Jane Wheel might occasionally be a bit scattered, like a rookie picker faced with the decision in the middle of a church meeting hall of whether to first hit the costume jewelry or sewing notions station. Would the jewelry be fished out by the dealers who masqueraded as do-gooders and volunteered to set up? If so, she should hit sewing and maybe find a tin of vintage buttons left, tucked under a tangle of zippers. But what if? What if there was a Bakelite dangle pin in the bottom of a jewelry box, waiting there in the dark whispering Jane’s name?
But perched by the window in the dark of Fuzzy Neilson’s cabin, Jane realized she had become quite the decisive detective. She felt around with her toes for her canvas slides and slipped them on, all the time training her eyes on the spot where she had seen the animated scarecrow. Animated was just how she thought of him, since the scene resembled something she had seen in Fantasia. True, it had been a lot of years, but didn’t something that was supposed to be inanimate come to life? Maybe it was Mickey Mouse’s broom? Yes, that was it, a broom or a mop—not unlike the crossed poles that make up a scarecrow’s limbs, Jane thought. Aha!
She felt around on the table for her flashlight. She was going to have to stop thinking, aha, every time she remembered some stray bit of flotsam from that tidepool of popular culture that passed for her mind. Aha’s were for clues and leads and discoveries, not for conjuring up the sight of Mickey Mouse dancing around as the sorcerer’s apprentice in a way-too-scary-for-children cartoon.
Flashlight and shoes and a decision to make. Wake up Charley? Jane Wheel had watched plenty of movies and read plenty of books, and she knew damn well that the heroine always gets herself into trouble when she goes up to the attic or down into the basement alone. She doesn’t want to bother her boyfriend or husband; she doesn’t tell her roommate where she’s going; she wanders alone and stupidly right into danger.
Jane was not going to be the silly schoolgirl heroine of some bad mystery movie. She had a solid role model. What would Nancy do? She clicked on the flashlight, but pointed it away from the entrance to the tent.
“Charley,” she whispered. She might not want to be the ingénue in a detective story, but she didn’t want to be the hysterical housewife in one either. Nick did not have to be awakened for this … whatever this was. Apparition?
“Charley,” she whispered again, bringing her light into the tent and slowly moving it up the sleeping bags until she could figure out which one held her husband. When the light caught Nick’s hair, flopped over one closed eye, she quickly moved it to the other sleeping bag. Charley, her light-sleeping, always prepared as a Boy Scout spouse, would jump up as soon as the light hit his face; and Jane was ready to motion him to follow, one foot already outside the tent in a ready-set-go position.
When the light hit the pillow where Charley’s sleep-creased face should be, Jane saw only pillow. She moved the light up and down, and chanced waking Nick by quickly flashing it up and down and over him and across to the other side of the tent. Then she circled the light around the perimeter. No Charley.
Jane stepped outside the tent and flicked off the flashlight for a moment. The moon was almost full and its brightness, once her eyes adjusted, enabled her to see the lawnscape, if not the entire landscape. She got her bearings and looked down to where the cornfield began. She thought she saw something … maybe there was something standing there. Maybe what she had seen so clearly, a scarecrow jumping down and running away, was merely a nighttime breeze picking up the patchy, ragged shirt and blowing it off into the fields, leaving crossed poles standing guard.
“Charley?” she whispered.
Jane figured the only path Charley would take that led away from the tent and his sleeping son would be one that led to his sleeping wife in the cabin, and she had not seen him. The outhouse? Must be, although that puzzled her. Wasn’t the only real difference between men and women the fact that men reveled in peeing outdoors? When Charley and Nick had returned from South Dakota after Nick’s first official dig, he’d spent twenty minutes telling her about the duck-bill dinosaur bones they had found, and the next thirty describing in glorious detail the wonders of outdoor peeing.
