Antiques Bizarre (5 page)

She began by leaning toward the microphone and blurting ridiculously, “Is this
on?
” So loud that everyone jumped a little.

The reps of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, seated next to each other, exchanged wide-eyed looks. They had come to Podunk in the middle of Flyover Country expecting just about anything—anything but
Mother
, that is….

I grinned to myself.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Mother straightened her shoulders, produced a gavel from beneath the lectern, and banged it.

“The bidding for the Fabergé egg will begin!” Mother announced.

A cheer went up from the audience, echoing in the sanctuary.

Mother said crisply, “Bidding starts at three. Do I have three?”

Earlier, at our kitchen table, Mother had created some homemade bidding placards, using recycled cardboard and old Popsicle sticks; but I’d convinced her it would be more dignified if the bidders simply used their heads or hands.

And the first bidder—a chubby, local thrill-seeker—now did so, waving his hand wildly like a kid in class who had to use the bathroom.

Mother, flushed with excitement, said, “I have three hundred thousand dollars—do I have three-fifty?”

The Russian nodded his bucket head, and the thrill-seeker appeared relieved to be off the hook for three hundred grand when he may have thought she meant three thousand or even three hundred.

“Three-fifty—do I have four?”

The Forbes rep, Don Kaufman, nodded.

“That’s four…four…. Do I have four-fifty?”

Christie’s Katherine Estherhaus raised a red-nailed finger.

“Four-fifty—do I have five?”

John Richards from Sotheby’s nodded.

Mother picked up the pace; the crowd stayed with her, their excitement mounting.

“Five hundred thousand dollars! Do I have five-fifty?”

Sergei Ivanov swiped the air with a bear paw.

“Five-fifty! Six? Do I have six?”

Don Kaufman nodded.

“Six hundred thousand! I have six hundred thousand. Is there six-fifty?”

The audience began egging the bidders on with chants of “More!
More!
”

John Richards aimed a forefinger at Mother.

Mother, red-faced, shouted, “Do I have seven?”

When none of the bidders twitched, Mother looked pointedly at Katherine Estherhaus, and asked incredulously, “Are
you
going to let your cousin across the pond win the bid? Have you so soon forgotten the Boston Tea Party?”

I was squirming in embarrassment, but darned if Estherhaus’s red-nailed hand didn’t fly up, and the audience cheered.

“I have seven hundred thousand! Do I have seven-
fifty?
”

Louis Martinette, until now silent, seemingly bored with the proceedings, intoned, “One million,” drawing gasps and shouts of exultation from the crowd. The white-haired gent appeared as casual as somebody ordering a cheeseburger. Or in his case, maybe, a filet mignon.

But suddenly, strangely, there were other sounds emanating from the crowd: cries of alarm, and fear.

Mother, oblivious to anything but her own performance, shouted in her best Dr. Evil style, “One
million
dollars! Going once…going twice…
sold!
”

And she banged the gavel.

My eyes were on Brian, who—along with Officer Munson—had been standing at parade rest during the auction.
Brian’s body tensed as he, too, became aware of a disturbance in the crowd, beginning with those standing in back.

Here and there, people were moaning, some keeling over, while others cried out for help. The audience was falling ill, a response apparently not inspired by Mother’s performance, which by her standards had been remarkably tame.

Brian moved quickly up the center aisle to aid those who were sick, but his effort was impeded when a gentleman toppled from a pew into his path, and lay curled and convulsing.

Mother, frozen at the lectern, added to the unfolding drama, when the microphone picked up her astonished words, “Dear Lord, what
is
this?
Anthrax?
”

Well, maybe
not
remarkably tame….

Panic ensued as the crowd tried to flee, moving en masse toward the back of the sanctuary, pushing and shoving, and jumping over those who had fallen. Did
everybody
have morning sickness?

My plan of escape was via the rear of the room, which is to say the
front
of the sanctuary, through the chambers located behind the tabernacle. I turned to gather Madam Petrova, still seated in the other celebrant’s chair.

She was leaning back, staring straight ahead, though she seemed not to be looking at anything.

“Mother!”
I called out, alarmed.

Mother rushed over, then knelt, her knees making a popping sound. She peered into Nastasya’s face, and felt for a pulse in the woman’s neck.

She shook her head somberly. “She’s gone, dear.”

“Are you
sure
?”

Behind the big lenses, her eyes were wild. “Don’t you think I know a
corpse
when I see one?”

The question was both blunt and rhetorical: Mother indeed had firsthand experience with dead bodies since I’d returned home and gotten unwillingly caught up in her amateur sleuthing.

