Bright New Murder: A Plain Jane Mystery Read online

  Once guests began arriving, the banquet hall filled up fast, and it looked like they ought to have had the large ballroom after all. Jane had to hand it to Jake. He knew his events. She had doubted the kind of draw the local preschool-for-children-of-homeless-families could have, but her heart was warmed to see the hundred or more people jostling each other for a taster cup of smoothies and the chance to donate to needy kids. She hadn’t signed on as a server, but she carried trays and filled cups and tossed away the empties anyway.

  But she kept thinking she saw Isaac out of the corner of her eye. Every time a dark head appeared to the side of the room, she just knew it was him, come to say they could make it work. That he believed she could do something important and exciting with her life. But even though she turned, every time, it was never him.

  About an hour into the event, Jane spotted a man with a big camera on his shoulder following a woman in a red dress with stiff hair. TV news? It seemed likely. Jane sidled up behind the cameraman to listen to the reporter’s take on the event.

  “The folks inside aren’t letting the weather, or the protesters, dampen their enthusiasm for this worthy cause.” The reporter’s face only moved slightly as she spoke, her eyebrows frozen in a look of mild astonishment.

  Protesters?

  “Excuse me.” A man tugged Jane’s elbow. “Will there be real food here tonight?”

  “What? Yes, of course.” Jane squinted towards the kitchen. Some kind of sandwich-and-salad thing was supposed to be coming out before the night was over. “Just give it a few minutes, okay?” She gave him a quick nod and slid away through the crowd. She opened the door a crack and peered into the hallway.

  A dozen hippies and punks and hipsters were gathered in the hall with tattered cardboard signs. The sleet had battered them on their way into the event, but their message was clear. And so was the person in charge.

  Rose of Sharon Willis.

  The “Helpers” had arrived.

  Jane scratched her head. The Human Liberation Party was all about eating right, but what was wrong with smoothies? Or educating homeless preschoolers? Jane slipped out of the door so she could hear better.

  Rose of Sharon stood on top of an old-fashioned soapbox, her banged-up red megaphone at her lips. The hubbub in the crowd made it hard to hear, but Jane made out a few choice sentiments.

  “We’re not baby COWS! We’re NOT baby cows! WE’RE not baby cows!” The emphasis was on a different word each time, but the point was clear. Rose of Sharon had a problem with milk. Rose of Sharon turned on her box and seemed to catch Jane’s eye. “Are YOU a baby cow?”

  Jane wanted to duck and cover, but instead, she shook her head no.

  “That’s a good girl!” Rose of Sharon spun on her box to call out to a janitor that was passing by.

  Jane exhaled slowly. HLP wasn’t doing any harm. They hadn’t prevented anyone from getting to the fundraiser. Kids would get their preschool, and that’s what was important.

  Rose of Sharon dragged her soapbox right in front of the door and pushed it open. Megaphone to mouth, she began her favorite protest song. “I like to eat apples and bananas.”

  Jane sidled through the crowd, but couldn’t get past the soapbox. Jake hovered near the door, just on the other side, and she managed to catch his eye.

  He pulled a chair up to the doorway and stood eye to eye with Rose of Sharon. “What do you have against the children, Rose? What did they ever do to you?”

  Jane was pushed aside as the reporter and her cameraman took her spot near the action.

  Rose of Sharon’s thin, leathery face was beet red. “Why are you poisoning the children? Why are you using the children to poison the city? We thought you’d learned your lesson, Crawford. We thought you’d changed your ways, but you keep trying to kill us!”

  “I’d kill for a hamburger right about now, that’s true,” Jake said with a smirk that was captured on the reporter’s camera. In fact, Jake was turned towards the camera on purpose, as far as Jane could tell.

  “You’ll kill us all if you don’t quit forcing your animal products on our fragile bodies.”

  Jake cupped his hands around his mouth like he was going to begin his own chant, but Jane shook her head.

