Scary Stuff Page 6

  Just as she was getting ready to lock up, Jane went back into her office and picked up her laptop. In case she didn’t find Honest Joe, she wanted to continue to check for his auction listings. Maybe she’d actually have to win the bid on one of his items to see what made people so angry. Since Rita was going to be accompanying her, Jane remembered to throw in a bag of dog food, some rubber toys, and her dog’s water and food dishes, both sturdy hand-painted crockery bowls, one monogrammed rather formally with the name Crooky and the other with a hand-painted Luna.

  Jane had picked them up over the years as part of her collection of personalized pet dishes. She said when she picked up her first, Scratchy, that it was her love of letters and initials and monograms that inspired her to buy dog bowls at garage and rummage sales, usually for fifty cents or less. Once she had them lined up on a shelf in her garage, she had half thought that maybe she would begin acquiring pets and naming them after the dishes. Buttons, Polo, Boopsie, Melville, Dogfred . . . Then Rita wandered into her life, and Jane had immediately called her Rita after “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid,” the Beatles song that had been playing in her head that morning. On her great wall of dog dishes, there was no Rita, so when she realized that the dog was now her dog, she chose her two favorite dishes and let them suffice. Rita never seemed to mind eating and drinking out of Luna’s and Crooky’s old bowls. And using these two made her feel a little more hopeful about this collection, one of her more naïvely sadder accumulations. Jane had been so startled when she heard Nick refer to the twenty or so dishes lined on the shelf as “Mom’s wall of dead dogs” that she asked Charley if he thought Nick was an unduly morose adolescent. Her husband had barely looked up from the papers he was grading.

  “Just realistic. Why do you think people got rid of the dishes?” asked Charley.

  Jane had opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Why had she never thought of that?

  “I mean it’s not like the dogs graduate from high school and go off to college, then the parents downsize, I mean—”

  “I get it, Charley,” said Jane finding her voice. “I just never thought it out.”

  Now, driving down Interstate 57, with Rita, Jane realized that having a dog in the car gave her permission to talk out loud. Perhaps this is why people became dog people—it allowed them to become slightly less dependent on the voices inside their heads.

  “Rita, you should know that Nellie isn’t really an animal lover, so things might be a little tense. Stick close to me, nod your head, and try to pick a seat next to Don so you don’t get swatted every time a stray hair falls off your head. Yeah, shedding . . . try not to do that, okay?”

  Jane sat up straighter and searched the rearview mirror. Rita, eyes wide and staring, mouth slightly open—in disbelief or apprehension, Jane did not know—was listening to every word.

  “A companion who lets me finish a sentence, doesn’t point out my mistakes, and growls on command,” said Jane. “Maybe I am a dog person, Rita.”

  She took the second exit for Kankakee. It was not the one closest to her parents’ tavern, but the route took her through downtown Kankakee, past the court house and post office, past the buildings and stores she remembered from her childhood. She and Tim lamented the changes in their town; they often chanted the names of the places in which their mothers had shopped and got their hair done and where they met their own school friends for movies and sodas on Saturday afternoons. The Fair Store, Jack and Jill’s, Matt’s Toy and Hobby, Carolyn’s Candy Store, Thom McCan, Kresgee’s, Alden’s, Lecour’s, Bon Marche, Samuel’s, Roger’s, the Record Bar, I.C. Drugs, the Kankakee Book Store, the Paramount, the Luna, the Majestic. It was a litany of loss.

  On an impulse, Jane turned off Court Street and drove down Schuyler toward the river. When she got to the bridge, she turned again, planning a drive around Cobb Park and a glimpse at the old houses, the dream palaces of her childhood, one of which Tim was in the process of rehabbing for his own. When she and Michael were young, they had lived within walking distance of this park. She remembered holding Michael’s hand, crossing Emory Street, to get to the playground.

