Scary Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Nellie’s girl,” said Ada, turning to Jane.

  “Nellie’s girl,” said Linda. “Turns out she’s the biggest snoop of all. First out at Swanette’s and then at your place, Ada. But if you and poor Nellie’s girl both die in the fire, then I’m the only one left who knows the truth. The Bible I rescued from the library will name me and Cindy and Joe as the true heirs. I’ll see to that. I can pick up the pieces of my confused family life and start over with the money from your estate, Ada.”

  “The fire’s there,” said Ada, looking out the window, where the light from the bonfire could still be seen behind her house.

  “Yeah, it’s going to turn out just a little differently than planned. Your house was going to burn down tonight, Ada, but as it turns out, I’ve gotten fond of that old place anyway. People would miss it. It’s a landmark.”

  As Linda talked, she began picking up papers from the kitchen counter and cramming them into an old leather briefcase. An old family Bible was in the kitchen and Linda stuffed that into the case, too.

  “Nobody’ll really miss Edna’s Diner, though. They’ll love the new place she’ll put up with the insurance money.”

  Jane knew that Nellie would have located Oh and Tim by now—that they would find them any minute. Then again, what if Cindy, the little sister, woke up and stopped Nellie . . . if she really did run into the kitchen for the handbag? What could Jane do to stall so that Nellie could spot the car?

  “You don’t have to kill us, Linda. You’re not desperate . . . you haven’t done anything wrong, have you? Not yet. You weren’t in on all that Internet scam stuff, were you? That was Cindy and Joe. Ada could still leave you everything . . . she could sign over property to you now while she’s alive. . . .”

  “Have you forgotten all about your little buddy, Swanette? I barely tapped her in that shed. I needed to get the Bible and the photos out of there. So stupid of Cindy to store so much out there. I didn’t mean to kill Swanette . . . she turned and I—”

  Jane realized she still held one ace.

  “You didn’t kill her.”

  Jane saw that Linda thought she was being played and stood up to head off another tirade.

  “Swanette’s fine. She’s recovering. It was a bump on the head and I can get her not to press charges. She’s still groggy, hasn’t made a statement. She won’t identify you. I can get her to say she tripped. We made up the rumor that she died. Oh and Tim and me . . . we spread it around town to draw out whoever would want to get their stuff off the property before we sold everything. We knew if whoever had hit her thought she was dead, thought it was murder, they’d have to come back there. We were there waiting. It was all about the Internet scam—Joe and Cindy. Not you—you’re not even involved in that, right? The police knew we were going to do it . . . that’s why they were there when we found Joe in the shed,” said Jane.

  “Swanette’s dead?” asked Ada.

  “No,” said Jane. “Not dead.” It had been a crazy idea, but Jane was so sure that someone would show up to get rid of that piece of two-by-four—but only if whoever had hit Swanette thought they had killed her. There were no official announcements yet, just Jane and Tim and Michael spreading the rumors all over town. The police wouldn’t have gone for it at all except that Oh was able to persuade them that the plan couldn’t harm anyone. Tell that promise to poor old Joe . . .

  Linda began to smile, staring right at Jane with those disconcertingly different-colored eyes.

  “Swanette’s not dead?” she repeated. “You swear?”

  “I swear.”

  “You stupid cow,” said Linda, letting fly with the back of her hand and the grip of the gun. “You made me shoot my own brother? I thought I had to cover up a murder so I had to keep him quiet and you made me shoot my own stupid brother?”

  Jane fell to the floor, her face stinging and her ear numb. Damn family loyalty. Apparently Linda could call her brother and sister idiots, but just let someone else set them up as targets and she went all “sisterly” ballistic. Jane decided not to mention that she had hit Cindy over the head with a maple cutting board.

  “Family,” said Ada. “Blood’s thicker than water.”

  Linda was right about one thing. Ada wasn’t as wacky as she appeared to be. She had followed this crazy scenario down to the letter. Jane hoped they got out of this mess—she’d like the opportunity to get to know her aunt Ada.

  “Downstairs,” said Linda.

  She marched them out of the apartment. Jane realized they had only gone up there to get the papers she needed and the family Bible.

