Antiques Bizarre (21 page)

Back inside, there were other questions, which Mother answered, moving game tokens as necessary, but the show was over, or anyway winding down.

I went over to see how Tony was doing. Ashland had already been escorted out by the pair of uniformed officers.

“Thanks for this,” I said.

“Don’t tell your mother,” Tony said, “but she really did fill in some gaps.”

“Don’t you mean, handed you the killer on a silver platter?”

He actually smiled. “You were the one who figured out the real egg would be in the safe. Anyway, just don’t you two make a habit of it.”

Mother had completed her charade and was chatting amiably with the bidders and publisher.

“I hope,” she said, “that this experience hasn’t given you sophisticates the wrong idea about the Heartland. We are not simple, inbred souls to whom murder and larceny are everyday matters—Serenity is really quite peaceful.”

Except for half a dozen murders or so, since I’d come home.

Richards admitted, “I’ve been to
duller
auctions.”

Estherhaus raised an eyebrow. “I hope never to attend one
this
‘dull’ again!”

Mother asked, “What kind of money do you think the real egg will fetch, next time around?”

Richards and Estherhaus exchanged glances, then the latter answered, “Hard to say. If you can organize enough
interest
, and
publicity
—”

I cut in. “
Please
don’t go there….”

Richards smiled. “You’re right, Ms. Borne—maybe your next auction should take place in New York, or London.”

“But first,” Katherine said, “there’s the legality of who actually owns the egg. I understand the police have it now.”

Mother said, “It certainly doesn’t belong to the ‘loyal, loving’ nephew—you can’t inherit something you killed to get. I feel confident the courts will award the egg to the auction committee so that it may provide the flood relief its real owner intended.”

(She was right. Three months later, an auction was held in New York that brought in $650,000 for the egg, and another $25,000 for the now-celebrated fake. Kaufman landed both for the Forbes group, which was fine with me. After all, that blond was the cutest of the male bidders.)

By midevening, we were back home. There had been formal statements at the “cop shop,” and local media and Quad Cities TV for me to contend with and Mother to woo. Also, Mother and I posed for a photo session for Sam Woods, who contracted with me to write up the Fabergé egg story (in much shorter form than you’ve just read) for
American Mid-West Magazine
.

As promised, Mother performed an enthusiastic reenactment of her charade for Jake, while I had a nice, long
supportive call from Tina, who made me promise to temporarily retire from detection and devote myself to eating and loafing and watching cable TV for the duration of “our” pregnancy.

Around nine
P.M.
, I was alone downstairs—Jake out walking Sushi, an exhausted Mother already in bed—cleaning up in the kitchen. That was when I noticed that Mother’s weekly pills case, containing her bipolar medication, was full. That meant she had missed three days of medication—which was understandable, considering the events of the past week.

Knowing how quickly her illness could kick in, I went upstairs to get her back on track.

She was snuggled under the covers, but not yet asleep.

“I brought your pill and some water,” I said from the doorway. “You missed a couple days.”

“No, dear,” she said, her voice emphatic. “I did not ‘miss’ any pills. I’ve decided not to take them anymore.”

Then she told me “good night,” and rolled over with her back to me.

I rushed downstairs and got Peggy Sue on the phone.

“Sis,” I said, “we have
got
to talk about Mother.”

“That’s funny—I was just going to call you about your father.”

“Why, did you and Bob get out the Ouija board again?”

“No, not Jonathan Borne—I mean, your
biological
father, Edward Clark.”

“Oh.” The esteemed United States senator. “What about him?”

“I just heard from him, and it seems he, too, recently received one of those nasty anonymous letters.”

“You mean—telling him about you…having
me?
”

“Yes. Can you come over tomorrow morning so we can hash this out? And what was it you wanted to tell me about Mother?”

“It’ll wait till tomorrow morning, Sis.”

After I hung up, I could only wonder what the senator’s reaction would be to his “new” daughter—thirty-one-year-old, divorced, pregnant, unemployed Brandy. And where would we go from there?

But more important, how many more lives would be disrupted or even ruined by that anonymous letter writer? Couldn’t
somebody
do something about it?

Tune in tomorrow—same batty time, same batty channel.

A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

Auctioneers have the power to reject any bid that slows down or disrupts the bidding process. More than once, Mother has been thrown out of auctions when she insisted on topping the last bid by one dollar.

BARBARA ALLAN

is the joint pseudonym for husband-and-wife mystery writers Barbara and Max Allan Collins.

BARBARA COLLINS
is one of the most respected short story writers in the mystery field, with appearances in over a dozen top anthologies, including
Murder Most Delicious, Women on the Edge, Deadly Housewives
and the bestselling
Cat Crimes
series. She was the coeditor of (and a contributor to) the bestselling anthology
Lethal Ladies
, and her stories were selected for inclusion in the first three volumes of
The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories
.

Two acclaimed hardcover collections of her work have been published—
Too Many Tomcats
and (with her husband)
Murder—His and Hers
. The Collins’s first novel together, the Baby Boomer thriller
Regeneration
, was a paperback bestseller; their second collaborative novel,
Bombshell
—in which Marilyn Monroe saves the world from World War III—was published in hardcover to excellent reviews.

Barbara has been the production manager and/or line producer on various independent film projects emanating from the production company she and her husband jointly run.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS
, a five-time Mystery Writers of America “Edgar” nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, has been hailed as “the Renaissance man
of mystery fiction.” He has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations for his historical thrillers, winning twice for his Nathan Heller novels,
True Detective
(1983) and
Stolen Away
(1991), and was presented the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Eye.

His other credits include film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including
Air Force One, In the Line of Fire
, and the
New York Times
bestsellers
Saving Private Ryan
and
American Gangster
, which won the Best Novel “Scribe” award from the International Association of Tie-in Writers.

His graphic novel
Road to Perdition
is the basis of the Academy Award-winning DreamWorks feature film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law, directed by Sam Mendes. A nominee for both the Eisner and Harvey awards (the “Oscars” of the comics world), Max has many comics credits, including the “Dick Tracy” syndicated strip (1977–1993); his own “Ms. Tree” “Batman” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” based on the hit TV series, for which he has also written six video games and an internationally bestselling series of novels.

An acclaimed and award-winning independent filmmaker in the Midwest, he wrote and directed the Lifetime movie
Mommy
(1996) and three other features, including
Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life
(2005). His produced screenplays include the 1995 HBO World Premiere
The Expert
and
The Last Lullaby
(2008) from his novel
The Last Quarry
.

“BARBARA ALLAN” live(s) in Muscatine, Iowa, their Serenity-esque hometown. Son Nathan graduated with honors in Japanese and computer science at the University of Iowa and works as a translator of Japanese to English in the video-game industry.