Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries)

by Fiffer, Sharon

  “I knew him,” said Jane, looking around at the narrow space. Jane could see that at one time there were offices that ran the length of this side of the building, but more recently, the walls had been taken down and the space resembled an art gallery. High windows fronted the street side, but the back wall was all a soft yellow brick. Jane pictured paintings hanging the length of that wall, illuminated by unobtrusive track lighting. In the center of that wall was a large arched doorway that led to the main body of the old factory. Since no one was sitting at the front desk, a heavy oak relic of the twenties, Jane sat in the wooden swivel chair. She reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook and started writing down everything she could remember from her conversation with Sluggo Mettleman.

  “Seeing the guy on the floor at the Steak and Brew doesn’t mean you knew him, Jane,” said Tim. “And what’s this about you filling in as Lucky’s assistant?”

  “Sorry, seems like everybody wants me for an assistant these days … you, Lucky, Don and Nellie…” said Jane. “And I did know Sluggo. I visited him at the hospital.”

  Jane sent a quick e-mail to Detective Oh with a few questions. She was managing the tiny keyboard better these days, but she’d never be Nick, whose thumbs could fly across the tiny face of the phone. Looking up at Tim who was trying to decide whether or not she was serious, she nodded.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, we need to go get started on our new jobs. And Timmy, be careful who you pal around with here.”

  Tim raised his eyebrows into question marks. Jane started walking through the doors to the main factory floor and, without fully turning around, quietly told Tim over her shoulder, savoring the opportunity to utter the phrase, “Might be a killer loose.”

  * * *

  Lucky was on the phone when Jane found him on the “set.” Basically the building was one giant factory floor. It had been meticulously cleaned and the wide wooden floor planks glowed. Although she could eyeball how perfectly a Pembroke table could fit in front of someone’s dining room window, Jane wasn’t great with large area measurements. Jane did know, however, that the factory building with its brick walls and six large skylights covered at least half of a city block. Cables and lighting subdivided the space further, defining the actual taped off set located in the rear of the building. Two wooden tables were pushed together, set up with a dozen or so chairs. A large-scale monitor hung behind the tables. A few nooks and crannies along the side walls were set up as mini-offices and Jane saw at least two makeup and hair stations. They had turned the old factory into a working studio. Who would have guessed? It’s amazing what a little hard work and thousands of dollars can do, thought Jane.

  “Sweetheart, hand me a pen and paper from over there, huh?” said Lucky, from one of the larger alcoves along the side of the main room. He gestured to her with his cell phone, waiting for someone to get back to him. “When I hired you, I had no idea how much I was going to need you around here, I just … yeah, I’m here, shoot. Okay, got it and send a shitload of flowers, okay? Oh, they don’t? Find out what the kid’s family wants, and send it. Yeah. Oh yeah, she’s here. I’ll tell her.” Lucky hung up the phone and nodded to Jane.

  “Brenda says she’s available if any questions come up, you can call her. She also said to tell you not to be too good at your job, since she plans on being back next week.”

  While Lucky was finishing up his call with Brenda, Jane had scanned the large folding table that appeared to be serving as a second desk. Loose script pages and DVDs were piled on top of food wrappers. Several dirty coffee cups were stacked in one corner. Two laptops were open on the table, their cords crisscrossing over the rest of the debris. When did Brenda leave? How could Lucky have trashed his office space this quickly?

  “What exactly do you need me to do?” asked Jane. “I’m not totally sure I’m the assistant type, but I do have some questions for—”

  “You’re my girl, all right,” said Lucky. “Nellie’s daughter is exactly who I want working for me.”

  Jane had remained standing, wanting desperately to close a door so she could talk privately with Lucky. She had to settle for pulling the makeshift curtain that surrounded the table and chairs as if it were a hospital bed in a double room. She supposed it was set up for the time this area would become a dressing room.

  “What? Time for my sponge bath?” said Lucky, unlit cigar firmly planted between his teeth.

  “Time for some honest answers,” said Jane, thinking a beat too late that if she wanted to be considered as a writer for this show, she could have said time to come clean.