  Here it was; autumn, all gold and orange and crunchy, in Cobb Park, Kankakee, Illinois. Did it get any better than this? Jane parked, snapped the leash onto Rita’s collar—perhaps a bit more clumsily than Miles would have, but she got the job done. She grabbed a few plastic bags, jammed them in the pocket of her jacket, and explained to Rita that it might be better to take care of any business here since the EZ Way Inn stood in the middle of a large gravel parking lot with no grassy nooks and crannies for either comfort or privacy.

  Jane strolled around the perimeter of the park with Rita and ached with that awful sentimental flu that she came down with every fall, every trip to Kankakee. Was it her imagination or was it always October when she visited? She stepped on something and it was just large enough to nearly unbalance her. When she looked down, she saw a buckeye underfoot. She saw another and another . . . thousands carpeted the grass.

  Of course. This was the buckeye tree where she and Michael, bringing those old state-hospital-made baskets from Nellie’s pantry, gathered buckeyes, popping the shiny brown horse chestnuts out of their soft spiny shells. Oh, the satisfaction! And when you got a double? Or one that came out albino white, then turned brown as you held it in your hand? They would gather a basketful, then Jane would count and sort and shine them up in front of the television that night. Don would always select one to put in his pocket as a lucky piece.

  Rita sat as Jane bent over, scooping up the buckeyes. Why were there so many? Didn’t children come and collect them anymore? Jane wiggled her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and scrolled and clicked.

  “Hey!”

  “Michael, you’ll never guess where I am!”

  “Two twenty-one B Baker Street?”

  “Cobb Park, right under the buckeye tree!”

  “Wow! Are there any good ones left?”

  Jane smiled and crouched down next to Rita. “So many, Michael. I’m filling my pockets. I’m on my way to Mom and Dad’s, but I just stopped here . . .”

  “Yeah. Send me one, okay?”

  “Thanks so much for a great visit, Michael. I won’t let that much time go by, okay, I’m sorry if I haven’t—”

  “Honey, everybody gets busy. Life. Q misses you. She told me that ‘you get her,’ ” said Michael, laughing. “I told her she’s ten and not old enough to be misunderstood yet, but she seems precocious. Just like you.”

  “I better go. I’m on the trail of Honest Joe. You be careful, okay?”

  “Do what you want, but I didn’t say I’d pay you, right?”

  Jane clicked off and put the phone away.

  The Kankakee River sparkled, the leaves glistened, the air was crystal clear, warm with only the slightest whiff of the coming winter. Jane could feel her brother’s hand in hers, could feel the weight of the baskets that they carried home. She stuffed her pockets with buckeyes and stood up.

  “My brother is not a crook,” she told Rita. Jane knew now, in this magical childhood spot, that it was true. Whatever those baseball cards meant, whatever they were doing snuggled up to Q’s stamp collection, they had nothing to do with the whole Honest Joe mess. “Right?” Jane asked her dog, who was showing remarkable composure as squirrels ran here and there, gathering, sorting, hoarding, and providing the stalwart Rita with nonstop temptation.

  * * *

  Even though Jane had brought Rita along for protection, she decided to leave her in the car when she parked in front of Edna’s Diner on Herscher’s main street. She had originally planned to stop at the EZ Way Inn and head to Herscher on Saturday morning, but fired up by a conversation with Michael and possessing the good luck of a fresh buckeye in her pocket, she decided she could spare an hour to ask questions in Herscher before she herself was grilled by Nellie in Kankakee.

  There was only one customer at Edna’s lunch counter and the tables were empty. The waitress was try
ing to hustle the man, tapping her foot, snapping her gum, and gesturing toward the clock on the wall.

  “We close at two today, same as always, Bill. Finish that coffee and giddyap,” she said. Looking at Jane she added, “Cook’s gone. No more orders.”

  “Just wanted to ask a question. Do I keep heading east on seventeen to get to Kankakee?” asked Jane.

  They both nodded and Bill added, “There’s back roads, too, but that’s the quickest.”

  Jane nodded and thanked them. She then took out her cell phone and scrolled through her pictures, stopping on the one she had taken of Michael at the airport before she left. It wasn’t a great shot, but it was clearly his face.

