The Plain Jane Mystery Box Set 2

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  Jane spotted two police cars in the parking lot with relief. She joined the line at the door to the A-frame meetinghouse, her heart in her throat, and a rock in her stomach.

  She stood behind a big family, three grown-up-looking daughters with long skirts and their hair in buns and a couple of younger boys with button-down shirts tucked into clean blue jeans. The man she guessed to be their dad scanned the crowd through narrowed eyes, his face split in a grin of excitement. The mom laughed at something one of the daughters said, which Jane couldn’t hear. They seemed to be geared up for a big show…not quite the memorial atmosphere that Lucas had been pushing for.

  A girl with a Mohawk stood to Jane’s left. She clutched the hand of a boy with a matching haircut. They both looked grim, but excited. From the X drawn on the hand Jane could see, she guessed they were straight-edge punk. But were they also into health, wealth, and prosperity, or were they here for the sideshow too?

  Through the general hubbub of the crowd, Jane caught the sound of a cackling laugh. She winced, if not for Christiana, who seemed to want some kind of festival atmosphere, then for Stacy, who still believed in all of this, and for Evelyn, who missed her brother so much. And for Gemma, who wanted it all to be true. And for everyone else who had put so much hope into what she could no longer consider anything but a sham. All of these people, just here to gawk at the widow of the preacher who got stabbed.

  She shuffled her feet as the line slowly moved forward. The crowd didn’t seem hostile, at least. No protesters, no hecklers. That was something in their favor.

  The meetinghouse was packed out. Even though the event wasn’t scheduled to start for another half hour, all of the seats were full. People stood in the aisle, and at the back surrounding the sound booth and filling the foyer. If the fire marshal were to show up, he’d shut the place down in a heartbeat.

  Jane wended her way through the people, with an eye out for Francine. She didn’t want to stop whatever work was getting done, but she wanted to pinpoint the key players in tonight’s drama.

  She found Lucas and Tiffany easily enough, Lucas in the sound booth and Tiff up front in her wheelchair, just like always. Reg and Stacy were in a middle pew, near the edge, most likely with the instructions to lead the crowd to the altar when the time came.

  The building was rustic and the ceiling high, but there was some kind of temporary structure with TVs and screens hanging from it. So despite the camp setting of the meeting, there would be all the same bells and whistles and video distractions.

  Jake had promised to be here already, but if he was doing his thing, his run-around-and-meet-everyone-in-the-building thing, then it was no wonder she couldn’t find him in the crowd. Which was fine. She didn’t need to deal with him right now. It was good to have an extra set of eyes and ears, and they could compare notes at the end.

  She made her way across the crowd and then back to the foyer near the door. There had to be more than five hundred people packed into a space for half that many.

  The lights flickered, and a Muzak-y electric instrument version of “Amazing Grace” began to play. But the song felt off—like it was some minor-key version. Something especially written to make you really sad.

  Jane stood at the corner of the sound booth, eyes forward, but ears on Lucas. He seemed to be handling the rejection of his offer to preach with grace—at least when people were around.

  “Psst!”

  Jane turned but didn’t see who was trying to get her attention.

  “Psst! Up here!”

  Jane turned to the booth. Lucas leaned over and smiled. “You could see better if you sat with Tiff. There’s always room in the front row.”

  Jane waved her hand and smiled. “I’m fine.”

  “It’s gonna be a long night. I’d grab a spot while you can.” His smile was innocent. Friendly, encouraging. But his color was heightened, and his eyes were cold steel. Funny, his ability to smile so realistically with everything but his eyes. Not everyone could do that.

  “Everything going right up there? You look worried.” Jane tried to play it cool, but she definitely wanted him to know he was on her list.

  He scratched the back of his neck and shook his head. “This is old equipment for the kind of stuff we do. I’m a bit freaked out, to be honest.” He pulled off a wry grin and tilted his head. “But faith can move mountains, right? So I’m trying to trust it will all work.” He held up his finger as though to say, “Wait a sec” and turned back to his equipment.

