Lula would pronounce all the studied authenticity ridiculous. Farmers don’t use chipped crockery and old cast iron because they think it looks cool and real, they use what they have because it’s what they have, and there’s nothing wrong with it—no excuse to replace it. And when they do replace it? It will be with something practical and sturdy and new. They will not look for something quaint and authentic at a rummage sale. Lula’s name for “retro” would be used. And why the hell would she want something that someone else had already used up?
On the other hand, Lula didn’t rid her kitchen of objects lightly. Even dishes that were sixty or more years old held their place in the cabinet as long as they were still viable.
Lula had some Hall Autumn Leaf kitchenware and Jane smiled to see it stacked and ready to use, instead of artfully arranged in a glass-front cabinet. Straight-sided ramekins and custard cups and an Aladdin teapot. Should she tell Lula that Tim could sell it for her at a good price? Jane didn’t think she would care. She’d just have to buy new, and it wouldn’t be as good.
Lula had a large Miss America Glass cake stand in the dining room. Jane had been tempted by one at an antique mall that she thought had been marked around two hundred. Lula used hers for breakfast pastries every day. Jane walked over and ran her hand around the edge. She couldn’t feel one chip, not even a tiny fleabite. A beautiful piece of Depression Glass. Jane had to make sure Tim didn’t offer to come in here and tell Lula what to put out for the garage sale. He’d buy everything up for his own house or shop before it ever saw the light of sale.
Family photographs lined the stairway. Jane remembered Fuzzy and Lula’s children, William and Mary Lee, but they had been just old enough to ignore her completely on the few occasions they had met. William, at least ten years older than Jane, was a grandfather already. Lula had hung a picture of her great grandson at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in a pumpkin costume for Halloween and was posed sitting amid pumpkins in Fuzzy’s garden. Jane winced at the sight of the cornfields in the background. That fall, when baby boy here was toddling in the pumpkin patch, no one watching from the sidelines or standing behind the camera could have anticipated how this view of the farm would be forever transformed. The same vegetable patch sans pumpkin vines instead entangled with crime-scene tape.
In the bathroom Lula had shown her characteristic organization. As soon as they arrived, she had invited Charley and Nick and Jane to shower and use this bathroom during their stay. Jane noticed that although they had all hung towels over the shower door that morning, there were now three freshly laundered bath towels and washrags for the guests folded into squares on the counter.
On the other side of the vanity, everything was in its place. A wooden natural bristle hairbrush, a rat-tail comb, a large jar of generic cold cream, a bottle of Cornhuskers Lotion, and Vaseline. These items all pointed to an economical but efficient nightly beauty routine. Lula might not be up on Botox injections and niacin lip plumpers, but she knew the most important rule of skin care … moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.
Jane opened the medicine cabinet and felt that she had now invaded Fuzzy’s territory. Metamucil, tiny curved scissors for trimming in small private places, several sizes of corn and callus pads, and toothbrushes. On the bottom shelf, a row of prescription bottles. Jane jotted down the names of the medication on the two bottles that belonged to Fuzzy—she recognized neither of them—and noted that Lula had a half empty bottle of Effexor. Wrong. These were antidepressants; this bottle was half full. Jane checked the date the medication had been prescribed. Lula had been taking an antidepressant for six months? That was odd. It wasn’t impossible to believe that someone in Lula’s position might need some help—she was aging and her children and grandchildren lived far away. Her husband, always a handful, was now behaving even more irrationally. And they had all this land that had to be worked, leased, managed, or, perhaps, sold. No, it was clear why Lula might need to visit a doctor and start a course of antidepressants, it was just highly unusual that Lula, a kindred spirit of Nellie, would seek help.
When she was in college, Jane had told her mother that she was feeling pretty low and had seen a school psychologist a few times. Nellie was shocked that Jane would share anything personal and private with a complete stranger, especially a doctor.
“They keep records of that stuff, you know,” Nellie had told her.
“But, Mom, I was in such pain,” said Jane.
“So?” Nellie asked. “Who told you weren’t supposed to be in pain?”
