Criminal Company: A Plain Jane Mystery (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 8) Read online

  Criminal Company

  A Plain Jane Mystery

  Traci Tyne Hilton

  Contents

  Killer Pedigree

  The Thirty Piece Puzzle Box

  Man About Town

  Killer Night In

  Killer Heels

  The Good Clean Book Club

  Killer Pedigree

  Jane’s life as a fledgling private detective and newlywed rarely intersected with Jake’s life as heir to Portland Old Money. His unimpeachable family tree—direct heir of the James Terwilliger and indirect descendent of both Asa Lovejoy and William Overton, who famously flipped a coin to name the fair city, gave Jane’s husband both access and obligations to a certain set of people in town.

  It was that set of people they were having dinner with at The Miramontes, a historic Portland mansion-turned-hotel, and restaurant which had been narrowly saved from demolition by a couple of well-intentioned Southeast Portland new-money types.

  It was charming, and Jane loved it.

  Tonight’s event was a family-only fundraising affair. This event, called The Dinner occurred every five years at a different historic home, once or still owned by the family. The money raised went straight to Portland Public Schools without any fanfare or publicity, though none of the people at the table had ever gone to, or would ever send their own children to, a public school.

  Jake’s cousin Jeffery and his new wife Flavia were the guests closest in age to Jane and Jake—everyone else hovered somewhere between elderly and ancient, with Jake’s Aunt Marjory representing the youngest of the elderly set at a spritely seventy-two.

  The table only sat ten for tonight’s dinner, but those ten had every expectation of sending over seven figures to schools, just because they always did. It was that kind of money. Sometimes there were more gathered, but at least seven of the Great Aunt and Uncle variety had died since the last dinner five years before.

  One elderly gentleman—though he was well on his way to being ancient—stared over his thick glasses at Young Jefferey, as he had just been called. “Young Jefferey,” Uncle Irving Smith repeated himself. “That young woman next to you isn’t Susan. Who is she?”

  Flavia, ten years younger than Susan had been, and still not a hit with her teenage step-kids, blushed.

  “This is my wife, Uncle Irving.” Jeffery’s voice sounded casual, but his smile had a hint of strain. He had answered the same question from the same uncle twice now. “Susan is doing very well, but she is remarried. Remarried this summer, actually.” Jeffery took a long swig of his seltzer. Alcoholism ran in The Family and The Dinner had been a dry event since 1973.

  “What kind of name is Flavia?” Uncle Irving bent his head and stared at the newest Crawford.

  “Romanian.” Flavia put on a heavy accent. She caught Jane’s eye and winked. Flavia had gone to school with Jane and Jake—just a grade above. A second generation American, on her father’s side, but she was fluent in both the language and trolling people who wanted to make a big deal about it.

  Uncle Irving cleared his throat. His father had been good friends with Sam Hill, and Sam Hill’s set. Friends of Queen Marie of Romania. “That so? Good folks there in Romania.” He put his attention back to his plate.

  “Why’d you marry a Romanian girl?” Aunt Luddy Rossi, who had caused scandal by marrying into a family of rich Italian farmers right before the war, was completely blind. Her head was turned toward Flavia, but she didn’t pretend she could see her. “Is she a refugee?”

  Flavia’s eyes flew open, her fork full of salad frozen in the air. She looked like she wanted to laugh, but also like she wanted to crawl under the table and die. “My grandfather was the Romanian Ambassador to Canada, but fell in love with a lumberman’s daughter from Idaho, and somehow I ended up here, at this dinner.” She didn’t try the accent again, and her voice was smooth as honey, like a radio host, which she was, for the local NPR station. It sounded like she had said those lines before. Jane expected she had.

  “Did you hear Jane and Jake are headed to France?” Jeffery changed the subject.

  The old heads crowned with the snowy signs of wisdom creaked in Jake’s direction and bestowed smiles on the couple. France was something they could all agree on—depending only on where you went, when you went, and how long you were going to stay.

  “Paris, I assume.” Marjory held out her glass of water as the waitress passed. “To take care of the mess your sister has gotten in with her pied à terre.”

