Buried Stuff Page 8

  Don held firm. He had, after all, signed the contract. And they had moved to Western Hills Drive, into a three-bedroom ranch house with a cornfield just beyond their backyard. Like right here at Fuzzy’s, Jane thought. And on moving day Jane prepared to hate it all, but was caught totally off guard when Roger Groveland had ridden up on his blue Schwinn and asked what grade she was in. They had been best friends in fifth grade, but due to the immutable laws of middle school, were unable to speak full sentences to each other during the next three years. They had gone to different high schools, but occasionally ran into each other. Adult Roger had stopped in the EZ Way Inn every month or so for a bowl of Nellie’s chicken noodle and an update on what Janie was doing in the big city. Roger, Jane now remembered, had worked for a local real estate office and, according to reports from Don after chatting over lunch, done well for himself.

  Hank Bennett fidgeted with his own name tag, lifting it slightly from his blazer that he now put on. Carrying it over his arm had been a mistake, thought Jane. It was what had made Munson so angry at Bostick. Without that ugly green jacket, Henry “Hank” Bennett had no business on the property. Bennett lifted his lapels and straightened his jacket, again fingering the name tag as if to make it clear that he was a Realtor, if not the Realtor that Munson had expected, and he was there to help sort out whatever needed sorting out.

  “I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear who I was,” said Bennett, as much to Jane as to Munson, whose face he seemed to want to avoid. “I had an early appointment at the office, so I answered the phone when the policeman called.” He straightened his shoulders.

  “That wasn’t Roger Groveland,” said Jane.

  Munson looked annoyed. “Oh no, Mrs. Wheel?”

  “No,” Bennett chimed in. “Rog is dead.”

  Munson’s annoyance went from a simmer to a medium flame.

  “I mean, Rog died about, let’s see, six, almost seven weeks ago,” said Bennett. “Heart attack. Sudden.”

  “No?” said Jane.

  “Oh yes, very sad,” Hank said, shaking his head. “His wife had left him a few years ago, moved away. Niece came to town and took care of everything, had a house sale for the contents—Irene hadn’t left him with much—then she listed the house with me. Still available. Nice potential there, if you’re looking,” he offered.

  “Bostick!” Munson shouted and turned away from Jane Wheel, and Jane saw what she might have thought of as impossible, a man cowering away from and running toward someone at the same time. Poor Bostick. Jane could hear Munson lambasting him about the identity of the victim. Bostick, however, frightened as he might be, had had no reason to doubt the name tag, as it was affixed to the blazer, which seemed to fit the gentleman. No wallet, no other identification, which didn’t seem unusual to Bostick. If the man was being robbed, of course his wallet would have been taken. Munson, in a quiet but deadly voice, suggested to Bostick that most muggings did not take place in a cornfield and perhaps the victim’s identification should have been backed up with more than a plastic ID tag before he turned in the name to Munson.

  Munson turned on Hank Bennett.

  “If that isn’t Groveland, who the hell is it?”

  “I have no idea, Detective Munson,” said Bennett. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “I don’t know why someone would wear a stupid green blazer unless he had to, that’s for damn sure …,”said Munson. “Sorry,” he looked at Bennett, who seemed to take the blazer slur somewhat personally. “It’s been a confusing morning. I apologize, Mr. Bennett. I appreciate you coming over and I hate to ask you to take another look, but we need to make quite sure that this isn’t an employee of K3 Realty who might have pulled the wrong jacket off the hanger at the office.”

  “Impossible,” said Bennett. “We take our jackets home. There are no mix-ups at work.”

  Charley came over from the shed where he had gone to check out the rest of the findings from the dig. He placed an arm across Jane’s shoulders and touched his forehead to hers.

  “Sorry about your friend, Roger. When Bostick told me who it was, I recognized the name. I told Detective Munson that you knew Groveland.”

  “It’s not Roger,” said Jane.

  “Nope,” echoed Henry.

  Charley look puzzled, then smiled faintly. “Well, I guess that’s good news in one way, honey. About Roger.”

