Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Jane set out their coffee cups and cream and sugar. Jack Sullivan poured in an inch of cream and loaded his coffee with sugar. Then he took three oatmeal bars and set them on the saucer.

  “Find out who killed Johnny yet?”

  Jane watched the old man dunk the cookie into his coffee and take a big bite. He half closed his eyes as he chewed. She thought he looked so content and lost in the sweetness of his snack that she might not have to answer his question.

  “I came over to tell you all that I know you found the guns out at the shooting range. And I was wondering if it was one of those guns that killed my boy.”

  “The police don’t know yet.”

  “What do you know different from the police?” Jane shook her head. “So Johnny knew about the fishing ranch? You discussed it with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he asked you not to sell?” Sullivan nodded. “Did he tell you why?”

  “Said we’d have to read about it in the papers like everybody else,” said Sullivan. “But he said we’d be thanking him. I thought he was being ornery not telling us; but Elizabeth was so happy he was coming home every weekend, she said we had to do whatever he said. He’d been to college, he worked at the paper, she said he knew more than we did.”

  Jane got up to pour more coffee, but Sullivan covered his cup with his hand.

  “I had enough, thanks. I just drink it for the cookies anyway,” said Sullivan. “Better save the rest for those policemen. You forget their cups?” He stood up and put his jacket on. Jack Sullivan lifted his chin and looked down his nose through his bifocals at her. “You know, those policemen that were supposed to be on the porch?”

  Jane nodded. Round one, Sullivan.

  “How did you know that the police found the shooting range, Mr. Sullivan?”

  “Don’t you know the old joke about why you’re not supposed to tell secrets in a cornfield?” he asked.

  Jane shook her head and Sullivan whispered, “Too many ears.”

  Jane filled Tim in over breakfast at Pink’s. The diner perched on the Kankakee riverbank was an all-night, greasier-than-your-average greasy spoon. All-night was the operative segment of the description since Pink’s was not open twenty-four hours. Instead Old Pink, who had been succeeded in business by Pink Junior, had found the winning strategy for a successful Kankakee restaurant. Open the doors around midnight and serve the over-tipping, after-bar-closing crowd who need the hangover preventative of a full breakfast, heavy on the fried potatoes, before falling into their beds; and, as a secondary market, the under-tipping teenagers who were defiant of and/or unbound by curfews, yet had nowhere in their little old town to go to get their party on. Close and lock those doors around 10:00 A.M., maybe 11:00 if Pink had a full pot of coffee he didn’t want to waste, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, go home, and sleep in front of a baseball game until it was time to come back and scrape the grease off the grill and start over. In the winter Pink Junior disappeared altogether for two or three months, and the restaurant had a CLOSED UNTIL? sign in the window. Then one day in early April, to herald spring, the first robin appeared, and a small grease fire broke out when Pink Junior started cooking again.

  “So Fuzzy was officially arrested?” asked Tim.

  Jane shook her head. “At least not yet. The lawyer said that if they matched the gun that killed Johnny to one of the twenty-twos that Fuzzy had in his possession, he’d likely be charged. They just questioned him to death. When Dad and Oh brought him home, I asked Fuzzy if he remembered being outside that night, if he remembered that he spoke to me from the outhouse.”

  Jane accepted more toast from Pink and nodded that she also wanted more coffee. Lots more. Pink brought over the thermal carafe and set it on the table.

  “Fuzzy’s answer was that he never used the outhouse. Outhouses were a crime against nature, he said. He was exhausted, couldn’t focus at all, and when he looked around and couldn’t find Lula, he became so agitated, I thought”—Jane broke off for a moment and put more strawberry jam on her toast—“I thought it was a good thing Munson wasn’t there to see it.”

  “Where was Lula?”

  “Pacing the floor at my mom and dad’s house. Nellie couldn’t get Lula to sit or sleep, but Fuzzy said he didn’t want her to come to the police station, said it wasn’t any place for a woman. But when he got home … he went a little crazy. He walked from room to room looking for her, wouldn’t listen to where she was, wouldn’t accept the phone to talk to her. In fact he looked at the phone like he had never seen one before. Oh helped me with him while Dad went and picked Lula up and brought her back home. She walked in, went directly to the refrigerator, and whipped up a plate of food and sat Fuzzy down with it and a glass of buttermilk and he was a lamb. It’s like she puts something in it,” said Jane.

