Antiques Roadkill (7 page)

“Yes … what’s this about? Has something happened to her?”

“I’m afraid she may be in a lot of trouble.”

“For driving without a license?”

He frowned, hesitated, then said, “It’s considerably more serious than that. Your mother came into the station claiming she killed someone … but that’s all the information we could get out of her. She seemed confused … disoriented.”

My knees buckled and I leaned against my car.

The young officer took my arm. “Are you all right?”

I didn’t answer him. For a moment I wondered if I’d
ever
be all right again.…

“If you know anything about this,” the officer said, firm but kind, “you need to tell us.”

“Take me to her,” I said.

A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

Antiques and collectibles should be insured against fire and theft. But if you’re short on cash like me, just make sure you unplug the iron and lock the house before leaving.

T
he Safety Building—a two-story redbrick monolith also housing the fire department—was home to the Serenity PD. Behind the seventies-era structure sat a new state-of-the-art county jail, aping the bland redbrick design of its safeguarding neighbor.

To the casual passerby, the jail might seem a law office or a medical clinic, the grounds tastefully landscaped, the premises lacking any barbed wire or electrical fence. The only “tell” as to its true purpose was the row of tiny, too-high barred windows on the second floor, where the prisoners were housed.

Kitty-corner to the jail stood Serenity’s grand old courthouse, a breathtakingly beautiful white wedding cake of sandstone and marble. Every couple of years or so, the folks working inside this noble Grecian structure would start grumbling for an ignoble modern facility, because they were hot or crowded or whatever. Mother would hear about a circulating petition for such and scream, “Over my dead body will that courthouse be torn down!” and fly into action, gathering her historical conservation troops and descending on city council meetings like a barbarian horde in support hose.

Rather than deal with the likes of Mother, the council would soon find some money for the purchase of a few
more courthouse air conditioners, and recommend that a storage room or two be cleared out for additional offices, and things would settle down for a while. Currently Mother had written her several congressmen (state and national) about protecting the structure with historical status. Nothing had come of it yet, but then you must keep in mind that all of those congressmen likely have a special file for Mother’s missives, possibly circular.

You might say the wheels of justice in Serenity worked closely together: a perp could be taken into custody at the police station, then hauled into court, and thrown into jail, all within a block or so … almost like one-stop shopping! (Shop-lifting location optional.)

Some time past midnight, I pulled my urine-yellow Taurus into the nearly vacant lot of the Safety Building, having dutifully followed Officer Lawson, who had come to the house looking for me.

Businesslike but polite, the officer—tall, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and not at all hard on the orbs—ushered me through the front door of the station, past a small waiting area where a few perfunctory plastic chairs crowded around a scarred coffee table strewn with public-awareness pamphlets. A soda machine hummed an electronic nontune in one corner.

I followed Officer Lawson down a beige-tiled corridor to a large, probably bulletproof window, behind which a ponytailed woman dressed in blues sat surrounded by a bank of screens and computers, like an air-traffic controller at O’Hare Airport.

At the moment, all was quiet on the western front, but the middle-of-the-night atmosphere held the promise of something bad breaking that mood any moment. The female officer took her eyes off a screen and looked at us as if we were a museum exhibit that had just materialized before her.

Lawson nodded; she nodded back, and buzzed us on through a heavy metal door … which is to say, a heavy door made of metal, not one decorated with rock-band stickers.

Down another institutional hallway we trod, footsteps echoing like muted gunshots off the gray walls, which were not at all cheered up by a few hanging pictures, mostly of posed rows of police department personnel past, and shots of the severe, grotesque police station of bygone days, long since torn down (Mother came to her senses on
that
one).

We stopped at a scuffed steel door marked
INTERVIEW ROOM
—kinder, gentler terminology for Interrogation Room, I supposed.

Next to the door was a small built-in wall safe. This Lawson opened with a key, took his gun out of its holster and placed the weapon inside, then locked it again.

Did he think Mother was really that dangerous? That she might go for his gun? Or did I have a wild look in my eyes that told him I might try for his rod?

