Scary Stuff Read online

  She was so different from her mom, who was tall and blond like Q. Aunt Jane was small with short dark hair that she always messed up with both hands when she talked about stuff. She got excited and danced around a lot, too. She wore lipstick, but no high heels even though she was short. Q thought this made her brave somehow. Her other aunts wore high heels and took small steps. Aunt Jane bounced when she walked and seemed like she was always ready to run off and do things. Q was going to be just like her when she grew up. Except she would be taller, and blond, of course.

  “Is everybody in this state a natural blonde?” Jane asked, pulling Q’s ponytail and looking around as they were seated at a table in the middle of the large dining room.

  Monica laughed. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? You’re an exotic creature here, Jane. By the way, any seafood dish here is terrific.”

  Jane ordered a Grey Goose with extra olives and Michael, in a whisper, ordered Pinky on the rocks for Monica and himself.

  “What’s a Pinky?” Jane asked.

  “Scandinavian vodka—too pretty, too precious, but once you taste it . . .” said Michael.

  “He hates to order it, though,” said Monica, laughing.

  “True. I hear Nellie barking in my head every time I ask for it. ‘Pinky? Pinky? What the hell’s a pinky? We don’t serve no pinkies here.’ ”

  “A friend of mine from college came in with me once and he wasn’t a drinker. Asked for blackberry brandy and Nellie looked him in the eye and said, ‘No blender drinks, buddy.’ Scared the hell out of him,” said Jane.

  “Must have made it hard for you to bring boyfriends home,” said Monica, “Nellie being such a character.”

  “Yeah, the only way I got to stay in touch with old Blackberry Brandy was to marry him.” Jane laughed. “I figured if Charley could be a good sport with Nellie from the beginning, he was the one to hang on to.”

  “Will you get oysters, Aunt Jane?” asked Q.

  “You like oysters, Q? At ten? Man, I had to be old and drun . . . drug by the hair to try them.”

  “I like the shells. And once my aunt Sherry’s boyfriend found a pearl in one of his oysters and he got to keep it.”

  The waiter arrived with Jane’s Grey Goose and two pale pink cocktails for Michael and Monica. He also placed a juice concoction with a multifruit garnish hanging off the edge for Q.

  Jane tried a sip of Monica’s vodka and, in spite of her EZ Way Inn indoctrination against anything trendy, fussy, or pastel, she nearly swooned at the delicate hint of strawberries and clean finish of the vodka. As loyal as she was to Grey Goose, she had a feeling she might just have to step out with Pinky now and then, if she could find it in Illinois. She had a feeling this ethereal drink just might be one of those Californian mirages. Maybe she could find a bottle to bring home to Tim. He had tried to woo her away to Cîroc. Now she would tempt him with Pinky.

  Jane’s pleasant vodka reverie was interrupted when a group of men emerged from what appeared to be a private dining room opposite their table. They were holding unlit cigars in one hand and cocktails in the other. The waiter was explaining that he was arranging a spot in the garden where they could smoke. From the expression on his face, Jane assumed the waiter would prefer to tell them to go home and smoke up their own spaces. This party of men must have some kind of clout.

  “Jane, before they go out there and poison the garden, come with me to see it. It’s one of our favorite spots. You’ll love it, lots of garden antiques and stuff—right up your alley,” Michael said, pushing back his chair and jumping up to hold his sister’s chair.

  “You have lovely manners, Michael. Really, you do,” said Jane. She knew where they came from, too. Despite all their complaining about Kankakee and being raised at the tavern, Jane pretending to hate it and Michael truly disliking the place, they had both learned their manners from Don and Nellie. Something about the customer always being right or respecting their elders or some old-world politeness of Don’s—whatever it was, the two of them had learned to say please and thank you, to listen when people spoke to them, and to hold the door for the elders. Don had always treated Jane like a young lady, holding out her chair for her, taking her heavy book bag from her when he picked her up from school. Nellie liked pulling out her own chair, carrying her own heavy packages, so Don gave her a wide berth. But with Jane and Michael, the manners had taken hold.

