Dead Guy's Stuff (19 page)

He needed some help. He was quick, he was nimble, he had an impeccable eye and unparalleled discipline, but even he, Tim Lowry, purveyor extraordinaire of the fine, the rare, and the cherished, could not be in two places at once. An elegant estate sale in Lake Forest held at the same time as a promising barn sale downstate presented him with a terrible dilemma. Jane had a great eye, although he tried his best not to let her know he thought so. He loved her, he liked her, he trusted her, and, most important, he could train her.
I can get her off the junk— the flowerpots and the buttons— I know I can
, he told himself with the zeal of an AA sponser. He had decided. He'd make a formal offer just before the gala and take her out of the bidding and into his logo.

Tim surveyed the basement recreation room and smiled. It was a teenager's dream. Comfy couches and big floor pillows he had covered with rug scraps, pieces of good Tibetan carpet from an estate sale attic that had been too damaged to salvage for the floor. Lots of low tables and a sweet little refrigerator tucked into the corner stocked with sodas and snacks. This
family
half of the large main room was arranged for cozy viewing and popcorn munching.

Turning into the L-shape that made up the other half of the basement, one entered a time-warped combination of swinging sixties bachelor pad, a wet bar worthy of at least half the rat pack— Sinatra, Martin, and Sammy, not Lawford, Bishop, and MacClaine— and a Las Vegas backroom complete with old felt-covered poker table under a green, glass-shaded, hanging light fixture. Cards were dealt out for six hands of draw poker, and Bakelite chips spilled out of their red-marbled holders.

Jane had left the punchboards Tim had coveted, and he'd hung them over the bar. Chase chrome cocktail shakers, trays with luscious butterscotch handles were piled with bartending guides and canapé recipe books. Glass shelves hung on a mirrored backsplash that held every size and shape of cocktail glass. An oversized deco chrome ice bucket with matching ice tongs and a chrome divided dish that begged to be filled with olives, lemon twists, and cocktail onions sat on the bar. Bakelite dice cups held the usual suspects in Bakelite and bone and specialized game cubes— Put-N-Take and poker dice. A square silver plate held cards printed with HORSE RACE, a bar game where four people picked a different horse pictured and named on the heavy stock, then the bottom half of the paper was dipped in water to "magically" reveal the win, place, and show. Loser paid for that round of drinks.

An ivory-colored plastic box with WHAT'S YOURS? etched on the cover sat open to reveal small, round, colored drink markers to assist the waiter. Roaming through the crowd with his tray, he might encounter a doe-eyed blonde who asked for a rye and soda. Waiter would drop onto the tray a blue disc with rye and soda marked on it. Doing the same for the orders of scotch and soda and bourbon and water, he returned to the bar and the bartender made the drinks to order, clipping the appropriate marker to each glass rim.
Great invention or too much leisure time on someone's hands?
Tim asked himself.

He hit the play button on the CD player, hidden behind a turquoise-and-white late fifties portable hi-fi. Bobby Darrin's voice filled the basement with "Beyond the Sea" and Tim nodded, dimming the overhead fixtures and flicking another switch that turned on the white twinkling bar lights.

"Eat your heart out, people," Tim said aloud. "This party palace is mine."

The doorbell chimed and Tim, for a moment, was ready to go greet a guest and offer a Gibson straight up and pass the cheese puffs. He had regained sense of time and place by the time he got to the front door. A man stood on the porch, one hand in his pocket, the other fingering the ornate brass cover over the mail slot. He was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes. Tim prided himself on being able to guess ages, but this man stumped him. Could be forty, with a few strands of gray and smooth boyish skin. Could be sixty by the way he slouched and selected his clothes. He wore a tan cotton, zip-front jacket and loose, creased pants. His shoes were black and well polished. Tim thought his late fifties, early sixties retro look was impeccable and would have complimented him on it if he had been certain that the stranger was intentionally affecting a retro look.