  Lucky’s eyes, for just a moment, Jane noticed, seemed to dart around the space, Looking for an escape? Trying to come up with a quip or a lewd remark that would get him out of any serious answers? To Jane’s surprise, he removed the cigar, took a long drink from a water bottle, which Jane hoped contained water, not vodka, and leaned back in his chair.

  “Okay. Just so you know, I just had a driver die over at the hospital. He and I share the same affliction—allergy to peanuts. So you got me in a serious mood. Let’s be serious.”

  Jane flipped through all of her questions. Why Kankakee? What was the point of this special? Why would Sluggo Mettleman say someone, probably Lucky, was trying to kill him? Why was Nellie so suspicious of him? Where did the money come for this “special”? Jane flipped over all the cards.

  “Who’s Boing Boing?”

  “Right for the jugular, just like your mother,” said Lucky. He actually smiled and dropped his voice low. When he wasn’t talking with a cigar in his mouth, his usual growl turned into a normal speaking voice. He pushed some loose script pages off a book on his makeshift desk. Sliding the book over to Jane, he said, “That’s what you and me and the author of this book are going to figure out.”

  RECOVERING LOST MEMORIES … recreate the journey and recapture your life.

  Jane glanced at the book, but quickly looked back at Lucky’s face to see if this was some kind of joke.

  “I’ve had every kind of addiction in the world, Jane Wheel—you name it. I’ve had problems with drugs and gambling and alcohol. Sex,” he paused and sighed, before continuing, “although I’m not sure I’d call that the worst addiction. I’ve been agoraphobic, had panic attacks, anxiety issues. I’ve broken out in rashes. Lost my voice once for five months. People say I’m a hypochondriac, but that’s just because the docs can’t find out what’s wrong with me. I’m a fucking mess, Jane, but you know what? I’m getting close to getting better because I finally found someone who knows what’s wrong. My therapist wrote that book.” He pointed to the volume in front of Jane. “She thinks I got some things I repressed from my childhood that are haunting me. I got whole chunks of time I just can’t remember, see? And she thinks if I can figure them out”—Lucky paused and took another long pull of water—“I’ll be right as rain.”

  Fran, her eyes still red, announced herself with a verbal knock-knock, and pulled the curtain back slightly.

  “Lucky? Got a minute?” Fran nodded to Jane, looking a little curious about the new girl, but too busy to study her further. “I talked to the hospital and Sluggo signed himself out against their wishes. They wanted him to stay another day. They said he was already compromised, and it could have been a candy wrapper in Mickey’s car that set off the reaction and he couldn’t get to his pen. Mickey’s a mess. Blaming himself. He says he should quit.”

  Lucky shrugged. “If he wants to go, let him, it’s got to be hard … watching someone…”

  Lucky broke off his sentence and stared down at the table. Looking back up at Fran, he waved her away. “Let him go if he wants, cut him a check for two weeks’ pay or whatever the hell the union makes us do. Tell him it isn’t his fault, pat him on the back. Do what you gotta do. I’ll talk to him before he leaves, but get lost for a little while, okay?”

  Fran left without seeming to take offense at Lucky’s brusqueness.

  Jane watched him write something i
n a small blue notebook and slip it back into his pocket.

  “Had a little flash of something when Fran was talking,” said Lucky. “Something felt weird. Maybe about Boing Boing? Who knows?” Lucky put the cigar back into his mouth. “Read that book, Jane, and you’ll see. It’s amazing.”

  “Any reason someone might want to kill Sluggo Mettleman?”

  Lucky shrugged. “Probably. He was a mean little shit, always trying to start fights is what Sal told me. Sal’s the, I don’t know, crew chief, I guess. Been around the longest. My driver. Doesn’t everybody always want to kill somebody?”

  “I’m serious, Lucky,” said Jane. “If I’m going to help you find out who’s messing with your four-leaf clovers, I have to know what else is going on here.”

  Lucky dropped his voice a few notches, to what, for him, probably passed for a whisper. “Sluggo told me that somebody messed with his stuff, too. He told me that after he and Brenda talked about him having a peanut allergy, she wanted to know exactly what his reactions were like. He was a mess, that kid. He was allergic to a boatload of stuff. Anyway, he came storming in here a couple days ago and said he had left his kit out on the writer’s table when he was demonstrating some tai fung fu shit to the other drivers and when he came back he thought it had been moved or something. Threw a fit and said nobody should ever touch his medicine.”

