Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) (32 page)

Jane nodded and told her mother that she and Michael had spoken on the phone.

“Carl cared a lot for you kids, you know,” said Nellie. She got up and took both cups to the sink and washed them out. “I believe your dad and I and you kids were the only family Carl had.”

Nellie dried her hands, then opened a drawer next to the sink and took out what looked to Jane like a slip of paper. “I found this today and I want you to have it,” said Nellie. “It’s a four-leaf clover I found in a patch of weeds out behind the EZ Way Inn and Carl always kept it in the cash register. Said it protected him, kept him winning on the punchboards and the lotto tickets. Kept him lucky. Now it’ll keep you safe. And lucky.”

Jane stood up to follow her mother to bed. Rita got up, too, wagging her tail, facing the delicious luxury of having two humans who wanted her to follow them into bed.

At the door to her room, Jane faced her mother. She stood a head taller than Nellie and looking down at her mother’s weathered face made Jane inexplicably sad. She felt like she was about to say good-bye, not good night, and she realized she didn’t trust herself to be able to speak at all.

“I know,” said Nellie, “I know.” Then Nellie did the unthinkable and hugged her daughter. “Now go to bed and get some sleep. You got yourself about four part-time jobs and I heard a rumor you’re buying a damn factory to live in.”

Jane watched her mother tiptoe into her bedroom and close the door.
What in the world is wrong with me?
thought Jane, feeling like she wanted to sob and laugh hysterically at the same time. Here she was, a grown-up woman, a mother and a daughter and a friend and a partner and every day she faced all of those things a grown-up human being had to deal with. But the truth was, in the middle of the night, in her hometown of Kankakee, Illinois, Jane Wheel realized she was just another child who had been waiting a long time for a four-leaf clover and a good-night hug from her mother.

also by sharon fiffer

Backstage Stuff

Scary Stuff

Hollywood Stuff

Buried Stuff

The Wrong Stuff

Dead Guy’s Stuff

Killer Stuff

About the Author

SHARON FIFFER collects buttons, Bakelite, pottery, vintage potholders, and other killer stuff. The author of seven previous Jane Wheel mysteries, she lives near Chicago.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

LUCKY STUFF.
Copyright © 2012 by Sharon Fiffer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Cover illustration by Grave Devito

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Fiffer, Sharon Sloan, 1951-

  Lucky stuff / Sharon Fiffer. — 1st ed.

        p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-64303-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-01489-4 (e-book)

1.  Wheel, Jane (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2.  Women private investigators—Fiction.   3.  Antique dealers—Fiction.   4.  Illinois—Fiction.   I.  Title.

  PS3606.I37L83 2012

  813'.6—dc23

2012014698

e-ISBN 9781250014894

First Edition: September 2012