Lucky Stuff (Jane Wheel Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

Evanston, wants your house because it’s a giant corner lot, and she wants the location, both the elementary and middle school districts and plans on redecorating, but slowly, and wants your furniture, all your stuff, beds, bureaus, dining room furniture, all of the big stuff, to use as her temporary furnishings until her decorator takes over and gets in the real pieces she wants.” He scanned down the page. “Listen to this. She told Melinda she thinks your eclecticism is charming, but feels that bringing the house back to a true Arts and Crafts consistency will make it a more peaceful space in which to raise her children.”
    “Where should I live?” asked Jane, slowly warming to the idea that she was going to have some interesting choices.
    “How about a condo in the city. Make Millennium Park your front yard?”
    “Maybe I could find a sweet little place in Lakeview. When Nick’s home, he could walk to Wrigley Field?”
    “You could go way suburban, babe. Find a cool little ranch house on a big lot west of the city and fill it up with midcentury modern.”
    “Or I could find one of those places off the Red Arrow Highway in Michigan on the lake, a kind of winterized summer cabin,” said Jane. “All knotty pine and Pendleton blankets in the winter … all votive candles anchored in tin sand pails in the summer. Or a little farmhouse with a barn and outbuildings…”
    Jane picked up a stack of Bakelite ashtrays from Tim’s desk and separated them, laying them out in a line. Red, yellow, green, black. She restacked them slowly, each one making a kind of sucking sound as they came together.
    “I could leave altogether,” said Jane. “I don’t have to stay in the Midwest. I mean, Nick’s going to spend more than half of his vacations with Charley and he’ll be happy to come to me wherever I am, he loves change, and I could pick him up at school and we could go somewhere together and…”
    Jane stopped talking and looked at Tim, who had grown completely still. Until Jane started daydreaming, neither of them had ever thought that Jane would leave the Midwest, leave Evanston or Chicago, or be more than an hour or two’s drive from Kankakee. Or the EZ Way Inn. Or Don and Nellie.
    “It’s not like you have to decide where you’re going to live right this very minute,” said Tim.
    “Of course not,” said Jane.
    According to Melinda, although the buyers legally had five days to have their lawyer review the contract and arrange for an inspection of the property after Jane accepted their offer, they had assured her that they had an inspector ready to go, and that the contract review could be done in half a day. The family had moved from a company rental in Dubai and had not owned one stick of furniture in their cavernous house. Now, back in the States, they wanted cozy, they wanted livable, they wanted homey and although they planned to redecorate, some quality they saw in Jane’s house made them want the place. Right now.
    Melinda had written that the wife had opened the linen closet, seen the towels and sheets folded and stacked, and told her to write everything into the contract. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker if Jane wanted to take her own linens and pots and pans, but they would pay top dollar to have everything in place when they moved in. Melinda’s words practically vibrated on the page. You could walk away—just walk away with a giant check in your pocket! Where Melinda had left a space to except anything, Jane printed that she would be taking all of the books in the library and her desk and leather chair and the rug on the floor. Those were the only items she could think of that were special, that she hadn’t already packed up and sent ahead.
    Jane signed on the line, as the buyer, accepting the offer and Tim signed as a notary. He scanned the document into the computer and with a few clicks, and a SEND , Jane’s house was under contract.
    “Tim, with this offer, I could buy all new stuff if