The Wrong Stuff (20 page)

Jane had never wanted to hear a gong so much in her life. Lack of food was making her delusional. What else had Nellie said? Oh yeah—that she was a round peg in a square hole. Maybe so.

Maybe so. Jane jumped up so quickly that her cell phone fell to the ground. She picked it up and went over to the barn. The front entrance was still taped off so she went over to a side window. They were low, these windows, easy to climb in and out of, but that wasn't what Jane wanted to do. She leaned in and saw Murkel talking to a young woman in a uniform, who was nodding and showing him her notepad. From where she stood, she could see the balcony where Rick Moore would have been slouched in a chair, his Birkenstock sandals tucked underneath. There were two stairways leading up to the balcony library, one from either side. A row of shelving right under the balcony had cans and jars of solvents, finishes, and strippers. Two small table fans were there, too. A large floor fan was next to the shelf. Jane assumed that workers used them to dispel the fumes and dry applications even faster. Masks and coveralls hung on pegs. If someone opened the right can or a combination of two or three and aimed one of the small fans right where Rick had been sitting, he'd have felt the effect pretty strongly.

Jane pictured him blinking, eyes watering, stumbling down the stairs, heading for the nearest door, the one in the rear, concealed by the offices. One of these push-out windows was right there at the foot of the stairs. Did he throw his weight against it, trying to open it and hang his head out, gasping for air the way Jane had this afternoon? The murderer had had time to close up the chemical can, turn off the fan, and wearing the filtered mask, guide Rick out the back door and down to the stream. Pressing his nose and mouth into the water, it would only have taken a few minutes for Rick's lungs to fill.

Jane had asked Oh—only trace amounts, if any, of the inhaled substances would remain in his blood. They would dissipate while he was busy accidentally drowning.

Jane leaned into the window, running her hands around the trim and deep sill. They were perfectionists at Campbell and LaSalle. Even the wood they used for finishing and trimming the windows of the barn workshop was chosen because it was beautiful and unblemished.

The swelling melodic note that sounded might have been inside Jane's head it was so loud and clear. Dinner at last. Jane was ecstatic. There would be good food, good drink, and she fully expected that everyone would have imbibed just enough not to notice that she was wearing her friend's extra set of clothes. And if she could pry her partner, Bruce Oh, away from Martine long enough, she might be able to dazzle him with her dinner party conversation. She was, after all, becoming a crackerjack listener.

Jane walked into the lodge smiling. Poker was not and would never be her game. She might not know all there was to know about Rick Moore's death yet, and “yet,” she knew, was the operative word. She was close. She could see it from here. Oh had told her when they first met that solving a crime was like building a house of cards in reverse. A crime was not usually built on a rock-solid foundation. It was a fragile construct, layered with doubt and coincidence and luck and fear.

“No glue holds a crime together, Mrs. Wheel,” Oh had said. “It is woven with that invisible thread of hope and guile. When a man has done something wrong, he holds his breath. If he is not discovered right away, he begins to exhale, tentatively at first, then with more confidence. It is this confident air that often blows through his house of cards. All fall down.”

Jane wasn't ready to knock down the entire house of cards yet, but she was ready to remove a few from the top. She thought she knew how Rick Moore had been smoked out of the barn and led to his death. And if she could just talk to Oh, the
how
might lead to the
who.

“And of course you understand how completely incestuous the publishing world is, and I refuse,” Martine said, lowering her voice and leaning into Oh's chest, eyes fixed on his funky maroon-and-olive necktie, as if speaking into his heart, “simply refuse to play by those rules.”

Oh nodded, but looking over Martine's head at Jane, shot her one of those minor eyebrow arches that Jane was beginning to recognize and decipher. This time, she figured, hearing Martine, whose quieted voice was still a stage whisper, the eyebrow was raised in confusion. If Martine did not want to play by incestuous rules, why was she leaning in so close to one of the alleged family?

“Mr. Kuruma, Martine,” Jane said. “Any news from Officer Murkel?”

Martine placed her hand on Oh's chest as if to steady herself to turn and see who was interrupting her moment. “Janet, how dear you look! A little retro Annie Hall, yes?” Martine gushed. “With Mr. Kuruma's tie, I think you could step right into the role.”

“Jane,” Jane corrected.

“Martine,” Martine said back, daring Jane to continue the conversation.

This one would take way more energy than Jane wanted to expend to win so she smiled and turned toward Tim. He and Scott had staked out an old-boy sort of conversation area. Two leather club chairs flanked a solid chunk of wood, squared and waxed to be used as a table, and beneath them, a dark green-and-gold rug. Jane squinted and imagined them with brandy and cigars; but when she opened her eyes wide, she saw that they sat with glasses on the table, legs crossed, holding a smoke-free and seemingly sober conversation.

