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

  “What she meant,” Uncle Irving added, “Was that they were rich enough relations to be included.”

  “After we lost Poor Phyllis, the Snodgrass-Ladds never came again. Twenty years. Four dinners. Not once has a Snodgrass-Ladd joined us.” Aunt Jantzen sighed.

  Mary-Clement made the sign of the cross.

  Uncle Lombard Ladd spoke up again, “But they do send a check. And can you blame them for not coming? This dinner is as dull as a desert.”

  “Hush.” Aunt Luddy turned a disapproving face toward her cousin. “This is an honored family tradition.”

  “An honored family dunning.” Uncle Irving, who had been silent for quite a while, said with conviction, like a judge making his final remarks.

  “So these four cousins from the Snodgrass side of the Ladd family, and Max, and Aunt Mary-Clement were the folks who had the easiest…view…of the brooch before the ambulance arrived.”

  “Exactly, and if it weren’t one of those Snodgrass-Ladds who made away with an heirloom from a branch of The Family they aren’t even related to, I don’t know what to tell you.” Uncle Lombard seemed to have strong opinions on the matter.

  “Be still.” Aunt Jantzen’s voice had the timbre of an experienced and severe teacher, though she had never had to work for a living. “You know as well as I do that they would never have done such a thing. They are truly a gentle branch of the family.” She turned to Jane. “This is our mystery. The reason that at The Dinner of 1997 we really could have used a detective. What do you make of it?”

  Jane rubbed her lips together to stall. They weren’t interested in hearing that someone in the funeral home had likely purloined their heirloom. They wanted something more…she looked from face to face, Aunt Jantzen with one eyebrow raised, looking expectantly at her. Aunt Luddy, the fuzzy gaze of her legally blind eyes directed towards Jane’s end of the table. Aunt Mary-Clement, with a hint of tears in her eyes. Uncle Lombard, looking ornery, and Uncle Irving with his arms crossed, frowning.

  “At least this dinner isn’t granola.” Uncle Lombard’s plate of salad was untouched. “But if they don’t bring the steak out soon I might find I have misplaced my checkbook.”

  Jane tilted her head and considered the situation. For one-hundred years or more members of this pedigreed family had gathered together to eat, visit, and donate money. It was getting thinner, the family. Jake’s generation had to make its own money if they ever wanted to be as rich as their forebears since the family seemed both long-lived and inclined toward philanthropy. And many of the people in Jake’s generation, Jane guessed, didn’t even know they were part of such a hallowed tradition, much less part of a group that considered themselves “The Family” of Portland.

  What a group of people like this wanted, Jane thought, her glance resting on Marjory the only baby-boomer to attend The Dinner tonight, was significance. How important was this brooch, really? A physical tie to someone a street was named after but was there more to it than that? Twenty years ago the five eldest seated at the table would have been…in their seventies or so. Mostly fit, and of strong mind. There would have been an older generation still, seated at the table with them. Someone in that group might even have remembered the aunt who had clipped her lock of hair for the brooch in the first place. Twenty years ago, the brooch may have been a very sentimental piece of jewelry. “How old was Poor Phyllis?” Jane interrupted her train of thought.

  “Now that is a sad point,” Aunt Jantzen said. “Poor Phyllis was just three weeks shy of her one-hundredth birthday. She did so want to hear her name read out on the television.”

  Back again at the longing for significance. A group of people with money and memories, but mostly forgotten by a city that had left them behind. This lovely group of great-grandparents gave, by tradition, anonymously. They met infrequently, and they wouldn’t have recognized their hometown in the newly popular Portlandia of hipster fame if they had been introduced to it by the mayor himself. They had been left behind and left out of the one and only thing that mattered to them.

  Or, on the other hand, Jane made a huge, corrective shift, she might be indulging in melodrama. Most likely each and every one of them had rich lives full of people and activities they had and did still love. But that didn’t solve the mystery of the missing heirloom brooch. “The newest wife would have received this item according to Phyllis—Poor Phyllis’s—will,” Jane said. “You all knew that, and when the will was read it was proven true, am I correct?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, very much so. And the tears around the room when we all thought about what we had lost…” Luddy sniffled.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Uncle Irving said. “Nobody cried over it, though it is a shame to lose an item that stood for something. Nothing does stand for anything anymore, does it?”

