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Authors: Barbara Allan

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BOOK: Antiques Disposal
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Again wearing an almost smile, he remained silent for a moment, gazing at the mausoleum, clearly wondering whether or not to tell me to mind my own business.
Finally he said, “It
wasn't
romantic. Only in the vaguest, someday-when-you're-old-enough-give-me-a-call kinda way. But I
was
a little wild when I was young—”
“A regular J.D., I heard.”
“What's the phrase? Rebel without a clue?” He spread his hands. “Anyway, sometimes I'd give Peggy Sue a ride from school—I was a senior in high school, and she was in middle school. I had this Corvette convertible, and I'd see her walking those couple miles home.”
“Back then, a neighborhood guy giving a girl her age a ride was no big deal.”
“Right. And I was just being friendly. But, again, I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind that I wished she were older, because she was so beautiful.”
And even at that age, Peggy would have known James was “so rich”... .
“Well,” he was saying, “one day, just before graduation, I was in a jewelry store downtown, looking at a gold necklace for my mom, when Peggy Sue came in to buy another charm for her bracelet—or some such thing. And while the owner was busy with her, I swiped the necklace.”
“What? Why? You come from—” I couldn't find the polite way of saying it.
“Yeah, my family was stinking rich. Still are.” He shook his head. “I don't know why I did it—I had the money.”
Rebel without a clue was right.
“What happened?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Peg must have seen me do it. Anyway, she comes running out after me, and really lays into me. Then she grabs the necklace out of my jacket pocket, and runs back in the store and says
she
swiped it.”
“Really?” That didn't sound like Sis.
He went on: “She told the store manager that she did it on impulse, and she was sorry, and she wanted to give it back. She worked up a bunch of tears, too—probably was scared enough that that wasn't hard. Now the store manager doesn't believe her, not really, he
knows
I took it, just can't prove it. And anyway, the store got it back, and with a nice little kid like your sis involved, no charges were filed.”
“You were eighteen,” I said. “You'd have done time.”
He nodded. “You are so right. And I already was on probation for something else stupid I did. So I owed Peggy Sue. I owed her a lot.”
I gave him a half smile. “You don't think she was motivated by losing her ride in a Corvette with an older guy? Particularly a cute one from a wealthy family?”
He gave me the other half of the smile. “Well, there's that. She was a smart, pragmatic kid. But, nonetheless, it was a spunky thing for someone her age to do. Took spine. Took guts.”
I had to agree.
“And for me, that incident was one of those life-defining moments, coming to that fork in the road you hear so much about. Turn one way, your life goes bad, the other way, good ... or, anyway,
better
, in my case. Ever have one of those?”
“Oh, yeah.” Like the night of my tenth high school reunion when I threw my marriage out the window for an old flame. A real bad fork up.
He seemed about to ask for details I didn't want to share, so I asked, “Jim, what brought you back to Serenity, after all this time?”
He nodded toward the mausoleum. “When my mother died in 1975, I couldn't make it home.”
“Because you were in Canada.”
“Avoiding the draft, yeah. You seem to know a lot about me.”
I shrugged. “My mother, Vivian, is the twenty-four-hour news of local gossips.”
His turn to shrug. “I'm not ashamed of being a so-called draft dodger. I operated out of self-interest, but I really did have strong feelings about the wrongness of that war. And I have never changed my opinions, especially since my brother ended his life facedown in a rice field for
nothing
.”
His eyes were wet.
“Were you close, you and Stephen?”
“Very. Not all brothers
are
, you know. Especially when the father makes no pretense about favoring one over the other. But we were tight. Really tight.”
“But your dad favoring Stephen ... I suppose that's why you were so wild.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I was just wired differently than Steve.”
Like Peggy Sue and me.
I said, “You did all right. Everybody calls you a ‘peacenik.' But you sure didn't
stay
a hippie.”
He chuckled. “Well, I did manage to make a good life for myself in Toronto.”
As owner of Lawrence Communications, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Canada, having gotten in on the ground floor of cable TV in 1975. (I looked him up on the Net.)
“Jim—mind if I ask you a personal question?”
His laugh was half cough. “Well, what have
these
been?”
I smiled. “Guilty as charged... . Anyway, I heard that your mother always looked out for you—maybe to offset your father's indifference ...”
James took a beat, then nodded.
“... but when she died, she didn't leave you anything.”
“That's right—more local gossip, courtesy of Vivian Borne?”
“More or less. Didn't you wonder why she'd left you out in the cold? I mean, you hadn't made your own fortune yet.”
He drew in a deep breath. Leaves in trees rustled with the wind, as if a physical manifestation of his thoughts.
Then he said: “I've come to look at it like this, Brandy—being cut off made me find my own way, make my own success. Besides, I'm not sure how well I would have handled the kind of money my mother said she was going to leave me.”
“She indicated she was going to leave you money?”
“Oh yes. She and I stayed in touch. The money I started my business with came from what I'd saved from regular checks she'd been sending. And of course we spoke on the phone frequently. I was to be well taken care of. But somehow my father must have changed her mind. She was sick toward the end—Alzheimer's. Manipulating her wouldn't have been difficult.”
