Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) (8 page)

“So what’s your screwup this time, Lowry?”

Jane began to shake her head, but she had spooned up a giant bite of coffee ice cream and hot fudge from her mother’s dessert and couldn’t protest out loud quickly enough to stop Tim.

“Didn’t Jane tell you most of the stuff from her house, the stuff she packed up for the showing, is lost somewhere between here and Colorado?”

“You said Nebraska before! Colorado?” Jane exclaimed.
And you never said lost before either,
she added silently.

Tim knocked back the rest of his brandy and leaned forward. He explained that the truckers were independent fellows who made short hauls from place to place, referred by bigger outfits who didn’t want to take on half and quarter loads and short hops. So, sometimes, if they had room in the truck and they could find new contract drivers when they needed them, they took on jobs as they came along and didn’t drive in necessarily straight lines.

“He screwed up, but you’re the one who’s screwed,” said Nellie, taking another bite of whipped cream.

“These guys looked like real movers,” said Jane. “How can they be so … random?”

“Actually, they’re used to moving band equipment. See, they’re part of a band that was on hiatus, but then they ended up getting some gigs through this small college booking…”

Jane stopped listening. As Tim laid out the details of these full-time roadies, part-time movers who gave him incredible rates, explained what a great and talented band they were a part of, and how the group was finally getting some breaks and taking on moving jobs was how they paid for their truck and expenses and how they had promised to store Jane’s stuff at a storage space in Nebraska—Tim had already called to put the monthly rental on his credit card—while they loaded up the band stuff and played a few gigs, then they would pick up Jane’s boxes and come back to Illinois, just about the time she had decided where she was going to settle … While Tim explained all of that and more, Jane stopped listening and accepted the rest of her mother’s sundae, which Nellie pushed in front of her.

“Eat the rest of that fudge. You’re going to need it.”

Don said that he was happy they would have Jane with them for a while and Tim interrupted that Jane would stay with him since he had so much more room.

Nellie watched Jane eat the last bite of ice cream and said nothing.

Jane finally looked up. Before she could begin telling them she’d prefer to sleep in her car, shouts from the bar interrupted.

“Call 911. He’s choking, call 911.”

A busboy ran over, prepared to give the Heimlich maneuver, but was stopped by a burly teamster who told him it was an allergic reaction, not a lodged food particle.

“He’s got a peanut allergy, he shouldn’t even be in here,” he yelled, pointing to a small dish of nuts at the other end of the bar.

Jane almost turned over her chair rising and running into the bar. She would be too embarrassed to admit that someone else’s emergency had saved her from thinking about her homeless, stuffless self, but she was weirdly grateful that someone urgently needed something.

The bartender shouted that the paramedics were on their way.

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” said the woman on the floor next to the unconscious young man.

“If he’s not breathing, we have to start CPR,” said Jane, trying to move some of the people in the crowd who had turned to stone. “Let me through.”

“Oh God, thank you,” said the same woman who had shouted out that he wasn’t breathing.

Jane looked away from the statues she was trying to budge out of her way and saw Nellie, who had threaded her way through the eight or nine men and women standing slack-jawed and frightened on the other side, drop to her knees, support the man’s head, and bend her head down to breathe life into this stranger.

The paramedics burst into the barroom and were at the man’s side immediately and Nellie popped up without having to begin the treatment. They backed people away, trying to give themselves room to work and the man air to breathe.

“I told you we shouldn’t come here,” said Nellie. “Your dad looks like he’s going to faint.”

Two peanut allergies in one night?
thought Jane.
Did Lucky have some fetish about hiring people who have the same health problems?

Jane saw that Tim had left a wad of cash on the table and she followed her parents out to the parking lot.

Don leaned against Tim’s car, parked closest to the door.

“Nellie, what were you thinking?” said Don, taking a few deep breaths.

“Mom was doing the right thing, Dad,” said Jane. The only thing stranger to her than witnessing two reactions to peanut allergies in one evening was the fact that her mother knew CPR and was willing to perform it on a stranger. “That was gutsy.”

“You never fail to surprise me, Nellie,” said Tim. “I’ve got to admit, I was impressed with your quick thinking and—”

“Jeez, Nellie, what
were
you thinking?” said Don.

