The Wrong Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Tim always said that as soon as he met the right man, they’d get themselves a poodle and name it Patina just to satisfy all of his Kankakee flower shop customers who weren’t happy having a gay florist unless he made them laugh and sang them show tunes. Tim often used Jane, not as his beard to pretend he was straight, but rather as his foil for outragious behavior. Jane was stuck playing Cher to his Elton.

  “They want me drooling over Liza and nibbling quiche,” Tim had said the last time Jane was in the store. “If they saw me with you, eating a pizza, drinking a beer, and not ratcheting my voice up to an octave above Q for queen, they’d go back to buying their flowers at the Jewel.”

  “I drove up to Michigan and picked up the chest myself,” Claire said. “I just glanced at it, and it looked gorgeous. I delivered it to Horace’s gallery. His assistant signed for it. I came home and changed for the Hospital Auxiliary antique show at the Community House and when I got there, Horace was already waiting for me at my designated space, screaming at my assistant that the chest delivered to him was a fake and he wanted his deposit back immediately. He said he had already sent it back to the house.” Claire continued rubbing the wood as she talked. “He went even crazier when he saw me. Called me lots of names. Screamed at everyone passing by that I was a liar and a cheat.”

  Bruce Oh, silent for so long, went over to his wife and patted her hand, which, Jane realized, was moving a bit obsessively over the carving. He led her over to the couch, and when she had sat, Oh took up the story.

  “Mrs. Wheel, you’ve been at shows like that. The first night is a benefit. Well-dressed people, drinking champagne, an elegant evening. Mr. Cutler’s screaming cut through the crowd like a knife.”

  “What happened?” asked Jane.

  “Security came and escorted him out,” said Claire. “Here was this elegant little man, dressed in an impeccable suit, yelling like a crazy person. Said his credibility with his customer was ruined. Shouted that he’d get even. He actually said he’d”—Claire stopped for just a second, swallowed, and continued—“he said he’d kill me for this.”

  “My god, what did you say?”

  “Not if I kill you first.” Claire shook her head. “I was being flippant, of course. I’m regretting the bravado now.

  “I returned a few cases to my booth at the antique mall that night like I always do so they could be locked in the safe I keep there, just jewelry and a few smalls. The back door was locked. I let myself in and there was a light on near my booth. Horace was there. Dead on the Kilim rug, right in front of the Pembroke table.

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “The lack of breathing, the pool of blood, the seven-inch blade with the carved bone handle sticking out of his chest,” Claire said, shrugging. “The dagger was a tip-off of sorts.”

  Oh again laid his hand on his wife’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve had a very bad day.”

  “It’s okay,” said Jane, thinking she had been right about tall people. They were supercilious and got away with it because they could see farther than the average joe—or jane.

  “But what about the timing of all this? How long had he been dead? Did you call the police right away?”

  “The police walked in right after me. The alarm had been tripped. I turned it off before I came in, but it had rung at the police station because of a front window being tampered with,” Claire said. “It was a scene from a television program. I was kneeling over the body of a man that at least thirty well-dressed, reliable witnesses had heard me say I’d kill.”

  “Network,” Jane said, looking past Claire, locking eyes with Bruce Oh.

  Oh looked at her blankly.

  “Last scene before the first commercial break,” Jane said. “Network television program.” She shook her head. “Not even HBO.”

  Jane placed four large boxes on the dining room floor. Belinda St. Germain had told her at the end of chapter one that sorting was a top priority. The categories that St. Germain had defined—trash, charity, deep storage, and finally, the well-placed essentials—had to be slightly amended for Jane’s work and home space. “Trash,” after all, was such a relative word. Everyone knew the hackneyed mantra of the garage sale crowd—one person’s trash is another person’s treasure—but it got more complicated for a picker. Jane labeled her boxes with the following—“Might be for Miriam,” “Maybe I should ask Tim first,” “Not Yet,” and “Almost Trash.”

