Scary Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “I think,” said Jane, “that for old James, this little side business was fine as is, selling the occasional box lot of stuff. After he died, though, whoever helped him with it got greedy. They wouldn’t have his paid-up lifestyle—the property he and Ada owned outright plus the interest income from all the land deals he made selling off parcels of the original farm. Whoever he shared that ring of keys with still needed to keep the selling going, and needed to make more money. The books from Ada’s library would bring bigger money, and some of her antiques—the Halloween decorations for sure. There’s a big market for them.”

  Jane stopped talking and Oh shined his flashlight her way. She pointed toward the barn. Both heard the hum of a motor. Both heard it stop. Someone had driven onto the property and parked behind the barn. Whoever had stored their stuff here, whether it was honestly acquired or not, had come to make his claim.

  Jane had advised Tim to keep the radio on in the house, allowing noise to filter out into the night through a few open windows. Tim and Claire also had left all the lights on. Claire had changed into a pair of dark trousers, as close to Jane’s old dark jeans as she could get, and she had pulled her hair back with one of Jane’s barrettes, so that her silhouette, if glimpsed from outside, might be confused with Jane’s. Claire was a head taller than Jane, but Jane didn’t think anyone on a mission would notice that detail. The hope was that if Tim and Jane were assumed to be in the house, the person who had assaulted Swanette would once again slip into the dimly lit shed, hoping that the weapon used was still in place.

  Jane and Tim had made sure, while spreading their story around town and proclaiming it from every corner of Ada’s house, that they said the police had no idea how Swanette might have been attacked, but that once they found a weapon, they would be able to find the murderer. The police had actually removed the suspicious slat earlier in the day, sending it off to the city to be checked for evidence that it had been used to strike Swanette. Another slat had been pried from a crate in the barn and been wedged into the corner. If someone entered the shed to retrieve what he believed was his weapon, Jane and Oh were ready to surprise him with a light show and a quick call to one of Officer Cord’s men with an arrest warrant. Jane wasn’t sure what Oh had said to persuade Cord to allow them their night, but she was once again grateful that Oh had been a police officer himself, that he understood procedure and the territorial nature of a crime. Perhaps if Swanette had actually—

  Jane stopped her runaway train of thought and froze. She still held the box cutter in her right hand and silently, with her left, she picked up the meat fork that she had laid out on top of the box. Oh held the walkie-talkie. She and Oh were on the opposite side of the shed from where the original wooden slat had been tucked away. Someone was coming in, and if they were correct in their speculations, that someone was coming to fetch the piece of wood. Without saying anything to each other, without even exchanging looks, they had flicked off their small penlights. The nearly full moon came in through gaps in the sides of the building, illuminating a slice of earthen floor in front of them, in front of the door, which opened slowly, creaking slightly on its hinges.

  Jane kept her eyes on that slice of light, watching for shoes, for feet. As someone stepped in toward the corner, Jane held her breath. They were timing the call for lights to the moment when the intruder actually laid hands on the board. Anything else he touched or tried to take away from the shed might be robbery, the act of a thief, but someone trying to remove an alleged murder weapon was the perpetrator they were trying to catch tonight.

  Jane heard no movement or sound from Oh, but was aware of a voice in the distance calling for lights. Nellie’s voice, to be exact, screaming, “Turn on the goddamn lights!” The person in the shed froze for just a second then began to back away toward the door. Jane jumped out and kicked it closed, her box cutter raised over her head.

  Light, as well as the buzz and hum of a generator, flooded the property.

  “Please don’t hurt me. I haven’t done anything.”

  Jane and Oh remained where they were, staring at a man who looked enough like Michael to indeed be his twin brother.

  “Joe?” asked Jane.

  “How do you know me?” the man asked, near tears. “Please put the knife and fork down. You look like you’re going to eat me.”

  “This is just a formality, sir, but I would like to search you. May I have your permission to make sure you’re not carrying a weapon?” asked Oh.

