Good Clean Murder: A Plain Jane Mystery (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 1)

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  She pulled a pan of heat-and-rise dinner rolls out of the oven and replaced it with a pan of miniature cinnamon rolls. She set the hot pan on the granite counter to cool. In addition to the rolls, she was serving a veggie tray, cold cut platter, broccoli and raisin salad, cinnamon rolls which were baking in the other oven, fruit platter, cheese plate, baguette and brie, fresh hot coffee, and unsweetened ice tea. The piles of food in the refrigerator did her heart good. She had also stocked up on the basics for the Crawfords’ breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. No one was going to go hungry while she was in charge of the kitchen.

  She half-expected Jake to pop in while she arranged the food, but he didn’t. She carted the first tray out to the library where Marjory was meeting with the business associates, a twinge of disappointment nipping her heart.

  She let herself into the room as quietly as she could, her slippered feet whispering across the polished hard wood floor. At a nod from Marjory, Jane walked to each of the three businessmen with the tray held out in front of her.

  The men were all in suits with polished shoes. All but one looked old enough to be her father. Considering they had some kind of important role in the Roly Burger corporation they probably knew her father. She kept her eyes down. When she had made her way around with the fruit and veggie tray, she exited.

  She’d refill coffees in about five minutes, offer the meat, bread, and cheese, and then close with the sweet rolls. She was making it up as she went along, but no one seemed to mind.

  They barely noticed her at all, in fact. Their discussion seemed heated, and their angry voices carried down the hall. Not quite all the way to the kitchen, but as she toted her emptier, lighter trays back she could still hear them speaking.

  “This is what Bob wanted.” The speaker’s deep voice was like a growl. He was the man who was wearing wire-rim glasses, she was sure. A Mr. Vargas, who she had met at past Roly Burger company picnics.

  “But until the investigation is over we shouldn’t make any changes.” Marjory didn’t sound angry, but she was loud and forceful.

  “If we shouldn’t make any changes, then I say the plan that is already in effect needs to keep going.” Jane didn’t recognize this voice so she assumed it was the man in a green tie, someone she had never seen before.

  “How can it keep going if we haven’t begun? I blame the newspaper. I don’t know how they got wind of Bob’s plans.” This was Vargas again.

  “We can’t let some reporter make business decisions for us.” Marjory’s sentence faded away as Jane entered the kitchen.

  She could see their dilemma. Did they continue to shut down all of the local Roly Burgers the way that Bob had planned and had been reported or did they wait, keep the status quo, and let the new leader make his or her own decision?

  And who would the new leader be? Did Bob’s sister-in-law Marjory come into leadership now or did his eldest son, Jake? For as long as Jane could remember Marjory had been a social member of the company—at all of the picnics and openings, not running a location of her own, or a member of the board. At one time Marjory’s deceased husband had been a board member, but that was years ago.

  Jane carried the coffee carafe to the library door and waited. She didn’t want to walk into the middle of an argument—but from the sounds of it, she would have to wait a long time before they cooled down.

  As before, she tried not to eavesdrop but certain words grabbed her attention. Words like “murder” and “motive” and “we’ll call our lawyers.” She lost track of who was making the worst of the accusations, but Marjory had said “motive” in a shocked kind of voice. And Vargas had said he’d be calling his lawyers. The fourth man in the room, a man she remembered was called Walker or Waller…something like that…was trying to calm the group down. At least that was what it sounded like to Jane. When she heard him say “Peace, peace” for the third time she turned the knob and slipped into the room.

  Marjory was standing, red-faced, staring at the man with the green tie. He was also standing. He looked flustered, ashen-faced even. He was blubbering something. It sounded like “but Bob, but Bob, but Bob,” over and over, the most literal blubbering Jane had ever heard.

  “Ahem.” Jane cleared her throat into her fist.

  Vargas stood up with a violent thrust. “I will be calling my lawyers.” He shoved his way past Jane and left.