  “No.” Jane, always aware of the inadequacy of language to communicate, felt like she was falling in a hole. “Roger’s still dead. He’s just not dead here.” Jane pointed to the cornfield. “I mean there.”

  Munson told Bostick to take Bennett to the cornfield. Munson wrote something down and followed them, looking back and holding up a hand to Jane that seemed to mean he’d be back in one finger’s time and that she wasn’t to wander off.

  “The man out there was wearing Roger’s blazer,” she whispered, “but Roger died a few months ago of a heart attack.”

  “And Bostick is catching hell for the bad ID?” asked Charley.

  “I’m not sure that Henry ‘Hank’ would have been invited in just yet if they hadn’t believed the murder victim was associated with the real estate company. Munson is pretty grouchy about the number of footprints he’s dealing with here already. He doesn’t want more than those his people have invited in to trample the evidence.”

  Charley was nodding as Jane talked, but she noticed his attention drifting down toward the cornfield.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Otto,” he said.

  “Are you sure it’s the same skeleton?” Jane asked.

  “Yeah. I heard someone out at the shed. I thought I heard footsteps, so I got up to see if you were trying to make it to the outhouse by yourself. I saw a flickering light by the shed, you know, a flashlight or a lantern, and went over there, but I didn’t have a chance to figure out what was missing.”

  “When did you go to the outhouse? After you had been to the shed?” Jane asked.

  “No, I …,”said Charley.

  “It was before?” Jane asked. “That timing doesn’t …”

  “I just saw you walking down the path and followed you. I didn’t know what you were doing, thought you might be walking in your sleep.”

  “I wish I was,” said Jane. “Anything else missing from the table over there?”

  “It was a mishmash of stuff, Janie,” said Charley. “There was the cat, and the old tag, and some interesting stones and pottery shards. There were two bottles. Things aren’t arranged the same way on the table, but I’m going to have to go over the list with the professor from the junior college. If they let him in,” Charley added, “or if they let us out.”

  Jane’s gaze followed Charley’s. The long drive up to the farmhouse was blocked at the road by two police cars. Jane was trying to decide whether or not Munson would take it as a personal affront if she went into the house to check on Nick before she was officially dismissed, when she heard a tinny-sounding bell. She was ready to dash back to the cabin, thinking it was her cell phone, newly tuned to some obscure melody by Nick, who would claim he just wanted to keep things fresh for her.

  It wasn’t her cell phone, though, or anyone else’s. It was a pre–cell phone alert, a bronze triangle hanging from the willow outside Fuzzy and Lula’s back door. Lula had carried out a huge basket of something and was using a metal stick to ring the triangle and shouting for everyone to come and get it. If there hadn’t been a dead man who wasn’t Roger Groveland laid out in the cornfield, Jane might have found it somewhat amusing and maybe even ironic that dozens of police officers were looking back and forth from Munson to Lula, who was luring them with the most deadly of threats to their well-being and professionalism.

  “Doughnuts, boys! Fresh hot doughnuts,” Lula sang out. “Come and get ‘em.”

  Apparently Munson decided he wouldn’t risk mutiny by denying his men a doughnut break, but he didn’t indulge himself. Jane wandered over to the large tray and helped herself to the shaker of powd
ered sugar Lula had thoughtfully set out next to the still warm rolls. Jane didn’t want the extra sugar, but she lifted the shaker above her head and read the mark on the bottom, UPICO, the signature of Universal Potteries. It was in Eleanor Blue with the circus decal. It wasn’t particularly rare, but Jane admired the utility of it, the heft of its rounded shape in her hand, the warm, safe feeling it gave her to see it being used, the knowledge that it had probably been in constant use since Lula’s mother had ordered it seventy-five years ago from the Sears catalog. Instead of gathering dust in an antique mall or displayed in some retro kitchen, all kitsch and irony, here it was, doing what it was meant to do. Continuity? Was that what Jane admired? Was it what she thought might rub off if she acquired enough stuff with the mojo of home and hearth? Would it protect them all? And what was it she thought she needed protection from?

