“Yes.”
“I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Vanessa Thompson. May I ask you some questions?”
“Vanessa is missing?” Laura sounded surprised.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Jane caught her up with what she knew of Vanessa’s story, omitting Pat’s death, as it wasn’t necessary for Laura. “I am trying to contact her because I think she would like to know that her fiancé has passed.
“Of course she would. She was in love with Claude.”
“Laura, I don’t have a relationship listed for you in my file, do you mind clearing that up, just for my notes?”
“I’m her sister-in-law. She was married to my brother.”
“Thanks. When was the last time you heard from her?”
“In August. She emailed me to say that Claude had proposed. No ring or date, but you know, being a missionary, they don’t have a lot of money.”
“Of course. Did she say anything about going away soon?”
“Not to me. I’m sorry.”
“Is it unusual to go so long between talking to her?”
“Not really. We keep in touch, but not daily or anything.” Laura sounded honestly worried, which didn’t match with Dr. Rodriguez’s report.
“I really appreciate you talking to me. I just have another question, if you don’t mind. Do you think anyone has talked to her parents or her brother?” Jane crossed her finger. If Vanessa wasn’t Chase’s brother, or didn’t have a brother at all, that little comment could kill the conversation.
“Golly, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to any of them in years. But I think her parents are at the same number still. Do you have it?”
“I don’t, but I sure would like it if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Laura read off a phone number.
“What about her brother? Were they close? Might she have contacted him?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sorry. He was a kid when I knew him, and now he’s so busy, on tour all the time and everything. I suggest you contact her parents. Vanessa’s usually so thoughtful. If she’s okay, she’s talked to them, I just know it.”
And, confirmed. Chase and Vanessa were brother and sister.
“Thank you Laura, you have been incredibly helpful. This is my number where you can contact me if you want to, and the number of my boss if you want to confirm anything I’ve said.” She gave Laura the information and ended the call. Her phone was hot in her shaking hand. She was so close now.
It seemed obvious Chase had come to the orphanage because his sister was missing. That part was clear, job done. Tory cleared from wrongdoing, Chase cleared as a respectable boyfriend.
She’d just have to find out what had happened to Vanessa, which ought to topple the dominoes of the two murders, too.
“I called her parents and spoke to them. I’ve told you this already. I am a man of integrity.” Dr. Rodriguez’s hands clenched in white-knuckled fists.
“I really want to believe you, but I think I have few questions for them that you might not have thought to ask at the time she went missing.”
Jane dialed, and prayed, and hoped that this call would be the one that solved everything.
“Hello?” The voice that answered Jane’s call was thin and fragile, like a sweet grandmother. But she hadn’t identified herself, and Jane, in her effort to sound like she already knew the family, hadn’t asked Laura for Vanessa’s mother’s name.
“Good afternoon.” She started simple, and honest. “My name is Jane, and I’ve been working with Chase recently.” First mistake. McBane wasn’t his real last name. Chase might not be his real first name, either. She held her breath.
“Oh, isn’t that nice.” There was a smile in the voice that made Jane relax.
“Am I speaking to his mother?” Jane asked.
“Oh no, dear. I’m his grandmother, Martha. Raelene isn’t in right now. May I take a message?”
“Oh, that’s kind, thank you. Maybe you could help me out if you had a minute.” Jane cursed her luck—grateful in reality that she didn’t have the power to curse things or have to rely on luck, but nonetheless severely disappointed. “I’m trying to get a hold of Vanessa. She has been active in the work we are doing, but I can’t seem to track her down.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t be able to.” Martha’s voice was sad. “We haven’t heard from her in the longest time.”
“Is everything okay?”
“She said so, but Mexico is such a dangerous place. I just hate to think of her out there all alone. She should have never left the orphanage.”
Jane considered her next question carefully. “Did she say when you would be able to reach her again?”
“She didn’t tell me, but she might have told Raelene. I don’t really know. She just said she had to go somewhere she wouldn’t have phones or computers for a while, but that she would be fine. I just hate it when young people do this to us. No consideration for their worried relatives.” There was a soft humor to her statement as though she knew that Vanessa was plenty old enough to take care of herself, but worried anyway.
“Well that puts us in the same position, doesn’t it? Wondering and full of questions but forced to wait.”
“I’m sure it does. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. You should ask at the orphanage where she used to work. She said they were sending her to help a new location, in the jungle I think, but why there would be orphans in the jungle I’ll never know.” She paused. “Oh dear, maybe forget I said that, would you? She said they weren’t supposed to talk about it yet, but that she felt like her mother and father would want to know. I’m sorry. Don’t mention it to Chase, dear. He is so protective of her. May I take your name and number and have my daughter call you back? She should be here by seven.”
“Of course, thank you.” Jane gave Martha her name and cell phone number. “You can let her know I’m trying to contact Vanessa if you’d like. And thank you for the conversation, I’ll keep the information to myself.” She ended the call and stared at her phone.
Dr. Rodriguez didn’t give her any time to consider what she’d heard. “If you’ve just learned something regarding a missing persons case that you yourself have instigated, you obviously cannot keep it to yourself.”
