“Anyone here could have written that note,” said Jane, reclaiming the floor. “You’re all artists and copyists to a certain degree. Anyone could have gotten a piece of Blake’s stationery and written a letter that implicated Blake.”
Jane did indeed have everyone’s attention now. She felt the change in the air. Up to now, she was pretty much saying things that they found interesting, plausible, if somewhat surprising, but now they might be implicated. Everyone here had a stake in protecting Blake’s name, protecting Campbell and LaSalle from scandal and murder.
“Who did it?” asked Blake. “Who forged that letter?”
“Oh, Rick did that himself,” said Jane. “I found a piece of paper he’d practiced Blake’s handwriting on. He was using it for a bookmark.” She looked at Oh, who nodded very slightly. “Yes, Rick did it and showed it to Roxanne and Glen. He thought it protected him if he was your boy.”
“Wait a minute,” said Blake. “You were willing to protect me?”
Glen started to shake his head, muttering again about what a dumb shit Blake was. Jane thought she heard him say just another dumb, handsome blond and something about the ego of the guy.
“You were willing to protect me, cover for me?” Blake asked Roxanne. The Campbell and LaSalle residents were all looking up at him, nodding dumbly, hopefully. Would this movie they were watching have a happily-ever-after ending?
Blake nodded with them for a few seconds, then said, equally quietly, “But you believed I was a murderer?” He went over to the sideboard and poured himself a tumblerful of expensive brandy.
“I’ve lived with you people off and on for thirty years. You’ve been my family. And you believed I asked someone to kill a person?”
Blake looked over all of their heads and past their eyes as best he could until he was meeting Murkel’s steely blues. “Well, Officer Murkel, I didn’t kill anyone or ask anyone to kill anyone, but I’m afraid I can’t vouch for anyone else here. I realize I don’t know everybody as well as I thought I did.”
“Poor baby,” said Glen. “Poor Blake. Has your innocence been shattered? You think everyone just loved you and thought of you as the grand papa of this place? At least I didn’t have any illusions about everybody. We were a meal ticket, and a damn fine meal ticket.” Glen looked back toward the dining room table. “Right, Silver? And our fine residents? They were slave labor. And they were getting sick of it, right, Scott?” Glen asked. “It was getting harder and harder to keep up the work standards and the reputation of Campbell and LaSalle. We had created a whole commune of spoiled, pretentious brats and not one of them had a health plan or job security. Anyone here would have protected you because they didn’t want this place to go up in smoke or down in flames, whichever you prefer. Your little game of beat the masters was going to cost everybody. Hell, Geoff and Jake are the only ones who have a business of their own outside of this place, and everybody made fun of them, right? Workaholics, right? Instead of an alcoholic like Scott or a pothead like Mickey?” Glen wasn’t yelling anymore. He sounded exhausted.
“So you did it?” asked Blake. “For Campbell and LaSalle, Glen? You killed Rick?”
Jane realized that this was what Oh had warned her about. If you let these climactic courtroom scenes play out, the guilty might never confess. They don’t think they’re guilty because they did the right thing. That’s why the world needs detectives, Jane realized. It’s what Oh had been trying to teach her. If they weren’t around to make sure the guilty got discovered, things might wind around and around until the wrong person put a noose around his own neck.
Glen had buried his head in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking. Anyone would think he was crying, his whole body racked with sobs. When he lifted his head, though, he was laughing. “No, you dumb sonofabitch, I didn’t kill Rick. Until a few minutes ago, I thought you had done it and were just too dumb to shut up about it. I just figured you were showing off—one more demonstration of the master’s hand.”
“My turn again?” asked Jane.
In the dead silence that greeted her question, Jane looked down again at her objects to be discarded à la Belinda—as soon as they stopped standing in for her suspects.
“Before dinner, I went out and looked in the window at the barn. Rick Moore had been up in the gallery library reading. The murderer went in and opened up the kind of eye-burning solvent that Rick would recognize and know was dangerous. The fan was switched on, blowing the fumes right into his face from below. He would be too blinded and disoriented to find his way down the steps and directly out the back door. Instead, once he stumbled down, he’d try to push open one of the windows. But he couldn’t. He might have even moved over to the next one and tried to push it open, but he couldn’t open that one either. By then, it would be easy to lead him out the back door to the stream and hold his head under for a minute or two. As soon as he took in a couple lungsful of water, all that was needed was someone to come along and find the body.”
