Killer Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries, No. 1) - Softcover

Sharon Fiffer collects buttons, Bakelite, pottery, vintage potholders, keys, locks, and other killer stuff. She is co-editor of the anthologies Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own, Body, and Family: American Writers Remember Their Own; and the author of Imagining America. Killer Stuff is her first novel.

Killer Stuff
1If she hadn't spent an hour sorting through the postcards and theater programs under the workbench, if she hadn't held each slope-shouldered pale blue jar up to the window searching for chips and cracks, if she hadn't pretended to be Nancy Drew, sniffing out an early copy of The Hidden Staircase, complete with book jacket, page-by-weathered-page checking for mildew, Jane might have been the scout, the picker, the shopper, the collector who found the small dull-green vase--maybe it was even Grueby, just maybe it was the real thing--in a box of oh-so-desirable vintage flowerpots, each of which were marked one dollar.Instead, it was some neighbor who dragged the box right out from under Jane's nose and chatted incessantly in the check-out line to anyone who would listen about her African violets and how poor Hettie's sweet little pots would brighten them up. This woman, this violet farmer, paid seven dollars and walked outside, not even aware of what she was carrying. Jane, tapping her foot in line, watched the woman from the large picture window and saw a man approach her. He kept his back to the house, but Jane saw him hold out his hand and the woman nod. He apparently made an acceptable offer, since Jane watched him walk away with the entire box, leavingthe silly woman shaking her head and holding a twenty-dollar bill. Jane had only glimpsed the matte green glaze of the vase nestled in with the flowerpots, and could have talked herself out of believing it was a valuable find if she hadn't seen that picker sniff it out and disappear."I don't even collect ephemera!" she screamed at the four hand-tinted postcards spread out on the driver's seat. Greetings from Carlsbad Caverns. Mount Baldy. Painted Canyon at Sunrise. Badlands Sunset. "I don't even travel!"Jane, driving her neighbor's Suburban, a bus of a car that might accommodate the Hoosier cabinet she had hoped to find that morning, tried to merge into unusually heavy traffic on Interstate 94. "It's Saturday morning. Go home and sleep."She thought the approaching blue pickup was slowing down for her, so she gunned the engine and gritted her teeth. The vehicle had the power, but she didn't have the feel for its size; she lost control and nearly went across two lanes as she slid into the traffic. She saw the driver of the pickup snarl and twist his mouth. Through her rolled-down windows, she heard the swearing that was required when a driver made a dumb mistake. She thought she even heard dogs barking and growling. There was another flurry of horns, two swerves, one squeal, as she straightened out the car and stayed in the middle lane. No real damage. She thought she saw a few fingers raised in her direction. "Yeah, peace to you, too."Nine A.M. Already 82 degrees. Humidity rising. Jane felt herself melting down at the core. It wasn't even August yet. She cranked the temperature up to frigid, then rubbed her bare arms as the arctic air blasted her elbows.It was too hot to go to another sale, especially an architectural sale where she would have to haul out her crowbar,hammer, and screwdriver and help dismantle a graceful old beauty so that new money yups could build a six-thousand-square-foot mausoleum with a family room and attached three-car garage. But she was after doorknobs. Not just the crystal prisms that she was scouting for Miriam in Ohio, but small closet knobs, solid brass ovals that could be mounted either vertically or horizontally. They felt like cool metal eggs in your hand. Just below the knob, another plate was mounted, the keyhole, waiting for its skeleton, cleverly concealed by another brass oval that hung vertically. Cunning little doorknobs. When you looked at them dead on, they looked like the punctuation mark of a new language.Jane glanced down at the map. She exited the expressway, beginning to like the feel of a truck. She was tall behind the wheel, powerful. Maybe this will be my career change, she thought. Maybe I can go to the famous trucker's school. Or maybe I'll let Charley have the house back and move into a van with Nicky.Two more turns, down a quarter-mile private lane, and she was there. A large circle drive was already filled with pickups, vans, and a fleet of Range Rovers and their relatives like the Suburban she drove. More cars were parked on the lawn. A man in a bright orange vest waved her into a spot between the rose garden and a rusted fountain. There were three people on their knees in the garden carefully digging up the roses as well as the hostas and dwarf lilacs. There was no line at the door, which was good and bad. Good because the heat wouldn't kill her as she waited to get her crack at the inch-by-inch destruction of this arts and crafts masterpiece. Bad because she was late, maybe too late to locate and claim her doorknobs and any other pane of leaded glass, unusual door