The Wrong Stuff (24 page)

“I think I can answer some…,” Jane began, then realized no one was listening to her. Glen was shouting. Roxanne was trying to get him to drink a glass of water. Scott was pouring mimosas all around. Annie was looking through her purse, claiming to have some St. John's Wort to give Glen. Mickey looked like he wanted to make a break for the door and head right up a tree, and Martine was trying to lead everyone in a series of deep breaths. Only Silver seemed not to notice what was going on. He had found a whole tray of untouched chocolate pots du crème on the dining room table and was knocking them back like Jell-O shots, lined up on a campus bar.

Jane climbed up on the seat of her chair and gave an ear-splitting whistle. Somehow she was certain that she had veered away from
The Mousetrap.
Agatha Christie would never have made Poirot or Miss Marple climb on top of a vintage Stickley chair to get the crowd's attention.

“I know what happened,” Jane said, “and if you'll give me your attention, I'll tell the rest of you.”

Glen stopped sputtering, and Jane took advantage of the lull.

“Blake Campbell crafted what might be taken for a Westman chest, a priceless antique,” she began, and Blake nodded, almost as if he were taking a bow. “And although he usually made his simpler fake antiques here and allowed them to be carted off by junk dealers to be sold at flea markets, then possibly make their way back for restoration, he wanted a better showcase for the fake Westman,” Jane said.

Jane reached into her right pocket and pulled out her small notebook, flipped to a page and nodded, and looked to Blake.

“Was McDougal your uncle?”

Blake nodded. “Uncle Mac. I was his only relative.”

“Blake hired a company to dispose of his uncle's estate by having a sale, but before they came on the scene, he split his Westman fake in two and planted the pieces among his uncle's belongings. He buried the bottom half of the chest in the basement under tools and boxes, so when someone spotted it, it was unpriced. He insisted that it be given away so no one could accuse him of taking any money for it.

“The dealer who discovered it, Claire Oh, brought it here for restoration and authentication, and checked it in with Glen LaSalle, then discussed it with Rick Moore,” said Jane, gesturing to Claire who was sitting next to Tim, devouring a scone. “He started to research it, and in snooping around found the evidence that Blake had made it in his private shop….”

Blake held up a hand. “Very good, Mrs. Wheel, but one thing. Rick knew it was made here; he helped with it. I just don't think he liked the game. He felt that there was money to be made. He wanted to sell the Westman as a real Westman, you see, and…”

“That's why Rick switched drawers, right? To make Claire Oh's Westman an obvious fake when it was returned, so it couldn't be sold as the real deal?” Jane asked.

Blake nodded. “This was a long project, and Rick had become a real Westman carver. He could do the sunflowers in his sleep, but he could do the faces and all the other motifs, too. He had built his own Westman chest. I never dreamed he'd try to sell it as a real one…when I saw what he was up to, I got mine out. Whether it was considered a fake or a genuine one, it would muddy the waters for anything Rick tried to do.”

Jane looked over at Claire. “That's what puzzled you, right? It seemed so authentic when you first found it, then, when you saw the drawers Rick had put in, so obviously fake, you couldn't figure out why you had been so sure in the first place?” Claire nodded and Jane continued.

“Rick realized that he had to stop any talk about a fake Westman on the market if he wanted to pass off the one he had made as real and drive up the auction price. He went into Chicago to silence Claire Oh and maybe even reclaim the chest. He probably figured she'd have it at the antique mall and he could steal it back or destroy it. Instead he found Horace Cutler, whom he realized also knew about it. That's why he killed Horace.”

“So he really did that,” said Blake. “I didn't want to believe it.”

“Yes, you arrogant dumb ass, and he had a letter from you offering him money to do it,” said Glen.

Blake, finally, was speechless. He had no answer for that. Roxanne left Glen to go minister to Blake, but he shook his head at her offer of a glass of water.

“That's what you mean about him blackmailing me?” said Blake, finally. “You didn't mean about the Westman; you meant about the murder?”

Glen didn't even dignify the question with a reply. He actually looked relieved that he didn't have to shout in Blake Campbell's ear anymore. When Blake realized that his silence looked like he was agreeing that he had hired Rick to commit murder, he stood up.

“No, I didn't do that. I didn't ask Rick to do anything of the sort.”

“I saw the letter, dear,” Roxanne said, trying to pat his shoulder as he strode away from her. “I didn't believe it at first, but Rick insisted. He said some ugly things about what he'd do to you, to this place…”

“Anyone here could have written that note,” said Jane, reclaiming the floor. “You're all artists and copyists to a certain degree. Anyone could have gotten a piece of Blake's stationery and written a letter that implicated Blake.”

Jane did indeed have everyone's attention now. She felt the change in the air. Up to now, she was pretty much saying things that they found interesting, plausible, if somewhat surprising, but now they might be implicated. Everyone here had a stake in protecting Blake's name, protecting Campbell and LaSalle from scandal and murder.

“Who did it?” asked Blake. “Who forged that letter?”