  Just as Jane was about to ask Michael about his last conversation with their parents, one of the cigar smokers approached them. He was listing to the right, and Jane wasn’t sure whether he had had too much to drink or whether he was just physically and perhaps permanently off balance.

  “I thought it was you,” he said, coming up within twelve inches of Michael’s face. “You crook. You cheat.” He spoke low and fast. “I can’t do anything about it right now, but I know a lawyer who’s going to help me, and if he can’t, I’ll beat the—”

  “Hey,” said Jane, “who are you?”

  At the same time, Michael shook his head. “I’m not who you think I am. Look at me.”

  The garden was lit by gas torches and Michael stepped closer to one, his face clearer than it had been in the twilight. “Please,” said Michael, “look at me. I’m not your guy.”

  The stranger stepped back and stared directly at Michael, ignoring Jane, who was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, readying herself for a fight. Michael might be taller, but he was younger and if she had to protect him she would.

  “God, I’m sorry, man. That is so weird.”

  “Weirder for me,” said Michael. “The last time it happened, the guy said he was going to have me killed, then he looked at me in the light and said I wasn’t who he thought I was.”

  “Nope. You haven’t got his eyes, but out of the light, you look just like this other guy. Can I buy you a drink or something?”

  Michael shook his head and stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings.”

  “What the hell was that?” said Jane, watching the man return to his buddies and light up his cigar.

  “I don’t honestly know, but that’s the third time it’s happened. Six months ago, I was in Columbus, Ohio, for a conference and a guy comes up and shoves me into a table and says he’s going to rearrange my face for breaking his wife’s heart. Monica was with me . . . first time she had left the baby overnight. I had begged her to come for the weekend, just a little break for us. And this freaked her out so badly she almost flew home that night. The guy apologized, said he believed me that I wasn’t the guy, but that I looked just like this crook. I wanted to ask him about it, but Monica was crying, and by the time I got her calmed down, the guy was gone.

  “Then about six weeks ago, I was in L.A. for a meeting, and this guy comes up to me on the street and says he’s going to kill me. But then he looks me close in the eye and says, you’re not Joe, are you? He believed me right away when I said I wasn’t and he said he was sorry. I asked him who the hell Joe was, and he kind of laughed and said the kind of guy you don’t want for a twin, and he just took off. I didn’t tell Monica then and I’m not telling her tonight, so . . .”

  “I won’t mention this,” said Jane, “but—”

  “What?” asked Michael, pointing out two vintage urns overflowing with bird-of-paradise.

  “You’ve got to find out who Joe is.”

  “My wife and daughter are in there, and Monica has been out of her mind superstitious since Jamey was born. I’m not doing anything right now, except ordering a great dinner for my sister. Okay?”

  Jane nodded. “Order for me. Take liberties. I love everything. I’m going to stop in the ladies’ room.”

  “I’m so glad you finally came out here, Jane,” Michael said, giving her a quick hug.

  Jane did go to the ladies’ room. She applied fresh lipstick and ran a hand through her hair. Then she returned to the garden and approached the cigar smokers, hoping that the skirt and sweater that Tim had selected as her “dress-up” L.A. outfit was as
“hot” as Tim assured her it was. Jane knew that “hot” at her age probably translated to tepid at best, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to make a favorable enough impression on the man who had threatened her brother.

  “Excuse me, may I have a word?” Jane asked.

  “Change your mind about the drink?” he asked, stepping away from his companions, blowing a smoke ring.

  “Thanks, no,” said Jane. “I just wanted to know more about this guy Joe, who people confuse with my brother. Who is this man?”

  “People tell me I’m stupid to trust the Internet anyway, but I’d never been burned before, I always say. But this guy, ‘Honest Joe,’ sold me a bunch of phony stuff, then wouldn’t return my money. No returns, no Joe. Seemed like he was selling bunches of stuff for a while, then poof. The guy disappears from the site. . . .”

