“They rented a house over by Cobb Park. Furnished. Nice old house, I hear. I suppose it’s their headquarters for Hometown USA,” said Tim. “Hey, is that a secret?”
“Nope,” said Don. “I’ve been talking it up to a few people, and a lot of folks around here already heard and are pretty excited about it.”
Jane didn’t want to argue with her dad so soon after tangling with her mother, so she kept her thoughts about Prof. Harold Hill and his sidekick to herself.
“Henry Bennett. And these three others, Laura Brown, Marisa Brown, and Kenny Pollett? All from Kankakee Realty?” Jane asked, checking Tim’s list.
“Not the Brown sisters. Laura’s a photographer from Chicago. She’s doing a photo essay on the sale for a suburban newspaper chain. Maybe going to take one block and document everything—prep, setup, sale days, and aftermath. Or she might try to cover the whole thing; we haven’t decided. And Marisa is writing the story to go with it. The text. They’re real excited about the whole event. Be a big story for them.”
“Did Mr. Sullivan ever want to write a story about the garage sale?” asked Oh.
“Never talked to me about it,” said Tim. “He was all airport all the time.”
“Hey, how’d you do with the high school volunteers you promised Suzanne Blum you’d find for her aunt’s block?” asked Jane.
“Service project for the National Honor Society at Bishop McNamara. Going over to speak at the high school later,” said Tim, standing to take his bowl back to Nellie in the kitchen for seconds.
“Kenny Pollett?”
“He’s a Realtor. Young guy who seems to have neglected the real estate tenet about location and moved here from Chicago.”
Jane looked at the list and tried to focus on the names. She looked up and into the kitchen where Tim had plunged into an old argument with Nellie. Both of them clearly enjoyed their roles. They knew what to expect from each other, navigated through the give-and-take of a conversation, and ended up satisfied at the end of it. How did people learn to do that? If Nellie was right, if Jane kept refusing what her mother had to give, asking her for what she thought Nellie had … whatever that meant … Jane had better figure out how to stop it. She wanted that easy rapport Tim had with her mother. She wanted to be respected or at least taken seriously by Nellie. Didn’t she? Or was Nellie just deep down right? Did Jane just want to be taken into the basement?
Oh parked in what was almost the last space in the lot that adjoined the real estate company. A large sign was lettered on the brick wall of the building:
Kankakee “K3” Realty
Let us take you home!
Jane wondered if the lot was nearly full because business was good or because it was poor. If all the cars belonged to the Realtors, it meant they were inside rather than showing property to potential buyers. If the cars were those of customers, Kankakee must be in the middle of a housing boom.
Bust. There were three people sitting in the large, open room, wearing those bright blazers that announced they were proud employees. Henry Bennett was on the phone, writing something on a notepad. A forty-something woman was paging through a thick computer printout of some kind of listing, carefully lining through certain points with a pink highlighter. A third member of the K3 team was a young man who appeared to be cleaning out his wallet. He sat back in his chair and was emptying each pocket and fold of receipts, ticket stubs, business cards, and small bits of paper with scrawled names and numbers.
Jane and Oh walked into the office and the Realtors looked up with such obvious hunger that Jane wasn’t sure whether they were going to try and sell her a house or throw her into a stew-pot. Henry Bennett remained on the phone but kept his eyes on the two of them, waved, and made a gesture to indicate he’d only be another minute. As the older Realtor, the one with the bigger desk, he clearly wanted them to believe he was the man in charge, the one worth waiting for. The woman actually licked her lips before smiling and standing. She choked out a hoarse greeting that made her sound like she might not have spoken aloud for several hours. The young man looked up, his eyes eager, but his manner restrained. You could almost hear his inner voice advising him to remain cool.
