Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) (3 page)

Jane did as she was told. What could have happened? Did a water pipe burst? A fire? Gas explosion?

Jane parked in front of a lawn sign that had been stuck into a large concrete planter in front of what used to be Kresge’s Dime Store.

TODAY’S YOUR LUCKY DAY
read the sign with that same grinning, cigar-smoking face outlined underneath the lettering.

“Today’s your lucky day,” said Melinda.

“How did you know?” asked Jane, thinking somehow she must be sending a picture of what she was looking at. Just how smart was this smart phone?

“How did I know?” asked Melinda, chomping away at what sounded like two stalks of celery. “Find a new place to live, Jane Wheel, because you just sold your house!”

2

“I knew something like this was going to happen,” said Nellie.

Nellie always knew what was going to happen. She’d see someone trip on the sidewalk, two cars crash at an intersection, lightning hit a rooftop, and shake her head.

“I knew that was going to happen.”

During what experts call the “magic years” of childhood, when children believe in impossible behaviors and events, Jane truly thought her mother had special powers. As Jane grew into the less magical years, she grew slightly more judgmental.

“If you knew it was going to happen, Mom, why didn’t you stop it?”

Nellie shrugged. Her powers could not be explained.

When Jane spilled a cup of coffee, ripped the hem of her skirt, or lost her job, Nellie, in the same monotone, would chant, “I knew that was going to happen.”

When Charley left? “I knew that was going to happen.”

And if there was an earthquake on the other side of the world? Nellie knew that was going to happen, too.

From the smallest accidents to the largest acts of nature, Nellie knew.

Five minutes before Nellie made her most recent assertion of prescience, Jane had let herself in to what she thought was her parents’ empty house. Don and Nellie would be at the EZ Way Inn and although the tavern was generally Jane’s first stop, she had no desire to walk into the barroom, make small talk with Francis the bread man or Boxcar or anyone else sitting at the bar, halfheartedly watching the Cubs lose.

Instead, Jane and Rita had walked into the house through the back door, directly into the kitchen, where Jane was examining the contents of Nellie’s refrigerator and Rita was sniffing around for nonexistent crumbs on Nellie’s antiseptic floor. The shelves in the refrigerator, often still referred to as the icebox by both Don and Nellie, were spotless and the condiments were lined up in an orderly fashion, not a drip of catsup, not a dried spot of mustard to be seen. Orange juice and milk standing sentry on the top shelf, butter and eggs in their assigned niches. Dill pickles, olives, and jam in the side pocket. One meticulously rewrapped package of turkey, one package of muenster cheese in the cold drawer, and a loaf of bread tucked into the middle shelf. Jane had the feeling she was looking at a museum display—so clean, so predictable—as if it should be titled “Contemporary Refrigerator” and protected behind two stanchions and a velvet rope.

Yup … all the normal stuff of Don and Nellie’s daily lives … except for the magnum of Veuve Clicquot.

Veuve Clicquot? Jane took out the bottle and studied the label. What were Don and Nellie doing with a bottle of French champagne?

“What the hell you looking for?” said Nellie, in a kind of low growl.

Jane nearly dropped the bottle.

“When will you stop scaring the hell out of me?” said Jane.

“You’re the one snooping. Put down my wine, it’s too early to drink.”

Jane forced her mother into a kind of hug, although Nellie dodged and ducked out of it as quickly as possible. It was highly unusual for Nellie to be home in the middle of the day. Although Jane had never known a germ to dare settle on Nellie—she had never sniffled, sneezed, or missed a day of work that Jane knew of—she did have to acknowledge that her mother was getting older. Maybe she had started coming home for midday naps?

“I came home to mow the lawn,” said Nellie. “Want to do the edging?”

“Thanks for asking, but I have to run over to Tim’s and print out something and then I guess I have to sign it and…” Jane stopped, finally letting it all sink in. She looked at her mother. “I think I just sold my house.”

“I knew something like this was going to happen,” said Nellie. “You’re homeless.”

And with Nellie’s pronouncement, which Jane knew was going to happen, Jane felt herself go a little weak in the knees.

