Antiques Knock-Off (16 page)

(Brandy speaking. NOTE TO SELF: never let anybody read advance proof pages again!)

“I’m not to going to tell you a thing,” I said, “unless you promise not to refer to the man as my ‘Daddy.’”

“Well, that’s a step up, anyway.”

“What is?”

“You referred to him as
‘the
man,’ not
‘that
man.’ Progress. Baby steps.”

Everything was “baby” with her at the moment.

Our curry tuna croissants arrived, and between bites, Tina tried again. “Sooooo … tell me all about it!”

What the hey. I did, even mentioning how Connie Grimes had tried to blackmail the senator. For money.

Tina’s tuna croissant tumbled from her hand. “Oh, my lord—that woman must have been out of her mind.”

“You’re thinking of Mother,” I said. “Connie wasn’t crazy, just evil.” I paused, to see if lightning would strike me for defaming the dead, then went on. “Evil, and desperate for money.”

Tina shrugged. “I don’t know why she would be. Her husband has a good job, doesn’t he? And they have a nice enough house. I mean, how much more does a person need?”

I said, “Plenty, if she’s trying to keep up with Peggy Sue Hastings.”

“Good point.” Tina frowned. “What if Connie was trying to feather her nest for
herself?
Haven’t you heard the rumors about her husband and that secretary where he works?”

I nodded. Gossip held no appeal to me, but Mother was Rumor Central in Serenity. So I knew much more than I wanted to about all kinds of people, many of whom I’d never met.

Tina sighed. “Blackmailing a senator was
some
risk to take—I mean, the woman could’ve gone to jail.”

“If she hadn’t been killed first.”

Tina pushed her plate forward, leaned in, elbows on the table, hands tented. “So what does your boyfriend the chiefie have to say? Where are the local fuzz in the investigation? Do they have a suspect yet?”

“Not that I know of. Somehow I don’t expect phone call updates from Tony on this matter.”

“What about your mother?
Vivian,
I mean, not Peggy Sue.”

“Please …”

“Does Viv have a suspect in mind? I mean, she must have
some
inkling.”

I stared at Tina. Talking about Connie’s murder was the last thing I expected from her, knowing how she felt about me being any further involved in so stressful a pursuit as an unofficial murder inquiry, during the last trimester of the pregnancy.

Was she fishing around to see if I’d kept my word?

Guardedly, I said, “Look, I’m not actively investigating or anything … but I’m also not discouraging Mother from doing so.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because rubber-stamping her sleuthing is how I got her back on her medication.”

Tina’s response wasn’t exactly short, but close to it. “Yes, I know … you already explained that. I’m not being critical, Brandy, I just wanted to know if there was a suspect, that’s all. No biggie.”

I knew my friend well; maybe better than she did herself … and somehow her interest in the case
was
a “biggie.” I just didn’t know why.

I decided to throw her a bone. “Well, this is hardly worth mentioning, but Mother met a woman in jail who had been ransacking the house across the street from Connie’s the morning she was killed, and—”

“Surely,” Tina cut in, with uncharacteristic rudeness, “the police have already questioned this home invader about what she saw.”

“Yes … but the thief can’t remember much.”

“So?”

“So Mother has this harebrained idea”—I had to stop and laugh—“to have her jailhouse friend put under hypnosis.”

But Tina didn’t laugh. Tina just stared.

Suddenly—and I promised earlier that I wouldn’t do this to you, but facts are facts—I had to pee really bad because of my condition.

So I left the table, saying, “Order me one of those gooey chocolate brownies, would you?”

I scurried off to the ladies’ room, a one-stall affair, thankfully not busy. I had finished washing my hands and was opening the door, when a woman barged in, pushed me back, then locked us in.

“Really?” I said. “In a bathroom? How classy is that?”

Top aide Denise was standing there, in these close quarters, pointing a red nail-polished finger at me. “I want you to
stop
bothering Senator Clark!”

I put hands on hips. Supergirl. Super-preggers-girl, anyway. “I wasn’t
bothering
him—
he
invited me to his office … or didn’t he share that with you?”

Judging by her surprised expression, my assumption that the boss hadn’t bothered clearing our meeting with his top aide was correct.