"I saw the sign," the man said, gesturing toward the McFlea banner hung from the porch roof.

"Sorry, I just hung that and haven't posted the hours yet. They're over there," Tim said, pointing to a wooden sign that would be placed just to the right of the front door. "We're not open until Sunday."

"House for sale?"

"No, it's just been decorated as a show house, for people to walk through, you know, and get decorating ideas," Tim said, feeling pretty certain that this gentleman did
not know
.

"Free?"

"Five dollars."

"Who gets the money?" the man asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Bishop McNamara High School… their scholarship fund," Tim said.

"Be a good moneymaker for you, if you got it," the visitor said.

"Yes. Well, I don't," Tim said. The man seemed in no hurry, content to stay and chat, and Tim was formulating his excuse for closing the door when the visitor straightened, checked his watch, and nodded.

"Thanks, buddy, good luck," he said, and waving good-bye, he got behind the wheel of one of the biggest cars Tim had ever seen outside of his parents' Florida retirement community. There was a university of something decal on the rear window, but Tim couldn't make out the name as the car sped away and careened around the corner.

"Now
that
was odd," Tim said aloud.

As he closed the door, he heard a rattle and crash at the kitchen door. A pot or pan had fallen in the pantry, maybe? Tim wasn't supposed to look at the kitchen yet, but what if something spilled or had been damaged. Jane would want him to investigate, wouldn't she?

At the back door, there was a small entryway they were calling the mud room, although it didn't have the contemporary tract home size or utility. It was a five by seven space where pegs could hold coats and a storage bench would fit to keep boots. Jane had left some of her boxes and bags on the bench earlier, but Tim noticed that they were gone. She must have taken them when she left with Oh. A broom, bucket, and dustpan had fallen down behind the door, accounting for the noise he had heard. Picking up Jane's quaint broom and dustpan, he noticed the Fuller Brush signature on them.

"Nice touch," he said aloud, making a mental note to tell her how much he appreciated the authenticity, and said again, "Nice, nice touch, partner."

* * *

If Jane was going to be introduced as Oh's partner, or "associate," as he called it, she worried that her blue jean overalls might not be quite the professional touch.

"Not to worry," said Oh, "look at my tie."

Oh's wife, Claire, was an antique dealer who rented a stall in a highly regarded Chicago mall. At their first meeting, Oh had told Jane that his wife was responsible for the ties.
They were stunning,
Jane thought,
real finds.
There were many hand-painted whimsies with figures and objects from the forties and fifties, but there were also vintage prints that had eye-popping art deco geometry and color combinations. Today's tie might have been titled "Square Pegs in Round Holes," since that was the repeating design in red and black.

"It's elegant," Jane said. "Your wife has an excellent eye."

Jane wondered if she had ever encountered Claire. Was she the heavyset woman with a ponytail who was always a few places ahead of her in line, carrying two folded canvas bags and smiling at everyone? Or was she the skinny blonde who always piled her stuff under tables and barked at anyone who came near, "That's sold, babe, that's mine. Put it down, sweetie. I bought that." No, Jane refused to believe that Oh's wife fit any of the typical dealer profiles. She was probably one of the more elegant professionals who was called in before the public, found her inventory at the presales that the people in the Friday and Saturday lines always complained about. "Yeah, this place is probably fished out," the grizzled old men and women who wore their oldest clothes and gloves with fingers cut out to ward off the early morning frost, complained to each other. Jane never knew how many presales actually took place. She suspected that some of the grumbling was just part of the ritual of waiting in line. It might scare away some of the amateurs, and it made for good posturing to explain why they might not find anything after waiting so long. They could do the old "I told you so" later as they walked out with their empty bags and boxes and raced to the next address on their lists, rehearsing in the car their bitching about how bad that sale was to discourage everyone waiting at the next.

"When Bill Crandall hired you, did he say why he suspected Duncan's death was anything more than a heart attack?"