I asked pitifully, “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

I was specifically thinking about finding Nastasya’s nephew, Clifford Ashland, but the last I’d seen him, he was standing at the back of the sanctuary, and would likely have been swept out into the lobby by the current of the panicking crowd.

Mother stood, supported by the arm of the celebrant’s chair, her knees now making a grinding noise.

“The best thing we can do, my dear, is to get out of here…out into the fresh air…until we know what is happening.”

The stench of sickness was in both our nostrils. Could Mother have been right—could it be Anthrax? Or Legionnaire’s Disease?

I said, “There’s an exit door in the furnace room.”

Mother shook her head. “You know it’s locked, dear…. Security.” She raised a finger. “But the spiral staircase can take us up to the bell tower, where we can go across the walkway to the front of the church, and down the stairs into the vestibule.”

It sounded like a plan. But when I hesitated, looking at Madam Petrova, Mother said softly, “Come, dear, she’s in God’s hands now. We must think of ourselves—and your little forthcoming bundle from above.”

With Mother in the lead, we fled to the arched wooden door behind the tabernacle, then on through to the choir room, where white robes, hanging like limp ghosts on a clothes rack, flapped their arms as we hurried past.

Through another door we entered the dim, dreary maintenance room, greeted by a water pipe dripping some
where. We skirted around the ancient metal furnace, shut down for the season, and Mother suddenly stopped short; I stumbled into her, nearly losing my balance.

Father O’Brien was on his knees near the spiral staircase, bent over as if praying, and perhaps he was; if so, it was inspired by the sprawled body of Louis Martinette, who lay on his back, eyes staring upward, head cracked open like an egg, spilling not yellow, but a bright terrible red.

A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

When attending a church bazaar—where money is being raised to help the disadvantaged—leave your price haggling at the door. Don’t be greedy about the needy.

W
e didn’t arrive home until late evening, because Mother felt a responsibility to linger at St. Mary’s Church until the last of the sick had been transported to area hospitals.

Before you attribute caring compassion to Mother’s various traits, keep in mind that the diva also wanted to find out as much as she could from the authorities about what had caused the sudden illness of over one-hundred-plus people, with the only fatality an ironic, especially tragic one—Madam Petrova herself, whose Christian spirit of generosity had been rewarded most bitterly.

Then there was also the matter of the unfortunate Louis Martinette, the winning bidder of the Fabergé egg….

According to what Mother had overhead at the scene from the coroner, Martinette’s body was (she vividly put it) “a sack of broken bones,” indicating the man had fallen down the high spiral staircase—which he had apparently, trying to exit the scene of mass sickness, climbed after finding the back door locked.

So the question seemed obvious: was the fall an accident, or had he been pushed?

At various times I have referred to Mother’s tendency to
view herself as a great detective. She and I had, bizarrely enough, been involved in several murder cases over a year or so that seemed no longer than the War of the Roses. From Mother’s point of view, we have solved three cases for the local police; from the local police’s point of view, they solved these cases despite our interference.

By the way, I once asked who she (Mother) thought she was—Miss Marple? Jessica Fletcher, maybe?

“I’m more the Angie Dickinson type, dear—remember
Police Woman
?”

Consequently, extracting Mother from the church premises was as tricky as removing a burrowed-in tick from a child’s scalp. Finally, an exasperated Chief Tony Cassato—Serenity’s top cop—put a figurative hot match head to Mother’s swollen back, forcing her to leave (or anyway me to take her away), since Vivian Borne has sucked all the blood out of that crime scene that there was to suck…
ugh!
That analogy made me more nauseous than another bout of morning sickness. Apologies.

By the way, I was exhausted, having actually helped out at the church, corralling the sick in various areas as those in the most trouble got the first rides to the hospital; I helped distribute water and aspirin and encouraging words, and emptied the pots and pans that had been provided for the upchuckers. Aren’t you glad I’m sparing you the details?

Meanwhile, Mother was flying high, and don’t think my hackles weren’t tingling, seeing her manic self kicking in.

“The cause of the sickness has been tentatively linked to the lunch served,” Mother said as we rode home on the lovely moonlit spring evening. “Now, that was
withheld
from the media, dear…so do keep that to yourself.”

And here I’d been planning to hit the bars tonight and troll for media types to peddle scoops to.

“Most likely salmonella poisoning,” she was saying. “But tests will have to be conducted to pinpoint the of
fending food, which will take time, because so many different dishes had been eaten. That’s potluck for you!”

“Food poisoning, then,” I said. “That egg winner—Louis Martinette?
He
didn’t die of something he ate. But I suppose you could write it off to collateral damage from the panic the food poisoning set in motion.”