Jane was relieved to see color returning to her dad’s face, but surprised at how harshly he was speaking to her mother. He usually championed Nellie no matter what sort of nonsense she spouted and now when she was about to be a real hero, he looked like he wanted to ground her for life.

“Oh c’mon, Don, I seen it on TV a million times,” Nellie said with a shrug. “How hard can PCR be?”

6

Jane had looked back and forth between Tim and Nellie, deciding where to spend the night. Tim was perky and bubbly, describing the bedroom he had readied and her own private bathroom he had supplied with her favorite shampoo.

“Your old room and you share the bathroom with me,” said Nellie. “And I use the store-brand shampoo,” she added, glaring at Lowry.

Don had hugged Jane and said she was welcome as long as she wanted, though he admitted he had no real estate to share since he had long been relegated to the bathroom in the basement. He had tiled it and built a shower in the small bathroom next to the area where he kept his beloved, if not often-used, exercise bike. No one would mistake his small corner of the basement for a man cave, but it served as a fairly soundproof hideaway for Don.

“And,” Nellie added, “no matter where you stay, Rita stays here. I know how to take care of her.”

Jane kissed Tim on the cheek.

“I’ll move into that lovely suite later,” said Jane. “But tonight I want to catch up on some stuff with Don and Nellie.”

Tim was still shaking his head as he jumped into his car and roared off. Jane didn’t blame him. It was crazy. But she didn’t want to chat all night about where she was going to live and what she was going to do next. She had enough of it for now.

Jane wanted to hide out in her old bedroom, read a good-night text from Nick, and answer him with a long e-mail about how lucky they were that they sold the house, She needed to ask him what he wanted her to save from his closet. She needed to know if there were any old soccer balls or baseball cards, anything that she needed to rescue for him. Although she knew she could do that at Tim’s house, she also knew that if she decided to cry, just a little, before falling asleep, Tim would be listening at the door and fall all over himself fussing and trying to make her feel better.

Nellie, on the other hand, would leave her completely alone.

Jane closed her bedroom door and opened the large bag she always carried—her just-in-case—and inventoried her possessions: one toothbrush; one half tube of toothpaste; Kiehl’s lip balm and moisturizer; hairbrush; large silver hoop earrings, pajamas, silky kimono; two changes of underclothes; spare blue jeans; navy turtleneck; black turtleneck; good black pants; blue oxford cloth tunic; gray cardigan; brown lace-up hiking shoes; plaid wool Pendleton shirt; two pairs smart wool socks; gold and black patterned pashmina; one black jersey dress with a V-neck, three-quarter sleeves, and a wrap style that incorporated baggy pockets; black strappy flats that could pass for dress shoes. Jane laid all of these things out carefully on the extra twin bed. From the outside zippered compartment she removed a pair of leather driving gloves, an extra lipstick, and a carved red Bakelite bangle. She sniffed the bracelet, hoping for a whiff of formaldehyde, the comforting eau-de Bakelite that she loved so much, but smelled nothing.

“You might be the only one I have,” she whispered.

Patting her not-too-worn Coach briefcase, which she had picked up at a house sale for three dollars—
three dollars
—she felt for her laptop and notebook and pens. She felt for the cords she used to her charge her computer and phone, then slapped her pocket to make sure she did, indeed, have her phone.

Jane looked in the mirror. She was wearing dark jeans, short Frye boots, a navy V-neck sweater, a chain around her neck with a few silver medals and a baby ring—all rummage treasures—and an old buttery leather jacket that she had bought when she and Charley were in New York, for their fifth anniversary. It had been way too expensive but Charley had insisted she buy it.

“It will never go out of style,” he had said.

Jane knew that wasn’t exactly true. The jacket had gone in and out of style, several times actually, but she wore it through its ins and its outs. Every September, she took it out of her closet and put it in her car, or folded it into her just-in-case, so she would have it with her when the sun went down.

“Thanks, Charley,” Jane said. “I’m glad I bought it.”

“Did you say something?” asked Nellie, walking in without knocking. Jane wondered how long her mother had stood outside the door, waiting for Jane to sigh or groan so she’d have an excuse to come in.

