Jane stared at him, shocked. She hadn’t considered that before. That being a “Crawford” meant something kind of like being a “Trives” did. Obviously not to the same extent. The Crawford family wasn’t building libraries for universities or anything, but still…
“Just don’t be surprised when the appeals letters start showing up in your mailbox.”
She laughed. “I’ve only been a Crawford for a few months. I’m not used to being a mark yet.”
Owen smiled. “May the pleasure of having much to give never grow old.” He cleaned his plate and excused himself.
Someone’s assistant had made a point to book Chase and Tory on this mission trip. But how had Tory and Chase found out about the team Owen was taking? Sheer luck? Or were they involved with the church who organized it?
Jane scooted down the bench to sit closer to the other team members, but lunch was ending, and no one did more than exchange hellos with her before they left.
The volunteer coordinator was happy to let her join the house mothers in the sewing room. Schoolchildren in Mexico were required to wear uniforms. The house mothers did all of the sewing for their own children and, when that work was done, a few of them volunteered their time to sew uniforms for other kids in the area. The community was very poor and lack of uniform meant no education for the children. One simple outfit could make a lifelong difference, both for the child and the village as a whole.
Jane didn’t know how to sew. Nonetheless, she settled in with the mothers, ready to get to know the community better.
Perhaps while they sewed they would gossip about the trouble the youths in the area were getting into . . . like drugs. There was always a chance that this afternoon chat session over sewing needles and plaid polyester would give her the clue that opened her case up.
But even if there wasn’t any good gossip, there was a bathroom not far from the sewing room, and Tory ought to be coming by to clean it. Also, the room had big picture windows that looked onto the courtyard, so Jane also ought to be able to keep an eye on Tory’s comings and goings.
The mothers spoke fast and furious in Spanish and Jane was having a hard time keeping up. In fact, there were so many unfamiliar words she suspected they were speaking a dialect that was very far removed from the Castellan-influenced school Spanish she had worked so hard on.
Jane was established at a table, pinning a pattern on some dark blue plaid that would become a knee length pleated skirt when it was finished.
One of the mothers sat across from her with a long pile of sturdy string in her lap. As she talked with the other ladies she handled the strands of string one by one, running her fingers over them as though they made her happy. The strings had series of knots in them that looked like they’d make a good sensory activity for small children. Jane watched for a while, and then asked, “Que es eso?” nodding at the string.
The house mother sighed in a satisfied kind of way and said, “Es cultura, sólo cultura.” The other mothers nodded in agreement.
Just culture?
“Que significa?” Jane asked. What does it signify?
The house mother explained at length in Spanish. Jane understood enough to know that the strings were some kind of ancient art that the kids liked to see.
The women changed the subject to uniforms, but Jane kept her eye on the woman with the strings, attracted by the rhythmic nature of the activity. It looked as though the act of touching and knotting the strings was the actual art, rather than the finished product being the goal. Jane was mesmerized. In all of her classes on culture and Latin America, Jane hadn’t seen or heard of anything like this.
She snipped the plaid fabric and watched the mother knot her strings, as Tory came in.
“Donde está el baño?” Her accent was laughably American and, indeed, the mothers did laugh, but they pointed out the bathroom and Tory tugged her bucket of spray bottles and rags into the room they pointed out.
Now Jane had Tory just where she wanted her. She walked to the bathroom as casually as possible, though the women sewing didn’t pay any attention to her. She let herself in and shut the door behind her. Tory was sitting on the closed toilet with her head in her hands.
“You doing okay?” Jane asked.
Tory looked up and scowled. “No. But what does it matter? I’m not here for me.”
“Are you sure I can’t do anything for you?”
“You could please just leave me alone.” She pressed her hands against her eyes. “I’ll adjust in a day or two.”
“Do you want to switch? I’ll finish the bathrooms and you could help sew. It might be easier on you.”
Tory took a little while to answer. “If you want to clean the bathrooms, go for it.” She stood slowly and carefully as though nursing a headache, and left. Jane followed her out and watched her cross the courtyard, not in the direction of the dorms.
Another misplayed hand. Jane picked up the spray bottle labeled “bleach” and mentally kicked herself. Now she couldn’t get any gossip from the mothers, and she couldn’t watch the courtyard for any shenanigans by Chase and Tory. At this rate all she’d get to do in Mexico was mission work.
4
Then next morning, after Miguel handed out work assignments, he paused, a look of sorrow slowly marking his face. “Thank you so much for coming here to serve us and to live with us, for even so short a time.” He cleared his throat. “Here at the orphanage we go through the same range of human experience that you do at home. This evening instead of chapel, we’re having a memorial service for Claude Marshall, just for the families. He lived and worked with us for ten years. We are so grateful for his time here, and the life of service that he lived. He was fifty-three years old, far too young to die, but he had a heart condition, so while we didn’t expect him to die, it also wasn’t a shock.” He cleared his throat again, clearly trying not to cry. “Claude was the head of our maintenance crew and kept all of our buildings and machines running. As it happens, two days before you arrived, he passed away. Later this week we will have a very formal funeral service. I hope you will all join us for it. It will be a very traditional goodbye from his adopted town of El Ruego, Mexico, and all of us here in the Casa de Esperanza.”
