Then, after yawning and surmising that Jane would be back late, imagining her lost digging through dusty boxes with Tim, they would rise to go to bed. Nellie would clean their fingerprints off the glass of the photo and replace it just so. She'd wipe Don's cookie crumbs off the table, smooth the heavy plastic tablecloth. She'd clean and put away their dishes, then fill the coffeemaker's reservoir with water for the morning. All would be tidied and untouched— Nellified so Jane would not know if her parents had walked straight through the kitchen and to the bedroom or if they had played out the late-night scenario she had just imagined.
* * *
Jane slept badly. She barely dozed, then woke every thirty or forty minutes to remember Lilly, sitting on top of the boxes in the basement. She wants to tell me something, Jane thought, the way one thinks in a dream… absolute clarity one second, a fuzzy haze the next. Lilly seemed to beckon with one hand, point to something. What she pointed to was unclear. The box? Something inside the box that held her body against the wall? At 5:30 A.M., Jane gave up. She rose and wrapped herself in her mother's old chenille robe. In the kitchen, she pushed the button on the coffeemaker and sat down with pencil and paper, ready to make a list, take notes. Anything to clear her mind.
Had Lilly visited her in the night because Jane had put the discovery of her body on some kind of time delay? She couldn't think about it when it happened; her brain was already in the process of filing away too many pieces of information, too many disconnected images, literally. Bateman's severed finger, Duncan's body with another almost severed finger, and now, poor Lilly. Jane, with her fuzzy morning brain, tried to organize her thoughts but kept coming back to the same paradox. The two men with their unconnected fingers were connected in their disconnection. Lilly, on the other hand, no pun intended, Jane silently told herself, was intact. Dead, yes. Had she been hit in the head? No blood that Jane saw, but she thought she had heard one of the police officers speculating. No mutilation of the body though, no mangling of hands or fingers.
Lilly had probably been dead less than an hour, perhaps less than thirty minutes, according to the eavesdropping Jane had done at the scene.
"Whoever killed Lilly," Jane said aloud, drawing on her notepad, "was in the basement when I came in the house." She held her pen poised over the face of the dog she had just sketched. "The noise was the murderer… maybe propping her up then leaving by the basement door."
She remembered that pile of bricks by the door. They would have been in the way. As the door opened, it would have moved them, pushed them aside. One might have tumbled down from the top of the stack. Jane wrote down Lilly's name and underneath, printed, BRICKS? The one thrown through the EZ Way Inn was a Kingsley Paver. That was the name stamped on its face. She would check the bricks in the basement of 801 today. If she could get into the basement. If not, would her parents report their act of vandalism so she could get Munson to recognize the importance of connecting those bricks? She would also find out what caused Lilly's death. One of those bricks?
"You sick?"
Jane jumped in her chair and stifled a scream.
Nellie had been sneaking up behind her for over forty years, and yet it still spooked her. Her mother was as silent as a baby breathing, and when she appeared at your side or behind your back, she always spoke as if you had been enmeshed in conversation for hours. "In medias Nellie," she and her brother, Michael, had always said. Every conversation with their mother began somewhere in the middle.
"You scared me, Mom," Jane said.
"Yeah?" asked Nellie, sounding not at all displeased.
Nellie poured Jane and herself a cup of coffee. She opened a package of chocolate doughnuts, the kind Jane knew Don and Nellie sold off the bread rack at the EZ Way Inn, the kind that were encased in a hard shell of chocolate, the kind that no one she knew ate anymore. They were the vintage items of the breakfast pastry world. Jane selected one from the box and dunked it in her coffee. It was as different from a bakery croissant, a fancy food store muffin, or a meltingly delicious Krispy Kreme as it could be. It was high in fat (and all the wrong kinds of fat, too), full of chemical preservatives (that gave it a shelf life akin to a Twinkie), and unappetizing in its hard, brown shell (surely containing more carnuba wax than chocolate).
Jane ate her first one in three bites and took a second.
"Where were you last night?"