  “Come on,” said Tim, unwinding the spiral dough of a homemade cinnamon bun and eating it piece by doughy piece. “All Lula has to put in her food is food. I mean she’s a wonderful cook, but basically she just soothes him with the familiar. Like we’re doing for ourselves right now. Nobody comes to Pink’s for the haute cuisine.” Tim lowered his voice to a whisper. “This food is terrible, but it’s our personal and intimate terrible, so it does the trick.”

  “I hoped you’d still be here,” said Bruce Oh, whom neither Tim nor Jane had seen or heard come in.

  Pink brought over a cup, a tea bag, and a pot of hot water and set it down between Jane and Tim.

  Neither one of them had seen Oh order anything.

  “Claire told me she was meeting you at your floral shop at noon, Mr. Lowry. She said the garage-sale plans are going well,” said Oh, sitting and removing the tea bag from its package.

  “And Jane tells me that you were Fuzzy’s best friend last night,” said Tim.

  “Mr. Neilson had a terrible night,” said Oh.

  “Tim, can I have your BlackBerry?” asked Jane, remembering that she had meant to check the names of the drugs prescribed to Fuzzy first thing this morning. Tim assured her she could “Google” on his tiny electronic “assistant” and once again Jane felt at least four incarnations removed from the “very latest in technology.” It didn’t matter. While she was typing on this current miraculous machine, something newer had probably been invented, test marketed, sold, reviewed, and been declared obsolete.

  “I’ve done some checking at Mr. Johnny Sullivan’s newspaper to find out if he was well liked, if he had enemies there,” said Oh. He waited while Jane typed a name into the BlackBerry. “It was unusual. There’s really not much of an office associated with his work on the paper. He works for the edition of the paper that serves the south suburban communities of Chicago, and most people who work for it are freelance reporters. No office culture. In fact, no office at all. His editor had only met him in person three times. Very little salary. Mr. Sullivan lived in a very small and cheap apartment. According to his landlord, he was behind on his rent.”

  “Maybe the landlord’s a tough guy, wanted to teach him a lesson?” said Tim.

  “Some lesson,” said Jane. “He can’t pay, so he gets killed? What kind of business savvy is that—kill somebody because they can’t pay?”

  “Yeah, I guess all those stories about bookies and gambling bosses putting out hits on guys who don’t pay up are ugly rumors,” said Tim. “Memo to the mob: Stop hurting people; it’s not good business.”

  Jane turned her attention back to the BlackBerry.

  “Hey, look, it’s Mr. Hyde,” said Tim.

  Dr. Jaekel, the acting coroner, was at the counter trying to get Pink’s attention. Jane knew he would be unable to attract it—everyone in Kankakee knew that Pink ignored customers who wanted to order food or drinks to go.

  “They come in to take out? Oxymoron. If they want coffee to go, let them find a Starfucks,” said Pink, according to Tim, who loved to quote Pink Junior on most subjects and, Jane guessed, embellish his words to feed the man’s legend.

  Whenever someone pointed
out to Pink that there was no Starbucks in Kankakee, he would smile and nod, suggesting that it was his point exactly; if you’re too busy to sit down and eat a Pink’s breakfast, you belong in another town.

  “Dr. Jaekel,” Jane called out, “won’t you join us?”

  The doctor approached the table tapping his wristwatch. “I’m just getting coffee to go. Due at a meeting.”

  “You’re not going to get any coffee until you sit down anyway,” said Tim. “If you take a seat, Pink will serve it to you in a paper cup if you ask, but he doesn’t do a ‘to-go’ business.”

  “I don’t understand this town,” Jaekel said, through pursed lips. “People complain about no work, they complain about no business, but when you offer someone work, try to give them business, they complain that it’s not the right kind of business.”

  “I am not sure that would be peculiar to this town,” said Oh. “It sounds more like the contradictory nature of human beings. I am Bruce Oh.”

