While Jane was looking around to see if anyone else was still working this late in the day, Lucky was waiting for her outside his curtained-off doorway.
“After you,” he offered in a shaky voice. “Who knows what might be in here now?”
Jane saw immediately what had so disturbed Lucky. The exposed brick wall was covered with horseshoes, all mounted so their opened ends were down, spilling all the good luck. It seemed silly, Jane knew, and it was silly, but it did mean that someone was unlocking Lucky’s trunk and messing about with his things. That was, at the least, mischievous. And in the case of a neurotic like Lucky, Jane understood how ominous it seemed. Jane went over to the wall to see how the horseshoes had been affixed to the wall. It had been announced on the schedule that Lucky would be out of the studio all day, so whoever had done this either knew that he or she or why not they had plenty of time to redecorate Lucky’s office.
“Open the trunk, Lucky, and see if these are the horseshoes that were in there or if somebody brought their own,” said Jane. “Everyone knows about your attachment to your good luck charms. And if someone wanted to threaten you or scare you, they might just bring in something to spook you. Might not necessarily be someone with a key.”
The horseshoes had been hung on little hooks that were attached to what looked like adhesive tape. The tape and hook were a sandy brown color that blended in with the bricks, making them almost invisible. Jane had seen these hooks before in white. They were the kind of hangers that students used so they wouldn’t damage their dorm walls. Jane had used them herself last month to hang Nick’s framed posters in his new residence hall room. A dab of glue might have been used on these to bolster the adhesive since the horseshoes were fairly substantial. Jane tugged hard at one of the taped hooks until it finally peeled off. She set down the horseshoe, but stuck the hook into her pocket. She continued removing the horseshoes and asked Lucky if he knew if they used those kind of hooks here in the studio. They seemed flimsy to her, but maybe they had to be careful on the brick walls?
“How the hell would I know the answer to a question like that?” asked Lucky. His obnoxious bravado came back stronger with every unlucky horseshoe that Jane removed. She toyed with leaving at least one of them up.
“You were right,” said Lucky. “Those aren’t my lucky horseshoes.” Lucky leaned back, away from the open trunk and Jane could see the shoes still stacked on one side. “How’d you know this prank was a BYOH?”
“If I were going to do something like this, I’d want to slap the hooks up on the wall fast. That way, in case someone came in or I got interrupted, you probably wouldn’t even notice these hooks by themselves. I’d stick the hooks up, maybe even the day before, then when I got a chance and knew nobody was around, I could come in with the horseshoes in a box or a bag and hang them up in less than a minute, drop the note on your desk … Is that where it was? On your desk?”
“No, it was taped to the horseshoe right next to the door, so as soon as I sat in my desk chair I could see it. Malcolm took it out and read it to me, then I…” Lucky slapped his pockets. “What did I do with it?”
Jane took it out of her pocket. She remembered that she wanted to point out something Lucky had misread on the note.
“Who’s H. M?” asked Lucky. “It was signed H. M.”
“No,” said Jane, spreading the note out flat in front of Lucky. “You missed the comma.”
YOUR LUCK IS RUNNING OUT, H. M.
“It’s not a signature. It’s a form of address. To you. You’re H. M. Herman Mullet,” said Jane.
“So what? So I changed my name. It’s in my bio. Anybody who bothers to read that piece of crap Malcolm wrote for my press packet and for the publicity for this roast could know my name.”
Jane asked Lucky if anyone called him Herman.
“Not if they still want to work for me. I always hated that name. I would have changed it even if … even if…”
Lucky sat down with the same glazed look in his eyes Jane had seen while he was standing on the corner.
“Take your time,” said Jane. “Why did you change your name?”
“I wanted to live,” said Lucky, in a voice that sounded like it came from another planet.
Jane resisted asking another question. She watched and waited. Detective Oh would be proud, thought Jane, allowing ten long silent seconds to pass. When she was about to touch Lucky’s arm, to bring him back from wherever he was, he opened his mouth and nodded before he spoke.
