The Wrong Stuff (5 page)

Jane took a deep breath and looked around the room. She was drowning in stuff; her family was drowning in stuff; she was pulling them under. Yes, she was an irrational woman married to an intelligent, logical man. But she wouldn't kill anyone. Claire was not what Jane had expected, not who she wanted her to be, but Jane didn't think Claire would kill anyone either. But. But what? There was something.

“Claire didn't kill Horace Cutler, Tim. She's…she's not…”

“Ye-e-e-s?” said Tim, drawing the word out like a cartoon shrink.

How could Jane explain this? Before she had met Claire Oh, she had had such a clear picture of her—and for the silliest of reasons. Detective Oh's neckties. He wore these funny, gorgeous vintage ties that he always seemed vaguely embarrassed about. He'd wave away Jane's compliments, explaining that his wife bought them and insisted he wear them. Jane had pictured her, had actually tried to pick her out at estate sales, and had thought of her as this plump, homey, funny collector, a bit more advanced than Jane, but lovely and warm. Claire Oh was supposed to be the counterpoint to Bruce Oh's careful reserve. She was supposed to be the yin to his yang, the jazz to his classical, the Mrs. Columbo to his Peter Falk. No, that wasn't quite it…but Tim was waiting.

“Claire Oh did not murder Horace Cutler,” said Jane, “but I will admit this. I didn't exactly warm up to her. There's something about Claire that just rubbed me the wrong way, something…I don't know, like she was a snotty cheerleader or something and I was the editor of the yearbook or…”

“You
were
the editor of the yearbook,” Tim reminded her.

“Yeah, but I
chose
that. I could have been a…” Jane stopped herself, remembering that she was a mature adult, a career woman, a wife and mother, and soon to be an organized, uncluttered detective and picker. Besides, Tim was the one person in her life who would know for sure that she couldn't do the splits at age fifteen—or at any other age for that matter. She wasn't going to convince Tim that she
chose
not to be a cheerleader.

“That's all beside the point,” Jane said. “Maybe if it weren't for Detective Oh, I wouldn't want to do this, but…”

“Let's face it, honey, if it weren't for Detective Oh, you would have drowned in Bakelite buttons by now. The fact that he sees your talent for finding things, your instincts for what's valuable, as important job skills is what's given you the confidence to move from junk collector to…” Tim stopped.

“Yes?” Jane asked, waiting to hear Tim use her new professional title of detective.

“A junk collector who's about to visit Campbell and LaSalle.”

“It's in here someplace,” Jane said. She was searching for a small notebook that she always kept for jotting down items she was currently looking for at sales. She decided to take notes as Tim told her about Glen LaSalle and his partner, Blake Campbell. “Jingle Bells” sounded from somewhere in the bottom of her large, leather bag.

“Isn't it a little early to switch your ring to Christmas carols?” Tim asked.

“Oh, Nick does that. He switches the sound so I never know it's my phone. I'll be grocery shopping and the phone will ring and everybody in the produce section is slapping their pockets and digging through their briefcases, and I'll be thinking, Can't be me, my phone doesn't play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and sure enough, when I'm hunting for my checkbook, I'll find that I've missed a message.”

Jane abandoned the search for her notebook and looked at her phone. It was vibrating as well as playing music. “Nick must have set all systems go,” she said.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

Jane sighed. Only one person she knew called her on the phone, then sounded so busy and irritated when Jane answered that she was often confused about who called whom.

“Hello, Mom,” Jane said, even though she could hear her mother talking to someone else.

Jane's mother, Nellie, came back on the line. Jane couldn't prove it, but she thought just maybe the phone vibrated not because of a preference setting but because it was reacting to the dialing style of Jane's mother.

“You're coming home Thanksgiving, right?” Nellie asked.

“Mom, don't we have a month or so? Yes, we'll be there,” Jane said.

“Yeah, she could bring it then,” Nellie said, but clearly to someone other than Jane.

“I could bring what?” Jane asked, trying to cradle the phone and talk while removing all the pens and pencils from the bottom of her bag.

“She sure as hell isn't going to ask you for food. Remember when you made that pumpkin pie?” Tim asked, laughing.

“Hey,” Jane said, punching him in the arm, “I used a real pumpkin, not canned. It was special.”

“Rind and all. God it was vile.”

“Charley said it wasn't too bad. He liked that it didn't come from a can. Besides, the instructions were so frigging unclear,” Jane said, remembering the masses of pumpkin entrails covering her kitchen floor.

“What the hell are you talking about? Who's there with you?” Nellie asked.

“Pumpkin pie and Tim. We're driving to Michigan,” Jane said.

