Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries)

by Fiffer, Sharon

  The old lady had a book of matches in her hand, which Jane thought odd, until she noticed the waiters and waitresses passing out matchbooks to everyone. A gum-chewing nineteen-year-old came over and handed matchbooks to Jane and Oh, who looked even more puzzled than usual when faced with what he assumed was a Kankakee custom.

  “Thank you, but I don’t smoke,” he said politely, trying to return it.

  “Who does?” said the waitress. Pointing to her mouth. “But this nicotine gum is delish. Does the trick.”

  “So why the matches?” asked Jane.

  “Rudy keeps them around for when somebody’s, you know,” she said, pointing to the scorecard, but not risking the bad luck one encountered for mentioning the words, “Perfect game” or saying “300” aloud. “Everybody used to smoke, you know. So when somebody was bowling a … pretty good … around the eighth or ninth frame, everybody’d start holding up their lighters or lighting matches for luck when the ball rolled down the lane. It’s a tradition. Rudy hasn’t had to get these babies out in a while.”

  Jane saw that the matchbook cover had a thin layer of dust on it.

  “Not sure any of the Lucky Miller people will know the tradition,” said Jane.

  “We’re spreading the word. Besides, one person does it and everybody does it. Like kids. Everybody loves lighting matches.”

  Sal’s tenth frame was getting closer. Jane looked over in time to see him dry his hands and shake out his shoulders. His face looked completely blank. She was reminded of hearing athletes talk about remarkable games, asserting that they hadn’t thought about the record being broken, the strikeouts thrown, the three-pointers drained. Most of them talked about being completely detached from their bodies, unaware of anything outside or inside, operating on pure muscle memory.

  Jane looked down at the matches in her hand, then looked at Lucky Miller who was turning his own matchbook over and over in his hand. Everybody likes lighting matches. Dickie Boynton ran away after he burned down his family’s garage. Dickie, however, had not acted alone. Jane was sure that his pal, Herman Mullet, had been with him, either playing with matches or setting out to do some damage. And once damage had been done and Dickie had been blamed, Herman had told his father what happened and his father, ready to move on anyway, always one step ahead of the law on his securities and insurance schemes, protected his son by scramming out of town.

  When Jane had found Lucky wandering the block of his old neighborhood, a fact confirmed by Mary Wainwright’s check into the real estate history, he had seen a woman watching, a current resident, and told Jane a little girl had been watching years ago, when he was a boy. Jane saw that that little girl, all grown up and grown old, was still watching. Ruthie Boynton, holding her book of matches aloft in her left clawlike hand, hit the joystick on her electric chair with her right hand and motored toward Lucky.

  The number of people at the bowling alley had easily doubled in the last half hour. It was a crowded Saturday afternoon anyway, with many locals thinking of the Lucky tournament as a spectator sport, hoping for a glimpse of the promised celebrities. When no celebrities except for Lucky who was fast becoming old hat around town showed up, some people left, only to return when cell phones started buzzing with the news of a perfect game being rolled. Spotting B-list celebrities was an okay way to pass a September weekend afternoon, but being present to watch someone roll a perfect game was history in the making. People were pouring through the automatic doors, video cameras in hand. Rudy and the other employees cordoned off an area around lane fourteen, so things didn’t become too impossible for Sal, who simply repeated his motions on every turn. He applauded his teammates when they rolled well, and when it was his turn, he dried his hands, squared his shoulders, and allowed his body to do the work.

  Tenth frame for Sal was approaching. He had started to stand, then looked down, paused and sat. The whispering filtered back to where Jane and Oh stood. A red-faced fifty-something man, wearing a Wally’s Tap T-shirt, explained that Sal’s shoe had come untied. Oh looked at Jane, puzzled.

  “Why not tie his shoe?” asked Oh. “Delay of game?”

  “Superstition,” said Jane. “When you’re on a streak, you don’t change anything. You dry your hands the same way, you turn the ball in your hands the same, if you always sip your beer before you roll, you sip your beer. If he stops to tie his shoe, he might break the chain.”

  “And if he doesn’t tie his shoe, he might fall and break something else?” asked Oh.