  “Quit Bogarting the sugar, baby, some of us want what’s inside of that quasicollectible,” said a familiar voice.

  “Tim?” Jane turned to see Lowry balancing a cup of coffee and a plate with three doughnuts. “How?”

  He took the shaker from her and liberally sprinkled his breakfast, smiling. “I’ve got my ways.”

  Tim explained between bites that he had been at K3 Realty when the call had come in. The real estate company was one of the sponsors of the Twin Gazebo Garage Sale, and Tim had been there using the street directories and making copies.

  “At six A.M. on a Sunday morning?” Jane asked.

  “I haven’t got much time to put this thing together. There weren’t any good sales this morning,” he said, taking a large bite of doughnut. “You know me—my inner clock is permanently set at four A.M. on weekend mornings to get me first place in line at the sales. But Sunday mornings aren’t as good as they used to be. So I told Hank I’d like to work there as early as he was opening the office, and he said he had a crack of dawn meeting.”

  Tim told Jane that Bennett had gotten flustered at the call and said that he could drive himself out to Fuzzy’s, then realized that his wife had dropped him off and he didn’t have a car.

  “I thought you might need me, Nancy Drew,” said Tim. He had driven Bennett, but he had laid low in the house, talking to Lula and Fuzzy about what they might offer for sale if they decided to come into town and take a table.

  “Munson, you may remember, isn’t my biggest fan, so I decided not to …”

  “Get in his face,” Jane finished, a cloud of powdered sugar now between them.

  “Something like that,” said Tim. “How would you price this shaker?”

  “Twenty dollars,” said Jane.

  “You’d better be a damn good detective because you’ll starve as a picker,” said Tim. “No one would pay that.”

  Jane started to say something but stopped.

  “Right, I know,” said Tim, “you would. You’d pay twenty.”

  “I look at it this way, Tim. I just bought a stainless steel sugar shaker at a fancy kitchen store, and it cost over twenty dollars. Don’t make that face, I did,” Jane said, knowing Tim didn’t believe she would ever wander alone into a housewares department anywhere and buy any item retail. He had seen her hyperventilate in a Target more than once.

  “Lula’s little ceramic one here has character and stories and is as cute as can be. Why wouldn’t I pay the same price for it? More even?”

  “Number one, it’s in the blue, which is a common color. If it had the same decal and was in red, maybe you could go ten, but that’d still be high. You wouldn’t buy it for twenty, honey, because you’re in the business. You don’t pay retail, especially not highend retail. You can find another one. And it will be cheaper. So you move on quickly to find it,” said Tim, his mouth full of fried dough. “And number two, why were you buying a shaker for powdered sugar. You open a can now and then, but you never bake.”

  “I cook,” said Jane. She took the last two doughnuts on the platter to bring in to Nick. “The shaker was for Nick. He makes pancakes and the powdered sugar gets all over, so I bought the shaker. It made the kitchen seem more organized.”

  “Yeah, honey. That’ll do it,” Tim said, and laughed. He brushed his hands into the air and wiped his face with a yellow-and-green paper napkin from the crocheted holder Lula had set out. He waved as he stepped off the porch. “I’m going to see Charley and take my chances with Munson. Let’s try to get out of here to do garage-sale canvassing ASAP, okay?”

  “Eleanor,” said Jane.

  “Who?” asked Tim.

  “The color is called Eleanor Blue. I know it’s the most common color,” said Jane. “But it’s the prettiest,” she added softly, since Tim was already out of earshot.

  When Jane dropped off the plate for Nick, he was half awake on the couch. Lula had tucked in even more crocheted covers over him, and he looked like a caterpillar wrapped in a brightly colored acrylic cocoon.

  “Anybody fill you in yet, Nicky?” Jane asked.

  Nick shook his head no, blinked, and stretched. “But I’m thinking that all those police cars in the driveway mean something happened out there. Is Dad okay?”