  Jake shrugged and stepped off of the chair, his eyes narrowed.

  Jane managed to wheedle her way through the crowd to Jake.

  “I’m not trying to kill people, Jane. Just trying to help out your cousin’s charity.” Jake lowered his voice.

  “I know, Jake, I know.” Jane turned to Rose of Sharon. “Listen, Rose, can you take this outside? I don’t want to have to call security, but I will if I need to.”

  “But you’re not a baby cow!”

  “Of course I’m not, Rose. But…it’s not like it’s high-fructose corn syrup, right?”

  Jake cleared his throat.

  “Never mind.”

  Jane dragged Jake back to the table of smoothie samples. The party had begun to deteriorate.

  A red-faced man with a bald head yelled at a younger, taller man in a suit.

  A woman with bobbed black hair pushed another woman with bobbed black hair out of her way.

  A man in a sweater with leather patches on the sleeves punched one of the hippies holding the door open. Punched him right in the face.

  Then a woman screamed.

  Jane froze. The room went completely silent.

  Jake climbed back on his chair so he could see over the top of the crowd. “Who was that? Does anyone know who that was? Is everyone okay?” His voice had turned serious, manly, and in charge. She had never seen him like that before. Not once. “This event was meant to benefit the most vulnerable children in our community. It was not meant to insult our friends who believe in a different way of eating, or to harm anyone. That scream sounded like someone was really hurt. Everyone look around, and holler if someone near you has been injured.”

  A low murmur spread across the room, then another woman screamed.

  The crowd jumped to life, and Jake pushed his way through the people with Jane right behind him.

  A woman in a denim skirt and Christmas sweater knelt beside another woman, who lay on the ground, a pool of blood forming on her sweater.

  The woman kneeling on the floor rocked back and forth, sobbing.

  Jake checked the pulse of the injured woman. “Jane, call 911.”

  Jane pressed the phone to her ear and ducked through the crowd. She told them what little she knew: injured, bleeding, unconscious, and where they were located, and then she hung up. She needed to breathe.

  The volume in the packed room had gone back to a loud roar. A man in a red-and-green Christmas sweater whose head was just above, and almost directly over, Jane’s own kept shouting, “No, let’s go home NOW.” Jane tried to maneuver around him, but the woman he was shouting at reached for him and caught Jane in her arms.

  “Excuse me,” Jane whispered.

  “Well!” The woman kept a tight grip on the sweater man with one hand, but let Jane go free.

  The room had seemed pleasantly full when the party was new, but with everyone jostling to get out but being repulsed by the protesters, and the fear and yelling, it was a bedlam that made Jane’s head spin.

  “Excuse me!” Rose of Sharon had climbed up on the table full of smoothie samples. “EXCUSE ME!”

  The room simmered to a low boil.

  “It has come to my attention that someone in this room has been seriously injured. I have taken the responsibility to keep everyone present in the situation. No one has left the room through the main door. The paramedics will be here as soon as they can—any minute. I need everyone to take a seat along the walls, leaving a center aisle through the room to the injured party, do you understand?”

  The people seemed to want a leader, and though they murmured in frustration, they shuffled to the sides of the room, and some people even sat down.

  “Thank you.”

  Jane jerked her head up. Rose of Sharo
n had thanked them?

  “In times of crisis, people need to come together and work with their enemies for the greater good. Because we are here protesting, it is of utmost importance that the authorities arrive to a calm scene. Any kind of chaos and my friends and I will be arrested.”

  “Let them be arrested!” a deep voice from the back of the room interrupted her.

  “Yeah!” A throaty female voice joined his.

  Jake hopped up on the table with Rose of Sharon, though Jane hadn’t seen how he got there. “That’s enough. For better or worse, the lady is right. We need to be calm so that the medics can treat the injured woman as quickly as possible. Right now, I’d like to know if someone can tell me who she is.”

  “I’ve never seen her before at all!” The speaker was a woman applying pressure to the wound. “Does anyone know this woman?”

