Dead Guy's Stuff (18 page)

"What was in the boxes in the basement, Tim, where Lilly… you heard, right?"

"Suicide? Yes, I heard. Bobby called me this morning. Wanted to know if I knew what the status of the house was, whether or not I'd be going back in today."

Jane checked her watch and realized that she needed to call Evanston and leave a message on the machine for Nick. She wanted to wish him good luck in the soccer tournament and hadn't gotten home to her parents' last night in time to do it. What was she supposed to say? Mom meant to call, but another one of those pesky dead bodies turned up. She should fill Charley in, too, but she was feeling guilty somehow, like she was responsible for Lilly.
Maybe,
she thought,
when you find a body, it makes you the one who's supposed to discover the truth about what happened. Like if you saved a life, you were responsible for the person.
God, she was starting to think like one of the fortune cookies she had used to paper the pantry wall last night. Jane left her message, then sat down with Oh and Tim to go over what she didn't know about the crimes that hadn't been committed.

"If the police think Lilly committed suicide, they'll never reopen their investigation of Gus Duncan's death. We're back to square one on that."

Tim looked at her, his face expressionless. "We? Who's we?"

"You said last night that you believed me, that I was right all along about Gus."

"I thought Lilly had been murdered. That made me believe that Gus had been, too. You know it follows you around in multiples, so I figured those little crime-dog instincts that you've been honing were right on. But now…" Tim let his voice trail off.

"You don't want to believe anybody's been murdered so you can get back into those shanties and inventory the stuff," Jane said.

"I believe that Gus Duncan's death was…," Oh hesitated, choosing his words carefully, "more complicated."

Jane tried not to let her delight show. It was, after all, murder they were discussing on this lovely autumn morning. But she had to know what had persuaded Detective Oh that Duncan might not have died of natural causes.

"It's my experience that when someone hires an investigator to look into the circumstances of someone's death, there's a good reason to believe that there are, or were,
circumstances
," said Oh. "And I have been hired."

A tinny cellular ring sounded. Not "La Cucaracha," so it wasn't Jane's phone. Not "Hernando's Hideaway," so it wasn't Tim's. A straightforward two-note ring. Detective Oh nodded and looked at his watch. His client, he explained, was most punctual and had told him to expect a call that morning. He pulled the phone from his pocket and answered on the second ring.

Oh spoke only a few words. His client was doing most of the talking. Jane didn't think she would normally have pried into anyone's private phone conversation, but things were getting curiouser and curiouser around here, so she stood up to shake out one of the slipcovers and pretended to take a look at its condition. She stepped behind the couch where Oh was seated. In doing so, she couldn't help but notice as he tilted the phone away from his ear slightly to reach for a pencil on the coffee table that the caller number was still displayed. Jane might not have even registered that she was taking note of the number if it hadn't been such a familiar one. Kankakee area code, then the number. One she had dialed almost every day of her life.

The EZ Way Inn.

19

Jane knew that the EZ Way Inn was not officially open. The grand reopening was scheduled to take place in a few days. That didn't mean, however, that Francis, the bread delivery man, and Gil, the retired Roper Stove foreman, weren't sitting at the bar right now having a late breakfast glass of beer. It also did not mean that any number of regulars and irregulars could not be sipping coffee or having a wake-up shot while Don and Nellie continued to scrub and polish and set up for their Monday opening. Jane's parents wouldn't think of actually closing the bar while the bar was closed.

Even on Christmas and Thanksgiving, Don found a way to cajole Nellie into spending at least a few hours at the EZ Way Inn so Barney and Vince and Carp and Chef would have somewhere to go. One Thanksgiving, they actually brought Barney and Vince with them to Grandma's for dinner because Don and Nellie knew they had nowhere to eat turkey and watch a football game. Nellie's mother and father, Lithuanian immigrants whose hearts were much bigger than their house, did not seem to find it odd that Don and Nellie had brought in a few extras. More card players for after the meal; more hungry eaters to appreciate the Kugela.

Because she knew there would be a few customers seated around the bar, because she knew anyone who walked in the front door of the tavern could round the corner into the dining room where the pay phone hung on the wall in the corner, Jane knew that seeing the EZ Way number displayed did not mean that Don and/or Nellie had hired Detective Oh.

But wouldn't it be a huge stretch of even Jane's elastic imagination to believe it was someone else who had just happened to wander into the tavern to make a phone call?

How would she approach the question with Oh? Was the relationship between a detective and client as inviolate as that of a doctor-patient, priest-confessor? She did not want to jeopardize the quasi-professional, almost friendship she was developing with Oh, but she had to know. As she was composing the question in her mind, delicate yet detailed, Tim spoke up.

"So who's your client?" he asked, as Oh slipped his phone back into his pocket.