  The blubbering man turned and watched Vargas leave. “What does it mean?” He almost wailed as he spoke.

  “It means that we all need to contact our lawyers.” Walker—or Waller—stood up as well. He nodded at Marjory and moved to the door, not seeming to notice Jane and her carafe of coffee. “And you, my dear, had better contact your own lawyer, because the corporate lawyer will do you no good.” He exited less dramatically than Vargas had done.

  Jane turned to Marjory.

  Marjory shook her head. “Drama queens,” she huffed.

  The blubbering man nodded at her, his mouth agape.

  “You’re the worst of them, Fitch, I swear. How hard is it to nod your head and agree? We need to press pause on all corporate decision-making until after the investigation of the deaths is over and the estate has been settled.” Marjory looked over Jane’s head at the open library door. “It’s like those men don’t even care that my husband’s brother and sister-in-law are dead."

  Fitch swallowed and nodded. He looked to the door but stopped, his eyes glued to Jane. “You’re that Adler girl,” he said.

  Jane nodded. He knew her?

  “I managed your dad’s locations until last year.” The color was slowly returning to Fitch’s cheeks.

  “Ah,” Jane said. He still didn’t look familiar.

  “Don’t worry about calling a lawyer.” Marjory’s voice had gone soft. “Those men are bluffing.”

  Fitch nodded. “Yes. All right. I won’t.”

  If he had been managing burger restaurants for her father, Jane was certain he didn’t have a lawyer, or the money to call a lawyer. No wonder he had been reduced to a blubbering pile by the other men in the room.

  “Go back to work. Business as usual for you.”

  Fitch nodded. “Business as usual for building and maintenance.” He exited the library, leaving Jane and Marjory alone.

  “Well…that didn’t go as I had hoped.” Marjory stood with her hands clasped behind her back, facing the window. “Thank you for being available.”

  There was a softness to Marjory’s words that caught Jane off guard.

  “That’s why I’m here, ma’am.” It was the truth, as far as it went. Jane was here, right now, to serve a family in crisis. Or so she kept reminding herself.

  “Please clean up this mess.” Marjory turned and waved her hand to the food that had hardly been touched.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jane picked up the plates from the small tables scattered around the room and balanced them with her empty hand. As she headed back to the kitchen she wondered what conversation she had stumbled onto. Were the suspicious deaths murder after all, and was someone in that room responsible? She shivered at the thought. From what she had heard, Fitch had been invited as a yes-man, to agree with whatever Marjory proposed. The Waller/Walker man and Vargas were muckety-mucks in the Burger with the Roly-Poly Bun business. Would either of them have wanted Bob and Pamela dead?

  Would Marjory have wanted them dead?

  Jane stretched plastic wrap over the untouched tray of meats. She had enough food to feed herself, Jake, and Marjory for several lunches, unless the cops came and arrested Marjory, in which case the meat would last even longer.

  Jane bit her bottom lip. Marjory was acting like she was in charge of the family business. Seizing control of the family business seemed like a good motive, but was it true?

  Jane needed to find out what role Vargas and Waller/Walker played in the business to understand what their motives would have been. After stowing all of the food away in the much fuller side-by-side stainless-steel fridge, Jane trod slowly back to the librar
y. This wasn’t any of her business, but so long as she was hearing half conversations through closed doors, it seemed wise to attempt to understand what was going on. And, in its own way, digging into the suspicious deaths was sort of like serving a family in crisis. Jane wondered, with a little smile, if she could get extra credit for finding out who had killed the Crawfords.

  8

  Jane had managed to get all of her clients cleaned despite the additional work that came with cooking for Marjory and Jake. By the time Friday night class rolled around, Jane felt tired, but satisfied. The fluorescent flickers and the aroma of dust greeted her like an old friend. She had made it back to class again after the most trying week of her life. However, try as she might, she still struggled to pay attention to the whole lecture.

