Jane took the chair next to her husband, but sat on the edge of it.
Dr. Rodriguez was ushered out of his office, and the officer shut the door behind him.
“What’s your problem? You talked your way off the suspect list. Did you want back on it?”
“Of course not. But I think you might have three murders to solve, not just one.” Jane bit her lip.
The officer sighed. “Do you watch a lot of police shows back home?”
Jane ignored the insult. “First, a woman named Vanessa Thompson disappeared without a trace. Then a man named Claude Marshall died of complications from a heart condition. And finally Pat Bromfield also died of complications from a heart condition. Possibly caused by someone messing with his medicine. I think Claude’s death was also caused by someone messing with his medicine.”
The officer didn’t roll his eyes, but it was close. “And what evidence do you have of this?”
“None.”
“No evidence that the woman is dead? No evidence that the other man’s medicine was tampered with?”
“With two men dead in such short space of time, dying of the same thing, surely you were already considering the possibility they were connected, right?”
“I’m here to make sure no one leaves the orphanage. Not to consider possibilities. That’s for the comandante.”
“He said you were supposed to take my statement, right? I want to make an official statement so you guys will look into it.” Jane nodded her head as she spoke trying to get him to agree with her.
“You just did. You stated it. Now go back to whatever you were doing so I can go back to what I was doing.” He looked at the clock, but didn’t open the door.
“I suspect you are hoping we might make it worth your while to tell the comandante what we just told you.” Jake spoke slowly and pulled out his wallet.
“Are you trying to bribe me?” The officer laughed.
Jake held his wallet but kept it closed. “It depends. Are you asking for a bribe?”
“No. I’m asking you to quit bothering me.” He let himself out.
Dr. Rodriguez entered his office. “What do you want to know about Vanessa?” He took his chair behind his desk, and folded his hands in front of him.
“Everything. Is she Chase McBane’s sister?” Jane cut straight to point.
“I don’t know. You would have to ask him.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t know. You would have to ask her.”
“Where did she go?”
“The answer is the same. She didn’t tell anyone that she was planning to leave, much less where to or why.”
“What did her family say when you called them?”
He frowned. “They were remarkably calm. They said thank you for the information. I got the impression that they knew about it beforehand.”
“Did you really call them?” Jake was lounging in his chair, as though he had no cares in the world. “Because that story sounds a bit like a lie.”
Dr. Rodriguez’s face turned red. “Of course it does. The truth often sounds false, but it’s true. You can call them yourselves if you want to.”
“Okay.” Jane smiled.
Dr. Rodriguez cleared his throat.
“Let me guess,” Jane said. “Her file is fertilizing the orchard.”
“We may have retired her information permanently.” He struggled to say it.
“This is not how you want to run a Christian orphanage, is it?” Jane asked softly.
He shook his head. “No. Things have gotten out of hand.”
“Since Pat introduced his parenting book?” Jane continued with the soft, understanding voice.
“I couldn’t say. All I know is that we need to regroup. To pray and seek guidance. Because no, making files disappear is not a good thing. But if you knew what we had to deal with to keep volunteers coming with ease, to be allowed to take children in, to be able to feed them. We can’t get on the wrong side of the police, and sometimes that involves doing things that don’t feel right.”
“But are for the greater good. Like the midwives in Exodus,” Jake said.
Dr. Rodriguez gave Jake a thankful look. “Exactly like that.”
Jane stood up. “Thank you. I guess now we go talk to Chase and Tory.”
“This investigation will be over soon. You’ll fly home and forget about it, and that will be for the best.” Dr. Rodriguez stood up and nodded at them, indicating they should indeed go talk to someone else.
Just outside the door to the office, Jane pulled out her cell phone. Flora answered on the first ring. “Buenos días! I need some help.”
“Rocky can be there immediately. Two days, tops.”
“It’s not come to that yet, but we have a missing American woman situation to go with our two murders. I was hoping you could find some contact information for her family.”
“Two murders? What did I miss?” Flora’s tone sounded more like “what am I missing out on?”
Jane worried that she’d never get a good assignment like this again if she made it sound too exciting. “Oh, nothing much, but it sure would help if we could get in touch with Chase’s parents. They live in St. Louis, I think. They ought to also be the parents of Vanessa Thompson, née McBane.”
Flora was silent, but Jane heard typing. “McBane’s not his real last name,” she finally said. “The band’s website says that much, but doesn’t tell us what his real name is.”
“Okay, how about this: Vanessa Thompson is a youngish woman, recently widowed, husband a military man who died in action. That ought to have made the news.”
“I can work with that. You want her parents’ contact information?”
“Yes, please.”
“It will take a little longer since I’ll be searching newspapers. But I’ll text you the names and numbers as soon as I have them.”
“Thank you so much. I’m sorry to interrupt your case.” Jane hadn’t realized before what a blessing having a team to work with could be. Between Riley and her enthusiasm and Flora and her experience, she was going to crack this case.
“Meh. It’s just insurance fraud. It might be my bread and butter, but it’s not all that exciting. I’ll get in touch.” Flora hung up, Jane thought, happy to be involved.
