“Dave!” Jane shouted. “How did you get here?”
The lighting technician was holding a bottle of beer in one hand and waving the other in the air, like he was at some rock concert. Jane half expected him to be holding a lit Bic and calling for an encore.
“I was drinking with a bunch of locals at that biker bar and somebody came in and said there was a bitching bonfire at Ada’s, so I just followed the crowd. I just wish I had some cameramen here. This is like being in one of those B-movie fright-night sets. I would hardly add lights here, just film it in the available—wouldn’t it be cool?”
Somebody had passed the word to a bunch of bored locals drinking away their Sunday night after the football games had ended for the day . . . that explained the sea change in the crowd. Ada didn’t know that her friendly neighborhood haunted house had taken on a new dimension. Jane could see Cousin Ada, now Aunt Ada, standing much too near the fire and waving her arms, those billowing sleeves and the edge of her cape coming closer and closer to the flames.
“Dave? Remember my friends—Tim and Oh? Seen them?”
Dave shook his head.
“Look for them, okay? Tell them to call the fire department and the police if they haven’t already. There’s someone in the kitchen who needs to be arrested.”
Dave was asking her something, but she had moved on. She could barely see Nellie to her left, also fighting her way through the crowd. Jane had to get to Ada and pull her away before Nellie got antsy and began firing shots in the air. Who knew how many others might have guns here? This could turn even uglier.
Jane elbowed a teenage boy hard in the side to get him out of his front-row spot. He pulled back an arm to strike, but then saw Jane with her best innocent I-could-be-your-own-mom face pasted on and his girlfriend pulled him back. Jane wasted no time grabbing Ada and shouting into her good ear.
“The fire’s getting out of control. Come with me, Ada.”
“Nellie’s girl?”
“Yes, it’s Jane. Nellie’s here, too. We want you to come with us.”
“I always tend the fire. James told me it would be the biggest ever this year.”
“That wasn’t James, Ada. Come with us.”
“Where’s Nellie?” asked Ada, looking around. Even though it was nearing midnight, the moon behind clouds and the sky completely starless, Ada still wore her dark-tinted glasses.
Jane could feel her lungs burning with every breath and the ash stinging her eyes.
“Come on,” said Nellie, grabbing her from the other side. “We got to get you out of here.”
Ada became more cooperative as soon as she felt Nellie tugging at her from the other side. Jane looked behind her and saw Tim struggling with a garden hose that lay tangled next to the house. Oh stood under the kitchen window and Jane could see that he was talking into his cell phone. She realized that her entire body had been a clenched fist the whole night, and when she saw her two partners in action, albeit too far away to actually communicate with, she felt herself relax.
“Do you need some help here?”
Jane turned at the sound of a friendly and competent voice. Linda, the nurse whom she had met earlier when she dropped by to perform her surreptitious health check on Ada, was at her side.
“We’re trying to get Ada out of here,” said Jane. “Can you help us?”
“Sure. Let’s get her back by the garage. My car’s parked around here somewhere and I’ve got some bottled water and some tissues. This ash is starting to spread—it’s killing my eyes. If the wind picks up any more, that fire’s going to spread to that shed.”
Ada was quiet, almost docile, once they got out of the crowd and away from the smoke and ash.
“I feel like I’ve got splinters behind my contact lenses,” Linda said, a tear streaming from her left eye.
“I have to pass out the food now,” said Ada.
Jane wanted to get Ada safely away from the house. She had successfully completed her first knockout, but she had no idea how long the woman in the kitchen would remain unconscious. Jane had thought she heard her moaning slightly when they were running out of the kitchen door. That could have been wishful thinking. Jane was still afraid of how hard she had swung that breadboard. She decided allowing Oh and the police to deal with her would be a fine idea while she got Ada out of harm’s way. She could ask Linda to take them back to Swanette’s. There were enough police there to keep Ada under guard until everyone was rounded up.
“I need my handbag,” said Ada. “It’s got my important papers.”