  Lucky unwrapped two sticks of gum, unplugged his cigar, and stuffed them both in his mouth and began chewing.

  “What did the bag look like?” said Jane.

  “Like mine,” said Lucky, chomping on the gum and replacing the cigar. He gestured with his thumb and Jane saw a red kit identical to the one she had figured for a Dopp kit in Sluggo’s hospital room.

  Jane noticed Lucky look at his watch, swipe one finger over the face, look again and wipe it again. He repeated the gesture seven times before looking up and saying, “I got to be at some park in a few minutes; can we be done for now?”

  Jane looked around Lucky’s curtained-off space.

  “Just tell me where you keep your lucky stuff?” Jane almost laughed. She sounded like she was shaking down a leprechaun.

  Lucky gestured to a trunk that was covered with a few pillows. It appeared it was being used for extra seating. “Here’s a key I had made for you. Don’t let it out of your sight,” said Lucky. “I’ve been collecting those things for years. You can’t imagine what it’s like to feel like you’re losing all your favorite stuff.”

  Jane toyed with giving Lucky Miller a rough inventory of exactly what she had lost in the past twenty-four hours, but decided against it.

  “Any other real assistant duties I should know about?”

  Lucky shook his head. “You’ll catch on. You just need to walk around with a clipboard and keep track of my schedule. Brenda left everything right there. When you’re here, you can answer that landline, but I got my cell and anybody who’s supposed to be calling me will probably do it directly. We do most of the rehearsal stuff in the morning and remotes, like at your folks’ tavern, in the afternoon or evening. We’ll begin taping next week.”

  “Who’s paying for this? I mean producing this?” asked Jane.

  “My company. I’m rich, baby. You’d be surprised how much being a second banana comic pays over the long haul. No ex-wives, no alimony, and no extravagances except the usual, so I got a nest egg. Besides, you’d be surprised how cheap everything is here. We got the building in a swap for a fix-up and cleanup and the food and motels are pretty damn cheap compared to anything out west.

  “I also helped a few members of the Rat Pack bury some bodies, so they took care of me, if you know what I mean?” said Lucky, raising his eyebrows.

  Jane opened her mouth and was trying to decide exactly what to ask, when he held up his hand palm up, then pulled back the curtain. “Kidding baby, kidding. I just want the roast enough to produce it myself. It’s like being at your own funeral and getting to hear all the best jokes. Now you be a good girl and read that book. You’ll get me. Belinda’s notes about my case are tucked into the front of chapters and you can read them, too. You’ll see. Belinda says as long as I can afford to do this, I got to do it. And I need all the help I can get.”

  Belinda? Couldn’t be. Then again, why not. Jane flipped over the book to the back where the familiar photo of a wise-looking woman with startling green eyes stared back at her, an almost smile playing around her lips. Belinda St. Germaine had been an organizer and decluttering guru, who had been featured on Oprah and whose book, Overstuffed, had nearly dismantled Jane’s psyche when she decided to give Belinda’s suggestions a whirl. The author had moved into the life-coaching business in California, authoring a best-selling book about navigating Hollywood that Tim and Jane had mistakenly tried to follow when in California on business and now, apparently, in her most recent incarnation, Belinda St. Germaine was a therapist specializing in the recovery of lost memories. Jane shook her head as she read one of the blurbs praising St. Germain. Remembering what caused our fears is what allows us to face them. St. Germaine might not be the first to claim this, but she says it in language we can all understand. Wouldn’t Jane be better off if she could repress some of her Nellie memories?

  Lucky gave her a nod as he stepped outside his quasi-private space, parting the curtain with one hand and holding a bulging briefcase in the other.

  “Hey,” he said, dropping the curtain and holding it back with his shoulder. “You said you talked to Mettleman? Where the hell did you see him?”

  “Hospital visiting a friend and I saw his Lucky hat and popped my head in, that’s all. Figured it was what Brenda would do.”

