Free Antiques Bizarre by Barbara Allan Page A

what hit it. Then I followed with a large dose of vanilla malt to show my tummy who was boss.
    That tactic worked for a while, but then I had to quit eating, when my stomach warned of impending disaster, should I continue.
    “Anything wrong?” Tina asked.
    “Just had a big breakfast,” I lied. “This on top of that….”
    While my gal pal worked on her fries, I excused myself to use the ladies’ room, because…Why do you think? I was pregnant! I had to pee a lot….
    I used the bathroom, then took a different route back, passing a private dining room, where a small group of people were in the midst of a party, being serenaded by some of the female waitstaff. (Imagine alley cats meowing “Happy Birthday,” with somebody tugging on tails to help them hit the high notes.)
    I stopped to watch the guest of honor, stocky Sergei Ivanov, blow out the candles on a huge, quadruple banana split sundae with all the trimmings, sending some of the whipped cream across the table. As solemn as a priest preparing to give communion, he grabbed up a spoon and dug in, not sharing with the other guests, although utensils and plates had been brought for them.
    The other guests included his fellow Fabergé bidders, as well as American Mid-West Magazine publisher Samuel Woods. If I wasn’t going to be involved in this mystery, the suspects simply couldn’t go around having group meetings like this.
    While I stood there gaping with the manners of a goldfish, they morphed into Mother’s game pieces: bald Sergei“Cootie Head” Ivanov; blond, slender, handsome Don “Leg Bone” Kaufman; curvaceous, sophisticated brunette Katherine “Candlestick” Estherhaus; boyish, bespectacled, British John “Ninja Turtle” Richards; and of course nattily-attired Samuel “Top Hat” Woods.
    As the waitstaff filed out, I stepped in and said, “Well, I see someone has something to celebrate.”
    And was greeted with a horde of hostile eyes.
    “Brandy Borne?” I prompted. “I assisted my mother, Vivian, who brought all of you together?”
    Cootie-Head Ivanov slammed down his spoon and flecks of whipped cream flew. “ You! ” His Russian accent couldn’t have been thicker if he’d been a local actor Mother was directing. “You have nerve to crash party!”
    “Actually, no. I was just using the rest room. I wasn’t expecting to come upon the cast party for Murder on the Orient Express .”
    This crack earned alarmed expressions from one and all, which they traded amongst themselves like kids swapping baseball cards.
    Only birthday boy Ivanov wasn’t speechless: “You, Miss Borne, are reason we cannot return home! You and that stupid woman.”
    I went on the defensive—nobody calls my mother stupid! Besides me.
    “My mother and I aren’t the reason you’re still in Serenity, having birthdays and ice cream…. You know, you could share a little with the other children, Sergei. Has the Communist spirit totally died in you? Anyway, it’s the police who are keeping you here, because of at least one suspicious death. And it could be that someone in this room is the real person keeping you here—if one of you nice people shoved Louis Martinette over the staircase railing.”
    Have I mentioned I was off the Prozac?
    Leg Bone Kaufman was patting the air. His expression was conciliatory as he said, “I’m afraid— what’s your name again?”
    “Brandy Borne. You can call me Brandy. We’re all friends here, right?”
    Kaufman’s smile was as crinkly as wadded-up paper. “I’m afraid, Brandy, meaning nothing personal, that we all feel that way about your mother, and the incompetent way she conducted this event. There should have been more security.”
    “As is all too obvious after the fact,” Ninja Turtle Richards said, his British accent as crisp as Sergei’s Russian one was thick. “You and your mother knew that you had a precious object that would go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You should have known what kind of people