Antiques Roadkill (10 page)

I thought the old boy might choke up, but he maintained his composure. He had abandoned his Blue Plate Special halfway through the meat loaf.

“Mary was standing at the front door with cash in her hands,” Ivan went on, then laughed dryly. “She was so proud of herself! She’d made us some money, after all. Of
course, it was a pittance compared to what the stuff was really worth. I went out to Carson’s place on the highway, where that barn warehouse of his is, and—in a wholly even-tempered manner, mind you—explained that my wife didn’t realize what she’d done, that she’d not been herself lately, was … ill. And Carson’s response? Well, he just laughed in my face and said, ‘So
sue
me, old man—if you think you’ve got a case!’”

Ivan pushed his plate angrily away. “I could have killed him myself at that moment,” he confessed. He looked around the table. “I’ll shed no tears for his heartless ass.… Sorry, Viv.”

Randall asked, “Why
didn’t
you take him to court?”

Ivan shook his head, then spoke softly. “It may come as a surprise to all of you, but before she passed away … Mary was showing certain signs of Alzheimer’s.”

“No,” I said. “Really.”

“Anyway, I wanted to protect her. Our attorney said we had a case, a legitimate case, but … I just couldn’t put her through the pain and embarrassment of a court trial.” His head lowered. “I guess maybe it was a blessing she died from pneumonia before that terrible disease
really
took hold.”

He swallowed, and got pats on the shoulder on either side from his compadres.

My soup came, and I sipped at it while Harold, the retired army captain, next unburdened himself. He told us that a week after his wife, Norma, died, Clint Carson appeared on his doorstep and had talked Harold into “unburdening himself” of a china cabinet filled with Haviland dishes … for only a few hundred dollars.

“I had no idea what that china was worth,” he began. “Much less the cabinet …”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

“… or that Norma had promised them to our daughter.…” He paused, shrugged. “I guess I was in shock over her death, sudden as it was … and I was thinking about moving into a smaller place, kind of downsizing, not needing so much.…”

The other men were nodding.

Harold looked at me, painfully earnest. “You
do
understand, don’t you, Viv?”

I almost said, “I bet you didn’t ‘downsize’ by selling your power tools,” but restrained myself. And then I felt a surge of affection for the crusty coot, and patted his hand, saying, “Of course.”

Now, with the lunch hour past, the restaurant nearly empty, we finally rose from the table. Vern was a gentleman and picked up my check.

Out on the sidewalk, Harold asked if he could drive me home, but I said I had other things to do downtown. I thought it best not to encourage him, and, anyway, I did have one more stop.…

Carson’s Antiques, on Main Street, was closed, not surprisingly; but lights were on inside the lovely old building, and I knocked on the door, trying to peer through the etched glass, albeit with little success.

Still, I could see movement, and even hear some, so I kept knocking.

Finally a hazy figure moved toward me—even through the etched glass I could make it out—and then a voice behind the door said, snippily, “Can’t you see we’re closed!”

“I must talk to you!”

“We are
closed!”

I projected my voice to the last seat in the farthest balcony.
“It’s Vivian Borne—would you prefer I talk to the police?”

Locks were soon unlocked, and the door cracked open.
The fiery-haired filly in the peasant blouse and leather skirt might have been pretty if she had not been frowning in such a foul manner.

“What do you mean, police?” she growled.

“I haven’t mentioned to them yet,” I said pleasantly, “that you called our house and left an answer machine message for us.”

Her eyes grew wild, her nostrils flared. “I did no such thing! Are you crazy?”

I have been asked that question before and seldom have I been offended—I understand its colloquial meaning—but I
was
a little put off by her denial.

So, as the young people say, I got right in her face. “You’re claiming you didn’t leave a call for my daughter, Brandy, last night? Telling her to come out to the late Mr. Carson’s house and barn, in the country?”

“No.
Hell
no!” The presumably pretty face grew uglier. “Look, lady, I don’t know what the fudge you’re trying to prove …”

Actually, she didn’t say “fudge.”

“… but if you go to the cops, you’ll only get
yourself
in trouble!”