  Jane nodded, considering her son. He had those big, brown, anxious eyes that seemed so familiar. Where had she seen them? Oh, yeah. Mirror. Okay, but there were so many things about her son that she didn’t recognize. He was calm, efficient, graceful, although he wouldn’t like that word. He had Charley’s stance and Charley’s scientific reasoning. Charley’s hair, she thought, brushing it out of his eyes. She only got to make those motherly gestures when he was still in the throes of sleep. As he became more and more alert, he stood taller and taller, out of her reach.

  “Mom, did you find a, you know … another body?” Nick asked, trying to scoot up into a sitting position, but straitjacketed by granny-square crochet.

  “Dad was right behind me,” Jane said. “We practically found it together.”

  Nick nodded, an odd expression on his face. Jane tried to do a quick calculation of how much of his college fund they would have to use on therapy and the most cost-efficient use of the money. Would it make more sense to let the money keep earning interest so it would be available for adult psychiatry or should they chip away at the savings and the neurosis they had bestowed upon their boy by signing him up for weekly sessions now?

  “So you and Dad are in this one together, huh?” Nick asked, grabbing a doughnut, blowing some of the sugar into the air between them.

  Jane nodded. She guessed they were.

  She promised to find Nick some milk while he unwound himself from the blankets. She warned him that Munson would want to ask him if he had heard anything, what time he had gone to sleep, all the usual questions. Nick waved her away. “I watch Law & Order, Mom,” he said. “I know the drill.”

  Jane had often felt like she was being watched. Not paranoia exactly. No one stalking her or keeping any kind of Hitchcockian tabs on her behavior, but a feeling of being watched onstage. What was the movie about the guy whose life, it turned out, was a soap opera? A television show? She hadn’t thought much of the movie as a movie, but she had certainly gotten the premise. Jane had thought it might have been because she had worked in advertising, producing commercials, that she was obsessed with seeing her life unfold as if it were on camera. But since leaving the business, she realized it was not a hazard of her profession, it was an epidemic that would overtake the twenty-first century. It had certainly gotten a head start in the good old twentieth.

  Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame? Sort of. But it was more than that. People felt that their most private moments were now the fodder of the public. Oprah might have backed out a bit, but she was in on it at the beginning, that’s for sure. To her credit, she seemed to have caught on and had the guilt-ridden decency to cut it out. But Jerry Springer and the string of no-names who had offered the masses a public forum for airing their worst selves? What would be next? Shows in which people manufactured falling in love, fought over money, strapped on lie detectors, let bugs crawl over their
faces. Well, yeah. Jane had feared she was on “reality television” long before the term had been invented and now lived with the fear that somehow her thoughts about it had been revealed in the program of her own life.

  Could she be responsible for creating reality television? More important, could she borrow some money from Nick’s college fund and get the psychiatric help she needed?

  Bottom line here: Did she want Nick to know the drill?

  “Janie, we’ve got ourselves some excitement, don’t we?” asked Fuzzy, who was sitting at the kitchen table when Jane came in after explaining what she knew to Nick. Fuzzy had poured nearly half of his coffee into a saucer to cool. For a moment Jane’s eyes misted over. These days, everyone drank from coffee mugs. One seldom saw actual cups and saucers in use. She remembered, as a child, watching her dad pour the coffee out of his cup into its matching saucer, explaining to her that he did it to cool it off. Then he’d pour it back into the cup and drink it down. Why in the world did this scene make her so nostalgic, so emotional? Would a professional be able to explain it to her? Would he or she say that she channeled fears and anxieties into a kind of therapeutic nostalgia? Maybe Nick didn’t need to go to college. He was pretty savvy, might get a scholarship anyway. And she needed the money right now to get a psychiatrist on retainer.

  “Fuzzy, have you talked to the police yet?” Jane asked.

  “Nope. Can’t get anybody to talk to me or tell me who shot Johnny,” said Fuzzy, carefully lifting the saucer and pouring the liquid back into the cup.