Antiques Knock-Off

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2011 by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins

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Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2010941089

eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-6830-3
eISBN-10: 0-7582-6830-0

First Hardcover Printing: March 2011

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Printed in the United States of America

Also by Barbara Allan:­

Chapter One:­ Knock-­down

Chapter Two:­ Knocked-­off

Chapter Three:­ Knock-­worst

Chapter Four:­ Knock-­kneed

Chapter Five:­ Knock-­knock, Who’­s There­? Mother.­ Oh, Brother!

Chapter Six:­ Knock-­about

Chapter Seven:­ Don’­t Knock It

Chapter Eight:­ Knock On Wood

Chapter Nine:­ Knock ’­em Dead

Chapter Ten:­ Knock Before Entering

Chapter Eleven:­ Knock-­out

Chapter Twelve:­ Hard Knock Life

About the Authors

Brandy’s quote:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
nor iron bars a cage,
Minds innocent and quiet
take that for an hermitage.
Richard Lovelace

Mother’s quote:

You can lock me up and throw away the key, but in my head I’ll always be free.
Vivian Borne

I
f you are in a bookstore, reading this opening paragraph, trying to decide whether or not to shell out your hard-earned money, you should know that I, Brandy Borne—thirty-one, bottle blonde, divorced, who came running home last year to live with her bipolar mother— am not perfect. I make my share of mistakes. Repeatedly. I am not always what you might call “nice.” Nobody’s role model.

(Also, there will be parenthetical remarks. I’ve been told the mark of a really bad writer is the overuse of parenthetical remarks. But you wouldn’t know that, if I hadn’t made a parenthetical remark just now.)

Therefore, I will understand if you replace this book on the shelf. One favor, please, if you don’t make a purchase? Could you face the cover out? And, perhaps (if no clerks are lurking to catch you at it), move the book to a more prominent spot? Thank you.

So much has happened in the fourteen months since I’ve been back in Serenity, a small Midwestern town nestled on a bend of the mighty Mississippi, that I hardly know where to begin. Actually, I began four books ago, but don’t panic—I can catch you up quickly, and those of you
who have been with Mother and me from the beginning (God bless you, and no sneeze required) might appreciate a refresher.

Besides the several murder mysteries in which Mother and I got ourselves involved (Mother a willing participant, me not so), I had also received two disturbing anonymous letters.

The first claimed that my much-older sister, Peggy Sue— who lives in a tonier part of town—was my birth mother; the other missive insisted that my biological father was none other than a certain United States senator.

After confronting Sis about these obnoxious notes, she confirmed that their contents were accurate, which put an added strain on our already strained relationship. But we both came to the conclusion that, for the present, we would keep these revelations to ourselves, and not disturb the status quo. Sis was to remain Sis, and Mother Mother … which suited social-climbing Peggy Sue just fine. Me, I had my own reasons for keeping quiet, chief among them not disturbing an already plenty disturbed Mother, who had stopped taking her bipolar medication a few months ago.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled mystery novel (and there
will
be another mystery, and another murder, despite my best efforts otherwise)….

Summer had once again arrived in Serenity, though it seemed something of a surprise after endless snow and then continual rain that had caused a flood from which our little community was still recovering. These were what we Midwesterners call the dog days: hot and humid, a literal pressure cooker—well, not a literal pressure cooker, but more than just a figurative one.

And while those with money fled north to Minnesota and Canada until the weather cooled off, we common folk holed up in air-conditioned houses, or malls, or movie theaters,
venturing out only in the early-morning hours, or late evening, when the heat was barely tolerable.

At the moment, I was indoors, specifically upstairs in my bedroom, trying to find something to wear that was cool, and
cool.
Because being seven months pregnant during the summer was no picnic.

Oh! Didn’t I mention that I was expecting? Sorry. Okay, just a little more catching up….

My best friend, Tina, couldn’t have a baby with her husband, Kevin (because she’d had cervical cancer), so I volunteered to be a surrogate mother for them. (Sometimes I
am
nice.) But don’t worry—I’m not going to be all, “Ooooh, my back hurts,” and “I gotta pee again,” for three hundred pages. Nor will you have to encounter such verbs as “trundled,” or “waddled.” You’ll hardly even know I’m preggers. Just, when you picture me—shoulder-length blond hair, blue-eyed, kinda pretty—don’t forget to add a baby bump.

From my closet I selected an outfit Tina bought for me—a Juicy Couture yellow sundress (from their maternity line) and a pair of orange Havaianas (flip-flops that I’d always wanted but wouldn’t buy myself because I couldn’t pronounce them). You see, I figure if you dress right, people won’t think “trundle” or “waddle” when you pass them on the street.

Sushi, my brown-and-white, blind, diabetic shih tzu (actually, my only shih tzu, and the only thing besides clothes that I slunk home with after the divorce) (Jake, twelve, was staying with his father in Chicago) (I warned you about the parentheticals) was on the floor a few feet away, attacking an old brown Brighton snakeskin belt as if it were a real reptile. I used the thing to keep her busy while I got dressed, otherwise she’d drag out all my shoes from the closet. I would hide the belt in the bedroom for her to
find—which she’d sniff out in a nano-second, even though she couldn’t see it, having slobbered on the thing so much.

After checking myself out in the large round mirror of my Art Deco dressing table, feeling a pregnant woman of thirty-one had no right to look so cute, I scooped Sushi up and headed downstairs to find Mother.

This morning, we were taking in an antique mantel clock to be fixed; it was lovely but not keeping time. We had snagged the clock at a tag sale because the seller (an out-of-state relative of the deceased) didn’t know its regional value and, naturally, we kept mum, as is the prerogative of any dealer (first rule of collecting).

Mother and I had a booth at the downtown antiques mall—located in a four-story Victorian brick building— and we figured that once the clock had been cleaned and repaired, we could sell it for five times what we paid. Mother would take the lion’s share (or lioness’s share) because she had spotted it first.

Our acquisition was one of only a few thousand such clocks made right here in Serenity from about 1890 to 1920 by the celebrated Andre Acklin, who had emigrated from Switzerland to take advantage of the top quality wood from our lumber mills (for clock casings), and pearl from the Mississippi mussel shells (clock faces).

As a young man, Acklin had worked in France with Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet—future founders of Audemars Piguet Watch Company—but Acklin went his own way when the other two men began to concentrate on expensive pocket watches. Acklin preferred creating larger timepieces over working in miniature, and also wanted to use more natural materials.

Sadly, Serenity’s famed clockmaker died one bitter winter afternoon in 1920, when a fire broke out in his shop on Main Street, blotting out the cold temporarily and the
clockmaker permanently. According to local legend, some of his precious inventory did survive.

So, naturally, when Mother and I saw an opportunity to buy an Andre Acklin mantel clock for a song at the tag sale, we were nearly beside ourselves with excitement—although we did our best not to show it (second rule of collecting).

In the kitchen, I found Mother in all her manic glory, standing at the sink, feverishly polishing a vintage silver tea set that we never used. At least her energy, as of late, had been directed toward home improvement, not investigating some murder—real or imagined.

Mother—age unknown because she’d forged so many documents, but who had claimed to be seventy-four for the past three years—was a statuesque Dane, with porcelain skin nearly free of old age spots, wide mouth, narrow nose, prominent cheekbones, and pale blue eyes magnified to twice their size behind large round glasses. She wore her shoulder-length silver-white hair in a variety of buns on a variety of places on her head, even when she went to bed.