Charley shook his head. “I asked Fuzzy for any documents he had, and he brought out land surveys and old deeds and papers on water rights, and everything that had been shoved under his bed fifty years ago and under his father’s bed for fifty years before that; but there was no official letter from any government office. This morning I phoned a few people I know to see if they could find out who made the initial call and what the nature of the stop is on this land, but I haven’t heard back.”
Jane appreciated Bruce Oh’s patience, the odd curiosity that led him to such interesting questions, his almost complete lack of irony, the absence of cynicism. He was the counterpoint to her impatience, her naïveté that begged only the simplest questions, and her sense of irony that always made her distrust the obvious. She was sure that because of their give and take, their dialectic, their yin and yang, whatever path they took to solve the murder of Johnny Sullivan and the puzzle of Fuzzy’s farmland would be a sensible one—straight to the core of the problem—held in place by their complementary views of the world. Jane Wheel looked at her partner and mentor and waited for him to tell her what he thought their first step should be.
“Let’s go talk to your mother,” was not what she expected to hear.
Nellie was in the kitchen of the EZ Way Inn, slicing onions. When Jane was five or six years old, a first grader waiting for her parents to finish up at work so they could all go home together, Jane loved to watch her mother chop vegetables for soup. It seemed so satisfying, so decisive. Making soup had a beginning, middle, and end; and the beginning part, the chopping, was so purposeful. Jane stopped enjoying the soup making, however, the first time she saw her mother cut herself.
Unlike contemporary chefs who might have a complete array of expensive, finely balanced knives, one appropriate for each task he or she might encounter in meal preparation, Nellie’s collection of kitchen tools included two knives. A big one, approximately the size of a broadsword, and a small one, which was a cross between an ice pick and a straight razor. Every time she picked up either knife for any task, Nellie swiped the blade across a sharpening steel, so each was always deadly at the ready.
Nellie always wore at least one bandage on one hand. She’d nick a finger making barbecue or burn her thumb on the grill. She worked so fast and so efficiently, she usually never knew she had injured herself until a horrified Jane asked her why she was bleeding or blistering. Nellie would look down at the cut finger and swear out loud. Then she’d take the bottle of hydrogen peroxide she kept above the sink with the dishwashing detergent and bottle of ammonia, douse her finger with it, and slap on a Band-Aid.
Four times that Jane knew about, Don had to take her into the emergency room for stitches when she almost severed a digit in the name of onions for the cubed steak sandwiches. After one of these harrowing accidents, Don bought a fancy electric slicing machine, but when he saw Nellie using it without the plastic hand guard because she said it got in the way, he boxed it up and gave it away.
Jane’s mother no longer fed the great crowds of factory workers who used to pour in the door when Roper was churning out stoves across the street, but every few weeks she made a pot of soup and hung up a sign outside the kitchen. soup TODAY, $I A BOWL UNTIL IT’S GONE. It never lasted more than two hours.
“It sure as hell wasn’t me called anybody on them,” said Nellie, her fingers holding the onion on the board dangerously close to the blade as it came down. “Wouldn’t have been my business what Fuzzy or Lula dug up on their own damn farm. Belongs to them.”
Jane winced every time the blade met the board. She tried to watch her mother’s face instead of focusing on her hands, scarred road maps of food-preparation disasters.
“No one thinks you did it, Mom,” said Jane. “But maybe Fuzzy was in here talking about it, you know telling the story of digging up bones, and somebody heard and reported it.”
“Does Mr. Neilson come in at a regular time? Are there others who are also here whom he talks to?” asked Oh.
Nellie stopped chopping and tried to scratch her nose with her shoulder. She was beginning to look red-eyed from the onions, and Jane enjoyed the vulnerable look it gave her mother. Even though the tears were artificially induced, Jane liked pretending that her mother’s emotions were occasionally allowed to surface. Jane’s pleasure was short-lived, since the scratching motion was making Nellie wave the knife around through the air, endangering all those in the kitchen. Jane and Oh stepped away from the counter.
