Antiques Roadkill

By Barbara Collins:

Too Many Tomcats
(short story collection)

By Barbara and Max Allan Collins:

Regeneration

Bombshell

Murder—His and Hers
(short story collection)

By Barbara Collins:

Chapter One: Home Is Where the Harm Is

Chapter Two: A Tisket, a Casket

Chapter Three: Jailhouse Crock

Chapter Four: Trolley Follies

Chapter Five: A Friend Indeed, a Friend in Weed

Chapter Six: No Pain, No Vane

Chapter Seven: Tools Rush In

Chapter Eight: A Churn for the Worse

Chapter Nine: Clock on the Wild Side

Chapter Ten: Do Tell Motel

Chapter Eleven: Vase the Music

Chapter Twelve: Bad Heirloom Day

About the Authors

O
n a perfect June day, late morning sun shining bright, I drove across the steel and concrete bridge over the muddy Mississippi, which actually didn’t look muddy at all, wind whipping little whitecaps on the deep azure water beneath a cloudless blue sky.

Like one of those miniature Dickensian villages you’d see in a better gift shop, the downtown of Serenity spread out before me: old, proud, restored Victorian buildings, positioned a cautious distance from the unpredictable flood-prone river, along which a bike path lined with old-fashioned lamp fixtures ribboned its way.

On the car seat beside me, Sushi, my shih tzu, stirred from her travel bed, stretched, and put her furry little face up to the passenger window. But I doubted the dog could see anything.

“We’re almost there, sweetie,” I said soothingly.

Sushi turned toward me, white eyes staring spookily out of a brown furry face, like a baby Morlock in that great old
Time Machine
movie I caught on TCM one insomniac night (not the terrible remake!). Even before she’d gone sightless from diabetes, Sushi’s vision had always been hair-impaired, so when the vet suggested I spend two thousand dollars to restore her vision, I had a good excuse not to …
also a good reason, which was not having a spare two thousand dollars.

“Almost home,” I repeated, more to myself than the dog, and took a swig of bottled Wal-Mart water.

According to Thomas Wolfe, you can’t go home again; of course that’s not true—many of us can, and do, crawl back to the nest to lick our wounds, regroup, rethink … and dream of leaving home again.…

My mother, Vivian, much to her surprise, conceived me at the tail end of her child-bearing years, in the mid-1970s, when her only other child was eighteen. Unplanned though I was, I provided Mother timely company, because shortly after I arrived, my father departed.

Now, this is not a sad story of paternal desertion—it’s another kind of sad story: my father died from a sudden heart attack, presumably having nothing to do with my arrival.

My dad, Jonathan Borne, had been an army photographer during World War II, really quite a distinguished one among those anonymous heroic shutterbugs; many of the pictures taken at the Battle of the Bulge—which were seen in
Life
and other magazines of the day (and, later, history books and in documentaries)—were his. Dad might have had a big career with one of the news magazines, but like so many Greatest Generation guys, he only wanted to come back home to his sweetheart and start a family and make an honest living—he accomplished the latter by setting up his own photography shop.

Mother named me Brandy, after a corny but kinda cool then-popular song (my older sister, Peggy Sue, didn’t fare so well with her own Buddy Holly–inspired moniker). Do you remember that “Brandy” tune? It got to number one, I think. Anyway, it talked about what a “good wife” Brandy would be—well, this Brandy … yours truly, Brandy … did
not grow up to suit those lyrics. Not unless you’re into irony.

Point of fact, Brandy Borne was coming home downsized, and not just in the physical sense: my beautiful silver Audi TT Quattro had been traded for this used urine-specimen-yellow Ford Taurus. My forty-something husband had been traded in, too, for … well, I’d say for Sushi, only actually I already had her back when I still had Roger, and the affluence that came with him.

Yup. No more retro-packaged Benefit makeup from Stephora, or cute shoes from Aldo’s (why have one pair of Jimmy Choos when you could have three of theirs? I’m not stupid), or designer clothes from Neiman Marcus. Now I was strictly drugstore makeup, discounted shoes, and outlet-center apparel. Checking in with my new reality, I changed my subscription from couture-featured
Vogue
to off-the-rack
Lucky.

In the back of the car, however, hanging from a rod, were some of the clothes I just couldn’t bring myself to sell on eBay: a black Stella McCartney satin bomber jacket with tons of zippers; a black Chanel loose-weaved wool jacket with silver chains and frayed edges; and a black (okay, I’d been trying to hide my weight) Versace low-cut spandex dress (the one Angelina Jolie wore to the Oscars … except a tad bigger).

I also couldn’t give up some vintage pieces: a Betsey Johnson bat-sleeved burgundy corduroy dress with big black patent leather belt, and an orange parachute-material jumpsuit by Norma Kamali that I never had nerve to wear. Since the split with Roger, I’d lost fifteen pounds and no longer fit many of these things; somehow, though, they were the only part of my former life I hadn’t been able to cut loose.

According to my mother, the town of Serenity used to be called “the Pearl Button Capital of the World,” button
factories lining the riverfront like a brick battlement. Then when plastic fasteners became popular (and cheaper), and government restrictions were put on the number of mussels that could be harvested from the river, half the town got a pink slip, including factory owners.

But Vivian Borne had a vision (actually, she’s had many, but more about that later); she thought the town could reinvent itself by opening lots of antique shops and cute little bistros, and become a tourist destination. Mother formed the Historic Preservation Committee, and marched on City Hall to stop the demolition of many a downtown building.

I suppose I should interrupt myself again to explain that my mother has always had a touch of the dramatic. She’d been a tall, slender, beautiful blonde in high school (willowy, they used to call it) who had snagged the lead in every play since kindergarten. Her plans to go to Hollywood had changed when she abruptly married her high school sweetheart (my dad, Jonathan—remember him?) on the eve of his marching off to war.

When my father marched home, Mother retreated into community theater and manic depression—in the fifties and sixties, they called this being “nuts”—and some of the therapy Mother got in those days was no picnic, though the plays were pretty good.

Don’t get nervous—she’s been medicated and beautifully sane for some years now … not counting occasional missed appointments, and ill-advised “drug holidays” from doctors who ought to know better.

Anyway, once upon a time poor put-upon Peggy Sue (I was only five) had to post bail when Mother’s commitment to preserving downtown Serenity extended to chaining herself to the front door of the old Capitol Theater. The movie house with its great art deco facade didn’t survive (it’s now a parking lot), and that threw Mother into a
deep depression that lasted for months; Sis had to move in for a while and take care of me. And Mother.

I suppose I should appreciate my sister for that, and for keeping an eye on our wonderful eccentric mom when I moved out after high school, leaving all the “fun” to Peg. But I’ll be honest with you (you may already have noticed I’m not perfect), I’ve always resented Peggy Sue, for no reason really, other than her finicky, fault-finding attitude toward me.

Once over the span of the river, I swung onto Elm, one of Serenity’s oldest streets, shooting out from the center of town like a spoke in a wheel. Along either side of the tree-canopied avenue, grand old homes built in the late eighteen hundreds, currently looking a little long in the tooth, were occupied by middle-income families, and those foolhardy enough to find romance in a fixer-upper. The local “barons” had long since moved out to the many subdivisions that now bordered the city.