April at the Antique Alley Read Online Free

breakin he had heard about and that was only about a week ago at the store called Uptown Treasures which he said was three or four shops down the alley.
    When I questioned him about Lola’s next of kin he could give me no help at all. Jill asked him what he and Lola would talk about each morning when he and Lola would share coffee. He told us that Lola spoke mostly about current events and steered clear of any nostalgic trips down memory lane. To him she seemed to always be living in the present and looking to the future which seemed odd to him seeing as how everyone on the block made their living dealing with furniture from the past.
    He continued by telling us that Lola would never discuss politics but seemed to be current on local news that was more gossip than fact. He said she could speak
     
    for hours about growing flowers, but also pointed out that there were no flowers in or around her store.
    He had a modern security system including several cameras and willingly handed over a video disc that should have covered the time period in question. We did not watch any of his video at that time, we just collected it with a promise that it would be returned at a later date. I gave him one of my cards and he gave me one of his.
     
    Parnell’s was the store just east of Lola’s Attic. Our next target was the building just to the west and it was called simply Antiques of Dallas. Where Parnell had focused on low volume high quality; this store was exactly the opposite. It was quite massive for a used furniture store but all I saw was a couple of acres of dusty junk.
    The proprietor was one Fredrick Smith (no relations to yours truly but like every other Smiths on the planet we joked about the commonality of our names) who greeted us with a big smile and called himself the “Mayor of Antique Alley.”
    His disposition changed though when he found out that we were not customers, but rather we had been pressed into service as investigators of the crime which had occurred next door to one of his fellow business owners. It is not that he was cruel or mean or rude, it was simply that once he figured out that we were not prospective buyers of his junk he simply had no further need of us. He impatiently listened as we requested information about Lola and quickly told us he did not know her very well at all. He told us his store had suffered no breakins at all and said that he had not heard of any from the other business owners in the area. He quickly pointed out two security cameras both on the inside of the store and both pointed directly at the cash register. He told us they were both fakes that were not hooked up to any recording device and were only to fool would be thieves.
    The self appointed Mayor Smith had no information at all about where we might find one of Lola’s family members. He asked me if I knew what was to be done with Lola’s estate. He was interested in not only the left over treasures but her building as well. I, of course, had no information to share with him other than to tell him it would all be tied up as evidence for a while.
    One of his mayoral duties was to complain about the crime scene tape and let me know that Sunday was their second most important business day of the week. He stated that he was quite sure Lola would not wish her death to interfere with the business that needed to continue along Antique Alley. I do not know if I had grown to like Lola or simply grown to dislike Fredrick Smith from his whining about her brutal death possibly having a slight effect on his balance sheet, but I was about to take a swing at the guy when his son saved him.
     
    Donald Smith walked into the room and immediately all attention fell upon him. It was not his fault, it was just the way Mother Nature had crafted him. He was a full two inches taller than me which put him at six feet five inches. He was dressed in black motorcycle leathers with lots of silver chains. His face under the helmet was that of Paul