hinge, or drawer pull she had to have. Jane didn'talways know what she wanted, what she needed, what she craved until she saw it.It had started with flowerpots. Two years ago while at her parents' house in Kankakee for Thanksgiving, she'd gone into the basement to find the extra gravy boat and spotted a maroon, ceramic flowerpot with an attached saucer. The deep color, the raised design, the hefty utility of it pleased her. She'd brought it upstairs. Her husband, Charley, took it from her, turned it over, and read, "McCoy. My sister collects these." He took one of Jane's mother's plastic pots of ivy and stuck it into the flowerpot and both plant and pot were transformed. Shiny, dark green leaves curled themselves around the wine-colored pottery. Nature nested into man-made object. Family and guests looked up. It created a moment. Even Nicky had looked up from his Gameboy and nodded.After dinner, packages of turkey and stuffing, green beans and pie, were neatly wrapped and packed into a box for their drive back to Evanston. Jane tucked in the flowerpot. In her own house, on a kitchen shelf next to her cookbooks, it looked lonely. A few months later, when her neighbor's mother died, Sandy had a garage sale and Jane helped her unpack boxes of salt and pepper shakers, animal figurines, souvenir pillows."I can't believe my mother, who couldn't even kiss you good-bye when you left for college, could hang on to all this junk. Not a sentimental bone in her body, but she never threw one crummy thing away," Sandy muttered, unpacking carton after taped carton.When Jane discovered four small flowerpots, green, yellow, pink, and maroon, raised designs, saucers attached, sheasked Sandy if she could buy them. "Take 'em. I want this junk out of my sight."Five flowerpots on a sunny kitchen shelf made a statement. We are a collection, they said. Jane added collector to her list of titles, along with wife, mother, and advertising executive. She also added stoneware jugs and bowls to the top of her cabinet, pottery vases to the bookcases, and fifties kitchenware to her open cabinets over the sink. She collected slim, elegant cigarette boxes for Charley and ceramic dogs for Nick. Sal at the office mentioned she liked flower frogs, and Jane found her dozens; metal, glass, even a ceramic come-hither mermaid. Mickey collected walking sticks, and Jane presented her with a hand-carved, black walnut, bird head beauty on her fortieth birthday.Friends of friends, acquaintances began calling her, describing the items that would make their lives complete, giving her a top price, and, often, offering her a commission. At first she refused to make a profit, but after picking up an unusual stork nursery planter, cold paint on the beak intact, at a rummage sale for twenty-five cents that she knew was listed in a McCoy price guide for ninety-five dollars, she allowed Miriam, her secretary's cousin, to give her twenty dollars for it. Miriam, who was a collector and dealer with a small shop in southern Ohio, now regularly supplied her with lists of her own and her customers' hearts' desires.When Charley had moved out last spring, he'd cleared his books off the bedroom shelves and emptied his closet of blue workshirts and khaki pants. Sighing, he'd touched her cheek and told her now, at last, she would have room for the mechanical banks she had begun bringing home. "On that topshelf over there, don't you think," he'd said, taking out his handkerchief and wiping her eyes gently. "I'll just collect these rare tears, if you don't mind." He slipped the square back into his pocket, picked up his few cases, and left for South Dakota.Two weeks later Jane's agency lost two large accounts and decided they should eliminate Jane and her entire department.Jane could have protested that only one of the lost accounts had been hers and the client was notoriously fickle, moving his business around every few years to "keep things fresh," but she didn't have the heart. She regretted that her assistants, creative staff and secretary, were only given three days to clear out and was guiltily embarrassed that she, by virtue of title and time served, was paid more than a half year's salary, barely enough to make the mortgage on the sweet, stucco, four-bedroom with front and back porches and fruit trees in the yard, but more, she thought, than she deserved.Nicky had planned to spend the summer with his dad at the dig, so Jane told Nicky that she hadn't been fired, she had been given an opportunity then proceeded to pack him up as quickly and efficiently as she had her office files and photos."I'm going to find a T. rex, Mom," Nicky had told her as he'd stuffed batteries into the pocket of his suitcase."Not if you don't look up from your Gameboy.""Dad said I could bring it. They have radios and little TVs at the campsite. Dad said just not to count on going into town for batteries all the time.""This'll be a good summer for you, Nicky. A real camp, not some wussy little storefront YMCA deal.""Yeah, Dad says we'll pee outside all the time.""Fabulous.""And when I come home, I'll bring Dad and you guys don't have to get the divorce."Jane stopped rolling socks and underwear and T-shirts and hugged her ten-year-old son."Just bring home the T. rex, honey." 
