Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries)

by Fiffer, Sharon

  Jane heard Fran’s voice just on the other side of the curtain and closed and locked the trunk, listening and tugging to make sure the lock caught. She slipped her own necklace back around her neck, thinking about how lucky she was that she had already been wearing keys, so one more would never be noticed.

  “Knock-knock,” said Fran, parting the curtain as Jane was fluffing the pillows and staring at her phone. She hoped she looked like she was just tidying up the office space. And although Jane had warmed slowly to the idea of these phones too smart for their own good, she now appreciated that anytime she wanted to look busy or distracted, all she had to do was pull out her phone and stare at it intently.

  “Lucky told me to give you this list of everyone working here, although I can’t understand why you’d need it, filling in for Bren just a few days, not like you’ll actually see half these people.” Fran clenched one fist then unclenched it, as if she were working one of those hand-exercisers or squeezing a rubber ball. “Half the people on the payroll are the rubes who live in this town who he’s paying to make their places look like he remembers them. Easy money for people to use for remodeling, if you ask me.”

  Jane gave her what she hoped was the encouraging un-rube-like smile of a coconspirator. “He’s paying townspeople to upgrade their businesses?”

  Fran shrugged. “Paid a guy to reopen his grandfather’s diner and paid to upgrade parking lots at a few bars and restaurants. Paying for extra security at every place scheduled for a visit. Oh, and all those banners and signs and stuff? You think that the town has money to pay for that kind of blitz? Lucky’s a man who likes buzz and he who buzzes loudest gets the most buzz back—that’s his motto. I know I sound like a crank, but I’m his personal accountant, too, and the man’s bleeding money for this project and who knows if it’ll even see the light of…” Fran broke off to take a phone call and handed Jane a sheaf of papers.

  Jane slipped those papers into her tote bag with all of the other Lucky Miller material she had gathered. She checked her own phone for the time. She was going to have to remember to always wear her wristwatch now that she was a working girl. She couldn’t keep depending on her phone as a clock, having to pull it out every time she checked to see how late she was for her next appointment.

  This time, though, there was a message on the screen. She hadn’t felt the vibration, so missed seeing Nick’s message when it came in thirty minutes earlier.

  just kicked butt in our soccer game against St. Rs—nobdy expects math and science geeks to be jocks, but a few of us know what we’re doing. Love you.

  Jane put down her bag and using both thumbs to type, managed a hooray for the nerds—love you back. Getting an onscreen message was definitely not even close to Nick bursting in the kitchen door, spreading peanut butter on five slices of bread and stacking them to stuff into his mouth while he told her of some goal kicked or blocked, but it was something. No amount of sadness or loneliness washing over her could dim the equally potent wash of relief that Nick was so happy. He was someplace he belonged. Now it was up to Jane to find her perfect fit. And if Jane didn’t quite belong in Lucky Miller’s entourage, she at least felt comfortable in this factory-turned-studio. She loved this building—the old stone factory. She hoped they had manufactured something good here at one time.

  “Hate to find out they made shopping cart parts or something,” Jane muttered, gathering up her bag filled with pages and lists and clipboards and Belinda St. Germaine’s giant book. She touched her necklace, fingering each key and counting, realizing she had just given herself a new superstitious tic.

  “Timmy,” she called, as she walked over to where Tim was bent over a place setting, studying the patterns in two different napkins. “I have to go back to the tavern and work for a while so Don and Nellie can have a rest and go see Carl.”

  Jane stopped, realizing she hadn’t told Tim about Carl. He shook his head and placed a hand over hers. “I stopped at the tavern before I came here to see if you wanted to ride with me. Don filled me in. I’m sorry, Jane, I know he’s family.”

  “Yeah, for a family tree as dysfunctional as ours, it’s amazing we still have so many branches,” said Jane. “I’ve got to go to Evanston and sweep the house clean of stuff I want. Can you come with me tomorrow?”

  “I’d like to, but I doubt I can. They want to film some of the roast stuff early next week, so the table stuff has to be done. Speaking of stuff, I got a message from the movers,” said Tim.

