Dead Guy's Stuff (26 page)

"Yeah, you can be a florist, antique dealer, appraiser, realtor. Your business card will be five by seven," Jane said.

She and Charley had adjourned to the back porch, where there was a glider and two lounge chairs that Jane was sure she remembered from the days Eddie Gerber had lived in the Gerber house. Jane was studying one of the punchboards coded with the word JUG which surely meant Hunter's bar, the Brown Jug. She wasn't really seeing the punches, though, she was thinking about Charley, next to her on the glider, his long legs thrust out in front and his arms draped across the oilcloth-covered back cushions. The sun was low in the afternoon sky, and Charley had closed his eyes as the beams fell across his face.

What had been different about Charley when he'd walked into the McFlea? What had given her that rush of feeling, that involuntary lightness that used to pick her up whenever he walked into a room? It had almost faded away in the last year, now here it was, making her as warm and itchy as would a full box of vintage Bakelite priced as old plastic junk.

Same khaki pants, same blue shirt, same brown hair and eyes, same weathered skin, same gorgeous hands, large and strong. His inventory was the same. What about hers? Same jeans and T-shirt, same plaid shirt worn over, a Charley reject as a matter of fact, same short, dark hair, same deep worried eyes, and same… no, different… smile. She hadn't smiled like this for so long: content, satisfied, happy. She was just purely happy, sitting on this thirties glider with a good, handsome man on a late September day in Kankakee, Illinois.

"I solved another crime, Charley," she said. "Sort of."

"Yes."

"I have two job offers."

"Impressive."

"We're taking Nick back to our house," Nellie said, poking her head out the kitchen door. "He's bored as hell."

Jane gave Nellie the punchboard she had been holding and asked her to give it to Hunter if he was still in the basement. All the saloon keepers would be leaving with a party favor, their customized gambling payoff/bribery history, hand printed and fetchingly presented on a vintage punchboard, courtesy of the late Gus Duncan. Out in the yard, on two wooden Adirondack Chairs, Bobby Duff was sitting with Mary Bateman's granddaughter, Susan. The two orphans had found each other. They were talking intensely, Bobby holding the punchboard that spelled out DUFF, Susan looking like she was hanging on for dear life to the straps of her purse.

Jane knew she owed Susan an apology for accusing her upstairs, for scaring her. She decided to wait a few days. Susan would be in no hurry to speak to Jane, let alone listen to her rehash what she had heard from her grandmother. Jane owed Bobby an explanation, too. Tomorrow. His parents' secrets had been buried for a lot of years; they could wait a few more days.

"Those two could talk forever and never run out of stories," said Jane.

"Or questions," added Charley.

Bruce Oh had accompanied Mary Bateman when she left with Dot and Ollie to give their statements. Jane tried to picture them that night, the three women reminiscing with Gus, talking about bowling tournaments, basketball games. It was after dinner, he was probably half smashed. Mary took his hand, for old time's sake, and stuck him. Loaded him up with him some potassium from the medical supplies she had so carefully stored in her basement. Jane had asked if Mary needed a lawyer.

"Possibly. But as she says, she's eighty years old. She hasn't admitted anything. No murder weapon has been found. There's no record of any of those medical supplies because Mary begged them from Susan for the church. The potassium and syringes were never in Mary's possession because they were allegedly destroyed after they were no longer needed by Susan's patients. They didn't exist," Oh had said.

"They waited for him to crumple, then Mary took a knife off the counter and wrapped Gus's hand around it and sawed at the finger where she'd injected him," Jane said. "Eighty-year-old Mary almost sawed the damn thing off thinking about what he had done to Bateman."

"Revenge can make you strong," Oh said.

"She waited a long time. If she hadn't been worried that there might be something in all that Shangri-La stuff I bought, none of this might have happened. She probably felt safe with everything in the basement, everything all packaged up. Losing control of that and seeing Leonard again after all those years…" Jane shook her head.

"If you're worried, Mrs. Wheel, you needn't be. I suspect that, just as she said, Mary will be back playing card games with Leonard at the Grand Heritage in record time," said Oh. He promised to call her when they finished at the police station.

Jane stretched her own legs out and relaxed against Charley's arm.

"I might become a dealer with Tim," Jane said to Charley.

Charley kept his eyes closed and nodded.

"Or a detective with Bruce Oh," she said.

How did Charley manage to raise his eyebrows while keeping his eyes closed, Jane wondered?

"What do you think?"

"I think the rest of your life is full of possibilities," Charley said.

Jane thought that sounded like something she might read in a fortune cookie.
Just the same,
she wondered,
did it make it any less true?
Was there any reason she should make a smart aleck remark to Charley about it and send him reeling to the other side of this vintage glider? Was there any reason to argue about the wonderful possibilities that loomed large? Continuing as a picker for Miriam, becoming a dealer with Tim, or working as a private investigator with Bruce Oh? Or all three? And how about the wonderful immediate possibility— going home with her husband and son?

Never allow perfect to be the enemy of good.

"Me, too, Charley," Jane said.