  The lights went down and the screens came to life.

  Josiah Malachi, with his trademark aw-shucks grin and his big brown eyes, friendly, like a dog, almost. The bad music faded away and his voice came through. It was an older video of his preaching.

  “Come you who labor, and work no more.” He paused, looked down at his hands, and then looked up apologetically. He held up his hand, rough, labor worn, and asked, “Why do I work so hard?” Then young Josiah faded away and a more recent video faded in. Josiah laughing, holding up his hands in praise. “God gave me rest! He gave us rest! He has it for all of us, if you just ask!” He turned his face to the camera, his voice dropped to an intimate whisper. “What is keeping you from asking?”

  The clips went on like that, but Jane did her best to turn her eyes to the crowd, to gauge their reaction…to try and spot the oddball out.

  From the back, all she could see were heads lifted slightly so that they could see the screens. Just heads and shoulders. In each pew, someone leaned over to whisper to their neighbor; the volume on the videos was loud enough that it drowned out any crowd noise. And except for the glow coming from the screens, the room was dark. She couldn’t tell what was happening on the stage.

  She stepped away from the sound booth, but Lucas called for her again. “Psst, Jane.”

  She turned.

  “Pay attention to what he’s saying. He’s not wrong, no matter what you think of his delivery.”

  She nodded and turned. A punch in the gut, like always. Reminded her of what Paul said about just this kind of thing…basically, “If Christ is preached, who cares who is doing it?”

  But that didn’t apply here—couldn’t apply here. Someone cared enough to kill Josiah, and that alone told her that this ministry didn’t fall under the “so long as Christ is preached, we should be happy” category.

  She nudged her way through the standing crowd to the far wall. If she could, she’d work her way to the front.

  Before she could get past the first row of people that blocked her way, the lights on the stage came on. Christiana stood on the stage, in the center, with no podium, no mic. Nothing between her and the crowd. There was absolute silence—or what passed for absolute silence in a crowd. Then, Christiana began to talk.

  Jane watched her hands, her body, but there were no sudden movements, no foaming at the mouth.

  And, even more remarkable, no sound.

  The murmur in the crowd turned to a dull roar. Jane pushed her way back toward the sound booth but was blocked by three big guys still wearing their Carhartts and work boots, presumably after a long day of labor. She tried to shoulder her way past, but one of them put his hands on her and pushed her back forward.

  Where was the sound?

  Was it the old equipment malfunctioning?

  Jane watched Christiana, but it looked as though she couldn’t tell that no one could hear her. She tried to make her way past the people in front of her, but the narrow aisle was blocked by a middle-aged lady in a power scooter. She couldn’t roll forward without mowing down several kids, and there wasn’t enough room for the scooter to turn around. Jane squinted to see if she could try and read Christiana’s lips, but the lights on stage flickered.

  The screens came back to life, but the image was blurred and stuttering. More technical glitches, or had someone sabotaged the video? The crowd had risen to their feet, and most faces were focused on the screens.

  Jane pulled her eyes away. If someone was going to at
tack Christiana, now would be the time. She elbowed her way into the pew nearest her and pushed past the people. She checked behind her, but the busy crowd had filled any gap she might have created. The end of her pew was blocked by a knot of teenage girls. Most were texting, but a redhead was taking selfies with the screen behind her. She kept pushing the brunette next to her, trying to get her into the picture.

  Jane climbed onto the pew to see if she could spot Jake or Gemma or Francine above the crowd, but the view wasn’t any better. Other people were standing on the pews around her, cell phones high in the air, capturing everything for Instagram.

  Jane climbed down and dropped to her stomach.

  If she couldn’t go over, she could go under. She wiggled and shimmied her way under the pews. The indoor-outdoor carpet was rough through her thin T-shirt as she pushed her way across it. She stopped to catch her breath. She couldn’t see anything but the feet that she had to slip around and slide over. And she couldn’t hear a thing. She wasn’t getting to the front fast, but she had made some progress, the space between feet being easier to navigate than the shoulder-to-shoulder press of people.

