The Wrong Stuff (4 page)

“Where is it?” Jane asked. She vaguely remembered that she should be asking questions about the murder, the
who, what,
and
when
of why she was in the Ohs' perfectly appointed living room in the first place, but all she could think about was touching one of the carved wooden sunflowers on the Westman chest.

The room off the Ohs' kitchen, in the hands of parents and children and cats and dogs, would have been named and used as the family room. A television and squishy couch, upholstered in a color that wouldn't show spilled cocoa, would have taken up most of the sunny space.

Bruce and Claire Oh, however, had kept this room spare. The mullioned windows were bare of curtains; however, the carefully placed trees and trailing vines on the outside of the glass offered natural privacy. The walls were painted a deep tan; the trim was a rich cream. A thick carpet, patterned with florals and vines, the colors all softened by at least a century, anchored the room. Two buttery leather chairs sat on either end of a mission library table. A reading room? A meditation space?
Belinda St. Germain would give her eyeteeth for this room,
thought Jane.
There's not one wasted object, not one piece of filler
. Even the large chest of drawers sitting in the middle of the rug seemed as if it might belong there, as the object of display in a small, elegant museum gallery.

Jane approached the chest and stroked one of the large, carved sunflowers on the drawer. She knelt to feel the carving of vines trailing down the chest's heavy legs and feet. Instead of a griffon's claw or a hairy paw for the chest's feet, Westman, if it was indeed Westman who was the maker of this magnificent piece, had continued his garden design and carved ivy leaves encircling the legs and clinging sensuously to the ball feet. Jane stood up and ran her hand along the top of the shelf, which was now reattached to the three-drawer body.

“Someone had pried off the shelf and used it as a narrow table. Probably in a child's room for a while,” Claire said. “There was paint and waxy stuff all over the surface, maybe crayons. I saw it and spotted the sunflower carvings at the top of legs, and I knew a master hand had touched it.”

The way she said it, “a master hand,” made Jane stand up a little straighter. Yes, that was what one, sometimes, some lucky times, saw across a room—the work of a master hand.

“What I didn't see right away was that the table was actually the top shelf of a chest. The top surface was narrow, but that could mean it was handmade and offsize, that's all. It was only when I saw the chest that I put it together,” said Claire. “I guess I mean that literally as well as figuratively.” She smiled, almost apologetically, at Bruce Oh, who had barely spoken since Jane had entered the house.

“It's beautiful,” said Jane, knowing that any word was inadequate when used to describe treasure. She felt the pull of the chest and continued to stroke one of the larger carvings on the drawer.

Jane knew that wood could talk, tell stories. She believed that the carved chest had whispered just loud enough for the right person to hear, “Take me home, Claire. I'm something.”

“Yes,” said Claire, walking around to the back of the chest, turning and looking back at Jane and her husband. She was taller than the chest, tall enough to look across the top of it. Claire leaned her chin on the shelf, half closed her eyes, and sighed. “It's a fake,” she said.

“A beautiful fake,” said Claire, “but a fake nonetheless.”

Jane looked back and forth from Claire's eyes to the drawer pulls and the sunflower carvings and shook her head.

“I'd bet my…,” Jane began to say.

Claire stopped her. “Don't. You'd lose it.” She came back around the front of the chest and pulled out the drawer. “You can see where they aged the wood, but it's a little too even, too neat. Dovetails are all large and too perfect. Look how it fits.”

Claire slid the drawer back in place.

“Perfect, isn't it?” asked Jane.

“Yes,” Claire said. “It shouldn't be though. A drawer from an authentic piece wouldn't go all the way in, wouldn't be such a perfect fit. There would be more ventilation space left at the back. There are other clues, too….”

Bruce Oh, who had quietly brought in a tray with coffee, set it down and motioned for Jane to come over and sit.

“Claire rarely makes mistakes,” he said.

“But when I do…,” Claire said, letting the thought trail.

“If Mrs. Wheel is going to help…,” said Oh.

Lost in the land of ellipses,
thought Jane.
Somebody better finish a sentence around here
.

“What is it you think I can…?” Jane began to ask.

Claire cleared her throat and straightened herself to her full six plus feet. Jane had always mistrusted people that tall. The truth was, and she knew it, she was jealous. Jane worried that the tall were able to see everything she, as the smaller than average, missed: dust on top of the refrigerator, cobwebs on the ceiling, the frailties of the human heart. Right now, even though Claire Oh was clearly in distress, Jane was certain she would never lose her keys, mismatch her socks, or mislay a permission slip.

“I called my helper, Stanley, to bring the truck over, and we loaded up the chest together. I kept it here, at home, in the garage. Horace came to see it. He agreed with me that it was a Westman—or the closest thing we were ever going to find. Wrote me a check for a deposit, and I told him I'd drive it up to Campbell and LaSalle myself for the cleaning and restoration.”