  Before anyone could answer, four paramedics barreled into the room. They paused in the door just long enough to spot the party they needed to help.

  A pair of policemen stationed themselves at the door.

  Jake climbed down from the table and joined Jane. He leaned close, his warm breath on her ear. “Now’s your chance, Janey. Someone stabbed that poor woman. But whodunit, and why?”

  3

  A slew of paramedics who seemed in control, but in a hurry, carted the injured woman away on a stretcher. Before Jane had a chance to pull herself together, more police officers poured into the room and began to sort the people into groups for questioning.

  Jake joined the officer who looked like he was in charge.

  Jane hung off to the side, but near enough to hear. Jake had been right. This was her chance to put her fall criminal justice classes into action—to test her detection skills.

  “I had them sort of line up to make room for the paramedics,” Jake said.

  “That was smart.” The officer was an older man, or, somewhat older. He had grey hair, but his face didn’t look as old as her dad’s did. Maybe he was in his forties? She thought he must be because he had the old-style wire-rimmed glasses with bifocal lines cut into them. No one wore glasses like that anymore. He also wore a trench coat and black slacks. Jane was glad to see her observation skills were working, but she needed to focus on the individuals in the crowd and not on the officer. The officer was the last person to have stabbed the guest. He hadn’t even been at the party.

  Or had he?

  Jane chewed on her lip. Maybe he was the killer. After all, he was the very last one she would suspect. And she hadn’t seen him come in.

  “Didn’t I, Jane?” Jake nudged her.

  “What? I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Didn’t I give the guest list to Gemma to take care of?”

  “Oh, yes. I think you did.”

  “Why would you do that?” the officer asked.

  “The preschool thing is kind of her baby. She’s a friend. I saw that I could help her with the refreshments and just putting stuff together, but she had to come up with the potential donors herself. Own it and all that.”

  The detective nodded. “And did she?”

  “Well…” Jake hung his head a little. “Her list was fairly sparse, so I made a few calls. But as far as any formal list goes, she’s the one that has it.”

  “Can you point her out to me?”

  Jane scanned the room and spotted her cousin slumped in a corner. Her navy cotton dress was crumpled, and her bobbed hair was a sweaty mess. “She’s over there, to the left. With the black hair and blue dress.” She pointed Gemma out.

  “Thanks. Please try and help keep everyone in the room until we’re done getting names and information.”

  “Of course,” Jane said.

  When the officer was out of earshot, Jake nudged her again. “Follow him. Listen to everything he says. Where’s your notebook?”

  “My notebook?”

  “You detectives are always supposed to have those long, skinny notebooks. Oh, wait. That’s journalists. You aren’t a journalist, are you?”

  “No. I’m not a journalist.”

  “Hold tight.” Jake ran to the kitchen and back before Jane knew what was happening. “Use this.” He handed her a thin tablet.

  “What’s this for?”

  “It’s for ease of communication in a modern world, Jane. Now go take notes!” He shoved her forward. If Jane had a dollar for every time he had pushed, shoved, tweaked, or nudged her in the last day, she could buy her own tablet.

  She followed the policeman, but tried to keep enough room for another person between him and herself so that he wouldn’t notice her.

  He started with Gemma.

  Jane took that time to figure out how to turn on Jake’s tablet and find the note-taking app. By the time she had done that, the policeman was facing her.

  “You’re Gemma’s cousin?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jane held the tablet by her side, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  “I’m Detective Walters. Where were you standing when the woman was stabbed?”

  “I was up front when I heard a scream. I think it was her. But I didn’t see anything.”

  “Nothing unusual at all?”

  “No. I mean, the protesters had come inside the building and I was really preoccupied. I wanted to try and defuse that situation.”

  “I see. Can you point out the protesters to me?”

  Jane indicated the huddled protesters who made their home against the wall by the door. They sat together, knees up and arms hooked. “Over there. It’s the Helpers.”

