Dead Guy's Stuff: A Jane Wheel Mystery

"Jane Wheel is making a career out of going through old stuff; it seems she can't get enough of the piles of vintage clothing, kitchen utensils, Bakelite buttons, and postcards she finds at estate sales across the Chicago area. What this saloon keepers' daughter loves, though, is not the items themselves but the stories they tell about the lives of their previous owners." "Needless to say, Jane's delighted when a Saturday-morning estate sale turns up a whole packed full of 1950s saloon ephemera - piles of Bakelite darts and dice, countless advertisements from long-defunct liquor suppliers, and, most exciting of all, a bunch of old bar games, employed by an untold number of patrons intent on whiling away the tedious moments in between the sips of so long ago. As luck would have it, she'd been planning to redecorate her parents' pub, still run and recently purchased outright by her folks. She makes a deal to buy the whole room, and can't wait to get the stuff back to her hometown." "As she's cataloging her find, however, Jane makes a gruesome discovery. Packed amid the glassware and bowling trophies and old photographs she's already fallen in love with is one highly personal, unusual, and creepy collectible that she is sure the saloon keeper would have preferred to have kept to himself. It sure sparks her curiosity about the saloon owners, and when Jane gets curious, nothing's going to stop her." Joined by her friends Detective Bruce Oh and fellow junkhound Tim Lowry, as well as by her erstwhile husband, Charley, Jane sets out to lay bare the secrets of long ago, secrets that even people close to her would rather be kept quiet forever.