Dead Guy's Stuff (13 page)

"I can explain why I was there," Lilly said. "And I didn't…"

Jane heard a different kind of clicking than her own call-waiting.

"Lilly? Is that your call-waiting? I'll hold," Jane said. The dead silence told her, however, that Lilly had not put her on hold. The screen on her cell phone confirmed it.

"Call disconnected."

15

The three houses that Gus Duncan owned, the ones that locals called the shanties, were lined up, one, two, three on the 800 block of Linnet Street. All three of the houses were the same, small frame cottages with postage stamp– sized front porches. The pointy roof and symmetrical front windows made them look like the models for children's drawings. A pencil scribbling of smoke emerging from a chimney was all that was missing.

Linnet Street was only four blocks long, a zigzag that broke up the monotony of the grid of streets just south of the EZ Way Inn. Jane had driven by the shanties almost every day of her Kankakee life: eyesores, piles of rubble, dumps. That's how most townspeople described them. Gus was clever though. He let the front lawns with their tangled vines and grasses get just so high, just weed clogged enough, littered with just enough car parts rusting in front to annoy, frighten, and horrify the other residents of Linnet Street. When the properties were just a rat hair away from the city being able to start condemnation procedures, Gus would call in a ragtag crew in a pickup truck and have them haul away just enough debris, have them mow the weeds just barely under what was acceptable, and then he'd park his enormous self on a folding chair on one of the front porches and dare anyone to show him written complaints from the neighbors.

At the Jewel that morning, Jane had overheard a checker and her customer talking about how soon the shanties would be torn down. The implication was that a bulldozer had been parked down the block, gunning its motor for years, and now it could do its work.

Jane parked in front of 801 Linnet Street, right behind Tim's Mustang. This was the farthest away from where Duncan had been living at 805. She stood outside her car, leaning back with arms folded, and looked at the three houses. She appreciated the way the town saw them. Rotted-out buildings, barely habitable, and then only by someone like Gus himself. A big storm would knock them to bits. Maybe even a gust of wind. Oh hell, you could huff and puff and blow them down.

But still… Jane pictured them painted, with picket fences and rose bushes that would climb up the wrought-iron porch supports. A fiber mat in front of the door with a hand-hammered metal knocker, the lawn green and mowed, the sidewalk swept, a fruit tree in the front yard. Green shutters lidding the windows. She clapped her hands against her shoulders to wake herself up. She was one step away from scribbling in the wisp of smoke from the chimney.

"I know, I know. You were thinking why couldn't you buy these up and fix them, and I could live in one and you could live in one, and…" Tim stopped. "Who would live in number three?" He stood inside the first house, behind the shredded screen in the front door.

"Tim, where do you get these romantic notions?" Jane asked, all wide eyes and fluttering lashes.

"Yeah, right. I saw you out there, redesigning and landscaping in your head. Your lips were moving, babe. It's your tell," Tim said.

"What?" Jane asked. "I have a tell?"

"When you want something, honey, your lips start moving, like you're reading a prayer book or saying a rosary. At an auction people probably think you're about to have a seizure when a box lot of McCoy flowerpots comes up."

Jane had wondered if anything gave her away. She had noticed all the dealers, the other pickers give in to shakes and shudders and rapid blinking when they saw their oh-so-necessary object come into view. When Charley was looking at rocks and fossils and he started to click his tongue, she knew to start oohing and aahing. When Tim saw his heart's desire, he patted his wallet pocket.

"What took you so long?" Tim asked, pulling her inside the house.

It would have been darker and smellier and scarier, but Tim had already performed the big three. He'd opened all the windows. He'd sprayed industrial disinfectant into every sink and drain. And most importantly he'd set up four of the dozen metal work lamps he'd bought at Home Depot and trained more wattage into the house than it had ever seen. Yes, it illuminated the filth, but somehow the dirt was less intimidating when you could see it— and what did or did not live in it. He handed her thin plastic gloves and a paper mask.

"It's really not so bad. The basement is actually fairly organized. A million boxes, but stacked and marked and fairly dry. That's the amazing thing. Looks like the Kankakee River barely made it into these basements, which is almost impossible to believe. Are you listening to me, dearie?"