"Bill Crandall, the nephew of Gus Duncan, the only relative," Oh said, turning to Jane. "He was calling from the EZ Way Inn. Says it's very near the shanties? Where we were last night? He wanted to know if I could expedite matters with the police. If he could get into the houses today."

"Good question," said Tim. "I was wondering the same thing."

Oh didn't think there would be any reason that the middle house, 803, would be closed off. He wasn't even sure 801 or 805 would be off-limits. Although technically suicide was a crime, the police probably finished there last night. But 803 would be open for sure. No dead body had turned up in that house.

"Janie, maybe you ought to stay out of that one," said Tim.

Jane gave him a frosty smile. She spoke, however, to Oh. "How did Bill Crandall know to hire you?"

"I asked the same. He said he had known someone who had taken a course from me and also recognized my name from a story his uncle had sent him about the murder at Mr. Lowry's flower shop."

"Yeah, what a marketing brainstorm that was. The bouquet business just boomed after that," Tim said. "Glad it worked for you, too."

"One little quote in the paper hardly seems like a ringing endorsement for a private investigator, and you weren't even in business then," said Jane.

"Yes," said Oh, "it seemed off to me. I did check out his friend's name, the one who took my class. There was such a person signed up for a summer seminar. He only came once or twice. I might have mentioned that I was thinking about beginning a consulting business."

"Really odd. A long shot that he even knew you were taking private clients, and," Jane said, her voice a shade higher, "why would he hire someone in the first place? Gus Duncan died of natural causes; that's what everyone keeps telling me anyway."

Jane's phone began playing, and Tim snapped his fingers as if he held castanets.

"Did you tell Nick to do this?" Jane said. "You know I don't know how to change it back to a normal ring."

Charley's voice was calm, but Jane could tell by the way he began the call that something was wrong. He said her name twice, in that reassuring tone that he used to calm her whenever he had bad news.

"Nick? What's happened to Nick?" Jane asked.

"Nothing. He was at school; he doesn't even know what happened, and he's off to his soccer tournament and everything's fine with him."

"You, Charley, are you okay? What's wrong?"

"Fine, everybody's fine. It's just that someone broke in," Charley said. "We had a burglary."

"Oh, no," said Jane. "Did they get…" Jane hesitated. Everything in her house was valuable to her, but what would a burglar see as a moneymaker? Could you fence hand-crocheted linens for enough to buy a fix? How much did mismatched Russell Wright cups and saucers fetch on the street? Bakelite bracelets, that's what they'd take. Those things went for a fortune on Ebay. Did burglars know how much they could get on Ebay? Did burglars own scanners?

"They didn't touch my research, thank god. None of the samples from the dig were touched; none of my rare fossils in the bookcase. Not interested in my hard drive or disks at all," said Charley.

"Of course…," Jane had been about to say, "not" but caught herself in time, "they wouldn't be smart enough to realize what you had there, Charley. Thank god for that."

"But your stuff, Janie…"

"The Bakelite, isn't it? Oh shit. I'm wearing my carved ring, and I have my red hoops in my suitcase, but they got the scalloped, butterscotch bracelets, didn't they? Oh god, the buttons. Did they get that wooden sewing box with the little Bakelite sewing kit and all the carved buttons? And the cookies? Oh god, I had at least two dozen big Bakelite cookies in there. And those two little carved acorns that were so sweet. And I had stuck that little candy tin with the realistics in it in that box, too. Why did I keep them all in one place? Damn, damn, damn!"

Tim had jumped up and was standing next to Jane, his arm around her, trying to get the phone out of her hand. Oh looked from Jane to Tim, hopeful that one of them might soon remember to translate for him.

Tim had taken the phone and was talking to Charley, while Jane held her head in her hands. Oh offered to make tea and she nodded, saying only that the house had been robbed and shaking her head.

Tim grinned and told Charley he'd tell her, then rang off.

Jane reached for the phone. "Wait! Why'd he hang up? What did he say? Why, in god's name, are you laughing?" Jane said, furious.

"First of all, your buttons are fine. No jewelry taken, no buttons, no sewing paraphernalia from the guest room. It's just that everything downstairs and in the garage got thrown around. All the boxes in the garage that were packed up for Miriam, everything on the shelves marked "current" got unpacked. A few pieces of pottery broke, but nothing too valuable by what Charley described to me. And it was all stuff you were sending, all garage stuff. It's just that everything's such a mess. All your suitcases, with the photographs, were emptied on the floor," Tim said, then started laughing. "I'm sorry, honey, I really am, but it sounds like your stuff really pissed them off."

"What do you mean?"

"No silver, no good electronics, no paintings, nothing really valuable," Tim said, then added, "At least, nothing of immediate recognizable value to the kind of jerks who would rob your house."

