Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) (25 page)

Nellie disliked all public buildings. She was suspicious of courthouses, post offices, and police stations. Jane chalked up Nellie’s mistrust of public spaces to her natural sense of anarchy and disdain for those in power, but Nellie reserved specific antipathy for the library.

“All they got in here is books,” said Nellie, pushing open the glass door. “I don’t get it.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” said Jane. “You can go back to the gazebo and listen to Lucky and I’ll come get you when I’m done.”

“I can’t abide that idiot talking to hear himself talk. I’ll stay here and make sure you don’t sneak off into a corner to read.”

Nellie was staring around her in front of the main desk, doing a full circle of observation. “What the hell does anybody need with this many books?” she said loudly.

A young smiling librarian, long dark hair hanging loose, rushed over to Nellie and without an overt shushing, quietly asked if she might help her with something. Nellie jerked her thumb backwards and the woman looked at Jane, clearly hoping that she could control this woman who looked as if she wanted to dismantle the shelves and give the place a good scrubbing.

“Mom, I want you to sit over there with a cup of coffee and I’ll be right back,” said Jane. “Please.”

“Okay, okay,” said Nellie. “Coffee in a library? I never heard of such a thing.” Nellie moved over to the table next to the coffee bar and Jane apologized to the librarian whose nametag read
ALLISON
.

“I need some early- to mid-twentieth-century telephone books or directories of local businesses. Are they all digitized or…”

Allison directed her to the glassed-off room, which was dedicated to genealogical research. Jane gazed around her at the shelves filled with ledgers and directories, yearbooks, newspapers, organizational minutes of meetings, old maps, church histories. Jane knew she could spend hours in this room, reading over names, looking at the old ads and graphics, and letting the history of her town wash over her in waves. Instead, picturing Nellie running from reader to reader trying to interest them in picking up a mop instead of a book, she quickly found telephone directories and instead of looking up the residential addresses, information she already had thanks to Mary Wainwright, she looked up businesses.

She had no trouble finding the business listing she was looking for: Herman Mullet, Suite 204, Arcade Building. Under his name, his title or his business
? Security Advisor.
What was a security advisor? Bodyguard? Someone who sold alarm systems? Someone who sold stocks and bonds?

“Excuse me,” said Allison, poking her head into the room, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but…”

Jane jotted down the information. She wasn’t sure if it was important, but it was something she could mention to Lucky. Maybe it would unlock a door.

“It’s your mother…”

“On my way,” said Jane, following Allison down to the main floor.

Jane understood why Allison and the other staff members might be getting anxious to say their good-byes to Nellie. She had helped herself to the rag next to the coffee urn and proceeded to circulate through the first floor, wiping down the study tables. Most readers simply lifted their books so she could swipe her rag beneath them, but a few patrons seemed dismayed to be interrupted and annoyed when Nellie commented on their choices of reading material.

“What are you reading a book on finding a job for? Just get out there and start going to places. Look for signs in the window. Pink’s needs a dishwasher,” said Nellie to a distinguished looking middle-aged man, who had been taking copious notes from a book on choosing graduate school programs.

Jane took her mother’s arm and handed the dishrag to Allison, thanking her for her help.

As they exited, Jane saw a display from the old library, the one in which she spent her formative years. Front and center was a wooden card catalog. If it hadn’t been out of reach, behind a velvet rope, Jane would have leaned over and caressed it. When Jane had first heard about the library move, she had mourned the change from the old building to the new in the way that many mourned the change from rotary phone to cell, from manual typewriter to laptop, from book to e-Reader. She was no longer sure that mourning was the right attitude—at least as far as the library was concerned. She liked this new space, the way it welcomed the entire community with different interests and needs. When she thought about it, she realized she also loved the smart phone that allowed her to wave good-bye to her son Nick and let him live apart from her, attending the school he loved and still stay in immediate touch. She loved the look of the old manual typewriters and their
tap-tap-tap,
but would she be able to work effectively with Tim or Oh if she didn’t have online access to eBay or Google?
Trade-offs,
she thought with a sigh, and then wondered, if by any chance, the library could be persuaded to sell her the wooden card catalog.