  Jane was impressed with the wording of her partner’s request. No longer a policeman, he made no mistakes that would violate the rights of Joe, who right now, since he had been thrown into shock by the lights a beat too early, had done nothing more than trespass. Jane felt certain he had been going toward the wooden slat, intending to take it and destroy it, but her hunch was not going to be what Cord needed to make a case.

  “I got nothing to hide,” said Joe. “Search me.”

  Oh patted him down and Jane suggested they all get out of the shed, onto the well-lit grounds, before the area police descended upon them, guns raised.

  “What are you doing here, Joe?”

  He shrugged. “Just looking around, that’s all. I heard there was going to be a sale and I collect all kinds of stuff, and sometimes if you come early where they’re setting up a sale, you can get bargains, so I just thought I’d come out and look around.”

  “In the dark?” asked Jane.

  “I got a light,” said Joe, pointing to the flashlight he had dropped. “And I figured I’d scout around before going up and knocking at the door. There are lights on up there in the house.”

  Despite the tension of the moment, Jane was amused when she looked toward the house, then did a full circle turn toward the barn, the fields, and the other small buildings. Family, friends, and police officers were moving in from every corner—all abandoning their posts since they had caught someone in their trap.

  Nellie was walking the fastest, of course, and got there ahead of the rest.

  “How the hell did you get my son’s face?” she asked, more rumination than question. To Jane’s ears, Nellie sounded mildly curious, but not surprised.

  “Let’s see those eyes,” said Nellie, flashing the light directly in Joe’s face.

  One clear blue eye and one dark brown eye blinked back at them.

  “Holy jeez,” said Don. “Did you know that you got one brown eye and one blue eye?”

  As unhinged as Joe seemed in danger of becoming, he sighed. “You’d be surprised how often I’m asked that.”

  Michael just stared.

  Jane was conscious of trying to keep her mind orderly. When these climactic moments happened, it always seemed that all events and facts flew around their heads, confusing the main issues and diffusing the solution to the crime. Despite Jane’s attempts at holding on to the reins, one question formed in her mind that had less to do with Joe and the police approaching cautiously with weapons drawn and more to do with her own mysterious mother. How did Nellie know to look at Joe’s eyes?

  Had she mentioned that Honest Joe’s Internet offers had featured a twin to Michael with different-colored eyes? No, because she hadn’t known that. Even if she had mentioned the eyes somehow being different, there was something about the way Nellie zeroed in on Joe’s face and nodded to herself, as if she had suspected what she would find all along.

  Head. Head. Oh. Hetero. Heterochromia. Two different-colored eyes. Jane now knew the term for it and knew why it had sounded familiar. She had heard it before. An actor who was a recurring spokesman in one of the commercial campaigns she produced had heterochromia. Ben Crumb. Jane had finally remembered both his name and his eyes. He would pop a brown contact over his blue eye before the shoot began, but Jane always found him more interesting, more arresting, before he “evened himself out” as he referred to it. Central heterochromia. Swanette probably had turned when she heard something, someone, and she had tried to tell Jane that the person who hit her h
ad heterochromia. But only Jane had heard her struggle with the word and she hadn’t even put it together until now. Why was Nellie nodding like Detective Columbo, like she knew all the answers to all the questions, all along?

  Oh took care of arrangements with the police. Cord sent the two officers who had come in from their posts in the field to check out the area behind the barn where Nellie had heard the car pull in.

  “You weren’t supposed to call for lights that soon, Mom,” said Jane. “We heard the car engine, too. We wanted to wait until he had actually picked up the wooden slat—that would have meant he was trying to remove what he thought was the murder weapon.”

  “We heard the engine, heard it stop, and I counted to forty-five. I figured it might take him that long to creep over to where you two were, but I wasn’t going to give him a second longer and a chance to use that club again,” said Nellie.

  “I agree with your mother,” said Don. “We shouldn’t have been doing all of this cloak-and-dagger work anyway, and we weren’t going to take a chance of anyone getting hurt.”

