Antiques Maul (15 page)

Mia rifled through the papers on the clipboard. “That item sold.”

I stomped a foot. “
Shit!
Pardon my French, dear. Actually French would be
merde
, but I
knew
I priced that vase too low! To whom did it sell?” I was at her side now, looking over her shoulder, helping her with the clipboard. “Another dealer? You can
tell
by the discount—”

“Mrs. Borne!” Mia snapped, drawing away. “I’m not here to give you that kind of information! Now, may we
please
proceed?”

Disappointed in my daughter’s old friend’s bad behavior, I turned back to the booth. “Well…the lyre banjo clock is missing.”

“That sold as well.”

I clapped my hands hard enough to bring Tinkerbell back to life. “Oh,
goodie!
” Then I froze. “Goodie, that is, unless it went to
another
dealer…and then I priced
that
too low, too. Oh, this business can drive a person simply insane!”

“So I’ve noticed. Is anything else gone?”

My eyes swept the booth in another inventory. “No. But I can tell someone was interested in the rolltop desk.”

“Why do you say that?”

I pointed. “Because they moved our cigar store Indian out of the way to get a closer look. Does that count?”

“No. I’m not concerned about that.”

I asked, slyly, “What
are
you concerned about, Mia? What’s
really
going on here? You can tell me. Ask anyone—Vivian Borne is the soul of discretion.”

The clipboard slapped down to her side. “
Thank
you, Mrs. Borne. Give my best to your daughter.”

“Well, certainly, dear.”

“That’s all we’ll be needing for now. You may go.”

“Do you mind if I use the bathroom first? We seniors do the bladder’s bidding, you know.”

“Thanks for sharing.” Mia sighed. “All right, all right, but be quick about it. I have another dealer coming in, in a matter of minutes.”

I headed down the aisle to the rear of the store where I opened the bathroom door and let it bang shut. Then I sneaked back along a row perpendicular to where Mia was standing, now talking on her cell phone.

“Yes…three more to go,” she was saying. “Okay, sure. Here’s the rundown to date…booth number one reported a gold watch worth three hundred dollars as missing…. Booth seven said some comic books totaling about fifty dollars were gone…booth twelve, missing an iron. No, used for ironing…and the dealer in fourteen claims a hand garden rake was stolen, but the matching trowel was still there…. I don’t know, how should I know? Maybe he already had one…. You tell me why the cash was still in the till!”

Try Midol, dear
, I thought.
It works wonders….

I tiptoed back to the bathroom and banged the door again. When I returned to the front of the store, Mia, off the portable phone now, had a wary look.

I said, “Thank you, dear…I needed that,” giving my girdle a realistic tug.

“
Good-bye
, Mrs. Borne,” she said with a smile as frozen as a Popsicle but not nearly so sweet.

Then she walked me to the front door, as if she didn’t trust me to leave. Nervy child.

By the time I caught the trolley in front of the courthouse, late afternoon had arrived. I asked Maynard Kirby for one of those aforementioned off-route “special requests,” and he acquiesced, dropping me at the Mabel Streble Animal Shelter, which after all wasn’t too far off his beaten path.

The modern one-story tan brick building with its landscaped lawn might well be mistaken for a medical complex or law office, if it weren’t for the assorted barking and meowing that drifted from behind the shelter, where dogs and cats frolicked on the green grass in spacious pens during most sunny afternoons.

These poor abandoned animals would still be languishing in the old run-down Quonset hut on the outskirts of town, if it wasn’t for me making an unscheduled visit to the Sunny-Side Up nursing home, some years back.

You see, I’d had a flat tire in front of the rest home, so I went inside to use their phone. (This was before I had lost my license for taking a certain shortcut, which was terribly unfair because farmers drive through their fields all the time and don’t get arrested. But, again, I digress.)

When the service station told me they couldn’t come to change my tire for at least an hour, I decided to drop in on some of the Sunny-Side Up residents to put a little good cheer into their day.

Mrs. Streble was one of several elderly folks I visited on that impromptu call. The widow was what we used to call filthy rich, though her husband had made his fortune in cleaning. Hardly anyone in town knew of her wealth, or the extent of it, anyway, because of the miserly way she lived.

When I entered her room, the poor dear was in such a state…crying about how her children and grandchildren never called or came to visit. She was particularly bothered by having been deprived of her pet cats when she’d been brought out to Sunny-Side Up, all of whom had been dispatched to the local pound and…dispatched.

So I said, in my cheerful conversational offhand way, that if she were to leave all her money to the local animal shelter, why, that would teach those inconsiderate ingrate kids of hers a good lesson.

And that’s exactly what Mrs. Streble did.

The very day after my visit, she called in her lawyer and changed her will. And a week after that the poor woman succumbed to a heart attack.

Of course, the animal shelter was ecstatic about their considerable good fortune—or rather Mrs. Streble’s good fortune, which was considerable—and immediate plans were made for a new, no-kill facility to be built in the late benefactress’s name.

Mrs. Streble’s relatives, needless to say, weren’t too happy with me—apparently Mrs. Streble had let it be loudly known that I’d given her the notion to cut the relatives out of her will, and the dogs and cats in—and I received a number of death threats. People can be such animals, sometimes.

Anyhoo, I walked into the cheerful, spotless waiting room of the animal shelter, and approached the young girl behind the counter, whose name tag identified her as Beth. Beth was on the porky side and rather dim, but she loved animals, which was a big plus in this business.

“Why, hello, Beth,” I said. “Have you lost weight, my dear? You look wonderful! Simply wraithlike.”