Crossing the library parking lot, heading back toward the market and their car, Jane saw Mary Wainwright coming toward her, wagging a finger in her direction.

“I knew it, I knew you were up to something, Jane Wheel.”

Jane had no idea what she was talking about and, uncharacteristically, Mary did not stop to elaborate. Instead, she walked past Jane and Nellie, shaking her head, intent on her own trip to the library.

“You said Herman Mullet had more money than the rest of the kids,” said Jane. “How did you know that?”

Nellie shrugged. “Just knew. Better clothes, maybe. Not worn out. New shoes or something. I don’t remember exactly how,” said Nellie. “I wore my sister’s clothes and she played ball all the time so everything had patches and mends where she had torn a hem or ripped a hole. I guess Herman just dressed nicer than the rest of us.”

“That’s because he didn’t wear hand-me-downs,” said Jane. “Herman Mullet was an only child so he got everything new and—”

“Yeah, that’s probably why he still yaks so much, he was probably spoiled rotten,” said Nellie, settling herself into the car.

“Because he was an only child? You think only children are spoiled?” asked Jane, surprised at how much Nellie’s opinions helped clarify her own thoughts on Herman’s childhood experiences. Maybe it was Oh’s “listening” techniques amped up to a whole new level. Jane had to admit that listening to her mother expound on almost anything did make one think.

“Spoiled probably, yeah,” said Nellie. “But also, just alone, you know? In our house, my parents were both working their tails off. My mother took in laundry, Pa was working on the railroad. And all of us kids had jobs, too. Even if we ever had anything to say, there wouldn’t be anybody around who had time to listen.”

“So, one child meant that he got undivided attention?” said Jane, more to herself than to Nellie.

“Yeah, unless … hey, don’t forget we’re going to Carl’s. Don’t turn here,” said Nellie.

Jane flicked off the left turn signal. “Unless what, Mom?”

“Unless they didn’t like him. Maybe they had a kid and figured out they weren’t cut out to have children. Maybe they didn’t like kids that much.”

“Come on, Mom,” said Jane. She realized that her mother might be talking about her. Wasn’t she the mother of an only child? “Nick’s an only child and he isn’t spoiled, and Charley and I love kids. Sometimes things just happen.”

“Yup.”

“Yup what?” asked Jane.

“Yup nothing. You’re right. You and Charley are good parents. Nick’s a great kid. And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” said Nellie. “But not with Lucky Miller.”

“Do you know what that means, Mom? A cigar is just a cigar?”

“Nah, but I hear people say it all the time. And if ever a cigar was more than a cigar, it would be with Lucky. He uses that thing as a weapon, for Christ’s sake, stabbing at people with it all the time. And you mark my words, his parents either spoiled him or hated him, but it wasn’t in between like it’s supposed to be.”

Jane pulled up in front of Wally’s tavern and shut off the engine. “So I know you didn’t spoil Michael and me, right?” said Jane.

“Nope,” said Nellie.

“But you didn’t hate us, either,” said Jane.

“Nope,” said Nellie. “I liked you fine. See, you just need to stay in between spoiling and hating with kids. That way nobody gets hurt.”

Jane had no time to pursue any more of her mother’s child-rearing theories, although she sensed a potential Belinda St. Germaine bestseller lurking in Nellie’s words. Gears, however, needed to be changed for the visit to Carl’s apartment. The entrance was next to the tavern doors and Nellie used the key marked “outer” to let them into a dimly lit foyer, barely large enough for the two of them to stand. The stairs were lit with two cheap fixtures, both fitted with low-wattage bulbs.

“Have you ever been here before?” asked Jane, climbing the stairs ahead of Nellie.

“Hell no. Carl didn’t exactly do any entertaining at home. When he moved in here … it had to be over fifty years ago … he asked me where he should get furniture. I told him to go to Turk’s and buy up everything new to fill up the place. Might be more money than he wanted to pay, but he’d get good stuff and it would last forever. He told me he went and bought what he needed. I remember somebody at the bar asked him what style he got.” Nellie gave one of her rare short laughs. “He said, ‘wood.’”

