A Killing in Antiques by Mary Moody Page B

he called as I stepped out of the van.
    He seemed to be waiting for me, and when I raised my eyebrows in question, he explained that he’d been waiting since Mildred called him from her cell phone.
    “I’ve got some glass on the kitchen table for you to look at.” He waved for me to follow him into the camper.
    Glass? I wondered if I had wasted yet more time. But it really was Sandwich, mostly small pieces. A very old doorknob, some lacy salts, a matched pair of curtain tiebacks, and two lacy pattern plates that were about eight inches across. It was all clear glass, none colored, and his prices were fair, so I took it all.
    “I have a customer who would like an early blue salt,” I said when we finished our business.
    “I have some colored glass, including blue salts, back at my shop,” he said. He gave me his card, told me I could call him or give the card to my customer. I nodded. There are customers that I can send directly to another dealer, and there are some for whom I prefer to remain a middleman.

11
    I drove back to Boston fending off thoughts of Monty’s murder. I looked forward to relaxing. We keep a phone, but no answering machine, so no messages, and therefore, no complications. A long soak in the huge old bathtub and a good night’s rest would bring me back to life.
    Even as I pulled the van into what was surely the last parking space in Boston, I could remember nothing of the drive home. My body was heavy with fatigue. I hurt in several places where I long ago had muscles, and my left hip was stiff again. I let myself into the apartment.
    The place looked cozy, furnished sparsely with castoffs I had picked up for a song. Future antiques, we’d called them. The building, converted to apartments, then converted later to even smaller apartments, and then finally sliced into itty-bitty condos, was once a single-family home. Our place was on the parlor level; the entire apartment had once been the front parlor.
    Now it’s an oddly proportioned living-sleeping room, a tiny kitchen, and an even tinier bathroom, where a big old-fashioned bathtub takes up most of the space. When we first leased the place for Nancy, I had rearranged the furniture a dozen times, but I’ve since surrendered. It is what it is—a small apartment built within a large room.
    Two notes, I saw, had been slipped under the door: “Lucy, call Matt when you get back, Sonny,” and, “Lucy, call Hamp when you get back, Sonny.” So much for no answering machines.
    Sonny’s door is across the hall; his apartment occupies the back parlor, or sitting room. We see him rarely, and might never have met, except that he had once interrupted an argument between Hamp and me at the front door of the once elegant old brownstone.
    We had arrived without warning because we—that is, I—wanted to surprise Nancy with an antique desk that she had greatly admired when she was last home at the Cape. Hamp wanted to call and tell her we were coming, but I knew she’d be here. She had the week off from school, and she was determined to spend it studying in Boston. Otherwise, of course, she would have come home to the Cape and spent time with us.
    Sonny heard Nancy’s name mentioned and asked who we were. Except that he was wearing a gigantic cowboy hat, he looked like a pretty regular guy to me, and I began explaining who we were. When I said we were her parents delivering a desk that she wanted, he said, “No problem.” He’d be happy to let us in.
    “You have a key to Nancy’s apartment?” we asked.
    “Sure, I pick up her mail and bring it in for her.”
    “Huh?”
    “Sure, she has a key to my place, and I have a key to her place, no problem.”
    And with that Sonny opened the heavy door, unlocked his mailbox and Nancy’s mailbox, and took the mail. Then he dashed into his place, found Nancy’s key, and ushered us in.
    The apartment looked oddly neat. Sonny told us to knock on his door when we were through moving the desk. He’d lock up