  Jane waited.

  “Might be a while,” said Tim. “They got another gig somewhere in Western Colorado and they think they might have to retrace one stop because one of your crates might have been dropped off in Iowa by mistake.”

  “I’m never seeing this stuff again, am I?” said Jane.

  “Don’t be absurd, Janie. Of course everything will come back—and think of the money you’re saving in storage. Did I tell you? They’re not charging for your stuff on the truck. Isn’t that great?” Tim looked back down at the fabric arrayed before him. Jane wasn’t sure whether he was compelled by the designs or simply couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Peachy,” said Jane.

  Walking to her car, almost dragging the impossibly heavy bag, Jane was startled and relieved when someone approached from behind and lifted her bag, taking the load off her arm and shoulder.

  “Not stealing it, it’s way too heavy,” said Sal, the driver who apparently was headed in the same direction.

  “Aren’t you Lucky’s driver and isn’t he…?”

  “Wow, you are stepping in to fill Brenda’s shoes. I better warn her you’re after her job full-time. And no, to answer your question, I have not finished off Lucky and dumped his body somewhere even though half the people on the crew would give me a medal. He’s meeting with the writers over at the diner and sent me back for a few things,” he said, holding up a leather portfolio. “I’m heading back there now. Lucky’s car is parked over there.”

  Jane nodded. “I’m a few cars down.”

  “Want to come with me to the diner? I could buy you a milk shake.”

  At just the mention of the milk shake, Jane wanted one. Badly. But she knew Don and Nellie would be getting antsy to get back to the hospital. She shook her head.

  “Rain check?”

  Sal nodded, dumping her bag into her trunk as she popped it open for him. Jane thanked him for the assist.

  “How about tonight?”

  “What about it?” asked Jane, confused.

  “The rain check. How about dinner or a movie or something? Who knows what they do in this town for fun?”

  Jane looked at Sal a little closer. He was almost her age, maybe a couple years younger. Handsome, too. Good smile. Intriguing. But, Jane told herself, also impossible. If timing was everything, then the timing of dating anyone who was only in Kankakee on what might be compared to a temporary work visa, when Jane was here sans home, sans stuff, sans everything was totally impossible.

  “I used to know. I’m a townie, so watch what you say,” said Jane. “I’m afraid I have a million things to do while I’m here, but maybe after the weekend.”

  “I’m a patient man,” he said, and as he walked forward to Lucky’s car, he tapped on the hood, the way New Yorkers did when they wanted to tell a cabbie he was clear.

  At least that’s what Jane always thought they meant when they pounded on a car.

  * * *

  When Jane got to the EZ Way Inn, only a few regulars sat at the bar. The mood was gloomy and despite the ballgame on in the background and cold beers sitting in front of everyone, no one looked happy.

  Don did his best to give Jane a smile and asked her how it went with Lucky. Jane gave him the shortest easiest answer she could, then asked about Carl.

  “I went up there for a few minutes after lunch, then when I got back, I had Francis drive your mother up. They should be back pretty soon.”

  “Dad, you look so tired. How about a rest in the back room while I tend
bar? Better yet, you could go home for a while.”

  Don shook his head. “I’ll just sit for a while,” he said, situating himself on the first bar stool on the other side of the bar entrance. “I just need to rest my feet.”

  Jane’s phone buzzed and she gave her dad an apologetic look. “I have to check, Dad, although I won’t when I tend bar by myself. It’s just that Lucky…”

  Don waved away her concerns and she looked at the text, which came through in three parts. Lucky wouldn’t need her tomorrow because he was going to lock himself in with the writers. If she wanted to nose around the studio, it would be fine. Since she said she had to go to Chicago for the weekend, maybe she could go tomorrow? After tomorrow, they would really need her around.

  Since she had her phone out, Jane checked e-mail and saw that Melinda had written to tell her that the buyers offered to pay a premium for the quick move which should cover any furniture she wanted moved out of the house. They were hoping they could keep most of it. Really liked her taste.

