Dead Guy's Stuff (22 page)

When Jane looked back in the barroom to where Crandall had been sitting, she was surprised to see he had changed his shirt. She blinked, squinted, and looked again. No, it was now Bobby Duff sitting there.

"Where'd Crandall go?" Jane asked.

One of the police officers gestured toward the men's room.

Jane went over to Bobby Duff, not knowing what she was going to say, even when she opened her mouth.

"Lilly… I'm so sorry. I wish she could have waited…," Jane stammered.

"Waited for what?" asked Bobby.

"For us to find out who killed Duncan and took his records. We're going to make all of this stop," Jane said.

The brick that Don had used to punctuate his conversation with Crandall still sat on the bar. Bobby picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It began to hit him, hard, that his sister was gone. She wasn't going to get him out of trouble this time. He knew Jane Wheel was still standing there, maybe waiting for him to say something. He hadn't blackmailed anybody yet; he had just thrown a few bricks. It wasn't too late to get out of all this.

"I'm sorry about the window. Lilly told me not to do it," Bobby said.

"Do what?" Jane asked.

"I thought I could take over the blackmail. I knew your dad and mom and lots of people went to see Duncan the night he died. Me and Lilly, too. We didn't kill him," Bobby said. "I wanted to help him with the business. I thought I could collect for him and stuff. He laughed and said anybody could have these suckers. Nobody would find his records, he said. So I got to thinking I could pretend to have the records. Who would know? Everybody'd been paying the bastard for so long without any proof…. It was stupid. I took the bricks out of the basement and tossed them because Don and Nellie had called that meeting about not paying anybody anymore. It was so stupid. Lilly told me it was."

Jane couldn't stand how young Bobby looked, how his hair fell into his eyes. He sounded no older than Nick. She looked at his hands, now stroking the rough brick and, without thinking, asked the question that had just popped into her head.

"When your dad died, when he committed suicide, Bobby, who found him?"

"Benny," said Bobby. "He tended bar for us sometimes. Came over a lot and cooked for us, hung out and watched television with me sometimes. Told me my dad had asked him to look out for me if anything ever happened to him."

"Was your dad depressed, you know, before?"

"Drinking more. Sad. Kept saying he didn't care about anything in the world except my mom; and if she was gone, why shouldn't he give it all up."

Oh had come over to listen.

"Give it all up? What did he mean?" asked Jane.

Bobby shrugged. "Kill himself, I guess."

"Did you see him?"

"Benny wouldn't let me. Said there was too much blood, and I should remember him alive, not like that."

"Blood? Didn't he asphyxiate himself?" Jane asked, forgetting that she should be sparing Bobby the memory.

"Yeah, but he had cut himself trying to attach a hose to the tailpipe. Benny said…"

"Yes?" Oh asked, fully engaged.

"Benny said he had cut his finger clear off," Bobby said, shuddering. "Said it was a wonder he could get back into the car and turn it on since he was practically bleeding to death."

21

Don called Jane and Oh over and gestured to the list of Duncan properties. He pointed to the Amos Auction House and said they had found the garage apartment had an unlisted number that matched the number from where Nellie had called.

"It's only about ten blocks west of here," Jane explained to Oh.

"How do you plan on going in there?" asked Don. "You're not using sirens and all? They could get scared and…"

"We've got an unmarked car on the way," said one of the Kankakee officers who had given up on questioning customers. "We're heading over for backup."

Don shook his head as they went out the front door. "Francis, tend bar for me. I'll be right back."

"No, Dad, we'll go," Jane said.

Detective Oh was standing next to the men's room. When he pushed the door open, hard enough to break through the flimsy lock, Francis jumped.

"What the hell's going on in here, Don?"

The window was wide open, the screen lay on the floor.

"Mr. Crandall decided to leave us," Oh said, looking out the window.

"Stay by the phone, Dad. Mom might call again. Call my cell phone with anything you hear." Jane hugged her father. "And keep Bobby Duff here. I don't think he has anywhere to go, but it won't hurt to keep his glass filled."

Jane and Oh went out the back door, but Jane stopped short.

"They took my car," she said. "I'll get my dad's keys.

Before she could reenter the EZ Way Inn, Tim pulled into the lot. If they had rehearsed the pickup, it couldn't have worked better. Oh slipped into the backseat, Jane into the front.

"Amos Auction House, Tim. They took Nellie."

"Who took Nellie?" asked Tim, already backing out of the parking lot.

Jane looked at Oh, who held his palms up. "I don't have names, I'm afraid."

"The bad guys," Jane said.

"Of all the times I imagined myself in a detective movie," Tim said, "all the chase scenes I pictured myself in, all the secret missions where I played hero, I never once imagined rescuing Nellie from the bad guys. This scene will not be appearing in my fantasy, I'll tell you that."