“You don’t need anything,” said Nellie. “We’ll get it later.”
Ada insisted that she never left her property without her handbag. It was a rule she lived by and she dug her heels in hard. “It’s on the kitchen counter,” said Ada. “Right by the flour canister.”
“I’ll get it,” said Jane. It would be easier to get Ada into the car if they just went along with her, and Jane wanted her off the property. “You guys get in and I’ll be right back.”
Jane helped Ada into the passenger seat while Linda climbed in behind the wheel and Nellie got into the back. So many cars were parked on the grass that at first Jane wasn’t sure Linda would be able to get out of the impromptu parking lot, but there was a narrow path straight ahead. Jane had to move sideways between Linda’s car and the one snugged up next to it. As she held her breath and crab-walked, she looked down, into the backseat where her mother had picked up a raincoat off the floor and was feeling it as if to test the fabric.
Jane looked down at the car. She sucked in her breath as hard as she could so she could see the body of the vehicle, and in the light shining down from the corner of the garage, she saw the deep fresh scratch that could only have been made deliberately by someone holding a key and determinedly running it the length of the car from back door to taillight.
As soon as Jane realized this was the car belonging to the person who shot Joe, she knew something even scarier. Nellie would know she was in the same backseat and Nellie had a gun in her jacket pocket.
Jane danced around the car and yanked open the back door where Nellie was holding the coat she had used earlier to cover herself up on the floor of the backseat.
“Get out, Mom, you go get the purse,” Jane said, yanking Nellie’s arm to get her out of the car. “You know the house better than I do. You go.”
Jane didn’t take the time to sort out her motivations. She knew that if Linda had shot Joe, she had a gun. And she knew by the bulge in Nellie’s front pocket that she hadn’t gotten rid of hers. She didn’t want Nellie to pull an Annie Oakley in the car as soon as she put two and two together.
Too late, of course. Nellie was good at math and holding on to the coat for dear life. Jane pulled her mother up by her elbow and literally lifted her out of the backseat and out of the car. If Nellie hadn’t been so light on her feet, she would have lost her balance, but she danced a few steps backward like a punchy bantam-weight, and righted herself as Jane climbed in, taking her mother’s place.
“Go get the purse,” said Jane, slamming the door shut and locking it.
Luckily Linda was busy fastening Ada’s seat belt and having difficulty cinching the belt around the voluminous folds of her cape. Fussing with the belt, she hadn’t seen Jane manhandle her mother or Nellie run off toward the house clutching the coat from the backseat.
“I can’t stand this burning in my eyes,” said Linda.
“Do you want me to drive?” asked Jane, not sure that she really wanted to be behind the wheel with someone who had already shot someone tonight sitting behind her.
“I’ve just got to get these contacts out,” said Linda. She reached across Ada who had grown very quiet and opened the glove compartment to get her case and tissues. She turned on the interior lights and pulled down the visor. Staring into the mirror, she stretched her eyelid until she could pop out first one lens, then she did the same with her other eye. She used the tissue to wipe her eyes, then looked in the mi
rror at Jane in the backseat.
“Much better now,” she said. Her bright green eyes had stopped tearing almost immediately. It wasn’t the only change. One of those bright green eyes had ceased being bright green. Jane could see it was now brown. Heterochromia. Just like her brother Joe. It had skipped her sister who was unconscious—Jane hoped—in the kitchen, but Brother James had passed his eye abnormality on to two of his three children. Three. Jane hoped the number of offspring stopped at three.
Jane was successful at not allowing any recognition to register on her face. Linda turned her attention to Ada and asked if she was feeling comfortable.
“Seat belt’s not too tight, is it?” she asked.
“My eyes,” said Ada.
“It’s the ash,” said Linda, “from the fire. Don’t rub them. Let them tear and you’ll be fine.”
“Our eyes,” said Ada, taking off her dark glasses.
Linda handed her a tissue. She showed absolutely no reaction to Ada’s face with her glasses removed, but Jane knew Linda was busy figuring something out.