  A pair of waiters entered the room, young men in black button down shirts and black slacks and deep green aprons. They exchanged salad plates for steak.

  An idea was growing in Jane’s mind…nothing spectacular, but something, anyway. “How many folks came to the next dinner?” She directed her question to Marjory, who she knew for a fact to be mentally sharp in the extreme.

  “Hmmm…” Marjory cut into her tender steak. “It was thirty-two of us in 97, and then, five years later, it was just twenty-five. Joyce Miller, of the Morrison clan, was the only one from her family to come. And Max and Sasha didn’t come. Who else was missing that year?” She directed her question to Aunt Jantzen.

  “Missing? There should be one-hundred or more of us around this table. Can you imagine the quality of education in our town if everyone on the invitation list arrived and did their bit?”

  “Yes, I understand that, but I mean who else was missing from the year before? Max and Sasha were gone, and all but Joyce Miller.” Marjory sounded impatient. Perhaps the many years of The Dinner with The Family she had married into were beginning to wear on her.

  Aunt Jantzen looked down at her plate. “My poor Edmond passed in 2001. So at The Dinner in 2002, I was alone.”

  Marjory reached a hand out for her Aunt-in-Law. “Ah yes. I am so sorry. It feels like just yesterday. I have a hard time believing he has been gone all of these years.”

  Aunt Jantzen nodded, accepting the sympathy.

  “Edmond was a skinflint.” Uncle Lombard practically hollered. “Get more out of Jantzen here every dinner than we did in all The Dinners combined from old Edmond.”

  “Young Lombard!” The word of correction this time was from Aunt Luddy.

  “Oh, it’s true.” Jantzen chuckled. “I loved him dearly, but he was a penny pincher.”

  “And the dinner after that?”

  “That would be 2007. We were down to just twenty.”

  “We wouldn’t have kept losing people if Jantzen here wasn’t always harassing them about that darned brooch.” Uncle Lombard seemed to have a lot to get off his chest this evening. “Every Christmas letter. And phone calls. And then you got email.” He glared at the sweet-seeming old woman across from him. “If you had just let go of the damn thing people wouldn’t have started dropping like flies.”

  “The young folks just don’t have time like we used to.” Aunt Luddy said softly.

  “The young folks move away,” Irving complained. “None of my grandkids live in Portland anymore. Not one out of thirteen. What kind of legacy is that for a man, I’d like to know?”

  “They move, they are busy, and Uncle Irving, I think sometimes we just forget to invite them. And the way we are dying off, time alone steals so many guests from our table. Goodness, the difference between 2002 and 2007 was entirely due to deaths. No one was scared away.”

  Or were they? Jane considered this. If the thirty-two people at dinner in 1997 thought they were suspected of stealing this brooch, they may have given up on the old family tradition. It’s no fun at all to go somewhere and have everyone suspect you of being a greedy thief. Greed and cheapness went hand in hand, and it was clear that cheapness, at least, was
very much frowned upon.

  “I do wish I could have seen this brooch.” Flavia had found a nice balance between her exaggerated accent and her professional radio voice. She was soothing and pleasant after the bickering. “So many items like that get lost through the generations.”

  “Obviously you’ve never been to Dear Luddy’s house.” Irving laughed. “She’s got the wealth of nations in her rafters.”

  “It is a big, old house.” Aunt Luddy nodded thoughtfully. “It seems a shame to have it empty, after all.”

  “Dear Luddy, it seems like so long since I’ve been to visit you.” Aunt Marjory said. “I sure would like to come by.”

  Dear Luddy turned toward the voice. “Yes, yes, Marjory. Dear Old William Terwilliger Crawford’s wife.” She savored the name of Marjory’s husband, who had passed away many years before, “It would be nice. You could bring your son and that nice wife of his…was it Susan? Susan Glisan?”