“Stop talking while you're driving. Jesus, Don? Don? She's on the phone driving her car again.”

Jane could hear her father's voice in the background.

“Your dad says to pull over.”

“Mom, listen to me. I'm not driving. Tim is. We're on our way to a furniture place in Michigan. What is it you want?”

“Furniture place? What the hell do you need any more furniture for? Where's Charley? Where's Nick?” Nellie asked Jane, then called to the others in the room, “She's in a car with that Tim going to Michigan.”

Nellie had met Tim when Jane brought him home from first grade. It was one of those rare days when Nellie, because of a doctor's appointment or some other outside force, had left work at the EZ Way Inn before six o'clock at night and ended up at home by four, so when Jane fished her key out of her plaid book bag, Nellie was already opening the door. It was a special day when Nellie was home, and Jane could still conjure up the joy she'd felt at having a mom there, in the house, just like on television.

“Who's that?” Nellie had asked, jerking her head at Tim, and Jane had told her that Tim was her best friend. Jane remembered that Nellie had been most suspicious. “A boy is your best friend?” Tim had shaken hands, hung up his coat on the peg by the door, and removed his shoes. Nellie, who might write “Catholic” on a form that asked for religious faith actually worshipped only two things—cleanliness and hard, backbreaking work. She watched Tim carefully and nodded.

Tim walked right over to the cupboard where Jane kept all of her paper dolls, neatly stored by Nellie in the folders they came in. He removed the June Allyson folder and asked, “Should we finish cutting out the hats and other accessories?” Nellie had nodded again, and taken Jane's coat from her. “We won't be worrying about that one,” she had said and had fixed them a plate of cookies.

“Just like on a television show,” Jane said, remembering out loud how much that afternoon resonated.

“What the hell are you doing with Tim? Where's your husband and son?”

“Rockford. Charley's giving a lecture at the museum there, and Nick went with him. What is it you want, Mom?”

“Hello, honey,” said her dad, Don, who had picked up another phone. “What's Charley talking about?”

“You watch out for that Tim,” Nellie said, ignoring her husband on the extension.

Jane laughed.

“I mean it,” Nellie said. “Maybe he's just been biding his time, waiting for the right moment.”

“Whoa, Mom, I'm pretty sure about Tim,” Jane said, still laughing.

“You take canned pumpkin out of the can so it would make sense that you take the real pumpkin out of the shell, right?” Tim said, still reliving the great pie disaster of 1999.

“My mom thinks you've been playing possum all these years, might really be after me,” Jane said, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.

“Listen to me, Jane, you think you know everything, but men are only after one thing,” Nellie said, “and maybe you don't know that Tim as well as you think.”

“And what might that one thing be, Nellie?” asked Don. “Because if that's the case, I'd like to tell you if I got it or not.”

“Stop right there, you guys,” said Jane. “Way too much information. Just tell me what you want, Mom. Why did you call?”

“Bring home Grandma's sewing chest.”

“What?”

“That table that folds out. Aunt Veronica wants to see it,” said Nellie.

Jane was relieved. It didn't actually sound like she had to lose one of her favorite pieces of furniture; she just had to take it home for a visit.

“Veronica remembers a secret drawer and I told her she's senile, but she won't take no for an answer.”

“Especially when it's so beautifully phrased,” murmured Jane.

“What?” Nellie asked.

“I'll bring it,” said Jane.

“Yeah, and watch out for Tim,” said her mother.

“Have a nice weekend, honey,” said her dad.

 

Jane ate the last bite of her hamburger and drained her beer. She and Tim had stopped at a roadside restaurant, the first nonchain place they had seen since getting off the highway.

“Almost as good as the EZ Way Inn,” she said.

“What was Nellie saying about me anyway?” Tim asked.

“She thinks you might have had a lifetime plan of pretending to be gay just to somehow trick me into bed,” said Jane.

“How the hell did she figure it out?” Tim asked.

“Do not ever underestimate the paranoia and conspiracy theory that we like to call Nellie,” said Jane.

“For forty years I've pretended to like other men, for god's sake. I've even had long-term relationships. I mean, I am nothing if not thorough. I even became a florist,” Tim said, eating french fries off of Jane's plate.

“You've learned the words to show tunes; you've dressed meticulously and expensively; you've rehabbed architectural landmarks.”

“I pretend to like to take long walks by the river, read poetry, and refinish chairs. I don't watch football on television. I polish my silver,” said Tim. “I can make drinks in a blender.”

“Let's face it,” said Jane. “We're describing the perfect man here. If Nellie were right, I'd leave Charley for you in a minute.”

“No you wouldn't,” said Tim, his voice soft, taking her hand.