"Why are you laughing at this?" Jane said, hurt, accepting a cup of tea from Oh.

"I am truly sorry, but Charley said you sounded like Leo Liebling all over again."

Jane tried to stay outraged and wounded, which she surely was, but when she heard the name Leo Liebling she couldn't stop herself from smiling.

"Charley said to call him back in an hour or so, and he'd give you details; but in the meantime he was going to clean up as best he could, leave the true inventory of the garage to you, but I was supposed to just say 'Leo Liebling' everytime you started to get upset."

"Liebling?" asked Oh.

"When Charley and I were first married, I was in graduate school. I had gotten into this poetry seminar taught by this really famous professor, Leo Liebling, an authority on the romantic poets. He had written eight or nine books, scholarly books on the subject, and I thought it was really a big deal to be in Leo Liebling's course. Then one night," Jane struggled not to laugh, "I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and I heard a news bulletin come on the television, and I thought I heard them say that Leo Liebling had died. I came rushing out all upset and saying how terrible it was and what a tragedy it was, and I realized Charley was just staring at me. I asked him what was wrong, and he said it was clear to him that I was way too immersed in school and my own little world if I thought Leo Liebling, who might be a great guy and a fine teacher, was really the kind of national public figure whose death would prompt NBC to interrupt
Johnny Carson
.

"We must have laughed for hours. 'Leo Liebling' became our buzzword for when one of us got a little self-important," Jane said. Charley's invocation of the name brought Charley's presence into the room. She could feel him, knew he'd take care of business at the house, just like he always did.
Good husband
, Jane thought.
That's what it would say under Charley's picture. Good husband
, Jane thought,
how underrated is that?

"I know Leo Liebling," Oh said.

"How's his health?" Tim asked.

"Perfect."

"Thank god," said Jane. "I couldn't take another shock."

"Interesting that your burglars were interested in your current packages, the things you had recently packed to ship," said Oh. "Not even the television or VCR?" he asked Tim, who shook his head. "I'll call a friend at the police department in Evanston and find out what they know."

Jane stuck her hand in her back pocket to find the notes she had started to take while talking to her parents but pulled out instead a leftover fortune from one of the Duncan boxes.

Never allow perfect to be the enemy of good.

"I love that," Jane said, handing it to Tim.

"So fix things up with Charley, sweetheart. You accept that nothing you find in all this treasure hunting is going to be perfect. You love all the dings and chips and flakes that make stuff used and familiar anyway. Marriages get dinged and chipped and flaked, too. Take the
good,
honey, and leave all the bitching about
perfect
to me." Tim ruffled her short hair as if she were a small child.

"Maybe you've got…"

"Mrs. Wheel?" Oh asked, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I promised to go to the EZ Way Inn and meet Mr. Crandall. Would you like to go with me? I could introduce you as one of my associates, and perhaps we could find out exactly what he hopes to find out."

Jane jumped at the chance. Last night Tim had called her a partner, now Oh was naming her an associate. She knew Charley would take care of the mess at home— it seemed like more of a mess than a tragedy— and she needed to clear up some of the messiness around here. After all, she still had a displaced finger floating in her glove compartment trying to point her in some direction.

* * *

Tim promised Jane that he wouldn't peek at the kitchen; he would make the living room the base of operations for the volunteer decorators and alums who would be coming to put the finishing touches on the McFlea. The show house, opening this weekend, would welcome visitors for three weekends with a single admission charge of five dollars; a McFlea show pass for unlimited visits was fifteen— Tim's idea. The grand finale would be the McFlea Gala, held in three weeks when the show house closed. Tim had encouraged attendees who would be paying fifty dollars per ticket to wear vintage party clothes— their prom attire from the year they graduated was one of the invitation suggestions— and to bring their checkbooks, since the committee was planning to auction most of the furniture and decorative items that had been scrounged for the house.

Tim had his eye on several pieces that he would bid on himself, they seemed so at home here in his new place. What a perfect marriage of charity and desire. Tim and the committee would raise more money for his old high school than any previous fund-raiser, plus he would have first pick of so many found and scavenged pieces already dusted and carried into his house and up the stairs. And since he knew the taste of almost everyone who would be coming to the gala, he knew he would have few alums bidding against him.

Unless, of course… how would he keep Jane away on auction night?

As his only competition for the items they would both recognize as more than the usual scavenged flea market finds, she would drive the bidding sky high. He knew she would find the signed sweet grass baskets Becky had used in the upstairs bathroom irresistible. The hand-stitched wool coverlets piled in the guest room were exactly her cup of tea. She'd be waving her auction paddle like crazy to get that old cedar-lined trunk in the master bedroom. Yes, he would need to find a compelling reason for Jane to avoid the gala.

Unless, of course… he did make her his partner.