He must have read my thoughts, or at least their gist. With a little shrug he said, “Procedure.” Then he opened the door to the Interview Room and I went in ahead of my handsome host.

Mother was alone, seated in a metal folding chair next to a metal card table, both fixtures firmly bolted to the floor. The room, sparse, small, seemed claustrophobic, cold. Steel rings for shackling (thankfully not in use at the moment) were attached ominously to one wall like especially ugly earrings.

I was startled and frightened by Mother’s appearance—eyes flitting wildly behind the large glasses, lips trembling, hands clutching what remained of a shredded tissue.

I was immediately worried about her mental well-being, but when Mother saw me she stood and pulled herself up
to her full height, head high, chin jutting, eyes winning a struggle to focus behind the glasses.

“I am all right, my dear,” she announced. The “my dear” designation was reserved for when we had an audience. “The local gendarmes have been very nice to me, even gotten me a tissue or two.”

I said, “We should call Mr. Ekhardt, Mother.”

She gave her head a toss. “Bosh! He’s in bed and I won’t bother him at this hour. An older man like him, well, we must have certain considerations.”

Mother did have a point.

Mr. Ekhardt had been our family attorney since I was in diapers; now he was old enough for adult diapers. In the late eighties, he semiretired, but kept a handful of clients, including the Bornes (Mother had been best friends with his late wife) and every so often, like an old fire horse responding to a clanging bell, Mr. Ekhardt would take on a criminal case. Even now he made a commanding presence in the courtroom—except, perhaps, when he fell asleep.

Mother once told me about the time in the 1950s when Mr. Ekhardt first made a name for himself as Serenity’s goto trial lawyer when he got a woman off for shooting her sleeping husband in the chest five times “in self-defense” … and I mean she went scot-free. This was back when a man could smack a woman around and not get thrown in jail, so it was some kind of victory. Mother said all the men in town were
awfully
nice to their wives for a long time after that!

But if Mother was in the kind of trouble I thought she was in, Mr. Ekhardt should be called, senior-citizen considerations be damned.

I swiveled to Officer Lawson. “Could I speak to my mother alone?”

He nodded. “I’ll be right outside.”

Soon we were by ourselves in the clammy cubicle.

I sat Mother back down, then took the other bolted chair, probably reserved for the interrogator … I mean “interviewer” … and I interviewed her. Which is to say, interrogated her.

“Tell me what happened, Mother—
exactly
what happened.”

Mother took a deep breath that started out confident but quickly turned quavery, her tough veneer beginning to buckle a bit. “I … I … came home, and you weren’t there … and the answer machine was blinking. I checked the message … it is
my
machine, after all, how was I to know it was for you?”

“I forgive you. Go on.”

“Anyway, it was the girl from that antique shop.”

“What girl? What antique shop?”

“She said her name was Tanya and that you’d spoken with her there.”

The redhead … Ginger, not Mary Ann.…

“She’s an associate of that terrible Carson person, and said he wanted you to come out to his house. He was willing to talk about letting us have our furniture back.”

The redhead had seemed rude and uninterested in me, but maybe she’d conveyed my desire to rebuy our stuff to her boss.

“Well,” Mother was saying, “I’d thought maybe you’d already gone out there, and saved the message … so I’d know where you were.”

“And then what, Mother?”

She nodded. “I got to thinking …”

Never a good sign.

“… and finally I decided to take my car—yes, I know I
shouldn’t
have, but I was
frightened
for you. That man Carson can be
awfully
mean.”

As the great Inspector Clouseau once said, in regard to a priceless Steinway he’d destroyed,
Not … any … more.

“I pulled into that circular drive of his, drove past the farmhouse and barn, but saw no sign of you, Brandy dear … so I hit the gas and headed home.”

“And also hit Carson?”

“No. Well, yes—he was in the road, prone there, and I didn’t see him. I sort of … bumped and thumped over him.”

Yikes,
I thought.