The desperation made Jane want to buy something. If there had been a display of gum or pens at a counter, Jane would have stocked up. Unfortunately, the impulse to want to buy something when business is slow, to help out the folks in the store, had to be squelched when you were in a store that sold houses and lots and office buildings. Even though there were bargains galore, Jane knew she shouldn’t be snapping up the downtown restaurant that was being sold at a tremendous loss or any of the magnificent old homes on the river that would have sold for millions on Chicago’s North Shore but here in Kankakee were practically being given away. Real estate at rock bottom still demanded more commitment than pocket change.
Bruce Oh looked at Jane with one of his almost raised eyebrows that signaled that she should take the lead. She was getting used to his lack of expression, or at least she thought she was. She decided she would interpret what passed for expressions as best she could, and until he called her wrong on it, she would assume she could read the man.
Jane liked her chances of learning something interesting with the salesman who wanted to remain cool. After her years in advertising, dealing with actors and models, she felt she could penetrate the invisible shield behind which a young man who didn’t want to showcase his need—his got to get this commercial, got to be hired for this shoot, must get this voiceover—tried to protect himself. This one Realtor had I’ve got to sell four walls and some windows right now written all over him, and Jane hoped that meant he would talk about anything to get her to sit down and look at some listings.
“Mr. Pollett?” Jane said, reading his name tag.
“Yes, how can I help you?” he asked, pulling two chairs over to his desk. Jane could see Henry Bennett out of the corner of her eye, anxiously trying to end his phone call.
Jane introduced herself and Bruce Oh, but did not immediately ask him about any of the recent happenings on Fuzzy’s land. Instead she mentioned that she had been a friend of Roger Groveland’s and had always meant to come in and visit him at his office when she was in town.
“I didn’t know him very well,” said Pollett. “I started a month or so before he died.”
Pollett offered them coffee, swept his wallet debris into his top drawer, and pulled out a yellow legal pad. “Were you planning on contacting him about the sale or purchase of property here in the greater Kankakee area?” he asked formally.
“My parents live here. They run the EZ Way Inn,” said Jane. Pollett nodded and Jane went on, hoping Oh would be ready to help bail her out if she began asking too much too soon. “With all this gossip going on about the airport, I was just thinking it might be a good time to find out about land prices, possibilities here for investment. My folks were saying that maybe there are some bargains that my husband and I might find, and then if the airport is built here …”
“Dead,” Pollett said, shaking his head.
“Pardon?” said Oh.
“I want to sell you property,” said Pollett, “don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure that the airport thing is dead. I can’t try to sell you anything on false pretenses. Besides, all that farmland that people thought would be so valuable for the airport, that’s not for sale. Now if you want a nice house on the river, I’ve got them, but land for development around here is so tied up because of—”
“Is there anything I can help you with, Mrs. Wheel? Henry Bennett. We met out at the Neilsons’ farm?”
“I am Bruce Oh, an associate of Mrs. Wheel’s,” said Oh, standing to extend his hand.
“The Neilson farm?” Pollett rolled his eyes. “If you’re thinking about finding someplace like that around here, forget it. The rumors have tied up everything west of town. Besides, most of the people around there are so dead set against development that they’d just as soon shoot us as talk to us about sell
ing.”
“Kenny,” said Bennett. “You and Kay head over to Villa Europa now … some condos out by the high school,” he said to Jane and Oh. “Make sure everything’s ready for the opening and that you’ve got examples in all of the different floor plans ready to show.”
Kay looked at Bennett, surprised. She shrugged, as if to say anything beats sitting here, and picked up her purse.
Pollett looked like he might protest, but instead decided on a parting shot. “If you’re a friend of the Neilsons, you ask them who’s made them promises so they won’t sell to anyone or even talk to us about it.”
“I apologize for Kenny,” said Bennett. “I don’t think he even knows about the young man who was shot out there. No newspaper story out yet. I didn’t think I should talk about it … so if he seems insensitive …”
“Mr. Bennett, you were the man who identified the body?” asked Oh.
“No, I couldn’t say who it was; I just said who it wasn’t. Not Roger Groveland, not anyone who worked here.”
“But you had met the man before; you did know the victim?” Jane asked.
Henry “Hank” Bennett shook his head.