  “Mother!” Linda pounded on the other apartment door.

  Em! The waitress, MJ, had told Jane that Em’s apartment would soon be vacant. Em wasn’t short for Emma, it was M. Martha Speller.

  A small old woman answered the door. She was dressed in a light blue knit traveling suit, vintage 1970s, and she carried a small suitcase. It wouldn’t have been such an odd sight except for the fact that it was well after midnight.

  “I’m ready to go to my new place, just like you told me to be,” said Martha.

  “We’re all going downstairs together. Mother, you remember your sister-in-law, Ada?”

  Martha Speller’s face contorted with fear. Brother James must have told some wild tales. Martha turned away, fearing she was about to be cursed by a Gypsy or thrown down the stairs. Instead, Ada put out her hand.

  “How do you do? I’m sorry James never introduced us.”

  The diner was dark although some light spilled in from the street and there was still a glow from Ada’s backyard. Linda told her mother to go out and sit in the car.

  She swore under her breath when she saw the broken hasp on the storage room door. Out of one small kitchen window, Jane could see a car exiting the field behind Ada’s house. The bonfire must be finally dying down . . . or had been put out by Tim if he’d ever gotten the hose untangled. Jane thought about how much business Edna’s could do if she was still open all night. All of those bikers from the bar and townspeople and teenagers, crazed from the bonfire and too much alcohol—wouldn’t they be starving? Wouldn’t they love breakfast at Edna’s?

  “It won’t make sense, us in Edna’s when it burns . . .” said Jane.

  “Edna keeps the gas cans in back and the fire’s going to start there,” said Linda. “I guess if you two are locked in the kitchen, that’s as good as the storeroom.”

  “The police will figure it out. Detective Oh, Tim, Nellie, they all know. . . .”

  “They know that Joe and Cindy ran a scam. I’ll get to Joe and he’ll stay quiet. Cindy doesn’t talk. . . .”

  “But—”

  “But Ada’s crazy. She’s wandered into Edna’s before in the night. She pretends not to leave the house but she walks all over town, don’t you, Ada?”

  Ada shrugged. “I don’t sleep much. I walk.”

  “And you, brave and helpful Jane, would follow your cousin and even try to save her if you saw a fire start—”

  “Linda!” Martha’s voice was thin and reedy, but loud and clearly frightened.

  “Mother, I told you to go wait in the car.”

  “I’m afraid of dogs, you know that.”

  Linda moved to the doorway of the kitchen to see what her mother was talking about. Jane pushed Ada away in case Linda turned back and fired at them.

  “Open for breakfast!” Jane said aloud, fingers crossed.

  Jane used both hands to push every switch on the wall into the on position. Each fixture, sign, novelty light, and overhead bulb in the diner flashed on, including the window neon that announced that Edna’s Diner was open for business. The cars exiting Ada’s Scary Night bonfire all began turning into the parking lot, horns honking, people shouting out of their windows.

  “Edna used to be open all night on Scary Night,” said Jane to Ada. “Did a great business, I heard.”

  “That’s why she always said I could come into the kitchen at night for food. Gave me my own k
ey. She said having a scary lady in a haunted house was good for business,” said Ada. “I’m a tourist attraction.”

  When Linda blinked in the sudden brightness, the first person she saw come through the door was not Martha Speller. Instead, Officer Cord, his gun drawn, had insisted that he precede Bruce Oh.

  Jane met Oh, second through the door, who pointed out to the parking lot. Rita sat in front of Linda’s car, her doggy head bobbing directly under the keyed-in arrow that Nellie had begun with her line and Jane had finished with the two diagonals. If there had been a spotlight trained on the tableau it would have, in effect, said, “THIS WAY,” pointing into the diner.

  As it was, people were swarming the parking lot and trying to jam their way into Edna’s. Cord and two police officers took Linda into custody.

  “We have her sister,” said Oh. “You gave her quite a bump on the head.”

  “Yes,” said Jane. “I have to talk to you about that. I think I need to take some classes or something. I’m not sure how hard I’m supposed to hit people.”