  Jane felt the man steaming up as he spoke of the incident.

  “My brother looks like Joe? And Joe runs an Internet scam?”

  “Oh yeah, but his eyes are way different, and he’s different when I looked close at him. But from far away . . . I mean, I memorized what this guy looks like . . . but it would be weird out here and all.”

  “Why?” Jane asked, shrugging away the hand he rested on her shoulder. The lack of balance she had noticed before she now saw was directly related to drinking. He was beginning to slur his words.

  “Old Joe lives in the Midwest. Sent him checks to some godforsaken little town in Illinois.”

  “What town?” asked Jane, holding her breath for the answer.

  “Something with Can . . .”

  “Kankakee?” asked Jane.

  “No. What’s a Kankakee?” He stepped back, tripping a little, and then he regained his balance. His friends had risen to leave. One went inside to pay the check and the others drifted toward the parking area. “Name was like some kind of candy, I think. You know, it wasn’t the money. I got the money. It was the principle of the thing. People don’t cheat each other that way. Maybe they do, but I’ve never had trouble. Not in my dealings. This guy is just a jerk, that’s all.”

  His friend gave him a wave from the parking lot but Jane blocked his view, then put her hand on his shoulder and turned him toward her.

  “What was he offering? Real estate? Property or vacation homes?” Jane racked her brain for some kind of Internet scheme that could provoke the victims to become violent. “Was it stock of some kind? Oil leases? What was it you were buying from Joe?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and gave it to Jane. The light was dim in the garden, but Jane could make out that he was a general contractor. He put his hand over his mouth and shook his head.

  “Don’t tell those guys, okay?” He leaned in close enough for Jane to smell the last whiskey sour he had downed.

  Jane crossed her heart and sealed her lips.

  “Roseville,” he whispered.

  “Pottery?” asked Jane.

  “Like my grandma had.” He rocked back and forth on his heels and pinched out the lit end of his cigar with stubby fingers. “I’d kill for Roseville.”

  2

  The food was as promised—California cuisine at its best. Fish barely out of the ocean, vegetables just pulled from the garden outside. Even the garnish was flawless; edible flowers and herbs meticulously tied into what was supposed to look like careless mussy-tussy bouquets. Jane slurped her oysters, sauced with a light tamari, after Q carefully checked each one for a hidden pearl. Michael poured three different wines, all heavily recommended by the sommelier, all from leading California vineyards.

  Jane kept mum about the man who mistook Michael for Joe, as also promised, but she allowed herself to study Michael, to reacquaint herself with her brother’s face, staring at him as often and as deeply as she could during dinner.

  She and Michael shared some similarities, she knew. Their jawline followed the same genetic map, and when they smiled, they both revealed Don’s strong even teeth. They were aging similarly, too, around their mouths—tiny lines that disappeared with grins—but their eyes were completely different. Jane’s were such a dark brown that they often appeared black. Michael’s eyes were a light gray that one would remember as blue if he wore a blue shirt like the one he had on this night. But if he had chosen an olive sweater? His dinner companions would swear that Michael’s eyes were sea green.

  So why had the stranger, whose name Jane knew was Ralph Mowbry from the business card he had given her, been so sure that Michael was not Joe. Just by eye color? A changeable characteristic in so many faces?

  “Do you really have a tower of cigar boxes up to the ceiling, Aunt Jane? With something different in each one?” asked Q. “Daddy said you did, that you had them since you were my age.”

  “I do have a lot of them,” said Jane. “And I keep old checks and receipts for some of my things in them. I guess a few have some shells, and there’s one with some carved-bone buttons.” Jane partially closed her eyes and pictured the stack of El Producto and White Owl boxes in the northwest corner of her office. Box by box, she thought about their contents, which she knew by heart. “Fourth one from the bottom has keys and key chains, fifth is Bakelite advertising mechanical pencils, six through ten hold receipts from house and rummage sales for some furniture, and—” Jane stopped and glanced at her niece who looked enraptured. Jane saw that her sister-in-law, Monica, looked, in equal measure, horrified.

