This is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed

in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used ficti-
tiously.

LUCKY STUFF. Copyright © 2012 by Sharon Fiffer. All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175
Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fiffer, Sharon Sloan, 1951-

  Lucky stuff / Sharon Fiffer. — 1st ed.
  p. cm.
ISBN 978-­0-­312-­64303-­4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-­1-­250-­01489-­4 (e-book)
1.  Wheel, Jane (Fictitious character)—Fiction.  2.  Women private
investigators—Fiction. 3.  Antique dealers—Fiction.  4. Illinois—
Fiction. I.  Title.
  PS3606.I37L83 2012
 813'.6—dc23
2012014698
First Edition: September 2012

10 ​ ​9 ​ ​8 ​ ​7 ​ ​6 ​ ​5 ​ ​4 ​ ​3 ​ ​2 ​ ​1
 1

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as she struggled to close the

lid of the wooden trunk. A middle-­aged woman’s face stared
up at her. “It won’t be forever . . . ​I’ll let you out again,” she
promised.
While fighting against the old hinges, Jane Wheel had
stopped to admire the milk paint that softened the look of the
wood, made the trunk look like what­ever it held would be old
and precious. As she paused, the relatives being packed away
shifted their weight and resisted the lockdown of the heavy
wooden lid.
“Aunt Bessie, I am so sorry,” Jane repeated as she smoth-
ered Bessie with a small autograph quilt made from men’s
suiting fabrics. The houndstooths and tweeds and scratchy
woolens might not feel soft to the touch, but they would pro-
tect the family members jammed into the wooden box from
scratches and breakage. At least Jane hoped the framed photos
would be well protected. Aunt Bessie, Uncle Titus, the cous-
ins who worked at the Iowa State Hospital, the 1912 firefight-
ers from Des Moines, the twelve grown men riding on a
child-­sized train ­ride somewhere in a leafy park. None of these

• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••••••••
1
photos ­were of people blood-­related to Jane Wheel. Aunt Bes-
sie and Uncle Titus ­were christened on the days Jane gathered
them from far-­flung rummage sales and flea markets, rescued
them from the oblivion of thrift stores and estate sales.
Aren’t we enough for you? Jane’s ex-­husband Charley, would
ask. Of course, she would answer, beaming at her husband and
son, Nick, as she unpacked photo albums and yearbooks
and unknown ancestor after unknown ancestor when she re-
turned from Saturday sales. These people needed rescuing,
she explained to Charley.
“If I don’t save them, who will?” Jane asked.
And now, as she packed away the faux family, she could
point out to Charley, who ­wouldn’t hear her since he now lived
most of the year far from Evanston, Illinois, in Honduras, that
the adopted relatives would come in handy to keep her com-
pany these days. Nick had been a wonderful companion and it
was with great mixed feelings that she celebrated his ac­cep­
tance at a math and science academy for high school. It was
Nick’s dream school—­one that would actually sanction time
with his father at the dig site if something exciting turned up
during the school year. Nick would board at a school with
other students like him, brainy and funny and motivated, all
on a full scholarship. He had left two weeks ago and Jane still
teared up when she thought about his whispered good-­bye.
“A text every night, Mom, if there isn’t time for an e‑mail,
okay? And don’t worry about the ­house or packing up. I’ll help
you do it all at Thanksgiving—­Will’s mom said nothing hap-
pens in real estate this time of year.”
Nick had hugged her ferociously and for just a second,
Jane thought about asking him to give up Lakewood Academy

2 • • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••
and stick to boring old high school at boring old home with
boring old her. But as ferocious as his hug had been, she could
see the absolute joy and excitement in his eyes. He was headed
to the place he was meant to be.
And Jane? Where was she headed?