  “Hey, do either of you recognize this guy? I think he lives here or used to live here . . . ?”

  The waitress shook her head, and while old Bill leaned in for a closer look, she took the opportunity to steal his cup and saucer.

  “Looks like Jim,” he said.

  “Jim who?”

  “Jim Speller. Looks like him. Can’t say it’s him, but it looks like him,” said Bill. “That’s my daughter, I got to go.”

  A truck had pulled up next to Jane’s car and honked. The woman driving waved and smiled at Bill.

  “Do you know where I might find him?”

  “He lived there all his life,” he said, pointing to a dark gray frame house with a mansard roof across the street. It was a hard house to miss. Every window was plastered with black cats, grinning jack-o’-lanterns, and witches. Cobwebs were strung on either side of the broad porch and a life-sized—or death-sized, to be more accurate—mummy sat on a wooden folding chair next to the front door.

  “That Halloween house?” Jane asked.

  “Haunted house, that’s right,” said Bill.

  Jane watched Bill climb into the truck. She thanked the waitress who came out of the kitchen, jacket on, key in hand. They walked out together.

  “Know anything about the people who live in that house?” asked Jane.

  “I guess they like Halloween,” she said. “I’m not from here, but one of my customers said they always fixed it up every year, but she was surprised that Ada did it up this year. Edna heard her and said the only thing that would surprise her is if Ada didn’t fix it up. They argued back and forth about Ada for a while.”

  “Why?” asked Jane.

  “I don’t know. ’Cause she’s so old, I guess.”

  Jane didn’t have much of a story ready for Ada or Jim, if that was who Honest Joe really was, but she was here in Herscher and the information had come so easily, she had to take advantage of the opportunity. Wouldn’t Detective Oh tell her that she should just approach and ask questions that made someone want to tell her the truth? And didn’t she want to clear this mess up?

  The porch stairs creaked with her every step, and if the house hadn’t been so obviously rickety, she might have thought it was a recording of spooky sounds, part of the elaborate holiday décor. There was a doorbell, but an old rag had been hung over it. She lifted the heavy brass knocker shaped like an owl. She could hear the sound echo in the house. She knocked three times. Jane thought a curtain fluttered at the window and she straightened her shoulders, trying to not look like anyone dangerous or selling something. No one answered. She felt something rub her ankle, making her skin prickle, and she looked down to see a cat rubbing against her shoe. Not a black cat, but a large tiger-striped male. She felt her eyes well up and itch just looking at the animal. Why did cats always sneak up on those who were the most allergic to them?

  Time to go and take Route 17 east to Kankakee, to the EZ Way Inn. She’d return tomorrow as originally planned. Hurrying to get off the porch, Jane stuck her hand into the cobwebs and shivered. They felt like the real thing.

  6

  “Where the hell is that dog going to sleep?”

  “Hi, Mom,” said Jane, bending to kiss Nellie’s cheek. Jane knew that people got smaller as they got older. Nellie had started out small, though, and Jane had a disturbing image of one day arriving at the EZ Way Inn, and tiny old fist-shaking Nellie would hop into her pocket.

  “Janie!” Don, who had started out big, was holding steady. He bear-hugged Jane, and despite his claims of arthritis and aging, she felt as if he just might lift her off the ground.

  “Welcome back! Got some pictures of Q and the baby?” Don asked. “And what about the movie? Are they going to make that movie about you?”

  Jane was not much of a photographer. She caught the occasional Nessen-designed lamp on her cell phone camera to send to Tim and she had remembered to get a photo of Michael’s face, but those recognizable images were the exception, not the rule. Even when she remembered to bring the higher quality camera that Tim insisted she carry, she usually forgot to use it. Luckily, she had a DVD of photos from Monica that she could show her parents. After a slide show on the new laptop Oh had insisted she should have, she’d make the prints Don wanted so he could pin them up on the EZ Way Inn bulletin board, next to the sign-up sheet for the bowling league and the final results of last summer’s Wednesday golf league.

