Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries)

by Fiffer, Sharon

“Carl told me he overheard Janie saying she wanted to eat at S and B,” said Tim. He called over the waitress, ordered a gin and tonic and asked for a menu.

  “Why don’t you just make yourself at home and join us, Lowry?” said Nellie.

  “Thanks for asking. How about if I order some appetizers for the table?”

  Jane wished she knew if Tim chose to ignore Nellie’s sarcasm or if it truly went over his head.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Nellie, trying to slink under the table. “Who do you think we are? The king and queen or something?”

  “Hot artichoke dip does not a princess make, Nellie,” said Tim. “Besides, the dinners take a while and I am starving. And”—he added putting down the menu—“I’ve got some good news to share with you, my lovely adopted family.”

  “What’s up, Timmy?” asked Don, savoring his second olive.

  “Don’t we have to agree to adopt you?” asked Nellie.

  Tim spread out four bright yellow rectangles on the table. Then, with a flourish, he laid down four more, almost identical, although these were a bright green.

  “Who else would I share these with, if not my adoptive family?” asked Tim, his smile at about seventy-five watts and growing.

  Don picked up the yellow rectangle, which Jane realized was a ticket, and read aloud, “VIP seating for the preview show/dress rehearsal.” He then picked up a green ticket and in a slightly louder voice read, “VIP seating for LUCKY GETS ROASTED.”

  Don clapped Tim on the shoulder. “How did you manage this? I didn’t think even you would be able to get VIP seating for either one of these, but to get both?”

  While Nellie asked the waitress just how well done she could assure her that her steak could be cooked, Tim explained to Jane that the seating in the converted factory was going to be limited and the audience would be made up of Kankakee movers and shakers like the mayor and editor of the newspaper and the Kankakee merchants who had won Lucky Miller competitions. In other words, if Don or Nellie won the Lucky Duck drink contest, one of them would get two tickets to the event—either the dress rehearsal or the actual taping.

  Tim’s floral arrangements had been much appreciated by the hotel that was hosting a dinner tonight in Lucky’s honor. Because the flowers had been a last-minute order and Lucky’s staff had absolutely loved them, preview tickets were bestowed upon Tim and four tickets to the actual roast were given to the party planner who had an out-of-town wedding next week and couldn’t make the show.

  “Did you notice the little lucky charms I put on the bouquets?” asked Tim. Not waiting for Jane’s nod, Tim turned to Don and Nellie.

  “Seems like Lucky is really superstitious and for some reason, all of those little tokens like rabbits’ feet and lucky pennies and four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, all that crap really rang the bell for him. He made a big deal, said whoever thought of that was going to get a big raise and the party planner pointed to Lucky’s assistant, Brenda, who had hired him and said it had all been her idea, thinking Brenda would be able to get him more work, would make a good contact if he ever made it out to California and so she comes out smelling like a rose and lays these tickets on us.” Tim finally stopped for a breath and took a big sip of his drink.

  “I’m good at four-leaf clovers,” said Nellie.

  “She is,” said Don. He pointed at his empty martini glass and the waitress nodded. Nellie snorted and shook her head. “Oh come on, Nellie, we’re celebrating.”

  Nellie bent over, digging for something in her purse. Don’s second martini arrived along with appetizers and for a moment all was quiet, except for the gentle sighing that went along with people being served just the right thing at just the right time.

  After trying one cracker thickly smeared with the warm dip Nellie declared too salty, she slapped down one small piece of waxed paper in front of Jane on her right and one small square in front of Tim on her left.

  “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” said Nellie.

  Jane picked up the square and held it close. Pressed between the two pieces was a real four-leaf clover. Tim had one, too, although his was slightly smaller.

  “I find them all the time.”

  “It’s true,” said Don. “We go out to work in the yard and before I mow, your mother goes through the grass on her hands and knees and finds three or four of these every time.”

  Jane was used to odd statements and off-the-wall predictions and declarations from her mother. Nellie had always had her peculiar catchphrases—her “I knew that was going to happens”—but this was the first she had heard of her mother’s ability to find four-leaf clovers.