  Jake’s sister Phoebe was not at dinner because she was in Paris attempting to not get evicted at the moment. “Yup.” Jake agreed. “Time to rescue Phoebe. We try to schedule these rescues to coincide with holidays from work whenever possible.”

  Uncle Irving snorted. “Hamburgers. I still don’t know what Howard was thinking, giving your grandfather money to start up a hamburgers restaurant.” He coughed into his white napkin, clearly allergic to hamburgers. Jefferey had been running the Crawford family fast food empire for several years now but didn’t correct his great uncle that they were now focused on smoothies and frozen yogurt.

  “I’m in fundraising and development, sir,” Jake said with his easy smile.

  “Harrumph.” Uncle Lombard Ladd sounded exactly like he looked: cranky. “Don’t you go asking for money here, Young Jacob. It’s neither the time nor the place. This dinner is a one-hundred years tradition in our family and I won’t have it sullied.”

  “No, sir.”

  Jane kept at her salad, head down, doing her best not to laugh with or at anyone who spoke.

  “But Jane’s not a beggar. She’s a detective. Tell ‘em about the latest murder, sweetie. The one down in Mexico.” Jake nudged his wife.

  Jane choked on her arugula.

  “A detective!” Aunt Luddy sounded and looked like Jake had said his wife was a prostitute.

  Aunt Jantzen Franz, a woman old enough to be Aunt Marjorie’s mother but, with a face that had obviously been worked on, smiled gently at Jane. “That sounds very fascinating. How does one become a detective?” She pulled her deep burgundy sweater closed over a thin silk blouse. Both were quality items, but not from this season’s collection.

  “One stumbles over my dead parents, of course!” Jake flopped his arm over Jane’s shoulders. If he had been trying to get the heat off Jeffery and Flavia, it had worked; all heads, even the ones who couldn’t see at all, were turned to him.

  Aunt Mary-Clement Failing, the only remaining Catholic in the family, crossed herself. “God bless poor Bob and Pamela.” She dabbed at her faded blue eyes with the linen napkin.

  Aunt Jantzen, who never went by Jan, didn’t let his flippancy daunt her. “We’ve never had a detective in the family before, have we Young Lombard?” Uncle Lombard, though the second oldest at the table, had been Young Lombard, since he was born, and would be until he was laid to rest at Rose City Cemetery with the rest of the Lombard-Ladds.

  “No. We have not.” His words were firm though his head shook a little.

  “We’ve had policemen, and archeologists.” Aunt Jantzen continued. “Both are like a detective, I’d think.” She stared down Jane, expecting an answer.

  “Yes, likely so.” Jane ran her tongue over her teeth and prayed she didn’t have any greenery stuck between them.

  “We needed a detective back in 1997, didn’t we Dear Luddy?” Aunt Jantzen said. “At this very dinner in fact.”

  “Where did we eat in 1997?” Uncle Irving asked.

  “That was the year we ate at the Bob’s Red Mill.”
/>   “And Poor Phillis keeled over dead.” Uncle Irving nodded to himself, having put the date to the unforgettable dinner. “I’ll never forget the look on her brother’s face. He didn’t live to attend the next dinner, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Aunt Marie-Clement crossed herself again. Jane supposed, if conversation at The Dinner tended to cover the stories of all of the family who had died over the last one hundred or so years, Aunt Mary-Clement would be doing a lot of that.

  “Poor Phyllis. I would love to hear what you make of the situation, Dear Jane.” Dear Jane…at least it wasn’t Young Jane.

  “Great idea!” Jake removed his arm from his wife’s shoulder and pushed his chair back from the table so he could look at her. “Dear Jane, let us lay before you the tale of Poor Phyllis who died at The Dinner and see what you make of it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I could…” Jane begged Jake with her eyes not to make her do this.

  “Please do!” Flavia laid into her accent again, and her pretty exotic voice trilled across the table. “I would so love to hear this tale.”

  Marjory snorted. This new daughter-in-law of hers was too glib by half.

  “You know Jane, you haven’t had the chance to exercise your mental faculties. Not like this. You’re a go-er, running after clues and getting people to confess. I bet you can’t solve the Great Family Mystery before dinner is over.”

