Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) (23 page)

Jane took a deep breath herself. Writing that e-mail felt good. In the time since Charley had asked definitely for a divorce—no more extended work trips, or trial separations—but the call-a-spade-a-spade request for a divorce, Jane had felt mournful, frustrated, anxious, and angry with herself, but things were definitely changing. She noticed a few turning leaves on the trees in her parents’ backyard, It was fall, her favorite season, and if Nellie had been right last night, that she was looking lonely, it was the right time for it. Jane loved the melancholy breeze of fall. Fall made sense to her in a way that the ripe hot summer never had. The dying days of autumn always lifted Jane to inexplicable heights.

Jane’s phone vibrated signaling a new e-mail and she touched the screen, thinking Charley had answered back with an immediate “hurrah” for both of them, but it was a Lucky Productions e-mail with the “revised weekend schedule.” Jane noted that the e-mail had been sent to the entire list of Lucky Production employees, the proprietors of the in-town locations for shoots, the caterers, the drivers, the support staff, all of the Kankakee contacts, people at the radio station and the
Daily Journal
. There was no need for Jane to feel like she had been the only one out of the loop with today’s change. This time, the schedule included the walk through the farmer’s market. Jane wondered just who Lucky had screamed at to make it happen so quickly. Where were all the people who scurried to do his bidding? So far, she had seen packs of writers, drivers, and a few production assistants like Fran who had delivered the tearful news about Sluggo, but no real secretaries and temps running around. Maybe e-mailed schedules and texting had eliminated the need for a full office staff. No need to have anyone copying pages and stapling and hand-delivering if everyone got every change pinged into their cell phone or laptop instantaneously. Jane repeated that thought aloud.

“Everyone gets every schedule change pinged into their cell phone or laptop,” she said, scrolling back through the schedule and looking again at the list of recipients. She highlighted all the names and copied them into the body of a new e-mail, which she sent herself. It would be useful to see the names of everyone who knew and/or was kept apprised of Lucky’s whereabouts. After all, if one knew Lucky was out of the factory studio and for how long, one knew if one had time to hang seven horseshoes upside down, didn’t one?

“Come down here for a minute,” yelled Nellie. Jane had noted her mother’s absence in the kitchen, but figured she was out in the yard. Being summoned to the basement was unusual since Nellie did not trust Jane’s laundry skills and when any extra pot or pan needed fetching from the cupboards below, Nellie was far too impatient to explain to anyone where the item could be found. Nellie was from the
forget-it-it’s-easier-if-I-get-it-myself
school.

Jane descended into the basement and wondered just how long Nellie had been awake and busy in the basement. When her parents had purchased the house Jane’s senior year in high school, the previous owners had left all of the “party room” furnishings. They had also left the ’60s-style wet bar decorated with fishing nets and starfish and twinkle lights. Don and Nellie, with no need for an at-home bar had simply left it alone and had gotten used to the kitschy corner, no longer really seeing it on trips through the “finished” portion of the basement to the “unfinished” laundry area, much more beloved and utilized by Nellie.

Today Jane saw enormous changes before she even stepped away from the stairs. Nellie had stripped away all of the bar decorations and dusted and scrubbed. She had put a simple desk lamp on the bar, and slid a file cabinet next to the two tall high-backed stools, making the wooden bar resemble an old style accounting desk. With the addition of an eyeshade banded around her head, Jane and Bartleby the Scrivener might easily share the office space.

Nellie had also pushed aside an old EZ Way Inn table and chairs that they had stored in the main area of the finished part of the basement. She had unrolled a colorful room-size braided rug made by Jane’s grandmother in the center of the space, arranged the fold-out couch so that it faced away from the newly set up bar/office arrangement and pulled out two lamps that had been stored somewhere to warm up the space. It looked cozy and, Jane had to admit, apartmentlike.

“Just so you can picture it,” Nellie said with a shrug.

Her mother had been cleaning and rearranging furniture for a couple of hours and it was barely eight
A.M.
Jane pictured it.

“I’m going to the farmer’s market. Do you need…” Jane stopped and turned in a different direction. “Would you like to come with?”

Nellie shrugged again. Jane read it as a yes.

