Dirty Little Murder: A Plain Jane Mystery (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 2)

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  Her skull felt like a bell with her brain sounding against its hard sides. She wiped her forehead with her wet hand.

  Blood. She was bleeding.

  The room swirled around her. She stopped everything and sat down, legs crossed. She leaned forward, her head in her lap, and tried to breathe. “Dear Lord, dear Lord, dear Lord,” she prayed over and over again, thankful that the Spirit would translate her panic into something useful.

  When her body stilled she sat up. Her phone, resting on Douglas’s knee, was the only phone she knew of in the house. In the three weeks she had been cleaning here, she hadn’t seen a single land line. Should she run upstairs and search the rooms for one? Or was there a faster way to call the police?

  She had seen a bright blue alarm system box in the garage.

  With extreme caution, so as not to start the panic back up, Jane stood, and took the long walk back down the basement hall.

  The alarm box was above the workbench.

  Jane popped the cover and stared at the keys. Could she trip the alarm to make it call the police? Or was there an emergency button she could press?

  She held her shaking finger in front of the keypad.

  Maybe she should get a neighbor instead.

  She turned her head toward the garage doors. The neighbors were so isolated on their acred lots. It would be faster to alert the police this way. If she could figure it out.

  But wait.

  Do you even call the police when a man drowns?

  She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. She needed a phone to call 911.

  But she didn’t really need an ambulance, because Douglas was dead.

  She looked up at the box again.

  She chewed her lip.

  How had that alarm gone off when she was a kid?

  The switch box.

  The switch box was near enough to the alarm box that she could reach it. She opened it up and began switching every one of them on and then off. Before she had done the whole box the alarm was sounding.

  A shoulder-shaking sob escaped. She took a deep breath. Then another. Someone would come help her now.

  Jane let herself out the garage door. She sat on the edge of the flower box nearest the garage and waited for help to arrive.

  6

  Caramel Swanson stormed across her driveway. She was squeezed into a pair of curve-hugging jeans and shiny brown leather riding boots that were silent on the cobblestone parking circle.

  “What is going on here?” Caramel held her phone in Jane’s face like an accusation. “The alarm company just called me to see if I knew why our alarm was going off. I do not know why the alarm is going off.”

  Jane’s whole body shook. Her mind told her to stand up and face Caramel, but her legs didn’t agree. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to hold them still. She opened her mouth, but a garbled choke came out instead of words.

  “Well? How did you trip the alarm? It wasn’t even set.” Caramel’s face was violent red. “I was in the middle of something a little bit important.”

  Jane threw herself to her feet. She quivered top to bottom. “It’s Douglas.” Her voice matched her shaking body.

  “What’s that dirty dog done now?” Caramel pulled her phone back. Her face wrinkled like she had a mouth full of vinegar.

  “He’s dead.” Jane’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  Caramel’s eyes bulged out of her head. “What?”

  “In the hot tub.” Jane kept her eyes trained on Caramel’s face.

  Caramel’s angry red face had bleached white. She looked Jane up and down, then frowned. “What do you mean he’s dead in the hot tub?”

  Jane just nodded.

  “You mean Douglas is dead? In the hot tub?”

  Jane nodded again. If she opened her mouth, all of her fear would come out in great hiccoughy sobs, and she couldn’t do that in front of Caramel.

  “What are you doing just sitting here? Call the ambulance!” Caramel’s voice rose to a shriek that sent shivers up and down Jane’s arms.

  Jane gulped. “I dropped my phone. In the hot tub.” She flinched.

  Caramel waved her phone in Jane’s face. “You are the most inept, useless person I have met in all of my life! Get inside the house and call the ambulance, you fool! They might have been able to save my husband!”

  Jane wavered, looking from the door to the phone in Caramel’s hand. “Is there a phone inside?”

  “Oh, never mind!” Caramel stabbed her cell phone with a long, red, fingernail. “911? 911? There’s been a death!”

  The blare of sirens made Jane’s skin crawl. She stood against the brick wall of the garage door, shaking with fear. When the paramedics poured out of the ambulance, Caramel swooped on them and led them to the hot tub room.

  Jane considered running—just running down the street as far away as her feet could carry her. She could always run back again to talk to the police. But an officer reached her before she could will her feet to move.

  The officer was a short woman with cropped brown hair and a deeply lined face. She frowned at Jane. “Caramel Swanson?”

  “No, ma’am. Jane Adler, the maid.” Jane bit her lip.

  The officer looked her up and down as though recording her height and weight.

  “You discovered the body?”

  “Yes.” Jane gripped her fingers together to keep them from shaking.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  Jane opened her mouth to answer, but she choked on a sob. She clamped her mouth shut and just nodded.

  “It’s okay.” The officer lowered her voice, and looked over Jane’s shoulder. “Take your time.”

  Jane nodded again. She blinked away the tears that were burning in her eyes. “I was going to call, but I was shaking so hard I dropped my phone in the water.” Her words began to spill out. “I thought I was all alone here, and I didn’t know what to do, so I set off the alarm. But they called Caramel’s cell phone, and so Caramel came up here and then she called you.”