Jane hated to think of herself as coldhearted, and knew that she really needed to check herself, but the funeral seemed like just another thief, stealing the little time she had to get into Tory’s head and move her investigation forward. Fortunately, Tory had skipped breakfast, so Jane could at least find her to let her know what her work assignment was.
Jane found the daughter of one of Portland’s leading Christian families in the dorm lying with a washcloth over her head. She sat on the floor next to her. “Are you okay?” She asked.
Tory groaned.
“Are you sure I can’t get the nurse for you?”
Tory groaned again.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
Tory removed the washcloth and sat up. “Jane, these allergies are seriously killing me.” She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. “I told Chase that it would be complete misery if I came with him.” She ended her complaint on an especially whiney note and then laid back down and slipped the washcloth back over her forehead.
“You didn’t want to come?”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be here, but I knew I couldn’t hack it. I know my limitations.”
“Are you sure I can’t get the nurse?”
“Forgot about it. It’s a sinus headache. Aspirin won’t help and I’ve already got allergy medicine. There’s nothing you can do. Just go away and leave me alone.”
“I could maybe pray for you.”
Tory sighed heavily. “It’s a sinus headache. If you want to pray for me, could you do it somewhere else so that I can maybe lie here in silence?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” Jane slipped out of the dorm as quietly as she could and prayed as she wandered back towards the dining room. It was pretty fishy kind of headache if
normal headache medicine couldn’t help. And it was yet another day where Tory would be free to slip away if that was what she was here for, since she wouldn’t be checking into a job.
Jane spent the morning in the cafeteria with a couple of American teenagers, mopping and scrubbing. Their chatter was entirely about Rest from War and how old Miguel the volunteer coordinator might be and if he might be single.
During siesta, she found Jake loitering in the doorway of the volunteer lounge. He jerked his head in the direction of the open field. Jane nodded and they walked that way. “What’s the word on Chase?”
“Glad you asked.” Jake took her hand in his. “He didn’t show up for his work job this morning. I asked—you’re welcome—Owen said Chase had a prearranged thing today to hang out with fans in Ensenada.”
“That’s like an hour way away. How could he fit a trip there and back in the morning?”
“It’s not just the distance that makes it weird. Remember the way the families acted when Miguel told them Chase was a member of Rest from War?” Jake pressed his point.
“Yes, with confusion.”
“Rest from War is just not as famous here as back home. They are too new, too American. Too religious. You and I both know that Christian music, books, film, all of that stuff doesn’t have much of a market outside of the U.S. So where’d he find fans to meet with?”
“He didn’t, did he?” Jane turned and began to walk back towards the orphanage.
“Of course not, so what was he doing?”
“That can’t too hard to discover. First we find out how he left, then where he ended up. That pretty much reveals what he was doing.” Jane was headed toward the main business office of the orphanage. “But while we sort out these little details, I am trying to get a grip on what’s going on with Tory. She claims she has allergies so bad that she can’t get out of bed, and nothing relieves her symptoms.”
“Ouch.”
“Sure, if it’s true. But what’s handier than not having to work on a work trip, if you are actually here to sneak around selling drugs?”
“Your evidence that she’s not here to work?”
“That’s the sticky point. At least this morning she was actually in bed. If sickness is an excuse to sneak away, she hasn’t snuck yet, as far as I can tell.” Jane paused in front of the office. “But if she’s that allergic to Mexico, why did she bother to come?”
Marcia, the receptionist in the cement block office building was graciousness herself but said that as far as she knew, Chase left in his own vehicle. He had popped in to say a friendly goodbye, but hadn’t given her any information about where he was going or with whom. For all she knew, he had gone alone.
Jane kicked at the dusty sidewalk in frustration as she walked back with Jake. “I guess if he took the team van, Owen, our fearless leader, would know.”
“Why don’t I ask about it while you go see if Tory is sticking to her sick in bed scheme.” Jake planted a big fat kiss on his wife and sprinted across the campus.
Jane poked her head in the dorm. Tory was asleep in bed.
Instead of chapel, Owen gathered all of the volunteers together in the lounge where the volunteers met and where they had had their casual concert.
He led a brief Bible study followed by some singing, led by the guy in charge of the team from California. They were both heartfelt, and took some time to pray for the residents on the loss of their friend, but Jane’s heart wasn’t in it, and when they were released on their own recognizance, Jane was relieved.
She and Jake cornered Chase, Jane on his left side and Jake his right, and steered him out to a patio with benches and a good view of the night sky.
“Tory’s sure not feeling well,” Jane said. “Do you know anything that could help her feel better?”
“She told me it was going to be like this,” Chase said, “but I didn’t believe her. Part of me thought she was exaggerating and the other part thought since this is mission work, God would make sure her allergies didn’t bother her.”