  Well, I don’t get that every day, thought Jane. I hope I get to meet these people.

  Melinda also told her that they had a quickie inspection and all seemed fine. The sooner she could get up there the better.

  “Dad, how about I go up to Evanston tomorrow to do my house walk-through and sign the papers? It’s fast, but it’ll be like pulling off a Band Aid if I just get it done. Then I can be here for you guys if anything happens over the weekend.”

  Don nodded and Jane e-mailed Melissa that she would be at the house by ten.

  Jane slipped her phone back into her pocket and grabbed a bar rag. Time for some on-the-job training.

  “What’ll it be?” asked Jane, doing her best Nellie impression, barking out of the side of her mouth and standing in front of Don with her arms folded.

  Don smiled and asked for a draft. Miracle of miracles. Jane held the glass, pulled down on the lever and drew a perfect glass of beer. Half inch of foam and no spillover. She grabbed a Lucky Duck paper coaster and slipped it under the glass as she set it in front of her dad.

  “Beautiful,” said Don. “Now bring me a whisky and water.”

  Jane lifted one eyebrow at her father. It had been a hard day, but it still seemed a little early for Don to be hitting the hard stuff.

  “What kind of whiskey? Water on the side?”

  “Nah, I don’t want a drink, I just wanted to see what you’d say. You asked the right questions, but the dirty look you gave me was your mother through and through.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean,” said Nellie, walking in from the kitchen. Neither Jane nor her father had heard the back door to the tavern open and close. Since it was a slamming, banging screen door, that meant Nellie had held on to it, closed it silently and come in quietly. Since she usually made a dramatic entrance at the tavern and saved her sneak-up-from-behinds for Jane at home, both Don and Jane turned to look at her.

  Nellie’s face was as hard to fathom as her moods. She clearly had been a pretty young woman, perhaps a beautiful one. Her eyes were sometimes gray, sometimes green, and piercing and she always looked right at you, sometimes until you flinched and looked away. Her hair had gray in it, but you wouldn’t call her gray-haired. Enough color remained to confuse any carnival age-guesser. The thing about her face, though, is that it was almost always in motion. She grimaced, she grinned, she chortled, she raised her eyebrows, and she sneered. She was an itchy, twitchy woman who was in constant fidget mode and her facial features were equally mobile.

  That is why, when Jane looked at her mother, she felt a chill. Her mother’s face was completely still. And Jane realized, when Nellie’s face was not in motion, she simultaneously looked ten years old and she looked one hundred years old. Every minute she had lived was apparent in her eyes, in the set of her mouth and every bit of childlike innocence and vulnerability that remains in all of us was present in the curve of her cheek and the stillness of her head.

  “He died,” she said.

  Don stood and put his arms around his wife. Nellie allowed it, but over his shoulder she stared straight ahead. When she moved away, Don sat back down heavily, his head in his hands.

  “I read all of his wishes and he wanted to be cremated so I okayed that,” said Nellie. “We’ll have a memorial service in a week or so, when everyone’s heard about it. He wanted it to be here.”

  Jane saw that Don was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, but Nellie remained dry-eyed. If she had cried, it was in private, away from all of them.

  “You call Salt and Pepper, and the newspaper, and the rest of these guys’ll do the rest, right? You all tell everything you know anyway, so you can spread the news, okay?” Nellie asked, looking around at the two customers who remained on the other side of the bar. Jane knew one was named Gil, but didn’t recognize the other man.

  “Now finish your drinks. We’re closing up now,” said Nellie.

  And for the first time in the long history of the EZ Way Inn, the closed sign went up on the door at five o’clock on a sunny weekday afternoon.

  11

  “And you believe him?” asked Nellie, using the back of a fork to crushed canned tuna into a fine pâté.

  Jane had just explained to her mother that Lucky Miller did not remember his Kankakee childhood or at least not much of it. She was trying to plow through Belinda St. Germaine’s book, but the going was heavy.