So much for Jane’s flirtation with existentialism as an alternative to Nellie—her mother suffered existential angst with the best of them, she just combined it with one-part paranoia and two-parts stoicism for a winning cocktail of neurosis.
Jane wrote down the names of the doctors who had prescribed the medications and stepped into the Neilsons’ bedroom. Without removing the perfectly smooth white-and-blue chenille bedspread, Jane knew she would be able to bounce a quarter on the tautly pulled sheets. Neurotic maybe, but the Nellies and Lulas of the world were to be marveled at, too. They had energy and discipline in their housework and in their cooking, but what they did in and to their homes was more than cleaning and fixing meals.
They took such fierce pride in doing it all right. All the home-making gurus and shelter magazines and television decorating programs in the world weren’t going to make Jane’s generation and the ones that followed hers any better at what these older women did as a matter of course. Nellie and Lula worked a solid sixteen hours every single day of their lives without ever once complaining about time for themselves, and they always got the damn beds made. Who was ever going to do it right when they were gone?
Jane walked over to the small oak desk in front of the bedroom window. Two 8 × 10 envelopes were lying open on top of the calendar blotter. Jane had felt authorized by her mother and her concern for what Fuzzy was going through to check out the medicine cabinet, but snooping in the bedroom was Jane’s own spur-of-the moment decision. If the envelopes hadn’t been right there, Jane told herself, she wouldn’t have picked them up. She wouldn’t have searched through drawers or pawed through files to find them but these envelopes, one with a familiar return address—K3 Realty—and the other with a name she also recognized in the upper left corner—Joseph Dempsey/Hometown USA—were too obvious to ignore.
Jane opened the letter from K3 Realty first and, by force of an old, work-related, memo-skimming habit, read it from the bottom up. It was signed by Henry Bennett. Glancing over the body of the text, Jane thought, at least from this cursory read through, that it was a standard form letter, offering to be of service if they decided it was time to “reassess their property needs.”
The letter from Dempsey was more intriguing. It was some kind of a document … an option to buy a certain parcel of land. It didn’t actually look like a sales contract or an invoice; it was an option to buy the land within the next five years or in the event of the owner’s death. The language was confusing, but the gist of the agreement seemed to be that the owner would receive a small amount of money up front and give Hometown USA exclusive purchase rights that would expire in five years. It didn’t seem binding exactly, since it stated that the seller was under no obligation to sell at all. Was this legal? Locking people into a price and a promise like this? Jane didn’t know much about property prices in Kankakee County, but this seemed low. Nonetheless, both Fuzzy and Lula had signed on the bottom line.
Jane heard the kitchen door and felt as guilty as a teenager. Worse. She felt as guilty as a teenager’s mom.
“Nick? I’m upstairs, just coming down.”
What if Nick caught her snooping here and jumped to the conclusion that if she were nosing around in the Neilsons’ bedroom, she would certainly be going through her son’s room at home? Absolutely false. Jane prided herself on her respect for her son’s privacy—she only read things that were left out face up and that didn’t require touching. In other words, if a n
ote from one of Nick’s friends was folded in half and Jane would actually have to pick it up, unfold it, and smooth it out to read, she would not do it. If the same note were on his bed unfolded, peeking out from under something that she could legitimately pick up and put away—say his jacket or soccer shin guards—she allowed herself to read what was visible. She could contort herself into any position to read something thrown into a corner or slid under the bed, as long as she did not touch the paper, postcard, notebook itself. She was a curious and caring mother, sure, but she had her standards. Like Nick, she had watched Law & Order, and knew how far Briscoe and his partner were allowed to go when looking for evidence in a suspect’s house. She knew the drill, too.