“How’s it look down there?” asked Don, when Jane came upstairs, back into the kitchen. “Your mother wouldn’t let me help.”

Jane assured him it looked wonderful and she was continuing to think over their offer. She also promised, when he asked, that she would stop by Carl’s apartment after the market. That would still leave her time to figure out what to do about Lucky’s blackmail letter before the bowling extravaganza. Before discussing with Lucky, she really needed to talk more to Oh and, as much as she hated to admit it, read a bit more of Belinda St. Germaine’s book. Nellie came out with a sweater in one hand and a canvas bag in the other.

“I can drop you back here,” said Jane, with a wicked grin, knowing already her mother’s reaction, “unless of course you want to come with me when I visit Carl’s apartment.”

Nellie snatched something from the depths of the canvas bag that she jingled in front of Jane. Carl’s silver key ring. “How you going to get in without me?” she asked. “I got the keys.”

*   *   *

“What’s that noise?” asked Nellie, as they pulled into a parking space next to the downtown market. “Sounds like the big cooler at the EZ Way when the belt comes loose in the motor?”

Jane glanced at her mother whose ears seemed literally perked up, like a fox smelling a rabbit or hearing a hunter in the distance.

“My phone’s on vibrate,” said Jane. “I think it’s a text.”

Nellie reached into Jane’s bag before Jane could take her hands off the wheel straightening the car in the space.

“Hmmm, Lowry’s done it again.”

“Give me,” said Jane, turning off the engine and holding out her hand.

Nellie held the phone out of reach and looked her daughter in the eye.

“You think I don’t care about the stuff you care about. You’re wrong. I care about you and if that means all your damned doodads, I care about them, too. But the world’s got plenty of stuff for you. Just remember that,” said Nellie.

Nellie handed her the phone, undid her seat belt, and got out of the car, grabbing her canvas bag from the backseat.

No need to read the text. A message that prompted that response from Nellie meant only one thing. Her stuff was gone. It had been
gone
but now it was
GONE.
Fire, flood, famine, frogs, boils, some plague had descended on the movers who had taken Jane’s stuff and Tim would now be able to file the insurance claim he had been reassuring her with. Jane almost felt relieved when she forced herself to look at the text.

Truc impounded in CO. Driver arrested. Band equipment and remaining boxes destroyed in DUI accident. Company says to proceed with ins. clm. Sory for txt. Will explain later, but am filing claim today. I will make this up to you. so sorry.

Nellie had bounded ahead into the market crowd. Insurance claim. Jane’s stuff had been precious to her, sure, but she had never thought about dollar value. Tim had, though, and set it so much higher than she would have imagined. Still, if all of the pieces were priced out, the replacement cost would be astronomical. Jane had been cash poor for so long, she wasn’t prepared for the feeling that being “liquid” gave her. Before all this had happened, she would have said having cash would enable her to buy more stuff and that would be great. Now, having cash, Jane felt like she had to be so careful with spending. Being afraid to invest money in anything was one part of it, but her fear of once again investing her heart and soul into any one or one hundred objects was equally chilling.

Jane got out of the car, still staring at her phone, thinking about Tim’s text. She could actually collect insurance money in exchange for the loss of her beloved objects. She felt a little strange about it. It was just stuff after all … it wasn’t like anyone died and she was collecting life insurance which was another odd and uncomfortable concept.
Who, after all, was really comforted by a check after someone they loved died?
Jane stopped and moved aside for a young mother and father, each holding the hand of a little boy who walked between them. Jane smiled, watching the child bicycle his short legs in the air as his parents helped lift him through the air
Unless, of course,
Jane thought,
the person didn’t die, just disappeared
. Then did the insurance company have to pay the claim? What if someone figured out how to have their cake and eat it, too?

The vendors were set up in the parking lot across from the new library, right in the heart of downtown Kankakee. What had been here before? Aldens department store? Was that it? Jane allowed herself a moment to remember walking into Aldens, turning to the right past the jewelry and cosmetics and purses, and being in the shoe department. Wasn’t that where they had a big goose and if you bought the right kind of shoes, you got a prize that came in an egg? Wasn’t that where Nellie would tell her that she needed to get shoes that fit, not look at some damn prize and pick the ones that pinched her toes? “If the shoes are made good enough and fit you right, they wouldn’t need to give the damn prize,” Nellie would always say. Despite Nellie’s words of wisdom, Jane always opted for the toe pinchers and the prize. Maybe now was the time to invest in shoes that fit.