“Just taking stock of my worldly possessions,” said Jane. She waved her arms over the bed. “Except for my books at home and very few clothes in my closet and drawers and maybe a few other odds and ends, this is it.”

Nellie looked over everything on the bed.

“What do you need two turtlenecks for?” she asked.

Jane opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead she started laughing. At first, it was that sad laughter, the prelude to hysteria that Jane had heard in so many others when she and Oh were working on a case. Then, as Jane looked at her things arrayed before her, the laughter became real, genuine, joyful laughter. She picked up the navy turtleneck and handed it to Nellie.

“Can you use an extra?”

“Sure,” said Nellie, snatching it up. And then a small miracle occurred on the south side of Kankakee. Nellie smiled. Jane saw it. She wanted to grab her phone and snap a picture of it, but it was gone too quickly. No matter. Jane saw it and she wouldn’t forget it.

“You working on a detective case right now?” Nellie asked.

Jane shook her head.

“Good. I got a job for you,” said Nellie. “And you only got a few days to get it done because I’m not paying out-of-town expenses.”

Jane sat on her bed and patted the spot next to her.

Nellie ignored the invitation. A smile was one thing, but cozying up for a conversation was another.

“I want to know what Lucky Miller’s up to,” said Nellie.

“Other than staging a comedy roast in a charming little town that gave him pleasure as a child?”

“Bull,” said Nellie. “Hermie Mullet wasn’t charmed by Kankakee. And Kankakee isn’t charmed by Hermie Mullet. There’s something fishy going on here. Lucky Miller’s a crook of some kind and I want to know what he’s up to.”

“Mom, I can ask around, but—”

“Use that computer of yours and find out stuff about Hermie Mullet. Maybe Bruce can help you on this.”

“I can call him and ask him to check on the family. You’ll have to give me the year they left. He was in your class?”

Nellie nodded.

“Just one year, then the nuns and priests split up the boys and the girls in different rooms.”

“Yeah, but you were in the same grade, that’s all … wait a minute. You call Detective Oh … Bruce?”

“That’s his name, ain’t it? Just find out what Lucky Miller’s up to,” said Nellie.

Jane finished hanging up her clothes and stowing away her bags, and climbed into bed. She expected it to feel too small and hard, but it was cozy. She had e-mailed Nick about what happened, even about the moving truck and found herself smiling through the story. She didn’t have the slightest urge to cry herself to sleep. Instead, she closed her eyes thinking about Nellie wanting to know about what Lucky Miller was up to. Questions swam below the surface of her thoughts: Of all the towns Hermie Mullet had lived in, why Kankakee? Why all the re-created stuff of his childhood? Then the current brought her right back to Nellie and her obsession with Lucky Miller. The last question that finally floated to the surface just before sleep?

“What was Nellie up to?”

7

On Thursday morning, when Jane woke up in her old bedroom, she lay perfectly still, making a list in her head. It was a habit that served her well as far as giving her a few extra minutes under the covers. It didn’t help her organizational skills all that much, since she found that a day usually unfolded demanding that its own list be obeyed.

She got as far as Mr. Toad—or was it Frog who wrote “
1. Get up
”—before she heard Nellie yelling at someone or something. She pulled on yesterday’s clothes as quickly as she could and ran out to the living room, where her mother was hanging out the front door, yelling at children on their way to school.

“I don’t like it when they cut through the yard. There’s a sidewalk there and they ought to be using it,” said Nellie, offering the explanation without turning to look at Jane standing behind her.

“How do you get all the eggs off your house on Halloween?” asked Jane.

When the phone rang and Nellie, still busy giving the evil eye to fourth graders, made no move to answer, Jane ran to the kitchen to grab it.

“Put your mother on, honey,” said Don.

“You kids use the sidewalk. That’s what it’s there for.”

“She’s yelling at the neighborhood, Dad, what’s up?”

“It’s Carl.”

Jane heard the break in her father’s voice before he cleared his throat.

“I found him when I got here. He had closed and locked up the front, but the back door was still unlocked. He was on his way out. He had his jacket on and that little cap of his. He was sort of awake, but…” Don broke up midsentence and cleared his throat. “Doc says stroke.”