  Jane recognized the name of one of Portland’s streets—most of the names being bandied about were neighborhoods or streets. And now she understood why the older generation had liked Susan-the-ex-wife so much. She was one of them.

  Flavia let it pass, but Jefferey looked fit to be tied. “Listen here!” He began to stand up.

  “Hush, Jeffy.” Marjory put a firm hand on her son’s shoulder.

  “But Susan left me three years ago!”

  “Yes, but the last time you saw your uncles and aunts was five years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Jeffery! You’ve been to all of the dinners, haven’t you? All of them since 1997?” Jane was suddenly struck by that. Someone of her own generation who had seen the action, and seen the changes in the group over time. When the elders had said that everyone at the table had been there….she herself had forgotten that the number included Jeffery and Jake.

  “Oh yes. I haven’t missed one.” He jerked his head at his mom, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Representing the Terwilligers and company.”

  “No Terwilligers left anymore.” Uncle Lombard scowled at Jeffery. “Not real ones, anyway.”

  Such a knotty tangle of names and relations, Jane wondered if they had a family tree or more of a family patch of ivy. “If you’d have married that Susan girl sooner you could have had the brooch.”

  “How? It was stolen before Phyllis’s will was read. And besides. Susan left me, and she would still have the brooch.”

  “Misplaced, I think,” Marjory said. “Just misplaced. Who would have stolen such a thing?”

  “The Glisans were Family.” Uncle Lombard winked at Poor Flavia. Jane hoped she could make that one stick. Poor Flavia had a nice ring to it.

  Aunt Luddy frowned. “You never have been a Portland girl, Dear Marjory. Born and raised in Vancouver, weren’t you?”

  Marjory agreed.

  “So you wouldn’t understand.”

  Marjory turned to Jane. “Well, what do you make of it, detective?”

  Jane was never more thankful to have a mouth full of steak. She only wished it wasn’t so melt-in-your-mouth tender. She chewed as long as she could, but it wasn’t nearly long enough.

  “Jane, I need to visit the restroom.” Flavia stood up. “Will you come?”

  Jane almost knocked her chair over, she stood so fast. “Definitely.” They made their way to the bathroom at the front of The Miramontes. They collapsed together in tears of suppressed laughter in front of the mirror. “I can’t. I can’t. I am dying here. If I hear the name Susan one more time.”

  “It’s like they’ve never met you before, but surely they came to the wedding, or even maybe the fundraisers for Oregon Public Broadcasting?”

  “Dear Uncle Young Lombard of the Lombard-Ladd’s has been a patron of Oregon Public Broadcasting for at least three-hundred-fifteen years. He has lunch with me every second month, and introduced me to Jeffery! But can he stand up for me in this group? Never.”

  “I never liked Susan.”

  Flavia laughed. “Most women didn’t, but boy the men sure did! Did you know that in their seventeen years of marriage she cheated three times?”

  “Yikes!”

  “I hate to suggest that any of the kids aren’t his, but…well…their wedding anniversary was awfully close to McKaleigh’s birthday if you know what I mean. If Susan had been looking for someone to give a name to her baby…”

  “I don’t know, around here Glisan is a pretty good name.” Jane laughed. “I’m not surprised I hadn’t heard the gossip, though. Jake doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone, and I’m far from running in these circles.

  Flavia pulled herself up on the counter and sat. “This is the longest, weirdest dinner of my life so far, and Jeffery comes to it every five years, without fail.”

  Jane adjusted the flowered clip in her sleek brown hair. “I have a feeling that someday we’ll all show up for the dinner and it will be just us and Marjory.”

  “Lord preserve us.”

  “I wonder what they are talking about right now.” Jane leaned back on the counter and stared blankly at the wall of toilet stall doors.

  “Hopefully where to have the next dinner. The ballroom at our place, the Laurelhurst house, was being discussed last week.”

  “Lucky you.” Jake and Jane technically owned the Old Crawford house in Laurelhurst and rented it to Jeffery and his family. He could use the space and had the money to run it. They only had the money.