  “It looks like someone knew how hard to hit you, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh, barely brushing her cheek with his finger. “You will have a black eye, I’m afraid.”

  Jane nodded. She could feel it now, her cheek warm and throbbing. It seemed like a very small pain compared to the heartbreak she saw unfolding in front of her. Nellie approached Ada, who held out both hands to her. All those years they had missed being sisters. And Martha, dazed, watching her daughter being led out of the diner by the police. Family messes, lies, secrets. Skeletons in the closet. Scary stuff. Jane went over to Ada and Nellie and pointed to Martha, who stood paralyzed. Someone was going to have to take care of her. After a quick headshake at Jane’s bruised eye, Nellie nodded and went over to Martha, leading her to a table and placing her sad little suitcase at her feet.

  “I’m going to put on coffee,” said Nellie. “Hell, Edna won’t care. I’ll ring it up for her.”

  “Just coffee?” asked Tim. “C’mon, Nellie, let’s serve breakfast. Tell me what to do and I’ll be your sous-chef.”

  “I don’t know what a damn sous-chef is. You just come with me and do everything I tell you to do.”

  “Exactly,” said Tim, giving Jane a squeeze as he followed Nellie behind the counter and into the kitchen.

  Ada asked a few of the neighbors to go over to her kitchen and bring over the pies and homemade treats she hadn’t gotten a chance to serve.

  Jane grabbed a plain doughnut from under the glass dome on the counter and slipped out into the parking lot. Rita still sat at attention under the arrow.

  “Here you go, pal,” said Jane. “Thanks.”

  Rita looked at the pastry with a certain amount of canine skepticism. Jane didn’t usually offer such bad-for-you human treats, unless of course she had forgotten to buy dog food.

  “It’s okay, girl. Nellie told me to give it to you,” said Jane.

  Jane sat next to Rita reviewing the evening, the day, the weekend, and thinking about how tired she should be and how awake she was. The crash would come soon enough, but now, the cool dark morning felt like a good time to be awake.

  Detective Oh brought Jane a cup of Nellie’s thick black coffee and sat down next to her on the pavement, their backs braced against Linda’s vandalized station wagon. From inside the diner or Ada’s house or someone’s car, Oh had grabbed a wool stadium blanket and now placed it over Jane’s knees.

  “A full night,” said Oh.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Jane, “is how—” But she stopped herself. She had been going to say that she didn’t understand how her grandmother could have given up her firstborn daughter and then lived her whole life with the secret . . . just down the road.

  But it was too big to put it into words.

  “Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh, “I think when you have rested and we are back in Evanston, we need to have a little talk.”

  A little talk. That was never good. A little talk was what you had when your boss thought you were slacking or when your parents thought you were lying or when your teachers thought you were cheating. Or when your husband was leaving you.

  “Oh?” said Jane.

  “Yes,” said Oh, with a rare smile.

  “No, I mean, what do we have to talk about? Are you firing me?”

  “I invited you to be my partner, so I hardly think I could fire you just like that. No, I want to talk to you about self-defense. I want to talk to you about some techniques for communicating with me. I want to talk to you about not getting into the car with someone who has a gun . . .” said Oh.

  “Oh,” said Jane.

  “Yes,” said Oh. “Your mother told me you threw her out of the car, then got in yourself. She came to find me, and we ran back to the car, but you were already gone.”

  “Linda already had Ada in the front seat. And she didn’t know that I knew that she . . . oh, you know.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Oh. “But I never again want to find you with this. . . .” And for the second time in their relationship, friendship, partnership . . . whatever it was between them . . . Detective Oh touched Jane. He laid one finger on her cheek and outlined the bruise that was continuing to spread from cheekbone to eye. “This,” he said, “has taken me aback.”

  “Janie!”

  Jane was so taken aback herself, she hadn’t noticed that the car that had just pulled into the diner was her father’s Chrysler. Don and Michael got out of the front seat. Don opened the back door for Claire Oh, and the three of them walked over to Jane and Oh, still sitting on the ground. Jane still had one arm draped around Rita but she reached her other hand out to her brother who pulled her up into a standing position. Jane kept her head slightly turned away, wrapping the blanket capelike over her shoulders. It was dark enough for the three of them not to notice her black eye or the blush that had spread over both cheeks.