“No, no I wouldn't,” said Jane, looking into Tim's eyes. “But I want to grow old with you, too. Is that crazy?”

“Not entirely,” said Tim. “I know the feeling. Tell you what. When we get to Campbell and LaSalle, you can check out the new-age yuppie communal way of life and decide if you dig it. If yes, maybe the Wheel family of three and the Lowry party of one and a few other well-chosen people we can stand to be around for more than ten minutes ought to buy some land together and work out our own little sunshine acres for our soon-to-be senior years.”

Tim handed Jane a booklet. It was made of high-quality paper, a marbled tan, with deep brown lettering. In elegant block printing across the top, it said
CAMPBELL AND LASALLE.

“Read it,” said Tim, when Jane looked at him. “I'm going to go out to the car and call the shop.”

Jane studied the map of the Campbell and LaSalle community. Tim had told her there were several rustic but beautifully appointed cabins on the property that those in the know used when they brought in big pieces for consultations. Writers and painters whom Glen LaSalle and Blake Campbell deemed worthy were also welcomed to use the place as a kind of artists' colony. Many contemporary novelists gave effusive thanks to Campbell and LaSalle for “allowing them the opportunity to work in beauty and silence” or for “giving them the space for their work to grow.”

“Here's the thing,” said Tim, when they were back on the road, “there isn't even an application process to live at Campbell and LaSalle. Can you imagine? You're a struggling writer, maybe one novel well-received critically but dying on the vine as far as bookstores and stuff, and you get a call from Blake Campbell inviting you to come and live up there for a month, rent-free, board-free? You get a cabin and peace and quiet and meals…they have an incredible chef. You just have to fit in with the ‘spirit.'”

“What does that mean?” Jane asked.

“Hard to say. Kind of a hippie, yuppie, snobby, work ethic? You know…casual dress, work clothes, as long as you look like you picked them out from Ralph Lauren's country collection. You know, you're there for the art and you're not attached to material objects, but at dinner there's a lot of one-upping on the wine and the sauce for the duck and all that bullshit.”

Jane sat farther back in her seat. She should still be sorting through her purse. She hadn't even discarded one item let alone three. She hadn't finished sorting through the boxes at home either. If Charley and Nick came home right now instead of Monday as planned, they would find the house even more chaotic than when they'd left.

Belinda St. Germain was reassuring in her book. “It sometimes gets worse in order to get better,” she counseled, along with other darkest-before-the-dawn clichés, but Jane forgave her the bad writing. Belinda, after all, had something to teach Jane, and Jane would, by golly, learn it.

Sorting and discarding. She could do it. Right now, she would practice by sorting out her feelings about Claire Oh. One-upping? Is that what Tim had said about the Campbell and LaSalle dinner table? Was that what was bothering her about Claire? Before Jane had met her, she had been certain she would like her, that she would be a kindred spirit. After all, Claire dressed Bruce, and Jane knew how she felt about Bruce Oh—respectful, fond, curious. Right now, she was extremely curious about how he had hooked up with Claire. He was so fair and unpretentious and straightforward. Claire seemed judgmental, like someone who just might send the wine back at Campbell and LaSalle.

When Jane had asked Claire if Horace might have switched the chest himself, had a duplicate made, Claire had laughed.

“Why would he go to all that trouble? If he claimed publicly that it was a fake, he wasn't going to be able to sell it.”

“Or quickly produce an authentic one for sale,” added Oh. “Would he have wanted the real chest for himself?” Jane had asked.

“Not his style. Didn't collect American,” Claire had said.

Jane wasn't convinced. She had heard so many people profess to collect only one kind of object, one artist, one author, but when you saw them at a sale, their eyes were everywhere. Appreciating the value of one piece led to the appreciation of another—and another.

Belinda St. Germain might be hammering away at “the glory of absence” and “the space of spaciousness,” whatever the hell that was, but Jane knew the beauty of bounty. Jane, like every other picker she'd watched work a sale, had the indiscriminate lust for all of it.

“If I'm not near the Roseville I love, I love the McCoy I'm near” was one of the songs that played in her rummaging brain at a sale.

If Horace Cutler had seen the beauty and workmanship in the Westman chest and wanted it for himself, why not pass off a copy to someone else? He'd have the chest and make the money from the sale of the fake. Oh and Claire were right—why would he create a public performance at the antiques show?

Jane sighed and went back to sorting through her purse. Trying to do a Belinda St. Germain purge before they arrived at Campbell and LaSalle might give her more closure than trying to figure out who had killed Horace Cutler and why Bruce Oh had married Claire. Holy Toledo, is that what people said about Charley? Why in the world did he marry that Jane?