Jane saw two familiar figures across the lot, one of them hefting two vegetables as if weighing them against each other.

Jane quickly texted.

Forgive you only if you can find me the perfect eggplant and present it to me within 30 seconds.

Jane ducked behind a truck selling jars of amazing-looking pie fillings. She tried to read the flavors out of the corner of her eye while watching the two people across the lot. The tall, handsome sandy-haired man set down a full ripe eggplant and took his phone out of his pocket, He frowned at the text, then laughed. Picking up the eggplants and quickly paying for them both, he spoke to the equally handsome man at his side, then turned and began an almost robotic scan of the market, his head turning slowly from stand to stand. Just as he was about to turn in Jane’s direction, she ducked behind the display of jars. There were only two strawberry-rhubarb left. Someone came up and bought one of them, toying with taking them both, Jane stayed crouched, but as soon as the customer left, she knew she was going to have to come out of hiding if she wanted that last jar. Paying for it, she felt the tap on her shoulder.

“”Two perfect eggplants in under fifteen seconds. You’ll have to forgive me twice,” said Tim.

Opening her canvas bag, she nodded as imperially as she could muster in the middle of the ghostly Aldens, now selling farm-fresh produce instead of Red Goose Mary Janes and hugged Tim, right in the middle of the shoe department, if her calculations were indeed correct.

“I’ll help you replace everything … brand-new old stuff and better,” whispered Tim.

“I’m fine. I am actually, really, truly better than fine,” said Jane, meaning it and knowing it was true. Jane started to say something about finding her a place to live, but she saw Maurice approaching and right behind him, practically a puppy nipping at his heels, was Mary Wainwright.

“Tim told me what happened,” said Maurice, shaking his head. “You’re more generous with forgiveness than I might be.”

Jane wished she could explain the whole sensation that led her to this calm and Zen-like state, but she was having trouble understanding it herself. When she was packing the boxes for storage, she couldn’t eliminate one collectible. Nothing ended up in the donations or throw away box—not even the torn old calendars and the books with crumbling bindings and foxed pages. But now, even when she could picture an object clearly in her mind, she found that when it wasn’t touchable, when she couldn’t hold it in her hands, she could say good-bye. So it wasn’t out of sight out of mind exactly, since she could “see” it in her mind. It was just okay that it was all gone. Not good, not bad, but it was fine. She felt even. Balanced. Yikes. She might have to start attending a yoga class. What was wrong with her? Was this what some called happiness? Peace?

“You call that a fair price? That’s robbing the people.”

Peace was short-lived. As Mary began to greet Jane and flirt with Maurice simultaneously, Jane heard Nellie employing her bargaining techniques with a young couple selling tomatoes. They looked as if they were about to cry.

Jane fished out a twenty and asked Maurice to go over to the stand and start bagging up the best tomatoes he could find, right out from under Nellie’s nose.

“It’s a dangerous mission, but I have faith in you,” said Jane.

“Don’t do it, man, it’s suicide,” said Tim.

Maurice saluted them both and nodded, eschewing Jane’s twenty-dollar bill. “Save it for some new old McCoy,” Maurice whispered, with only a hint of a smile.

“You found a good one,” said Jane, watching him stride over to the stand and position himself directly in Nellie’s line of fire.

“Don’t want to jinx it,” said Tim, “but yeah, he’s really special.”

“Ooooh,” said Mary, catching on. “Sorry, Tim, didn’t mean to step on your toes.”

Since Tim was immune to Mary’s flirting techniques, he hadn’t really noticed her trotting them out for Maurice. Glancing at Jane, seeing her shake her head and raise a subtle don’t-even-go-there hand, Tim quickly told her there was no problem.

The morning was so crisp and bright and the stands were teeming with September’s reddest, greenest, and the deepest yellow, orange and purple produce, herbs and flowers. Jane spied tables with craft displays—dried flower wreaths, baskets packed with homemade jams and pickles. What could be better than a morning filled with friends greeting each other and people planning the amazing dishes they would be cooking later that day?