  “They don’t reach quite to the ceiling,” said Jane. Scrupulously honest, at least to a child, a blood-related child at that, Jane added, “I do have very low ceilings in my office.”

  “How does Charley—” Monica began to ask.

  “Put up with it?” finished Jane, tearing off a bite of expertly seared tuna.

  “I was going to say ‘feel about it,’ but I’ll settle for ‘put up with it,’ ” said Monica.

  “He has a study filled with rocks and picks and books and field guides. He understands the tools of the trade, so to speak. He’s got an eye for the object that tells a story, holds a key to history,” said Jane. “And he travels. A lot.”

  “What does Nick collect?” asked Q.

  “Fossils, like his dad,” said Jane, “not that his dad is a fossil, you understand, and let’s see, baseball cards, like your dad . . .”

  Jane looked up from her perfectly browned potato quenelle just in time to see Michael wince.

  “Oh no, Michael doesn’t collect anything,” said Monica. “He told me how your mom threw out his cards and his gloves and souvenir programs and everything else and how free and unattached he became to objects. Q is the only collector in our house and I’m hoping she’ll outgrow it.”

  Monica, whom Jane had always believed to be genuinely kind and she knew to be flawlessly polite, had drunk one more Pinky than she usually consumed. It brought her to the brink of the kind of honesty that people were able to avoid in everyday life. It delighted Jane that she was a few Grey Gooses behind, so that instead of leaning forward and confiding, girlfriend to girlfriend, that Michael was indeed hoarding baseball cards in the back of the drawer of their coffee table, she could enjoy watching Michael squirm and accept Monica’s disapproval of her own hoarding habits with amused goodwill.

  “Be careful, Q. Not only did I not outgrow it, my stuff has practically outgrown me! That’s why I had to go into business. If I find stuff for other people, it helps me thin out my own herd.”

  Q shook her head, her mouth full of pommes frites. “What herd?” she managed to get out.

  “Okay, let’s say I like crocheted potholders—”

  Q shook her head again. “What’s crocheted?”

  Jane was going to have to educate this girl on her own turf—that much was clear. How could someone, even a Californian ten-year-old, not know what a hand-crocheted potholder looked like?

  “Okay, sweetie, let’s say I like salt and pepper shakers,” Jane said, placing the restaurant’s fine vintage crystal shakers with sterling silver tops in front o
f Q. “If I have a customer who really likes shakers, who has a giant collection, and who will pay me to find pairs of them that she doesn’t already have, I have all the fun of finding them, of hunting them down, and then the collector pays me more than I paid for them. That makes it easier for me to let them go. I’ve collected them . . . I own the hunt . . . I just don’t have the shakers on my shelf anymore.”

  Q shrugged. Jane thought she knew how Q took in this information. Sure, sounds reasonable enough, but if you keep the shakers, you own the hunt and you own the stuff. Jane knew that was the trouble. Jane hated to give up the stuff. But she was learning. Tim was teaching her to trade up; swap four or five of the most desirable white McCoy pottery vases for one small, stunning piece of Weller or Hampshire. That was the road Tim was trying to put her on. Jane looked at Q who was cheered by the arrival of dark chocolate mousse served in a candied-orange shell. It was difficult to not want the hunt, the stuff, the shakers, the McCoy, and the Weller. And the Hampshire. Jane shrugged, too, picking up a spoon. And the mousse.

  After they all had tasted the airy chocolate and an apple tart served with a wedge of locally made cheddar so sharp it could break your heart and a banana-caramel bread pudding, Michael wanted to order brandies all around, but Q was sleepy. Monica was slightly flushed and seemed as if she could be persuaded to go in either direction—home to bed or out to the garden for brandy and cigars. Michael had all his wits about him, but he had polished off the last of the wine, and noting Q’s fade from miniature adult into sleepy-faced child, he was ready to go. Jane had stopped after one drink, barely sipping the wines Michael had ordered and coaxed her to try, so she asked if Michael would like her to drive.