  Cord came over to them shaking his head. “Car’s gone. His partner got away.”

  Honest Joe looked up from the porch steps where he had been sitting, handcuffed and curiously calm.

  “I didn’t come here in a car,” he said.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” said Tim. “Out for a night hike?”

  Claire had gone back into the kitchen and Jane could see her put the kettle on the stove. That was getting to be a familiar sight. Michael was sitting at the kitchen table. He had relaxed some after his initial shock at meeting his doppelgänger, but still looked shaken. Don and Nellie, Tim and Oh, they were all out here still surrounding Joe. So who was walking toward them from the road?

  “I rode here with him,” said Joe, pointing to the stranger.

  “Dave, the lighting tech, I presume,” said Jane, extending her hand.

  “Jane Wheel, the love of my boss’s life, right?” said Dave. “He’s always talking about how you made his business for him, hiring him when he was just starting out. And you’re pretty, too, just like he said.” Dave looked around, realizing for the first time that he had a bit of an audience. “Did I do okay with the lights?”

  Dave had gone into town on his motorcycle and met Joe at a road house where they talked over beers and sandwiches. Joe asked for a ride out to the property so he could ask Jane Wheel about the sale and Dave didn’t see anything wrong with giving him a lift. Figured the guy seemed to know about the farm and all the stuff that was going to be for sale. Len had told him that the whole lighting thing was probably for one of Jane Wheel’s “junkapaloozas” or something. It all made sense by the third beer.

  “Did Joe ask you if you would be able to drive him back to town?”

  “Nope,” said Dave. “I would have, though. Once I turned on the lights for the night, I really didn’t have anything to do. I could have taken the ten minutes or so to bring him back to the bar.”

  “Or he might have arranged for another ride home,” said Jane. “And when the lights went on and the commotion started, the driver left the same way he came.”

  “I didn’t arrange anything,” said Joe. “I just wanted to see what was out here, that’s all. I heard there was lots of stuff and I thought it was my chance to be the first guy here. That’s all. Haven’t got a partner and I didn’t ask for a ride,” he said. “Except from him,” he added, pointing to Dave.

  “And you were planning to return home by what vehicle?” asked Oh.

  “I’ve walked that far before. I just live over Edna’s and it’s less than a mile from here.”

  Michael had come out to the porch, holding a mug of tea. The autumn coolness that had led to their search for jackets earlier had turned into a real chill.

  “You’d walk that distance in the dark?” asked Michael.

  “Do it all the time,” said Joe. “Nothing to be afraid of out here. You talk like a city boy. City people have to be afraid of the dark all the time. My mom always said that was why cities had all them bright lights. People who lived there were afraid of the dark.” Joe had remained sitting on the porch steps, but had turned to look at Michael’s face. “You look like you’re afraid of the dark.”

  “Damn right,” said Michael, looking as if he might want to add more, but stopping himself.

  Cord motioned to Oh who raised an eyebrow in Jane’s direction. The three of them retreated a distance from those on the porch.

  “Under the circumstances, I could just barely hold him for trespassing. Keep in mind that someone in your employ brought him here. He could make a case that he thought that gave him permission to look around. He entered an unlocked structure. He didn’t touch anything, pocket anything, and didn’t go for the wooden slat we placed . . .”

  “He didn’t have time,” said Jane. “He would have.”

  “Mrs. Wheel,” said Cord, “I’m not saying I don’t believe your instincts could be correct on this, but under the circumstances,” he repeated, “I’m not sure anything that happened here tonight makes a case against this fellow.”

  Jane nodded.

  “You’re right. I appreciate your support on all of this, and I wish we had led you to a real suspect, but you’re right. Under the circumstances, tonight was a bust.”

  Oh tried to look into Mrs. Wheel’s eyes to see what was truly posted there. He had never known her to give up this easily.

  “If Swanette had actually—” Cord began, but Jane stopped him.

  “I’m willing to admit that tonight did not go according to plan, but I’d just as soon not reveal anything about the plan to Joe over there. I’d rather just give the gentleman what he came for.”