Jane replaced the envelopes on the desk, trying to make them look undisturbed. She kept equating Lula’s household skills with Nellie’s, but what about her eye for trespassers? Was it as sharp as Jane’s mother’s? Nellie could tell what Jane had worn to school by looking at her closet and seeing which items had been rehung crookedly. She could skim the garbage can in the kitchen and name Jane’s after-school snack. She knew if Jane had done her homework in front of the television by counting the wrinkles in the couch cushions. Mail in disarray on a desk—Nellie would have Jane cold—knowing that she peeked, of course, but would also be able to tell in what order she had read the letters. Jane squinted at the desk, trying to remember if the K3 Realty letter had been on top. Or was it the Hometown papers? She picked up that envelope and held it over the desk, trying again to picture it.
“I got one of those, too.”
Jane jumped at the unexpected voice and made a sound between a scream and a stifled scream. As frightening as it was to see Jack Sullivan watching her from the doorway, she told herself that he was a grieving old man who had just come up because he thought Lula had called down to him that she was upstairs. He was no one to fear or scream about. Besides, the farm was crawling with police. Shouldn’t they have stopped Sullivan, though? Or did the father of the victim have some freedom in roaming the scene of the crime?
“I took the shortcut,” he said.
Jane nodded. Nellie had said not to tell the Sullivans about Fuzzy. Jane didn’t bother at the time to inform her mother that the Sullivans, strange birds or not, were the grieving parents who had hired Jane to find out who killed their son, Johnny. If she happened to see them, she didn’t tell her mother that she might feel some obligation to offer them something.
“Take the corn path to the property line. When you hit Fuzzy’s land, you walk through the soybeans right up alongside the flower garden. Lula’s got a path in there through the roses that you can’t see from the yard. Takes you right alongside the house, then boom, you’re at the porch steps.”
“Can I make you a cup of coffee?” asked Jane. His explanation of getting into the house, unseen by everyone, made her want to be on the first floor—the well-lit, well-patrolled first floor of the house.
“Regular or decaf?”
“I can make decaf,” said Jane. She realized it was almost nine. Had anyone eaten dinner today? Where had the hours gone? “I need to see if my …” Jane stopped herself from saying the word “son.” “Would you like some decaf?”
“I’m eighty something,” said Sullivan. “What the heck do I want to sleep for? Regular.”
Jane laughed and walked toward him standing at the door. She felt some relief, but she still didn’t like being trapped in the room. She had never liked being in a room with someone blocking the door. It awakened all of her latent claustrophobia. She could stand crowded spaces as long as the exit was open and available. Time to take the lead on this one.
Jane hooked her hand through Sullivan’s left arm and gently turned him and walked with him into the hall. Feeling how frail his arm felt under his cotton, zip-up jacket, she was ashamed of her own anxiety. How could this man hurt her?
“I brought my gun,” he said, pulling some kind of pistol out of his pocket with his right hand.
Yes, right, that’s how. What was it with guns these days? Did everyone except Jane have one?
“In case the killer was out there,” he said, “and knew the shortcut, too.”
He put the gun away without Jane having to ask, and they walked downstairs and into the kitchen. Jane checked from the kitchen window and could see Nick through the lit window of the shed. He was sitting at the high, wooden counter, his head bent over a box of Fuzzy’s various finds, his stuff.
Jane opened up the porch door and poked her head out. Never a cop around when you need one. But Jane had an old comfort trick she had invented for herself when she was a latchkey kid. When she used to walk home from St. Pat’s and arrive at her empty house, she worried that someone might have followed her. If someone was stalking her all the way to 801 Cobb Boulevard and then saw that she entered a house where no one waited for her, what would stop the bad guy from walking right up to her door? Her trick for fooling this villain in her head was to always unlock the door, throw it wide open, and yell, “Hi Mom, hi Dad, I’m home,” and then—and this was the best part of the invention because any bad guy would know that the greeting was only her side of the conversation, easily faked—she answered her imaginary parents’ imaginary question. “Yeah, a great day. How about you guys?” and closed the door behind her, locking it once, then twice by snapping the deadbolt into place. Hah! No bad guy would bother with someone who was coming home to not just one parent but two. As she got older, Jane realized that the phantom bad guy would also be unlikely to bother someone crazy enough to be carrying on a conversation with dead air. It was a win-win situation.