  “It’s like having a truffle pig or something,” said Jane, finishing up her drink.

  “A what?” said Nellie.

  “A highly trained specialist who can find rare things,” said Jane.

  Nellie stared her down. “Better be respectful, Jane, because if I can give you good luck, I can take it back, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean that as an insult. Truffles are special and—”

  “Forget it, I don’t really give a damn. Eat your dinner and let’s get the hell out of here because I’ve got more to say about this good luck and bad luck business.”

  Jane looked over at Tim, who was cutting into a steak and chatting with Don about gin martinis versus vodka martinis. She wanted to ask him about the errant moving truck, what he had heard, if he had heard. She thought about her stuff, boxes and boxes of random finds, taking a road trip through the Midwest. What were the odds that these boxes, the old wooden trunks, the cardboard wardrobes, the vintage suitcases would make it back to her? Dropoffs, pickups, changes of drivers would all contribute to chaos. And she hadn’t even labeled all of the boxes that well. Why did she have to? It was going to be one load, traveling one and a half hours south and being met by its godfather, Tim Lowry. These were the objects Jane had collected and curated for years, ever since she began picking up the oddball find in college. Now her treasure trove was circling around a five-state area, alone and unprotected. Jane felt oddly light and slightly dizzy. She was positive the second martini she ordered had nothing to do with it.

  Tim ordered an after-dinner drink, which set Nellie off on a lecture that had something to do with overdrinking, overspending, showing off, and taking a table in a busy restaurant for too much time.

  “People waiting in the bar want to sit down, too, Lowry. We had our turn.”

  “Our waitress is delighted that we’re here and continuing to spend money, Nellie. This will be her biggest tab all night. Plus,” he added, “I’m a big tipper.”

  “I’m treating tonight,” said Jane. “Celebrating the house sale.”

  “Yeah, but I owe you after my screwup and I’m buying tonight,” said Tim, as the waitress set down his brandy.

  “Let me see that dessert menu again,” said Nellie.

  Don asked for more coffee as did Jane, and they settled in to wait for Nellie’s hot fudge sundae to arrive.

  “Why are there so many people here so late on a Wednesday?” asked Don.

  “This is what time people eat,” said Tim.

  “Not in Kankakee,” said Don and Jane at the same time.

  “But it is in L.A. or Las Vegas or wherever all these writers and production people are from,” said Tim.

  Jane looked around. Tim’s observations were correct. These were non-Kankakeeans ordering multiple drinks, specifying brands of vodka and gin, people who requested wine lists and ordered two shrimp cocktails instead of an entrée. Waitresses were confused, but delighted. The bartender looked like he needed to call for backup. Jane was about to tell Tim that he was right about the clientele but wrong about their own tab being the priciest. Records might be set at the Steak and Brew tonight.

  “So what’s your screwup this time, Lowry?”

  Jane began to shake her head, but she had spooned up a giant bite of coffee ice cream and hot fudge from her mother’s dessert and couldn’t protest
out loud quickly enough to stop Tim.

  “Didn’t Jane tell you most of the stuff from her house, the stuff she packed up for the showing, is lost somewhere between here and Colorado?”

  “You said Nebraska before! Colorado?” Jane exclaimed. And you never said lost before either, she added silently.

  Tim knocked back the rest of his brandy and leaned forward. He explained that the truckers were independent fellows who made short hauls from place to place, referred by bigger outfits who didn’t want to take on half and quarter loads and short hops. So, sometimes, if they had room in the truck and they could find new contract drivers when they needed them, they took on jobs as they came along and didn’t drive in necessarily straight lines.

  “He screwed up, but you’re the one who’s screwed,” said Nellie, taking another bite of whipped cream.

  “These guys looked like real movers,” said Jane. “How can they be so … random?”