“Oh, Rick did that himself,” said Jane. “I found a piece of paper he'd practiced Blake's handwriting on. He was using it for a bookmark.” She looked at Oh, who nodded very slightly. “Yes, Rick did it and showed it to Roxanne and Glen. He thought it protected him if he was your boy.”

“Wait a minute,” said Blake. “You were willing to protect me?”

Glen started to shake his head, muttering again about what a dumb shit Blake was. Jane thought she heard him say just another dumb, handsome blond and something about the ego of the guy.

“You were willing to protect me, cover for me?” Blake asked Roxanne. The Campbell and LaSalle residents were all looking up at him, nodding dumbly, hopefully. Would this movie they were watching have a happily-ever-after ending?

Blake nodded with them for a few seconds, then said, equally quietly, “But you believed I was a murderer?” He went over to the sideboard and poured himself a tumblerful of expensive brandy.

“I've lived with you people off and on for thirty years. You've been my family. And you believed I asked someone to kill a person?”

Blake looked over all of their heads and past their eyes as best he could until he was meeting Murkel's steely blues. “Well, Officer Murkel, I didn't kill anyone or ask anyone to kill anyone, but I'm afraid I can't vouch for anyone else here. I realize I don't know everybody as well as I thought I did.”

“Poor baby,” said Glen. “Poor Blake. Has your innocence been shattered? You think everyone just loved you and thought of you as the grand papa of this place? At least I didn't have any illusions about everybody. We were a meal ticket, and a damn fine meal ticket.” Glen looked back toward the dining room table. “Right, Silver? And our fine residents? They were slave labor. And they were getting sick of it, right, Scott?” Glen asked. “It was getting harder and harder to keep up the work standards and the reputation of Campbell and LaSalle. We had created a whole commune of spoiled, pretentious brats and not one of them had a health plan or job security. Anyone here would have protected you because they didn't want this place to go up in smoke or down in flames, whichever you prefer. Your little game of beat the masters was going to cost everybody. Hell, Geoff and Jake are the only ones who have a business of their own outside of this place, and everybody made fun of them, right? Workaholics, right? Instead of an alcoholic like Scott or a pothead like Mickey?” Glen wasn't yelling anymore. He sounded exhausted.

“So
you
did it?” asked Blake. “For Campbell and LaSalle, Glen?
You
killed Rick?”

Jane realized that this was what Oh had warned her about. If you let these climactic courtroom scenes play out, the guilty might never confess. They don't think they're guilty because they did the right thing. That's why the world needs detectives, Jane realized. It's what Oh had been trying to teach her. If they weren't around to make sure the guilty got discovered, things might wind around and around until the wrong person put a noose around his own neck.

Glen had buried his head in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking. Anyone would think he was crying, his whole body racked with sobs. When he lifted his head, though, he was laughing. “No, you dumb sonofabitch, I didn't kill Rick. Until a few minutes ago, I thought you had done it and were just too dumb to shut up about it. I just figured you were showing off—one more demonstration of the master's hand.”

“My turn again?” asked Jane.

In the dead silence that greeted her question, Jane looked down again at her objects to be discarded à la Belinda—as soon as they stopped standing in for her suspects.

“Before dinner, I went out and looked in the window at the barn. Rick Moore had been up in the gallery library reading. The murderer went in and opened up the kind of eye-burning solvent that Rick would recognize and know was dangerous. The fan was switched on, blowing the fumes right into his face from below. He would be too blinded and disoriented to find his way down the steps and directly out the back door. Instead, once he stumbled down, he'd try to push open one of the windows. But he couldn't. He might have even moved over to the next one and tried to push it open, but he couldn't open that one either. By then, it would be easy to lead him out the back door to the stream and hold his head under for a minute or two. As soon as he took in a couple lungsful of water, all that was needed was someone to come along and find the body.”

“Why couldn't he get the windows open, Nancy Drew?” Tim asked.

Jane unrolled her fist and held it out. In the middle of her hand were the objects she had selected from her bag to represent Roxanne: two nails, the nails Roxanne had left on the table after replacing the hanger for the mirror in the dining room—one a contemporary two-inch nail and one an antique, square iron nail.

“He couldn't push them open. The only person who had a twenty-first-century hammer and a handful of smooth, round nails had hammered them shut.”

The room had cleared quickly after Murkel took Roxanne away. She had not offered even one word of protest. She smiled at Blake; then she was gone. Then everyone was gone. Jane's phone had rung once more, and it was Nellie. Jane handed the phone to Tim, who made his static noise and hung up. Now Claire and Oh, Tim and Jane sat in front of the fireplace one last time, Tim pouring one more round of strong morning coffee for everyone.

“How are they all going to face each other again?” asked Jane. “Blake was defrocked as the high priest of antique integrity, revealed as a dangerous prankster. Glen's a mean, jealous cynic who called everyone out. And Roxanne, the one person who made this place run, who really gave to it instead of taking from it, is going to jail.