  “Exactly the dilemma,” said Jane. “But it gives me time to stop Ruthie.”

  Jane pushed through the crowd, confident she could overtake the wheelchair, but Ruthie did a little bob and weave maneuver through the crowd that the chair allowed and Jane couldn’t imitate. People were pressing in now, as anxious to see what Sal decided about his shoelace as they were to see him bowl his tenth frame. Parents were pointing and aiming their children’s heads to the projected score as if it were the aurora borealis. A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X.

  Ruthie got to Lucky just ahead of Jane, who could now see that Lucky was completely in his trance, turning those matches over and over in his hand. The look on the old woman’s face was positively victorious, as if she had planted Sal here, commanded the perfect game, and produced the matchbooks herself. Jane recognized the look. She had seen it on other people bent on setting records straight, exacting revenge.

  “Herman Mullet,” she croaked. “You burned down Daddy’s garage and let Dickie take the blame. You thought you got away with it, didn’t you? But I knew you’d come back. Criminals always come back to the scene of the crime.” Her voice grew stronger and louder. Jane looked over to Sam, who was now also fighting his way through the crowd to his great-aunt. Jane knew he had his own reasons for wanting to shut the old woman up. He must have mentioned Sluggo, and the pranks played on Lucky and Ruthie told him they could play the tricks all right, but there was a way to get money out of Lucky. She could tell him how to blackmail Lucky.

  Sam was the caterer and Lucky planned the food. He must have let him know he could eat peanuts. Or Sluggo told him since Sluggo was Lucky’s source for what would happen to him during a reaction. Sam had messed with an EpiPen, on purpose or accidentally when slipping in the three-leaf clover, believing it was Lucky’s kit. Maybe he played with the pen, thinking it wouldn’t matter to Lucky. It would only prove he had faked his allergy. Just in case Ruthie’s nonsense didn’t work, Sam would shake him down for money, threatening to reveal that he was a phony. Poor Sam didn’t know that Lucky wasn’t afraid of being called a phony; his whole life was built around it.

  Sal had stood up, but Jane couldn’t tell whether he had decided to tie his shoe or not. The sound of matches being struck, lighters being flicked was loud and strange. A giant scraping, a sandpaper breeze. Jane, along with everyone else, turned to watch Sal. In that quiet moment, while everyone listened to the ball rolling toward the pins, Ruthie cried out, “You thought you committed the perfect crime!” At the word perfect, everyone groaned. Jane heard Ruthie screech above the fray, “You tried to burn up my brother, now it’s my turn to burn you up!”

  Jane saw Lucky shake his head. He yelled, “No, it was an accident. Dickie wasn’t supposed to be in the garage. He ran in for his fishing…”

  Lucky’s voice changed into a scream and just as the ball crashed into the pins, Jane saw Ruthie hold her lit match to the bottom of Lucky’s green plaid sport coat. Jane threw herself across two spectators who hadn’t turned away from lane fourteen so were knocked to their knees as Jane threw her elbows forward. As the shouts began when the pins fell, Jane crashed into Lucky, knocking him onto the ground, and trying to roll him over and smother the flame. Nellie must have been watching Jane since she was right behind her with a pitcher of water, which she threw with uncanny accuracy, soaking both Jane and Lucky.

  Jane had ended up lying across Lucky’s body at a right angle and as she lifted herself up, she examined
him for any sign of fire or smoke. The stench of burned wool was strong, but Lucky was no longer on fire, and he assured her, he had not been burned. He was, however, wide-awake and no longer in anything resembling a trancelike state.

  “I didn’t know Dickie was in the garage. I swear. We were playing around. My dad said Mr. Boynton would pay us if we burned down his garage. He had insurance on it. He was going to claim…” Lucky shook his head. The facts were still fuzzy. “I couldn’t find Dickie when the fire started and he had said he was going in and I ran home and told my dad I killed Dickie. My dad said to shut up about it, I hadn’t done anything wrong, and we were all going to disappear for a while. I remember, we were all packed and I hadn’t even known we were moving. My mom just kept crying. I…”

  The crowd around them was clearly torn. There were those who wanted to listen to Lucky’s confession even though they had no idea what he was talking about, but there was, after all, a bowler on lane fourteen who had just rolled his tenth strike and was only two away from Kankakee bowling history.