Had Scott drank himself sober? Although Jane didn't totally believe it was possible, her father Don claimed that he had witnessed the phenomenon many times. He could name names of those who, after a long night of carousing, just kept up the alcohol intake through the wee hours on a slower, steadier pace, like an IV drip, and were able to get over to Roper Stove on time for the 7:00
A.M.
whistle.

Those stories always made Jane feel relieved that Roper built kitchen appliances rather than cars or robotic surgical arms. It might be an inconvenience to have the knob marked left actually control your right stove burner, but it seemed an easier fix and a less lethal mistake than an incorrectly installed airbag.

There was of course the possibility that Scott had not been drunk at all. He could have been outside Jane's cabin, listening to their conversation and deciding to break in at the moment he did because…because…Oh well, Jane would figure that out soon enough.

Martine had been able to fend Jane off ably enough because, Jane knew, she'd allowed it to happen. Jane didn't want to get trapped into one of those three-way conversations where she was expected to nod at every third remark made by the alpha dog, in this case, Martine. No, mingling was the right strategy for tonight. It might help her solidify some of her thoughts as to what had happened. Silver, though, had no other place to be, no other task to accomplish, and Jane noticed with considerable pleasure that he was fighting for territory next to Martine and Oh. It probably didn't hurt that a large copper tray of appetizers was parked near them. Oh excused himself from the two of them for a moment and walked over to where Jane stood alone next to the fireplace.

He slipped two pages out of his jacket pocket and with a vague smile consulted them as if they were a timetable and set them on the mantel next to Jane's drink. She had ignored the Ciroc in favor of the Grey Goose, not wanting to reinflame Scott. Oh, with the blandest of smiles and looks, told Jane that he had gone up to his room to get a jacket for dinner and managed to print out a few pages from the list of Web addresses. He then reached past her, taking a handful of wasabi-spiked almonds and excused himself. Jane noted that he had dropped a napkin over the folded pages and again marveled at how effortless his actions appeared. Jane picked up the napkin and neatly folded pages and slid them into her pants pocket, grateful for Tim's good taste in clothing and his penchant for deep, usable pockets.

Jane did not rush to the dinner table. She actually wanted to see who sat next to whom, what alliances had remained strong during this topsy-turvy day at Campbell and LaSalle. Not too surprisingly, Glen and Roxanne walked to the table together and took up posts on either side of Blake. Jane wondered if Blake was even aware that he had two sentinels on duty. Was he so used to being the king of the castle that he no longer paid attention to those who made up the court? Was he even aware of the physical presence he possessed? Blake certainly seemed undemanding—perhaps, Jane thought, he had had his position thrust upon him. He only seemed regal because of the way Roxanne and Glen deferred to him.

Jane had sensed a certain assurance, a confidence from all the C & L residents when she had first arrived. It was in the air—eau de I-know-something-you-don't-know. Jane half envied it and wanted to belong and half disparaged it, seeing it as snobbery of the worst sort. Now, she found, she missed it. It was that supreme confidence that made a place like this run. Yes, this was a substantial old lodge, built out of solid, rough timber, but what really held it together was the unerring sense that everything and everyone belonged. Who hated enough, demanded enough, was lost enough to commit murder on these hallowed grounds? Who among these people would have dared upset the balance?

Mickey wanted to step into Rick's place. He had been following Blake around and begging for a position ever since Jane had found Rick in the stream. Did he want Rick's position enough to have erased him from the picture? Scott wanted more money, complained about being broke. If he got his hands on the Westman chest, he could afford all the root canals he wanted.

Annie seemed to be crying all the time. Even now, her eyes had that puffy, tired look. Jane picked up the bowl of almonds and walked over to where Annie perched on the arm of a chair sipping herbal tea.

“These nuts are great. Have you tried them?” Jane asked.

“Spicy. I'm so out of balance, you know emotionally, that I can't eat any heat-generating foods,” Annie said.

“Yeah, it is out of balance,” said Jane, not knowing what the hell Annie was talking about. “Rick's death probably pulled everything out of whack,” Jane said.

“Not at all,” said Annie. “That was the beginning of a rebalancing. I've laid out a compass.”

Jane might be new at the detective game, but she recognized a crossroads when she came to it. How she chose to play out this scene with Annie, this moment of opportunity was important and she had to use all those instincts that Oh seemed to think she had. She could either nod sympathetically and fake understanding, hoping that Annie would continue, or she could admit total ignorance, hoping that Annie would rise to the bait and want to educate her.

Jane plunged into the middle of the pool, nodded her head sympathetically, and turned her palms up to the sky. “I haven't a clue what you're talking about,” she said, leaning in toward Annie and taking her hand, “but it sounds fascinating.”

“Aren't you something to be so honest?” said Annie, triggering immediate reflex guilt in Jane. “I practice feng shui. I dabble anyway. And when Rick was here, I could find nothing to counterbalance the disturbance he created.”

“Was he a difficult person to get along with?”