  “I think I do,” said Jane. “He’s struggling with something, anyway. And I can’t believe anyone would carry this book around with him if he didn’t think he could learn something from it. It’s so much mumbo-jumbo. I mean, I believe there can be repressed memories, but this is like reading the back of a cereal box … if the cereal was all-natural granola with a kombucha glaze.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Nellie asked Don, who was chopping onions for her. “Make them finer. And chop a little celery, too.”

  “New-age claptrap? That what you’re saying, Janie?”

  Between the phone calls Don and Nellie had to make about Carl and the many more phone calls they received with condolences, there hadn’t been time to make a real dinner. Now Nellie insisted on taking the phone off the hook and making tuna salad, so they could all sit down and eat something in peace and quiet. Jane was doing her best to entertain and distract.

  “Yeah, it’s new age and shamanistic with a little Ouija board thrown in for good measure. But it’s also an expensive way to self-help. She recommends total recreations of one’s past. A kind of spare-no-expense tableau. Says you can’t truly know your history unless you actively remember, which will make you truly recover the past. Belinda’s a cross between Dr. Phil, a Magic 8 Ball, and a battalion of Civil War reenactors.”

  Jane stood up and snatched a piece of celery from the counter.

  “Mom,” said Jane, “who was Boing Boing? I think your mention of him was what made Lucky want to hire me, made him want me close since he thinks that’s some kind of memory trigger for him.”

  “Ought to be,” said Nellie.

  Since Nellie said no more and seemed terribly busy looking for mayonnaise, Jane looked at her father.

  “Boing Boing?”

  Don shrugged. “You know I didn’t grow up in town. Until high school, I lived out past Herscher on my stepdad’s farm, so all of these names your mother drags out … if I don’t know them now, I have no idea who they are. Maybe she’s making them up. Instead of those repressed memories, maybe your mother’s got the opposite. Maybe she’s got brand-new invented memories.”

  Jane wondered if this teasing was such a good idea on such an emotional day, but as soon as Nellie closed the refrigerator, Jane saw that once again, Don proved that he knew Nellie better than anyone. And knew how to get her to talk.

  “Oh yeah? You think I made it up that Dickie Boynton burned down his own garage and then ran away. They dragged the river for weeks before they found him. Only kid I ever knew who got a nickname after he was dead. Shorty Philli
ps, when they told us kids at school that Dickie was dead, started crying and said, ‘poor old Boing Boing’ and from that day on, that’s what everybody called him. Whole school went to the funeral. You’d think he was everybody’s best friend. Boing Boing this and Boing Boing that.”

  “Was he your friend?” asked Jane.

  Nellie shook her head. “Not really. We were all poor at St. Stan’s. All of us Lithuanian kids and Polish kids, we were all dirt poor. But our houses were clean and our mothers always made sure our clothes were mended. That’s just the way it was. No money didn’t mean you had to be a bum. But Dickie, he was always dirty and raggedy. Most kids made fun of him right to his face.

  “Tell you the truth, I think that’s why everybody got so nice to him after he showed up dead. Gave him a nickname and pretended he was one of the gang. That way nobody had to feel guilty.”

  “Why would Lucky figure in to any of this?” asked Jane.

  “You saw the way he looked when I mentioned Dickie Boynton. He looked guilty as hell.”

  “That’s not an answer. Why did you mention Dickie Boynton at all?”

  Nellie took out a spoon and tasted the tuna. The taste sent her to the refrigerator for mustard. Adding a small amount and mixing it in, she looked at Jane.

  “You’ll laugh at me,” said Nellie.

  Jane and Don both looked at Nellie. When had Nellie ever cared about such a thing?

  “When those TV people told me to make up a bit, I planned on talking about Hermie’s nickname. Some of the kids called him Muley and he hated it. It’s really all I remembered. He didn’t make much of an impression. He had a little more money than us and was only at our school for a year and a half. I couldn’t remember who his friends were or anything. Then when he came in and was mouthing off at the tavern, the memory of Dickie Boynton came to me. And that nickname, Boing Boing. So maybe you’re thinking now, maybe I got those impressed memories.”