  Sam had restrained Ruthie, yanking the battery connector out on the chair, keeping his arm on her arm as he bent over listening to Lucky. Nellie and Oh had also gathered around Jane, helping her to her feet. Lucky pulled himself up to a sitting position. When he saw Nellie, he directed his words straight at her.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt Dickie. He was my friend. He liked to go down by the river, he taught me how to fish, he…”

  Jane mustered up all of her inner Belinda St. Germaine and waited for Lucky to finish. Nellie, too, stayed silent, hawklike, and watched Lucky.

  “I remember. I thought I killed him. I had a … I guess I had a nervous breakdown. My mom took me to her sister in Canada and they put me in a hospital and when I went back to my aunt’s house, I told her I wanted to go back to my mom and dad and she told me I couldn’t because there was a death in the family, so I just … I just thought my parents had … died.… But they didn’t. A few years later, Mother came to see me, with a new husband. She told me my dad went to prison and I thought it was because of me and got all upset again and she said that it wasn’t, it was because he was a crook. He sold people insurance policies that were no good, stocks that were no good, and he went to jail because of it. She said Dickie hadn’t died in the fire. He died in the river. His dad wanted him to pretend that he died in the fire for the insurance money. He had taken an insurance policy out on him, but Dickie didn’t want to be dead, he ran off to the river, but—” Lucky stopped talking and looked at Nellie. “What happened?”

  “Dickie drowned. He camped under the bridge near his uncle’s and it stormed and the river came up and got him,” said Nellie. “It wasn’t you.” Jane was surprised to see Nellie pat his arm. Then she added, “So you didn’t kill Dickie, but from what I hear, this crowd’s going to tar and feather you for faking this whole damn roast. And that girl who broke her toe told everybody you faked up the health insurance and everything else you promised them. You better get the hell out of town,” said Nellie. “I can already smell the tar heating up.”

  “Nope,” said Lucky, shaking his head. “I ran away last time, but … wait a minute … Who died? Why didn’t my aunt send me back to my folks? If I found out I didn’t do it, what happened to my memory? Why couldn’t I remember?”

  “You died, Lucky,” said Jane. “Your dad and mom had an insurance policy on your life and they filed a claim. When they moved to Louisville, they sent you to Canada and they filed a claim, said you drowned in the Ohio River.”

  Jane, Nellie, and Oh were sitting on the floor around Lucky, a small enclave protected by the molded plastic seats of lane three. Don must have been in the crowd around lane fourteen where shouts went up again. Now Sal was one strike away from a 300 score.

  “Did they collect the money for me?” asked Lucky.

  Jane nodded. “I believe they did. I think your dad might have decided to do it after the Boyntons’ scheme with Dickie didn’t work. See, your dad had taken the money for a lot of policies, especially on kids, and not really filed them with the company, playing the odds that there would never be an attempt to collect. He had taken a policy on you, though, because he got a discount and why not take advantage? Probably helped him sell policies if he said he had taken one out on you, too. And the one he took out on you was legit.

  “But Dickie wasn’t insured, and since he ran away after the fire, which Ruthie believed you set, they blamed you and your family for everything that went wrong in their own.”

  Ruthie was close enough to hear most of what Jane was saying. She bent over in her chair and leaned forward, making her raspy voice as loud as she could.

  “I ruined your game, Herman Mullet. I ruined your perfect game!” she screamed.

  Not exactly. Lucky didn’t really have a game to ruin.

  Instead, Ruthie Boynton ruined Sal’s perfect game. In the silence as he went up to roll his twelfth ball, there was a collective intake of breath. And the scraping of matches being lit. Then Ruthie’s words rang out in the tense quiet, her screech of perfect game, the ball was thrown and except for the crashing fall of nine pins, there was no sound at all.