*   *   *

“Do you know how freaking lucky you are?” asked Tim. Although he was phasing out of the florist business, he still operated his estate sale business out of the flower shop, partially furnished with antiques and special treasures from the estates he had helped liquidate for clients. Today, behind the long iron and butcher-block worktable he had scavenged from an old garment factory, Tim looked every inch the florist he was when he had first opened the shop. Wearing a white apron with bits of fern and foliage stuck to it, his workspace was covered with raffia and stems, and his giant coolers were filled with mixed bouquets.

“Last minute favor for a friend,” Tim said, waving his hand in the general direction of the coolers. “Bit of a splashy party and I agreed to do flowers.”

Jane pulled out one of the bouquets for a closer look. It was tied with a green ribbon; a few charms hung from the bow. A four-leaf clover and a fake rabbit’s foot.

“What?” asked Jane, pointing to the bow.

“Lucky charms,” said Tim with a shrug. “Theme party. Here’s your offer. I’ll print it out for you, then you can sign and fax it.”

Jane was silent as she replaced the flowers.

“You
are
going to sign it,” said Tim. “Aren’t you?”

“What’s with all of this Lucky stuff all over town. I saw a bunch of banners across from the courthouse.”

“You
are
going to sign it, right, Janie?”

Jane paced around the office of the shop and looked over Tim’s shoulder.

“How did you get into my e-mail? I didn’t log in yet.”

“Honey, I set up your e-mail in-box, remember? It’s not like you ever changed your password or anything,” said Tim, as the printer started spewing pages. “Stop avoiding my question. You got a cash offer in a rock-hard, rock-bottom market. You’ll be more financially solvent than you’ve been in years.” Tim started picking up the pages and arranging them in a neat stack. “Charlie has a new home in Peru or wherever…”

“Honduras,” said Jane.

“Wherever. And I got an e-mail yesterday from Nick. He’s happy as a clam at school. Loves his classes, likes the kids. He sounds perfectly at home. He’ll be relieved when he doesn’t have to worry about you all alone in that house,” said Tim.

Jane nodded.

“So let’s read this baby over and then sign it. I’m a notary, you know,” said Tim, hunting for something in his desk drawer.

“Why?” asked Jane.

“Because even if it’s the best deal in the world, you still have to read the contract, honey.”

“No. Why are you a notary?” asked Jane

“Why are you avoiding the subject at hand?” said Tim, standing and walking over to Jane. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye.

“I’ll be homeless,” said Jane.

“Nellie,” said Tim.

“What?”

“You’re talking like Nellie. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to sign this deal before the buyer wises up and actually looks at the real antiques in your house—the hot-water heater, the furnace. According to the date on this offer, they want to close in a week if they can. The company’s buying the house for the family and the wife wants their kids in school asap. They’ve been in a hotel in downtown Chicago and…” said Tim, looking for the exact wording from Melinda’s cover letter he’d printed out with the offer, “… the wife wants Evanston, wants your house because it’s a giant corner lot, and she wants the location, both the elementary and middle school districts and plans on redecorating, but slowly, and wants your furniture, all your stuff, beds, bureaus, dining room furniture, all of the big stuff, to use as her temporary furnishings until her decorator takes over and gets in the real pieces she wants.” He scanned down the page. “Listen to this. She told Melinda she thinks your eclecticism is charming, but feels that bringing the house back to a true Arts and Crafts consistency will make it a more peaceful space in which to raise her children.”

“Where should I live?” asked Jane, slowly warming to the idea that she was going to have some interesting choices.

“How about a condo in the city. Make Millennium Park your front yard?”

“Maybe I could find a sweet little place in Lakeview. When Nick’s home, he could walk to Wrigley Field?”

“You could go way suburban, babe. Find a cool little ranch house on a big lot west of the city and fill it up with midcentury modern.”

“Or I could find one of those places off the Red Arrow Highway in Michigan on the lake, a kind of winterized summer cabin,” said Jane. “All knotty pine and Pendleton blankets in the winter … all votive candles anchored in tin sand pails in the summer. Or a little farmhouse with a barn and outbuildings…”

Jane picked up a stack of Bakelite ashtrays from Tim’s desk and separated them, laying them out in a line. Red, yellow, green, black. She restacked them slowly, each one making a kind of sucking sound as they came together.