“He was a newspaper reporter whose parents lived on the neighboring farm. He had been doing a lot of stories on Kankakee. You were quoted in one of Johnny Sullivan’s stories,” said Jane. “Don’t you remember being interviewed by him?”
Bennett sat down. His eyes were focused somewhere behind Jane and Oh when he spoke. “I didn’t realize that was him. I looked away quickly when I realized it wasn’t … when it wasn’t anyone I knew from the office. They had told me about the blazer and …” Bennett stopped. “I didn’t know it was that reporter.” He brought his eyes back to them. “Really.” Bennett’s hands were shaking.
Jane turned around, thinking she heard another car turn into the parking lot, and she noticed behind them on the wall was a large map of Kankakee County. A table in front of it held a coffeemaker and a plate of cookies that looked like it had been there awhile.
“Do you need a cup of coffee, Mr. Bennett?” asked Jane, walking over to the table.
“Please call me Hank. Yes, that’d be good. I only met Sullivan once, but he seemed like a good boy. I …” Bennett stopped again. “It’s funny, I could put the image out of my mind when I didn’t know who it was. I just walked away from it and it didn’t stay with me at all, but now I can see it so clearly. His poor parents.”
“Do you know them personally?” asked Oh.
“Yes, but not well. Kenny and I have been working with landowners west of town. We had a Chicago developer interested in building housing out there; we were talking to a retail mall developer, too. See, if the airport …” Bennett stopped. “We thought that some of the more entrenched farmers, the ones who were holding on to their land so tightly, might be persuaded to sell some of their adjoining acreage. Then no one farmer would have to give up everything, but there’d still be enough to offer a developer to make it worth his while to consider an investment.
“The Neilsons and the Sullivans, for example. They own a lot of land, but they’re getting older, leasing out most of it anyway, and we thought they’d consider selling some big parcels as long as we could structure it so they kept ten, twenty, even thirty acres, with their houses and buildings, enough to farm for their own satisfaction. None of them are making a lot of money right now. This way, they could sell before they were forced to and keep a place to live,” said Bennett.
“On the morning of Tim’s meeting about the garage-sale promotion at the EZ Way Inn, did you hear Fuzzy talking about the bone he’s found on his property?” asked Jane.
Bennett nodded.
“Did you call anyone to report it?”
“Are you joking? Do you know what happens when your land gets tied up in that kind of red tape?” asked Bennett. He straightened and seemed to realize that he was talking to two people whose role in all of this he didn’t quite understand. “I mean, of course I would have made the call if I felt it was truly an important historical find. I would always follow procedure on that. But Fuzzy was always finding things,” said Bennett. “He often talked about valuable minerals and treasures he was turning up when he was gardening. We all laughed it off. He played jokes on us like that all the time.”
“Like what?” asked Jane.
“When Kenny and I first approached him about selling some of his land, he agreed to come into the office for a meeting. He brought in a piece of gold and told us he’d found it on his land, so he thought we should raise the price considerably,” said Bennett.
“I was taken aback because it did look like a piece of gold ore, and he was so serious about it all. I started asking him questions about it, and he burst out laughing, told us we were a bunch of dopes. Asked why he should expect us to make a good deal for him when there were smarter people in the world. He said he wanted to sell his land to somebody who had vision.”
“So the deal was off?” said Oh, writing something down in a small pocket notebook.
“No. He’d play some trick and call us names, then he’d call and say he was sorry and want to know if we were still interested,” said Bennett. “Kenny had had it. He said Fuzzy was a crazy old man and he wasn’t ever going to sell his land. He told me it was a waste of time to deal with these farmers. They’d never make a deal.”
Jane asked about the Sullivans, if they seemed willing to part with a parcel of their farmland.
“They did until their son started writing about the airport all the time and coming home to work on the weekend,” said Bennett. “They said maybe he should be making the decisions about the farm.”
