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Authors: Barbara Allan

BOOK: Antiques Fate
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In the lobby, Seabert was checking out a guest, and I waited till he'd finished and the guest had departed before stepping up to the counter.
“Mr. Falwell,” I began pleasantly. “I'd like to ask a favor. . . .”
He could barely contain his irritation, but mustered an unconvincing smile. “Well, of course, I will do my best to comply, Mrs. Borne, although frankly I'm rather busy.”
“Oh, I think you'll make time for me.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. I'd like you to bring that outdoor sign of yours up to my room, along with its letters.”
He jumped back a step. “What was that?”
I repeated my request.
He said, “Well, that's absurd. Why would you want me to do such a thing? And what makes you think I'd ever agree?”
“Because if you don't, dear boy,” I said, allowing a bit of my Brit accent to come into play, “I'll tell one and all that it was
you
who wrote those nasty messages. Now chop-chop!”
I had no idea he could move so fast.
 
A Trash ‘n' Treasures Tip
 
When buying antiques that you know little about, begin with inexpensive items. That way, if mistakes are made, they won't be costly ones. Mother's “vintage” Brown Betty teapot is adorable, but not worth the hundred dollars she paid, in part because it wasn't as vintage as she is.
Chapter Ten
Out, Out, Brief Candle
B
randy again.
I had just finished dressing when I heard a commotion across the hall. It sounded something like a steamer trunk being hauled up the stairs, accompanied by groaning and muttering worthy of Marley dragging his chains in to see Scrooge.
Carefully I opened my door and peeked out and saw Seabert Falwell, lugging the inn's clunky outdoor sign up to Mother's door, where he paused to catch his breath before knocking. The hand clutching the sign's steel stem also held on to a white plastic sack whose bottom bulged, like a Halloween bag after a successful round of trick-or-treating.
Mother quickly appeared. “Well,
that
wasn't so hard now, was it, Mr. Falwell?”
His obsequious tone was tinged with malice. “Where would you like this, madam?”
I left a still-slumbering Sushi behind, went out and crossed the hall to see what this was all about. Actually, I had a vague idea, and if you've read any of our previous accounts—
Antiques Con
, for example—you may have one, too.
“Oh, good morning, dear!” Mother said from her doorway with a smile, craning around Seabert and his cargo to do so. “Lovely day waiting for us out there!”
The innkeeper, holding on to the sign sideways like a body he was dragging off somewhere, said, “Mrs. Borne?
Where
, please? This is heavier than you might think.”
She withdrew into the room and I heard her say, “Over by the window will be fine. And just drop the sack of letters on the floor in front of it.”
“Yes, Mrs. Borne,” the innkeeper responded, despondently dutiful.
I joined them and shut the door behind me. Seabert glanced at me and winced at the thought of sharing his indignity further.
After he'd done Mother's bidding, the faux-Fawlty faced her. “I am humiliated and ashamed, madam.”
“Please stop referring to me as ‘madam,' Mr. Falwell. I'm beginning to feel like the proprietress of a bordello.”
“I'm sorry. So sorry. Please let me explain my actions. . . .”
Mother tossed a hand. “No need. I quite understand your motive—you wanted to unsettle the trustees who had voted no on incorporation.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “What's going on here?”
Her eyes still on our hangdog host, she said to me, “Mr. Falwell was responsible for posting those unnerving messages.”
“Not
all
of them,” the innkeeper insisted defensively, eyes flicking briefly my way. “Not the ones about rotten rooms or horses on the moon. That was some prankster. But yes, the others, I did do.”