Jane walked slowly toward the cornfield, and since the outhouse was on the way, she expected to meet Charley any second. As she got closer to the field, she could see the stalks bending and waving. She was going to have to go online and Google Walt Disney and find out whether or not he was a farm boy. It hardly took any imagination at all to picture an inventive cartoon of the fields coming to life, trees lifting up their firmly planted roots, which would bend like knees stomping in time to an old-timey fiddle at a hoedown. Mickey and Goofy could grab rakes and hoes and whirl away into the cornfield as the scarecrows hopped down and formed two corners of a square; and that fat, old, waxing moon, almost a harvest moon, could call the do-si-dos and allemande lefts. Had Jane ever seen a cartoon like that or was she inventing it on the spot?
“Charley?” she whispered near the little wooden building.
“Huh?” A flashlight blinked on from inside and a deep voice whispered, “Ocupado.”
Jane smiled. Charley must have picked that up from his South American trip.
“It’s me, Charley. I’m going out to look in the cornfield; I thought I saw …,” Jane hesitated, “something.” That ought to provoke his curiosity.
Jane approached the pole still standing, although it was no longer costumed as Ray Bolger, ready to sing and dance for little Dorothy and Toto. As a matter of fact, as she got closer, Jane realized it wasn’t actually a pole or any type of construction. It was a long-handled spade stuck into the ground, an unlikely frame for a straw-filled pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. Still, it was a sight that might warn off some creatures from the cornfield.
The moon was high and bright enough, and Jane and her flashlight were close enough to illuminate the tableau. A large mound of dirt was piled up at least three feet, so the shovel standing up in it extended into the air at least six feet. Sitting, all loose-limbed and relaxed, his back against the garden spade, was a man Jane had seen at the pig roast, shaking hands and shoveling barbecue into his mouth while talking a mile a minute. He wore the green blazer of a real estate company. His mouth was still open, perhaps surprised at where he now found himself, sitting alone, no plate in his lap. Instead, a not-so-artfully arranged animal skeleton had been dropped across his knees, the animal’s skull seeming to look right at the man’s chest, right at the jagged hole torn through his blazer, his shirt, and, Jane could only assume by the amount of blood, his heart.
“Jane?” Charley whispered.
“Charley,” Jane answered, as he came up from behind her.
“Nick?” she asked, turning around, fearful that her son might have come up behind her too, not wanting him to see this picture. Charley put a hand on her shoulder. He shook his head and gestured with his head toward the tent.
Charley’s eyes were fixed on the dead man, and Jane, who had turned to her husband, was looking back over his shoulder in the direction of the outhouse, the tent, the cabin, and the main farmhouse.
“Otto?” Charley said to the dead man’s lap.
“Fuzzy?” Jane whispered, watching the man tiptoe into his house through the kitchen door.
When Detective Munson got out of his car, the sky was barely beginning to lighten. His face was still imprinted with the map of his bedsheets, and he had a faraway look in his eyes. Jane realized she was truly glad to see him. In fact she was almost giddy with delight. He was an old friend, a colleague. They were on the same side, and he would be happy to have her “work the case” with him.
“Mrs. Wheel,” he nodded, hiding the delight he must have felt at seeing her back in Kankakee, literally camped out not a hundred feet from where an agent for Kankakee “K3” Realty, if the man’s blazer was to be believed, had been shot through the heart.
Jane walked the still-sleeping Nick into Lula’s kitchen, straight through the dining room, maneuvering him around a huge,
half-round table made of walnut and into the front parlor, where she folded him onto a maroon camelback sofa and covered him with two of the six crocheted afghans that Lula had piled on the hassock in the corner. Her hope, as always, was that Nick could sleep through the unpleasantness that was now going to permeate the air at Fuzzy’s farm, the unpleasantness that might interrupt the dig he and Charley had planned to supervise, the unpleasantness that a murder investigation would bring to their campout. Oh yes, and the unpleasantness of the murder itself.
Jane watched sleep smooth Nick’s face into that of a three year old. If we could just snap our fingers and put them under a protective spell, she thought, let them dream through the hard parts. She knew it was impossible, not even always desirable. After all, Tim had asked her many times, “Choose, Janie,” he’d say. “You want a happy life or an interesting life?”