  Three hours of lecture was long at the best of times, but when trying to sort out the major players in a suspicious death, plot a plan to retrieve her confiscated belongings, and keep her face from blushing magenta every time she looked at the tall, dark, and disarming lecturer, it was a Herculean event. And she wasn’t Hercules.

  Hercule Poirot, perhaps, but not Hercules.

  She had a list of people she needed to talk to about Pam and Bob, and next to each name she had noted what she knew of their psychology.

  Since she had grown up with Phoebe and Jake at their exclusive Christian prep school, they were easy.

  Jake: lazy, self absorbed, emotionally stunted. She scribbled possible motives onto her paper next to his name, but they seemed foolish. Seize power of the company. Scratch. If it had been a motive he certainly hadn’t exerted himself to do it. Escape being sucked into the family company? That one seemed more likely, but with Bob’s plans to shut the burger business down being public it seemed unnecessary. What company was Jake at risk of being sucked in to? Unless she came up with something better than the last one on the list, “Erratic behavior indicates mental imbalance,” Jake was not her first suspect.

  She considered Phoebe. Despite being on campus at a university a mere two miles from her parents’ home she hadn’t been seen since the deaths were reported. Well, Jane had to admit, she herself hadn’t seen Phoebe, but Jake, Marjory, or any number of their other family members may have. Under psychological notes Jane listed: Determined, driven, hardworking. In general those were good qualities and only applied, as far as Jane knew, to Phoebe’s soccer career. The notebook paper line allocated for motive was blank. Why would Phoebe want her parents dead? They were paying a pretty penny so she could play soccer for a team that had recently won the national championship. One doesn’t hamstring one’s gravy train, usually.

  Marjory was a different story. Marjory, Bob’s sister-in-law via her marriage to his deceased brother, had grabbed the reins of the business that had funded her lifestyle all these years. When William had passed away, his shares had gone to her. Or were they shares? Is that what it was called? Jane had to admit that she didn’t know what kind of financial stake Marjory had in Roly Burgers.

  Financial stake. Marjory wanted status quo…that’s what Jane had gleaned from the bits of conversation that had fallen by the wayside. If she were financially dependent on the burger business would she have been willing to kill to keep it running?

  Or, by status quo, did Marjory really mean they needed to continue Bob’s plan to shut it down? Jane picked through her memories of overheard conversations.

  Jane scribbled big X’s across all of her notes. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t her business, and it was distracting her from the real and present danger of not getting her lock-box with her emergency credit card back from the apartment. Plus her futon, privacy screen, side table, locally-sourced honey mustard, alarm clock, iPod, swimsuit, Excedrin migraine, shower foof, the OED on CD Rom and Nave’s Topical Bible. She stopped. Was that all she owned in the world besides the junk in her car and the laundry that she had finally managed to wash? No, she also had the complete works of L M Montgomery, a hummingbird feeder, a pair of Gucci sunglasses, her Birkenstocks, and one pair of high heels. She ran her pencil down the list. That looked exhaustive. And pathetic. But she had needed to keep her possessions to a minimum. She did not need a bunch of first world baggage in the 10/40 window.

  She was still staring at her list, bouncing her thoughts between facing down the bully landlord and what could be keeping Phoebe from coming to the house when Sarah sat on the desk.

  “Earth to Jane. You have a serious case of senior-itis.”

  “How can I? This place doesn’t have ‘seniors.’”

  “It’s a great mystery, but either way, our lecturer stares at you for hours at a time and you ignore everything he says.”

  Heat rose to Jane’s cheeks. She looked up to see if he was anywhere near them.

  “It’s okay, he took a call in the hallway. What’s up with you two? The last two classes, you two couldn’t keep your eyes off of each other and then tonight you hardly know he’s alive.”

  “Nothing’s ‘up.’ I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”

  “What is so important that you can’t make time for a hot guy like Mr. Daniels?”

  Jane tried to suppress a smile. Mr. Daniels. She called him Isaac, herself. “Did I not tell you that I was evicted because my roommate stole my rent money instead of paying it and now the landlord has all of my worldly possessions under lock and key?”