I said, “Well,
those
were the nasty ones.”
“Yes, and I do apologize. And, believe me, I wish I hadn't.”
“I wish you hadn't, as well,” Mother said. “Particularly considering that the suspicious deaths of Barclay Starkadder and Fred Hackney followed soon after.”
Seabert raised his hands as if in surrender. “You're being most unfair, Mrs. Borne. Barclay died from a heart attack, and Fred's fall was accidental. My messages had
nothing
to do with what happened to them.”
“My inquiries,” Mother announced, “indicate both men were murdered.”
His hands came down to settle on his chest, his eyebrows high over wide eyes. “You can't think
I
had anything to do with that!”
Mother studied him like a script page. “Not directly, no. But you may have inadvertently inspired someone to take advantage of your threatening messages—just as you were inspired to write them by some unknown prankster.”
I knew she was just rattling his cage now. But that had been low of the man, posting those ominous messages after the deaths.
He lowered his head and folded his hands, holding them before him. He was outright pleading. “Please, please, in heaven's name,
please
don't tell Celia. She would kill me.”
“Poor choice of words,” Mother said.
It was no surprise that Seabert was more worried about his wife's wrath than what harm he might have caused. But then, if I were in his place, I might feel the same way.
“I see no reason to inform your wife,” Mother said magnanimously. “Nor the authorities—unless a law enforcement officer questions me on the subject, and it becomes necessary.”
His relieved sigh started at his toes and ended as it escaped through his pitiful smile. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are very kind, Mrs. Borne. Gracious beyond understanding.”
“Well, let's not overdo it,” Mother said. As if she hated overacting. Then, with a dismissive flip of the fingers of her right hand, she said, “You may go.”
Seabert almost ran to the door, going out with Mother on his heels, and she closed the door right behind him.
“Do you buy that?” I asked.
“I do, actually. I don't believe that weasel has it in him to conceive of such an elaborate, nefarious murder scheme.”
It occurred to me that I'd never heard anybody say “nefarious” out loud before, not even Mother.
I said, “Well, I agree with you, but not because he isn't capable of murder. After all, every time he looks at his wife, there's murder in his eyes.”
“True,” Mother allowed. “But then what makes you agree with me, dear?”
“If Seabert is the killer, he would never have posted those messages, calling attention to himself. And I doubt the real killer would take a chance, even in the middle of the night, of being seen rearranging those letters. Anyway, what would be the point?”
“Very impressive reasoning, my dear,” Mother was saying as she adjusted the positioning of the sign near the window.
I nodded toward the thing. “I'm afraid I already have a sick feeling about why you blackmailed Seabert into loaning you that sign.”
She sat on the foot of the bed, where the tilt she'd given the sign gave her a good view. “Dear, you
know
I can't concentrate sufficiently on a case without my incident board.”
At home, she always used an old schoolroom blackboard on wheels to compile her suspect list. And on a recent trip to New York, where we attended a comics convention in the Hotel Pennsylvania, a lobby-café chalkboard sign went mysteriously missing. (Yep,
Antiques Con
.)
Mother was saying, “I'll give you a name, and you arrange it on the board with the letters.”
“Mother—what, do you expect me to go down on my knees in front of that sign and empty the bag of black letters, and spread them on the floor and take dictation from you? That will take an hour!”
It took half an hour.
Now the board looked like this:
PRIME SUSPECTS
CELIA
DIGBY
FATHER C
FLORA
 