  “HLP?” He sniffed. “Of course it is. Okay. I’m going to go speak with Ms. Willis.” He walked away without another word.

  Jane didn’t follow him. Instead she watched two other officers make smaller groups of the people lined against the walls. She had a feeling they were all stating their names and phone numbers, and if they had or hadn’t seen anything.

  She hadn’t cracked a single textbook since Isaac had come home. What a dumb idea that had been. A little extra time spent with Crime Scene Techniques and Principals of Detection (revised American edition with foreword by C. Anderson) would have stood her in good stead right now.

  But rather than follow the police around or ask her own questions, Jane found a quiet perch on a stool near the kitchen and took notes on what she observed in the crowd.

  She had only taken the Introduction to Criminal Justice class at Portland State, and they had only spent two days discussing private detection—so what? It was two days’ more training than she had had when she helped solve the two previous murders. And what she had learned in those two days had been pretty good stuff. The importance of observation, body language, and a little Psych 101 on what liars look like.

  Jane leaned over the tablet and tried her hand at observing the crowd.

  The clump of people nearest her were almost all finished talking with the police. The last person, a woman with big, sparkly earrings and spikey white hair, was answering questions. Her small body trembled, but she made eye contact with the cop and kept her hands away from her face. She seemed to be telling the truth.

  The other people in the crowd were shifting and shuffling. A girl about Jane’s age clung to the arm of an older-looking man who was wearing expensive jeans with a sports coat and turtleneck. He kissed the top of the girl’s head. Jane couldn’t tell if the girl was his date or his daughter. But either way, they looked a little scared, but not guilty.

  A motion at the back of the room caught her eye. The small circle of people still waiting to talk to the police looked inward, and down, as though maybe someone had fainted.

  “Is there a doctor or a nurse here?” a woman’s voice cried out. She sounded like she had laryngitis. A person willing to holler out like that despite her own physical discomfort had too much compassion to stab someone.

  One of the protesters broke from her group. “I’m a doctor of naturopathic medicine.” She caught the eye of one of the police, who nodded his approval. The small group clus
tered around the fainter made way for the doctor.

  An old man in a tweedy coat lay on the floor. His hair, face, and slacks were grey. The doctor checked his pulse. She nodded, and her face visibly relaxed. The doctor spoke with the people standing around, but Jane couldn’t hear what she said. Three women handed over their purses. The doctor stacked them and then raised the man’s feet and rested them on the bags. She then sat cross-legged next to the man and held his hand. That simple gesture calmed all of the people around her. It was obvious by the way their shoulders seemed to drop a few inches. Two women in excessively high heels sat down beside her as well. The doctor couldn’t have been the person who stabbed the woman.

  Jane turned to the next group, the one sitting next to the man who fainted. But they all seemed normal. That seemed to be the trouble with their crowd full of philanthropists and smoothie lovers. They were all either perfectly normal or extra compassionate.

  Jane took a deep breath and considered the protesters. Would she call them extra compassionate? They had come out on a dark, cold night to try and convince a crowd of strangers that their bodies were worth better treatment.

  She gave each protester a good, long look. Three sort of punk-rock hippies, if there were such a thing, sat at the end of the row. Two of them had liberty spikes and Doc Martens. One of them wore a leather motorcycle jacket with the sleeves ripped off. That person held hands with a woman who could have been someone’s grandma. She had on a long, flowered dress and a nubby sweater. The only difference between her and a normal grandma was her long, grey-streaked hair. The ends of her hair brushed the floor where she was sitting.

  Then a string of hippies in the classic sense, Birkenstock-wearing, long-haired, dreadlocked, all of that, made up the rest of the row. One of the hippies, a tan young woman with freckles on her nose and dishwater-blonde curls, was pale like she might also faint. She kept shifting her gaze around the room like she was keeping her eye on the police. And while Jane watched her, she let go of the hand of the person next to her, and then clasped it again five times.