“You could, dear—but the police aren’t.”

“No?”

“No. Mr. Martinette’s death is being treated as suspicious.”

“I think I know why.”

Mother’s eyes were gleaming like the jewels on one of the better Fabergé eggs. “Do you, dear? I would love to hear your theory! We are a
team
, you know.”

“Well,” I said, ignoring the latter, “I don’t think you can fall all the way down a spiral staircase. You’d get caught up in the works, maybe a quarter of the way down—and the way that staircase is constructed? You couldn’t fall through the side rungs to the floor. There’s a railing up there on the wooden landing, but not much of one. Pushing someone over wouldn’t be
that
much of a challenge….”

“Brandy! This is wonderful! You’re thinking like a detective.”

I sent my eyes from the road to her disturbing face. “We’re just
talking
. We’re not getting involved in another of these things. This isn’t
Murder, She Wrote
, Mother, or
Nancy Drew,
either. You can’t—
we
can’t—go snooping around without getting ourselves into real trouble this time.”

She touched her cheek with a forefinger. “I’m afraid I
am
in real trouble, dear.”

“Why is that?”

“The auction…I’m afraid it was a fiasco.”

“You think?”

“Oh, I don’t mean the hundred people throwing up, or
even our Russian benefactor being the only food-poisoning fatality. It was Mr. Martinette’s death that has put my mammaries in an old-fashioned washing machine.”

“Huh?”

She whispered, looking around to make sure no one else was in the car, eavesdropping. “Titties in a wringer, dear. Titties in a wringer.”

She really hadn’t needed to repeat that.

“You see,” she said, “each of the credible bidders had arranged a line of credit up to at least a million dollars with First National. The paperwork, and the actual transfer of funds, were to take place
after
the auction, off the church premises, at Father O’Brien’s request.”

“Why?”

“He apparently found it undignified. Too much like money lenders in the temple.”

As if allowing Vivian Borne to run an auction in your church was the
dignified
way to go….

“Anywhoo,” she went on, “Mr. Martinette obviously did not have time to make payment, nor had he taken care of any of the paperwork. With his death, and Madam Petrova’s, the egg goes back into her estate and the auction is null and void.”

“How do you
know
this?”

“The bank president was there—Mr. Ingstad? He answered all of my questions, which was very kind of him, considering he was intermittently—how shall I put it delicately?—sitting there filling a pan at his feet.”

I closed my eyes. This nasty image reminded me of the smell in that church, which I hoped one day to banish from my sensory memory.

“So then the guy who really benefits,” I said, “is Clifford Ashland.”

“One would think, but then he’s already wealthy in his own right. So I hardly see why he’d kill Martinette, much
less his beloved aunt! I mean, can you imagine anyone wanting to kill a beloved elderly relation?”

I looked at her. “Am I under oath?”

“No, dear.” Her smile was wicked. “But I can tell you that the death of Mr. Martinette has been deemed suspicious
not
because of the nature of his injuries, rather due to…now, you simply
must
promise to keep this from press!”

“
Mother!
”

“Sorry, dear. But imagine how excited the media will become when they learn that the Fabergé egg…is…wait for it, darling…
missing
.”

“
What?
”

“Several people gave statements confirming that Martinette moved from his seat and claimed the egg on the altar table, just as panic broke out.” She raised a finger skyward and waggled it. “And yet the valuable item was not found with his body!”

“Father O’Brien was right there….”

“Yes, dear…and Father O’Brien says he did not notice the egg. Of course, he didn’t search the poor man—he was more concerned with checking for signs of life, and of course giving the last rites.”

“Wow. Gotta hand it to you, Mother—you sure can soak up a lot of information when people all around you are getting sick.”

“Thank you, dear. But all is not bleak.”

“Really?”

Her smile was wide, making her face nothing but teeth and magnified eyes, like a cartoon animal. “Yes, our team brought in more money than any other…even
without
the million-dollar egg! So, technically, we were the winners, and will be featured in
American Mid-West Magazine
!”

“Well, I’m glad to see the tragedy hasn’t blurred your sense of priorities.”

“Thank you, dear.”

We pulled up in front of our house. “Mother, you have to promise me something.”

“Yes, my darling girl?”

That was bad—“my darling girl” meant that any promise I extracted from her was worth the air it was written on.

But I tried anyway. “I have that ‘bundle from above’ coming, remember? Can we please let the police do their job, and stay on the sidelines of this?”

“We don’t even know if there’s a
murder
yet!”

I was pretty sure there had been, but I said, “That’s right, Mother. That’s very sensible. Shall we go in and not talk about this?”