  Sorting out what was going through her mind also benefited from a kind of labeling. Actually, Jane realized, her thoughts were working more in her old ad exec mode of pro and con listing before going forward with a pitch.

  Reasons to take the case:

  • Makes me a real detective.

  • I like Bruce Oh.

  • I’ll learn more about antique furniture, which will help me be a better picker just in case this whole detective gig doesn’t work out, which it probably won’t.

  • My role as a mother is up for grabs.

  Reasons not to take the case:

  • My role as a mother is up for grabs.

  The pro list clearly outweighed the con list, however that one con was a lulu. If she ran off to play detective, wasn’t she in even more danger of losing permission slips and packing defective lunches? Perhaps Belinda St. Germain had a point when she stated that sorting through one’s stuff—learning the difference between the right stuff and the wrong stuff—was a lot easier than figuring out the rest of one’s life.

  Maybe Jane needed to start with the stuff. She stood knee-deep in a pile of used wool sweaters that she thought someone might want for felting, shoeboxes full of old snapshots of someone’s California vacations, and two laundry bags full of silk flowers that she thought Tim might be able to use for decorative somethings. Since she had moved these piles in from the garage in order to sort them into the boxes that she had also dragged in and marked, the dining room was already more impassable than it had been that morning when Charley and Nick had pointed out the errant permission slip on the table.

  When her cell phone began playing “Jingle Bells”—Nick must have been at the tone menu again—she forgot how much she hated the device and lunged for it gratefully. Anything to focus on other than these piles of…these piles.

  “Yes?”

  “Whoa, girlfriend, you actually sound like someone who answers a cell phone, instead of searching for it in your purse until it stops ringing.”

  “Timmy, do you ever use fake flowers?”

  “I hot glued them to a foam-core sandwich board once for a Halloween costume,” said Tim.

  “So I should put them in the ‘Almost Trash’ pile, maybe?” Jane asked, more to herself than Tim.

  “I was going as a garden plot,” said Tim. “It was pretty cool.”

  “So you do want them?”

  “Want what?”

  “Never mind,” Jane said. She looked at the mounds of stuff in front of her and made her decision. “I thought we might go on a road trip bright and early tomorrow.”

  “The Waukesha auction?” Tim asked.

  “Nope, Michigan. Campbell and LaSalle.”

  Tim laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t have any furniture good enough for Campbell and LaSalle.”

  Was she wearing a “kick me” sign?

  “Tim Lowry, you know I don’t have the money or the truck to get big pieces of good furniture, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what they are or that I don’t recognize quality. It doesn’t mean I’m small time or…” Jane stopped. Of course she wanted to accept Claire Oh’s case. She needed to take control of her life again. She took a deep breath, mustering her dignity and calling on the ghost of her former professional self for help.

  “Tim, Detective Oh asked for help on a case, and I said yes. I mean I’ve decided to say yes. And since I also said yes to being your partner, you can be my partner this weekend. You can set us up at Campbell and LaSalle, can’t you?”

  “Of
course I can. I’ve been going there for years,” said Tim. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about…it’s just like you said, that you don’t have the big cash flow or the truck for a Campbell and LaSalle job. No need for the thin skin.”

  This was great. Jane had been a detective on her first real case for only a few minutes, and she already had smart-ass Tim apologizing. She made a mental note to get business cards printed as soon as possible.

  Jane filled Tim in on her conversation with Claire Oh. She had barely begun her description of the Westman chest or the alleged Westman chest, when Tim stopped her.

  “Horace Cutler, yeah, I heard all about that. So that’s who killed him? Wow!”

  “Tim, don’t be ridiculous. Claire Oh did not murder Horace Cutler,” said Jane.

  “Okay, you’re right. Forgot for a minute that you’re Jane Wheel, girl detective. But let me ask you this. If you read what happened in the paper, big-deal antique furniture forgery catfight and one cat ends up dead with the other one kneeling over him, you’d pretty much take it as fact, yes?”

  “Well…”

  “But because this is Bruce Oh’s wife, you have some weird karmic debt that you’re paying off to him?”