Jane took out her cell phone and found a place to plug it in. Her battery had taken a beating in the last hour, and although she had tried to call back all the people whose calls she'd lost or cut short, no one was now available. She needed to talk to Oh, she needed to get back to Mary and Ollie, and she was most anxious about Lilly. She had tried to call her at home and at her tavern, but gotten no answers.

"Is there a working phone here?"

Tim shook his head and handed her his cell. He also checked his ever-present day planner and gave her a third number for Lilly.

"Her boyfriend's? Her brother's? I don't know," said Tim. He had gotten lost counting out place settings of silver.

Jane leaned over his shoulder, breathing heavily. "It's not…?"

Tim shook his head.

They both sighed. Tim and Jane loved hotel silver and serving dishes. Both were mad to get silver from the Hotel Kankakee, long gone from downtown. Jane had managed to find six silver dessert bowls and one larger bowl, a salad, she and Tim had decided. Tim had hit the mother lode at one of his house sales. A former employee of the hotel, Mrs. Slagmore, had been offered much of the merchandise before it was auctioned, and she'd left it boxed and unmarked in her basement. Tim had trays, condiment servers, some silver utensils, and a tea service that Jane would dearly love to claim as soon as Tim acknowledged Duncan's murder. Its book value, however, was a good deal over twenty-five dollars.

"It's hotel, though. Where did Gus…? The monogram is an L," Tim said.

"L?" Jane asked, then smiled. "Pay dirt."

"Yes, yes, yes. It's from the Lafayette Hotel, and there's tons of it." Tim performed a kind of jig around the box. Jane would have described it as an end-zone dance. He had the glee and the stomping feet of a player who had just scored a touchdown, but Tim was no running back. He was just a tall, handsome man with a taste for quality vintage table-ware and whose last name began with L. It was a touchdown
and
the extra point.

Jane walked into the kitchen of Duncan's shanty number one and wasn't surprised to find it as dirty and garbage strewn as the one he had been living in. The quality of chaos was slightly different. Not as much abandoned as ransacked. In fact, as Jane scanned the room, left to right, top to bottom, just as she would at a house sale, she noticed the drawers had been pulled out and barely closed, with some linens still spilling out. Upper cupboards had been opened and the doors left hanging. The pattern of dust was disturbed, too. Fingers had trailed through the grime recently.

"Have you been going through the kitchen?" Jane asked.

"You get first crack at that. You need stuff for my place, right? I mean the McFlea," Tim said.

"How were the doors secured? Regular deadbolt or were they padlocked?"

"The back door, believe it or not, was open. I'm guessing Bill Crandall just left it for me. He didn't have real high hopes for the stuff."

"Who?"

"Duncan's nephew. He owns the places, but Duncan didn't want him messing around here while he still lived at 805. Told me that Uncle Gus was always eccentric and said he had to do some filing and packing, then Bill could do whatever he wanted. Burn the joints down, Bill said. That's what Gus always said. Just burn 'em."

Maybe Gus had started to do some filing and packing in this kitchen.

Jane forgot that she had come in to call Lilly, to try her at this other number, and instead, began going through boxes that had been stacked to the left of the back door. Maybe Gus had emptied some of those cupboards recently and boxed things to move. He had sold all his properties and given the shanties to his nephew. Maybe he was leaving town or at least leaving Linnet Street.

"Tim!"

Tim came in with a large white linen napkin, a large maroon L tastefully embroidered on its corner, tucked under his chin.

Jane was crouched over a wooden crate, squatting in the picker's pose. Tim would have to tell her that pretty soon her knees were going to go. She was going to have to lift those boxes up to table height. After all, she wasn't a catcher who could go nine innings; she was a forty-something whose arthritis was hovering around the corner.

Jane was holding a MORE SMOKES punchboard. Red, white, and blue graphics laid out the rules. Red tickets with numbers that ended in five won five packs of cigarettes. White tickets that ended in zero won five packs of cigarettes. Jane held it up to the dim light of the kitchen. Tim hadn't put any stands of lights here yet, but some sun came through the grimy streaks of the small window over the sink. When Jane held it up, Tim saw that this board had lost value. It had punches pushed out. Jane was twisting it and turning it in the light, looking at the pattern of holes.