“Trouble. You are headed straight for trouble,” said Nellie,

talking out of the side of her mouth as she always did when
she thought Don might hear and contradict her. Not that
Nellie ever cared who contradicted her.
“I’m headed toward fiscal responsibility,” said Jane. She
had caller ID; she had seen that it was Nellie calling. Jane had
chosen to answer the phone and had no one but herself to blame.
“You’re a single woman now and your son is off to board-
ing school. If you sell your ­house, you’ll be homeless. Hell’s
bell’s, Jane, isn’t your life pathetic enough?”
“Thanks, Mom, got to go. Another call—­probably some-
one from the soup kitchen wanting to know if they can deliver
my meals or if I’ll be shuffling down to the church basement on
my own.”
Jane pushed end and her mother’s voice was gone. How
she longed for a sturdy Bakelite telephone receiver that she could
slam down into an even heavier Bakelite base. Hanging up on
someone used to mean something, used to have a kind of sound
and fury to it. Ending a conversation with a silent click had no
panache and gave Jane little satisfaction. In fact, it was such a
quiet ending to the phone call that Jane had no doubt her
mother was still talking on the other end, railing about Jane’s
decision to sell the ­house and find a smaller place to live. She
would be enumerating all the reasons it was too soon to make a

• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••••••••
3
change—­the reverse of all the reasons she had enumerated
twenty years before when she told Jane and Charley they should
not commit to buying the h­ ouse in the first place.
Buy it they did—­for a good price that felt impossible to
manage at the time. But the ­house, the beloved old four-­bedroom
with charming stone fireplace and ancient hot-­water heater and
rattling furnace had appreciated—­the property’s value had
risen up and up to a figure too good to be true. That peak was
eight years ago and the figure was indeed too good to be true—­in
fact, it ­wasn’t true at all. Poof—­like a puff of smoke from the
working-­but-­always-­problematic stone fireplace, the imaginary
profit had vanished and their beloved albeit drafty old ­house
had become one more sad listing on the overcrowded housing
market.
“Pack this junk up. Every bit of it,” said Melinda, Nick’s
friend’s mom, the realtor who had come over to list the ­house. “I
got phone numbers of people you can hire to come in and have
a sale.”
Jane stared at her. Melinda was a sturdy attractive woman
whose blazer pulled a little tight in the shoulders, but whose
pricey blond highlights and good gold jewelry supported her
claim to being a top producer at her realty firm, even in this
depressed market.
She was probably a swimmer, thought Jane, unaware that
she was staring at Melinda’s shoulders.
“What? What’s back there?” asked Melinda, turning to
look behind her shoulder where she thought Jane was staring.
“Oh yeah, you’re going to have to clean up all that luggage.
What’s the deal? Packing for a vacation?”
Jane looked at the vintage suitcases stacked behind Melin-

4 • • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••
 da’s back. Two drunken pillars on either side of the fireplace, the
cases ­were turned this way and that, brown and red, a few that
­were striped or plaid and displaying the scars of travel and the
tattoos of stickered destinations. They made for interesting
storage of old tax information, auction cata­logs that Jane used
both for reference and her own continuing education as a picker.
A brown leather bag with a Bakelite handle contained twenty-­
five high school yearbooks from the thirties. Jane figured some-
one who loved cool graphics and vintage photos would buy them
in a heartbeat—­but that would involve taking them out of the
case and actually pricing them for sale.
Melinda had given her a week to clear out the main rooms,
offering over and over to help her find a ser­vice to do a clean-­out.
Last night she phoned Jane to tell her she wanted to
bring by a potential buyer in two days.
“I’ve worked with hoarders before,” said Melinda. “I can
find you someone to help. Someone who runs estate sales.
They know how to get rid of the crap.”
No they don’t. They just bring it all to their homes, thought
Jane.
“What do you say?” said Melinda.
“The ­house will be ready for showing on Wednesday,” said
Jane.
“If you promise . . .”
“Afternoon. Wednesday afternoon, okay?” Jane could
hear Melinda chewing something. She was eating while on the
phone. Okay, so maybe Jane looked like a hoarder, but she
­wasn’t a phone-­eater.
“I’ll call you with the time. Get it cleaned out, Jane. If
you want to sell this place, clear the decks!”

• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••••••••
5
 So, in her best aye, aye captain mode, Jane Wheel, Picker
and Private Investigator, was spending this warm September
eve­ning clearing the decks. She was packing the smalls: the
vintage glass and pottery flower frogs that dotted shelves and
served as punctuation marks between rows of books in the
cases; the McCoy flowerpots that held fistfuls of number-­two
pencils as well as old plastic advertising pens and mechanical
pencils; the small copper vessels in which she had planted bou-
quets of old pairs of scissors; the Depression glass and mason
jars, which bloomed with bunches of wooden and Bakelite
knitting needles; the glass apothecary jars that held swizzle
sticks and wooden spools of thread and several pounds of old
silver and iron and brass keys. A basket of doorknobs stood in
the corner and an antique fishbowl sat on the trunk used as a
coffee table filled not with koi and guppies, but rather board-­
game tokens, dice, and orphaned Scrabble letters.
“Am I a hoarder?” Jane asked herself out loud.
Jane sat down on the trunk that now held all those made-
­up old relatives and gave her living room a long hard look.
Stacked cardboard boxes, taped and labeled with a black
Sharpie, replaced the vintage luggage stacks. Now packing
cases held old flowered tablecloths, napkins adorned with ini-
tials not even close to Jane Wheel’s, and tatted doilies, antima-
cassars and crocheted tea cozies.
One lone black garbage bag sat in the middle of the room.
Jane had put it there for any items she came across that she no
longer wanted. Movers ­were coming in the morning to pack
up all the boxes and nonessential furniture and driving it to a
storage locker in Kankakee—­in a facility that Jane’s friend,
Tim, used.

6 • • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••
 “It’s dry and clean and I got you space on the first floor
next to two of mine,” said Tim. ”You can drive right up to it,
open the garage door, and visit your stuff anytime you want.
From seven am to ten pm. Except on Sundays when it closes at
six,” he added.
Jane peered into the garbage bag. One lone flour sack pot
holder lay at the bottom of the bag. Shaped like a pear and em-
broidered with a cheerful smile and long curly eyelashes that
gave this 1940s handmade kitchen collectible a feminine, flirty
air, it was lightly padded, Jane guessed, with a piece of old recy-
cled wool sandwiched between the soft cotton fabric.
“How did you fall into that throwaway bag?” Jane asked
the pot holder.
It was the second question she had asked herself—­or an
inanimate object—­out loud.
Quickly she stuffed the cloth pear into a box where the
tape was not totally sealed and snatched up the garbage bag.
There ­were some old shirts and pants, Charley’s clothes he had
left behind that he asked her to donate and get rid of. Okay, she
could do that. After all, answering her first question, it ­wasn’t
like she was a hoarder.

By the time the Wednesday showing of her Evanston home

arrived, Jane had watched movers fill a large truck with trunks,
luggage, and box after box of stuff that they drove off to Kanka-
kee. Jane had already decided to let Tim receive the stuff on the
other end while she stayed behind to wrap up some business at
the bank and have lunch with her partner in the PI part of her
PPI professional life, Detective Oh. Jane’s plan, after lunch, was
to head home and pick up her dog, Rita, and head down to

• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••••••••
7
Kankakee. There she would be re­united with her boxes and
cartons and bags and suitcases. And, of course, her parents,
Don and Nellie. Jane would remain there through the week-
end since the open ­house was scheduled for all day Sunday.
Melinda would shepherd the lookers, the gawkers, the
curious neighbors, and one or two potential buyers who would
descend upon her now sparsely furnished space. Jane could
hardly believe anyone would find the ­house appealing without
its character-­building clutter, its rich textural personality, but
according to Melinda, Jane had done a spectacular job of de-
cluttering.
“A for effort,” she had announced when she made a quick
inspection early on Wednesday morning. “Don’t forget to take
all the family photos out of the den.”
Jane had showered and changed into a clean pair of jeans
and a soft navy V‑neck sweater. She grabbed her giant leather
tote bag—­what she referred to as her “ just-­in-­case,” which
held everything she might need . . . ​just in case—­and prepared
to leave to meet Oh, when she remembered that she hadn’t
removed the family photos. Not wanting her grade to drop
down to a B, she dashed into the now almost empty room.
When Charley left, his den became a resting place for old
library items—­book carts and card files—­all of which Jane
snapped up when a suburban branch moved its location. Jane
thought she might find a good use for the comfortable trappings
of a library, all worn and wooden, and they had given the room a
cozy, if cluttered ambiance. Now that the den was emptied of all
but a leather chair, ottoman, and lamp, strategically placed on a
lovely old semiworn Persian carpet, Jane found herself a little

8 • • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••
breathless at how peaceful it looked. What did it remind her of?
Oh, yes. A den.
She took all the photos off the built-­in bookcases that
flanked the fireplace. With only a few books remaining on the
shelves, old leather-­bound sets of Dickens and Alcott, books
that felt as warm and soft to the touch as a pair of ladies’ kid-
skin gloves, and the brass lamp next to the chair turned down
low, the room gave off such an appealing glow that it was all
Jane could do to resist curling up in the old leather chair with
one of the books. She steeled herself against the ­house love ris-
ing up in her and grabbed the photos, stuffing them into her
“ just-­in-­case.”
Whistling for Rita and giving her big dog a decent head
rub before sentencing her to a few hours alone in the backyard,
Jane threw herself into her car and pulled it around to the
front. She sat parked in front of the ­house for a long look. Each
red brick stair that led up to the oak front door held a terra-
cotta pot filled with rust-­colored mums. The window boxes
­were still filled, but the greenery was dying, spent from a sum-
mer of blooming. The stucco was in good shape and the stained
timbers that framed the ­house, giving the illusion that the all-­
American four-­square had En­glish Tudor roots, ­were solid. It
had been a good h­ ouse and although waves of sentiment, feel-
ing vaguely like the flu, washed over Jane as the years of Nick
growing up, learning to r­ ide a bike on the front side-­walk, kick-
ing a soccer ball into a net Charley had set up alongside the
­house, dashing out the front door to trick-­or-­treat dressed as a
dinosaur or a gila monster flashed by in a slide show, making it
hard to swallow for a moment, Jane ­wasn’t really sorry about

• • • • • • • • •••••••••••••••••••••
9
selling the ­house. It was the right thing to do. It was time for a
new family to plant flowers and to play catch in the yard. Char-
ley had moved on and Nick was firmly launched.
Time for Jane to move on, too.

Jane walked into the Deadline Café at three minutes past noon,
almost exactly on time, but, of course, Detective Bruce Oh was
already sitting at a table by the window, He r­ ose slightly as Jane
approached and she smiled at him, wondering if younger men
­were learning to do that, to stand when a woman came in the
room or, as in this case, approached the table. Why would
they? Who would teach them? She felt a little panicky that she
had never mentioned it to Nick, that maybe he should stand
when a woman enters the room, then wondered if women to-
day wanted men to stand. Would everyone have been better off
if no one stood for everyone or everyone stood for everyone?
“. . . and so I ordered the tea. I hope you don’t mind,”
said Oh.
Oh looked at Jane, and realized that she had been carry­
ing on one of her conversations with herself when she arrived
at the table.
“I ordered a pot of Earl Grey, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh.
“Would you prefer coffee?”
“Tea’s fine,” said Jane, glancing at a menu, but fully aware
that she would have a veggie club sandwich, which is what she
always ordered at the café.
Tossing the menu aside, Jane looked her partner in the
eye.

10 • • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••
 LUCKY  STUFF

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