And the door slammed in my face!

Mother’s expression carried all the indignation it must have held at the moment that door shut on her.

I said, “What then?”

Still seated on the edge of my bed, she said, “I caught the Traveling Trolley home …”

And now she was off her trolley, and back again.

“… because I simply
had
to tell you the news!”

“What news?”

Mother’s eyes grew enormous behind the exaggeration of the lenses. “That we weren’t the
only
ones who Clint Carson swindled!”

Stop the presses.

“Well, really, Mother … I never thought we were.”

Her head reared back, like a horse about to buck its rider. “But surely you know what this means?”

“What does it mean, Mother?”

“That we’re not the
only
suspects!”

I blinked at her. “Suspects? … Oh yeah, in the ‘Clint Carson Murder Case.’”

“Exactly. Didn’t we both confess to the murder already?”

Shaking my head, I insisted, “We didn’t confess to
any
murder—we were taking responsibility for an
accident.”

The complication was that we were both taking that responsibility.

I put a conciliatory hand on her sleeve. “Let’s go have some coffee.”

Soon we were sitting at the kitchen table, having Starbucks Caffe Verona, decaf—you don’t think I was about to give Mother anything
but
decaf, do you?

“Let’s suppose you’re right,” I said. “And that Clint Carson really
was
murdered.”

“Let’s suppose that, yes, dear.”

I shrugged. “Why should we care?”

She goggled at me.

I patted the air and pressed on: “After all, we didn’t kill him. I didn’t. You didn’t.”

“Yes … but
somebody
did.”

“Right. But who cares?”

“Pardon?”

I spoke slowly and clearly. “Who … the fuck … cares?”

You’ll note I didn’t say “fudge.”

“Mother, we hated that bastard.”

Mother touched her bosom and looked askance at me, her Victorian sensibilities offended by my language and my
sensibilities. “That doesn’t make murder acceptable! Or that kind of vocabulary.”

“Of
course
it doesn’t make murder acceptable. But it also doesn’t make it your job to do anything about it. What’s the idea, anyway, of going out snooping like that?”

Her expression took astonishment to new heights—or, possibly, lows. “Don’t you
know?”

I thought I did. I knew that Mother had always had a morbid interest in murder—both true crimes and the Christie/
Murder She Wrote
variety that her Red-Hatted League book club found so intriguing—and this Carson mess had tripped some trigger within her that I, frankly, did not feel was conducive to her continued mental health.

But I didn’t know how to express that without offending her, and making an instant enemy of her.…

“Listen,” I said, and reached across and patted her hand. “The police are absolutely capable of looking into this. You met Officer Lawson—he was nice, right? And smart?”

“And handsome,” Mother said.

“And handsome. Plus, we both know what a terrific police chief Serenity has.”

“Yes. That’s certainly true.…”

“Why not leave it to them? The professionals?”

Mother leaned forward and grasped one of my hands in hers. Tight. “But don’t you
see,
darling? That redheaded wench lied!”

Wench?

“Or if she didn’t
lie,”
Mother was saying, and now her eyes were moving quickly behind the lenses, too quickly for my taste, “and she truly
didn’t
make that phone call … then someone else
did!”

“Mother … please.…”

“Someone who wanted to
implicate
us! To
frame
us!”

The kitchen wall phone rang, thank God, and I got it.

It was Tina, calling from her office at the chamber of commerce, where she worked as the tourism liaison.

She had heard about Carson’s death, and the rumors about Mother’s involvement that were buzzing around, probably in part due to Mother’s going clang, clang on the trolley. I quickly brought Teen up to speed.

“How exciting.”

“Oh yeah, thrilling.”

“Well then, let me ask the
really
important question.”

“Which is what?”

“Brandy … are we still on for tonight?”

I actually found myself laughing, a little. “Clint Carson being dead won’t stop me from going out and having a little fun—I’m not even sure my
own
death would.”

“So I can pick you up, then?”

“Sure.”

We set the time, said our good-byes, and I hung up.

Mother was staring into her Starbucks decaf as if it were a crystal ball that held all the answers to the mystery she was cooking up in her fertile imagination.