  “You are kidding!”

  “I’m not. It is pretty bad. I have a place to stay right now—as a housekeeper, but I’d kind of like to get all of my stuff back, you know?”

  “I can imagine, at least.”

  Jane laid her hand over her suspect notes. “I admit though, the attractive lecturer has distracted me from making any progress.”

  Sarah’s eyes popped open wide and her mouth made a little “o.” She shook her head in a tiny motion. Jane’s heart dropped. It was that shocked-but-laughing look people get when someone you are talking about is right behind you.

  Jane raised an eyebrow.

  Sarah looked over her shoulder, but turned her head as though following someone with her eyes. Then she let out a long breath. “He passed. I don’t think he heard you.”

  “I’m probably a really big idiot.” Jane picked up her pen and tapped it on her page of notes.

  “No, I can assure you, as an expert at seeing who digs who, however attractive you find Mr. Daniels, he thinks the same, but double, about you.”

  The smile snuck back on Jane. Her heart did a little flip. She held the same opinion, after their coffee earlier in the week, but they hadn’t been calling or texting or any of the other things people do when they like each other, so she had begun to think she was imagining it. Of course, they hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, but that was a part of her disappointment.

  Sarah stood up. “Stay at your desk after everyone leaves. He always walks out of class immediately after you do. This time, just don’t leave.”

  Jane nodded.

  The rowdy students, hopped up on coffee from the cart in the lounge, seemed like they’d never leave at the end of lecture. Isaac had been in the middle of a lively conversation with several of them. It didn’t seem to Jane that he had noticed her waiting. While she debated on paper whether to call her parents over the weekend, when she knew they’d be back from the cruise, Isaac and the students she thought of as “kids” argued over the L in John Calvin’s TULIP. As far as Jane was concerned John 3:16 said God so loved the world so there couldn’t be any limit to his atonement. She was glad to hear that was the side Isaac took as well.

  “You just believe what your seminary taught you,” an eighteen-year-old Calvinist called Duncan said. He thumped his Bible with his knuckles. “If you took the Bible literally the way you claim you do, you couldn’t deny that Christ’s atonement isn’t for everyone. Jeesh, all you have to do is look around and see that not everyone is saved.”

  “You are confusing your L and your U, Duncan. Not everyone is saved because not everyone is elect.”

  “You�
��re both just rebelling against your parents. It’s dangerous and stupid.” Sarah flailed her hands while she spoke. “We all grew up together at Fair Havens Baptist and you know you don’t really believe this Tulip nonsense.”

  “Be careful,” Isaac said. “Just because we don’t subscribe to it, doesn’t mean it is nonsense.”

  “But it is dangerous and foolish. What’s the point of missions if everyone who is going to get saved will get saved and can’t escape it anyway?”

  “Thank you, William Carey. There is more to salvation than that.”

  “Of course there is. That’s my point!” Sarah face-palmed.

  Jane rested her head in her hands. Free time. That was the problem with the live-in students. They had too much free time. If they had some real work to do they wouldn’t have time to waste arguing about election and all of that. She could wait three more minutes. If they weren’t done arguing in three minutes she’d have to leave, no matter how much she wanted a few moments alone with Isaac.

  They didn’t stop. At one moment Jane thought she caught Isaac glancing her way, but he didn’t extricate himself from the group.

  Jane packed up her small computer and her notebooks. She left without looking behind her.

  As Jane turned into the Crawfords’ driveway her phone rang.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I got your number from the class list.”

  Jane’s heart raced. “I don’t.” She felt like her heart was going to break out of her chest.

  “It’s been a while…I was just wondering how you are doing.”

  “Okay…hanging in there. Um…when I got home after coffee I found out I had been evicted.” Jane unbuckled, but stayed in her car.

  “What? Are you kidding? I’m so sorry I didn’t follow you home. I should have followed you. It was so late. What did you do?”