“Yes. I changed my name because Herman Mullet was dead.”
16
If a young man found out that his parents had sent him out of the country to live with an aunt and then claimed he had disappeared, it would certainly send that young man to a therapist’s couch. Wouldn’t it? Jane asked herself. Nellie had gotten rid of her favorite teddy bear and all of her toys when they moved and it had sent Jane on a lifelong quest of rescuing discarded or lost objects. Hadn’t it? Jane asked herself. Jane had uncovered secrets her mother kept about her own past and about relatives Jane never knew. Nellie’s secretiveness accounted for Jane’s own foibles and tics and mistrust. Didn’t it? Jane asked herself.
Jane did, however, remember everything. Perhaps a little too clearly? Nothing had been so traumatic that her memory was erased. Was that even possible? Jane knew that the idea of repressed memories was controversial. She remembered the outrage when a psychologist came forward and suggested that the epidemic of patients with repressed memories was caused by their own therapists, planting memories of abuse and trauma. The doctor wasn’t suggesting that abuse and trauma did not exist, just that the overwhelming numbers of those who were “recovering” memories had been manipulated by unscrupulous therapists.
Lucky was not suffering from memories falsely planted. He seemed to have genuine gaps in his own history. Jane knew, with some of the information from Oh, she could fill in a few of the erasures, but what about the initial trip to Canada to stay with an aunt. According to the information from Oh, the Mullets left town and Herman was never seen with them in their new location in Louisville. They reported his disappearance and mentioned that he might have drowned. Had Herman really run away? Was he taken? Did his parents simply tell him they were getting rid of him? Did they explain why? Was money too tight? Was someone ill? Did they simply send him off to spend time with his aunt, then “forget” to pick him up? Although Lucky told Jane he knew his aunt had raised him from around the age of thirteen, he could not remember why he had been sent there. He remembered one town before Kankakee, a little farming community in Indiana. Then, in Kankakee, he remembered certain places of business, his neighborhood, attending school, riding a bike, bowling, drinking a milk shake, but there was a kind of fuzziness around it all. Then, when he tried to recall leaving Kankakee with his parents, everything was blank.
“Herman Mullet was dead,” Lucky repeated several times, before Jane touched his arm and patted it.
“What does that mean, Lucky?” asked Jane, unsure about what Lucky actually knew and what she should reveal while he was in this state.
“I don’t know,” said Lucky
“Would you like me to find you a cup of coffee? Tea?” asked Jane.
“There’s a crystal decanter on the table of the set. It has real whiskey in it. Bring that back,” said Lucky. “I should…” He stopped and cast around for a task. “I should check my messages.”
Lucky seemed to be on his way back from wherever he went. If he was faking this memory loss, he was a much better actor than anyone ever gave him credit for. Jane wasn’t ready to end the conversation about Herman Mullet’s demise, since she needed to know what he knew before blurting out anything she and Oh had uncovered and she could see he needed to return fully to earth. Recalling things seemed to take its toll. Belinda St. Germaine had a chapter in her book entitled, “The Exhaustive Work of Remembering.” Jane had skimmed it and the actual fatigue on Lucky’s face could have been an illustration from the book.
“Jane, Maurice. Maurice, Jane,” said Tim. No cute remarks, no scintillating repartee, no cracks about Jane’s wardrobe. Jane could tell right away this was important.
“Hello, Maurice,” said Jane. “It’s a pleasure.”
“The pleasure is mine. Truly. Every other word out of this guy’s mouth is about you, a quote from you, or a funny story about the two of you. I feel like I’m meeting the family,” said Maurice with a warm and firm handshake instead of the air kisses Jane had seen flying around this studio the day before.