“Ada, was your purse on this side of the sink or that side?” asked Jane, hoping that her poorly formed question would make Ada turn around in her seat. Although the seat belt and her enormous cape held her mostly in place, she turned her head enough for Jane to look directly into her aunt Ada’s eyes.
Two big brown eyes, identical to Jane’s own, stared back at her.
“Our family eyes,” said Ada. “Two different colors.”
Jane saw in the way that Linda straightened her shoulders and took in a sharp breath that she knew she had been discovered. Always careful to wear her contacts, she had hidden the family resemblance that might make her known to Ada as someone other than the itinerant health professional she pretended to be.
Jane thought it might help if she played dumb and directed Ada away from the heterochromia. “Ada, you have beautiful brown eyes, perfectly matched!”
“But I’m supposed to have two colors. The family eyes. Mother said that even though I couldn’t see well, I should wear the dark glasses so I could be like Brother James. So people would think we were the same. I could see Brother James’s eyes. He was my twin. My mirror.”
Linda started the car and slowly began to creep forward, threading her way between the rows of parked cars.
“Let’s wait for my mother, okay? She went to get Ada’s purse. Remember?” said Jane.
Linda looked straight ahead. The visor was replaced, the mirror folded, and Jane couldn’t see the look on Linda’s face. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“How did you get my brother’s eyes?” asked Ada.
Linda pulled out of the field, drove exactly four car lengths down the street, then turned into the parking lot next to Edna’s Diner.
“I got them the usual way,” said Linda, so softly that Jane leaned forward to hear her. “I got them the usual way, Aunt Ada.”
Ada shook her head, confused.
“She’s not your aunt, actually,” said Jane. Linda parked the car.
“Tell me all about it inside, Jane,” said Linda. “And let’s not do anything that would startle Aunt Ada, okay?” Linda patted her pocket, and Jane noted that she was much more subtle about it than Nellie was when she wanted to demonstrate that she was packing heat.
Jane nodded while Linda leaned over to unfasten the seat belt. Jane was pleased to note that the car was parked under the light in Edna’s parking lot, passenger side facing the street. Jane felt in her pocket for her car key, and when she let herself out of the car, she firmly drew two diagonals at about forty-five degrees from the end point of Nellie’s original mark. Linda, luckily, was struggling with the seat belt and muttering about the fastener so did not notice any scratching sound. So far so good. Jane stood blocking her crude sign while Linda helped Ada out of the car. She gestured that Jane was supposed to precede them into the back door of Edna’s which led to the upstairs apartments.
Jane led the way, making as much noise on the steps as possible, hoping that the old lady, Em, whom MJ had said lived in the other apartment over the diner was a light enough sleeper to wonder about all the noise. Maybe she was one of those nervous old ladies who would call the police when she heard people clomping up the stairs.
In contrast, Ada stepped lightly, not struggling at all while going up the steep flight. She hadn’t said anything since Linda had parked the car. If Ada was confused, she saw no need to complain. Jane knew she didn’t see that well, but instead of being agitated by being out of the comfort zone of her own home, she seemed only mildly curious about where she was and what might happen next.
Jane stopped at the top of the steps where there were two doors facing each other. Linda nodded at one and Jane turned the doorknob, letting them into the unlocked apartment.
The apartment was simple. There was no entry or foyer. Once in the door, you stood in the living room, and from that room, you could see a galley kitchen, a bathroom, and a short hall opposite which, Jane surmised, led to a bedroom. The floors were hardwood, but there were no rugs and the windows had blinds, but no curtains. It was not a well-lived-in home. A sofa bed was pulled out with a tangle of sheets and a thin wool blanket on top of it. Under the living room window, which faced the main street, meaning it had a direct view of Ada’s house and yard, was a scuffed card table which held dirty coffee cups and a few priority mail cartons from the post office.
If Jane had wandered in alone, she would have said that it was an uninhabited apartment, abandoned by deadbeat tenants who shouldn’t be holding their breath waiting for their cleaning deposit to be returned.