  “You guys don’t want to move back in, do you? I like the idea of a condo in the Pearl.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to the kids, would you?” Jane asked playfully but did wonder. Was this new cousin-in-law the kind of step-mom who would uproot the kids further for her own convenience?

  Flavia laughed. “Not on your life. You’ll have to pry me out of that mansion with a machine. Are you even kidding? A mansion in Laurelhurst? Susan was crazy to give it up.”

  Jane, who had spent quality time as the only housecleaner for the mansion in Laurelhurst before her marriage to Jake, wasn’t sure she agreed with Flavia, but, then again, Flavia wasn’t likely to clean that house herself.

  “I would like to know what they are talking about in there without us. For example, Young Uncle Lombard is showing off. Did you notice? Every chance he had to make a crack about that dinner, he took it. And why would he do that? Not to impress a batch of first and second cousins he’s known his whole life. Not to impress some kid whose dad used to work for his second cousin twice removed. I think he’s showing off for you.”

  “Showing off, hmmm? I thought he was just trying to tick them all off.”

  “Maybe both. He doesn’t have lunch with you six times a year because he thinks you’re a bore. I would guess he doesn’t keep those antics up while you’re not at the table.”

  “So I should stay in here a while?” She leaned back against the mirror. Don’t mind if I do.”

  “No…” Jane twitched her nose. She felt ridiculously young in the room full of nonagenarians, and ridiculously basic hiding in the bathroom with the sophisticated and exotic voice of public radio. “No, I’d better stay away for a few more minutes, too. They want to suss me out. They want to see how good I am at being a detective, or maybe at being a Crawford of the Terwilliger-Crawfords.” Jane chewed on her lip for a moment. “In fact, I think Aunt Jantzen knows what happened to the brooch.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. This mystery wouldn’t be any kind of test for my skills if she didn’t. I could walk in there and say that the waiter took it and they couldn’t prove I was wrong. Nope. She knows what happened to it, and she wants to see if I can figure it out.”

  “That’s…childish.” Flavia’s eyes narrowed. “I think I like it.”

  “Maybe it is, but I think Aunt Jantzen is bored. And….oh dear.”

  “Oh dear? That sounds interesting.”

  “I’ll hold on to that thought. In the meantime, sneak around to the front hall with me.”

  The Miramontes was a converted Victorian m
ansion. The restaurant, which The Family had reserved for the private event, was on the back of the old house. The front of the mansion had a completely restored foyer with gleaming wood floors that featured an inlaid compass rose. It also boasted a reception desk that matched the gravitas of the house, a double-sided stairway with arrows for newell heads, and a stunningly beautiful Italian woman with a name tag that said “Carmella” to greet guests of the hotel and restaurant alike.

  A scraggly young teen in a very old fashioned bellboy costume waited by the stairs. He had the gawky look of a freshman. He poked at a smartwatch on his wrist while he waited for something to do. His name tag read “Diego JR.”

  “Excuse me…” Jane cleared her throat to catch his attention.

  Carmella looked up and smiled at Flavia and Jane. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” Jane pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet.

  He lifted an eyebrow and smiled. “Anything you want.”

  Jane glanced at Carmella and then led Diego Jr into a library off to the side of the foyer. “Can you go into the dinner party and pretend like you are tidying up a far table, and listen in? Take about five long minutes, then come right back here and tell me what you heard.”

  “Easy.” Diego grinned, grabbed the twenty and sauntered around the corner towards the restaurant.

  “These folks,” Jane said, “were raised not to notice the help.” She took a seat in a black velvet wingback chair and waited, taking a moment to google mourning jewelry from the Victorian era.

  Flavia helped herself to a flyer about “Things to do in Portland” and sat on the arm of the same chair.

  Five long minutes later, Diego Jr. returned.

  “Quietly and quickly, tell me everything you heard. All of it, no matter how boring.”

  “There was a lot of talking.” Diego Jr furrowed his brow. “But I think I can repeat it all back, mostly. I just don’t know who anyone was. The two old guys argued over if Ringside had the best steak or if Saylor’s did. They argued about it a lot. The guy who didn’t have white hair was talking to his mom—he called her that—he was arguing with her about someone called Susan.”