"Out," Nellie said.
"Yeah?" Jane asked, trying to match her mother in minimalism and attitude.
"We had a meeting, that's all," Nellie said. "What about you? You and Tim find any good junk?"
Nellie had tipped her hand. It had only happened a few times in Jane's company in Jane's lifetime. If Nellie asked her a question, tried to change the subject, deflect her daughter's inquiries, Jane was as close to breaking into the vault of Nellie's memories and secrets as she had ever been.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of all of this, Mom," Jane said softly. "Why don't you tell me about it yourself?"
"I already told you I killed Gus Duncan. Isn't confessing to murder enough for you?"
"Mom," Jane said, "you know…"
"I know, I know. Just because I want to be the one who killed him, doesn't mean I get the title."
"Well, Nellie, maybe not the title you wanted, but if you mean literally, we got that. The title to the building, I mean," Don said, padding into the kitchen dressed in a plaid wool robe and brown, fur-lined slippers. "Morning, honey. Save me a doughnut?"
Jane waited until her father had gotten his coffee and sat down at the round table with them. Nellie started to jump up and get a rag to wipe up the small circle of liquid that had splashed out when Don set his cup and saucer down, but he put his hand over her arm.
"Let it go, Nellie."
Nellie grunted and gave in. At least for the moment. She did take a paper napkin from its holder and mop up around his cup, but she remained seated.
Don gestured to the photograph with his doughnut. The three of them were seated in a half circle around it. Since the round table was pushed up against the wall to fit in this small square kitchen space, the picture was propped up like a fourth guest at breakfast.
"Find this in Duncan's house?" Don asked.
Jane thought it sounded like a statement rather than a question, and she nodded.
"We should have told you a long time ago," Don said, looking directly into his daughter's eyes. "It wasn't fair to keep…"
"Why the hell wasn't it fair?" Nellie asked, her own eyes blazing. "Kids got to know everything their parents do? Even when their parents do something stupid? I thought the point of raising kids was to make them smarter and better. Isn't that what you always said? Educate them and send them off into the world? Jane and Michael didn't need to carry this," she said. "We made our bed," Nellie added, hitting the our hard, "not theirs."
Don patted Nellie's arm. Jane noticed that he had kept it there when he restrained her from jumping up to clean. He took a deep breath and shook his head at Nellie and smiled slightly.
"But a picture's worth a thousand words, hon," he said gently. "We got to give Jane a few of our own words before she makes up her own."
Don began his story, punctuated by a few snorts and curse words from Nellie, while Jane kept eating doughnuts. She doodled through her entire scratch pad. It wasn't a shocking story, nor was it a particularly surprising one. It all made sense. Sort of. In a Kankakee, Don and Nellie kind of way.
Don had worked as a milkman, a railroad signalman, a farmhand, and a printer's assistant all before the age of twenty to help support his mother and an invalid stepfather who had lost everything in the Depression. Jane knew most of that part of her father's history. He had told her about the dogs who had chased him when he delivered the milk, about the empty bottle he kept in his back pocket as a weapon if he was attacked. As a little girl, she had traced the outline of the large, jagged scar on his ankle. It had been the illustration to the lecture on why she could not have a puppy. Rita, Jane'
s adopted German shepherd, was the first dog Don had allowed in his house, the first dog, he told Jane, he had ever viewed as a man's potential acquaintance. He would never admit to the possibility of a canine best friend.
Don's dreams of college and a professional life flew out the window when he had to quit high school to support his family, so he modified the dream. "If I could be my own boss," he always told Jane and Michael, "I knew I'd be a happy man." It didn't matter how hard he had to work, how many hours he had to put in, as long as at the end of the day, he had ownership.
"Gus came up to me at the bar of the Brown Jug, used to be over on East Avenue, one night and told me I could buy a tavern and have my own business," Don said. "Told me he could fix it for me."
"Just like that?" Jane asked. "How did you know him?"