“Did you send Vanessa to the new location to help start it up?” Jane asked.
“Of course not. We do our very best to start every work with native Spanish speakers, for the sake of the children.” He looked offended.
“I thought not.” She let herself out of his office. It sounded like Vanessa left of her own will, but the why and where hung like an anchor around Jane’s neck.
Out of the office in the bright sun, Jane realized that she couldn’t run to her husband to go over what she had heard. He had let himself get arrested. She also couldn’t go to the police station to bail him out since she had no idea where it was, no transportation to get to it, and no money to pay the bail. He’d have to sit and simmer for a while. It would probably be good for him, though the idea was very unpleasant to Jane.
Owen was an empty vessel, and too shaken to be of any real use right now. Miguel was a potential suspect in the troubles. Ginger was on the side of the weird parenting book. It looked like she’d have to try and connect with Esperanza and Riley, the two young ladies who had the right attitude toward the situation.
Riley and Esperanza were both in the lounge of the teen house, playing cards. Jane caught Riley’s eye first. She gave her head a jerk, indicating she wanted to talk privately.
Riley dropped her cards and hopped up.
Jane sidled up to Esperanza. “Could I steal you from the game for a moment?”
Esperanza lifted an eyebrow. “Bien.” She laid her cards down with care and followed Jane outside, where Riley had gone to wait.
“Ladies, I’m in a bit of trouble, and could use your help.” The three of them walked across the courtyard, toward the orchard. “As Riley knows, I’ve been hired to find infor
mation on Chase McBane and Tory Trives, two of the volunteers here for this trip. I’ve learned quite a bit, but I’ve run into some trouble.”
“Interesante.” Esperanza held her hands behind her back. “I was wondering why you had so many questions for us.”
“Esperanza, do you remember a volunteer named Vanessa Thompson?”
“Of course I do.”
Jane took a deep breath. “Chase McBane is her brother.”
“Ahh.” Esperanza nodded. “I had also wondered why a famous man from America had come here to spend a few weeks with no reporters or television crew to film it.”
“It seems to me that he came here to find out what happened to his sister.”
Esperanza was silent.
“What did Vanessa think of the book that Pat Bromfield had been teaching?”
They had reached the gate to the orchard before Esperanza spoke. “She was opposed to its use. She was very vocal with Dr. Rodriguez and the other staff. She fought against it, but the book’s message was being welcomed by so many that women who wanted to fight were considered a problem.”
“Even to Dr. Rodriguez?”
“It seemed so.”
“So she left?”
Esperanza was silent again.
Riley had been bouncing along beside them, in pained silence, clearly wanting to talk. “I think she got smuggled out in the dark of night, don’t you? Like, some others who supported her snuck her away so she could be safe, someone had threatened her, but who, and how?”
Esperanza stopped. “Who would have threatened her?” The question was asked like a teacher would do it—as though Esperanza knew the answer but wanted Riley to find it for herself.
Riley dug the toe of her shoe into the ground. “Who first brought this book to the orphanage? Was it Pat?”
Esperanza smiled. “Yes, he wrote it, even, though it is anonymous. Boxes of them come to him from America once or twice a year. He hands them out to all of the men he meets in town. He has given them to all of the parents. All of the volunteers. He is passionate about this book. This . . . idea that women must make up what is lacking in relationship to Christ’s suffering, but I think he misunderstood what San Pablo meant when he wrote that.”
“I agree,” Jane said. “God’s Way for Girls and Boys cannot be what the apostle Paul meant by his words. Vanessa, and so also Claude, were violently opposed to the philosophy that Pat had brought to the orphanage.”
“Yes.”
“Could Pat have killed for it?”
Esperanza shook her head. “According to his book, there is no amount of suffering a girl can do that would truly make up for bringing sin into the world, and yet, you have to keep suffering for it, so I don’t think he would have killed Vanessa.”
“But he might have made a really horrible threat that scared her off. Made her think that he could, um, create like, the worst suffering ever,” Riley said. “Like, maybe he could have, um, I don’t know. Maybe he could have threatened to break her up from Claude? Make it so they couldn’t get married?”
“But would that be enough to run away?” Jane mused. If Pat had known that Claude’s papers weren’t in order, he could have held that over Vanessa’s head, but running away from your boyfriend seemed like a worse fate than not getting to marry him. So what else might it have been?
“What if he threatened Claude? Like what if he told her that he could hurt Claude and there was nothing she could do about it and that he would do it if she didn’t leave? Maybe he did that.” Riley was excited like a puppy and the ideas spilled out of her.
“Yes. What if? What if he threatened to get Claude deported . . . or better, arrested?”
“Es posible.” Esperanza spoke softly. “Yes. If Pat had threatened Claude with arrest . . . I think Vanessa would have run away to protect him. But what could Claude have been arrested for?”
“That’s easy,” Jane said “He had let his visas expire. An unscrupulous cop could arrest him and hold him for ransom or whatever the worst case scenario is. He would have been lucky to just get deported back home.”
“I agree,” Esperanza said. “I think that must have been what Pat had threatened.”
“So, where did she go?” Jane asked. “And how do we find her?”