  The officer narrowed her eyes. “You’re the regular housekeeper?”

  “No. I’m just filling in while their maid is on vacation.”

  “So you didn’t know where Caramel was or where the phones were?”

  “I panicked. I couldn’t remember seeing a phone, but there might be one upstairs in the office.” Jane rubbed her lips together hoping to make her jaw stop trembling.

  “So your cell phone is in the hot tub with the deceased?”

  “Yes.” Jane looked at her feet.

  “I need you to remain outside now. Two officers are staying out here, and you cannot leave the property. Do you understand?”

  Jane nodded. This time the tears spilled down her face.

  The officer looked her up and down again. Her eyebrows lifted a tiny bit. “Go ahead and sit down.” The officer indicated the ground.

  Jane slid to her seat. She wrapped her arms around her knees and laid her head on them. She had been alone in the house with Douglas, and now he was dead, and she wasn’t allowed to leave the property, and her cell phone was in the hot tub. They were going to arrest her. She pinched her eyes shut and prayed the prayer of a desperately scared kid. “Dear God,” she whispered, “I want my mommy.”

  Jane kept her head down and her eyes shut until she heard the paramedics exiting the house. She opened her eyes, but didn’t lift her head. Two paramedics carried the stretcher off to the ambulance. Douglas Swanson was zipped in a body bag. Behind her somewhere, maybe still at the threshold of the door, Caramel was answering questions, her words mingled with deep, chesty sobs.

  A man in a raincoat crouched beside Jane. “I’d like to ask you some questions. Do you mind stepping over here?”

  Jane wiped her eyes, nodded, and followed the man to the front door of the house. They both sat on the stone benches that flanked the front door.

  “I’m Detective Bryce. Are you Jane Adler?”

  “Yes.” Jane chewed on the
side of her tongue. She would have given her own left hand to stop shaking. Kaitlyn’s bionic hand popped into her head, and she almost smiled. She took a deep breath, slowly calming down.

  “Can you tell me why you were in the basement of the Swanson house?”

  “I’m their cleaner—just while their real maid is on vacation.” Jane took another deep breath.

  “Tell me about what you did today.” The officer had a baby face, with big blue eyes and an easy smile. His words were slow, with a hint of the South. He seemed like the safe spot in a whirlpool of sharks. She couldn’t pull her eyes away.

  “I started in the garage, tidied the work bench, mopped up the floor. Then, since I was downstairs already, I went to the back room with the hot tub. I needed to clean it up.”

  “What happened next?” He leaned forward a little, as though she were telling a fascinating story.

  “I wanted to check the pH on the tub—I do it every time I come. Balance the chemicals and all of that.” Jane took another deep breath. “I dipped the little tester thing into the water, to get the sample, you know? And that’s when I saw him in there.” She squeezed her eyes shut for just a second, wishing she could see anything but the straggling hair floating at the surface of the water.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I had to call the ambulance, so I grabbed my phone, but I was shaking so hard—” Jane held out her hand, still quaking “—that I dropped it in the tub.”

  “What did you do then?” Detective Bryce had a surprised tone, like he hadn’t already known that, though Jane thought surely he had.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I tried to think of where there was a phone in the house, but I couldn’t remember, and the house is so big. I didn’t want to waste time running around.”

  “You didn’t try to get him out of the water and revive him?”

  Bit her bottom lip. She had tried to pull him out, but he was so heavy. What if she should have tried harder? Her hard-won composure was gone again. He had just looked dead. He had looked hideously dead, lying there in the water. “He was too heavy…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Do you have CPR training?”

  Jane nodded. After the situation with Bob Crawford the previous year, she had gotten CPR training. But in spite of that she still hadn’t been able to save Douglas.

  “But you didn’t try to resuscitate him?” Detective Bryce hadn’t changed his tone of voice one bit; he still sounded interested and concerned. But Jane felt convicted.

  “I couldn’t get him out. And he just looked so dead.” Jane pulled her eyes from the detective’s face.

  “What happened next?”

  “I just tried to think of some way to get help, and the fastest thing I could think of was the house alarm.”

  “You didn’t try and find Caramel?”

  “I didn’t know she was home.”

  The officer nodded. “Okay. So you set off the house alarm. Then what happened?”

  “Caramel came and called the police.” Jane was suddenly exhausted. She didn’t want to relive every step of the last hour—the sloshing water, the moist towels, the frantically flipping switches at the electrical panel, or Caramel yelling at her while Douglas floated in the filthy water of his playboy tub.

  “There’s just one more thing I’d like you to do today. Do you think you are up for it?”

  Jane frowned.

  “I just need to get your contact information. Okay? No big deal. Later, we’ll want to connect with you to get an official statement. You know, if this is just some kind of accident, it’s no big deal at all, but depending on what the coroner says, we’ll need to get in touch with you for a statement.” Detective Bryce’s voice was friendly, not condescending. It had a little up note at the end, like getting in touch for a statement was kind of the same as going out for coffee, or meeting at the library.