Linda quickly folded the bed up, dingy linens inside. She told Ada and Jane to sit, then took out her own cell phone.
Whoever she called did not answer. Linda crossed to the window and shook her head as if to clear it. When she turned back to Jane and Ada, she had made a decision.
“I have your family eyes because your brother James is my father,” said Linda.
“No,” said Ada.
“Yes. He married my mother and never told you. Then he threw her out when she got pregnant,” said Linda.
So far, this was the same story Jane had heard from Don and Nellie.
Ada shook her head.
“Yes, your brother James, my father, wasn’t such a nice man, Ada,” said Linda. “He mellowed after a few years. Mother kept coming back to him, asking him to take her back, hoping for a handout, and every time she came crawling back, he got a little softer hearted. Finally, he told her she could stay around and he’d take care of her. Us. Because now there were two more kids.”
“This is not my brother,” said Ada, putting her own dark glasses back on.
“I think you better look at me when I’m talking to you, Ada,” said Linda.
Jane stood up. She recognized the tremor in Linda’s voice as someone who was coming unglued fast. Even a desperate woman like Linda wouldn’t harm an old-timer like Ada, would she? Then again, Jane reminded herself, Linda had shot her own brother a few hours earlier.
“Linda, she’s too old to harm you. Can’t you leave it—” began Jane.
“You’re a tough old bird, Ada, and you’re not senile or crazy, either. I’ve been watching you for years. I think you knew all along that your brother had a family. You just kept him on a short leash with your crazy-and-blind-as-a-bat routine,” said Linda, shoving Jane hard back down on the couch.
“You know, Jane, I’m a desperate woman, so don’t test me right now. I’ve got some logistics to figure out.”
Linda casually took out the gun from her jacket pocket and waved it at Jane. Jane took her aunt Ada’s hand.
“Now, Ada, my father told my mother that there was money in the house. Hidden away in books and secret compartments in the furniture your father built. Know anything about that?”
Ada sat still as a stone.
“I think he was lying, though. I think the money was safe in the bank and invested in the farmland, that’s
what I think. Joe and Cindy like playing treasure hunt, but I think Pops was just playing games. But Daddy took out an insurance policy on you and left papers filed with an attorney in Kankakee claiming me and Joe and Cindy as the heirs to the family estate. He got you to sign a lot of papers before he died, remember?
“I’ve been a patient woman. I worked my way through nursing school, I’ve taken care of my silly sister and half-wit brother. I’ve taken care of my mother even though she never could get out of her own way to take care of us. I figured I could be patient and wait for you to die. I keep an eye on you, Ada. And you,” Linda said, pointing a finger at the woman, “you pay me back by staying healthy as a horse.”
“It’s not going to do you any good to harm her,” said Jane. “She’s not your aunt . . . she’s—”
“I know,” Linda screamed, turning to Jane. “She’s your aunt. And I knew when you started snooping all around the old photo albums and papers that my stupid brother and sister had been stealing to sell on e-frigging-Bay or some other Internet auction that all of this was going to come out. Those stupid children. I told them to leave it all alone . . . all the stuff . . . so I could get rid of the . . . I told them we’d own everything if they’d just stop risking it all. But no, they had to be as stupid as my father—taking stuff from storage lockers and nickel-dime selling it off. Stealing from Swanette’s mother-in-law. Lying about antiques and putting fakes up for auction—like nobody would come looking for them! You know what excites them? Selling some worthless thing for a hundred damn dollars on the Internet!
“I was willing to wait until you died, Ada, I really was. I knew Nellie was your sister—I found the papers in the old Bible that told the family story about you being given away to your aunt and uncle to be raised as their own. Boo-hoo. My father knew, too, so he got you to sign stuff over to him and his heirs . . . whenever they presented themselves. Said it couldn’t be broken as long as Nellie didn’t come snooping around.”
Scary Stuff Page 24