by: Trish Esden
Series: Scandal Mountain Antiques Mystery
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: April 17, 2025
Publisher: Patricia AR Esden
Some secrets die with their owners. Others hide in silence, waiting to be set free.
Edie Brown despises the bigwig antique and art dealer Felix Graham. She even suspects he had a hand in her mom being set up for the art forgery charge that sent her to prison. However, when Graham is drugged and robbed after purchasing a valuable antique bottle and a box of local historical items, Edie agrees to hunt down the thieves for him. In payment, she wants one thing: everything Graham knows about her mom being set up—who was involved, how they did it…all the information that could lead to her mom’s freedom.
But the number of possible thieves is as plentiful as the potential motives. Graham’s womanizing ways and slippery business practices barely outweigh the stolen pieces’ rarity and value. As Edie, her uncle Tuck, and enigmatic employee, Kala, dive into the dangerous search, evidence that the crime is tied to the stolen pieces’ history surface. Both the bottle—known as the Glass Widow—and the box of ephemera are related to a tragedy that occurred the night before the grand opening of a Victorian-era hydropathic resort, a shocking fragment of Vermont history that involved a peculiar dowry, concealed murder, and a fire that claimed lives and gutted the lavish resort.
With her mom’s mental health rapidly declining in prison, Edie must fight against the clock to expose the thieves by untangling a mystery with roots that stretch from the Victorian-era to the recent robbery, and perhaps into Edie’s own past as well.
Secrets. Everybody has them, large and small, the white lies and the deep, dark soul crushing ones. Some are revealed with the slightest prompting, often for money or love. Others are buried with their keepers.
Antique dealers and collectors, like me, are notoriously adept when it comes to holding our secrets close. Just try and discover where we acquired a prized piece or how much we paid for it. Perhaps we’ll brag about the procurement, more likely we’ll dance away from the subject as lightly as an auctioneer moving on to the next bid. Even if we offer up the information, can you be certain you’ve learned the truth?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Some say all secrets eventually come to light, even if it takes decades or the passing of the older generation. I’m not so sure about that. Some secrets lie in graves so thick with damp moss, ferns, and brambles that they resist the light, only to become more deeply buried with the passing years.
On second thought, I’m probably wrong. I know better than to make sweeping assumptions. Plus, I’ve crawled under those brambles and dug in that dank earth. I’ve excavated bottles and bits of china, silver coins and gold rings…a million small treasures from cellar holes and abandoned privies, remnants of lives long gone, pieces capable of revealing the most closeted truth—even those left unsaid until it was too late.
“You okay?”
My uncle Tuck rested a hand against the small of my back, a comforting gesture as we joined the crowd flooding toward the old feedstore building, currently home to Fisher’s Auction House.
“I’m fine,” I said. In truth, sadness pinched at the back of my throat instead of the jittering excitement I usually felt when attending an auction. I loved antiques and art. I lived for auctions. I craved the adrenaline rush of bidding.
Tuck hushed his voice even further. “Seriously, Edie. I don’t mind if we skip this.”
I managed a smile. “I want to stay. It just feels…”
“Like the end of an era?”
I nodded. Today, Bucky Sander’s estate was going on the auction block. Bucky had been a renowned Vermont antique dealer and one of my grandparents’ closest friends. I’d learned most of what I knew about antique bottles from him—historical flasks, medicines, poisons, mineral spring bottles…the rare and the common. It’d been over ten years now since we’d lost my grandparents. Bucky had passed five years after that. His collections, mountains of antique inventory, as well as the accumulated contents of the farmhouse he shared with his wife had sat untouched until recently when she put their home on the market and moved into a smaller place.
Tuck’s hand left my back. He chuckled. “Bucky was quite the character.”
“That’s for sure.” Smiling wistfully, I glanced ahead to the auction house’s front stoop. I could picture Bucky standing there with his buddies: faded overalls, his beard stained with tobacco juice, looking like a total hick. But he was no average hick. He was one of the shrewdest, most brilliant antique dealers I’d ever known, aside from my grandparents.
Tuck lengthened his stride, hurrying up onto the auction house stoop ahead of me and a pair of middle-aged women. He opened the front door and held it for us. Tuck, always a gentle bear of a man in action and looks, especially this time of year, when autumn-brown corduroy and tweed were in season, and he let his graying beard grow fuller.
As the women moved on, I stepped into the warmth and rumble of the auction gallery. The sight of aisles and tables piled with all manner of antiques made my skin tingle. Primitive cupboards, blanket boxes, blue decorated stoneware, Vermont country store and farm relics. Paintings. Folk art carvings. Decoys. Handmade baskets. Boxes full of tins and old bottles.