Sushi didn’t greet us at the door, which meant she was hiding somewhere because she’d been bad. At her age, this meant either number one or number two, because she wasn’t chewing furniture, anymore. In a house full of antiques, dogs who chew on furniture don’t last long.

Soosh did, however, on occasion, when she was feeling particularly put upon, sink her tiny teeth into an available shoe….

I called out that it was okay for her to show herself (sort of an olly-olly-oxen-free for dogs), but when she still didn’t appear, I surmised that the little doggie must have been
really
bad. Maybe the dreaded
three
(number one and two)….

I left my shoes on. Not a good time to go barefoot.

You see, Sushi can be quite vindictive if I miss her dinnertime, and we’d been gone much longer than that. I just hoped she hadn’t chewed up my new, black-leather Donald Pliner sandals that I’d left on my bedroom floor; I’d bought the expensive shoes end-of-season last year at seventy-five percent off, then stored them away. (Don’t you just
love
discovering a sale item you’d forgotten you had? If that isn’t guilt-free shopping, I don’t know what is!)

Whatever Sushi’s dastardly deed had been, and there surely had been one, I decided I’d rather deal with it in the morning; so I said a quick good-night to Mother and went upstairs. Despite my orders to Mother about not talking about the church fiasco, my brain hadn’t got the message.

Why
, it asked me,
didn’t
you
get sick? You don’t even need the excuse of food that’s gone off to throw up, do you? And yet you were one of the few who kept it down!

Of course, so had Mother, which only meant she hadn’t partaken of whatever the particular dish was that carried the nasty bug. And Martinette had felt good enough to snatch his egg and run…and die.

A cursory scan of my bedroom indicated nothing had been disturbed—the Donald Pliner shoes still in their box on the floor. (
Phewww!
) I shut off my brain, clicked off the light, stumbled over to the bed, and fell in, not bothering to take off my clothes.

My head hit the pillow in delicious anticipation of deep slumber, but an instant later I bolted upright.

Sushi had peed on my pillow!

“
Sushi!
” I said, not calling the dog, rather invoking her as a nemesis, the way Seinfeld used to with Newman.

It was the little pooch’s ultimate “gotcha,” which she employed only to show her most extreme displeasure—as when, a while back, we had taken in an orphaned dog named Brad Pitt-bull until a new owner could be found. She had marked her territory, all right—with my pillow as her territory.

I ran into the bathroom and scrubbed my face—which, by the way, was a rarity for me, since I often opt for leaving my makeup on at night. (Not a suggestion—an admission.)

Then, muttering, “I’ll get you later, you
dog
you,” I made for the guest room and crawled under the covers…

…where I found Sushi hiding.

She sheepishly inched her way to my face, then licked it. All over. And I forgave her, of course, kissing her furry little forehead, tucking her close to me. People were sick and dying, and I had a warm doggie who loved me.

Anyway, I’ll take a piddled-on pillow over gnawed-up Pliners any day.

The next morning, Sunday, I awoke with a start, remembering that I had a lunch date at noon with my BFF, Tina. And as she would no doubt be concerned over my wan appearance, I would need several hours to get ready to look healthy and happy.

The first clue that something wasn’t right in the Borne household came when I walked by Mother’s bedroom and saw that her bed was made.

Why suspicious? Well,
she
never made the bed, leaving that task to me—so that meant it hadn’t been slept in.

Then downstairs, in the living room, I found that my childhood board games had been dragged out of the front closet and scattered around the floor, as if Christmas had come way early, the presents all been opened, but the tree had been stolen.

I wondered if Mother had been so keyed-up that she couldn’t sleep. Had she stayed up all night, playing games? Wasn’t hard to envision her rolling the dice, making a move, then running around the game board to play against herself.

I found Mother in the dining room, wearing the same clothes as yesterday, her eyes wild behind her large glasses, hair disheveled—as if maybe she’d inserted a wet finger into a light socket. She loomed like God Almighty over the Duncan Phyfe table, where, taking up most of the surface, was a large cardboard replica of the inside of St. Mary’s Church!

Vivian Borne had been a busy girl.

The model was quite detailed: Popsicle stick pews; cereal box pulpit (single-serving-size—Cocoa Puffs); ditto for the lectern (Froot Loops); empty tuna can celebrant’s chairs (lids opened for back rests); and taped-together toilet tissue tubes to represent the tall spiral staircase.

Into this miniature playhouse, Mother had placed an assortment of board-game pieces, which I quickly ascertained represented the key players in last night’s melodrama. For example, the chess queen behind the Froot Loops lectern was Mother, while the white pawn from the Clue game, resting on a tuna can, signified Madam Petrova.