“Fuzzy comes in around eleven most days. He usually talks to himself, but it’s out loud. Anybody at the bar could hear him if he decided to tell a story and they decided to listen. Fuzzy’s one of those guys likes to entertain the crowd.”
“Do you remember him talking in here about digging on his land?” asked Jane.
“Ask your dad. I’m making soup here, Jane.”
Don remembered. Not the date, but the morning.
“Fuzzy told the whole bar that he almost broke the blade on his rototiller, running over a bunch of bones,” said Don. “No-body pays any attention to Fuzz. He exaggerates everything.”
“And the ‘whole bar’ translates to whom?” asked Jane.
“Francis the bread man, Gil, maybe Dempsey and his buddy, they come in just about every day around lunchtime, hoping your mother made soup. You know, I think Tim was in here, too. It was the morning he had his meeting with the real estate people and the owners of the Ford dealership. Yeah, because I made about four pots of coffee. Some kind of sponsors’ meeting for this big sale,” said Don. “I’m sure it was that morning because the bigger the audience he has, the more Fuzzy likes to tell stories. He was being real dramatic about how scary it was to uncover bones and not know whose they were, who he was waking up to haunt him. He was acting up a storm.”
Jane dialed up Tim to ask him for a list of everyone who was at the meeting. He answered his cell phone on the second ring.
“Where are you? I’ll drop it off at the tavern for you,” Tim said.
“Not necessary, I’ll pick it up,” said Jane. “Where are you?”
“Claire and I got access to a most remarkable basement. You would love it down here, and the funny thing is, it was all Claire’s charm and down-home manners that got us in.”
Jane was almost sure Tim was teasing her. He knew she thought Claire a bit chilly and a little too tall and polished and poised. Jane was, perhaps, just a touch jealous of Claire’s well-bred good looks, her majestic presence, and her incredible inventory of antiques. Claire Oh knew her collectible kitchenalia and her vintage neckties all right, but her real passion was for the real, the old, and the exquisite. She had traded up from Bakelite bracelets to vintage Cartier watches a long time ago, and next to her Jane felt rumpled and linty. It didn’t help that Jane usually was rumpled and linty, while Claire dressed in elegant clothes with shoes and bags that matched. She even wore silk scarves tossed over her shoulder, looking like she was ready to pose for her fashion spread in Vogue. When Jane tried to achieve the same kind of panache with accessories, she ended up with a bandana knotted around her neck looking like the cover girl of Modern Scoutmaster.
Jane wasn’t so keen on the cold calls that Tim was going to want her to make for this garage sale, so she could probably convince herself to appreciate the fact that Tim and Claire could do the door to door. When and if the time came that someone was needed to actually help someone sort through their stuff, though … well, that was Jane Wheel’s forte. For the reluctant Kankakeans who thought nobody’d want that old junk in the basement, Jane was just the person to convince them that nearly everything had a value.
But Tim said that he and Claire were actually in a basement, and Jane didn’t like the idea of Tim and Claire working a basement together. Claire was probably as clearheaded and directed while going through sealed-up cartons as she was when she planned Jane’s briefly aborted garage sale. Jane admired efficiency, so why did it bother her so much that Claire could cut to the chase, label
the items, price the goods, cull the keepers? Claire could probably do that sort of job in half the time Jane would take … yes, that was it … Claire could do the job in half the time.
Jane was slow and dreamy when she went through housefuls of goods. She unwrapped, dusted, read, admired, and speculated on each item that someone had thought enough of to put into a box instead of the garbage. Tim described this as Jane playing the tortoise to his hare. Jane herself described this method as thorough.
How dare he take Claire with him into a basement? Wasn’t Jane his part-time, almost full-time, partner? The stuff of the sales was Jane’s specialty. Tim might be the one who initially charmed the owners and eventually led the reluctant participants to the sellers’ tables, helped them set up their cash boxes, told them how many singles and fives and quarters to put in their bank; but it was Jane, left alone with the good people of Kankakee who had been hoarding their childhoods wrapped in tissue, stored in attics, who would exclaim over every item, coax the owners into telling their stories, and convince them to either rewrap it, frame it, pass it on to other family members, or, as a last resort, sell it.