“Why couldn’t he get the windows open, Nancy Drew?” Tim asked.
Jane unrolled her fist and held it out. In the middle of her hand were the objects she had selected from her bag to represent Roxanne: two nails, the nails Roxanne had left on the table after replacing the hanger for the mirror in the dining room—one a contemporary two-inch nail and one an antique, square iron nail.
“He couldn’t push them open. The only person who had a twenty-first-century hammer and a handful of smooth, round nails had hammered them shut.”
20
If by now you have not learned that less is more, there is still hope for you. Sit in your most cluttered room, surrounded by your most superfluous objects. Begin again with chapter 1 and this time, pay attention.
—BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed
The room had cleared quickly after Murkel took Roxanne away. She had not offered even one word of protest. She smiled at Blake; then she was gone. Then everyone was gone. Jane’s phone had rung once more, and it was Nellie. Jane handed the phone to Tim, who made his static noise and hung up. Now Claire and Oh, Tim and Jane sat in front of the fireplace one last time, Tim pouring one more round of strong morning coffee for everyone.
“How are they all going to face each other again?” asked Jane. “Blake was defrocked as the high priest of antique integrity, revealed as a dangerous prankster. Glen’s a mean, jealous cynic who called everyone out. And Roxanne, the one person who made this place run, who really gave to it instead of taking from it, is going to jail.
“Alcohol, food, drugs, work,” said Tim. “Eventually, sex. They’ll medicate for a while, then some project will come in or some new hotshot artist will arrive to give a master class in inlaid veneer or something, and this will all fade away.”
“Good work, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. “I knew Blake Campbell didn’t know what had happened, but I wasn’t sure who did. I always think the person who does the bookkeeping, the paperwork, is a good suspect, but I didn’t have the final…”
“Nail in the coffin?” asked Tim.
“If I hadn’t held on to these nails, I’m not sure I would have known it was Roxanne. When I leaned against the window frame, I saw and felt the holes where the nails had been hammered in. I realized that they were smooth, round holes and that the nails would have had to be removed quickly. I know those square heads are tricky to get out, and Roxanne was the only person at Campbell and LaSalle who had modern nails and a simple claw hammer to get them out fast.”
“You don’t seem to be that happy about solving the crime,” said Claire, brushing off more tree-house debris, leaves and twigs, from Tim’s sweater. She had felt more than vindicated when Jane revealed that the drawers had been switched. She had been sure she wouldn’t have missed such obvious phonies when she’d originally brought home the chest from the estate sale.
“I feel sorry for Roxanne,” said Jane. “She ran this place, probably loved it more than anyone, and was trying to preserve it from an unscrupulous man.”
“Aha,” said Oh, “as I said, she had nothing to feel guilty about so why would she confess? She had done something noble.”
“Right,” said Jane. “She had put on a mask and goggles and sent toxic fumes into a man’s face, then led him to water and held his head down until he drowned. I know she’s not a saint, but it’s…” Jane noticed that Bruce Oh seemed to be smiling at her. He was actually giving her a genuine, lips curved upward, slight, but unmistakable, smile.
“It’s complex,” she finished.
Jane and Tim drove home later that morning. Neither one of them wanted to spend another minute in the cabins at Campbell and LaSalle. Jane had very little to pack, and because most of Tim’s clothes had been loaned out, neither did he. She did put back all of the objects into her tote bag, and when Tim reminded her that she was supposed to be getting rid of them to make room for her Moonlight Market purchases, she shook her head.
“Maybe later,” she said. She fished out the Moore Push-Pin Company tin from her Moonlight Market shopping tote, put the two nails inside, and dropped it into her bag. A new talisman to keep, to add to the wrinkled buckeye and the EZ Way Inn key rings.
Tim said he felt wide awake and didn’t mind driving. Jane said she, too, was bursting with energy and curled up in the front seat, closing her eyes.
