, Mother—looking take-charge in her navy wool Breckenridge slacks and jacket—and I—loaded for bear in DKNY jeans and Juicy Couture black sweater—gathered our things to leave for the eight o'clock rehearsal at the Playhouse. My brown-and-white diabetic shih tzu, Sushi, could read all the signs and did her take-me-along dance.

The little darling had been blind for several years but now she could see again, thanks to a recent operation. I'd been taking her with me from the first read-through—she just loved being around all that excitement. But as tonight was dress rehearsal, I figured she might get underfoot.

As we bundled up to brave the cold, Sushi spied the fruitcakes in my arms, where by all rights
she
should be, and threw a hissy fit, barking, growling, circling Mother and me like a tree she was considering.

Sushi
had
been neglected most of the day, what with me working at our antiques shop downtown, and Mother preoccupied with last-minute rehearsal details. So I passed the fruitcakes to Mother and scooped Soosh up—it was either that or suffer consequences that could be as minor as coming home to entryway piddle or as major as chewed-up Jimmy Choos.

It was already dark when we piled into the car with me behind the wheel, Mother riding shotgun with Sushi on her lap. I'd put the fruitcakes in the trunk, to keep them away from Sushi, who had a serious jones for those particular baked goods.

You see, when Mother first got hold of that fabled recipe, she tried it out, leaving a fruitcake to cool in its pan on the kitchen counter. The newly sighted Sushi apparently scaled our little red step stool to get up there and help herself. This I deduced, amateur sleuth that I am, from an empty cake pan on the counter and a belly-swollen shih tzu on her back in the middle of the kitchen floor.

So it's safe to say the fruitcake got the Sushi Seal of Approval.

On the ten-mile drive past the city limits to the Playhouse, Mother seemed understandably jittery.

“I hope there's no trouble tonight with the second act,” she lamented.

Vivian Borne was still quite attractive at her undisclosed age—porcelain complexion, large blue eyes made bigger by thick glasses, straight nose, wide mouth, wavy silver hair pulled loosely back.

During last night's tech rehearsal, the authentic-looking wood-and-cloth caboose carrying Roosevelt rolled off its tracks, knocking down various bits of scenery.

“I'm hostage to my penchant for realism!” Mother cried. Sushi, in her arms, gave her a “huh?” look.

“Everything will be fine,” I soothed. “I'm sure Miguel will have organized all the repairs.”

Miguel was stage manager at the Playhouse.

“I know he will, dear,” she said. “That's not what's troubling me most.”

“What
is
?”

“I just don't know how much more I can
abide
from that woman! The one thing I cannot
tolerate
in theater is a
diva
!”

Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.

Mother was referring to her leading lady, Madeline de Morlaye, who had, since the beginning of rehearsals, been a real pain where the sun does not shine. Mother had known de Morlaye for decades, going back to when the woman's real name was a decidedly untheatrical Hildegard Gooch.

Madeline, somewhere in a plastic-surgery no-woman's land between fifty and sixty, had grown up in Serenity, but left about thirty years ago to find her fame and fortune on the Great White Way. She'd had some success mostly off- but occasionally on Broadway, and had been in bus-and-truck productions as recently as a few years ago.

Though still quite attractive, Madeline's beauty had faded enough (Mother cattily opined) to keep her off the stage and the casting couches that had helped put her there. And now she had found her way back to Serenity, where she was still a local-girl-made-good legend.

Or was that Gooch-made-good?

What really irked Mother was that she herself had lobbied to play the part of Hattie Ann Babcock. But the Playhouse board of directors gently if firmly ruled that since Mother was the playwright
and
director, she had enough on her plate. After all, she was reminded, the Playhouse doesn't present one-woman shows.

Or anyway they hadn't since Mother starred in and wrote
Give 'Em Heck, Eleanor!
(Lots of Republicans had demanded their money back.)

Privately (and this got back to Mother), the board felt Madeline would be the bigger draw because she had performed on Broadway and, therefore, was a “legitimate” actress. Plus, Madeline was younger. A slap on both Mother's cheeks. You decide what cheeks.

Right now Mother was saying disdainfully, “I wrote a serious play and
she's
turning it into a
melodrama
!”

I restrained myself from pointing out that Mother had written the Depression-era banker character as a Snidely Whiplash-type right down to curling mustache, black cape and top hat.

“I'll
tell
you why she's a diva!” Mother blurted.

This was a response to a question I hadn't asked.

She was spitting words out as if they tasted foul: “Insisting on a private dressing room . . . Baccara bottled water . . . fresh fruit . . . personal masseuse. . . .”

No wonder Mother was mad; her past theatrical perks had never included a masseuse. She did demand M&M'S, but was never fussy about what color.

Thankfully, my turn off the main highway lay just ahead, in another moment I was driving down the long, snowy lane to the Playhouse, passing by cornfields on either side, where currently the only crop was snow.

The theater began as an old barn where community actors would gather and perform on a makeshift stage to the delight of family and friends. You could almost hear Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney yelling, “Come on, gang—let's put on a show and save the farm!”

Over the years, the barn had been transformed into a modern theatrical facility, with new additions, and a state-of-the art auditorium. About the only thing left of the original structure was its rooster weather vane.

Mother had been a big part of this transformation, as any play Vivian Borne appeared in (or directed) always drew crowds because
anything could happen.
Like the time she was playing the lead in a musical version of
Everybody Loves Opal,
while enthusiastically mugging for the audience, and stepped off the apron into the orchestra pit and got her right foot stuck in the tuba. Or when she was directing
My Fair Lady
and had several real horses run across the stage in the Ascot scene, causing a panic in the auditorium, not to mention some messy cleanup.

I parked the car among others in the lot reserved for players and staff and we got out, Mother carrying Sushi, while I liberated the two fruitcakes from the trunk and carted them in.

No sooner had we entered the stage door than Miguel rushed up to Mother, frantic. He was quickly joined by Paul, the lighting designer, and Martha, our wardrobe supervisor.

“We've got a problem,” Miguel said. About thirty, with dark wavy hair and an athletic body, he had joined the Playhouse as an assistant stage manager, but his organizational skills and ability to oversee all departments soon led to the removal of “assistant.”

“
Two
problems,” added Paul. Slender, bearded, about forty, Paul had a long tenure with the Playhouse, during which he won several regional awards for exceptional and innovative lighting.

“Make that three,” said Martha. The big-boned woman in her midfifties sported mannishly cut gray hair. She'd joined the Playhouse this past season, after taking early retirement from teaching drama at the community college.

Mother sighed and set down Sushi, who trotted off per usual to find Kimberly, Madeline's understudy, who was inclined to spoil Soosh with doggie treats.

Mother asked, “These problems wouldn't, by any chance, have anything to do with our distinguished leading lady?”

“
Yes
,” the trio answered.

“Very well . . . a director's job is to solve problems. Let's take them one at a time. Paul?”

He gestured in frustration. “She's demanding that I change the lighting, to her specs—says what I've come up with is unflattering. I told her that that's
impossible
at this late stage, but she said . . . Well, I can't repeat it in mixed company. In
any
company!”

Mother turned her gaze to Martha. “And you, my dear?”

The wardrobe woman grunted. “Our star refuses to wear a certain costume.”

“Which one would that be?”

“The fruitcake factory uniform. She says it's too drab. She says the owner of the firm wouldn't wear a uniform.”

Mother nodded. “That's two.” She looked at Miguel. “Hit me with number three.”