Antiques Slay Ride

Book 0: Trash ‘n’ Treasures Mystery

by Barbara Allan

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Private Investigators

Synopsis

Ho Ho Homicide The Christmas rush is on as Brandy Borne and her quaintly quirky mother, Vivian, sniff out plum collectibles for resale, only to find the owner of a Santa's workshop worth of treasures has received some deadly tidings. It's beginning to look a lot like murder. . .but who wanted the deceased closed for the holidays—permanently? Maybe a rival antiques dealer, a Grinch who collects Christmas? Or the victim's suspiciously frosty stepchildren? Brandy and Vivian check their list of who's been naughty or nice, but it may take a Christmas miracle—and some help from Sushi, their elfin shih tzu—to tie a bow around the season's most wanted killer! DON'T MISS BRANDY BORNE'S TIPS ON ANTIQUES! Praise for Barbara Allan and the Trash ‘n' Treasures Mystery Series. . . "A humorous cozy that teems with quirky characters." — Booklist "Brandy and her eccentric mother make a hilarious team of snoops." —Joan Hess "Top pick! Thrills, laugh-out-loud moments and amazingly real relationships." — Romantic Times Book Reviews "You'll laugh out loud." — Mystery Scene 19,500 Words

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 75

Sample

I was dreaming in my warm bed, visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, when Mother came into my room, rudely awakening me by banging on an old toy drum. She had bought the thing for the six-year-old me on a long-ago Christmas as a measure of self-defense—an attempt to keep her pots and pans (and spoons) from getting further dented.

An old trick on her part—I had long since learned to work the noise of that toy drum into my dreams, but just as the sugarplums were lining up in a row right out of Babes in Toyland, Mother yanked the covers back, exposing me to cold air and colder reality.

I was not happy—“I” being Brandy Borne, a thirty-two-year-old divorced bottle-blonde who’d come running home to Mother (a.k.a. Vivian Borne), home being the little Mississippi River town we call Serenity, Iowa. Well, everybody who lives here calls it Serenity, Iowa, but that includes us.

And someone else was not happy about being bothered: Sushi, my blind shih tzu, nestled behind my knees. The poochie was the consolation prize I’d slunk home with after the divorce—my bad, resulting from an indiscretion with an old boyfriend the weekend of my ten-year high school reunion. Jake, my thirteen-year-old son, lived with Roger in Chicago. But my ex and I had patched things up to the point where we were more than civil.

Civil toward Mother was not something Sushi and I felt right now, and we let out a low communal growl.

Still drumming, Mother chirped, “Uppie-uppie-uppie,” as if I were still a child who might respond to that cheerfully delivered annoyance by reaching for, and tossing, a pillow.

I reached for and tossed a pillow.

Mother batted it away as if it were nothing more than an oversize snowflake, not missing a beat on the toy drum.

Croaking through the frog in my throat, I whined, “But I wanna sleep iiiiiiin.”

Monday was the only day we didn’t have to work at our antiques store.

“Starving children in China want ice water,” came her immediate if incoherent reply. “Up, up, up!”

“No!”

“Now, Brandy, we have places to go, things to do, and people to see.”

I hate it when Mother says that, which is about every day, it seems.

“What time is it?” I groaned, sitting up. It was hard getting comfortable without a pillow. (I already knew the answer: eight o’clock; this was just more grousing.)

“Why . . . time to get going, dear,” she replied sweetly, then strode out of the room (no longer banging her drum, thank goodness, but still marching to her own drummer . . . as always).

I had learned not to ask Mother about her agenda until I’d had a hot breakfast, just as she’d learned not to inflict it upon me until a cup of coffee had turned me semihuman.

I crawled out of bed, and stumbled off to the bathroom; Sushi, lucky her, stayed behind in a nest of blankets.

Shortly thereafter, refreshed, my shoulder-length hair squeaky clean (and actually brushed), I stepped into my DKNY jeans, tugged on a black V-neck cashmere sweater I’d snagged half-off last year, and headed barefoot downstairs. It’s a two-story, turn-of-the-century home, or it had been before it got blown up (see Antiques Roadkill) and rebuilt from the original plans.

On the way to the dining room, I passed by our Christmas tree, in the front picture window, and shook my head. Not that it wasn’t beautifully decorated—it very much was, this and every year a stunning collaborative Christmas vision court. . .