Claire looked Jane over from top to bottom. “Do you know about Campbell and LaSalle?” she asked.

Jane was surprised at how thoroughly she resented Claire Oh's question. Yes, she was a picker not a dealer, and yes, she liked the old and worn more than the old and precious, and yes, she was wearing a boxy, vintage wool jacket over a pair of skinny jeans instead of the slim, gray Armani skirt and silk blouse that Claire was wearing. Yes, even after some jail time, Claire Oh had the dealer look, the I-know-the-value-of-everything-you've-ever-touched look, and yes, she had on Manolo Blahnik heels, too, but did that give her the right to assume Jane would not know that Campbell and LaSalle were the premiere restorers/refinishers/rebuilders in the country? Just because the jewelry Jane was sporting was a Bakelite pin with dangling butterscotch cherries instead of the forties Cartier diamond watch that Claire wore on her left wrist? Jane reminded herself that she really liked Bruce Oh, and he had asked her to come and talk to Claire.

“Who is Horace?” Jane asked.

“Horace Cutler's a dealer in fine European antiques. This wasn't his cup of tea, but he had a buyer. Everyone was going to make something on this,” Claire said, patting the surface of the chest.

Everyone but the owner,
Jane thought, but didn't say anything out loud. After all, would she refuse if someone running an estate sale gave her something? Just asked her to haul it away? No. But what if she thought the something was
something?
Would she tell?

“I checked it in with one of the carpenters at Campbell and LaSalle and told him I wanted the minimum amount of work done. Clean it up, put it back together, save the age, you know, the patina,” Claire said.

Jane nodded. She and her pal, Tim, when out of earshot and sight of Charley and Nick, played a pretend game. Tim would link his arm though Jane's at a flea market, and they would discuss their imaginary daughter, little Patina. “Would Patina like a little dressing table for her room?” “Is Patina still collecting poodles?”

Tim always said that as soon as he met the right man, they'd get themselves a poodle and name it Patina just to satisfy all of his Kankakee flower shop customers who weren't happy having a gay florist unless he made them laugh and sang them show tunes. Tim often used Jane, not as his beard to pretend he was straight, but rather as his foil for outragious behavior. Jane was stuck playing Cher to his Elton.

“They want me drooling over Liza and nibbling quiche,” Tim had said the last time Jane was in the store. “If they saw me with you, eating a pizza, drinking a beer, and not ratcheting my voice up to an octave above
Q
for queen, they'd go back to buying their flowers at the Jewel.”

“I drove up to Michigan and picked up the chest myself,” Claire said. “I just glanced at it, and it looked gorgeous. I delivered it to Horace's gallery. His assistant signed for it. I came home and changed for the Hospital Auxiliary antique show at the Community House and when I got there, Horace was already waiting for me at my designated space, screaming at my assistant that the chest delivered to him was a fake and he wanted his deposit back immediately. He said he had already sent it back to the house.” Claire continued rubbing the wood as she talked. “He went even crazier when he saw me. Called me lots of names. Screamed at everyone passing by that I was a liar and a cheat.”

Bruce Oh, silent for so long, went over to his wife and patted her hand, which, Jane realized, was moving a bit obsessively over the carving. He led her over to the couch, and when she had sat, Oh took up the story.

“Mrs. Wheel, you've been at shows like that. The first night is a benefit. Well-dressed people, drinking champagne, an elegant evening. Mr. Cutler's screaming cut through the crowd like a knife.”

“What happened?” asked Jane.

“Security came and escorted him out,” said Claire. “Here was this elegant little man, dressed in an impeccable suit, yelling like a crazy person. Said his credibility with his customer was ruined. Shouted that he'd get even. He actually said he'd”—Claire stopped for just a second, swallowed, and continued—“he said he'd kill me for this.”

“My god, what did you say?”

“Not if I kill you first.” Claire shook her head. “I was being flippant, of course. I'm regretting the bravado now.

“I returned a few cases to my booth at the antique mall that night like I always do so they could be locked in the safe I keep there, just jewelry and a few smalls. The back door was locked. I let myself in and there was a light on near my booth. Horace was there. Dead on the Kilim rug, right in front of the Pembroke table.

“How did you know he was dead?”

“The lack of breathing, the pool of blood, the seven-inch blade with the carved bone handle sticking out of his chest,” Claire said, shrugging. “The dagger was a tip-off of sorts.”

Oh again laid his hand on his wife's.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I've had a very bad day.”

“It's okay,” said Jane, thinking she had been right about tall people. They were supercilious and got away with it because they could see farther than the average joe—or jane.

“But what about the timing of all this? How long had he been dead? Did you call the police right away?”

“The police walked in right after me. The alarm had been tripped. I turned it off before I came in, but it had rung at the police station because of a front window being tampered with,” Claire said. “It was a scene from a television program. I was kneeling over the body of a man that at least thirty well-dressed, reliable witnesses had heard me say I'd kill.”