She lowered the pointing finger, as if reluctantly holstering a gun, but her threatening manner remained.

“If the press gets wind of your relationship,” she said through white little teeth, “Senator Clark may very well lose the election in November … and I’ve worked too hard to let that happen!”

Not
“we’ve,”
but
“I’ve”
worked too hard.

I smirked. “And
you’d
be out of a job, with a career path to the White House blocked. Boo freakin’ hoo.”

“Just
stay
away from him!”

“Or what?”

I might end up like Connie Grimes?

“Or … you’ll be sorry.”

Lame.

“Just tell me,” she said, and it seemed like she was about to cry, “is it really
his?”

And her eyes went to my tummy.

Was
that
the relationship she suspected?

Obviously it was; only, I hadn’t figured it, seeing the senatorial situation only from my own warped end of the telescope.

I was so flustered, I couldn’t speak. She unlocked the bathroom door, threw me a look of daggers, and left.

Brazen as I’d sounded, my knees felt weak, my legs were trembling. Was it possible that über-aide Denise, in her protective zeal, had been the one to silence Connie? If so, what else might the Dragon Lady be capable of?

I shook my head. Maybe I’d been reading too many political thrillers lately. Still—I looked down at my protruding stomach—was I prepared to jeopardize two lives over this increasingly convoluted ordeal?

I left the bathroom, returning to Tina at the table.

“You won’t believe what just happened,” I said, sitting down.

My friend looked wan.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Don’t you feel well?”

After a long moment she said, “Brandy, I’m sorry, but … I just have to tell you something….”

“What is it, sweetie?”

Then she dropped a bombshell.

“You need to know that I … honey, I went to see Connie the morning she was murdered.”

A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

To help authenticate an antique, look for the maker’s signature: a brand or paper label on furniture, a name or initial on pottery, or an identifying mark stamped on glass, ceramics or metal. Mother once thought she had bought a signed painting by Grandma Moses at a flea market until she got home, put on her reading glasses, and on closer inspection read, “To Grandma, love Moses.”

A
llie’s Tea Room had cleared out enough for Tina and me to have some privacy at our table-for-two. And when I’d recovered from my friend’s admission that she, too, had been at Connie Grimes’s house the morning of the murder, I asked, “Why on earth would
you
go?”

Tina swallowed. I could even hear the
gulp.
“To ask her—to
beg
her—to stop harassing you. I … I was afraid the stress might hurt the … the …” She choked on the last of it, never getting “baby” out, eyes tearing.

I reached for her hand resting on the table, giving it a squeeze.
“Nothing’s
going to hurt the baby, Tina. You needn’t have gone. I’m fine.
We’re
fine.”

Or was I/were we? Having been on Prozac since I moved home—the only way I could live with Mother—and now anti-depressant free for seven months, I was beginning to see cracks in the veneer of my own tender psyche.

But I wasn’t about to let Tina see them.

“Tell me what happened,” I said gently. “Did you see Connie? Talk to her?”

Tina shook her head. “I rang the bell, again and again,

but she didn’t answer, so …” She shrugged. “I just tucked my tail between my legs and left.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t go inside. That would certainly have complicated things.”

“She must have already been”—Tina gave an involuntary shiver—“dead.”

“Or just didn’t want to answer. At any rate, there’s no need for you to come forward with this information.”

Her eyes jumped with relief. “You think so?”

Now I shrugged. “What do you know that would help the investigation? I mean, you don’t know anything, do you?”

“How could I?”

“Did you see something, someone—someone else leaving, maybe? Or a car you passed coming or going?”

Tina’s brow furrowed momentarily, then she said, “Well … after I pulled out of Hidden Pines, I
did
notice a blue SUV in my rearview mirror, coming from the other direction. But I can’t say for sure that it turned in at the Pines.”

Could it be the same van Mother saw leaving the housing development some time later? Or just one of hundreds zipping around the streets of Serenity?

“I don’t mean to sound like a cop,” I said, “but what about the make of the car?”

Like, was it a Cadillac Escalade?
But I didn’t want to lead the witness….