The plain-faced, cow-eyed child beamed. “Five pounds, Mrs. Borne. Could you really tell?”

“Of course…every pound shows.” (Encouragement must be given to the weight-challenged, however hopeless the case.) “Would you be a dear and tell Jane I’d like to see her?”

“Certainly.” Beth turned away from the counter and I watched her formidable backside disappear through an archway with little leeway to spare. Five pounds, I’m afraid, was like taking an ice-pick to the floater that took down the
Titanic
.

After a minute and change, the manager of the shelter appeared. In her midforties, with short brown hair and an athletic build, Jane had been a dedicated advocate of the homeless animals of Serenity for twenty-some years. Never married, Jane once told me that she considered these animals to be her very own children—an ever-changing brood—and always took it hard when any had to be (as the terrible phrase so accurately states it) “put down.”

Jane came around the counter to greet me. “Nice to see you, Vivian,” she said with a winning smile. “You look wonderful. Have you lost weight?”

That was rather too personal and presumptuous a question for her to ask, I thought; so I ignored it and inquired, “How is the foster pet program going?”

Jane had recently initiated this new concept, believing that more animals would be adopted if they were first placed in foster homes where they could get comfortable being around people. Also, the animals would “show” better to prospective buyers, having been in a home setting.

And sometimes the “foster” homes became real ones.

“We have fifteen dogs and twenty-five cats in foster care at the moment,” Jane said. “And last week seven others were adopted.”

“That’s delightful to hear, dear, simply grand.”

Jane tilted her head. “Are
you
interested in being a foster pet parent, Vivian?”

“Possibly,” I answered slowly. “Sushi might enjoy having a companion. Sushi is my daughter Brandy’s dog, you know—she’s blind, and diabetic.”

“Brandy is?”

“No, dear. Sushi. The dog.”

“Are you interested in any particular breed?”

“I understand you have a pit bull.”

“Why, no. Other than…” Jane’s head reared back. “Oh my…you don’t mean the one that was just brought
in
…?”

“His name is Brad, dear. Brad Pit Bull. Isn’t that precious?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Vivian—he’s scheduled to be put down.”

I put on my most indignant expression, which in this circumstance wasn’t difficult. “I thought you didn’t
do
that kind of thing here anymore!”

Her eyes took on a sorrowful look. “Only when it’s necessary—rabid animals, for example. Or if the city orders us.”

“And
have
they? Signed Brad Pit Bull’s death warrant?”

“No, not yet…but they just haven’t gotten around to it. They’re still investigating, after all.”

And if they were investigating, so should I be! Brandy and I!

“Well,” I said, “then stall them, Jane…. Brad’sa good dog, who may have made a mistake.”

“May have made a
mistake
?”

I waved that off. “Well, even if he did maul Mrs. Norton to death, doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance? Even a bad little doggie?”

She was giving me the funniest look, her mouth hanging open….

I asked sweetly, “May I see him? Brad?”

Jane seemed puzzled at my request, but she knew darn well
I
was why this fancy doghouse had ever been built, and finally she said, “All right, but just for a moment.” Like a bossy nurse does when you want to visit someone in intensive care, after hours.

I followed Jane through the door to the large concrete-floor area housing the wayward animals. As I walked along, the noise became deafening, each dog barking, each cat meowing, the language of species differing but the translation the same: “
Pick me! Pick me!
”

(Here, by way of full disclosure, I must admit that I’ve never wanted a pet, being as busy as I am…but having Sushi around the house these past months had changed my mind. And it broke my heart to see the hope in the eyes of these discarded animals being dashed as I passed by them.)

Jane halted in front of a large cage, and for a moment I thought it was empty. But then I spotted the pit bull curled in a pitiful ball in a corner.

Jane warned, “He’s not been very responsive.”

I called his name, and then Brad’s head and ears perked, and he jumped up and scampered over.

Jane said, amazed, “He…he seems to really like you.”

“Yes, dear…we’re old friends. And he has excellent taste!” I bent and scratched the dog’s ear through the cage wire, and he pressed closer for more.

“Do you think you can get him to eat?” Jane asked. “He won’t for me.”

“I can but try.”

Jane gazed down at the dog. “A loss of appetite after being sedated is expected…but that’s been some time ago.”

I straightened to face the woman. “You had to sedate Brad when he arrived?”

“No. Animal Control apparently did, before they brought him over, yesterday…and not a very good job, I might add. He wasn’t even close to being knocked out.”

I said, “No one with Animal Control sedated this dog. I should know!”

“Why is that?”

“If the
Serenity Sentinel
did its job, you’d
know
why! Because, dear,
I
was at the antiques mall when Brad was put into the van!”

Jane shook her head. “All due respect, you must be mistaken, Vivian. There were clear signs that this animal had been drugged when he was brought in—dilated eyes, sluggishness…”

I frowned in thought.

Jane sighed, turning her attention back to the pit bull. “But that was long enough ago to be well out of his system. No, I’m afraid he isn’t eating right now because he’s depressed.”

I nodded. “To be expected. Brad misses his mistress.”

“Then he shouldn’t have killed her.”

“Oh, but he didn’t, my dear,” I said. “I’m quite sure of that now…. So, where are the Kibbles and Bits? He’ll gobble them down for his old friend Viv.”

A Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip

Sometimes a dealer will mark an antique as “firm,” meaning he won’t come down on the price. If the item has been gathering dust for a while, however, try making an offer on the day the rent on his booth is due.