“Network,” Jane said, looking past Claire, locking eyes with Bruce Oh.

Oh looked at her blankly.

“Last scene before the first commercial break,” Jane said. “Network television program.” She shook her head. “Not even HBO.”

 

Jane placed four large boxes on the dining room floor. Belinda St. Germain had told her at the end of chapter one that sorting was a top priority. The categories that St. Germain had defined—trash, charity, deep storage, and finally, the well-placed essentials—had to be slightly amended for Jane's work and home space. “Trash,” after all, was such a relative word. Everyone knew the hackneyed mantra of the garage sale crowd—one person's trash is another person's treasure—but it got more complicated for a picker. Jane labeled her boxes with the following—“Might be for Miriam,” “Maybe I should ask Tim first,” “Not Yet,” and “Almost Trash.”

Sorting out what was going through her mind also benefited from a kind of labeling. Actually, Jane realized, her thoughts were working more in her old ad exec mode of pro and con listing before going forward with a pitch.

The pro list clearly outweighed the con list, however that one con was a lulu. If she ran off to play detective, wasn't she in even more danger of losing permission slips and packing defective lunches? Perhaps Belinda St. Germain had a point when she stated that sorting through one's stuff—learning the difference between the right stuff and the wrong stuff—was a lot easier than figuring out the rest of one's life.

Maybe Jane needed to start with the stuff. She stood knee-deep in a pile of used wool sweaters that she thought someone might want for felting, shoeboxes full of old snapshots of someone's California vacations, and two laundry bags full of silk flowers that she thought Tim might be able to use for decorative somethings. Since she had moved these piles in from the garage in order to sort them into the boxes that she had also dragged in and marked, the dining room was already more impassable than it had been that morning when Charley and Nick had pointed out the errant permission slip on the table.

When her cell phone began playing “Jingle Bells”—Nick must have been at the tone menu again—she forgot how much she hated the device and lunged for it gratefully. Anything to focus on other than these piles of…these piles.

“Yes?”

“Whoa, girlfriend, you actually sound like someone who answers a cell phone, instead of searching for it in your purse until it stops ringing.”

“Timmy, do you ever use fake flowers?”

“I hot glued them to a foam-core sandwich board once for a Halloween costume,” said Tim.

“So I should put them in the ‘Almost Trash' pile, maybe?” Jane asked, more to herself than Tim.

“I was going as a garden plot,” said Tim. “It was pretty cool.”

“So you do want them?”

“Want what?”

“Never mind,” Jane said. She looked at the mounds of stuff in front of her and made her decision. “I thought we might go on a road trip bright and early tomorrow.”

“The Waukesha auction?” Tim asked.

“Nope, Michigan. Campbell and LaSalle.”

Tim laughed. “You're kidding, right? You don't have any furniture good enough for Campbell and LaSalle.”

Was she wearing a “kick me” sign?

“Tim Lowry, you know I don't have the money or the truck to get big pieces of good furniture, but that doesn't mean I don't know what they are or that I don't recognize quality. It doesn't mean I'm small time or…” Jane stopped. Of course she wanted to accept Claire Oh's case. She needed to take control of her life again. She took a deep breath, mustering her dignity and calling on the ghost of her former professional self for help.

“Tim, Detective Oh asked for help on a case, and I said yes. I mean I've decided to say yes. And since I also said yes to being your partner, you can be my partner this weekend. You can set us up at Campbell and LaSalle, can't you?”

“Of course I can. I've been going there for years,” said Tim. “I didn't mean to imply anything about…it's just like you said, that you don't have the big cash flow or the truck for a Campbell and LaSalle job. No need for the thin skin.”

This was great. Jane had been a detective on her first real case for only a few minutes, and she already had smart-ass Tim apologizing. She made a mental note to get business cards printed as soon as possible.

Jane filled Tim in on her conversation with Claire Oh. She had barely begun her description of the Westman chest or the alleged Westman chest, when Tim stopped her.

“Horace Cutler, yeah, I heard all about that. So that's who killed him? Wow!”

“Tim, don't be ridiculous. Claire Oh did not murder Horace Cutler,” said Jane.

“Okay, you're right. Forgot for a minute that you're Jane Wheel, girl detective. But let me ask you this. If you read what happened in the paper, big-deal antique furniture forgery catfight and one cat ends up dead with the other one kneeling over him, you'd pretty much take it as fact, yes?”

“Well…”

“But because this is Bruce Oh's wife, you have some weird karmic debt that you're paying off to him?”

“Bruce Oh is a quiet, intelligent man, who is wise and thoughtful and clever without having to show off about it by spouting song lyrics and puns, like some people I know,” Jane said, “and his wife wouldn't…”

“Hey, your husband Charley—remember him—is a wise and thoughtful man, and you do all sorts of irrational things. You buy truckloads of vintage junk that might make you some cash if you turned it around, but you adopt it and give it its own room.”