“Both,” she always answered. Jane, when faced with the great dessert decisions of childhood—Chocolate or vanilla? Apple or blueberry? Red or redder?—had always asked for a bit of both. Nellie had always scolded her not to be so greedy. When Jane and Charley were at dinner, on a second or third date, and Jane was torn between Key Lime and tiramisu, Charley told Jane he didn’t think it reflected greed; he thought it showed hope.
She looked down at Nick, anticipating his confusion when he woke up on the parlor couch, a prisoner of tightly tucked crochet instead of bundled up in his sleeping bag in the tent. She was wondering how she could prevent that—a note on the coffee table? While she stared at her son, a small miracle occurred. He smiled in his sleep and said, “Whatever.” Clear as a bell. He could have been dreaming about any number of events, scenes, the realistic or the surreal. But wherever he was, his happy answer to his dreamy questioner had been, “Whatever.” Jane decided to listen to that small glimpse into his unconsciousness. His intelligent face told her everything she needed to know. As long as he had the even-handed intelligence of his father and the … what was it Jane could gift him with?—touching his forehead with her imaginary fairy godmother wand as he slept … “interestingness” of his mother’s life—maybe Nick would be okay. Perhaps, translated for the waking adult, the sleepy “Whatever” meant that his life could be happy and interesting. A bit of both. Whatever.
When Jane went back outside, she saw seven squad cars lined up in the long driveway that led to the house. An ambulance was parked on the gravel patch near the barn. Munson and a few others in plainclothes were directing uniformed officers not to trample the grounds, to tape off a perimeter that appeared to include the cabin and the tent. Jane was glad that her first instinct had been to get Nick out of the tent without asking permission or calling attention to it. There would be time later. Charley was crouched a respectable distance from the body, looking at the bones piled up in the victim’s lap. He seemed to lean in, turn his head, lean back. Jane realized with a start that Charley had a camera, must have been in his jacket pocket, and he was photographing the bones. And although Jane had no idea what a law against that might be called, she had a feeling, if he happened to look over at Charley, Munson wasn’t going to like seeing him playing photographer.
Lights had been set up, and the scene was being combed by three police officers that Jane could see. More could have been in the cornfields behind the first row.
Jane felt someone come up behind her before she heard the crunch of gravel, but before she could pry her eyes away from what, just a few hours ago, she had thought was a dancing scarecrow, a voice was in her ear.
“Sooner rather than later,” said Dr. Jaekel, the acting coroner.
“Pardon?” Jane said, doing a little sideways jump so she was facing the man. She noted that his long face looked even longer, but his hair was neatly combed, his shirt pressed, his tie tied.
“We are meeting again, sooner rather than later,” he said, and kept walking toward the cornfield. Charley had stood and pocketed the camera by the time Jaekel passed him, and Jane was relieved. She had the feeling he would have no problem holding out his hand and requesting the film, just as a stern teacher might stand before you, interrupting his lecture to demand that you surrender your gum.
Murder stirred up action, that was for sure. Jane had walked away from the porch, but she turned and saw that the chairs and table nearest the back door had been appropriated as a makeshift desk and there were two police officers writing furiously on lined tablets. Everyone had either a cell phone or a walkie-talkie. Munson was walking from uniform to uniform, asking questions, giving directions. Yellow tape was streaming out, being wrapped around little stakes pounded into the ground. And Jane knew that within a few minutes she would be questioned for the first time; and for the next five hours, the same questions would be asked again and again and again. She took a deep breath and walked toward Charley. Before she answered anyone else’s questions, she wanted to ask her own.
“You okay?” Charley asked, turning to her and holding out his arms before she reached him. She found she was happy to fold herself in. Even though the temperature would climb and climb, this early sunrise air was chilly.
“Charley, before we get split up to answer questions, tell me, did you hear anything when you were in the outhouse?”
“Mrs. Wheel?” Munson had walked over. Munson and Charley shook hands and the police detective made some remark about Mrs. Wheel being, once again, in the middle of the mess.
“Well, at least we can agree this time on how we define the mess,” said Jane. Unlike some of the other moments when Jane’s detecting life had intersected with that of Detective Munson’s and she had to convince him that it was murder or, at best, an aided and abetted natural cause, here on the edge of Fuzzy Neilson’s cornfield there was no debate. Green-blazered Roger T … something—Jane could read the first name printed on Munson’s notebook upside down, but the last name was under Munson’s thumb—was definitely not a living scarecrow escaping from the farm as Jane had feared, but a Realtor who was now unquestionably a murder victim.