"Everybody knew him," Don said. "I don't know how. He was just one of those guys who knew everybody and owned property and always had the money to buy a drink for himself and everybody else. I think he started in the candy and cigarette business, had a piece of the vending delivery service, something like that. Something that got him into every tavern and on the listening end of every conversation when somebody was in trouble or couldn't pay off a note. Gus was there to help or to lend or to give advice. Pretty soon after that, he'd be there to buy or to foreclose."
Don took out his pipe from the pocket of his robe. He had quit smoking cigarettes and tried to keep from lighting up anything in the house; but occasionally, Jane knew, he still indulged. Now he used the stem as a pointer, gesturing to the photograph.
"When that picture was taken, we had just signed the lease on the EZ Way Inn. Your mother and I had been married a few years and saved enough for that little house over on Calista. We put a down payment on that in the spring and by fall, Gus had found an opportunity for me, the EZ Way Inn. I'd own the business, but he'd keep the building. I'd pay him rent, but I'd be my own boss."
"Yeah," Nellie said, "'Cause a landlord never has any boss power over you."
"You liked the idea at the time, Nellie," Don said, without any anger or recrimination in his voice.
He was staring at the photograph, at their young images, full of hope and smiles, and seemed wistful but not bitter. None of this, Jane noticed, was being told in the hard voice he usually reserved for conversations about Gus Duncan.
"So what happened?" Jane asked.
"Gus had set up a lot of people, given them good deals on places. Some made it; some didn't. We made it," Don said.
"Most of them drank themselves into early graves," Nellie said, "thought the tavern business meant that they could drink all day for free. Nothing free about it."
"We did okay, and so did Duff. The ones who could add two and two and could hang back on the bottle. Larry, Jack, and old Pink. They all held on and built up their businesses. During the war, everybody made money. Nick did great with that little fried chicken place on the river," Don said.
"Duff," Jane said aloud, thinking to herself, They don't know about Lilly. I'm going to have to tell them.
"Bill Duff had the place down the road from us. You know the one. Lilly and her brother are running it," Don said. "Anyway, Gus just kept his eyes and ears open all the time until he got something on you."
"Got something?" Jane asked.
"Got something, made up something," Nellie said.
"Let me tell it, Nellie."
The phone rang and he patted Nellie's arm to keep her still and got up to answer it.
Jane could tell by the look on Don's face and the one-syllable expressions that he let escape that she wouldn't have to tell him about Lilly. Someone was filling him in right now. When he hung up, he came over and stood behind Nellie and put his hands on her shoulders. It was more physical contact between them than Jane had seen in thirty years.
"Lilly Duff is dead," Jane said.
Nellie stared at Jane for a moment, then stood up, pushing away Don's hands.
"The old bastard kills people from the grave," she said, clearing away the coffee things and doughnut crumbs.
"Son-of-a-bitch won't stay dead," Don said. Jane saw tears in his eyes. "That Lilly was shaping up into a fine saloon keeper, too."
"Who called?" Jane asked.
It was Benny, an old pal of her dad's who tended bar for Lilly part-time. Benny had served a drink at almost every bar in town at one time or another. He had a terrible stutter and preferred not to talk at all, which made him the perfect bartender. He was a born listener. Don told Nellie and Jane that he'd been crying when he called. Hadn't been able to find Bobby and was afraid of what he'd do when he found out.
Jane told her parents that she had seen Bobby leave Pinks with the police last night.
"Poor kid," said Don. "He was one step out of trouble anyway, and now with Lilly gone…"
"Did Benny say anything about how it happened?"
"I suppose he thought you'd fill me in," Don said.
"What? Why should she…? Oh, shit," said Nellie, "you weren't the one who found her, were you?" Nellie went to the sink and washed her hands. "What's wrong with you anyway, getting mixed up with dead people all the time?"
"Don't look at me that way. I didn't kill Gus, did I?" Jane stood up, too. She wanted to keep asking about Duncan, about what had made everything turn out so badly, so wrong for everyone. What did he have on everybody? What did he have on Don and Nellie?
