Dead Guy's Stuff (7 page)

"You were just really smart and you seemed to have a lot going for you, even though you and I both— oh, I don't know— both came from the same place."

"The tavern?" Jane asked.

"Yeah. I knew who you were, a tavern kid just like me, but you were such a goody-goody and smart, too. President of all the clubs and stuff."

"Lilly, you were very popular in high school," Jane said, thinking that this was sounding more like an intervention than a show house fund-raiser meeting.

"Yeah, with the boys. I got them beer out of my dad's outside cooler."

Tim put his arm around Lilly. "Baby, you had tons more fun as a bad girl than Jane ever had as a good girl. Trust me on this. I had to take her to the prom for god's sake. The guys figured she'd never…" Tim stopped when he felt Jane staring a hole through the center of his forehead.

"This bad-good stuff makes no difference now, Lilly. We're all grown-up."

Lilly nodded and stood. "I'm still sorry I acted like a jerk. I've got to go back to work."

She let the screen bang shut on her way out of the kitchen.

"Hay fever, my eye," Jane said. "She no more has seasonal allergies than that"— Jane looked around for a definitive nonallergic object— "than that ironing board closet? Oh, Tim, you have a drop-down ironing board. That is so adorable."

"Yeah, yeah, you can feature it in your design. Now, what's the big deal playing pharmaceutical detective with that girl? Could you use a… Claritin, little girl?" Tim twirled an imaginary moustache and whirled around. "Or maybe an… Allegra would be more to your taste?"

Tim flopped down into a kitchen chair. "What the hell was going on, Nancy Goody Two-shoes Drew?"

"She didn't even know what a Claritin was, okay, so I figured she had been crying or was upset about something. Then I thought maybe Claritin wasn't the prescribed cure of choice around here, so I took a chance on Allegra; so it was clear…"

"It was clear that she had been crying and didn't want to give us an explanation. I'm an acquaintance not a friend, and you're barely that. You're a face in the yearbook, that's all, and, I might add, one with a lot of little clubs and award thingies under your name, which she obviously resents. Why would she want to tell you that her fourteen-year-old daughter stayed out all night with her boyfriend or her husband whacked her last night when he came home drunk?"

"I didn't know her daughter…"

"She doesn't have kids, but something's possible, isn't it? People have messy lives that screw them up, so they make excuses."

Jane started to nod but stopped. People did cover up hard lives, but Lilly Duff had actually driven over there and come to talk to them in person. Covering up involved phone messages left when you knew no one was around. Lilly could have called Tim's flower shop and left the message that she had to drop out of the project. She didn't have to show up where Tim had told her that he and Jane would be working. Jane had heard Tim tell her on the phone last night. Lilly had walked into the house hoping to find out something about Gus Duncan or make sure that Jane and Tim knew that the police were satisfied with natural causes.

"If Lilly has problems that make her cry and lose sleep, then she's used to making excuses. She might pick allergies, but it would be because she read an ad for Claritin or Allegra in
Family Circle
or
Women's Day
that described watery, itchy eyes and so forth. This was a last-minute, spur-of-the moment excuse that someone uses because she's really desperate or determined or scared…"

"Okay, Nancy, what's she scared of? That we'll find out she murdered Gus Duncan, who after all those years of holding out finally agreed to sell all his property. People have wanted to kill that guy for at least thirty years. Why now
after
he's signed all the papers?"

She shrugged and went over to the refrigerator, opened it, and inhaled sharply when she saw small, square, GE glass refrigerator dishes neatly stacked inside.

"I'll do the kitchen," Jane said.

"Knew you would."

9

Jane measured the kitchen of the Gerber house with loving care. Using Tim's big green tape, she smoothed her hands over the window frames with worn, wide sills, just big enough for a few McCoy flowerpots with blooming African violets or trailing English ivy. She measured the depth of the pantry shelves, thinking about the vintage tins she might be able to find to fill them. She decided on the perfect spot for the beaded board spice rack she had at home waiting to be hung.

Tim knew her paperwork was in order, but nonetheless he'd asked her about the prices of all the pieces she already owned. A five-hundred-dollar limit he had said at least three times. To Jane, who had nickel-and-dimed her way through a hundred or more rummage sales, it was a lottery jackpot. She wouldn't even have to worry about walls since the painting was all to be donated by a Bishop Mac alum.

"You have a limited color palette," Tim told her, "but if you can choose today, the whole place will be done in a few days. Bill promised me a double crew doing a double shift. The second floor is already finished."

"Floors?" Jane asked.

"Not free, but a deep discount, babe. That's one of my donations to the project. Refinishing all the hardwood on the first and second floors. Everybody's got to live with the wood floors. The vintage baby black-and-white tile in the bathrooms— can't do better than the original— so we're keeping that. Just cleaning it up."

Jane nodded her approval. The bathrooms were gigantic, with room for a comfy chair and lamp; or, she supposed, for the more practically inclined, a treadmill and an exercise bike. Although why anyone would want to rack up no-distance miles when you could, instead, inhale the perfume of your child's bubble bath, curl up in a garage sale stuffed chair, and read aloud a chapter of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
was beyond Jane's imagining.