  She started her slow progress to the front again, but the lights came back on, and Christiana’s mic, as well.

  “Praise the Lord!” Her voice had more fire, more verve, than Jane had heard in it before. “Don’t you agree?” She laughed, and the crowd, moments before almost a mob, started to laugh as well. “Please, don’t sit down for me. Aren’t we all here to praise the Lord? To thank him for the ministry of my husband?” Her voice broke on husband.

  Jane, her head under one pew and her feet under the other, stopped. Had the pandemonium been orchestrated in advance? Prearranged theatrics? If so, would she be able to tell from what Christiana chose to say next?

  “I want you all to know that God was not killed that night on the stage. Just a man. A good man, but just a man.”

  Someone in the crowd, a man with a deep voice, booed.

  “No, don’t you see? There wasn’t anything special about Josiah Malachi. He’d have been the first one to tell you that. He was just a broken vessel.”

  Jane pulled herself forward to get her head out from under the pew and rolled over so she could see what was going on.

  The screens jumped to life, and a clip of Josiah holding a broken earthenware jug popped up, but there wasn’t any sound with it.

  “We’re all broken jars. But that was the whole point of what he taught: God wants to do great things through us, through our broken vessels, so that he will get the glory, not man.”

  Jane scrambled forward and climbed out from under the pew. She crouched in front of the people seated, her chin resting on the wooden back of the pew in front of her.

  How dare Christiana say something so…true? She narrowed her eyes and focused on Christiana’s face. Could she have gotten her hands on some drugs? Was she going to start freaking out?

  The screens glitched again, and heads turned away from Christiana. Jane turned away as well, but not to the screens. She looked back at the sound booth.

  Lucas was gone.

  The pew she had wormed her way into was crowded, but most of the folks were seated. She made her way to the middle aisle. Her mind revolted; a lifetime of church attendance told her it was very wrong to go rushing down the middle aisle in the middle of a service, but if Lucas had left his booth, Christiana was in immediate danger, and now was the time to act.

  It only took her two seconds, maybe less, to get to the altar; not having a plan of what to do once she got there, she dropped to her knees.

  Only then did she notice that others had followed her, and were also dropping.

  A man in a red flannel shirt stopped next to her. He pressed his forehead to the step and moaned.

  Christiana paused in her memorial talk to bless the repentant believers, but Jane wasn’t paying attention to her.

  She scanned the stage, craning her neck to see behind the equipment, and looked for any door near the front that someone could hide behind. But she didn’t see a single spot where Lucas was, or could be, hiding.

  The crowd at the front rivaled the crowd in the side aisles now, so Jane inched her way up the stage. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but if the crowd surged forward, someone would attack Christiana, and Jane wanted to be close enough to protect her.

  She was perched on the last of the three steps, crouched to look penitent. The crowd hadn’t surged; the lights hadn’t gone off again.

  Her heart pounded, and even though she was near enough to a speaker that she could feel it vibrating with her knees, she couldn’t tell what Christiana was saying anymore. Platitudes, maybe. Sound bites. Things that could be stitched together to make an online video, and couldn’t possibly be offensive when held up to scripture.

  Jane bowed her head again, but looked to the left and right. If it wasn’t her imagination, no one was moving.

  Then a heavy hand fell on her shoulder and a voice whispered in her ear, “I’ve been watching you.”

  Chapter 24

  She held her breath and kept her head down. Fear had such a tight grip on her gut that it took every ounce of effort not to puke.

  “So I came forward. I don’t know what you suspected.” This time the speaker was louder, and his deep-voiced slight southern drawl familiar instead of terrifying. “But right now, I’m guessing you’re right.”

  She turned fast.

  “No, keep your head down. There are other cops here too, and we’ve all got our eye on Christiana. If someone is going to try something, we’ll catch them. I came to keep an eye on you and your cousin.”