  Jaekel shook hands with Oh. “In town for the hometown investors’ meeting?”

  Jane studied Oh’s face and rejoiced at her mentor’s talent. His expressions were so slight, so subtle. She knew all about the stereotype of the inscrutable Oriental and, of course, deplored it. Deplored the stereotype part anyway. But the hard fact about Bruce Oh was that his face was, at times, well … inscrutable. It was a painting whose eyes followed you around the room, whose color changed with the light, whose minutely raised eyebrow conveyed whatever the person looking at it wanted it to convey. Jane thought she was getting better at reading the expressionless expressions, but now realized they were not designed to be without meaning; they were valuable because they were infused with any and all meanings. They allowed Oh to be whomever one wanted him to be. Right now, to Jaekel, who had made an assumption that a stranger in town, an Asian man wearing an expensive suit, with a distinctive vintage tie, must be a foreign investor. Oh, in his wisdom, allowed his eyes to be mildly curious, relaxed his mouth into an almost smile, that seemed to agree with Jaekel’s assumption. All this without one spoken word, without one spoken lie.

  Oh had once told Jane that if she listened exactly twice as long as she spoke, she would never have to ask another question. People hated silence so much that they would always fill in the blanks of the conversation.

  Jaekel once again proved Oh right.

  “I’m not going to make it to Dempsey’s meeting. Police want me over at the station to discuss my report on Sullivan.” “You are an investor?” Oh asked.

  Jane noticed another trick. She knew Bruce Oh had grown up in Ohio with one Eastern parent and one Western parent. She knew that although his language sometimes sounded formal, it was a reflection of the man’s character—not any confusion with the English tongue. However, when he wanted to trade on his own foreignness to bring out something in another, he dropped contractions. It was a simple ploy, and it worked. He sounded as if he might stand and bow at any minute.

  “Considering the proposition. Sounded interesting the first time I heard it. Of course the more I have to be in this town, the more I think Dempsey’s going to have nothing but trouble getting anyone to cooperate with him. People will say it’s a good idea; but as soon as anything happens, they’ll do anything they can to mess it up.”

  “Can you tell us about the autopsy?” asked Jane.

  “No,” said Jaekel, standing up as Pink approached the table with his paper cup.

  “Can you tell us about the bones of Otto the cat?” asked Jane.

  “What about them?” Jaekel asked, as he threw a dollar on the table to cover his coffee. “I can tell you the same thing your husband can tell you. A huge waste of time. I have to drive over here when I’m filling in as Kankakee County coroner and what is normally a boring fifty-minute trip is now a frustrating two-hour drive because of road construction. I get here for a look at something that sounds interesting on the phone, and I get treated to a tour of Fuzzy Neilson’s pet cemetery,” said Jaekel, then straightened a little. In a more professional tone he said, “Male adult cat. Probably died naturally. I didn’t really examine it. It was given a decent family burial next to the garden. Been in the ground a while, at least ten years, maybe more. Don’t have any idea why they needed me. Damn government red tape.” “Who called you in?”

  “Somebody from the police department. They had to determine that it wasn’t a crime scene. I might have it somewhere,” Jaekel began rummaging in his briefcase. “Why? What’s the big deal about that cat anyway?”

  “Charley was wondering who called it in and reported it as a possible site, that’s all. He couldn’t get anyone at the Illinois office over the weekend, and Fuzzy couldn’t give him any paperwork. We were just wondering who …” Jane stopped when she saw Jaekel pull a small notebook out of his bag.

  “I got the call from an Officer Ransford, and he said it was called in by a citizen whose name is …” Jaekel strung the sentence out as he squinted at his own handwriting. He held the notebook out at arm’s length and then brought it close to his face.

  “Rober Grayland?”

  Rober Grayland? An unusual name, so why did it sound so familiar to Jane. “Roger Groveland? Could that be Roger Groveland?”

  “Yes. Yes, Roger Groveland. According to my notes, he was the one who reported the Neilson property.”

  “What’s the date? When did you get called in?”