Tim spent almost every weekend scouring Amos Auction House for bargains. He knew about the apartment over the garage and also knew there was an access road behind the main auction hall. As they approached the property, Oh pointed out the unmarked police cars parked on the road, watching and waiting. No one was rushing into anything, since the Kankakee police didn't know exactly what the kidnappers wanted from Nellie or had wanted from Jane. On the way, Tim told Jane and Oh about his visitor at the McFlea.

"At first, I didn't think it was that suspicious— you know, somebody just checking out the banner and all— but the noise at the kitchen door, the broom falling… I checked around the back porch and saw a cigarette butt thrown down, still lit, fresh. So I figured someone had been in the back while Mr. Curious talked to me at the front door."

"Was he driving a big car?" Jane asked.

"Pale yellow yacht. You know, he was one of those retro-looking guys who isn't really retro. Skinny tie with a windbreaker type."

"They were looking for the stuff I brought from Duncan's— and Bateman's for that matter. There were no
records
in the
records,
so they think there's something valuable in all the paper scraps," Jane said.

"Wasn't there anything that could be a file on someone? You'd want initials, maybe. Dates? Amounts of money?" asked Oh.

"Nothing," said Jane. "The only things remotely mysterious were the fortunes from fortune cookies. It just seemed odd that he'd save those."

"Some kind of code?" Tim asked.

"Totally random," Jane said. "Factory printed with no notations on them."

Tim drove past the main driveway into the auction house and circled around the back, parking behind the large garage and storage area. There were outside stairs leading to the apartment over the garage space. Jane's car was nowhere in sight, but they all knew it could be parked inside one of the three garage bays.

The realization that Nellie was being held by the bad guys was starting to sink in. Jane had managed to deny the worry and fear in order to function efficiently, but now the repression of those fears was turning into anger. Who were these guys— these gamblers or collectors or whatever they were— to come down to her town and grab her mother?

Jane started to get out of the car, but both men protested.

"You can't just waltz up the stairs," said Tim. "You're Nancy Drew, not Rambo."

"He's right, Mrs. Wheel," said Oh.

"Is there a way into the apartment through the auction house?" asked Jane. "That back door is wide open."

A truck driver was wheeling crates on a dolly into the wide back doors of the Amos Auction House. They had driven past the sign when they were turning into the access road. SALE ON SUNDAY NOON— PREVIEW 9:00 A.M. DAY OF SALE. The merchandise was arriving.

"There are inside stairs right next to Amos's office. They must go up to the apartment or to the hall right outside of it," Tim said.

Jane was out of the car before either man could stop her. She walked in alongside the ramp from the truck to the doorway. Tim and Oh rushed to catch up.

Jane wasn't quite sure her plan would work. Actually, she wasn't quite sure she had a plan. Her mother certainly hadn't sounded scared on the phone; but then again, she wouldn't. Did it mean they didn't have guns, weren't threatening? Not necessarily. It would just take more than kidnappers to ruffle Nellie. Her fearlessness might work to her advantage, or, Jane thought, it could really piss these guys off. Didn't bad guys become bad guys so people would take them seriously? These were men who probably worked as enforcers for Chicago gamblers, who, if they hadn't killed before, at least had hacked off fingers. Jane crossed her own and hoped that a plan would materialize as soon as she saw her mother, as soon as she saw that Nellie was all right.

* * *

Nellie was more than all right. Nellie was on top of the world. She had found a roll of duct tape in a kitchen drawer and, after rinsing all the lunch dishes and wiping off the stove, she took the tape and scissors over to the couch where Mel and Frank slept like bad guy babies.

It hadn't been that hard to put these two to sleep, not for someone who watched as many cops and robbers shows as Nellie. She'd found a prescription bottle of Valium in the bathroom cabinet, crushed the tablets into the scrambled eggs, making sure she had loaded the mess with plenty of fried onions and bacon to mask what she assumed would be a medicinal flavor. She sauteéd mushrooms she had found in the refrigerator and splashed in as much wine from an opened bottle on the counter as she dared to boost the pills. She wasn't sure exactly what Valium did, but she had watched enough episodes and reruns of
Dallas, Dynasty,
and
Melrose Place
to recognize the name of a downer when she saw it. She also figured if these guys had been snooping around town on some kind of job, they probably weren't sleeping that much. They asked her to make coffee, and she found a bag of decaf in the freezer and used that instead of the can of regular on the counter. She had always believed, and told the EZ Way customers, that if real coffee woke you up, decaf must put you to sleep.

Stuart had put Mel and Frank in charge while he went down to the garage to search Jane Wheel's car. They had thrown into the trunk the bags of Duncan's stuff from the McFlea that Frank had snagged while Mel kept the pretty boy busy, plus there were boxes Jane had been driving around with. Maybe something of Bateman's was in there, Stuart had told them. Nellie knew it was just luck that Stuart wanted to do the searching himself since she hadn't been able to slip anything into his poached eggs. He was hurting, Nellie could tell that. She found Mylanta in the bathroom, and thought about emptying a few Valium capsules into it, but realized if she offered him something for his heartburn, he might realize she had looked in the medicine chest and put two and two together. No wonder Jane had such a glow lately… this detecting stuff was okay.