  “I wouldn’t call this The Great Family Mystery.” Young Lombard interjected. “No, if you ask me, I’d say The Great Family Mystery is whatever happened to Cousin Cless Abernathy. The one who moved out to Wheeler County and was never heard from again.”

  “Be fair, Young Lombard,” Aunt Luddy said. “One mystery at a time. Let’s see if the family Detective has anything to say about Poor Phyllis before we try her on something of that caliber.”

  “Okay.” Jane’s voice was small, but Flavia’s smile was bright. She would attempt to solve this family mystery for the sake of her old friend, the newest family bride.

  “Just twenty years ago, we had gathered for dinner in the banquet room of the newly opened restaurant at Bob’s Red Mill. They make flour and oats and things.” Aunt Jantzen said.

  “Yes, I know.” Jane bit back her words, not wanting to sound impatient with the people who had the power to make our break the city.

  “Poor Phyllis’s grandfather used to own the mill, you know. That’s why we chose it. It hadn’t been located in that spot originally, but by this sale and that, you could tie Bob’s Red Mill back to The Family, and Old Cornelius, Poor Phyllis’s brother, God rest his soul, was on a health kick at the time and just insisted.”

  She took a sip of her water and set the scene. “It was a quiet night and we had the restaurant all to ourselves. There were thirty-two of us attending The Dinner that night, including all who have joined us here tonight except for yourself and Flavia.”

  Jane nodded. Thirty-two people to keep track of in a story that was twenty years old, and not a piece of scratch paper in sight. She might as well give up now.

  “Dear Luddy had just said grace, and Poor Phyllis had given the toast.”

  “Young Lombard gave the toast.” Uncle Lombard stood up for himself. “I remember just what I said. Let no man tear our family asunder, and let no one make us eat granola for dinner.”

  “You did not say that.” Aunt Luddy swatted her napkin in the direction of her cousin. “Poor Phyllis gave the toast and I am sure it would have been a lovely dinner if she hadn’t dropped dead right after her first sip of cider.”

  “Martinelli’s.” Uncle Lombard added for good measure. The Dry Dinners had been his invention, and he was rightly proud of it.

  “What did the medical examiner determine was the cause of death?” Jane asked.

  “That’s simple. It was her heart. Poor Phyllis was born with a weak ticker, and it just up and gave way, right then and there.” Aunt Luddy sighed and then began to butter a piece of thick, white bread. “Bad hearts run on that side of the family. Poor Phyllis’s mother, Sweet Rosie only lived to be thirty-five. And never a nicer woman you would have met. Always a kind word. But then, she wasn’t related to anyone important except her husband.”

  “That’s how badly Poor Phyllis didn’t want to eat granola for dinner.” Uncle Lombard said.

  Jane stared at Aunt Jantzen, her face pulled tight in concentration. “But if you know how Aunt Phyllis died, what is the mystery?”

  “The mystery is this,” Aunt Luddy answered for her cousin. “What happened to the brooch with the braid of Great Great etc. Grandmother Clementine Couch Lewis’s hair that Poor Phyllis always wore to The Dinner? It was hers by right, she, being the last direct female descendent of Darling Clementine. But after her death, according to her will which she had always told us would be the case, it was to go to the newest bride in the family. I suppose that would have been Susan.” Aunt Luddy gave a vague glance to the side of the table Jeffery and Flavia were seated at.

  “No, not Susan. We weren’t married until later that year. It would have gone to Cousin Max’s wife Sasha.”

  “I don’t know her.” Aunt Luddy dismissed Sasha.

  “But what about this brooch?” Jane asked. “It went missing?”

  “Indeed it did.” Aunt Jantzen said. “My daughter-in-law Sasha would have inherited it, by rights, and then passed it to her daughter Soleil. But this is what happened: Poor Phyllis gave a very sweet toast to her branch of the family and their contribution to the development of Portland—”

  “A very long toast for a dinner of granola, if you ask me.” Uncle Lombard put in.