When Tim first heard Jane go through items with a family, he despaired because when he heard them weep over Grandma’s china, he was sure they would decide to keep it. But it usually worked the other way. Jane listened to them and encouraged them to think about the object, remember the stories, wax poetic about the holiday tables that the Spode had once graced, and the cathartic action of remembering often was what allowed the owner to smile and let it go. The same person who had groused that all he had in the basement was old junk now saw that junk transformed into vessels of memory. It didn’t seem like junk anymore. And Jane’s eyes, shining at the thought of these memories being passed on into the world, convinced the owner that yes, if there wasn’t room in their house, they could keep the story in their heart and let the objects go—for the right price. And Tim was right there, a handful of paper tags and a fine-point Sharpie pen, to mark that right price and seal the deal.
“Look, I’m at the tavern now with Oh, and I can come to you. I’ll get the list of names and maybe take a look at that basement. I mean Claire might not be so familiar with what would be valuable here in Kankakee, so … Wait a minute.” Jane stopped talking when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
Jane turned around, expecting Don or Nellie or Oh. She certainly did not expect Tim Lowry, holding his cell phone to his ear.
“Hi,” said Tim, still speaking into his phone. “Hi,” said Jane speaking into hers.
“Nell, some of these glasses and pitchers are divine, but you’re right about the finish on those trays. A shame, really,” Claire said. Jane couldn’t see her, but she imagined her towering over her mother who would, by now, be stirring all of the ingredients simmering in her enormous soup pot.
“This basement? She charmed her way into the EZ Way Inn basement? Here?”
“I swear I didn’t even ask her. She looked at my ‘holdout’ list for the sale and saw that Nellie was on it. The EZ Way Inn and the house. And she wanted to meet Nellie anyway, so I didn’t think you’d mind if we just stopped by …”
Jane heard Nellie answer Claire in the kitchen, but couldn’t make out the words; then she heard Claire laugh in response.
“Put your phone away, hon,” said Tim. “I’ll write down that list of names.”
Tim sat down at the bar, waved to Oh, who was still talking to Don, and took out a small leather case with monogrammed 3 × 5 cards. Jane had wondered who the people were who used those fancy leather pocket briefcases, the ones she coveted from the catalogs. Tim, of course. He would be the one.
“How did this happen?” Jane asked. “You know I’ve been trying to get into that basement for years. Half of it is probably vintage tavern stuff I gave them, stuff that never made it out of the box.”
“What can I say? Claire was just … I don’t know … charming.”
“Nellie doesn’t speak charming,” said Jane. “Furthermore …”
“Jane,” said Claire, entering the barroom through the kitchen door, looking like she just stepped off the Queen Mary, wearing a peach silk suit, bone sling-back heels, and a pastel geometric print scarf. “I know what you’re thinking. Please don’t be angry about it …”
“I’m not angry …”
“She’s in good hands, frankly she’ll be better taken care of this way,” said Claire.
Holy Toledo. Claire had charmed her way into the basement, and she had gotten Nellie to agree to psychiatric evaluation?
“You know, Sergeant Miles welcomes every opportunity to be with that dog of yours. And, you know, I don’t have the way with animals that I …” Claire dropped her voice and inclined her head toward the kitchen, “that I do with people.”
Jane sorted it out quickly. She had forgotten that Claire and Bruce Oh were supposed to be caring for Rita, the German shepherd she had taken in. It was Sergeant Miles, though, who had loved the dog at first sight and taught it some lifesaving tricks for which Jane was enormously grateful. Miles would be a better dogsitter, but that didn’t make Claire a better Nellie charmer.
“How did you get my mother to allow you to go into the basement?”
“I gave her my card when I introduced myself, and she said she had some old stuff in the basement I might be interested in,” said Claire. “I don’t know why Tim had her on his holdouts list in the first place. She’s a darling.”