Jake hadn’t waited politely while Jane made her call, and it took her a while to track him down again.
He had found himself a table full of volunteers in the cafeteria.
Jane poured herself a coffee from the big aluminum pot and joined them.
“We’re working out a plan for a post-siesta Bible study with the kids,” Jake said. “Remember, the staff is hoping we can provide some activities since they can’t go to school right now.”
“Of course.” Jane kissed him lightly on the back of the neck. “I’ve got to go have a chat with Owen. I’ll find you when I’m done.”
Aiden looked up from a paper he was writing on. “I think I saw him in the lounge.”
“Awesome, thanks.”
Jane headed straight there.
13
Owen wasn’t pleased to see Jane.
“If you don’t mind, I’d love to have a chance to chat again.” She smiled softly, a natural at the calm, quiet voice and face.
He was surrounded by volunteers from both teams, constrained to be polite when he clearly wanted to tell her to leave him alone. “Okay.” He stood up awkwardly.
“Let’s walk.” She went along beside him, leading him to the courtyard where they could pace in circles indefinitely.
“You were upset when I brought up Claude and Pat and Vanessa. Why? Please help me.”
He took a long, deep breath. “Because it’s none of our business.”
“That’s not why.”
He kept walking with her, even though she had no power over him, a good enough clue to her that he knew something and that he wanted to get it off his chest.
“You did know them well, after coming here so oft
en. Why did you say you didn’t?”
“There are police everywhere, looking for a reason to arrest someone.”
“But they couldn’t arrest you for anything. A short term visitor? Even one who’s been here a lot.”
“They fingerprinted me.”
“They fingerprinted all of us.” Jane changed their direction slightly, so they’d be farther away from the open windows of the various building, and slowed her steps down. “Why are you afraid?”
“I have a lot of friends here and I care about them all. I want to work here someday. When I’m done with seminary. They need a full time pastor.”
“Would they hire an American?”
“I’m praying they will, but so far it’s been a no. Too many Americans on staff already.”
“A ha.”
He stopped. “But just because I want to work here and can’t, that’s not a reason to kill somebody. Not a reason to kill three people.”
“With Claude and Pat and Vanessa all gone there are only a few gringos left on staff.”
“Just Dr. Rodriguez and Ginger.” Owen’s voice cracked. “But the police don’t know I want to work here, and they don’t know I’ve been refused. They don’t need to know it, so don’t tell them.”
“I don’t have any reason to tell them. I can see why you didn’t want anyone to think you had a connection with the three of them. But Owen, the staff here surely knows what your relationships were since you’ve been here so many times.”
“It was a mistake to lie.” His face was ashen, and he stumbled as he walked. He hadn’t confessed everything yet.
“Sit down with me.” Jane gestured to a bench under an awning on the windowless side of a storage building. “What else is going on.”
He rubbed his jaw with a shaky hand. “I love these people. I loved Claude and Pat, and I thought Vanessa was terrific. I hate that I said I didn’t know them. I love the rest of the staff here, too, and I don’t want to see anyone punished for anything.”
“Even murder?”
“It can’t have been murder. Everyone is mistaken.” He stared into the distance, his eyes locked on the men’s dorm.
“What else are you wanting to say? Please tell me.”
He took another deep breath, so deep Jane was afraid he might pass out.
“I hid the bag of pills in our dorm.”
Jane was frozen.
“The nurse gave them to me. Told me I had to help her. Told me to just hide them anywhere, but not to flush them.”
“The nurse did?” Jane spoke slowly. The nurse who hated liars?
“Yes. She said, she said . . . medicine is valuable, that she couldn’t watch it be wasted. She had taken it from someone, caught someone with it. Someone trying to destroy it and she had saved it. She had promised to make it disappear.”
“Why had she turned to you for help?”
“She’s my friend. She knows she can trust me. She said the police had already searched our things and wouldn’t do it again. She promised me they wouldn’t. She said if I would take them and hide them, I could give them back right before we left. It would be easy, simple even, and I might save someone’s life.”
“Did you hide them in Jake’s bag?” She threw out her suspicion, expecting him to correct her if she was wrong.
“I tucked them into the empty bunk above his. Between the mattress and the bed frame.”
“You should tell the police.” She continued in a slow, quiet almost sing-song voice, to calm him and keep him listening.
“I can’t do that to the nurse. She’d be arrested.”
Jane thought about that. She would be arrested, and who knew what that would mean for her or the orphanage. But if she had rescued the pills from destruction, she knew who the killer was.
Jane could take the information to the police, or ask the nurse to, but she couldn’t keep it to herself. “Okay. I understand. I won’t tell the police. Perhaps you could admit to hiding them. Maybe you thought they were something else.”
“No. They would arrest me and I’d get kicked out of seminary. No way.”