“You are,” said Tim. His smile made Jane’s own heart do a flip. Tim looked happy. Not I-just-found-a-signed-Kalo-silver-pitcher-in-a-throwaway-box-of-old-plate happy, but innocently and truly happy. Jane thought there might be just a dash of tentative can-this-be-happening hovering around his grin, and that, she decided was really a good thing. It meant that he really wasn’t rushing forward like a fool, he was falling at a normal human rate. Jane felt a heady mixture of joy and wonder and celebratory glee that her friend had found something sweet here. This was tempered by a modicum of uh-oh-if-Tim-is-finding-love-what-will-happen-to-me envy, but that, she knew, was also a normal human reaction and if this was real and right, Tim would make room for her. That’s what she and Tim did—they expanded their hearts when others moved in. They built on rooms and knocked out walls. Jane’s relationship with Tim had not changed substantively during her marriage or her motherhood, nor had it changed when Tim was in a long-term relationship with Phillip years earlier. And, if this relationship with Maurice flowered, Jane knew that there would be place for her at the holiday table—the elegantly set, meticulously designed, and deliciously prepared table.
“This looks amazing,” said Jane, noting all the wonderful details up close. The gleaming modern silver, the cut crystal wineglasses, everything turned just so to catch the light. “It reminds me of something. It’s a good thing, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Tim and Maurice both laughed. “We know what it is, but I won’t give it away,” said Tim. “We’re a little worried about it actually. It’s because of the drapes in back mostly, but still…”
“Would you like to join us for dinner?” asked Maurice.
Tim continued to smile, but Jane thought she saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes, hope that she would refuse.
She shook her head. “I’m still on duty with Lucky right now.” Jane looked back at the table. She was so close to getting it.
“Jane,” yelled Lucky. “My life is in danger!”
If someone is really dying or something is happening, do they phrase it as my life is in danger?
Jane shook her head, but hurried back toward Lucky’s office without the decanter.
“We’ll hang around to make sure he’s okay,” said Maurice. “I’ve heard him yell stuff like that before to Brenda and it’s never anything, but you never know.”
“I’m coming,” said Jane.
Lucky waved a letter written on Lucky Productions stationary. He didn’t appear to be in imminent danger, but he was definitely pale. “I’m being blackmailed.”
“For what?” asked Jane, approaching the desk.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” said Lucky.
Jane read the note, typed, not printed out from a computer, on an old machine.
$ will buy silence. I know what you did, I can prove it, and there’s no statute of limitations. You’ll die in prison too.
“What’s next?” said Lucky. “A body falling out of a closet?”
“Stop!” screamed Jane. She threw herself on top of the desk toward Lucky and slapped the half sandwich he was about to bite into. She nearly impaled herself on the fountain pens Lucky had lined up in a wooden rack. The sandwich half lay on the floor and she could hear Tim and Maurice running toward them.
“What the f…?” said Lucky, looking from Jane to the sandwich and back to Jane.
“Did you take a bite?” said Jane, out of breath. “Peanut butter, peanut butter, I smell peanut butter. Call 911, Tim!”
“Hold the phone,” said Lucky. “I am impressed, Jane Wheel, but no need to panic. Watch this.”
Before Jane realized what he was doing, Lucky snatched up the other half of the sandwich off the paper plate and took an enormous bite. He dropped the sandwich on the plate, chewed slowly, and held up his hands, palms up, in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. He then wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin he pulled from a desk drawer.
“What the hell?” said Tim.
Maurice shook his head. “I heard the stories, but I didn’t believe even you would be that deceitful, Lucky.”
“Who are you again?” said Lucky.
“Your set designer. I have a contract and I’m union. You can’t fire me, so don’t even start…” said Maurice, without raising his voice. His tone was evenly balanced between disgust and amusement.
“You’re not allergic to peanuts,” said Jane.
Lucky shook his head, taking another bite of the sandwich.
“So what about the show at the EZ Way Inn?” asked Tim. “He had a reaction there, right? After Nellie’s Lucky Duck?”
“Did you taste that shit?” asked Lucky. “Anybody’d have a reaction. Draino with a dash of soy sauce.”