In and out of sleep, Jane kept hearing Belinda St. Germain’s voice in her ear. All of the snippets of Overstuffed that she had tried to absorb between meals and tree houses and chemical solvents and furniture hoaxes floated through her brain, leaving her feeling much more cluttered than she had two days ago when she had vowed to remake her life.
“Why was that again, dear?” asked Tim. “Why are we doing the topsy-turvy?”
“Because I’m a bad mother. I lost Nick’s permission slip.”
“No, Jane, you’re not a bad mother, you’re a distracted mother. And even if you got rid of every McCoy flowerpot in your house and every pair of Bakelite dice and every advertising thermometer, you will still be a distracted mother. They’re the best kind.”
“Yeah, right,” Jane said, yawning. “Like Nellie, she was always distracted, and she was terrific. A regular mom and a half.”
“Hey, can you imagine if she wasn’t distracted? If she’d used up all that manic crazy energy watching and following you around all the time?” asked Tim. “You’d be a basket case.”
“Like I’m not,” Jane said, slipping away into sleep.
“No, you’re not,” said Tim. “And besides, all that manic chatter is helpful. Nellie got you thinking square pegs in round holes, and that got you thinking about the nails, and you need all that stuff in your head and in your house. There’s nothing you have to get rid of. Sometimes, darling, less is just less,” Tim said, and reached into Jane’s bag, pulling out her copy of Overstuffed.
Tim took his eyes off the road just long enough to glance at the author’s photograph on the book jacket. “Holy shit, she looks like Martine,” Tim said, and shuddered. “That’s all we need, another life coach, Janie,” he said, nudging her. “Janie, wake up for a minute.”
“Yeah?” Jane asked. “I’m awake,” she said, not opening her eyes.
Tim pushed the button on his door that rolled down Jane’s window.
“Honey, you’ve got a great husband and son and friends. You’ve got to stop worrying about all the wrong stuff. Throw this out your window for me, okay?”
“Okay,” Jane said, tossing Overstuffed onto the shoulder of the road.
“Feel better? You’ve gotten rid of at least five pounds of useless clutter. That’s the stuff that needed to go. Right?” Tim asked.
“Yes, five pounds,” murmured Jane.
“Atta girl,” Tim said. “You got it.”
“Okay,” Jane whispered. “Got it. Got Charley and Nick and you and Don and Nellie and Oh…”
“Quite a cast for a dream,” said Tim, smiling.
“Got it,” Jane said, still sound asleep. “Got all the wrong stuff.”
“Right stuff,” said Tim.
“Right stuff,” repeated Jane, smiling at a dream just beginning to form at the edges of her sleep.
Also by Sharon Fiffer
Killer Stuff
Dead Guy’s Stuff
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my family—my husband, Steve, my first and best reader, and our children, Kate, Nora, and Rob, who provide witty commentary as well as the patience necessary for having writer parents. To the following, my sincere thanks for wonderful friendship as well as various forms of expertise: Judy Groothuis, Dr. Dennis Groothuis, Chuck Shotwell, Lynn Shotwell, Cas Rooney, Lauren Paulson, Michael Swartz, and Sheldon Zenner. Thanks to Gail Hochman for being a writer’s best friend. Thanks to Kelley Ragland and Ben Sevier at St. Martin’s for asking all the right questions (providing more than a few answers, too), my copy editor, Marcy Hargan, and thank you, Anne Twomey, for designing such knockout covers.
Note
Two authentic Brewster chairs with excellent provenances are known to exist. The chair built by Armand LaMontagne is still owned by the Henry Ford Museum and is often loaned to other museums for exhibits on fakes and forgeries. There are no known Westman Sunflower Chests; however, I suggest we all keep our eyes open.
THE WRONG STUFF. Copyright © 2003 by Sharon Fiffer. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fiffer, Sharon Sloan, 1951–
The wrong stuff / Sharon Fiffer.—1st St. Martin’s Minotaur ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-312-31414-9
1. Wheel, Jane (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. 3. Antique dealers—Fiction. 4. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 5. Suburban life—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.137W76 2003
813'.54—dc21
2003047025
The Wrong Stuff Page 23