Her dad, though, couldn't finish his story now. Jane would have to wait until later. He had promised Benny he'd make some calls, and her mother was already planning on the food she'd bring over to Lilly's brother. "Somebody's going to have to help that one. He isn't worth a damn as a worker, and Lilly was the only thing that stood between him and jail most of the time," Nellie said. "I'll make him a ham."
Jane had a million questions and had to start finding answers. Bruce Oh had never even gotten to why he had come to Kankakee last night, not the details. He had told her they'd talk about it today. Maybe if she started with him, she could follow some kind of Bateman to Duncan to Lilly trail. Jane dialed the cell phone number that Oh had given her last night. It wasn't quite 8:00 A.M., but she was sure he'd be awake.
Oh was ready to meet with Jane, but the last thing she wanted was to bring Oh and Nellie into the same room. She gave him directions from his motel to the McFlea house. She had planned to finish the kitchen this morning so she would be able to work with Tim over on Linnet Street. That was probably out of the question now. She figured the shanties would be off-limits for a while.
Jane's old room was just off the kitchen. She put on her overalls again. If she was going to work on the McFlea, she might as well start out dirty and paint spattered. She stuck her hands into the deep front pockets to straighten the pants and felt a thick wad of paper. Pulling out the packet of letters, she remembered. They were on the basement floor. Maybe that's what Lilly was trying to point to in Jane's dream. Maybe she wanted Jane to read them. Sitting on the edge of her bed, Jane pulled out the first in the packet and unfolded the yellow sheet covered in small flowery script.
Trying to decipher the handwriting in the low light of her bedroom, Jane heard her parents talking about the people in the photo. It sounded to Jane like a morbid listing of everyone who was dead, followed by how and when they had died. Were her parents the only ones left? She thought she heard them talking about Lilly's father and called in to ask them the how and when on him.
"Couldn't handle things after her mother died. Year or so later, must have been, he took the same way out," Don called in to her.
Jane came back in the kitchen. "Suicide?"
"Yep. Louella cut her wrists in the bathtub one night, and Duff came home and found her. Ruined the man," Don said. "One day he went out and started his car in the garage but forgot to go anywhere. That's why Benny's so upset. He found him and then had to go in the house and tell Bobby."
"Where was Lilly?" Jane asked.
"Last year of nursing school," Don said. "She came home and took care
of everything, and Gus told her she could have the same deal if she wanted to run the business. She was doing okay, too."
"When was all this?"
"I'm not sure, maybe ten years ago? Fifteen? Lilly was always going back and forth to school. She'd work for a while, then go back to school, then be back here working some more. Thought she'd stick with nursing though; she seemed to like it, Duff told me. After he died though, she just decided to run the saloon. I figured she did it to give Bobby a home and something to do. He was always drifting from one thing to another."
"Lilly was a hard worker," Nellie said, bestowing her supreme compliment. "Who killed her?"
Nellie asked this question as if Jane, as the one who'd discovered the body, would have all the pertinent information. But before she could answer her mother, Don chimed in.
"Nobody. Did it herself. Must run deep in that family."
"What are you talking about?" Jane asked. She thought maybe her father had misheard or that she was dreaming again, so she pinched herself hard while she waited for her dad to set the record straight.
"Pills, she took something, but nobody knows why she was down there in that shanty basement."
"What about… I heard them say they thought she had been hit in the head," Jane said, beginning to get agitated. First Gus, now Lilly. Didn't anybody believe that people could get murdered on Linnet Street?
* * *
An hour later Jane was unpacking boxes at the McFlea. She had brought some of her favorite linens from home— dish towels embroidered with dancing silverware and hand-crocheted pot holders that were shaped like little dresses and hats. She decided to set the table. She chose Harlequin plates, not as pricey or popular as Fiestaware, but just as honest and strong on the table. She used some of her mismatched Bakelite-handled flatware and drew solid red napkins through thick, butterscotch, grooved napkin rings to tie it all together.
Dead Guy's Stuff Page 17