I breathed in the aroma of coffee mingled with old wood and leather, the vanilla scent of early books, and even a trace of gasoline from things stored in a barn…an untouched estate fragrance as enticing to me as the scent of apple pie hot from the oven.
If I’d had a million dollars—better make that five million—I would’ve bought everything in the place without a second thought. Unfortunately, though our antique shop’s bank accounts were more liquid than they’d been a few months ago when I’d returned home and took over running the business, I still wasn’t in a position to bid without caution—ten thousand dollars at the most, less than five made more sense.
I scanned the gallery again, this time taking in the competition. Martina Fortuni, a dealer who had a shop in a neighboring town and was a general thorn in my side, was scrutinizing a silver teapot with her jeweler’s loupe. It was doubtful that she’d be bidding on much today, not enough jewelry and glittery things for her taste.
Only a few yards from her, Marissa Lavelle—a forty-something bigwig dealer from New Hampshire, overdressed as usual in white slacks and a swing coat that Cruella de Ville would’ve been proud to wear—was chatting up the much beefier and a whole lot less pretentious Sparky Collins. An electrician by trade, Sparky was also a dedicated Vermont bottle digger and collector. Rumor had it, he’d recently discovered a stash of early bitters bottles inside a wall while rewiring an old house. He’d sweet talked the homeowner into letting him have the entire lot in exchange for a hundred dollars off the wiring bill, a stingy offer considering one bottle could easily bring a hundred bucks or a whole lot more.
Joie Bascom, the director of Scandal Mountain Museum, was deeper into the stacks of antiques, flipping through an old postcard album. Plump and dressed in orange leggings and a marigold-yellow sports jacket, she resembled a Turk’s turban squash. She glanced up, smiled and posed as Francois-Baptiste, the eldest living member of the infamous Lefebvre family and co-owner of the Scandal Mountain Gazetteer panned his video camara her way. I hadn’t seen Francois, or Frenchie as everyone called him, in several years. His hair was now nothing more than a crescent of white frizz, but he was as lanky and buzzing with energy as I remembered.
The more I looked, the more people I recognized from both the in-town and out-of-town antique dealing communities. Sure, anyone could bid by phone or online. The online preview of the items being auctioned had been available since mid-August. But I suspected I wasn’t the only one who wanted to honor Bucky by participating in this auction the old fashion way—namely, in person.
Tuck touched my wrist. “I’m going to register and get a bidding paddle.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll save us some seats.”
I headed for the rows of folding chairs that spanned the center of the gallery. Lots of the seats had boxes on them or coats draped over their backs, marking them as reserved. I peeled off my sweater and laid it across two chairs in the rear row.
“Hey there.” The familiar voice came from behind me. I turned to see Pinky Woods with her rooster-comb of blond hair strutting toward me. She worked at Fisher’s Auction House as well as bartending part-time at the Jumping Café’s pub. We hadn’t hung with the same crowd in high school, but we’d gotten along then and become even closer since I’d returned home.
“Quite the crowd,” I said.
She rested the box of vintage records she was holding on one hip. “Frickin’ madhouse if you ask me.”
I smiled. “Bucky would have loved it.” I quieted my voice. “I haven’t seen Jules and Rosetta Ramone. What’s up with that?” Jules and Rosetta were dealers who disliked my mom and had recently extended that feeling to include me.
Pinky rolled her eyes. “They’re vacationing in Paree.” She pronounced Paris with the same affected accent as Jules would have used.
I laughed. “I bet he wishes he’d put that trip off for another time.”
“They probably left bids online.” She leaned closer. “Did Kala ask you about the puppy?”
A twinge of tension pinched at the base of my skull. Kala lived with Tuck and me and worked for our antique business. In fact, she was watching the shop today. She and Pinky were also currently an item, and the golden retriever puppies were Pinky’s most recent fundraising scheme. The portion of the puppies’ cost that didn’t go toward expenses was being donated to the Scandal Mountain Humane Society. I toughened my voice. “A puppy isn’t a good idea right now. I already told Kala that.”
“You should at least take a look at them. They’re adorable.”
I crossed my arms. “I imagine they are.”
“You have the perfect place to raise a puppy—” She abruptly stopped her sales pitch and glanced toward the front of the auction house. Alfred Fisher, the head auctioneer as well as the owner of the place, was at the podium tinkering with the mic. Pinky shifted the box of records off her hip, once again holding it squarely in both hands. “I better get going before Alfred bursts a blood vessel. We can talk more later.”
“Sure,” I said. But not about puppies, I added silently. Tuck, Kala, and I had enough to do without the complication of a pet.
