Antiques Swap Read Online Free PDF Page B

sell less shirts than you.”
    â€œI’m just being realistic, dear. Television is about personalities! And I have one.”
    I reared back as if just hit by a cream pie.
    Before I could recover, the phone rang on the counter. I answered it, forcing my voice into pleasantness. “Trash ‘n’ Treasures . . .”
    â€œBrandy? This is Vanessa.”
    Oh, crap! Vanessa as in Mrs. Wesley Sinclair III.
    In a rush of words, I said, “Vanessa, I want to apologize again for—”
    â€œBrandy, I’m calling you to ask if you’ll forgive me for my rude behavior today.”
    Wait, what?
    She went on, “I was way out of line. Wes explained the whole thing to me.” She paused. “I was wondering if you could come over to our house. . . .”
    I didn’t have the time or the wardrobe for that. “Vanessa, really, you don’t need to apologize in person or anything . . .”
    â€œNo, no, that’s not it. I have some collectibles that you might be interested in for your shop. You could buy them or I could even consign them. Just some things that need to go.”
    â€œWhat are they?”
    â€œOld beer signs, mostly—some going back to the nineteen-fifties. I understand a few of these are really quite rare.”
    â€œWell, yes, I am interested. We could use some man-type stuff in the shop.”
    â€œGreat! Is there any chance you could come over now? You know where we live?”
    â€œOh, sure, of course.” The renovation of the Sinclair homestead had been a topic of town gossip for years.
    â€œSee you soon,” Vanessa said cheerfully, ending the call.
    Mother, her interest piqued by hearing my end of the conversation, sidled over like a cat sensing a mouse. “Now whatever was that about?”
    â€œJust a minor misunderstanding,” I said. And, sidestepping the swap meet incident, I said, “Vanessa Sinclair wants to sell us some vintage beer signs.”
    â€œWhoa!” Mother’s eyebrows climbed above her large glasses, threatening her hairline. “ Voon -der-bar! Rich folks have high-end trinkets! I’ll get my purse.”
    I held up a stop hand. “Aren’t you forgetting that someone needs to watch the store? Joe is off on maneuvers.”
    Mother frowned. “Oh, horse doodle! I’ve always wanted to see the interior of that house.”
    The Sinclair place was one of the few interesting homes in town she hadn’t managed to invade. But so far, she hadn’t been able to finagle her way inside.
    Her usual ploy was to ring the doorbell collecting for some charity, pretending to feel faint before asking to come in for a glass of water. But either the Sinclairs had never been at home for her road-show production, or perhaps they had seen who was loitering on their doorstep.
    I patted Mother’s arm. “Look, I’ll go over there now and take photos of the beer signs, then come back so we can research their value on the Internet. Then . . . after the shop closes . . . we’ll go back out there together, and make Vanessa an offer.”
    Mother clapped her hands. “Goody goody!” she sang, adding a few more of the Johnny Mercer lyrics, first pointing to me, then to herself.
    Oh brother.
    With Mother appeased, I headed out to the Caddy.
    One might assume that Wes and Vanessa, with their considerable wealth, would live in a modern mansion in the most exclusive area of Serenity. But they didn’t—Wes had inherited his grandfather’s Mulberry Avenue home, known as Sinclair House. Not that the homestead was anything to sniff at—the three-story, beige-brick French provincial had once been the grandest residence on that side of town, dwarfing its much more modest neighbors.
    As I mentioned, Sinclair House had been a topic of town gossip, because Wes and (really) Vanessa—evidently dissatisfied with the home’s lack of twenty-first century sprawl—had spent a