  On his last word the lights and the sound died again, this time with an electric sputter of sparks and noise. The crowd at the altar jolted forward.

  Jane lunged for Christiana.

  She knocked her down, landing on top of her, their weight echoing on the hollow stage with a deep, reverberating thud. “Christiana, it’s Jane, the maid. Lie low.”

  Christiana didn’t lie low. She rolled and clawed at Jane’s face. “Get off of me!” she hissed.

  “I want to protect you!” Jane pressed her knee to the ground and pushed Christiana off of her, but gripped her arm. “Stay low, please. Someone is going to try and hurt you.”

  “You are hurting me.” Christiana twisted her arm in Jane’s grip but couldn’t get free. She dragged Jane towards the back of the stage.

  “Were the power outages planned?” Jane’s knees burned as she tried to keep Christiana in one spot, but the preacher was strong.

  “No, of course not. This is an old building.”

  The beam of a high-powered light flashed across Christiana and Jane. “Okay, everyone, calm down!” The voice was amplified, as though it had been mic’d, and very confident. “Everyone take your seats. It’s just a power outage.” More flashlight beams crisscrossed the room, and the crowd began to settle back down.

  Jane looked around for the source of the voice but got the beam of light in her eyes instead.

  “You there, hands up.”

  Jane dropped Christiana’s arm and held her hands up. She looked left and right for Detective Bryce but could see nothing.

  “Come with me.” The man with the flashlight held out his hand to Jane, but she was still blinded from the flashlight he trained on her face.

  She took his hand and let him help her up, since it was likely he was with the police.

  From behind her, Christiana screamed, like nails on a chalkboard.

  Jane spun, but the cop grabbed her.

  The crowd sprang to life again, with wailing, crying, and the sound of feet pounding everywhere.

  “You, come with me.” The cop tugged Jane away from Christiana, not violently, but leaving no doubt that she had to move.

  The room was still intensely dark, but the officer detaining Jane shone his flashlight on Christiana, prone on the floor, with a uniformed police officer bending over her.

  “You’ve got to
find Lucas, the guy from the sound booth,” Jane said. “He’s behind this, and Josiah’s murder. I just know it.”

  “You’re the only one we saw lay hands on the woman.” The officer shoved her to the side of the stage. “Hands on the wall.”

  She placed her shaking hands on the wall and let the officer pat her down.

  “Okay, everyone, let’s try something new here,” the amplified voice said. “Let’s all pray the lights come back on, okay? Everyone, let’s bow our heads…” He had a bit of a chuckle to his voice, but the crowd began to quiet down. “Okay, thank you, folks. If you can all stay where you are, maybe in silent prayer, for just a few more minutes…” As he started to give instructions, the lights came back on.

  Jane jerked her head around.

  “Face to the wall.” The officer in charge of her wasn’t messing around.

  She couldn’t see what was happening, but someone tapped a microphone. “Everyone? Everyone?” It was Lucas, his voice unsure and almost awed. “Look what your prayers achieved!”

  The crowd responded with a nervous chuckle.

  “If we could all sit down, and allow the officers to make sure everything is okay…” Lucas looked behind him. “Christiana had a panic attack, and has gone to the other room with a paramedic. Praise God there was a paramedic in the crowd tonight, am I right?”

  Amens echoed.

  The cop tapped Jane’s shoulder. “Come along with me.”

  She followed him wordlessly, looking around for Jake, or Bryce, Gemma, or Francine—any ally at all—as she was led outside.

  The cop parked her on a bench by the door. “Why did you attack Christiana Malachi as soon as the lights went out?”

  Jane took a deep breath, but it did nothing to stop her from shaking. “I wanted to cover her, in case someone tried to hurt her.” She closed her mouth, but her teeth clattered.

  The cop narrowed his eyes.

  “I was afraid for her.” Jane wrapped her arms around herself.

  “So you’re a big fan of the Malachis, then?” The cop did not speak sympathetically.