  “Pictures back at the house. I have to show them to you on my computer,” said Jane. “And no movie, I’m afraid. Free trip to California, but no Hollywood movie deal.”

  “I told you so,” said Nellie. “Just like them trips to Florida where they make you go get your picture taken looking at apartment buildings. They fly you down there, but then lock you up with salesmen in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Not exactly like that,” said Jane, “since I was—”

  “Yeah, I know. Aggie and Willy went on one of those things, said they never even got to see the ocean.”

  “This was—”

  “Did you see the ocean?” asked Nellie.

  “No, but—”

  “Yup. You want soup? I saved you a piece of coconut cream pie.”

  Jane sat at the almost empty bar. She didn’t know the two men finishing bottles across from her. A group of six women drank coffee at a table in the dining area next to the barroom.

  “Isn’t it late for them to be at lunch?” asked Jane, checking the large old jewelry-store clock hanging over the door. Almost four. Since the Roper Stove factory had closed across the street, Jane wasn’t even sure where these women had come from. These days, Nellie served lunch sporadically, made soup when she felt the urge, and ordered a pie or two from the local bakery when the spirit moved her. Jane noticed today that Nellie was wearing an apron and still washing bowls and plates. It almost looked like the old days—postlunchtime rush—after they had served hundreds of hamburgers, Polish sausage sandwiches, and bowls of soup in a thirty-minute time span.

  “Don’t you know those girls?” asked Nellie. “That’s Christine and Zarita and Joyce. That there’s Swanette and I don’t know the other two names, but they all used to come in every day. They loved my vegetable soup.”

  “Those girls are about eighty years old,” whispered Jane. “They’ve been retired for decades. Are they ghosts?”

  “Funny,” said Nellie. “You’ll be old someday, smarty. They’re having a birthday party for Christine and they wanted to have a reunion here. Called me and asked if I’d make vegetable soup and get some pie. They’re having a really nice time, too.”

  “You remember the girls, don’t you, Janie?” asked her dad.

  Jane did remember the office girls, as they had always been called. When she was around Q’s age, she had begun working summers at the tavern, helping cook and serve and wash dishes in the heyday of serving the Roper boys, as they had always been called. The office girls had always left her a tip. Jane rushed to serve them and clear their dishes, and under the coffee cups and saucers she had always found dimes and quarters. Since no one ever tipped at the EZ Way Inn, this was an event, and Jane always offered the money first to Nellie who would shake her head and refuse it.

  “They left it for you. I don’t get a tip when you’re not here. It’s yours,” said Nellie. “Put it in your
bank at home.”

  Jane watched the women for a moment, talking and laughing, probably telling stories of their days working for the vice presidents and sales directors and whoever else held the white-collar jobs across the street. She had to say hello.

  In that short walk from the bar to the table, Jane felt herself grow younger and younger, until she was, once again, a shy ten-year-old. She didn’t want to interrupt what appeared to be an intimate and happy party, but she had to greet these women who had been the career women of her childhood. They had dressed smartly and worn their hair in the latest styles. Even Nellie had been respectful, deferential, and that was such a rarity that Jane had put them on an even higher pedestal.

  “Miss Munsterman?” asked Jane. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

  “Janie, oh my, Janie!”

  “Look at Jane!”

  They fussed over her and made her feel even more like a child, which was far more enjoyable than Jane would have imagined. Christine, who had always been the ranking member of the group, serving as secretary to the factory president, took Jane’s hand in hers. “You know, dear, I was feeling pretty young until I saw you all grown-up.”

  The girls laughed and demanded to know about her life and Nick, whose picture they had already noted on Don’s bulletin board. Jane filled them in on both husband and son. Zarita then asked about her career. Don had bragged to them about her successes in business up in Chicago.

  “I worked in advertising as a creative director. It was great fun, but . . .” Jane hesitated. A feeling of gratitude for these women who had been such unknowing role models washed over her. She didn’t want them to know how disillusioned she had become in the business world, how she had one day been valuable and cherished and the next, downsized and out, how it had never been quite what she had expected.