Antiques Bizarre Read Free Page B

harder to come by.”
    The woman carefully opened the egg, revealing a small crystal bird with a gold wreath in its beak.
    “The dove of peace,” the woman said proudly.
    “Well, it’s not much to look at,” Mother said matter-of-factly, “but still, it is the fiftieth and final egg commissioned by the Tsar.”
    I asked Madam Petrova, “How can you be sure this is the genuine article?” Quickly adding, after Mother shot me a reproving look, “Not to be impertinent.”
    Our hostess smiled enigmatically.
    Then she said, “As a very young man, my father, Peter Petrov, was an apprentice at the House of Fabergé in St. Petersburg. Then the Russian Revolution began, and one evening, when he was working late, the Bolsheviks broke down the door and ransacked the business, taking everything of value. My father had only enough time to escape out the back, but he managed to grab one item—thisprecious egg. Which traveled with him to Finland, then Sweden. And in Norway he caught a boat to America.”
    The woman’s smile turned inward.
    “That’s where he met my mother, who was returning to Iowa after visiting relatives in Oslo. They fell in love on the crossing, and settled here, where my mother’s family—who owned a lumber mill—brought my father into their business.”
    Again, I could tell that Mother knew all of this, and was trying hard not to show her impatience.
    Mother cleared her throat. “ About the egg…”
    Madam Petrova took a deep breath. “I quite agree with you, Vivian.”
    “You do?”
    She nodded. “I can’t think of any better use for it. This town and its people have been good to me over these many years, and if this object can bring in a good deal of money to help those now in need…then, yes, certainly, of course I agree to donate it.”
    Mother smiled broadly, as if auditioning for the Joker role in the next Batman movie.
    But I foresaw a possible problem.
    I asked, “What about your nephew? Wouldn’t he object?”
    Knickknacks were one thing, but a Fabergé egg?
    Mother had reached behind Madam Petrova and was in the process of pinching my side, when a deep voice asked, “Would I object to what?”
    Entering the room was Clifford Ashland, the son of our hostess’s deceased sister. Tall, confident, with good looks rivaling the old swashbuckling movie star Stewart Granger, he wore expensive resort clothes—navy and white seersucker jacket, butter-yellow open-collar shirt, white slacks, and white deck shoes sans socks. Seeming more Palm Beachthan Serenity, the nephew bent and kissed the cheek of his aunt as she raised her smiling face to him.
    Ashland’s eyes went to Mother, and then me; they did not have Granger’s twinkle, though in other circumstances, they might have. Were Mother and I skunks at a garden party?
    Madam Petrova said with a gesture, “You know Mrs. Borne, and this is her daughter, Brandy….”
    “Yes, of course,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve bought several small Art Deco items recently from your booth at the antiques mall.”
    Mother had been stocking our little business in Pearl City Plaza since I’d been under the weather, so this was news to me.
    Mother gushed, “It’s so nice to see you again, Mr. Ashland.”
    I suppressed a gag. Had Mother forgotten that before Clifford Ashland had made his millions, he’d been a used-car salesman, from whom I’d purchased my first set of wheels, which had died an unceremonious death in the middle of an intersection on our way home, after which Mother had called him a charlatan (actually a blankety-blank charlatan)? But apparently, all is forgiven if you buy from our booth.
    (Look, I know I said the “s” word was pretty much the extent of Mother’s swearing, and it is. What she literally said was, “You’re a blankety-blank charlatan!”)
    The nephew’s attention went to the Fabergé egg cradled on his aunt’s lap.
    “That ugly old thing,” he said with a chuckle, and a kind of shudder. “Definitely not laid