“Bostick and Miles?” Jane said to the empty porch. “I’m making coffee for Mr. Sullivan here. Would you like a cup?” Jane nodded to the darkness. “Okey-dokey, then. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Childhood fears might translate into adult traumas for some, but Jane had become more of a believer in the “use it or lose it” school of neurosis. If you couldn’t make sense of your lousy childhood by weaving its trials and tribulations into your adult life, you might as well give up and plop down on the couch. It would be a long bumpy ride through analysis. Jane was beginning, and just beginning, to learn that Nellie’s questionable people skills—as applied to her own family anyway—might have been the ideal preparation for adult life. After all, what did a happy, saccharine childhood really prepare you for? The cold cruel world of adulthood? Hardly. Maybe it was time to stop blaming Nellie and Don for not being June and Ward Cleaver and start thanking them. Jane looked over at raisin-faced Jack Sullivan, sitting down at the table unzipping his jacket with the gun in its pocket, and offered up a silent thanks to good old antisocial Nellie. She had prepared Jane to be a private detective as well as anyone could. Expect the worst. Be suspicious. Strike the first blow. Believe no one. Be tough. Figure everyone for a strange bird. Thanks, Mom.
“Mr. Sullivan,” said Jane, measuring out the coffee for Lula’s ancient percolator, noting that this was one kitchen item that she didn’t regard as desirable vintage. This was just an old electric coffeepot that, Jane was pretty sure, would make vile-tasting coffee. “Upstairs I was holding an envelope, and you said you had one like it? What did you mean?”
“Letter from that Joe Dempsey and Mikey Hoover. They’re going to make my farm into a fishing ranch.” Jane stopped spooning out the coffee.
“Mikey?”
“He knew Phillip. They were in the service together. Now he’s hooked up with Dempsey, and they’re going to make a million.”
“By making your farm into a fishing ranch?” Jane asked. “If I let ’em,” said Sullivan. “Got some cookies to go with that?”
“Did they offer to buy your farm?” asked Jane.
“Yup. They’re making this whole town into a tourist place. And when I told Dempsey that the best part of my farm was the fishing hole, he said that’s exactly why they needed it. They wanted to make a kind of fishing dude ranch. Parents and their kids, bringing picnics and fishing, and the
n we’d have a place where people would clean up their catch and they could bring it home. Or maybe we’d have grills so people could cook ’em up right there. We’d sell bait and rent out poles and such.”
Jane had seen that same dreamy look on her dad’s face when Dempsey had talked about making the old stove factory into a big-band ballroom. He was good, this Dempsey. He stared into the eyes of these old men, picked up the threads of their young man’s dreams, and wove them into a fantasy he could offer them; all they had to do was to sell them their property, and he would turn it into whatever they wanted.
“Elizabeth told Dempsey that we might like to stay on at our farm, and he said we could do that, no problem. We’d sell them the property, then they’d rent back our house to us for as long we wanted.”
“Have you already signed the papers? Are you giving them the option?” asked Jane. She opened up the cupboard from where, this morning, she had glimpsed Lula filling a plate with cookies. Holy Toledo. Lula Neilson’s everyday cookie jar was Smiley Pig, made by Shawnee in 1942. It was not the model that was all-over gold and platinum—that could have sold for over eight hundred dollars to a collector. But it was Smiley with a green neckerchief with a hand-painted shamrock, with gold, so it could go up to four hundred dollars at auction. And filled with Lula’s fresh oatmeal raisin bars, as the credit card commercial spokesman might intone, Priceless.
“Johnny asked us to wait. He wanted us to get the best price, he said, but Elizabeth thought maybe he was thinking about coming back to farm. I knew he wasn’t. He’s no farmer.”
Jane’s eyes burned at the present tense.
“Hell, he’s too old to change now. I told Elizabeth just ’cause he was our baby boy and we still called him Johnny, he’s no spring chicken,” said Sullivan. “Elizabeth’s just a kid. She’s just seventy-five or something like that, so she doesn’t really see the world like I do. Still thinks people will change and things’ll turn out different every time. But I told her they don’t. Things turn out the same.”
Buried Stuff Page 19