I frowned. “Jim, you've been really nice, very generous, about answering my nosy questions ... so I'll tell you something you might like to know.”
“What's that?”
“Do you remember the Bix Beiderbecke cornet that belonged to your brother?”
“Sure! Steve treasured that thing. He was such a jazz buff, Steve.”
“Well ... I know where it is.”
And I went into the whole song and dance about winning the storage unit and finding the provenance papers in the bell of the horn.
He was shaking his head, smiling in astonishment. “I always wondered what happened to that cornet,” he said. “I hoped to someday end up with it. But I figured it was long gone.”
“You'd like to have it because of its ... value?”
“Yes, but not monetary value—sentimental. My interest in that item is strictly personal. You see, I have nothing to remember Steve by, really—just a few old photos that I took when I left home.”
“Did you know Anna Armstrong had been killed?”
He nodded solemnly. “When I passed through Davenport on my way here, I stopped to see her.
Tried
to see her, anyway.” His chin tightened. “I guess she died the day before.”
We fell silent.
Then suddenly he leaned toward me. “Brandy—would you—you and Vivian—consider selling the cornet to me?”
I said, “As a matter of fact we
are
planning to sell it ... but when and how will be Mother's call. Vivian, I mean, not Peggy Sue.”
He nodded, his expression one of understanding. “But you'll let me know, if you
are
going to sell? To give me a fair shot at it?”
“Sure. How long will you be in town?”
“A few more days, anyway. I have some meetings with the city planning commission. Now that my ... father ... is retiring and leaving town, I'm considering giving something back to the community that put up with me all those years ago.”
“Cool,” I said. “Hey, I'd like to see the bike path extended.”
Even if my old Schwinn did have two flat tires.
“It's a possibility,” he said with a smile.
He was thirty years older than me, but I could definitely understand what twelve-year-old Peggy Sue had seen in him. And it wasn't just his money.
I stood. “Well. See you around the hotel. Don't miss the meeting of the Prodigal Offspring Association at the stroke of midnight.”
“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” he said, and we shook hands again.
Then I left him alone with his mother.
 
Back in my hotel room, I risked calling mine.
“Brandy, dear ... where have you been?” She sounded out of breath, and rather giddy. “You've missed all the hoopla!”
“That was the point. Have the reporters gone?”
“Yes, dear, they've scurried off, like rats off a sinking ship!”
Apparently she hadn't thought that one through, since that made our house the sinking ship. Or had she?
I said, “I find it hard to believe they aren't skulking somewhere in the neighborhood.”
“No, they've gone, at least for now. You see, the senator and Peggy Sue are holding a press conference this afternoon to explain everything, and it's
not
here.”
“Where then?”
“Channel Six in Davenport. They're the NBC affiliate.”
So the senator was going public. Out of necessity? Or as some kind of PR stunt? I wasn't sure I cared anymore.
I said, “Guess who besides me is staying here at the Holiday Inn?”
“The national media!”
“No, Mother—James Lawrence.”
And I told her about my morning conversation with Jim, emphasizing his belief that his mother had intended to leave him an inheritance.
“Good work, dear! I'm afraid I've allowed myself to get stars in my eyes, with all these cameras and microphones waving at me. It's just not
like
me.”
“No. Not like you at all.”
“I'd like to clear up this business of a will once and for all—Brandy, come pick me up. Toot sweet.”
“Okay. Where are we going?”
“To drop in on Wayne Ekhardt.”
“He doesn't have office hours today.”
“I know. We'll beard the lion in his den!”
“Go to his house, you mean?”
“That's exactly what I mean!”
It disturbed me, realizing I was actually starting to understand almost everything she said... .
“Mother, shouldn't we
call
Wayne first?”
In all the time we had known him, the cagey lawyer had managed to keep Mother away from his residence, meeting only at his office.
“No! He might say not to come. We'll just surprise him.”
“Do you think that's wise ... he
is
almost ninety—”
But Mother had already hung up.
Half an hour later, with Mother riding shotgun, I guided our trusty, rusty Buick onto Park Drive—a picturesque neighborhood of well-tended old homes bordering Weed Park.
I know what you're thinking, and I apologize to those of you who've already heard this unlikely but very true explanation; but the park—ten acres of gently rolling, green-grassy land overlooking the river—was donated to the city by a family named Weed.
Years ago, the park had a zoo, including (but not limited to) a smelly snake house; a surly, peanut-shooting elephant named Candy; some marauding mountain goats; and the rudest orangutans this side of the Congo.
Then in the early 1980s, due to the soaring expense of maintenance (along with pressure from animal activists), the elephant shot its last peanut, and the zoo closed.
But, as Mother is wont to say, I digress.
“There's Wayne's house, dear,” Mother said, pointing to a brick Tudor.
I pulled into a drive and up to the well-kept, two-story hugged by a tidy row of evergreen bushes. Next to the house, a tall oak loomed, spreading its vibrant-colored leafy limbs out for protection and shade. We exited the car, then walked a short distance to three cement steps leading up to a screened-in porch.
BOOK: Antiques Disposal
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