“Stay right here,” said Jane, “I think I know. And don’t touch that board.”
She left Tim in the shed and walked farther down the drive to the pole barn, situated directly behind the house. At first glance, the layout of the farm—the house, the barn, and the outbuildings—led one to believe that there was only one way in and out of the property. As you drove down the driveway, the natural place to stop for access to the house was between the sheds on your left and the house on your right. There was a large area used for parking—Jane, Tim, and Swanette had all left their cars there and proceeded into the house through the kitchen door. There was a walkway that wound around to the front door, but the path, carelessly landscaped with a few bushes and flowers, looked like it was seldom used.
Because visitors obviously parked by the kitchen door, Jane hadn’t really paid attention to the rest of the driveway, which, she now noted, continued on to the barn located behind the house. Trees in the backyard partially hid the barn from view. If a car had driven all the way down the driveway, not only would Tim not have heard it arrive because of the radio—he likely would not have seen it, either. Even if he had bothered to look out the window where he was working in the back bedroom, his view would likely be of the large trees, which, although on the verge of shedding their leaves, had not yet lost their brilliant fall foliage.
Jane stood at the barn where the driveway seemed to end and, as she had guessed, saw that the gravel continued around the back of the barn. Walking around the structure, she saw the drive go on, narrowing a bit, but it remained drivable, bordering the now-spent cornfield. Jane figured the road was used primarily by farm machinery. Since the cornfields went on as far as she could see, it was safe to assume the service road did as well, and likely was accessible from the other direction, probably from one of these confusing country roads marked with a number, a letter, or known by the name of the farmer who owned the biggest property along the way.
It was a back entrance and exit, easily used by anyone who knew his or her way around. In fact, if Jane had her directions right, and she almost always did, this route would be a shortcut if you were coming from the main street that was Herscher’s downtown. Anyone familiar with the territory could arrive at Swanette’s farm without people in the house seeing a vehicle—coming or going.
Jane tugged on the door to the pole barn, but the padlock held it firmly closed.
“Jane,” yelled Tim. “Where are you?”
She called back, gave one more tug on the door, and ran back to the shed.
“Don’t leave me here holding a flashlight and take off like that. When that little compact fluorescent goes on over your head, I want in on the idea. The jerk who beaned Swanette, he or she might still be around, yes?”
“Nope,” said Jane. “Left by the service road and long gone for sure. Let’s check these other buildings. Someone didn’t want Swanette or anyone else in them, so let’s get busy and find out why.”
“Swell idea, Sherlock, but I left my giant padlock cutters in my other trousers. How do you propose we get in?”
“Keys? You said Swanette found keys,” said Jane, once again shining the light over the interior space. She held out little hope of finding them, but she didn’t want to miss the obvious easy solution to getting into the sheds.
“Don’t bother. While you were out surveying the roads, I shined light into every corner of this place. I even broke your rules and got in there on my knees and looked into the nooks and crannies, such as they are. No keys,” said Tim. “In fact, that’s your proof that someone knocked her out. She left the house with a giant brass ring, must have been five inches in diameter, with a slew of keys. It would be hard to miss. It’s not here.”
Jane backed out of the shed. She ran over to the other shed and the chicken coop, checking the locks. She had looked at them earlier when searching for Swanette, but hadn’t pulled on them to see if they really were locked. Maybe they just looked secure and the doors could be opened? The chicken coop was definitely locked. The second shed had what appeared to be a dummy lock. Jane could see a sturdy padlock was in place, but the latch was not threaded through the loop in such a way that the lock really prevented opening the door. The wood on the door frame was rotting, causing it to sag, and the two parts of the latch just didn’t match up enough to get it to work. Whoever wanted to keep others out of the shed was counting on them seeing the padlock and not really trying the door. Jane tugged on the handle. The sagging wood frame did make the door seem fast. She lifted up as she pulled and inched the door open.
The space was larger than the other shed. It was also electrified and Jane switched on the overhead light.
Crude, hand-built shelves lined three walls. Perhaps at one time fertilizer, gardening tools, old clay pots, tangles of hoses occupied these shelves. Jane pictured them lined with Mason jars of various sizes full of nails, screws, and bolts, but now, less practical objects were on display.
“This is how you ought to fix up your garage, Janie,” said Tim, always one to give credit where credit is due. “This is some system.”
The shelves were crammed with vases, dishes, small lamps, small appliances, primitive farm objects—at least that’s what Jane assumed the various large forks and blades were—cast-iron pots and pans. And those were just the things Jane could take in at a glance. There were objects behind objects, so a complete inventory would take some time. At first, Jane couldn’t understand what Tim was admiring. As far as she could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to the objects collected on the shelves, in their order, their type, their size, their use . . . then she noticed the placards with numbers. Each item was tagged with at least one number, each shelf was marked with a date.
“These dates go several months back,” said Jane. “And there are a few cards here with addresses. Do you think someone was selling this stuff online, then not mailing it out?”
