Free Antiques Fruitcake by Barbara Allan

into East Hill residential. Built around the turn of the last century, the place had a downstairs parlor, a music room, a formal dining room, and spacious kitchen; four bedrooms and a bath occupied the upstairs.
    In setting up our shop, Mother and I decided to slant each room toward its original purpose—that is to say, all of our kitchen antiques were in the kitchen, bedroom sets in the bedrooms, linens in the linen closet, formal furniture in the parlor, and so forth—even the knicknacks were placed where you might expect them to be (only with price tags).
    Our customers often had the vague sense that they were visiting an elderly relative—a grandmother or kindly old aunt—with so many lovely things on display. Only at Trash ‘n’ Treasures, you didn’t have to wait to inherit something; for the listed price (or maybe a haggled-over lower one), you could walk right out with whatever caught your eye.
    The spacious entry hallway was where we put our check-out counter, so that we could greet customers, and also keep an eye on the downstairs rooms. Mother and I believed a certain amount of pilfering was better business than security cameras hovering high in every corner announcing: “We don’t trust you.”
    Besides, even a state-of-the-art system couldn’t compare to our secret weapon: the all-knowing, now all-seeing shih tzu, who with her Sushi sense could detect a nervous shoplifter, following him or her from room to room with an accusatory glare. (Now if someone would only steal that darn smiley-face alarm clock!)
    Before moving our business into the house, Mother asked Serenity’s resident New Age guru, Tilda Tompkins, to meet us there and conduct a reading to make sure we weren’t going to upset any spirits—especially murdered ones—thereby courting bad karma. A disgruntled ghost slamming a door was one thing . . . knives hurtling through the air was quite another.
    Mother, Tilda, and I had sat in a circle on the floor of the empty parlor holding hands, while the guru closed her eyes, chanting softly, summoning any willing visitor from the other side.
    But much to Mother’s disappointment, no one answered. Oh, there was a sneeze . But it turned out to have come not from a departed one who’d died of pneumonia, rather from Sushi, thanks to some antique dust she’d breathed in.
    The next day, still uncertain, Mother asked Father O’Leary to come bless the house, which he did, even though we belonged to New Hope Church. For flood relief, Mother had organized a charity bazaar at St. Mary’s, which brought in a lot of money ( Antiques Bizarre ), so we’d racked up some good Catholic-style karma there.
    Father O’Leary intoned a prayer in the entryway, then went from room to room, sprinkling the air with Epiphany water, and marking each door in chalk with the initials CMB—“Christ bless this house.” If Linda Blair happened to drive through Serenity, and stopped to do some antiquing, she’d be just fine, though some of our collectibles were real head-turners.
    And so, with our bases covered from New Age spiritualism to old-time religion, we moved our antiques in, and Trash ‘n’ Treasures was ready to rock ‘n’ roll.
    Anyway, Saturday morning.
    Mother and I and Sushi were waiting in the shop for Joe Lange to arrive and “take the conn” (as the longtime Trekkie put it) so that we could attend the swap meet down on the riverfront.
    Joe was tall and loose-limbed, with nice features that were somehow a wee bit off—one eye higher than the other, mouth a touch too wide, nose off center. He was a committed bachelor (in the sense that he’d been occasionally institutionalized), was an old pal of mine since our community college days, when we were assigned as lab partners in biology class. I’d been faced with a crucial decision: either strangle the irritating nerd, or befriend him. I chose the