Claire moved off to say hello to her husband and, Jane assumed, charm Don, too, while she was at it. Hell, she’d probably be going through Francis’s bread truck and the trunk of Gil’s car before the day was over.
Tim was still writing down names, and Jane was happy to see, checking his PDA for the phone numbers and addresses of the people who attended his meeting, so he could give her a complete list. He was probably trying to make up for bringing Claire into the EZ Way Inn in the first place, and he probably liked writing on those cards, just the right weight of cardstock, printed with that grid and a bold T & T SALES across the top. Whatever the reason, Jane was glad Tim was just honoring the request and not smarting off about her being the girl detective on the case. Ah, Jane thought, maybe he’s jealous that I’m working with Oh right now instead of him, so he’s trying to force me to choose.
“Tim, I’ll try to save some time to work on the sale with you, it’s just that Fuzzy …”
“Hey, no problem. Whenever. Claire’s said she’s willing to sign on for the duration.”
“Nellie. Darling,” said Jane, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
Nellie looked up to see if Jane had lost more of her mind.
“Mom, why’d you let …,” Jane began to ask, peering into the soup pot, closing in on her mother, who was getting out bowls, spoons, and packages of saltine crackers.
Nellie shushed her.
“See that woman?” asked Nellie. “The one who’s all dressed up?”
“Claire Oh,” said Jane.
“She’s an antique dealer,” said Nellie, “and she thinks some of the old tables and chairs and glasses and junk in the basement can bring some money.”
“I’ve told you that for years, and you kept telling me there was nothing down there and I wasn’t allowed. You told me you thought there were rats,” Jane said, her quiet voice getting louder.
“Shh. I let her go down there because she’s a professional,” said Nellie.
“So am I,” said Jane.
“Yeah? Look how she’s dressed,” said Nellie. “I got her card.”
“We have different styles, Mother, but I’m just as professional, and I should get to go in the basement and go through the stuff and …”
“Why?” “What?”
“Why should you get to any more than anyone else?”
“I’m your daughter.” Jane felt her voice rise, and Nellie didn’t bother to shush her. She just made her own voice very quiet and calm.
“Jane Wheel, if I let you go into that filthy basement
, I know what would happen. You’d get me down there and ask me about every spoon and ladle and box of napkins and old stove parts and even the old wash tanks that your dad never threw away,” said Nellie. “Then you’d haul it all up here, and we’d have to clean it up and you wouldn’t sell it. You’d say how it’s vintage and part of the history of the place and all that nonsense, and then I’d haul it out to the alley, then you’d go into the alley and put it into your car, and take it home and put it in your garage.
“You listen to me, Jane. You have enough stuff. You have enough stuff for your whole family and a hundred more. At least if you go into other peoples’ houses to get stuff, you might be able to let go of some of it someday; but if I really let you into my house and my work, you’ll never close the goddamn door.”
Nellie grabbed a large, stainless-steel ladle, sloshed it around in the soup, and dished up a bowl. She shoved it into her daughter’s hands.
“Now, go eat some of this soup.”
Nellie wiped her hands on her apron.
“You know what’s wrong with you, Jane?” asked Nellie. “You don’t know how to accept what I give you. You just know how to ask for what you think I have.”
Everyone ate soup. Bruce and Claire Oh, Tim, Don, every customer at the bar. Dempsey and Hoover came in and made a production out of sniffing the air and claiming to know when soup was being made. They did a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-wink, telling Nellie she ought to have the opportunity to serve her soup to the world, and if they ever found a way to put Kankakee on the map, they’d make sure she had her own restaurant.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d like. More work and my own damn restaurant.”
Jane looked over Tim’s list of names. She knew Dempsey and Hoover had been in the EZ Way, but she hadn’t realized they had been there for Tim’s meeting.
“They volunteered to be on a committee. Said that anything that helped Kankakee was fine by them.”
“Where are they living? Are they staying in a motel?”
Buried Stuff Page 15