  “Three weeks ago, minus a day,” said Jaekel. “I have to go. Munson will be sending a squad car. Will he give me a lid for this?” Jaekel asked, holding up the flimsy paper cup of coffee.

  Jane got up, went behind the counter and picked up a lid for the paper cup. Pink Junior gave her a slight shake of his head, but smiled. Jane knew he figured it was only a matter of time before she came back to Kankakee for good and became Nellie Junior so he thought of her as a colleague. Jane handed the lid to Jaekel and resisted telling him that the lid was superfluous anyway. Pink’s coffee would probably eat its way out of that cup if he didn’t drink it immediately. If she wasn’t going to tell him his cat skeleton case had been instigated by a dead man, she probably shouldn’t tell him anything at all. Then she remembered the BlackBerry.

  “Dr. Jaekel?”

  He looked up from trying to get the lid on the cup with one hand without collapsing the whole mess.

  “Do you know anything about a drug called Aricept?”

  “Don’t worry about your parents, Mrs. Wheel. Don is as sharp as a tack and, from what I’ve observed of Nellie, she only forgets names and dates when it’s convenient for her to do so. She’s crazy like a fox, your mother. Nothing wrong with her cognitive skills,” said Jaekel.

  Jane couldn’t stand to see him struggling and put the lid on his coffee herself, wrapped the cup in a napkin and handed it to him. “So its only use is for …”

  “Alzheimer’s. Yes.”

  At 10:00 A.M., Tim parked in front of Mrs. Schaefer’s bungalow. Jane had phoned Charley and spoken with him about Fuzzy, and they agreed to talk to Lula together later. Oh had gone back to his motel, bringing a carryout breakfast that included a Pink’s special omelette, fried potatoes, slices of melon, and toast. Jane had watched Pink Junior prepare it and pack it without a murmur of dissent. It wasn’t the first time she had seen people react differently to Oh than they did to other people. Although she was distracted with her own thoughts, Jane wondered if Oh practiced some kind of mass hypnosis.

  “Look, honey, this is hard news about Fuzzy, but it means he won’t go to jail, so maybe …,” Tim began, but he couldn’t finish the thought. He knew that she knew that he knew what everybody knew. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s might mean that Fuzzy wouldn’t be charged with first-degree murder, but it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be in jail. His prison might not be presided over by Munson and his officers, but it was only a matter of time before Fuzzy was behind more and more locked doors. First, he would be confused about why Lula locked him in away from his garden and his fields, then another deadbo
lt would fall into place and he’d stop finding comfort in Lula’s cookies and pies and forget to eat. Then he’d forget Lula altogether.

  Jane knew she could talk to Tim about it. They would have that crying and laughing conversation that would end with them pledging loyalty and friendship to each other. Jane would give Tim the you’ll-always-have-a-family-with-us kind of promise and Tim would give her the even-if-Charley-is-there-I’ll-come-in-and-pick-out-your-clothes assurance. She just wasn’t ready to have that conversation yet.

  Suzanne Blum, Mrs. Schaefer’s niece, opened the door. She motioned for them to come in. “I was watching you just sitting out there. Did you think I was meeting you outside?”

  Since neither of them wanted to explain their vigil in the car, they both nodded.

  “I actually ended up sleeping over here last night. I got involved in going through some of the stuff, and I found I couldn’t help myself. Once I opened one box in the attic, I couldn’t stop. This must be what happens to those people who get addicted to old stuff, right? You know those people who watch the Antiques Roadshow and get all starry-eyed over house sales? Their houses must be something, full of other peoples’ junk. I hope I’ve just got the twenty-four-hour version of this disease. Wouldn’t it be terrible to be so fixated on all that stuff?”

  Three slides flashed before Jane’s eyes: one, her living room, an architectural wonder of old suitcases stacked to the ceiling; two, the master bedroom where space for the master or the mistress of the house had long been filled with maps, architectural plans, books, vintage textiles, and souvenir travel pillows; three, the garage-sale interruptus tableau, where Jane’s garage was filled with the items she reluctantly agreed to part with—piles and tables of … everything…. Jane, unable to speak, nodded. It would indeed be terrible to be so fixated on all that stuff.

  Tim, however, found his voice.