  21

  Lucky Miller was not tarred and feathered. In fact, the citizens of Kankakee were fairly forgiving, considering they were not going to be treated to a bunch of insult comedians hurling jokes in bad taste at their own Lucky Miller. After all, the excitement and competition leading up to the event had been a lot of fun and most of the people in town who cared about any groundbreaking local events had witnessed an almost perfect game of bowling.

  Sal showed an enormous amount of restraint after he bowled the twelfth and his score was recorded overhead as 299. He sat down and tied his shoe and accepted the backslapping and high-fiving, then went over to where Ruthie sat, finally subdued but not exactly repentant. Sal solemnly shook her hand and thanked her.

  “I’d hate to think I peaked this early in my life,” he said. “So if you jinxed me, it was meant to be.”

  If Jane hadn’t been ready to say yes to a dinner date before that happened, she was ready now.

  Before leaving the bowling alley, Lucky was able to grab the microphone located behind the shoe rental. Over the PA system, he explained to those in attendance from Lucky Productions that the insurance glitch Suli had encountered was really a glitch. Although he admitted the show might not go on, everyone had been covered as promised and everyone would get paid as promised. Although there might be a slight delay.

  “Including all the tabs you ran up all over town?” shouted Nellie.

  There was talk about putting a plaque up at lane fourteen, but Sal asked Rudy not to. He seemed to be entirely serious about not wanting his life to be divided into before his almost perfect game and after his almost perfect game. It was, after all, as he reminded them, just bowling. Tim and Maurice came over, both a little breathless from the excitement. They had not been caught up in the excitement of the bowling, since neither had been paying attention to the X’s going up overhead, but both had caught Jane’s diving save of Lucky Miller and were duly impressed.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Tim, whispering to her, as Nellie was giving Maurice the third degree about what he was doing with all those tomatoes he bought at the farmer’s market.

  “Perfectly fine,” said Jane. “Exhilarated.”

  She made her way over to the catering table and saw that Sam had been right. After Sal had finished his game, everyone had descended on the food, and the platters and baskets held only crumbs. Bruce Oh was having a quiet conversation with Sam. Although Oh looked serious, she could tell he was reassuring Sam he was not responsible for Sluggo Mettleman’s death.

  “The kit you took was Lucky’s and the pen would have been emptied by Brenda before it was used on Lucky anyway. You do realize, though, if Lucky had needed it, you would be responsible for him,” said Oh.

  “It was stupid. But I wasn’t trying to really hurt Lucky. He told me he didn’
t have an allergy, I guess because he knew I’d be making the food and he didn’t want me to worry about stuff I saw him eating. I knew if I played with his pen I wouldn’t be killing him. Sluggo said it was a way to humiliate him, though, if we showed that he didn’t even use the stuff. It was just stupid. Like those horseshoes I had to hang in his office. It was just dumb stuff. Then Ruthie said I should blackmail him and then I could have the restaurant and pay my bills, but I couldn’t even figure out how to do that right.”

  “That’s a good thing, Sam,” said Jane. “If you’d actually threatened him or asked for money or given him specific directions, the police would have been called in.”

  Lucky came up behind Jane. “No police. If I have any dough left after all the bills are paid, I’ll back your diner, kid. Your grandfather was a good guy and you make a hell of a milk shake. In fact, next time I go into rehab, I’m thinking I might fly you out to cook for me. If I drink those milk shakes every day, I might not miss the Jackie D.”

  Lucky had declared an open bar for an hour and no one remembered that he had no way to pay the tab. The noise level built up again as a few teams decided to finish the games they had interrupted. Jane was pleased to hear the familiar crashing of pins resume. Sam had called Ruthie’s home healthcare worker to pick her up and take her home after Lucky had tried to shake hands with her. She hadn’t forgiven him. Old memories, especially the bad ones, the ones that have stood the test of time, don’t erase or flex easily. Lucky was so pleased to have a grasp on his past, he didn’t mind that Ruthie believed the worst of him. Jane was sure that Belinda St. Germaine would have her work cut out for her when Lucky came to grips with the fact that his parents actually gave him up, declared him dead, and collected on his life insurance policy. But right now, Lucky was content with a clear mind and a clean conscience.