“I didn’t notice. I’m kind of dumb about that kind of thing. If Kevin had seen it,
he’d
know.” She shrugged again. “Just a blue SUV. Light blue. Pretty new. Clean.”

I nodded, then reiterated that she should remain mum on her trip to see Connie, unless directly asked by someone in law enforcement.

Still, my friend seemed understandably troubled. She asked, “What about your mother’s plan to put that jail-house
acquaintance of hers under hypnosis? Robbing the house across the way,
she
might remember me.”

I shook my head. “I can’t see this hypnosis thing happening. Tony won’t ever agree to it. It’s just another one of Mother’s crazy, rattle-brained ideas that I’m pretending to go along with, to keep her happy … and happily medicated.”

We fell silent. I wondered if Tina was thinking the same thing I was: that all too many of Mother’s rattle-brained ideas had come to fruition….

Finally Tina sighed and smiled in resignation. “Okay, then … I won’t worry about it….”

I smiled. “Why waste the energy? Besides, if that jailbird
does
remember you, she’ll only corroborate that you rang the doorbell, then left. Right?”

“Hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“You just didn’t read as much Nancy Drew as I did. Enough said on the subject. Now, how about getting down to serious concerns? Like splitting one of those brownies?”

On my drive home, the Buick’s air conditioner conked out, which was frustrating in a “What
now?”
sort of way; but did give me the perfect opportunity to follow up a lead on my own.

The morning of the murder, the police couldn’t locate Connie’s husband at the car dealership where he worked. If he wasn’t there, where
was
he?

Fred—or Freddie, as Connie always called him—reportedly made a comfortable living selling high-end cars on commission. Comfortable, at least, before a sagging economy inspired folks to either hold on to their cars longer, or buy cheaper models, or even trade in for used ones.

The luxury car dealership, located at the mouth of the notoriously treacherous bypass, was much smaller than
others in Serenity, a fact emphasized by the current lack of inventory in the lot.

Under the pretense of needing a new car, I slowly cruised the rows of BMWs, Mercedes, and Caddies, looking for blue models that might fit the description of the SUV seen in the vicinity of Hidden Pines.

Seemed to me that Fred Grimes had a unique opportunity to get behind the wheel of a car off this lot, drive home, dispatch his wife, then return the car here, where it could remain hidden in plain sight.

That’s right—all that Nancy Drew I bragged about to Tina had really paid off….

I pulled up to a powder-blue Escalade—exactly like Peggy Sue’s—turned off the Buick, and got out. I walked around the big-sticker vehicle, then peered in the windows. To a bystander, I might appear just another prospective buyer (if an unlikely one, based upon the battered Buick I’d arrived in), and not a shrewd female sleuth.

Did I say “shrewd?” What did I expect to find, anyway? A bloody footprint on the driver’s side?

“May I help you?” a male voice asked. Friendly enough, if touched with skepticism. He’d apparently noted the Buick.

I turned to see Fred Grimes in white shirt-sleeves, red tie, and navy slacks. Early fifties, a tad overweight, with a drinker’s nose, and a fairly convincing comb-over, Fred had left his glory days behind at high school, mostly on the football field, where then-slender cheerleader Connie must have thought he’d be quite the catch. What she caught, according to Peggy Sue, had been years of disappointment and discontent.

“Oh,” he said flatly, “it’s you,” his friendly, hoping-for-a-sale expression fading.

“Yes … uh … hi, Mr. Grimes.”

“‘Fred’ is all right, Brandy.”

“Okay, Fred. I’m kind of surprised to see you back at work.”

“My first day. We missed you at the funeral.”

“I didn’t think I’d be welcome, frankly.”

Fred didn’t contradict that notion.

(We hadn’t sent flowers, either. Or a card. At the Hallmark Store, they were fresh out of
So sorry my dog and I found your loved one’s body stabbed with a kitchen knife in your living room.)

Finally he said, “So can I help you?”

“Would you believe I need a new car? I sure like the looks of this baby.” I gestured to the Caddy.

Fred’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “That right?” he said blandly.

I’d come this far. Blurting my ridiculous interest in a Cadillac seemed to be the story I was stuck with, so I put on my sincerest face. “Yes, I’ve just come into some money—a final settlement from my ex.”