Bennett stopped talking abruptly and looked at the two of them, then, almost as an afterthought, looked at the clock on the wall. He stood and said he was going to have to go to a meeting that was scheduled, couldn’t be canceled. He picked up his phone, pushed a button on its base, and asked someone to work the front. The door to the back office opened and a young woman came out. She was carrying several file folders with her, and Bennett indicated she should sit at his desk.
“You cover the phones, Letty, and direct people to my cell phone if it’s a client with a specific question. Pollett and Kay will be back in an hour or so. So sorry, but I’m late. I hadn’t realized …”
Bennett was out the door before Jane could even think of how to phrase what she was thinking … that Johnny Sullivan’s death would mean that his parents might sell the land Bennett needed to make his deal. Jane wasn’t quite ready to accuse Bennett or anyone else. After all, less than twenty-four hours ago, she had been pretty certain that Dempsey and Hoover were guilty, that they had silenced Johnny Sullivan because he was going to expose all their plans for turning Kankakee into an amusement park.
Jane and Oh got up to leave the office, but they stopped at the giant map on the wall. Oh traced his finger in the air over the county map, and Jane watched him outline the large green shape marked Sullivan and the equally large blue piece marked Neilson. The land butted right up toward the edge of the town of Kankakee, its western border defined by a large structure, the former Roper Stove Factory, and a tiny structure south of it, the EZ Way Inn. Each building was labeled with its own tiny red flag.
“How long has Mr. Bennett owned K3 Realty?” Jane asked the woman at the desk as she and Oh paused at the front door.
“He wishes,” Letty said, turning away from them to answer the phone at another desk.
Jane and Oh sat in the car in the parking lot while Oh studied his notebook. He closed it and put it away.
“Did you believe Mr. Bennett when he said he did not recognize John Sullivan in the cornfield, Mrs. Wheel?”
“I think so. He was there for a moment, just making sure it wasn’t anyone from his office. There was so much confusion. What I don’t believe,” said Jane, “was that he had a previously scheduled meeting just now. He just realized that Johnny Sullivan’s death could be good for him and his deal.”
“And Mr.
Bennett realized that we now know this, that John Sullivan’s death benefited Henry Bennett. And …”
Jane’s cell phone rang. No William Tell Overture, no “Happy Birthday,” no “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” no funny little song or weird little pattern, just a regular ring. A telephone ring. Jane thought it must mean that her son had gotten tired of his game of changing the tone on her phone so often that she never recognized the ring as hers. Perhaps this ordinary ring was supposed to be the most confusing of all? Or maybe Nick changed it back to the recognizable tone that she preferred because he was growing up.
When she answered the phone, though, Jane Wheel thought her little boy didn’t sound grown up at all. He sounded like he was upset, hysterical. Was he crying? Jane listened to her son, then directed Oh to drive as quickly as possible back out to the Neilsons’ farm. She kept redialing Charley’s cell, but got no answer. Either Nick had clicked the phone off altogether, the battery had died, or Nick had rushed back to wherever the action was taking place at that moment, dropping the phone in the cabin, the tent, or the farmhouse, whatever he had run to for privacy to make the call. The last thing he had yelled into the phone sounded like a loud and static-riddled “Hurry!”
According to what Jane thought she heard Nick say, someone had just tried to shoot Charley.
If it were the case, if someone had indeed been trying to shoot Charley, he seemed pretty calm about the whole thing, lounging against Fuzzy’s small tractor parked outside the barn.
Oh had barely pulled into the driveway next to the farmhouse when Jane had her seat belt unlatched and the front door unlocked. She ignored Bruce Oh’s request that he be allowed to stop the car altogether before she opened the door and jumped out, feeling, she had to admit once she saw that Charley was unhurt and unperturbed, a little thrilled at keeping her balance while exiting a moving car. True, it wasn’t moving very fast and she did stumble a little, but, she thought, she could add a picture of herself bolting from a moving vehicle to her inner reel. No one was going to ask her to audition for Charlie’s Angels, but for a Kankakee-made detective flick, she was holding her own.
Buried Stuff Page 16
