Antiques Maul by Barbara Allan Read Free Book Online

stripped down to our skivvies (me scanty pink lace; Mother long pink thermal) and dove under our respective covers.
    Unfortunately, Mother—even after all of her car napping—fell asleep faster than I did, and began to snore so loudly the windowpanes rattled. I wish that were a joke.
    Whenever we were on the road together, I considered it a race as to who got to sleep first. If I didn’t beat Mother to the punch, the snore-fest would make slumber a challenge for me, no matter how bushed I was.
    And I would just like to know…how can a person still hear with a thick feather pillow clamped against one ear, and the other ear pressed against a six-inch mattress?
    So I got up a couple of times and poked Mother with my finger, but she only rolled over and snored with renewed vigor and as much personality as she brought to her stage performances.
    About two in the morning, deciding against murder or suicide or murder/suicide, I grabbed my covers and stomped into the bathroom. In the tub I made myself a bed, pulled the shower curtain closed, snuggled in, and finally, finally, finally fell asleep.
    I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but apparently Mother came in to use the toilet and I must have stirred and made a noise, because she shrieked—which startled me!—and I jumped up, grabbed hold of the shower curtain, which fell down over me, and then Mother began beating my head with a hairbrush while screaming, “Rape! Rape!”
    Actually the second one was sort of a question.
    I tried to fend her off, hollering over her shrieks and the shrieking Psycho strings in my brain, “It’s me …it’s me !”
    But my words must have been muffled by the curtain because Mother ran gracelessly out of the bathroom, waving her arms in Oh, Lordy, Miss Scarlet fashion.
    Stunned, I heard the front door open and click shut. I tumbled out of the tub, got onto my bare feet, and ran after Mother, catching her halfway down the hallway by reaching out and grasping the tail of her thermal top like a relay baton, stopping her short.
    She whirled, relieved it was me. “Brandy! Thank God you’re all right! There was a big, hairy man in our bathroom!”
    “That was me , Mother, in the tub.”
    And please, if you believe anything I’ve told you, believe this: I am neither big nor particularly hairy. And certainly not a man.
    Her wild expression turned quizzical. “Well, my goodness…whatever were you doing in there, pretending to be a rapist?”
    “I was not pretending to…I was trying to escape your big, hairy snoring! ”
    The quizzical expression turned dismissive. “Don’t be silly, child…you must have been dreaming. You know very well that I don’t snore.”
    I put my hands on my hips. “Are you kidding me? You sound like a pig rooting out—ohmigod! We’re locked out of our room!”
    We stood in the cold hallway gaping at each other.
    “ Will you shut up out there! ” requested a loud if muffled voice from a nearby door.
    This—or anyway the first word or so of it—scared us into leaping into each other’s arms. If only somebody’d been there with a video camera, we’d have made it onto one of those funniest video shows.
    We stepped apart, and Mother said, “You must go down to the front desk and tell them what happened.”
    “ Me ?”
    She frowned but her eyes were big—somehow they seemed bigger without the magnifying glasses. “This is your doing, Brandy…and besides, you look better in your scanties than I.”
    I had a bit of trouble picturing Mother in my “scanties.” I protested, “But you’ve got more coverage!”
    “ Shut up out there! ” another door said.
    This called for a time-out, and drew our attention to the end of the hallway where an elevator began to groan.
    I groaned, too, and then Mother and I goggled at each other with the shared thought: Where are we going to hide?
    A bell dinged.
    Too late.
    The elevator door slid open and a security guard stepped out.
    Mustached, beefy, wearing more