Tim offered her black-and-white vinyl tile for the kitchen floor— he could get that from one of his magical discounters— but she shook her head. "I'll stick with the wood," she said, "if you'll let me paint the pantry floor."

"Deal."

She chose her wall color in three minutes. A rich off-white. Heavy cream that would allow the color in the room to come from all the kitchen linens and culinary objets d'art that she had by the boatload in her own kitchen and in storage. It was the exact color of the old stool that sat in a corner of her garage, milky paint peeling, waiting patiently for the
right
corner, which was right under the window she had just measured. Tim sighed when she tossed the paint card down on the table.

"Ah,
Buttermilk.
Thank you so much for not going jadeite green, dear." Tim taped the color card into his notebook and put the rest of the samples back into the file.

"That jadeite stuff is pretty played, don't you think?" Jane asked. "Or maybe I'm just sick of it from the tavern."

Long before Martha Stewart popularized the pale green Fire-King kitchenware, Nellie had chosen the heavier restaurant version for the EZ Way Inn. Jane had sipped enough coffee and spooned enough chili out of green jadeite bowls to last her a lifetime.

"It's funny," Jane said, helping Tim pack up his supplies and check all the window locks on the first floor, "so much of the stuff I lust for is from my childhood, and yet that green stuff Nellie has at the tavern doesn't do a thing for me."

"Doesn't take a genius, dearie, to figure that one out. The jadeite is always greener on the other side. I mean Nellie's
got
all that stuff, so you don't need to replace it, do you?"

"Maybe," Jane said, pocketing the tape measure that Tim had agreed she could now "Malcolm."

"Maybe, nothing. You wander through all those sales of yours glassy-eyed, reliving every Saturday cleaning rampage Nellie ever went on, getting rid of your beloved stuff."

Jane shrugged but didn't argue. She knew Tim was half right. She did try to replace objects she remembered, objects she had loved. But what about the high school yearbooks and autograph books and photo albums that belonged to complete strangers? Why did she have box after box of those packed and labeled on shelves in her garage and in her attic? And the glass flower frogs? Nellie had never arranged a flower in her life.

The mania for sewing stuff and buttons, that probably came from Grandma; but all the rest, the skeleton keys and old locks, the Bakelite jewelry, the fishing lures, the turned wooden boxes, the folk art carvings, the sweet little beehive string holders…? And on and on?

Poor Nick. He would have a hard time doing any family research when he went through her stuff. Who were all these people whose memories his mother had so lovingly cleaned and kept? She made a mental note to change the labeling on the boxes of photos from her wry EXTENDED FAMILY to the more explicit, NOT RELATED TO YOU, NICK. It was the least she could do.

When she returned to the EZ Way Inn, Jane witnessed the rare sighting of a sitting Nellie. Her mother was famous for perpetual motion. While Don might relax at the small desk behind the bar, going over the books or whiskey orders, Nellie manufactured some physical labor to keep herself moving. Wiping down the bar, cleaning the windows or glass on the jukebox, dusting the lamps that hung over the tables where the boys gathered after work for a quick euchre game or two before heading home… those were Nellie's reflex movements. Standing in front of the stainless-steel bar sink, as natural as breathing, she soaped, she rinsed, she wrung. She emptied ashtrays twice as fast as cigarettes burned.

But this afternoon, Nellie sat at the bar, sipping coffee from one of those thick jadeite cups, running her hand over something Jane couldn't quite make out as she slipped in the back door of the kitchen.

"Coffee break, Ma?" Jane asked, risking tirade number seven, "Who has time for a coffee break?"

But Nellie looked up slowly and shook her head.

Jane came over and saw that her mother was studying the punchboard, Jackpot Charley, that Jane had dropped back into a crate after her father had refused to display it.

"I haven't seen one of these things in a million years," Nellie said. "Where'd you say you got it again?"

"House sale, a tavern owner and his wife. He's dead and she's gone to assisted living, and they had all this stuff from the Shangri-La in their basement."

Jane poured herself a cup of the coffee, even though she knew she wouldn't be able to get past one swallow of the tarry paste her mother's coffee became after sitting on the warmer for six hours.

"Why is Dad so touchy about this stuff?"

"How am I supposed to know what he's thinking?" Nellie said.

"You know everything, that's why."

"Gambling hurt a lot of people. Lot of old friends."

"How'd it hurt Dad?" asked Jane.

Nellie looked at the board for at least thirty seconds before looking up.

"Who said it hurt
him?
"

Nellie hopped down from the bar stool with the agility of someone half her age. Jane knew that this signaled the end of the rare conversation with her mother. Rare since it didn't involve a dust rag; a conversation since Jane was allowed a sentence or two.

Hell,
thought Jane,
she moves with the agility of someone half
my
age.