“Alcohol, food, drugs, work,” said Tim. “Eventually, sex. They'll medicate for a while, then some project will come in or some new hotshot artist will arrive to give a master class in inlaid veneer or something, and this will all fade away.”

“Good work, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. “I knew Blake Campbell didn't know what had happened, but I wasn't sure who did. I always think the person who does the bookkeeping, the paperwork, is a good suspect, but I didn't have the final…”

“Nail in the coffin?” asked Tim.

“If I hadn't held on to these nails, I'm not sure I would have known it was Roxanne. When I leaned against the window frame, I saw and felt the holes where the nails had been hammered in. I realized that they were smooth, round holes and that the nails would have had to be removed quickly. I know those square heads are tricky to get out, and Roxanne was the only person at Campbell and LaSalle who had modern nails and a simple claw hammer to get them out fast.”

“You don't seem to be that happy about solving the crime,” said Claire, brushing off more tree-house debris, leaves and twigs, from Tim's sweater. She had felt more than vindicated when Jane revealed that the drawers had been switched. She had been sure she wouldn't have missed such obvious phonies when she'd originally brought home the chest from the estate sale.

“I feel sorry for Roxanne,” said Jane. “She ran this place, probably loved it more than anyone, and was trying to preserve it from an unscrupulous man.”

“Aha,” said Oh, “as I said, she had nothing to feel guilty about so why would she confess? She had done something noble.”

“Right,” said Jane. “She had put on a mask and goggles and sent toxic fumes into a man's face, then led him to water and held his head down until he drowned. I know she's not a saint, but it's…” Jane noticed that Bruce Oh seemed to be smiling at her. He was actually giving her a genuine, lips curved upward, slight, but unmistakable, smile.

“It's complex,” she finished.

 

Jane and Tim drove home later that morning. Neither one of them wanted to spend another minute in the cabins at Campbell and LaSalle. Jane had very little to pack, and because most of Tim's clothes had been loaned out, neither did he. She did put back all of the objects into her tote bag, and when Tim reminded her that she was supposed to be getting rid of them to make room for her Moonlight Market purchases, she shook her head.

“Maybe later,” she said. She fished out the Moore Push-Pin Company tin from her Moonlight Market shopping tote, put the two nails inside, and dropped it into her bag. A new talisman to keep, to add to the wrinkled buckeye and the EZ Way Inn key rings.

Tim said he felt wide awake and didn't mind driving. Jane said she, too, was bursting with energy and curled up in the front seat, closing her eyes.

In and out of sleep, Jane kept hearing Belinda St. Germain's voice in her ear. All of the snippets of
Overstuffed
that she had tried to absorb between meals and tree houses and chemical solvents and furniture hoaxes floated through her brain, leaving her feeling much more cluttered than she had two days ago when she had vowed to remake her life.

“Why was that again, dear?” asked Tim. “Why are we doing the topsy-turvy?”

“Because I'm a bad mother. I lost Nick's permission slip.”

“No, Jane, you're not a bad mother, you're a distracted mother. And even if you got rid of every McCoy flowerpot in your house and every pair of Bakelite dice and every advertising thermometer, you will still be a distracted mother. They're the best kind.”

“Yeah, right,” Jane said, yawning. “Like Nellie, she was always distracted, and she was terrific. A regular mom and a half.”

“Hey, can you imagine if she wasn't distracted? If she'd used up all that manic crazy energy watching and following you around all the time?” asked Tim. “You'd be a basket case.”

“Like I'm not,” Jane said, slipping away into sleep.

“No, you're not,” said Tim. “And besides, all that manic chatter is helpful. Nellie got you thinking square pegs in round holes, and that got you thinking about the nails, and you need all that stuff in your head and in your house. There's nothing you have to get rid of. Sometimes, darling, less is just less,” Tim said, and reached into Jane's bag, pulling out her copy of
Overstuffed
.

Tim took his eyes off the road just long enough to glance at the author's photograph on the book jacket. “Holy shit, she looks like Martine,” Tim said, and shuddered. “That's all we need, another life coach, Janie,” he said, nudging her. “Janie, wake up for a minute.”

“Yeah?” Jane asked. “I'm awake,” she said, not opening her eyes.

Tim pushed the button on his door that rolled down Jane's window.

“Honey, you've got a great husband and son and friends. You've got to stop worrying about all the wrong stuff. Throw this out your window for me, okay?”

“Okay,” Jane said, tossing
Overstuffed
onto the shoulder of the road.

“Feel better? You've gotten rid of at least five pounds of useless clutter. That's the stuff that needed to go. Right?” Tim asked.

“Yes, five pounds,” murmured Jane.

“Atta girl,” Tim said. “You got it.”

“Okay,” Jane whispered. “Got it. Got Charley and Nick and you and Don and Nellie and Oh…”

“Quite a cast for a dream,” said Tim, smiling.

“Got it,” Jane said, still sound asleep. “Got all the wrong stuff.”

“Right stuff,” said Tim.

“Right stuff,” repeated Jane, smiling at a dream just beginning to form at the edges of her sleep.