  “Bruce Oh is a quiet, intelligent man, who is wise and thoughtful and clever without having to show off about it by spouting song lyrics and puns, like some people I know,” Jane said, “and his wife wouldn’t…”

  “Hey, your husband Charley—remember him—is a wise and thoughtful man, and you do all sorts of irrational things. You buy truckloads of vintage junk that might make you some cash if you turned it around, but you adopt it and give it its own room.”

  Jane took a deep breath and looked around the room. She was drowning in stuff; her family was drowning in stuff; she was pulling them under. Yes, she was an irrational woman married to an intelligent, logical man. But she wouldn’t kill anyone. Claire was not what Jane had expected, not who she wanted her to be, but Jane didn’t think Claire would kill anyone either. But. But what? There was something.

  “Claire didn’t kill Horace Cutler, Tim. She’s…she’s not…”

  “Ye-e-e-s?” said Tim, drawing the word out like a cartoon shrink.

  How could Jane explain this? Before she had met Claire Oh, she had had such a clear picture of her—and for the silliest of reasons. Detective Oh’s neckties. He wore these funny, gorgeous vintage ties that he always seemed vaguely embarrassed about. He’d wave away Jane’s compliments, explaining that his wife bought them and insisted he wear them. Jane had pictured her, had actually tried to pick her out at estate sales, and had thought of her as this plump, homey, funny collector, a bit more advanced than Jane, but lovely and warm. Claire Oh was supposed to be the counterpoint to Bruce Oh’s careful reserve. She was supposed to be the yin to his yang, the jazz to his classical, the Mrs. Columbo to his Peter Falk. No, that wasn’t quite it…but Tim was waiting.

  “Claire Oh did not murder Horace Cutler,” said Jane, “but I will admit this. I didn’t exactly warm up to her. There’s something about Claire that just rubbed me the wrong way, something…I don’t know, like she was a snotty cheerleader or something and I was the editor of the yearbook or…”

  “You were the editor of the yearbook,” Tim reminded her.

  “Yeah, but I chose that. I could have been a…” Jane stopped herself, remembering that she was a mature adult, a career woman, a wife and mother, and soon to be an organized, uncluttered detective and picker. Besides, Tim was the one person in her life who would know for sure that she couldn’t do the splits at age fifteen—or at any other age for that matter. She wasn’t going to convince Tim that she chose not to be a cheerleader.

  “That’s all beside the point,” Jane said. “Maybe if it weren’t for Detective Oh, I wouldn’t want to do this, but…”

  “Let’s face it, honey, if it weren’t for Detective Oh, you would have drowned in Bakelite buttons by now. The fact that he sees your talent for finding things, your instincts for what’s valuable, as important job skills is what’s given you the confidence to move from junk collector to…” Tim stopped.

  “Yes?” Jane asked, waiting to hear Tim use her new professional title of detective.

  “A junk collector who’s about to visit Campbell and LaSalle.”

  4

  When someone asks you for a pen, do you rummage through your purse and come up empty-handed? Do you empty your bag later and find three pens and two pencils, ink dry, leads broken? Wouldn’t one working, well-placed writing instrument be enough?

  —BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed

  “It’s in here someplace,” Jane said. She was searching for a small notebook that she always kept for jotting down items she was currently looking for at sales. She decided to take notes as Tim told her about Glen LaSalle and his partner, Blake Campbell. “Jingle Bells” sounded from somewhere in the bottom of her large, leather bag.

  “Isn’t it a little early to switch your ring to Christmas carols?” Tim asked.

  “Oh, Nick does that. He switches the sound so I never know it’s my phone. I’ll be grocery shopping and the phone will ring and everybody in the produce section is slapping their pockets and digging through their briefcases, and I’ll be thinking, Can’t be me, my phone doesn’t play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and sure enough, when I’m hunting for my checkbook, I’ll find that I’ve missed a message.”

