Antiques Bizarre - 4 - Barbara Allan by Barbara Allan

Author:Barbara Allan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780758268501
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2010-03-21T22:00:00+00:00

Mother’s Trash ‘n’Treasures Tip

If you bid on the wrong item, tell the auctioneer immediately. And if your bid wins the wrong item, it’s at the discretion of the auctioneer whether or not you’re stuck with it. So butter him/her up beforehand—just in case!

Chapter Eight

Deviled Eggs

When I got back from my morning visit with Peggy Sue, I began playing with a much-neglected Sushi. She had no idea that a friend of mother’s had possibly been murdered just down the block, and the bliss of her ignorance was contagious.

Her favorite game was for me to rearrange the living room furniture, making an obstacle course she would navigate to the grand prize—a doggie cookie. I would say, “Stop,” “Left,” or “Right,” whenever she might bump into something, and she got so good at it, I had to extend the course past the French doors into the music/ library room.

By early afternoon, I was returning the furniture to their rightful positions, when Mother came home, looking unhappy—and not a little disheveled—and I surmised that her snooping had not gone at all well.

We’d both blown through the lunch hour, so I made some egg salad sandwiches and served them with potato chips and iced tea on TV trays at the couch, the dining room table being taken up by Mother’s cardboard church with its game-token congregation. As I served her a plate, I noticed a faint fragrance of liquor on her breath.

I did my best not to overreact—which is not so easy, off Prozac—and asked her for a blow-by-blow account of her latest downtown excursion, which she did, even copping to having “the tiniest” glass of whiskey, quickly assuring me that her “indiscretion” would not be repeated.

But I wasn’t so sure. Extended bouts of depression had been known to make Mother a) stop taking her medication, b) start drinking, or c) all of the above. Mother had by no means ever been an alcoholic, but booze combined with the naturally nutty juices zipping around within her made for a cocktail that gave all around her perpetual hangovers.

To cheer Mother up—and against my better judg-ment—I said, between delicious bites (Mother’s egg salad recipe was to die for), “Maybe we should drop by your friend Henry’s hypnosis session this afternoon. Maybe when he’s under, his memory could be jogged.”

That immediately perked her up. “Together? Mother and daughter? Holmes and Watson? Poirot and Hastings? Archie and Nero? Nick and Nora? Morse and Lewis?”

More like Martin and Lewis, I thought.

She went on like that for a while, while I just ate my sandwich and nodded, as she summoned increasingly obscure detective teams that her Red Hatted League had read about.

Finally she ran out of names and said, “And I need to question Clifford Ashland. He’s still on my list.”

“I don’t know, Mother. Peggy Sue said Ashland’s investment firm is doing very well. She and Bob do business with him, and are happy as clams with him.”

“Wonderful! Even better!”

“But that means he has no motive….”

“You said it earlier! He’s the least likely suspect, so he has to stay high on our list.

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