Jane laughed. “It seems like he would, don’t you think?”
“It’s a beautiful night,” Jake said.
“It’s a bummer Tory can’t see it.” Chase added, “I just love that girl so much.”
“How long have you known her?” Jake asked.
“About six months. We met back stage at a fundraising concert in Chicago.”
“She sure travels a lot for a student,” Jane murmured. She tried to walk the line between curious in a friendly way and nosy. She knew an awful lot about Tory’s school history, but as it was a high school and college trip, she was playing dumb.
“Oh, she’s not in school. She’s under the assumption that since there’s no end to Trives money she won’t ever have to work…or that she’ll just work for her daddy.”
Jane laughed. “Nice life.”
Jake frowned. “Tempting life.”
“You would know,” Chase said. It sounded like Jake and Chase had had a chance to catch up on their backstories.
“Yup, but I went to school. I couldn’t let myself give in to the temptation.”
“What about you, Chase? Did you go to school?” Jane asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Community college anyway. I was studying music. Then the guys and I got our record deal and I quit, but just for now. Fame doesn’t usually last.”
“Invest wisely, son.” Jake put on fatherly tones that didn’t match his youthful look.
Jane considered Chase’s situation. Two years of community college, then the record deal. Rest from War had been on the scene for about two years now. Chase must be younger than he looked.
“How did you guys hook up with the orphanage?” Jane asked.
Chase hesitated for the first time. No glib answer at hand. The hesitation turned into a long awkward pause. Finally, he answered, “My baby sister grew up here.”
“No kidding?” Jake asked, “Did you parents adopt her?”
“Yeah, they did. She’s sixteen now. We were finally able to sign the papers when she was ten.”
“That’s really cool, but I thought the point of this orphanage was that kids grew up here with the families,” Jane said.
“They do, if they are citizens of Mexico. Sis lived here but she had no known extended family, no Mexican papers. When my parents came through about twelve years ago she was just a wee little thing and the orphanage didn’t know what to do with her.”
“What do you mean she didn’t have any papers?”
“It’s complicated. Sis was born in America, in San Diego, but her mom couldn’t make it work there so she came back to Ensenada, just her and the baby. She either abandoned Sis or she died, we don’t know which, but someone left Sis here, with an American birth certificate, father’s name blank.”
“They don’t know who left the baby here?”
“Nope. Not a clue. And they looked. They do their very best to keep everything on the up and up around here. Legal paperwork can be a nightmare and the work they do is too important to mess around.”
“Have you come before?”
“This is my first visit. Sis never wanted me to come. I think she has good memories of it, but I think now she just wants to be a . . . McBane, you know? Just a normal American girl. And then again, maybe her memories of the orphanage are too good. Maybe she didn’t want to leave. She really didn’t have choice. As far as the organization was concerned, anyway. She’s lucky she didn’t end up on the streets. A lot of kids do.”
“It’s kind of an incredible story,” Jane said. “When she’s older I think she’ll really appreciate the miraculousness of it.”
“I hope so. She’s a great kid. I could not ask for a better kid sister. She’s a full six years younger than me, but she seems much more mature than that. And she’s beautiful too. I’m not home as much as I should be. She needs a big brother to scare the boys away. She’s got that olive skin, but huge green eyes. Girls shouldn’t be that pretty.” He laughed with brothe
rly affection.
“Do she and Tory get along?”
“They actually haven’t met yet.”
“Oh, no kidding?”
“My parents live in St. Louis. Tory’s been around with me, here there and everywhere while I tour, but we haven’t been home yet. It’s not been long, just six months, but when you’ve found the one, you’ve found her, you know?”
“I do,” Jake said.
“What made you decide to come down this time?” Jane asked.
He paused again, another long awkward wait. “It was just time.”
They sat in the quiet, under the stars, for a while longer. Maybe being a star made Chase used to being interviewed. After his first hesitation, where he decided if he was going to play along or not, he certainly acted like their Q and A had been perfectly normal and not invasive. And he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in learning more about them.
Eventually Jane stood to go. Her fingers laced loosely through Jake’s.
“Can I come, too?” he asked, a hint of desire in his low tones.
“Not just yet.” She had decided to go check on Tory. Maybe she was feeling well enough to answer some questions . . . just enough to see if her story would match up with Chase’s.
The walk through the quiet, moonlit orphanage grounds was lovely, and Jane was in a mellow, contemplative mood when she entered the dorm. She was ready to casually get to know Tory better.
Unfortunately, Tory was gone.
5
Tory made it to breakfast looking much more with it than the previous two days. She was assigned to the cuna to care for the babies so she didn’t offer to switch Jane’s toilet duty. She claimed she had given in and gone to the nurse the night before.
She also managed to sit with some of the other team members from the college group. Jane herself hadn’t put any effort into getting to know the rest of the team, and was suddenly aware that she might be contributing to a bad vibe. No one wanted their mission trip ruined by snotty team members.
Killer Calling: A Plain Jane Mystery (A Cozy Christian Collection) (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 7) Page 3