“Brandy, I got out to check—he was, not surprisingly, dead.” She straightened. “But. I think he must’ve been dead already. In fact, I assumed
you
had done it. So … so I turned myself in!”

Mother leaned forward, put a hand on mine, as if I were the one who needed comforting; maybe I was.

“Brandy,” she said, with considerable drama (make that melodrama), “you mustn’t worry about your old mother. Why, I’ve lived a good life, a long life.”

“Save it for the matinee, Mother. We need to call Mr. Ekhardt.”

“And that’s exactly why you needn’t worry! We will have Mr. Ekhardt in our corner! Don’t forget about that!”

Assuming the old gent lived long enough to defend her.

One thing was clear to me: Mother could not survive the ordeal of a trial. Or at least, her mental state couldn’t, and I was not about to see her institutionalized again, not after we’d made so much progress.

I stood, sighed, swallowed, opened the door, and asked Officer Lawson to step back in.

Calmly I said, “I don’t know what my mother told you, but
I
was the one who ran Carson over.”

“… Really?”

“It was dark and I just didn’t see him.”

Mother bolted up from the chair. “Brandy! What in heaven’s name are you saying? Officer, don’t you believe her. She’s just trying to protect me!”

I shook my head and pointed at Mother accusingly. “No …
she’s
trying to protect me.”

Lawson raised a traffic-cop palm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, as if we were a couple of brawling kids. “Settle down, ladies. Do I need to separate you two?”

Mother and I said nothing, not looking at each other.

“If I took your statement tonight, what—”

“I did it,” Mother and I said.

The officer took a long look at us, giving each of our faces a thorough going-over; he shook his head, sighed, smiled in a rumpled way, then crooked a finger at me, as if I were a grade-school student being summoned to the principal’s office.

And he said, “Ms. Borne, a word in the hall, please?”

I stepped out there with him, after he shut Mother back in.

“Can I give you a small word of advice?” He wasn’t really asking. “Stop covering for your mother.”

“I’m not—”

“Look, it’s not gonna take TV show forensics to know which of your cars was involved, and we’ll soon know who was behind the wheel, too. Pretty rudimentary police work.”

The thought of Mother facing a trial and even a prison sentence sent tears trailing down my cheeks. I didn’t have a tissue, but he found one for me. I used it.

His voice softened. “I’m not going to take your statements tonight. Neither one of you is a flight risk, and I know the police chief will want to talk to you, personally. Isn’t the chief a friend of yours, Ms. Borne?”

“Y-yes.”

“Look,” Lawson said, his voice softening. “I’m sure everything will straighten out—it’s clear you’re covering for each other.”

“I can—”

“No, you can’t. If either of you were involved, it was likely an accident. Everybody in town knows your mother has a history of mental illness—”

“What are you—”

“Quiet. I’m not going to report that your mother confessed to this, only that she was dazed and confused. And anything you said, well, I hadn’t advised you of your rights.”

I frowned at him. “Are you
now?”

“No. But I
am
advising you to contact your attorney, first thing tomorrow. And to stay in town.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

“You sure aren’t. There’s a little matter of your mother driving with a suspended license to sort out, at the very least.”

I nodded. Sniffed.

“I’ll come around to your house in the morning, after I’ve had a chance to talk with the police chief. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

Since the PD had impounded both our cars, Officer Lawson had to take us home.

Mother and I sat in exhausted silence in the backseat of the squad car, fenced in behind the wire barricade like a couple of criminals. Maybe one of us
was.…

Lawson pulled in our drive, got out, and opened the car door for us. Mother loped on ahead, disappearing into the darkened house surreptiously, a prisoner making a break for it. Lawson saw me up to the front steps, like a polite suitor; crickets and bullfrogs serenaded us.

I said, “Thanks for taking us home … and thanks for being decent to Mother. And … and for taking this slow.”

“I always take things slow,” he said with a shy smile. “By the way, my first name’s Brian.”

“Brian. Glad to meet you.”

“Oh, we’ve met before.”

In the darkness I could see a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.