  “Actually, they’re used to moving band equipment. See, they’re part of a band that was on hiatus, but then they ended up getting some gigs through this small college booking…”

  Jane stopped listening. As Tim laid out the details of these full-time roadies, part-time movers who gave him incredible rates, explained what a great and talented band they were a part of, and how the group was finally getting some breaks and taking on moving jobs was how they paid for their truck and expenses and how they had promised to store Jane’s stuff at a storage space in Nebraska—Tim had already called to put the monthly rental on his credit card—while they loaded up the band stuff and played a few gigs, then they would pick up Jane’s boxes and come back to Illinois, just about the time she had decided where she was going to settle … While Tim explained all of that and more, Jane stopped listening and accepted the rest of her mother’s sundae, which Nellie pushed in front of her.

  “Eat the rest of that fudge. You’re going to need it.”

  Don said that he was happy they would have Jane with them for a while and Tim interrupted that Jane would stay with him since he had so much more room.

  Nellie watched Jane eat the last bite of ice cream and said nothing.

  Jane finally looked up. Before she could begin telling them she’d prefer to sleep in her car, shouts from the bar interrupted.

  “Call 911. He’s choking, call 911.”

  A busboy ran over, prepared to give the Heimlich maneuver, but was stopped by a burly teamster who told him it was an allergic reaction, not a lodged food particle.

  “He’s got a peanut allergy, he shouldn’t even be in here,” he yelled, pointing to a small dish of nuts at the other end of the bar.

  Jane almost turned over her chair rising and running into the bar. She would be too embarrassed to admit that someone else’s emergency had saved her from thinking about her homeless, stuffless self, but she was weirdly grateful that someone urgently needed something.

  The bartender shouted that the paramedics were on their way.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing,” said the woman on the floor next to the unconscious young man.

  “If he’s not breathing, we have to start CPR,” said Jane, trying to move some of the people in the crowd who had turned to stone. “Let me through.”

  “Oh God, thank you,” said the same woman who had shouted out that he wasn’t breathing.

  Jane looked away from the statues she was trying to budge out of her way and saw Nellie, who had threaded her way through the eight or nine men and women standing slack-jawed and frightened on the other side, drop to her knees, support the man’s head, and bend her head down to breathe life into this stranger.

  The paramedics burst into the barroom and were at the man’s side immediately and Nellie popped up without having to begin the treatment. They backed people away, trying to give themselves room to work and the man air to breathe.

  “I told you we shouldn’t come here,” said Nellie. “Your dad looks like he’s going to faint.”

  Two peanut allergies in one night? thought Jane. Did Lucky have some fetish about hiring people who have the same health problems?

  Jane saw that Tim had left a wad of cash on the table and she followed her parents out to the parking lot.

  Don leaned against Tim’s car, parked closest to the door.

  “Nellie, what were you thinking?” said Don, taking a few deep breaths.

  “Mom was doing the right thing, Dad,” said Jane. The only thing stranger to her than witnessing two reactions to peanut allergies in one evening was the fact that her mother knew CPR and was willing to perform it on a stranger. “That was gutsy.”

  “You never fail to surprise me, Nellie,” said Tim. “I’ve got to admit, I was impressed with your quick thinking and—”

  “Jeez, Nellie, what were you thinking?” said Don.

  Jane was relieved to see color returning to her dad’s face, but surprised at how harshly he was speaking to her mother. He usually championed Nellie no matter what sort of nonsense she spouted and now when she was about to be a real hero, he looked like he wanted to ground her for life.

  “Oh c’mon, Don, I seen it on TV a million times,” Nellie said with a shrug. “How hard can PCR be?”

  6

  Jane had looked back and forth between Tim and Nellie, deciding where to spend the night. Tim was perky and bubbly, describing the bedroom he had readied and her own private bathroom he had supplied with her favorite shampoo.

  “Your old room and you share the bathroom with me,” said Nellie. “And I use the store-brand shampoo,” she added, glaring at Lowry.