  “Your mother called and said you saved the day,” said Don.

  Jane started to protest that she had fallen into saving a small part of the day, but Michael shushed her.

  “Don’t worry, she said she helped you and you couldn’t have done it without her.”

  Tim opened the door and yelled for them all to come and eat breakfast.

  Jane let everyone walk in ahead of her . . . her dad and brother, Bruce Oh and his wife, Claire . . . then Jane hung back, she told herself, for just a minute more with Rita. There was something about this air, this time of day, just before sunrise, that made her not want to miss anything. If she went inside now, if she turned her back for a minute, the sun would pop up, it would be Monday morning, and this magic hour would disappear.

  “I could bring you some bacon and eggs, Rita,” said Jane.

  “Like hell you will,” said Nellie, who had, as usual, sneaked up on Jane. “You don’t feed a dog table food.”

  “Unless it’s your pancakes, right?”

  “I got an ice bag to put on your eye. Your dad didn’t see you yet, did he? He’s going to have a fit,” said Nellie.

  “I talked to Charley tonight, I mean last night . . . in the middle of all this,” said Jane.

  Nellie took the plastic bag full of ice and wrapped it in a small clean dishtowel and touched it gently to Jane’s cheek.

  “He’s not coming home from South America. Nick’s coming back next week, but Charley’s going to take a job down there. That’s what he said.”

  Jane wasn’t sure why she wanted to tell her mother all of this right at this moment. Maybe it was because Charley’s news was a part of this whole topsy-turvy weekend, so she was determined to get it out now, before the sun came up and it was just another Monday morning.

  “And that’s okay with you, huh?”

  “Of course not,” said Jane, “but he’s entitled to make up his own mind, isn’t he, I mean . . . what can I do if he—”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. Tonight I found out I got a big sister. Crazy as a loon and blind as a bat, but she’s my sister and I’m glad to
finally have her. Better late than never. I suppose my ma had a good reason for letting her go like that, but I expect I’ll never know exactly what it was. Or how she could live with it all her life. And I suppose I won’t know why you’re letting your husband go like that, without a fight, but if that’s what you want to do, I’ll go along with it. You’re my daughter. I’ll be on your side. I just don’t want you to screw up that son of yours . . . he’s a good boy.”

  Jane was confused. Nellie blamed her for everything . . . always. She pried and poked and judged and juried. And now . . . was she using reverse psychology? What was this new technique?

  “Janie, you listen to me. You like this life, this solving problems and finding the bad guys. I can see why. It’s exciting. It’s satisfying. And if it’s the life you choose, that’s fine with me. Charley wants to have a satisfying life, too. And if you can’t do it together, you’ll do it apart. Just don’t lie to your boy. He’ll be all right. Just love him and put him first. Everything else will follow along.”

  Jane never wanted the sun to come up. Listening to Nellie in the dark like this, she felt as if she were in the magical childhood she imagined, but wasn’t sure she ever experienced. Where did all this wisdom come from?

  “That’s what your dad and I did and look how good you and Michael turned out.”

  Jane took a deep breath. Okay, so today, at this moment, she wasn’t doing so well as “wife,” but her stock as a daughter had just risen. Nellie thought she’d turned out okay. And Nick came home next week, so she would have plenty of chances to be a good mother and she would do her best. Bruce Oh thought she was a worthy partner . . . he was actually taken aback by her, whatever that meant. And coming out the door of Edna’s Diner was her best friend, Tim Lowry, with a plate of scrambled eggs and dark brown toast, almost burned, the way he knew she liked it.

  Scary Night had been a scary night. Now, just a silver thread in the east, day was breaking. Jane looked at Nellie, who was whispering some secret of life in Rita’s ear, then she turned back to the spreading light.

  The sun was coming up. There was nothing she could do to stop it. So Jane Wheel ran her hands through her hair, straightened her shoulders, and decided to meet Monday morning . . . maybe even the rest of her life . . . head-on.