“Define away, Mrs. Wheel,” said Munson, flipping through the pages, either looking for some elusive fact or trying to convince Jane he didn’t really care about what she was going to say.
“Murder,” said Jane. “I don’t know much about guns, but I’ve been studying, and I believe the victim was shot and the bullet hit something major because of the amount of blood. And I …” Jane stopped. Did she want to say that she might have seen Roger T. fall, collapse onto the ground? Of course she wanted to tell the police investigator everything she knew, but before she did, maybe she could find out what woke Charley up so that he wasn’t in the tent when she went to find him and why Fuzzy was hightailing it into the back door right after she and Charley found the body.
Munson nodded at someone behind Jane’s back and then looked directly into her eyes. “We do agree on murder, Mrs. Wheel,” said Munson, “and I believe you knew the victim?”
Jane tried to remember the face of the man she had seen what? One hour ago? Two? It was light out now. How long had it taken for Munson and his people to comb the field, examine the body, set up camp, turn Fuzzy’s farm into the beehive it had now become?
What was it about a body that made you remember everything and nothing? She could recall the position of his arms and legs, the company blazer he wore, the somewhat surprised look on his face. But did she associate the man with anyone living? No. She thought she had seen him at the barbecue, but she didn’t know him, did she? Was it someone from Kankakee that she should recognize? The sad truth right now, as she racked up the numbers of dead bodies she had stumbled over, was that she practiced a kind of disassociation with the victim. After finding her neighbor Sandy murdered, she had experienced nightmares, periodic flashes of horror. Then came other victims. Since she now had a professional interest, she wondered if some kind of protective reflex had set in.
“I don’t believe I—” Jane began.
“Roger T. Groveland?” Munson asked, again looking over Jane’s shoulder.
Why is he avoiding my eyes? Jane thought, then realized he was not just looking past her but looking at someone.
She turned to look and saw a short, gray-haired man, still sleepy, but scrubbed and pink-cheeked.
“You are?” asked Munson, gesturing to the man.
“Oh no, I’m not him,” he said. “No, no, I’m not Roger Groveland. I’m Henry Bennett. Hank,” he said, extending his hand to Munson. When Munson narrowed his eyes at him and did not extend his own, Henry did a slight pivot and Jane found herself shaking hands with a man whom Munson seemed most displeased to meet.
“Hey, Bostick, you letting the world in here now? Not bad enough that we have a hundred and fifty sets of footprints from the damn pig roast? I told you, the Realtor to make the identification and that’s it.” Munson was waving his pad in front of the face of a frightened young man in a uniform—Bostick—who looked like the younger brother of someone Jane had gone to high school with. Great, she thought, him I know, him I recognize. Sammy Bostick’s little brother.
“I’m the Realtor,” said Henry Bennett, holding up the green blazer he was carrying over his arm. “I came here from the K3 office. I’m certainly not Roger Groveland.”
“No, no, of course not,” said Munson. He looked over at Jane accusingly, as if to say that none of this would be confusing if it weren’t for Jane Wheel standing in the middle of this backyard-farmette-crime scene. This was a woman who complicated things. “I was simply telling Mrs. Wheel the name of the man out there. Roger T. Groveland.”
What was Munson talking about? Yes, she did know Roger Groveland. He had lived down the street from her when her family had lived in the subdivision out west of town. Don’s Folly, she and her brother had called the house. He had wanted something brand-new in their lives, something he had built from the ground up. So when ground was broken for the development, Don was there at the meeting, looking at maps of lots and selecting blueprints. He had bought the land and put a down payment on the house and come home proud as any poor-kid-makes-good, bootstrap-yanking, hard-working-provider-of-the-year kind of guy and been crushed when his children wept over leaving their neighborhood, which was within walking distance to Cobb Park and bicycling distance to school. Out in the subdivision, they would have to ride a bus for half an hour to go to a school with farm kids.
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