“Honey?” said Don, as Jane headed for the door. She turned back to face her dad, who pointed to the clock. “Wouldn’t it be easier to wear a watch?”
19
Did the absence of ownership allow Jane to multitask more efficiently? On her way to Mack’s Diner where she was due to meet Lucky, Jane placed her cell phone on her lap and her notebook and pen in the seat next to her. At a stoplight, she blatantly broke the law and clicked her e-mail so she could do a quick scroll-through, then placed the phone next to her notebook.
At the next stoplight, she phoned Tim. When he answered, she put the call on speaker.
“You won’t believe where in Kankakee is a museum-worthy cache of midcentury modern,” said Jane.
“I’m putting you on speaker. Maurice and I are driving over to the bowling alley.”
“Hi, Maurice,” said Jane. “Aren’t you guys early? Not supposed to start for an hour.”
“We’ve got the team shirts to deliver and the trophies,” said Maurice. “Hi Jane.”
“About that midcentury modern?” asked Tim.
“Ever been to Wally’s Tap? They call it Salt and Pepper’s, too,” said Jane.
Before Tim could answer, Jane heard the beep that she was getting another call. When she saw the caller was her brother, Michael, she promised Tim to call back soon and clicked onto the incoming. Before she could complete her enthusiastic hello, Michael was yelling. She hardly needed the speaker function.
“When was anyone going to call me about Carl? When did I stop being a member of this family?” shouted Michael.
Jane could think of no satisfactory explanation or decent enough apology. She just hadn’t thought about it.
“How did you find out?” she asked quietly, hoping guilt and humility would soon make things right.
“The worst possible way, Jane. On fucking Facebook!”
Jane knew Michael must be in the car alone, on his way somewhere. He would never swear in front of her niece and nephew. Michael and Jane had both agreed that after growing up in a house and tavern where everyone swore early and often, they would not expose their children to the same language. Most of the time, they succeeded.
“Carl was on Facebook?” asked Jane. That couldn’t be true.
“No, moron. I’m a friend of the Kankakee Daily Journal and they post the obits on Facebook. I had to find out that Carl was dead on Facebook!”
“Michael, I am so sorry. I don’t know how I could have let this happen.…”
“Not just you. Mom and Dad should have called. He was part of our family, he was as much of an uncle as anyone of the family we ever saw once a year at Christmas. We saw Carl every day of our lives,” said Michael.
Jane pulled the car over, and took Michael off speaker. She rolled down her window for a hit of September breeze and wished, just for a fleeting moment, that she could time travel back to her misspent youth and light up a Benson and Hedges, lean back, and have a long rambling conversation with her brother.
“It’s been hectic here, but it’s not an excuse. Carl’s going to be cremated and there’s going to be memorial at the EZ Way next weekend. He left everything to our family, I mean, it’s really so strange here right now.”
“I talked to Dad. I’m flying in. Q’s having a fit that she can’t come, but school just started.”
“I’m so glad you’re coming, but tell my Suzie I wish she was coming, too.” Jane could picture her niece, hands on hips, furious about being left behind. “I can’t believe I didn’t think to call. I sold my house and all.…”
“Dad filled me in, with a little Nellie on the side. You’re homeless, according to Mom who was shouting in the background. Dad talked about you moving in to the basement, then I heard Mom say you were moving into Carl’s apartment above a bar. So what’s the story, sis? Hunkering down in Kankakee for a while?”
“Sounds like a terrible idea, doesn’t it?” said Jane. “Such a predictable story. Local girl makes good, gets fired, gets divorced, heads home with tail between legs, and—”
Jane sat up straighter in the seat and pitched her imaginary cigarette out the window.
“Gotta go. I’ll call you back. Glad you’re coming.”
Jane tossed the phone on to the seat next to her. Whipping her car into a fast U-turn worthy of any TV private eye, she followed a blue sedan being driven by Lucky Miller. His arm hung out of the open window, unlit cigar dangling in his hand. He was driving a few miles over the city limit, with what Jane judged to be a great deal of confidence. No slowing down at intersections to read street signs, no hesitation about turning left or right. Even more interesting than the sureness of his driving? He was headed in the opposite direction of where she and Lucky were meeting, the opposite direction from the bowling alley.