“I give up,” said Tim.
“Well,” said Maurice,” the rumor is that Lucky fakes his allergies and a lot of other ailments because he likes the extra attention, is a bit of a hypochondriac, and he wants a convenient way to get out of uncomfortable or boring situations. Am I close?”
“You’re wasting your time as a set designer, Maurice, I ought to promote you to writer.”
“I make more than your writers, Lucky,” said Maurice, with a smile. “And since I’m with the production company you partnered with, you can’t fire me, remember?”
“Anybody else in the building?” asked Lucky.
Maurice and Tim both shook their heads. “We’re the last ones here.”
“Okay, you’re partly right, Necktie,” said Lucky. Maurice stopped him from christening him with a new nickname and reminded Lucky who he was. “Okay, Maurice, here’s the real story. I do need an excuse to get out of places sometimes. I have panic attacks, okay? Nobody wants to hire a comic or an actor who has panic attacks because they look a lot like stage fright. So once when I froze up backstage at some shithole club in Delaware, Brenda comes up with the peanut allergy. Starts screaming about somebody eating peanuts backstage. She whips out a fountain pen and pretends to give me a shot, then has somebody help me back into the dressing room. She shuts the door, finds me a Xanax, hands me a shot of Jack Daniel’s to wash it down, and we’re all good to go. I realize this peanut allergy is a good gig. Gets me out of things fast and who’s going to ask questions?”
“Do you make it a habit to hire people who have peanut allergies?” said Jane.
“No,” said Lucky. “You’re thinking about that kid. I asked him about it, what his reactions were like. And he gave me the fish-eye and asked me if I was concerned or if I was doing research. I told him a little bit of both. I wanted to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Your medical kit?” asked Jane, beginning to pace back and forth. “Real EpiPens and fake shots? Or fake EpiPens and fake shots?”
“Real EpiPens that we just empty. And then a fake shot. Brenda’s the only one who would ever touch the kit. I don’t have a “reaction” unless Brenda’s around. I wouldn’t have sprung it on you, Jane. Although you have proven your worth as a temp, that’s for sure.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jane, shaking her head.
“Nah, you were good. I think you would have saved me,” said Lucky, stuffing the last corner of the sandwich int
o his mouth.
“You’re wrong about your kit. Somebody touched it. Or they thought they did. Somebody picked up Sluggo Mettleman’s kit and stuck a three-leaf clover in it because he or she thought it was your kit. And if somebody had the kit and thought it was yours, maybe they messed with the EpiPen, too. If Brenda’s the only one who touches your pens—she’d know your kit from Slug’s even if they looked alike. So, whoever did it was either trying to embarrass you by proving you didn’t have an allergy, showing somebody that you didn’t really need the medication or,” said Jane, “somebody believed you did have an allergy and was trying to kill you.”
Lucky swallowed hard and Jane believed it was more than the peanut butter that stuck in his throat.
“So, Slug was murdered?” asked Maurice.
Jane shook her head again. “Not exactly murder, but if Slug’s EpiPen was tampered with because someone thought it was Lucky’s … it was malicious mischief to say the least. I mean he did recover from what happened in the Steak and Brew, so even if the pen didn’t do the trick, the paramedics got there in time. I heard that they found the peanut candy wrapper in his friend’s car and that caused the reaction that killed him. But if Slug hadn’t already been compromised, if he hadn’t left the hospital early,” said Jane, “who knows?”
“Somebody wanted to murder me,” said Lucky.
“Everybody wants to murder you, Lucky,” said Maurice.
“I think attempted murder by EpiPen or lack thereof is a pretty imprecise way of going after someone if you really want to kill them. I think it’s more likely that the person who was messing with your lucky stuff was trying to figure out some way to embarrass you or scare you. Whoever it was figured out that messing with the horseshoes and talking about you running out of luck was a better way to get to you.”
Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) Page 16