I gave Pinky a head start, then followed the same route she’d taken, down the center aisle between the chairs to the front of the room. But instead of heading for the podium and Alfred, I veered toward a glass showcase. The showcase as a rule contained the auction’s most valuable smaller pieces. Today that meant one thing: the Glass Widow.
The Glass Widow was a legendary mineral springs bottle, the only recovered example of a case of thirty-six bottles made for the grand opening of the Mountain House Resort, a vast Victorian-era hydropathic spa built high up on Scandal Mountain near the ever-flowing Maiden Spring. The resort was intended to become a destination spot, but on the eve of its grand opening a fire flashed through the massive structure, killing guests and the resort’s newly married owner. However, that wasn’t the worst of the tragedy. The following investigation revealed the fire was arson, ignited to cover up the owner’s murder.
Antique dealers and collectors, like me, are notoriously adept when it comes to holding our secrets close. Just try and discover where we acquired a prized piece or how much we paid for it. Perhaps we’ll brag about the procurement, more likely we’ll dance away from the subject as lightly as an auctioneer moving on to the next bid. Even if we offer up the information, can you be certain you’ve learned the truth?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Some say all secrets eventually come to light, even if it takes decades or the passing of the older generation. I’m not so sure about that. Some secrets lie in graves so thick with damp moss, ferns, and brambles that they resist the light, only to become more deeply buried with the passing years.
On second thought, I’m probably wrong. I know better than to make sweeping assumptions. Plus, I’ve crawled under those brambles and dug in that dank earth. I’ve excavated bottles and bits of china, silver coins and gold rings…a million small treasures from cellar holes and abandoned privies, remnants of lives long gone, pieces capable of revealing the most closeted truth—even those left unsaid until it was too late.
—Edie Brown
Chapter One
“You okay?”
My uncle Tuck rested a hand against the small of my back, a comforting gesture as we joined the crowd flooding toward the old feedstore building, currently home to Fisher’s Auction House.
“I’m fine,” I said. In truth, sadness pinched at the back of my throat instead of the jittering excitement I usually felt when attending an auction. I loved antiques and art. I lived for auctions. I craved the adrenaline rush of bidding.
Tuck hushed his voice even further. “Seriously, Edie. I don’t mind if we skip this.”
I managed a smile. “I want to stay. It just feels…”
“Like the end of an era?”
I nodded. Today, Bucky Sander’s estate was going on the auction block. Bucky had been a renowned Vermont antique dealer and one of my grandparents’ closest friends. I’d learned most of what I knew about antique bottles from him—historical flasks, medicines, poisons, mineral spring bottles…the rare and the common. It’d been over ten years now since we’d lost my grandparents. Bucky had passed five years after that. His collections, mountains of antique inventory, as well as the accumulated contents of the farmhouse he shared with his wife had sat untouched until recently when she put their home on the market and moved into a smaller place.
Tuck’s hand left my back. He chuckled. “Bucky was quite the character.”
“That’s for sure.” Smiling wistfully, I glanced ahead to the auction house’s front stoop. I could picture Bucky standing there with his buddies: faded overalls, his beard stained with tobacco juice, looking like a total hick. But he was no average hick. He was one of the shrewdest, most brilliant antique dealers I’d ever known, aside from my grandparents.
Tuck lengthened his stride, hurrying up onto the auction house stoop ahead of me and a pair of middle-aged women. He opened the front door and held it for us. Tuck, always a gentle bear of a man in action and looks, especially this time of year, when autumn-brown corduroy and tweed were in season, and he let his graying beard grow fuller.
As the women moved on, I stepped into the warmth and rumble of the auction gallery. The sight of aisles and tables piled with all manner of antiques made my skin tingle. Primitive cupboards, blanket boxes, blue decorated stoneware, Vermont country store and farm relics. Paintings. Folk art carvings. Decoys. Handmade baskets. Boxes full of tins and old bottles.
I breathed in the aroma of coffee mingled with old wood and leather, the vanilla scent of early books, and even a trace of gasoline from things stored in a barn…an untouched estate fragrance as enticing to me as the scent of apple pie hot from the oven.
If I’d had a million dollars—better make that five million—I would’ve bought everything in the place without a second thought. Unfortunately, though our antique shop’s bank accounts were more liquid than they’d been a few months ago when I’d returned home and took over running the business, I still wasn’t in a position to bid without caution—ten thousand dollars at the most, less than five made more sense.
I scanned the gallery again, this time taking in the competition. Martina Fortuni, a dealer who had a shop in a neighboring town and was a general thorn in my side, was scrutinizing a silver teapot with her jeweler’s loupe. It was doubtful that she’d be bidding on much today, not enough jewelry and glittery things for her taste.