SECONDARY SUSPECTS
SE BERT
CH D
BREND
HENRI TT
(I eventually ran out of letters
A
and
E
, so you'll have to fill in those blanks yourself, mentally, just as Mother did.)
“How's that?” I asked, sitting back on my haunches.
Mother nodded. “Satisfactory.”
She was doing Nero Wolfe again, but I doubted Archie Goodwin would have had the patience, much less the lack of self-respect, that it took to crouch for half an hour putting letters on that sign.
I went over to where she was seated on the bed and joined her. “Mind telling me where you were this morning? I had to take breakfast by myself.”
“I meant to get around to that, dear,” she said, eyes gleaming. “I attended a
most
interesting church service, then had lunch with some very knowledgeable local ladies.”
Then Mother preceded to tell me about Father Cumberbatch's cryptic sermon (well, what she'd heard of it before dropping off) and how Sheriff Rudder had come and gone in the night, writing off the Hackney death as accidental.
Also, she informed me of Digby's twenty-thousand-dollar withdrawal from his bank, and Celia's failed attempt to get a loan for that amount, for imaginary repairs and renovations. Both pointed to a payoff of some kind.
Finally, saving the best for last, Mother revealed that Chad Marlowe drove a car with one working headlight.
“Chad?”
I said. “Why would
he
want to run us down?”
Unless it was his idea of reviewing our performance last night.
Mother stood and smoothed her Breckenridge ensemble. “Well, we're supposed to pick up our check at the theater in a few minutes. Why don't we
ask
him?”
I said, “That could be dangerous. I spoke to Tony last night, and he said if there
is
a killer at large in Old York? That killer is getting desperate, and escalating.”
“He did, did he? Well, I don't see Chief Cassato here at our side investigating.”
“It's not his case.”
“No, but his beloved Brandy is in the thick of it. Why isn't he here protecting you?”
“Because I promised him we'd head home as soon as we get our check.”
Behind the lenses, her eyes grew huge. Huger. “And you took it upon yourself to speak for both of us?”
“I did.”
“And you imagined I'd comply?”
Not really.
“Anyway,” she said flippantly, “who needs Chief Tony Cassato for protection? Sushi's sharp little teeth have come to our aid in more than one instance.”
Right. Who needed a brawny, armed police detective when a ten-pound shih tzu was on the job?
I mulled it. “You know . . . Chad might figure out that we suspect him, if we don't go over and pick up our check. And we
do
still have to retrieve our hats. I mean, he can't run us over in his office, right? Particularly if we don't betray that we do suspect him.”
“Exactly! Just act naturally, like me.” She said that with a straight face, by the way.
I checked my wristwatch. “What about our rooms? It's already almost checkout time.”
“We'll take care of that when we get back from the theater, dear. Anyway, I have the distinct feeling that Seabert will be lenient on that matter.”
“We better take the car,” I said, not wanting to walk back from the theater with the box of hats.
“Very good, dear. I'll meet you downstairs.”
I returned to my room to get Sushi and her carry-sling, plus my little cross-over bag with car keys and cell.
Soon we were piling into the Ford C-Max in the parking lot behind the inn and taking the short drive over to the theater, where I parked in front.
The New Vic's lobby doors were locked, and a call from my cell to the office's number went unanswered.
“Let's go around back,” Mother suggested. “Maybe the stage door is open.”
It wasn't, but an outside staircase led to a door on the top floor.
Staring up there, Mother said, “Millie mentioned that Chad lives in an apartment above the theater.” She gestured to the stairs. “Shall we?”
“What's the point? He's not here.” I jerked a thumb at the empty graveled spot with grooved tire tracks next to the staircase.
Mother shrugged and said, “Perhaps Chad moved his car in case we might recognize it.”
“That's possible, Mother . . . but that's a long, steep climb to see if you're right.”
But she was already a third of the way up.
And of course I followed. Several times we paused while she caught her breath—I took advantage of those stops, too, as Sushi was surprisingly heavy in the sling—but eventually we made it to the small outdoor landing with wrought-iron railing.
Mother knocked on the apartment door.
Nothing.
She knocked again—harder.
When that too brought no result, Mother tried the knob, which turned in her hand.
She threw me a wicked gleam. “You know what I always say about an unlocked door, dear.”
I did. “It's an open invitation to enter.”
“It surely is. And another thing I always say is, you can't break and enter when there's no breaking.”
“But you're
still
entering. . . .”
Only she already had.
The door opened into a living room, decidedly male in decor: black leather couch and recliner, modern accent tables, and a massive entertainment center with all the latest toys. Chad's grandmother's reduced financial straits had had no apparent impact on the apartment above the theater.
And while the New Vic might lack technological advances, Chad Marlowe did not. His flat-screen TV alone was twice the size of ours.
We moved through the living room and down a narrow hallway, where we paused at an open doorway. The bedroom showed signs of hurried departure—dresser drawers pulled open and emptied, open closet cleared, some hangers askew, others on the floor, as if clothes had been ripped from them.
“As they say in jolly Old England,” Mother said, “methinks Chad has done a runner.”
She crossed to a corner wastebasket, knelt, and began riffling through it.
After a few moments, Mother exclaimed, “Ah-ha!”
She held up a handful of white and brown paper strips like she'd won the lottery.
She said, “Here are four bank wrappers, each labeling five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. If these aren't from Digby's payoff, I'll eat my hat. I'll eat every hat in our Scottish play!”

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