It was only when she followed Lucky’s car into a parking lot where he stopped abruptly, jerking the vehicle into a parking space, and she had to circle around and park a few spaces behind, that she realized he was not alone. Slumped into the front seat next to him was Malcolm, his head barely level with the headrest.
Jane picked up her phone and called Lucky. She watched him slap his shirt pocket and take out his phone, squint at the screen, then push a button. She started to talk before she heard him say hello, then watched as he put the phone back in his pocket. He had sent her directly to voice mail. She winced. So that’s what it looked like when someone didn’t judge you worthy of call acceptance?
Whatever Malcolm was saying must have been agreeable since Lucky was doing a lot of nodding. Either that or they were listening to a song, since Lucky was bobbing his head in a fairly rhythmic manner. Lucky suddenly jerked his hand holding the cigar, and pointed across the street to the river, where an old concrete slab angled down into the mighty Kankakee, just west of the dam.
This wasn’t a riverside park or an area where picnickers or fishermen might gather. This was just a commercial intersection where there was an old access point to the river. Jane remembered when she was young that there had been a house there, next to the bridge, with a garage at the end of the sloped-down driveway. Jane always thought it seemed like a scary place to live, since waffling to the left or right as one drove down the concrete slab might take car and driver directly into the river. It didn’t help that the stone garage had two windows in the door whose placement looked like large staring eyes. There was no house or garage there now, but the concrete drive remained.
Lucky got out of the car. Malcolm opened the passenger door and got out, looking like it was far too bright and early for him to be facing sunlight or fresh air. He shaded his eyes with one arm and shook his head. Jane could hear him say something that sounded like a question. How would I know or how should I know was what it sounded like, but Jane was too far away to be sure.
Lucky and Malcolm crossed the street and Jane saw them both head closer to the river. Her view was blocked after they started down the bank, so she eased her car forward into a parking place directly across from where the two men began their descent.
Without knowing exactly why she did it, Jane picked up her phone and snapped a photo of Lucky and Malcolm. It was only the backs of the men, but the ever-present cigar left no doubt that the larger man was Lucky Miller. Belinda St. Germaine’s book was on the front seat and Jane rested one hand on it as she snapped another photo of Lucky pointing under the bridge. Jane rifled the pages of the book to see where Lucky had placed all of his bookmarks, remembering that she had seen some handwriting on some of the index cards. No. The only handwriting she could decipher looked like a list of errands. But the chapter where the card was stuck was titled, REVISITING THE SITES: SACRED AND PROFANE.
Jane was sure that’s exactly what Lucky and Malcolm were doing. She called Oh and left a message with her location, the intersection where she was observing Lucky ramble on to a bored-looking Malcolm. Lucky had brought Malcolm here for a reason, he must be remembering something that had happened in that spot. Malcolm kept shrugging and shaking his head. Jane figured h
e was content to create the fictional life of Lucky Miller and wasn’t that keen on doing the research into the life of Herman Mullet. Before Jane finished leaving her message, Detective Oh picked up the phone.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Wheel, I was in the garden and couldn’t get to the phone quickly enough. How may I help you?”
“The information about Dickie Boynton’s death? His body was found washed up from the river. Does the article you found say exactly where? Can you get that information?”
“It’s here, Mrs. Wheel. I printed the article. His mother was quoted. ‘Dickie liked to camp out by the river near his Uncle’s house. He liked it because it wasn’t a park and no people would come around. There was a garage where he could hide from the street, but he could get right onto an old concrete piling and be almost in the river.’ The location is given as next to the bridge near the dam at the intersection of…”
Jane finished his sentence for him.
“I’m standing here right now,” said Jane. She hung up after promising to call back as soon as she figured out what they were all doing there.
Belinda’s book was still open to the first page in the chapter.