* * *

Jane knew she shouldn't feel insulted by Munson's refusal to discuss Gus Duncan's death with her. She hung up the phone but continued to stare at it. He was right— she was not the police. Nor was she a member of the coroner's staff. She was not even a reporter for the
Kankakee Daily Journal
. She was not a relative of Duncan's. She was not a PI. She blushed slightly, remembering just how high-handed Munson had sounded when she had interrupted his litany of what she was not, to ask what a PI was.

"That would stand for 'private investigator,' Mrs. Wheel, and you are clearly not that either."

Why am I not that? At least why am I
clearly
not that? Jane packed up all the tavern stuff rejected by Don and Nellie. She planned to drop it off for Tim, who might want some of it. She would then inventory the boxes, photograph some of the more interesting finds, and send the listing off to Miriam in Ohio, who would tell her what to pack up and send to her. Jane was Miriam's prime picker, and Miriam was Jane's professor in the study of buy and sell. Antiques, collectibles, vintage memorabilia, junk. Killer stuff. Miriam taught her what she needed to know and provided her with the trickle-down paychecks of other people's manias.

Jane bought it for a dollar. Miriam gave her two. Mr. Collector gave Miriam five. As long as someone wanted a handmade primitive shoeshine box with an art nouveau brass last fastened on the top, and as long as Jane could spot it and grab it at the Saint Nick's rummage sale for a dollar, Jane would have a job. Sort of. A picker. It wasn't exactly a job, she knew— more of a calling. She was good at it, though, and getting better. She hadn't quite made enough to prove to herself— or Charley or Nick for that matter— that she could actually pay the mortgage, but she was getting better.

She did come pretty close last month when she turned over some room-size hand-braided rugs that she had bought at an estate auction for just a few dollars. Most of the big dealers had gone to a more desirable sounding sale in Wisconsin, and Jane had stayed to the bitter end of this little under-advertised gem, picking up a lot of American primitive and country stuff, all hot now, and all at bargain prices. It had gotten her close to being able to actually pay some bills. She had also picked up a trunkful of old photographs, calendars, seed catalogues, and Elmira Selfridge's elementary schoolwork.
The family had been pretty proud of Elmira,
Jane thought,
since it appeared that every spelling test, every composition, and every arithmetic assignment had been carefully saved in a University of Illinois Agricultural Extension binder.
Naturally, Charley and Nick had asked more questions about the why of the trunk rather than the how of the truly profitable work of acquiring the rugs. Jane couldn't blame them. She couldn't explain to herself why she had to keep Elmira's colored maps and state capitals quiz. She couldn't explain her passion for purchasing the nonsensical things she often came home with that Miriam would not ever want to buy.

The best she could come up with was
If I don't conserve Elmira's work, who will?

And that, she knew, was a tough sell.

* * *

Now, driving back to Evanston a few days ahead of schedule, she sifted through the events of the weekend. The thrill of finding Bateman's Shangri-La packed into boxes and hers for the picking seemed like centuries ago. Discovering Bateman's pickled finger also seemed like ancient history. Something about finding a dead body, or even, for that matter, a dead finger, threw off the mundane time schedule, the 24/7 of daily life. Everything slowed down because it was so important to sift through every minute, every second in order to piece together the why and how of the body, the death, the discovery. Or, if her hunch was right, the victim, the murder, the crime scene.

Jane called Oh on her cell phone and smiled when she heard his careful message. "This is Bruce Oh. Your call is important to me, so please say and spell your name, and repeat your phone number twice, slowly and carefully, and tell me, please, the best time to call you back."

"I'm on my way back to Evanston, so I'm on my cell; but I should be at home in, wait, did I say this is Jane, Jane Wheel, and my home phone, if you get this after an hour or so is, but wait, you have that, I'll give you the cell number first. It's new, I switched carriers, but I can't retrieve the voice mail on it yet, so…"

Oh's machine clicked off.

Jane had never gotten the hang of the succinct message. No matter. He would figure it out and call her back within five minutes of her arrival at home. Dropping her worn leather duffel on the floor by the back door when the phone rang, she hurried in and answered, "What took you so long, Detective Oh?"

"I am so sorry, I must've misdialed. Please forgive me," said a woman whose voice sounded familiar. "I hope there's no trouble?"

Jane recognized it on the second worried but curious remark.

"Is that you, Ollie? This is Jane Wheel speaking."

"Thank goodness. I thought I'd lost even more marbles and that I had copied down your numbers wrong. It was so teeny tiny on your card, I made a new listing for it in my big book. Now I've got this number and your portable one big enough so I can
see
them," Ollie said, clearly another one who hadn't gotten down the succinct, get-to-the-point telephone manner. "What? Oh, Dot says I'm rambling, and I shouldn't be bothering you."

Jane could picture Dot talking so quietly, her lips barely moving. She remembered giving them one of her old business cards and crossing out the firm's number, printing her home and cell phone number carefully under her name. Miriam was right. She did need to get some new cards, some cards that said Jane Wheel,
picker
or
dealer
or
vintage items bought and sold
or something that reflected her new status in the world.