"No. He says he has no real reason to doubt the cause of death being natural. That is n't what he wanted me to investigate. He thinks his uncle's property might have been tampered with. Some of it stolen, perhaps, and he wanted me to find out who had come to see him over the last few days he was alive. He seemed to think that his uncle's recent property transactions, like his sale of your parents' tavern, might have prompted some 'funny business,' as he called it," said Oh.

"I can tell you some of the people who visited him on the night he died," said Jane. "My mother, my father, Lilly Duff, the Chinese takeout guy… I think he had a whole parade in and out of there."

"Crandall said he has all the books, the accounts and ledgers, but valuable business papers are missing. That's what he thinks someone took."

"I have some stuff. Back at the McFlea. Scraps of papers and old looseleaf notebooks. Mostly torn-out pages and writing on empty matchbooks. Stuff that looks like sacks of garbage that didn't make it out to the alley. When Tim and I were cleaning, he let me take it with the old, used punchboards and old cardboard coasters and junk," said Jane. "But there was nothing coherent in there, nothing that could be read as business records."

"My wife has taught me never to ask this question when she comes home from a sale, but here I feel I have to," said Oh. "Why? Why would you want what you describe as sacks of garbage?"

"Are you allowed to ask how much?" Jane asked.

Oh shook his head.

"Well, I collect handwriting," said Jane. "It's not as popular as Bakelite bracelets or darning eggs or McCoy cookie jars, but there's something about it I like. I mean, I mostly like written things that make sense, you know, to other people, like recipe boxes filled with handwritten cards or autograph books from the early 1900s, the kind where Alvah wrote to Jessie, 'One if by land/two if by sea/where ere you travel/remember me' stuff like that. Those things I keep intact.

"But I've bought, or sometimes been thanked for taking, boxes of school work that was saved for fifty years in a trunk, old spelling tests and stuff. Once," Jane said, her face flushing with excitement at the memory, "I was at a convent sale. The building had been sold. The nuns had boxed up tons of stuff, just emptied desk drawers and briefcases into boxes and taped the tops over with plastic wrap, then stuck a dollar or two price tag on them. It was heaven. Boxes had old mechanical advertising pencils and key rings and holy cards and letters and notes… all mixed together. One box had a book of lettering styles and a handbook of
Palmer Method Handwriting
exercises with practice pages. Just old fragile notebook sheets with capital Fs flowing over the page. I still get light-headed when I look through the box."

Jane stopped for breath and to peek at Oh to see if he was looking at her strangely. His wife had taught him well. His expression remained one of polite curiosity, which encouraged her to continue.

"I like the handwriting because it's all that's left of some people. All they left behind of themselves. It's so personal— more than photographs, I think. Anyway, I like the way it looks. As art. Or as a graphic design element. I use it on walls sometimes. I love individual letters. Typewriter keys. I have a collection of name pins— you know, mother of pearl pins from the forties that say JANICE or MAY— just because I love writing. The actual words, names, letters written over and over." Jane smiled. "If you come to the McFlea, you'll see it in the pantry. I used all kinds of ephemera, paper and writing stuff, as wallpaper and shelf paper."

"Maybe," Oh began, but Jane shook her head.

"I really didn't see anything that could be put together as business records. Unless he kept notes on the backs of his cookie fortunes. I have some letters I have to read," Jane said, patting her pocket, "but they look like personal correspondence."

* * *

Jane was not surprised to find the EZ Way Inn parking lot almost full. Her parents seemed to have more customers when they were closed than when they were open. She smiled at all the big boats parked there. Most of her parents' friends still drove throwbacks, large comfortable four doors, the kind she and all her friends learned to drive when they were kids. Nicky kept telling her she'd better not have a minivan when he was sixteen or he'd never learn to park, but Jane knew better. The family cars when she was a teenager were as big and heavy as today's omnipresent SUVs. Pulling into her parents' garage at curfew, she always thought, must qualify her to dock the
Queen Mary.