"What a pack rat! He saved
old
punchboards, I mean ones that were punched," Jane said, shaking her head.

"Yeah, what a nut!" Tim said, laughing. "I'll just toss it."

Tim tried to take it from Jane, but she gripped it firmly.

"I'll put them in your car, pack rat," Tim said.

"Ms. Pack Rat to you." Suddenly remembering Lilly's call, Jane dialed the number Tim had given her. An answering machine, male voice. Jane hung up.

Tim loaded up the punchboards and several other boxes of kitchenware that Jane wanted to go through at Don and Nellie's. It would be impossible to wash things clean enough in this filthy kitchen to see what they were, to judge their condition. Jane had found some iced tea spoons with Bakelite handles that were charming and pristine, never removed from their box; but for the most part, Gus Duncan's stuff had sat under cobwebs and greasy dust for decades. Jane knew her mother would holler when she saw the dirty boxes hauled in, but Jane also knew the deep satisfaction it would give Nellie to help her daughter clean the stuff. Nellie might not want to accumulate, but she dearly loved to sanitize. Tim was still trying to decide whether they should try to clean one of the shanties well enough to have the sale inside.

The McFlea preview was this weekend; then he turned it over to the ticket takers and tour guides. He could be ready for the shanty sale in two weeks if Jane would help, or so he said. He was toying with setting up a tent in the yard. Both he and Jane were willing to plow through old musty basements and attics, pick their way through rusted hardware and moldy Tupperware, but Tim wasn't sure he could convince Kankakeeans— and the Chicago dealers he might be able to draw if he found anything interesting— into Duncan's caves.

Bill Crandall poked his head in briefly. He shook Jane's plastic-gloved hand, and Jane offered him a pair for his own use. He declined, saying he didn't plan on going through any of his uncle's trash. He just wanted top dollar for it.

"Gus didn't strike me as a man who knew the value of anything he had. He just didn't want to get rid of stuff," Crandall said. He was a big man, too, although much fitter and trimmer than his uncle. There was some facial similarity, but where Duncan was dark-skinned and dark-haired, his nephew was fair and sandy-haired.

"Gus Duncan Lite," Tim said, describing him as they watched him leave in his Jaguar.

"Showy car," Jane said. "What's he do?"

"Told me he was an entrepreneur like his uncle. Owns some properties downstate. Lives in Chicago, some south suburb. Doesn't look like he works with his hands," Tim said. "Did you notice his diamond pinky ring?"

Jane nodded. She had also noticed that his fingernails, neatly and professionally manicured, she was sure, were in need of a touch-up. His white linen shirt was going to need some special attention, too. He might not want to borrow a pair of gloves to do it, but he had certainly been going through his uncle's trash.

Jane made sure that Tim catalogued everything she packed into her car. She knew it all had to be accounted for before the sale. In addition to the kitchen kitsch she wanted to clean and examine, she took the old punchboards. There were at least thirty of them. And a file box full of random papers, old clippings of places for sale, foreclosures. Jane also took a bagful of yellowed sheets, old handwritten papers marked by Tim for trash. She could use the old papers for her McFlea project. Poking around in the bag she saw paper squiggles. Gus must have eaten the cookies that came with his takeout but hung on to the fortunes. Jane smiled— she could use those, too, in the pantry.

Jane wanted to look over some of Gus's scratchings. Were those his rental agreements? On the backs of napkins and matchbooks? Maybe she could afford to keep a place here in Kankakee, store and sell her overflow, stay there when she was visiting her parents and Tim. She'd still live in Evanston with Nick and maybe Charley, if that worked out, if they got through this malaise or cold war or whatever it was they were suffering from. But she'd have this place, too. Maybe that was the key to a good marriage, a healthy family: separate houses. Some happily married couples had separate bedrooms. Some of her own friends and neighbors did, she knew. The bedroom, though, she liked sharing with Charley. That's the room that seemed too lonely as a permanent single. But the kitchen, the study, the living room? Those she might like to rule: alone.