“No,” said Tim. “Look at this address card. It’s a public storage facility. I recognize the address . . .” Tim said, trailing off, picking up the cards on the shelves, reading them and replacing them. “Listen: ‘From locker number 4826/WeStoreIt/K3.’ That’s a storage rental place in K3 . . . Kankakee. What I think these cards tell us is where the objects came from, not where they were supposed to go.”
“I think you’re right,” said Jane. “ ‘Ada’s basement canning locker,’ ” said Jane, reading off a card in front of two giant blue jars, labeled THE QUEEN in raised glass letters. “I have jars like these.”
Jane and Tim strolled the shelves, picking up the cards and reading them. Jane noticed that Tim held on to one of the cards as he walked on, then replaced the card in front of a few items farther down on the shelf.
“No,” said Jane. “These ivory glove stretchers . . . that’s where that card goes.”
“Sorry,” said Tim. He stepped back and put the card down, picking up one of the stretchers. “Not ivory, honey. I think this pair is bone, look at the striation here . . . and this pair is Bakelite, I think, or something like it.”
Jane picked up the blunt, scissorlike object and stroked its smooth butter-colored surface. She put it back on the shelf and read the card. “ ‘Trunk number 3, A attic.’ ”
“Got a notepad in your pocket?”
Jane told Tim to copy down as many of the item numbers as he could. Tim could check the numbers against some of the item numbers on the online auction site they’d found where Honest Joe had posted items. Jane would have to settle for a small sampling from the shed. There were hundreds of objects and the overhead lights in this shed would be little help when they completely lost the daylight.
Right now, Jane wanted to close up the house and get back to Kankakee to see how Swanette herself was doing. Just locking the doors, however, didn’t feel like enough to secure the property. If someone had been using this farm as a storage facility, a staging place for Internet sales, they had been doing it right under the nose of Swanette’s mother-in-law. It was simple enough si
nce the older woman never left the house and surrounded herself with so much stuff that she wouldn’t be aware of the controlled chaos in the out-buildings. Swanette wasn’t allowed into the house and the other areas were locked up. Who else had access to the property and was likely to use the service road? The nurse who came from town probably knew about both entrances to the property. The handyman who had the keys to the sheds was the likely person to also hold the key to Michael’s twin. Wasn’t he? So . . . if whoever had been doing whatever whenever, wouldn’t it all be even simpler with no one at all living on the property? Especially at night?
Jane went to her car and fished out her address book from the big leather bag she hauled around with her. Although Tim had been after her to get a BlackBerry or whatever newest incarnation of electronic assistant he was currently touting as a brilliant invention, Jane clung to the beat-up leather book that not only held all of her current information, but had all the pages from her past life, as well. When Jane had worked as a creative director for a Chicago advertising firm, she took on a lot of the setup arrangements for various commercials, finding that she liked supervising the production details. Paging through the L’s she found the company she was looking for—Len’s Industrial Lighting—and punched in the numbers.
Len himself, who felt he owed a great deal of his success to Jane’s championing him as a lighting designer on several night shoots she supervised, assured Jane that they could handle her emergency. Their main warehouse was located in a south suburb of Chicago, and Len promised he could have a truck on the road in thirty minutes.
Within two hours, before the true blackness that is nightfall in rural America descended, Len would have technicians set up a “night shoot” at Swanette’s farm. Jane was certain that two large trucks full of equipment, a trailer, and enough bright lights trained on all the outbuildings and house to film a commercial would protect the goods stored within. Len promised her someone would stay with the equipment for as long as she needed.
“It is the light we shed on the problem, Mrs. Wheel, that aids us in the solution,” said Bruce Oh, when Jane called to ask his opinion of the plan.
“It’s only a temporary answer, though. I’m not sure how long I can tie up Len’s crew,” Jane told Tim, when they met in the hospital parking lot. On the way into Kankakee, after phoning Bruce Oh, she had called her dad, hoping Nellie had checked in with him. He told her where to go when they reached the hospital, but had no new information on Swanette’s condition.
“Not to mention the fact that lighting up the night sky for the town of Herscher might not be universally appreciated. Sooner not later, a neighboring farm is going to wonder what’s wrong with the nocturnal rhythms of their livestock,” said Tim.
“Really? ” asked Jane. “You think the roosters will crow all night?”
Tim shrugged. “Depends on how much light spills, I guess.”
“You’re making stuff up, aren’t you?” asked Jane, checking the directory next to the elevator for Family Waiting Area Two.
“It’s about time you two got here,” said Nellie, jumping out of her chair. “I thought you’d be coming right along behind me. They kept asking me questions and I—”
“Is there family? Has someone been called?” asked Jane.
“Christine is here and she had an old number for the niece, but it doesn’t work anymore. I think Christine’s the one who should call the shots here.”
“What shots need to be called?” asked Tim. “Is she—”
“No, Lowry, she isn’t dead, but the doctors look pretty serious and asked me a lot of questions before Christine got here and was able to give them information about her medical history and stuff. Hell, I don’t know anything except that she always ordered tuna salad on white bread every Friday.”
“Okay, then, she’s probably Catholic,” said Jane. “She was having lunch at the EZ Way back when you couldn’t eat meat on Friday. We should probably tell the nurses so they can alert a priest.”