  Lucky took out his cigar and pointed it at her, as if he were bestowing his own form of knighthood.

  “You got some Nellie in you, all right.” Jane saw the light in his eyes flash again and he whipped out his small notebook and scribbled something. “It’s coming back, baby. After the writers’ meeting, I’ll have a bunch of new pages to go over. You can put them all in one of those binders in the morning. All the numbers to reach me or Brenda or any of these chumps are in the front of that binder. Meantime, just give me a buzz if anything new comes up on the schedule, comprendez-vous?

  Scanning the schedule Lucky had shuffled over to her, Jane saw it was dated at the top with today’s date and a time of nine A.M. It appeared that it was e-mailed or delivered in person daily to the principals involved and Jane saw a folder where the previous schedules were all filed. She picked this up along with Brenda’s notes and dropped them into her bag.

  Jane also dropped the weighty Recovering Lost Memories and Finding Yourself into her tote bag and picked up the key Lucky had placed in the table. Before sinking into Belinda St. Germaine’s prose of self-help, she would help herself by unlocking the kind of closed doors she preferred.

  Jane removed the chain from around her neck that she wore with a few of her own totems. She had two small openwork iron keys, a Yellowstone Park souvenir silver medal with a deer on it and a tiny gold baby ring she had found in the bottom of a battered jewelry box, otherwise filled with knotted chains and orphaned screwback earrings she had picked up for a dollar at a rummage sale. Jane added Lucky’s trunk key to her necklace, then knelt in front of the box and pushed aside the cushions on the trunk’s lid. Putting the key into the lock and turning it, Jane recovered a few memories of her own. As soon as she figured out what was going on here and who was tampering with Lucky’s lucky stuff, she would get on the case of her own lost memories, boxed and crated, now cruising somewhere through Nebraska or wherever in the back of a moving truck. Between Jane and Tim, they had taken on so many part-time jobs, she realized she had let some of her own household responsibilities slip. Like getting back my household, she thought.

  “There should be music,” said Jane, turning the key and feeling the satisfaction of the tumbler sliding back. She lifted the top of the trunk. “And light pouring forth.”

  No music, though, and no light. Inside the trunk were
several small boxes and bottles. Jane settled herself cross-legged on the ground to open them one by one. Four-leaf clovers, rabbits’ feet, stickpins crafted into horseshoes, and a large vintage celluloid box apparently devoted to lucky tokens and coins that had been advertising pieces from various shoe stores, bars, and amusement parks made up most of the contents. There was a small jar of beach glass, another one that held smooth round beach stones. Jane picked up a small silk drawstring pouch and shook the contents into her hand. Petrified wood? No, these were teeth, large and pointed. From a shark? No, not angular enough. An elk, a buffalo? Were teeth considered lucky? Not for the elk, of course. A felt jewelry bag held a lop-sided blue marble and two wrinkled buckeyes. Jane smiled at the buckeyes, which were her personal favorite lucky pieces. In addition, of course, to Nellie’s four-leaf clovers, now that she knew Nellie had the “gift.”

  There was also a buttery soft leather lidded box shaped like a fortune cookie that held, naturally, fortunes. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, most with dates printed neatly on the back. Apparently Lucky not only noted memories in his little book, he also kept track of any ancient Chinese wisdom that accompanied his mu shu pork. One of the fortunes had been separated from the pack and was tucked into a tiny clear Ziploc, the kind Jane used for special buttons in her collection. Carefully separating the sealed top, Jane pulled out the paper and read:

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID

  There was no writing on the back of this one. Either Lucky had been so unnerved by this ominous message he had neglected to date it, or, thought Jane, Lucky hasn’t seen this one yet. This might be one of those tweaks to his collection that had prompted him to hire her. Jane put it back in the box, planning to ask Lucky about it later. She opened a few more small cardboard boxes. There was a bottle filled with holy water from Lourdes. Jane resisted the urge to open it and dab it on her pulse points. After all, who was she to deny powers? There was an empty Skippy’s glass jar with wooden disks printed with LUCKY signs on one side and DON’T TAKE ANY WOODEN NICKELS on the other. Two identical charms, mustard seeds encased in small glass orbs, hung from a silver chain.