Only a few yards from her, Marissa Lavelle—a forty-something bigwig dealer from New Hampshire, overdressed as usual in white slacks and a swing coat that Cruella de Ville would’ve been proud to wear—was chatting up the much beefier and a whole lot less pretentious Sparky Collins. An electrician by trade, Sparky was also a dedicated Vermont bottle digger and collector. Rumor had it, he’d recently discovered a stash of early bitters bottles inside a wall while rewiring an old house. He’d sweet talked the homeowner into letting him have the entire lot in exchange for a hundred dollars off the wiring bill, a stingy offer considering one bottle could easily bring a hundred bucks or a whole lot more.
Joie Bascom, the director of Scandal Mountain Museum, was deeper into the stacks of antiques, flipping through an old postcard album. Plump and dressed in orange leggings and a marigold-yellow sports jacket, she resembled a Turk’s turban squash. She glanced up, smiled and posed as Francois-Baptiste, the eldest living member of the infamous Lefebvre family and co-owner of the Scandal Mountain Gazetteer panned his video camara her way. I hadn’t seen Francois, or Frenchie as everyone called him, in several years. His hair was now nothing more than a crescent of white frizz, but he was as lanky and buzzing with energy as I remembered.
The more I looked, the more people I recognized from both the in-town and out-of-town antique dealing communities. Sure, anyone could bid by phone or online. The online preview of the items being auctioned had been available since mid-August. But I suspected I wasn’t the only one who wanted to honor Bucky by participating in this auction the old fashion way—namely, in person.
Tuck touched my wrist. “I’m going to register and get a bidding paddle.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll save us some seats.”
I headed for the rows of folding chairs that spanned the center of the gallery. Lots of the seats had boxes on them or coats draped over their backs, marking them as reserved. I peeled off my sweater and laid it across two chairs in the rear row.
“Hey there.” The familiar voice came from behind me. I turned to see Pinky Woods with her rooster-comb of blond hair strutting toward me. She worked at Fisher’s Auction House as well as bartending part-time at the Jumping Café’s pub. We hadn’t hung with the same crowd in high school, but we’d gotten along then and become even closer since I’d returned home.
“Quite the crowd,” I said.
She rested the box of vintage records she was holding on one hip. “Frickin’ madhouse if you ask me.”
I smiled. “Bucky would have loved it.” I quieted my voice. “I haven’t seen Jules and Rosetta Ramone. What’s up with that?” Jules and Rosetta were dealers who disliked my mom and had recently extended that feeling to include me.
Pinky rolled her eyes. “They’re vacationing in Paree.” She pronounced Paris with the same affected accent as Jules would have used.
I laughed. “I bet he wishes he’d put that trip off for another time.”
“They probably left bids online.” She leaned closer. “Did Kala ask you about the puppy?”
A twinge of tension pinched at the base of my skull. Kala lived with Tuck and me and worked for our antique business. In fact, she was watching the shop today. She and Pinky were also currently an item, and the golden retriever puppies were Pinky’s most recent fundraising scheme. The portion of the puppies’ cost that didn’t go toward expenses was being donated to the Scandal Mountain Humane Society. I toughened my voice. “A puppy isn’t a good idea right now. I already told Kala that.”
“You should at least take a look at them. They’re adorable.”
I crossed my arms. “I imagine they are.”
“You have the perfect place to raise a puppy—” She abruptly stopped her sales pitch and glanced toward the front of the auction house. Alfred Fisher, the head auctioneer as well as the owner of the place, was at the podium tinkering with the mic. Pinky shifted the box of records off her hip, once again holding it squarely in both hands. “I better get going before Alfred bursts a blood vessel. We can talk more later.”
“Sure,” I said. But not about puppies, I added silently. Tuck, Kala, and I had enough to do without the complication of a pet.
I gave Pinky a head start, then followed the same route she’d taken, down the center aisle between the chairs to the front of the room. But instead of heading for the podium and Alfred, I veered toward a glass showcase. The showcase as a rule contained the auction’s most valuable smaller pieces. Today that meant one thing: the Glass Widow.
The Glass Widow was a legendary mineral springs bottle, the only recovered example of a case of thirty-six bottles made for the grand opening of the Mountain House Resort, a vast Victorian-era hydropathic spa built high up on Scandal Mountain near the ever-flowing Maiden Spring. The resort was intended to become a destination spot, but on the eve of its grand opening a fire flashed through the massive structure, killing guests and the resort’s newly married owner. However, that wasn’t the worst of the tragedy. The following investigation revealed the fire was arson, ignited to cover up the owner’s murder.
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DeleteLooking forward to the new book! I love making snickerdoodles, these look good!
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