“I could leave altogether,” said Jane. “I don’t have to stay in the Midwest. I mean, Nick’s going to spend more than half of his vacations with Charley and he’ll be happy to come to me wherever I am, he loves change, and I could pick him up at school and we could go somewhere together and…”

Jane stopped talking and looked at Tim, who had grown completely still. Until Jane started daydreaming, neither of them had ever thought that Jane would leave the Midwest, leave Evanston or Chicago, or be more than an hour or two’s drive from Kankakee. Or the EZ Way Inn. Or Don and Nellie.

“It’s not like you have to decide where you’re going to live right this very minute,” said Tim.

“Of course not,” said Jane.

According to Melinda, although the buyers legally had five days to have their lawyer review the contract and arrange for an inspection of the property after Jane accepted their offer, they had assured her that they had an inspector ready to go, and that the contract review could be done in half a day. The family had moved from a company rental in Dubai and had not owned one stick of furniture in their cavernous house. Now, back in the States, they wanted cozy, they wanted livable, they wanted homey and although they planned to redecorate, some quality they saw in Jane’s house made them want the place. Right now.

Melinda had written that the wife had opened the linen closet, seen the towels and sheets folded and stacked, and told her to write everything into the contract. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker if Jane wanted to take her own linens and pots and pans, but they would pay top dollar to have everything in place when they moved in. Melinda’s words practically vibrated on the page.
You could walk away—just walk away with a giant check in your pocket!
Where Melinda had left a space to
except
anything, Jane printed that she would be taking all of the books in the library and her desk and leather chair and the rug on the floor. Those were the only items she could think of that were special, that she hadn’t already packed up and sent ahead.

Jane signed on the line, as the buyer, accepting the offer and Tim signed as a notary. He scanned the document into the computer and with a few clicks, and a
SEND
, Jane’s house was under contract.

“Tim, with this offer, I could buy all new stuff if I wanted. I mean, I could get stuff that matched and…”

“Way ahead of you,” said Tim, who had already read everything onscreen as it printed out and he handed the pages to Jane. “Look, I know you don’t buy retail, but sheets and towels? We could go to Crate and Barrel and pretend we’re getting married, you know,… go to one of the bridal registry parties they have on Sunday mornings and pick out all the stuff you’ll need.”

Tim was glowing as he described the joy of traipsing through the store before it opened to the public. “And there’s a brunch, too,” said Tim. “We get to walk through the entire store with our coffee and use our own handheld scanner! For what we want our friends to buy us!” Jane allowed herself to bask in the glow for a moment before she reminded Tim that she couldn’t very well pick out furnishings for a new home, if she didn’t have the home first.

“Okay, no rush, though. You can live with me or your folks while you decide.”

Jane took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure she could last more than a day or two in her old room at Don and Nellie’s. And the back room of the tavern would be a dimly lit, grim alternative. Tim had a big four-bedroom on the river. She could camp out there for a few weeks, that was true. It might be fun actually. And there was no better partner for dreaming up one’s home-selecting and decorating future than Tim Lowry.

“Well, our stuff is living side by side in the storage lockers, so I guess there’s no reason we couldn’t give actual living together a try. Besides, as much as I’ve loved all my stuff around me, the idea of starting with nothing and building … rebuilding … has always been appealing. And you know, the whole metaphor of this—Charlie gone from my life, Nick otherwise occupied, just me and now…” Jane stopped when she saw the horrified look on Tim’s face.

What had he just seen on the computer screen? Had he lost an eBay bid on the Art Deco daybed he had his eye on? Did the Kalo bowl he had been visiting online for weeks get sold? Did his favorite
Project Runway
finalist have to clear off his workspace and go home?

“Oh, Jane, I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry.”

“What?” asked Jane. What could be so terrible? “Oh Tim, if you can’t put me up for a while, it’s okay. Did you forget about other company, did you…?”

Jane looked at her friend’s handsome face. His wide-eyed terror had given way to a kind of frantic eye-darting pinball panic. He had turned to the computer screen and was furiously typing. As the soft
tap-tap-tap
of the computer keyboard grew more and more staccato, Jane looked around the shop. All those flowers in the cooler! She knew what had happened. The meticulous bouquets, neatly trimmed and decorated, meant that he had gotten this order, this favor for a friend had been called in. Tim said he had been finishing up everything that morning, tying up bouquets and attaching tiny little lucky charms. In the flurry of activity in the shop, Tim had forgotten his promise to Jane.