  “Then she sipped her sparkling apple cider and fell over dead. During the toast, the priceless family heirloom was pinned to the right shoulder of her blouse. When she fell, Max—my son, who is a doctor—gently laid her down and attempted to revive her while someone called emergency. No one at the time was thinking of this little piece of jewelry, I’m sure. The ambulance came, and took her away, still attempting to save her life, though I’m sure we all knew it was hopeless. She was, very old, after all.”

  “I’m ninety-three.” Aunt Luddy frowned. “If I collapse tonight, you had better not expect me to stay dead like Poor Phyllis did.”

  “She saved us from a terrible dinner at least.” Again, Lombard.

  “But the day later, when Phyllis’s belongings were returned to her family by the funeral home, the brooch was gone.”

  “It wasn’t worth a single dollar in money.” Uncle Irving said with a sorrowful tone, “but priceless to those of us who have the privilege to be a part of this family.”

  “Tell me how Phyllis’s belongings made it to the funeral home.” Jane’s mind was already on the chain of custody. From the paramedics to the hospital, to the funeral home. Different people had been responsible for the items belonging to Poor Phyllis along the way. This was much easier to keep track of than thirty-two family members at a dinner.

  “I rode in the ambulance with her.” Aunt Jantzen said. “The paramedics had her shirt open to apply the electric paddles, but she passed before they could get her in a hospital gown. She was still wearing her own clothes when she went to the funeral home.”

  “I see.” Jane frowned in concentration. The clothes, and so supposedly the brooch, had remained with Poor Phyllis until she arrived at the funeral home. That didn’t sound good for the funeral directors.

  “Did you ask them about it?”

  “Most certainly.” Aunt Jantzen sounded mildly offended. “But they were adamant, in a kind way, that they had returned to us everything she had arrived with. And what would they want with a dusty old thing like that? A small circlet of gold encasing a glass window with a thin silver lock of plaited hair inside, the whole thing no bigger than a quarter. Hardly something someone would steal.”

  “Should have had her at Rose City Cemetery.” The Lombard-Ladd branch of the family—though not the Ladds who weren’t married to Lombard’s—had all been buried at Ro
se City, but they were the only branch who had been.

  Aunt Jantzen let out a long, slow sigh. “I asked Max if he had removed it. After all, it was going to his wife. He might have done, without any trouble, when he was trying to revive her. But he looked at me like I had two heads when I asked him. He said, simply, ‘No, Mother.’”

  “Who else went near Phyllis while you were waiting for the ambulance?” It seemed obvious to Jane that someone at the funeral home had pocketed the old thing. And why shouldn’t the thief have been an employee there? Any jewelry made of hair would have to be an antique and that might be enough to tempt some poor employee.

  “I did my best to help. I brought a glass of water and had the waitress collect a pillow for Poor Phyllis’s head.” Aunt Luddy volunteered her movements.

  Jane wondered how blind Luddy had been back then. “Did you notice the brooch?”

  Luddy sighed. “My vision isn’t what it once was…”

  “Mary-Clement, you were hovering over poor Phyllis doing your sign language and all of that.”

  Mary Clement stiffened. “I did come near enough to pray for her poor soul, yes.”

  “Did you notice the brooch?”

  “There was such a crowd of us, who could notice anything? With Uncle Snodgrass-Ladd’s seven children all gathered around and making a ruckus.” Mary-Clement dismissed the notion with a brief shake of the head

  “Only four of Snodgrass-Ladds kids were there that night.”

  “Well, it felt like seven, and I still say the Snodgrass-Ladd’s aren’t quite Family.” Aunt Mary-Clement tilted her chin up in defiance.

  “Oh stop. If Mother said the Snodgrass-Ladds were family, they are family.” Aunt Jantzen’s tone was more formal than Jane had thought possible. The elders were pulling out their most Old Family manners tonight.

  “The Lombard-Ladds are family anyway.” Uncle Lombard Ladd, the son of a Lombard female and a Ladd male, two prominent and often at odds families said. “But yes, your mother,” he nodded his acknowledgment to Aunt Jantzen, “is the one who insisted the Snodgrass-Ladd’s were close enough relations to be included in the dinner.”