  Jane gave him her address. “But… I have to get a new phone now, so I don’t know. Should I call you when I have a new number? Or maybe I can have the phone people switch my number to a new phone?”

  “Yes, you’d better give us the old number, and then try and have it moved. If worse comes to worst we’ll just pop by. And as soon as you have a new phone, you can call us and confirm the number.” Detective Bryce passed her a business card.

  “Okay.” Jane felt tongue tied.

  “Wait here just a minute, all right?”

  Jane nodded and watched the young detective go back to his car. He stood next to it and made a phone call.

  He was back on the porch with her before she could decide what she should do next. He had a pad of paper and a pen.

  “I had a quick chat with my boss, and he suggested since you might not be easy to reach, that you could write your statement out for us now.” He handed her the pad, with a disarming smile. “Do you think you are up for it?”

  Jane swallowed hard. What could it hurt? “Sure.” She took the notepad with a shaking hand.

  “Just write down everything you told me, and it will be perfect.” He sat down on the bench across from her again.

  Jane started to write. The words seemed to flow from her pen like water. She said everything she could think of from mopping the spotless garage to how she flipped the electric switches to set off the alarm. When she was done, she was exhausted.

  “Good job!” Detective Bryce flipped the pages of his notebook. “Five pages! This might be a record.” He turned it to the last page. “Just sign here for me, okay?”

  Jane signed the notepad underneath her statement.

  “I’d like you to remain up here for just a bit longer, in case we have any more questions. One of the officers will let you know when it’s okay to leave.”

  Jane leaned back against the house and waited to be released from the scene… of the crime? Was Douglas murdered in his hot tub? She sincerely hoped not, and yet, murder seemed highly likely this time.

  7

  Jane stopped at the store on the way home to buy a new phone. She grabbed a pay-as-you-go phone and a time card, and set it up before she drove away. Not that it was a real help, since it didn’t have her phone numbers in it, and no one knew its number.

  She charged it in her car as she drove home. It wasn’t much use, but it was something to call her phone company from—and her parents, who paid the bill on their family plan—to replace her real phone.

  When she got home and her phone was finally usable she called Isaac—one of the few numbers she knew by heart.

  And he actually answered.

  “Jane!”

  A smile spread across Jane’s face that started in her heart. His voice was a breath of fresh air. “Where have you been?”

  “In the mountains. Very sketchy reception. You, my friend, would love it.”

  Jane exhaled slowly. His voice sounded so happy and confident. A gray shadow lifted from her picture of the future. Isaac was totally going to want to be a missionary after this.

  “I’ve had a horrible week. Tell me something to take my mind off of it.” Jane stretched out on her futon and kicked her shoes off.

  “I can hear the ocean from my office.”

  “I thought you were in the mountains?”

  “I was, but I’m back at the office now. I’m staring at a picture of the view from the ridge of the mountain we climbed and listening to the sound of the ocean from my office.”

  “Can you see the water?”

  “Nah, there’s a forest, a wildlife preserve, between here and there, but it’s a short walk, and I can hear it.”

  “You can hear it with a forest in the way?” She wasn’t sure if Isaac wasn’t making any sense or if she was just having a hard time concentrating. Whenever he said ocean, the image of Douglas’s head floating in the water came to mind. She wanted it to go away, but it wouldn’t.

  “It’s not loud, but it’s there.”

  “So location is perfect. Now, how is the work going?”

  “Great. The students are serious. No
ne of the slackers you get back home.”

  “You love it.”

  “That I do. But you had a horrible week? What happened?”

  Jane paused. She wasn’t ready to talk about Douglas yet. “Paula Ehlers—the mission coordinator at Columbia River? Her husband was killed in a hit and run.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “She’s a wreck. I feel so bad for her.”

  “You’ve got to step up, Jane. These are the moments God put you on Earth for.”

  Jane pictured the last time she had gone to Paula’s house to help. “I want to help, but I don’t think she needs me.”

  “Of course she needs you.”

  “Listen, that wasn’t the worst of it.”

  “Mark Ehlers dying wasn’t the worst?”

  “It was bad, but not the worst. You know my new clients, the Swansons?”

  “Wait—hold on a second.”

  Jane waited. The silence was killing her. Had the line been dropped?

  “Okay, I’m here. Something was worse than Mark dying?” He had a distracted tone in his voice.

  “Mr. Swanson, my client, died, too. They think it was murder.”

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “Another murder? Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not kidding in the least.” Jane rolled onto her side, she needed a bit more than disbelief and distraction right now.

  “No. I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t, but you can see what I mean, can’t you? It’s a little unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, of course.” Jane’s heart was heavy and her whole body felt tired. She had waited ages to be able to talk to him and this was the support he offered?

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t really know yet. I was cleaning the hot tub room and I found him, drowned in the tub.”

  “No way.”

  “Really.”

  “Hey, Jane. I hate to do this, but I’ve got to go. They need me outside. But I’ll call, okay? Until then, see what you can do for Paula. This has got to be hard for her.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  The phone clicked off.