Plain Jane Mystery Box Set 1

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “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 of
f 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.

  Chapter 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. None 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.

  Jane traced the screen of her new phone with her finger. Had he just dismissed her troubles? Surely not. That wasn’t his style. His teaching gig at the seminary in Costa Rica was just all consuming. She knew what that felt like. He would call her back when he had more time to talk about things. Probably.

  Jane called her parents next to take care of the family plan phone thing.

  Her mother answered on the first ring.

  Jane rushed through the tale of how she found the body and lost her phone.

  “Oh, Janey! Do you want to come home? You don’t have to stay there after all of that. What a nightmare.”

  “No, Mom, I don’t need to go back to Phoenix, which as you remember, is not my home.”

  “Honey, you want to be a missionary. You don’t have a home.”

  “True. And I don’t have a phone either. Or, not a permanent phone. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Just go buy lots of minutes for that one, sweetie. We’ll call the phone company and fix the situation, but until they send you a new phone, you need some way to get a hold of people in an emergency.”

  “That makes sense. Thanks.” Jane picked at the lint on her denim shorts. She was tempted to ask for a phone upgrade while she had her mom.

  “I’m uncomfortable with this Swanson situation, honey. It sounds dangerous.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t worry.” Jane changed her mind about a phone upgrade, and now just hoped to cut the call short.

  “I just remember last time…”

  “I live with Gemma now. Aunty Gail sends us casseroles. I’m not homeless, hungry, or anything. And I have lots of clients since school is out. Don’t even worry.”

  “You go straight to Aunty Gail’s if anything goes wrong. Promise?”

  “I promise.” Jane sighed.

  “No attitude.”

  “Mom.”

  “Okay. I love you. Call your dad.”

  “As soon as I can. Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye, baby.”

  Jane hung up and flopped back on her bed. Calling her mom had been worse than calling Isaac, though she wasn’t sure why. It hurt to think there were problems so bad in the world that her mom couldn’t fix them just like that. Jane dialed Isaac’s number again but didn’t press send. Her heart was lonely, and she was scared. She just wished she had someone in Portland who loved her right now.

  The next day was Sunday, and after church and lunch, Jane met her ministry team at the new Bean Me Up Scotty’s coffee shop by the mall.

  Jane sipped her iced mocha. Valerie was texting. Kaitlyn was late.

  Jane wasn’t sure how to propose their new idea to Valerie. Kids that hang out at the mall and get bullied. They exist, but were they a group? Did they have a self-identity that she and her teammates could tap into? The coffee shop was quiet, which was nice. If Valerie was going to laugh her head off at their dumb idea, at least the audience was small.

  Valerie looked up at her phone and smiled. “I’ll be just a sec.”

  Jane looked out the window. Kaitlyn was just pulling up in her shiny silver Jetta. She had a frazzled look a
bout her that Jane had never seen before. Her hair was in a messy bun—but not the carefully messed up kind. In fact, patches of white showed through the bun—clear signs the mess on top of her head was supposed to be a big, sleek, “sock” bun and not a messy bun at all.

  When Kaitlyn managed to pull up a chair at the table, it was obvious she wasn’t herself. She took a deep breath. “I need prayer warriors, stat.”

  Valerie reached across the table for Kaitlyn’s hand and bowed her head.

  Jane took a hold of Kaitlyn’s prosthetic and looked around the room. The barista wasn’t watching.

  “Oh, Lord, I need your strength now, more than ever.”

  Jane echoed the sentiment in her mind. She peeked at the barista again. This time the girl with the nose ring was watching. Jane shut her eyes.

  “Today your enemies are trying to thwart your plans, but we trust in your strength, and your will, Lord God, but please help us trust.”

  Jane peeked at Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn’s head was slightly bowed. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her brows drawn close together. She wasn’t faking her stress, even if Jane thought the words were a bit melodramatic.

  Kaitlyn closed with more of what Jane secretly considered church jargon, and then lifted her head, chin stuck out.

  “Poor girl, what has happened?” Valerie kept her hold on Kaitlyn’s hand.

  “Yo-Heaven has just opened up at the mall food court.”

  “So?” It popped out before Jane could control herself. She hadn’t meant to say it. But really. So?

  Kaitlyn stuck her chin out a little further. She cast her big, sad blue eyes on Jane. “They are Bubble-Bubble’s strongest competitors.

  Jane wanted to say, “So?” again, but refrained. With effort she asked, “Tell me more about this problem.”

  “Yo-heaven is way more popular than Bubble-Bubble. It just is. And they opened up in the empty spot right next to me. I don’t know how I can take this.”

  Valerie made some soothing sounds but caught Jane’s eye. She shrugged lightly.

  “Are you concerned the Yo-Heaven is going to affect your job?”

  “I’ll lose my job. We won’t last a week next to Yo-Heaven. But even if we do, I won’t get to stay on. I’ve only been there a month.”