Jane was beginning to lose her patience with Owen. She had estimated him as about two years younger than herself, but he seemed less mature than Tory right now. She wanted to give him a good swift kick in the pants and make him buck up, but that wouldn’t do. She just didn’t have the kind of personality that could rally a person to admit to the policía that they had hidden evidence. “Okay. You’ve told me now, and you are going to have to trust me with the information. I’m a professional with a job to do. Don’t freak out and do something stupid.” She stood up and walked slowly away. She was headed back to the nurse, but didn’t like it one bit.
The nurse, so the receptionist at the main office said when asked, was home sick. How she had gone home when the orphanage was considered closed, Jane did not know. She was also surprised to learn the nurse lived off campus. Surprised, disappointed, and severely aggravated. But she didn’t have time to worry about that for long.
Two police officers swept past her with Jake in tow. They managed to scoop her up in their wake, and shoved everyone into Dr. Rodriguez’s office, whether the doctor wanted them or not.
One man was the scrappy little officer with the big gun who had made the announcements the day before. He stood over the other police officer—the one who hadn’t wanted to be bothered—seething.
The officer who hadn’t wanted to be bothered sat in a folding metal chair in front of Dr. Rodriguez’s secondhand metal desk, with Dr. Rodriguez seated in his chair. Jane and Jake had the roomier, but threadbare, chairs against the wall. The scrappy, small officer was the comandante. And he was not happy. “A rich, powerful American with a motive for killing the dead man tells you he has important information, I tell you to take the statement, and you refuse to report it to me?” The commandant’s voice was icy cold, and almost a hiss.
The seated officer did not reply.
“I am in charge of this investigation—the investigation into the murder of a rich American man who works for a business that brings a great deal of benefit to our town. You do not get to decide what information is worth reporting.”
“Some woman went missing. Name, Vanessa. There. You have the report.” The seated officer spoke in his clear English.
The comandante sniffed. “Hardly a report. Who is Vanessa? What did she do? How old was she? When did she leave? What was her relationship to the dead man?”
“To the two dead men,” Jake volunteered.
The comandante slowly turned to Jake. “Two dead men?”
Jane closed her eyes. Only Jake would interrupt right now.
“You know that Pat Bromfield died under suspicious circumstances, but not so long ago, Claude Marshall died under almost exactly the same circumstances. And over the summer Marshall’s fiancé went missing with no trace. She’s the missing woman you are discussing.”
The comandante turned to Dr. Rodriguez. “Mi amigo, what is this story?”
Dr. Rodriguez swallowed. “It is true, but . . .”
“Did you report the woman missing?”
Dr. Rodriguez kept his eyes strictly on the comandante. “No. Not to the policía estatal.”
“Then you reported it to the federales?”
“No.”
“Who, then?”
“Her family. When they weren’t shocked, or concerned, we left it at that.”
The comandante shifted his steely stare to Jake. “But you say the woman’s fiancé has been killed just like Bromfield.” It was a statement, not a question. “We will need to do an autopsy on this man Marshall. And I want a description of this woman. We will begin looking for her.”
Jane’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She wanted to check it and see if it was the contact information for Vanessa’s family, but she didn’t dare.
“This is all you had to say?” The comandante asked Jake.
“For now.”
“If you know something else, you need to t
ell me now. Otherwise I arrest you and hold you until you decide to speak.”
Jake shrugged. “That’s up to you.” The picture of lackadaisical insouciance
The comandante turned to his lazy officer. “Arrest this man, and bring him to the delegaciones. He’ll talk if he’s locked up long enough.”
The officer stood up, a sickly grin on his face. “Venga.” He grabbed Jake by the arm and jerked him up.
“You’d better just tell them whatever it is you are keeping in.” Dr. Rodriguez’s voice broke over his few words.
“I think I’d better not. I’d rather be the one in prison innocently if my thoughts are unfounded,” Jake offered his selfless opinion as the officer dragged him out.
Jane was frozen to her chair. She didn’t know where the delegaciones was located. Didn’t know how to find a lawyer in Mexico, and didn’t know if the message waiting on her phone would free her husband or not.
The comandante left, too. Maybe assuming that a woman wasn’t worth arresting. Maybe not. But Jane decided the best option for the moment was not to draw any attention to herself. Now was not the time to rat out Owen and the nurse.
As soon as the door shut behind the comandante, the officer, and her husband, she pulled her phone out. She had a short message from Flora: A name—Laura Thompson—and a phone number.
Thompson?
The disappointment that rolled over Jane was palpable. Thompson was Vanessa’s married name. Would her in-laws know anything at all about Chase’s family?
She’d never know until she called, and this office was as good a place to call from as any.
She smiled at the grim-faced doctor and made the call.
14
It took two calls and a lot of backbone to stay in her seat while Dr. Rodriguez stared at her. He didn’t seem to know what to say about Jake’s arrest, and as she had all of her attention focused on the phone, he didn’t have much of an opening.
After what felt like an hour, but was only seven minutes of trying, someone answered the number Flora had sent.
“Is this Laura Thompson?” Jane asked as soon as she heard hello.
Killer Calling: A Plain Jane Mystery (A Cozy Christian Collection) (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 7) Page 10