  Jane smiled at the puzzled look on Cord’s face.

  “To make sure he doesn’t feel ‘entrapped’ or anything,” Jane said, pulling the word out of her limited cop TV show vocabulary and hoping that it fit this occasion. “Not that he’d have a case since he didn’t do anything he can be held for, but we’ll just let him look around at the stuff. I might be wrong in some of my suspicions, but I can spot a picker and that guy really does want a look around at the stuff. Let’s give him the preview.”

  Oh nodded. Very nice.

  Jane left Oh to talk with Cord in police-speak about what would happen next. Based on Jane’s limited experience with the police, nothing would happen. Someone would have to be hit over the head with a board to convince the police that a violent crime was committed. Oh wait, Jane wanted to say, someone was.

  “Joe?” said Jane. “I’m afraid we’ve made a mistake.”

  Joe looked up at her. In the light from the porch, Jane could see his two different-colored eyes clearly enough to be momentarily disconcerted by them. She knew Michael too well to really be fooled by the face now that the first shock was over. Yes, Joe resembled Michael, but knowing someone, talking with someone, recognizing their expressions and foibles and flaws, allowed a sister such insight into a brother that she could never really think that anyone else looked like him. Not really. Resemblance and likeness were two different things.

  Jane did notice something familiar about Joe that had nothing to do with Michael. He cocked his head when he listened. Now, as he looked at her, she realized it was the same angle from which Ada regarded her when they spoke.

  Deaf, thought Jane, or hard of hearing. At least in one ear.

  “You showed up here with all good intentions. Just wanted an early peek at the sale stuff, and then got caught up in something that doesn’t really concern you. We should, at least, let you have your look around,” said Jane.

  Claire Oh now cocked her head at Jane and Jane knew her hearing was perfect. Claire just didn’t believe what she was hearing Jane tell Joe. Even though Claire could never suspect this itinerant picker of posing the slightest threat to her own antiquing with her own deep pockets, she did arrive at Swanette’s farm under the impression that she was being given an early look at the estate. Now some
scruffy character in torn blue jeans was given the royal treatment by Jane Wheel?

  “Claire, may I have a word?” asked Oh, suddenly beside her. Jane hadn’t heard Oh approach, but she now heard Cord talking to his people out by the barn.

  Jane had avoided speaking directly to Don and Nellie since the lights went on, except to remind her mother that she had jumped the gun in calling for them. She needed to dodge her dad’s protective embrace and deflect Nellie’s overzealous desire to participate. What Jane surmised was that Oh would suggest to Claire that she return to Kankakee with Don and Nellie and allow them to spend time with Joe on the property. Surely, as one picker to another, Joe would become comfortable enough to speak about his business, his greatest finds, his most recent Internet sales. Before the night was over, Joe would tell them everything they wanted to hear. But they had to make Joe comfortable . . . set him up with a meat-loaf sandwich from Edna’s and some boxes to unpack. Jane had to persuade her parents to go home.

  “Thank you for helping out here, but we’ve got it for the rest of the night. Looks like the show is over for now,” said Jane. “If you would drive Claire back to your house and let her get some rest, we’ll just follow along later. Michael’s got his rental and Tim and Oh both have cars here, so . . .”

  “Some detective you are,” said Nellie. “You believe that guy?”

  Jane looked at Joe who had stood up and was looking in the window of the house.

  “Enough,” said Jane.

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Nellie.

  “It means I believe him enough to let the rest of the night play out here,” said Jane. She realized that she was telling her parents the truth. “I don’t totally trust him, any more than anyone should ever trust someone who’s a picker, someone who wants what someone else has, but I don’t feel threatened by him.”

  Jane was prepared for her father to be on her side and that it would take the two of them to force Nellie to go home. Nellie, however, didn’t stand around waiting for them to persuade her. Instead she headed for their car, throwing up one hand in the air and waving without turning back to look at anyone.