 
"Look out, lady." Jane jumped back, but not far enough. The heavy piece of carved oak molding crashed down, grazing her left shoulder and knocking her back into several people on their knees actually prying up floorboards.Several men, shirtless and sweating in the morning heat, looked up and swore, ready to say more until they saw that it was just a woman--five-three, bobbed brown hair tied back with a scarf, good-looking in her jeans and tank top, big eyes spilling over with tears from the pain in her shoulder. Nah, she wasn't worth a fight. But not so great looking that she was worth losing the boards for either.Jane staggered away from them into the open and empty dining room, bare wires hanging from the ceiling where a chandelier had hung, wires protruding from walls where, she imagined, etched bronze sconces had been mounted."Hey, lady, I am so sorry. I didn't think that molding would give with just one pull. You okay?"Jane rotated her left shoulder, dropped her wrist, then slowly raised her arm. Painful, a bad bruise, but no break. "I'm okay.""Let me make it up to you, what'd you come for?"Jane studied this eager clumsy stranger. He couldn't bea regular or he never would have left that piece of molding in the hallway."First you better collect your weapon.""The boys'll get it. Those guys prying up the floor are my crew.""What's so great about that floor?""It's the nails. There are some hand-forged roseheads in there. Some early cut nails, too. Way earlier than the house. The carpenter who laid the floor must have hoarded nails like crazy. Some of them aren't even nails that should go in a floor. Bitch to get out so Bill, the sale director, said I could have them for free as long as I bought enough other stuff and hauled away the floorboards. You look pretty pale. I'll get you a Coke from my truck." He turned, then turned back. "I'm Richard.""Jane."Jane's shoulder throbbed. She leaned against the wall, trying to get her bearings. Through the dining room doorway, she saw what must be a butler's pantry. It was the only spot that offered a counter where she might be able to have a seat, if she had the strength to boost herself up. No one seemed to be hammering or sawing in there. She walked slowly over, figuring it must already be gutted.The glass doors of the pantry had been removed, which gave her more space for a seat on the counter. As soon as she drew her knees up to her chest on the counter, she spotted them. Lovely brass oval knobs with keyholes beneath. There were two miniatures on the small, built-in cabinet high above the now doorless china cupboard. Slowly she stretched herself out and turned and stood on the counter. She couldreach the knobs, but her leverage wasn't perfect. She pulled a small screwdriver out of her back pocket. They weren't going to budge. She'd have to take the doors off. She scooted sideways to check the hinges. Her heart racing with discovery, she momentarily forgot the throbbing in her shoulder. When she wedged herself into the corner, she rammed her left side directly into the china cupboard and recoiled like a broken spring. Her weight, now thrown too far back, she began teetering on the lip of the counter, a cartoon character on a cliff."Help!""Jane!" Richard ran in, braced her from the back while she steadied herself; then he lifted her down from the counter."How about that?" Jane said. "I yelled help and somebody came.""Drink this." Richard called out to Louie, one of the floorboard crew, and asked him to take the cupboard doors off for the lady.Jane drained the Coke. "First you try to kill me; then you save my neck.""Yeah, all in a day's work. Thanks, Louie.""Boss, there's a ...""Is that a box up there?" Jane asked.Treasure. Jane loved nothing more than a mystery box, something everyone else had missed. No dealers here, except for the architectural artifacts guys like Richard. No grabby, bitchy women looking to pay a dime and charge a dollar at their own little flea market tables, no grizzled old prospectors bumping her out of line waiting for numbers at dawn at a northshore estate. It was just Jane and Richard and one heavy cardboard box that clinked when Louie set it down.Louie looked from Richard to Jane and saw that she had the goofy, glazed look that the real junk junkies get when they are excited."You want me to take it out to the truck, boss?""Shouldn't we see what's inside?" Jane asked, trying to keep her hands from tearing at the cardboard."We bought this part of the house already, so we own it, right, boss? I'll take it out to Braver's truck."Richard put his hand on the box and shook his head at Louie. "Let's guess what's inside," Richard said. "You go first.""Okay, a signed Tiffany light fixture," said Jane."Waterford, decanter and cordial glasses, a forgotten wedding gift," said Richard.Together they opened the flaps of the box."Shit, boss, it's just flowerpots," Louie said. "I'll put 'em in the truck for Doris.""These are cool, though." Richard held one up to the light.Jane laughed out loud. "Cool?" Six vintage flowe...