  Jane abandoned the search for her notebook and looked at her phone. It was vibrating as well as playing music. “Nick must have set all systems go,” she said.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, hold on.”

  Jane sighed. Only one person she knew called her on the phone, then sounded so busy and irritated when Jane answered that she was often confused about who called whom.

  “Hello, Mom,” Jane said, even though she could hear her mother talking to someone else.

  Jane’s mother, Nellie, came back on the line. Jane couldn’t prove it, but she thought just maybe the phone vibrated not because of a preference setting but because it was reacting to the dialing style of Jane’s mother.

  “You’re coming home Thanksgiving, right?” Nellie asked.

  “Mom, don’t we have a month or so? Yes, we’ll be there,” Jane said.

  “Yeah, she could bring it then,” Nellie said, but clearly to someone other than Jane.

  “I could bring what?” Jane asked, trying to cradle the phone and talk while removing all the pens and pencils from the bottom of her bag.

  “She sure as hell isn’t going to ask you for food. Remember when you made that pumpkin pie?” Tim asked, laughing.

  “Hey,” Jane said, punching him in the arm, “I used a real pumpkin, not canned. It was special.”

  “Rind and all. God it was vile.”

  “Charley said it wasn’t too bad. He liked that it didn’t come from a can. Besides, the instructions were so frigging unclear,” Jane said, remembering the masses of pumpkin entrails covering her kitchen floor.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s there with you?” Nellie asked.

  “Pumpkin pie and Tim. We’re driving to Michigan,” Jane said.

  “Stop talking while you’re driving. Jesus, Don? Don? She’s on the phone driving her car again.”

  Jane could hear her father’s voice in the background.

  “Your dad says to pull over.”

  “Mom, listen to me. I’m not driving. Tim is. We’re on our way to a furniture place in Michigan. What is it you want?”

  “Furniture place? What the hell do you need any more furniture for? Where’s Charley? Where’s Nick?” Nellie asked Jane, then called to the others in the room, “She’s in a car with that Tim going to Michigan.”

  Nellie had met Tim when Jane brought him home from first grade. It was one of those rare days when Nellie, because of a doctor’s appointment or some other outside force, had left work at the EZ Way Inn before six o’clock at night and ended up at home by four, so when Jane fished he
r key out of her plaid book bag, Nellie was already opening the door. It was a special day when Nellie was home, and Jane could still conjure up the joy she’d felt at having a mom there, in the house, just like on television.

  “Who’s that?” Nellie had asked, jerking her head at Tim, and Jane had told her that Tim was her best friend. Jane remembered that Nellie had been most suspicious. “A boy is your best friend?” Tim had shaken hands, hung up his coat on the peg by the door, and removed his shoes. Nellie, who might write “Catholic” on a form that asked for religious faith actually worshipped only two things—cleanliness and hard, backbreaking work. She watched Tim carefully and nodded.

  Tim walked right over to the cupboard where Jane kept all of her paper dolls, neatly stored by Nellie in the folders they came in. He removed the June Allyson folder and asked, “Should we finish cutting out the hats and other accessories?” Nellie had nodded again, and taken Jane’s coat from her. “We won’t be worrying about that one,” she had said and had fixed them a plate of cookies.

  “Just like on a television show,” Jane said, remembering out loud how much that afternoon resonated.

  “What the hell are you doing with Tim? Where’s your husband and son?”

  “Rockford. Charley’s giving a lecture at the museum there, and Nick went with him. What is it you want, Mom?”

  “Hello, honey,” said her dad, Don, who had picked up another phone. “What’s Charley talking about?”

  “You watch out for that Tim,” Nellie said, ignoring her husband on the extension.

  Jane laughed.

  “I mean it,” Nellie said. “Maybe he’s just been biding his time, waiting for the right moment.”

  “Whoa, Mom, I’m pretty sure about Tim,” Jane said, still laughing.

  “You take canned pumpkin out of the can so it would make sense that you take the real pumpkin out of the shell, right?” Tim said, still reliving the great pie disaster of 1999.