Mel and Frank were happy to relax on the couch while Nellie tidied up. Asleep two minutes after Stuart went out the door, Nellie gave them five more minutes, then approached with tape and scissors.

Feet together first, she figured. Even if they woke up, they'd fall if they tried to get her, so that was the best place to start. She taped their ankles as tightly as she dared, then for good measure, taped each pair of feet to a leg of the couch. She taped Frank's hands next. Easy, they were folded together in his lap. Just for fun Nellie made a final loop that went around his neck, picturing him yanking his hands and nodding like a rocking horse.

Mel's arms were spread out wide, one hand fallen off the back of the couch and the other on his knee. She studied him and decided it would be safest not to try to get them together. She wound duct tape around each hand, making big steel gray paws. Couldn't do much without fingers and thumbs working, could he? The paws still seemed potentially dangerous, so she connected each hand to his head, figuring that pulling on his hair would hurt enough to at least slow him down. A final duct tape square over the gaping mouths, and her work was done.

She called Don and whispered that Stuart was down in the garage and he had a gun, but Mel and Frank were taken care of.

"Nellie, get the hell out of there!" Don shouted, adding, "And be careful."

"Yeah, yeah."

Outside the door, Jane whispered to Tim, who swallowed and nodded. Oh watched the stairs behind them. Jane knocked boldly and gestured to Tim to start talking.

"Mr. Amos, where do you want those armoires unloaded? And how about that Empire chest?" Tim said, in a voice an octave below his normal register.

"Shush," said Nellie, opening the door, "you'll wake up the dead."

"Mom, you didn't…" Jane said rushing in, trying to hug her mother who ducked away, "you didn't kill these guys, did you?"

"Could have," Nellie said. "Let's go. Your dad's about to blow a gasket."

Oh got on his phone to the police downstairs. Nellie gave him a description of Stuart, right down to his navy blue jacket and polished black loafers.

"Walks bent over a little, like he's got a stomachache," Nellie said.

"Did you poison him, Nellie?" asked Tim.

"Could have," Nellie said. "Didn't need to though, with you coming to rescue me and all." Nellie narrowed her eyes, looking at Tim. "Think you could have gotten those bruisers tied up like that?"

"I am great with duct tape, Nellie," Tim said, trying to put his arm around her and guide her down the stairs.

"What's the plan? You in charge?" Nellie asked Oh.

"Not really," Oh said, "but I think if we go down this way, through the auction house, we won't run into Stuart. He'll go back up through the backstairs, from the garage."

Jane introduced her mother to Detective Oh as they hurried down. When they entered the showroom, they saw six police officers, guns drawn and pointed at them. Amos, owner of the auction house, was peeking out of the window of his office, the delivery men crouching next to him.

"Upstairs," Jane said, "that's where the kidnappers are. But those two aren't going anywhere. The one in the garage is…"

Munson slammed the door on his way in.

"Gone. The one in the garage is gone," said Munson. "He either made the unmarked cars parked out on the road or…," he turned to Oh, "he made the little civilian posse tiptoeing up the inside stairs."

"You know he didn't, Munson, 'cause he wouldn't know that his two lugnuts up there weren't in control of the situation," said Jane's mother, picking a piece of lint off the sleeve of Jane's shirt.

"Glad to see you're okay, Nellie. Don's fit to be tied," said Munson. "I'll have someone drive you all back to the EZ Way Inn. We're going to hang on to your car for a bit, Mrs. Wheel, see if we can pick up prints and find out more about this guy. Stuart, Nellie? That his name?"

Jane listened to her mother describe Stuart and his stomachache for a minute, then stepped into the garage area to look at her car. She put her hands behind her back so she wouldn't inadvertently touch anything and peered into the backseat. Elmira's schoolwork and all the other leftovers from her pantry project at the McFlea were dumped on the floor. The trunk was open, and Jane saw more papers dumped out. She thought one or two brown paper bags might be missing. She couldn't remember how much of Bateman's or Duncan's stuff she'd still had in the car that morning.

"Your prints will, of course, be on your car anyway," said Oh. She hadn't heard him come up behind her. He could give Nellie a run for her money in the silent sneak competition.

"I don't want to mess up anything they might be able to find. Especially since we don't know what it is we're looking for. But if you think…?" Jane asked Oh.

Oh reached into his pocket and brought out a pair of disposable plastic gloves. He handed them to Jane with a small shoulder movement, an "any-Boy-Scout-could-tell-you-it-never-hurts-to-be-prepared" kind of shrug.

Jane put on the gloves and opened the door quickly and quietly since she didn't want Munson and his officers swarming. She unlocked the glove compartment, and from behind the owner's manual and box of Kleenex, she took out Bateman's finger. She was unreasonably happy to see it, delighted that Stuart had not even bothered with the most obvious storage area for valuables in the car. She gave it a little slosh, the way a snow globe collector must greet her favorites when she rearranges them on a shelf.