“Yeah,” said Nellie. “That’s a smart idea. Unless she’s a Methodist who liked my tuna fish.”
Christine walked into the room. Jane marveled at how put together the woman was. Matching sweater and skirt, sensible low-heeled shoes, gray hair wound up in a neat bun. She even wore lipstick. Jane, at least thirty-five years younger, wore beat-up jeans, broken-down leather hiking boots, and imagined her hair sticking straight up out of her head. Even though she kept telling herself that she had escaped her small town and found adventures in the big city of Chicago, every time she returned to Kankakee, she found herself outclassed. Usually it was Tim Lowry who made her feel frowsy . . . this morning it had been Swanette, now it was Christine, too.
“She was mumbling, then she just slipped off,” she told them, shaking her own head. “Unconscious, I’m not sure what to do.”
“What’s to do but wait, right?” asked Nellie.
“Oh, there are forms and things I guess I have to sign,” said Christine, sighing. She looked at Jane and must have seen a puzzlement on her face, because she went on as if she were answering a question voiced aloud.
“Because I have power of attorney. When Swanette had a hysterectomy several years ago, Lee was already dead, and she asked John and me to be the executors of her will, and gave us power of attorney since she was going under and all. John’s office drew everything up. Her surgery turned out fine, but then she just asked if we’d mind keeping everything current, since she didn’t have anyone else. I expect she figures her niece is dead. She dropped off the face of the earth about twenty years ago and Swanette hasn’t been able to track her down. She’s the only relative and from Lee’s side of the family, too.
“Swanette didn’t have a soul, except us girls,” said Christine. “And John. He tried to be a friend to her, too. I always said John had the gift of being sort of a husband to the girls that didn’t have any or had lost theirs. I don’t mean I thought . . .” Christine smiled for the first time. “No hanky-panky or anything. I just admired the way he could be a friend to my women friends.”
Since Christine talked about her husband in the past tense, Jane assumed she had been widowed. When Nellie asked how he was doing, Jane saw all of the put-together-efficiency of Christine disappear. When she shook her head and shrugged, Jane saw every worried line in her face, every sad shadow emerge.
“Doesn’t know me at all,” she said. “According to the support group, I’m lucky. At least he likes me. Even flirts with me now and then. Just has no idea that he was married to me for sixty years.”
“What exactly did the doctor say about Swanette’s condition?” asked Tim.
“Listen to me,” said Christine, apologizing. “Poor girl. She slipped off to sleep. A serious concussion and some swelling in her brain, they think. They just won’t know anything until she wakes up. I signed the DNR form. It’s what she wanted me to do when she had her surgery, so I figured nothing’s changed on that.”
“I don’t want to seem crass here,” said Tim, “but are you the heir?”
Christine looked blank for a moment.
“Well, I guess I am,” she said. “We went over the charities she’d like some of her things to go to . . . we had to discuss all this when she signed the papers on the independent-living apartment. We joked about it. I’m about six years older than Swanette and I told her we all had to get ourselves some younger friends. Here she is counting on me and I could drop dead in a minute.”
“Yup,” said Nellie. “I guess that’s one good reason to have children.”
“Nellie, you are the funniest person I know,” said Christine, actually laughing out loud. “I wish mine lived as close as Janie. You are a lucky woman.”
“Yup,” said Nellie. Only Jane saw her eyebrows rise and the one corner of her mouth go down when she said it.
“I asked because of the sale,” said Tim. “I could go ahead with it. At least the preparation and staging of all the stuff. She went over the house with me and there wasn’t anything
in there she wanted to keep . . . at least nothing in our preliminary walk-through. I don’t know about the outer buildings, of course. I’m not sure if—”
Jane cut him off. “This is the least of all of our worries right now, we know that, Christine. But maybe Tim and I should continue working out there and then we can decide if we really hold the sale when all the prepping’s done. Swanette signed the contract so we know it’s what she wanted, and that way, when she wakes up, it’ll be one less thing she has to worry about.”
“That sounds fine to me,” said Christine. “If you need me to sign off on that, too, I will.”
Jane wasn’t really sure how she felt about continuing to prep for the sale with Swanette lying unconscious in the hospital, but she had to cut Tim off before he mentioned that the outbuildings contained more items, maybe items that did not belong to Swanette at all. The fewer people in on that bit of news, the better. Jane was already planning to bait a hook for Honest Joe, who very well might be the one storing stolen goods, even some from Ada and Swanette, and then selling them on the Internet. If whoever was behind the Honest Joe name thought that she and Tim were preparing to hold an estate sale, one that included selling their own stolen goods, wouldn’t they come out of the woodwork and try to claim their stuff?
On second thought, maybe Jane didn’t need much bait. If someone had attacked Swanette in the shed, hadn’t the bad guy already come out of the woodwork?
12
“You do know, Bruce, that I am not one to criticize, but I find your partner’s methods . . . well . . . haphazard, to say the least,” said Claire Oh. “So if Jane Wheel is saying that this estate is in disarray, I interpret that as disaster. I hardly think a day will be enough time to assess the value of the items.”
Scary Stuff Page 12