  Don had hugged Jane and said she was welcome as long as she wanted, though he admitted he had no real estate to share since he had long been relegated to the bathroom in the basement. He had tiled it and built a shower in the small bathroom next to the area where he kept his beloved, if not often-used, exercise bike. No one would mistake his small corner of the basement for a man cave, but it served as a fairly soundproof hideaway for Don.

  “And,” Nellie added, “no matter where you stay, Rita stays here. I know how to take care of her.”

  Jane kissed Tim on the cheek.

  “I’ll move into that lovely suite later,” said Jane. “But tonight I want to catch up on some stuff with Don and Nellie.”

  Tim was still shaking his head as he jumped into his car and roared off. Jane didn’t blame him. It was crazy. But she didn’t want to chat all night about where she was going to live and what she was going to do next. She had enough of it for now.

  Jane wanted to hide out in her old bedroom, read a good-night text from Nick, and answer him with a long e-mail about how lucky they were that they sold the house, She needed to ask him what he wanted her to save from his closet. She needed to know if there were any old soccer balls or baseball cards, anything that she needed to rescue for him. Although she knew she could do that at Tim’s house, she also knew that if she decided to cry, just a little, before falling asleep, Tim would be listening at the door and fall all over himself fussing and trying to make her feel better.

  Nellie, on the other hand, would leave her completely alone.

  Jane closed her bedroom door and opened the large bag she always carried—her just-in-case—and inventoried her possessions: one toothbrush; one half tube of toothpaste; Kiehl’s lip balm and moisturizer; hairbrush; large silver hoop earrings, pajamas, silky kimono; two changes of underclothes; spare blue jeans; navy turtleneck; black turtleneck; good black pants; blue oxford cloth tunic; gray cardigan; brown lace-up hiking shoes; plaid wool Pendleton shirt; two pairs smart wool socks; gold and black patterned pashmina; one black jersey dress with a V-neck, three-quarter sleeves, and a wrap style that incorporated baggy pockets; black strappy flats that could pass for dress shoes. Jane laid all of these things out carefully on the extra twin bed. From the outside zippered compartment she removed a pair of leather driving gloves, an extra lipstick, and a carved red Bakelite bangle. She sniffed the bracelet, hoping for a whiff of formaldehyde, the comforting e
au-de Bakelite that she loved so much, but smelled nothing.

  “You might be the only one I have,” she whispered.

  Patting her not-too-worn Coach briefcase, which she had picked up at a house sale for three dollars—three dollars—she felt for her laptop and notebook and pens. She felt for the cords she used to her charge her computer and phone, then slapped her pocket to make sure she did, indeed, have her phone.

  Jane looked in the mirror. She was wearing dark jeans, short Frye boots, a navy V-neck sweater, a chain around her neck with a few silver medals and a baby ring—all rummage treasures—and an old buttery leather jacket that she had bought when she and Charley were in New York, for their fifth anniversary. It had been way too expensive but Charley had insisted she buy it.

  “It will never go out of style,” he had said.

  Jane knew that wasn’t exactly true. The jacket had gone in and out of style, several times actually, but she wore it through its ins and its outs. Every September, she took it out of her closet and put it in her car, or folded it into her just-in-case, so she would have it with her when the sun went down.

  “Thanks, Charley,” Jane said. “I’m glad I bought it.”

  “Did you say something?” asked Nellie, walking in without knocking. Jane wondered how long her mother had stood outside the door, waiting for Jane to sigh or groan so she’d have an excuse to come in.

  “Just taking stock of my worldly possessions,” said Jane. She waved her arms over the bed. “Except for my books at home and very few clothes in my closet and drawers and maybe a few other odds and ends, this is it.”

  Nellie looked over everything on the bed.

  “What do you need two turtlenecks for?” she asked.

  Jane opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead she started laughing. At first, it was that sad laughter, the prelude to hysteria that Jane had heard in so many others when she and Oh were working on a case. Then, as Jane looked at her things arrayed before her, the laughter became real, genuine, joyful laughter. She picked up the navy turtleneck and handed it to Nellie.