“Let me have conversation with mi mamá yes? I will meet you back here this evening, after supper, and tell you what I have learned.” She held out her hand for Jane, and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “If it is safe to tell the answer, now that Pat is gone, I will make sure you learn it.”
“And now that Claude is gone, too,” Riley said. “You can’t arrest a dead man.”
Esperanza didn’t respond. She turned into the orchard and walked away from the orphanage, perhaps needing to plan her conversation.
15
What do you want me to do?” Riley broke into Jane’s musings. “I can do anything you want. Talk to people, listen in on people, check people’s houses. I’ll wear gloves. I got a pair from the kitchen.”
“Follow me.” She had grabbed Riley in the first place to have a second brain working the problem, and she had been worth it, but Riley was ready for action. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had my eyes on Tory and Chase. We need to find them, and we might need to split up to do it. Do you have a cell phone on you that works down here?”
“Teresa took them before we left. She’s got them all in her luggage. Sorry.”
“Hmmm. Okay. I guess we’d better stay within shouting distance of each other. There aren’t many places they could be.”
“Except if they were where we’re supposed to be we’d have seen them several times today alone.”
“Good point.” Jane put a little speed into her step and headed for the back parking lot behind the volunteer dorms.
She heard the fight before she turned the corner. Tory, screaming her head off, something about murders.
Jane sidled along the edge of the building so as not to be noticed. She put a restraining hand out to the enthusiastic Riley.
“We’ve searched this crappy little village. We’ve searched Ensenada. She’s nowhere. What did you do with her?” Tory was on her toes, almost nose to nose with Miguel.
“Control this girl.” Miguel waved his arms in frustration, and smacked Tory in the face. He jumped back, hands up, a look of horror washing over him.
“Keep your hands to yourself!” Chase bolted forward and grabbed Miguel by his shirt. He lifted him up. “Or do you beat all of the girls here, huh?” His biceps bulged. The veins in his neck bulged. “Not just the children, but the women and volunteers, too?”
Miguel wriggled in Chase’s grip. “Get your hands off of me. This is a murder investigation. Are you looking to get arrested?”
“Where is my sister?” Chase threw Miguel against the dorm wall.
Miguel’s head cracked on the cement block and he slid to the ground with a thump.
“Chase!” Tory stepped back, hands to her face.
“Oh crap.” Chase dropped to his knees and tilted Miguel’s face up. “Miguel. Miguel. You okay, man?”
Miguel’s eyes fluttered open and then shut again.
Jane kept her distance, praying, and not sure exactly what intervention she should or could offer.
“Step back!” Riley jumped into the scene. “I’m a nursing student.” She grabbed Miguel’s wrist, and held it between her thumb and forefinger.
After a moment she fanned his face and called his name. Then she lifted up an eyelid.
He twisted his head and groaned. “Chase, run and get the nurse.”
Jane interjected, “No, the nurse isn’t here today. Tory, go get Dr. Rodriguez. I want to talk to Chase.”
Tory looked to Chase who nodded, then she bolted.
“Don’t touch him,” Riley said. “He surely has a concussion and maybe a cracked skull, but he is mostly alive.”
He groaned again and tried to lean forward.
“Ah, ah!” Riley cautioned. “Hold still until the
Dr. Rodriguez gets here. He’ll probably call an ambulance and get you to the hospital for an x-ray. That was some noise your head made! But hey, Dr. Rodriguez isn’t a medical doctor is he? It’s a good thing I’m here!” Despite her frantic manners most of the time, she was calm, and still next to Miguel, his wrist still lightly between her fingers as though she wanted to keep track of his pulse.
“Chase—before Tory gets back—do you have any reason to believe your sister Vanessa is dead?” Jane turned her attention to Chase while she had the chance.
He grimaced but didn’t deny it. “Just Claude’s death. Why would they stop at one?”
“Who do you think ‘they’ are?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out. But now that Pat is dead, I may never get to.”
“Please, consider the question and don’t speak fast: Did you tamper with Pat’s medicine?”
Chase glared at her.
The sound of running feet thundered in the distance.
“No. I didn’t. Neither did Tory. We weren’t here to punish anyone. Just to bring my big sister home—even if it was just her remains.”
One of the ladies Jane recognized from the kitchen came around the corner. “You got in a fight?” she asked Chase.
He bowed his head. “Yes, but I never meant to hurt him.”
She sniffed. Then she gently took over for Riley and spoke to Miguel in quiet Spanish. She stood him up, one arm around his waist and led him away.
“Sorry,” Tory said to Jane in an aside. “I was scared so I grabbed the first person I could find.”
“They’ll be going to the hospital now. She thinks he doesn’t need an ambulance,” Riley explained. “She’s probably right, but you never know with head injuries, if his neck was hurt or anything.” She shivered.
Chase began to pace, his head still bowed. “I did not mean to hurt him.”
“He deserved it,” Tory cried. “Did you see what he did to me?”
“It was an accident, Tory, I could tell when he did it, but I was so mad.”
“An accident? He smacked me across the face.” She was fuming. “And he probably killed your sister.”
Killer Calling: A Plain Jane Mystery (A Cozy Christian Collection) (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 7) Page 11