Which, of course, bothered me.

But not as much as a sense I had—and did not care to acknowledge—that there was something
to
what Mother had said. Someone may well have tried to lure me out to Carson’s place to implicate me.

Someone who had no compunction about taking a human life.

Or was I as crazy as Mother?

A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

Sometimes, treasures can be found set out with trash on garbage collection night. Sifting through a Dumpster, however, I won’t stoop to. But Mother will.

I
n the midst of Mother’s murder suspicions, amateur detective work, and her fear that we’d been framed, I faced my first real crisis …

… I didn’t know
what
to wear!

Clothes were strewn and not just on the floor, but on the bed, hanging from the vanity—the entire contents of my underwear drawer tossed in a jumbled pile. It was as if a bad guy or maybe the cops had “tossed” my room looking for clues.

Only they didn’t do it, I did. And I was looking for the right clothes, not clues.

Tina was picking me up in half an hour, and I had to find
just
the ensemble. After all, we were hitting the new nightclub on the bluff, the Octagon House, for our long-overdue “girls’ night out,” and Tina assured me this was
the
place in Serenity, right now.

This evening I wanted to look chic, but not cheap; hip, but not too trendy—and not for the men. To hell with the men!

Why
do
women dress for each other? Maybe only another woman truly appreciates the effort … whereas the chief interest the opposite sex appears to have in women’s clothing is pretty much limited to getting them off.

Finally, with fifteen minutes to go, I settled on a hippie-chic
Nanette Lepore off-one-shoulder top (which I had eaten Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for a month to be able to buy), some slim-fitting, cropped GAP jeans, and a pair—my
only
pair—of Jimmy Choo turquoise heels, a lucky eBay buy (even so, it cost me a month of Campbell’s Tomato Soup lunches) (at least dieting and saving money can go hand in hand).

Now for a purse.

Unlike shoes, a person
can
have too many bags. Besides taking up lots of closet space, purses can all too easily get tangled up. Plus, it’s tiresome having to switch contents from one bag to another all the time, just to match your outfit.

And here’s another point—I once saw an old black-and-white movie on cable where a man came home, found no sign of his wife, but spotted her purse on the kitchen table; from this he surmised that she had been kidnapped, and on that single piece of evidence the police put out an all points-bulletin and rescued her from a sex maniac.

Which begs the question: how in this day and age is anybody going to know if you’ve been kidnapped by a sex maniac with all your purses left lying around?

And one more thing before I get off the subject: how
ever
did bags get elevated to the exalted position of shoes? One strong possibility is that, like shoes, a purse always fits, no matter how fat you get (but unlike shoes, you don’t have to shed alligator tears because the shop doesn’t have your size).

Here’s my bottom-line advice: take all your bags and sell them (eBay, garage sale, secondhand shop—dealer’s choice), then buy one expensive
to-die-for
purse for spring/summer, and another for fall/winter … and your life will become a lot less stressful.

I selected from the tangle (do as I say, not as I do) a small Nichole Miller evening bag that Tina had given me
for my last birthday (it’s always nice to show your friend that you appreciate—and use—her thoughtful gifts). Beaded in orange with the yellow word
POP!
and dangling from the shoulder by a silver chain, this little beauty offered just enough room for some lip gloss, a condom (you never know), a tissue or two (so you didn’t have to “drip-dry”), and fifty cents to call your mother (you’ll have to decide for yourself what you want to call your mother).

A car horn beeped.

I raced downstairs and dashed into the kitchen to make sure Sushi had enough water—she’d been asleep in her little pink bed, but raised her furry head and turned her spooky white eyes toward my voice.

“If you have to go,” I instructed firmly, “go pee-pee on the papers.” I’d already put down the nightly edition by the back door.

Mother was rehearsing this evening at the Serenity Center for the Performing Arts (i.e., the Central Middle School stage) in
Everybody Loves Opal
—a lowbrow play catering mostly to midwestern ladies of the blue-haired variety, with a leading role perfectly suited to Vivian Borne’s over-the-top talents. She wouldn’t be home until late.