“He was unpredictable. Which can be good, you know, exciting,” Annie said, demonstrating a charming ability to spin positively, “but there was no counterbalance. He had a lot of anger, his cabin was poorly situated, and that foul, dirty truck blocked the energy flow to my cabin. He was year of the rat—seemed loyal, could have been loyal, but chose to be opportunistic.”

“It sounds like you knew him well,” Jane said, reflecting on how little anyone else had said about Rick Moore.

“I know this,” said Annie, with a sweet smile. “He was fucking with everybody's chi around here.”

Mickey asked Annie to come sit with him at dinner. She stood and held on to Jane's hand for a moment. “You're a rabbit, aren't you?” she asked.

Again Jane turned her palms upward and shook her head. The cluelessness seemed to work well for her. “Next time you eat at a Chinese restaurant, check your place mat,” said Annie. “That's what got me started.”

Jane took a seat next to Geoff and Jake, who, Jane was noticing, might as well have been joined at the hip. “The boys,” as most of the residents referred to them, were studying a drawing as they ate, each taking turns putting marks on it.

Jane took out the paper cocktail napkin she had picked up with the pages Oh had given her. From her bag she took out a black, fine-point pen and drew from memory the chair in Rick Moore's sketch. She wasn't sure she had gotten the back exactly, but the turned legs looked right. She took a bite of her salad, romaine, thinly sliced onion, and orange slices perfectly chilled, glistening with a sour cherry vinaigrette, perfectly composed on the plate. Chewing slowly, she added the finials to the back uprights.

Geoff and/or Jake had stopped looking at the drawing they were making and turned to Jane's. Jane could feel his, then their, eyes on the napkin, studying and measuring. Maybe this was the only way they communicated. She pushed it in their direction.

The two of them nodded, and the one closest to Jane took his pen and added three turned spindles to the back of the chair. Then the other one added in a double foot rail in front. They both nodded then and pushed the sketch back in front of Jane. At the risk of breaking up what was for them a rapid-fire dialogue, Jane felt compelled to shatter it with words.

“Worked on this chair here?” she asked, cutting her sentence down as much as possible. Perhaps later they would all go out and rub sticks together or do some cave painting.

Geoff and Jake looked at her even more blankly than they had looked at her before when introduced. Then Jane's encounter with them took an even more extraordinary turn than the curve that brought her to using Etch A Sketch as a language. They began to laugh. Heartily. Geoff slapped Jake on the back, then Jake slapped Geoff on the back or vice versa, then they both slapped Jane on the back and pointed and guffawed. Jane didn't really want to break the moment by asking what exactly was so funny, so she laughed with them. They pointed to the sketch and laughed again. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended; and they went back to drawing for each other. Jane, totally clueless about what had just happened, folded the napkin and put it back into her pocket.

Glen tapped on his glass for attention. “I know we've all put in quite a day. Everyone here has had to speak with the police, and by now I think everyone knows that we at Campbell and LaSalle”—Glen paused here and Jane listened for any irony, but there was none—“we at Campbell and LaSalle did not know Rick Moore the way we thought we did. Or perhaps we did know the real Rick Moore, and the Rick who committed this terrible murder was the aberration, the dark side of him that we had never met. I can only say that the Rick Moore I knew was not a murderer. He was a craftsman, artist, and friend.”

Jane noted that Glen was speaking more positively about Rick now than he had at the memorial service. Jane did not remember anyone having anything intimate or warm to say then. They had let Martine keen and wail for them. It was strange that now that he had been labeled a murderer, he had become Glen's number-one guy. Was Glen in a bit of denial, or was he just laying it on a bit thickly to patch up any chinks in the armor? After all, if Rick were murdered, it was important to be perceived as his friend, not his enemy. Jane looked at Annie who sat on the other side of the table, and she gave Jane a knowing shake of the head, mouthing the word, “rat.” Jane wasn't sure if she was referring to Rick again or Glen.

“It is my belief that Rick, in his guilt and in his grief, probably took his own life when he realized what he had done,” Glen said, then sat down.

Jane could not see Oh's face, but she could see Tim, who, with Scott, sat across from her at the wide dinner table. She was determined not to react to any facial expression, any mouthed word, any gesture Tim might send her. The only trouble well-behaved Jane had ever encountered in elementary or high school was when she reacted to Tim Lowry's instigation. Curiously, this time Tim kept his face completely blank as everyone at the table sat in shocked silence.

Did Glen really believe that Rick had run down to the stream shoeless and thrown himself in? More precisely, thrown his face into ten inches of water?

Tim continued to stare at Jane, but his face remained expressionless. Then he started to smile as everyone looked first down at their own bags and pockets, patting them or shaking their heads. Then Jane heard it, too. The tinny notes were faint but unnervingly close to her. This time, it wasn't “Jingle Bells” but the catchy, unforgettable notes of “I'm a Believer” by the Monkees.