Revisiting the site where something traumatic occurred is, of course, important. Perhaps even more vital to the experience of “recapturing” is a reenactment of the event itself. You say you don’t remember the event? You will be surprised what muscle memory can do. Once in the place, once in the mental space, you will know what to do. Embrace the pain, the rage, and the fear. Once you do, you will also embrace your past.
“Oh no,” said Jane, rushing to get out of the car. If Herman Mullet had actually done something to Dickie Boynton, Lucky could be about to do the same to Malcolm. What exactly did Lucky do to Boing Boing?
Jane crossed the street, holding up a hand to stop the car bearing down on her. The driver laid on his horn, but Jane, paying no attention to the angry blast, just waved a thanks at him for stopping.
She skidded down the driveway and ducked right, where the bridge foundation hid people and activity from the busy street.
“What the bloody hell, man?” Malcolm was resisting Lucky’s pull on his arm to get closer to the river. “Look at my shoes. I’m going to be sucked into mud up to my knees in a minute. Take your loony walk down memory lane with somebody else.”
Jane could see that Lucky had that faraway look. He was either remembering something or trying to remember something and he wasn’t listening to any of the writer’s protests.
“Malcolm, stay calm. He’s in a kind of trance. Don’t let him get closer to the water,” said Jane, inching up behind Lucky.
“Don’t let him? He’s in charge here. What am I supposed to do?”
“He’s not going to pull you into the water, he’s just trying to figure things out. Stay calm. Lucky?”
Lucky Miller continued to stare out at the river.
“His childhood friend drowned and his body was found right here,” said Jane softly to Malcolm. “Lucky’s trying to figure out if he had anything to do with it, if he could have stopped it.”
Malcolm’s jaw went slack and he retracted his head, his beaky nose moving back and forth. “No, that didn’t happen. Lucky had a happy childhood here in Kankakee. Drinking those milk shakes, and bowling, and whatever else you young Huckleberry Finns did in those days.”
“That’s the kind of stuff you write about Lucky, but that’s not the way it was,” said Jane. “He lived here about a year and a half. His friend’s garage burned down and Lucky and his parents moved to Kentucky. Except Lucky never really made it there. He went to live with an aunt in Canada…”
“All wrong, Jane Wheel,” said Malcolm. “I have it that his parents died and Lucky started working in theaters, doing whatever he could, filling in…”
“I read the biography,” said Jane. “So has Lucky. Trying to live out the fake history while trying to figure out what really happened is what’s making him crazy.”
“Not crazy,” said Lucky.
Lucky didn’t stop staring out at the river, but he continued to talk to them as if they were sitting across the table.
“I told my dad that it should have been me. I should have drowned.”
“Why? Dickie ran away because he burned down the garage and his dad was mad,” said Jane. “Why should you be the one who drowned?”
“I did drown,” said Lucky. “I did die.”
Jane felt goose bumps on her arm and she saw Malcolm pale. Lucky’s voice sounded like it came from outside of his body. No longer was this trancelike voice hesitant, speculative. Lucky was as sure of this as he was of anything.
“I died,” he repeated. Lucky then shoved his cigar in his mouth and turned to face Jane and Malcolm. When he spoke it was present-day, fully inhabited Lucky Miller. “That’s it, kids. I died.”
“What the hell does that mean?” said Malcolm, beginning to extract his shoes from the mud.
“I can’t say. I just know I died here. That’s for you to figure out,” said Lucky. “More precisely, you Jane Wheel, since that’s the answer to this. I died,” he repeated matter of factly. “I don’t know what it means, but that’s the answer. You figure it out and explain it to me, Jane.”
“I think you already figured it out. You didn’t need to come back to Kankakee because you lived here. You came back because you died here,” said Jane.
“You’re one hell of a fat foul ghost, Lucky,” said Malcolm. Now that they were headed away from the river and back to the parking lot, Malcolm was recovering some of his bravado. Jane noted that the closer they got to the car, the louder he got.
“Or maybe you’re one of those vampires that are so popular. They’re all dead aren’t they?”
