NEXT WEEK WILL BE BETTER

Furniture restorer Cat Wilde had thought she was done with flea markets--thought the part of her life that had to make room for 4 A.M. risings, lugging cartons of dubious knickknacks into rented spaces, and dealing with the public at its most pertinacious was over, and good riddance. But when her friend Rena Kundera's gallstones take her into the hospital and away from the reserved spots she'll have to forfeit at Finney's Farm and the Beacon Mall, Cat volunteers to take over Rena's stall for six weeks. In no time at all she's up to her elbows in underhanded dealing (why is Rena's friend Old Sam Samson pocketing thick wads of bills for 35-cent paperbacks?), murky provenances (are those her friend Dr. LÆ’li Steinhauer's lovely things getting sold for a song by neighboring vendors?), love young and old (is duckling-turned-swan Tina Spiridakis, celebrating her own engagement, determined to get Cat fixed up with her father?), and, eventually, murder (why would somebody not only beat Old Sam to death but open every box in his pickup and smash everything inside to pieces?). Cat's third (What Ever Happened to Jennifer Steele?, 1996, etc.) is aimed once again at the antiques crowd that finds Jonathan Gash too taxing--even though this low-key offering needs as many flashbacks as Citizen Kane to tell its slender story.