Although Nellie had opened the street level door herself, she passed the key to Jane to unlock the apartment. Jane usually loved opening the door to an unknown space. A kind of spinning reel began inside her head, all of her most coveted objects passing before her eyes. In a north shore suburb, she might walk in and find incredible art; in a small retirement apartment, there might be valuable first editions; in a stylish gated community, there might be weighty sterling serving pieces. Here, opening the door to Carl’s apartment, where he had lived for nearly fifty years, over Wally’s Tap, what could she possibly find besides the lonely furnishings of a lifelong bachelor bartender? Jane hesitated as she heard the tumblers in the lock click. She always played a game, imagining the first thing she’d see when she and Tim entered a house. It wouldn’t be respectful if she didn’t play it with Carl’s place.

“What do you think we’ll see as soon as we open the door?” Jane asked Nellie.

“A bottle of whiskey and a water glass he stole from the EZ Way Inn,” said Nellie.

Her mother was good at this game.

“I think there’ll be a plastic laundry basket on the floor in front of one chair that’s positioned in front of the television,” said Jane.

“Are the clothes clean or dirty?” asked Nellie.

She was really good at this game.

Jane opened the door and gasped. Even Nellie, standing next to her, took in a little puff of air.

“I’ll be damned,” said Nellie. “It’s as neat as a pin.”

Leave it to Nellie to note the cleanliness. Jane had her eye on something else. On everything else. The apartment opened into a living-dining area with a small galley kitchen off to one side of the dining area. There was a hall that led in the other direction, Jane assumed, to a bedroom and bath. There was a coat closet to their right and Jane could see a door off the kitchen that probably led to the rear stairs down to the alley.

“He was a clean man, he kept the bar clean and washed the glasses fine. I shouldn’t be surprised at this, but I didn’t expect it to look so…” Nellie stopped herself and looked at Jane. “What is this? What does this look like?”

“A bachelor pad from some early sixties movie with a B-list star?” said Jane.

“What the hell does that mean?” asked Nellie, stepping around the black leather ottoman that went with the impeccable black leather lounge chair, moving closer to the pale wooden table in the dining area surrounded by four matching chairs.

Jane didn’t need to check any labels, although she would look later when she came back with Tim. For now, she was satisfied that the chair was an Eames lounger. The table and chairs were Heywood Wakefield, as was the matching credenza under the window that faced the side street. The bark cloth curtains were off the rack, in a great turquoise and black atomic print. Jane quickly walked down the hall and saw a double bed, neatly made with a plain tan corduroy bedspread smoothed over the top. The frame, end tables, and matching chest looked like Dunbar, but Jane wasn’t ready to open drawers and start the label search. First, she wanted to marvel at the closet, with neatly hung pairs of pants, eight white shirts, and eight dark striped ties hung on a wooden rack. Two pairs of black shoes, polished, with wooden shoetrees in them, were on the closet floor.

There were two photographs on the wall, both of the EZ Way Inn. One was an exterior shot with the beer signs in the window and the tumble-down roof looking like it might fall at any minute and the other was a shot of the bar’s interior with Don and Nellie smiling at the camera. Who had shot those eight-by-ten glossies?

“Uncle Chucky,” said Nellie, behind Jane, looking at the photos, reading her mind.

“I have an Uncle Chucky?” asked Jane.

“No,” Nellie growled. “Chuck had a studio where he took pictures of babies and kids and families and he called it Uncle Chucky’s. He was a friend of your dad’s and took those pictures. We had them hung up in the bar. Your dad took them down when we paneled the dining room twenty years ago and I never found them after that. Figured they got thrown out.”

“Carl needed some family photos,” said Jane.

“Yup,” said Nellie, removing them from the wall. “Guess I can take them back now.”

“So Turk’s sold him some good stuff,” said Jane, following her mother into the kitchen area.

“Yeah, he did okay,” said Nellie, her head inside of a cabinet. “Wasn’t much on the pots and pans.”

Jane smiled. There was a teakettle and one sauce pan and a frying pan. Nothing looked like it had ever been used. In one of the upper cabinets, there was a set of turquoise and pink melamine dishes, service for six. Jane held up a plate and couldn’t see one scratch made by a knife or fork.

“Here we go,” said Nellie. “I win.” The cabinet next to the stove had three bottles of whiskey in it with two EZ Way Inn glasses.