“Or maybe I’m a fucking zombie who isn’t going to sign your next paycheck,” said Lucky. “Shut up and get into the car before I scramble your brains for my lunch.”
Malcolm did as he was told. Lucky turned to Jane.
“It’s the key to everything,” said Lucky. “I just don’t know where the lock is.”
Jane noticed he was wearing a sterling silver four-leaf clover on a chain around his neck. Each of the leaves was inscribed with a name. James. Linda. Thomas. Elaine.
“Who are the people named here?” asked Jane.
Lucky shrugged. “I bought it at a thrift store somewhere. I can’t resist a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe. My aunt’s farm in Canada was called Lucky Acres and I…” Lucky broke off, then smiled at Jane. This smile was unlike the mugging he did on camera and in front of a crowd. “See? It’s coming back. I haven’t thought about that farm for years. And the name just came back to me. If I can hold out a few more days, it’ll all come back,” said Lucky.
The Lucky Miller Roast was scheduled to be taped at the end of the week. Jane reminded him that he had more than a few days.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” said Lucky. “Brenda’s schmoozing some money in Las Vegas and if that goes as planned … well, we’ll see.”
“Have you heard anything more from the blackmailer? The one who left you that note?”
Lucky fished in his pocket with one hand and with the other, rapped open-handed on the window as if slapping Malcolm in the face. Malcolm flinched and stopped staring at the two of them.
“Just because the bastard writes my life story doesn’t mean he’s got to know everything,” said Lucky.
Lucky handed Jane a crumpled piece of paper.
I KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE HIDING.
MY SILENCE WILL COST MONEY.
“Maybe I ought to just let the guy tell me what I’m hiding and why I’m here,” said Lucky. “Instead of paying for silence, I pay him to spill it to me. Whatever it costs, it’s probably cheaper than throwing this damn shindig.”
Jane thought Lucky might be right. If the blackmailer or whoever the mischief maker was—hard to call him a blackmailer when there weren’t yet any demands to be met—would just meet with Lucky and t
ell him what he knew, Lucky would gladly pay for the information. If he was renting the old stone factory and paying for all the production costs involved in taping Lucky Gets Roasted, being blackmailed would be much more cost-efficient for Lucky Miller Productions.
“Got your bowling shoes, honey?” said Lucky, moving around to the driver’s side of the car.
“We were going to meet, Lucky. Remember?”
“And so we did,” said Lucky.
Jane remained sitting in her parked car after Lucky and Malcolm took off for the bowling alley. She called Oh and when she heard his voice-mail message, she said, “What kind of blackmailer leaves notes without asking for a specific amount of money? Without instructions? To call this man or woman an amateur is generous, right?”
Jane heard the beep and saw that Oh was calling her back. When they connected she repeated her question. “What kind of blackmailer never gets to the point?”
Before Oh could offer a suggestion, Jane answered her own question. “I’ll tell you. It’s somebody who’s still deciding whether or not to do the deed. Someone trying to work up the courage to blackmail Lucky. Someone who was serious, even if he or she was an amateur, would ask for too much money. Or too little. Someone who wanted to chase Lucky away or drive him crazy would be specific and try to make Lucky crazy. Whoever is bothering to hang upside-down horseshoes and leave these vague notes is someone trying to work up the courage to actually commit a crime.”
“A reluctant blackmailer?” offered Oh.
“Or,” Jane continued, “someone who isn’t sure of what he or she knows. Perhaps the would-be blackmailer is only a could-be?
“Perhaps someone is still gathering the facts?” said Oh.
“Like Lucky,” said Jane.
20
Jane had to make two stops on the way to the bowling alley. First, she swung by her parents’ house to take Rita for a short walk. Lately, she felt like she was ignoring her shaggy friend, or feeding her hollow round-the-block promises of longer walks to come. Rita looked at her with hope, as if she wanted to believe, but Jane knew by the droop of the tail that the dog was not buying the milk bones her mistress was selling.
Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) Page 21
