Plain Jane Mystery Box Set 1 Page 5

  “Not if I want to be at work on time tomorrow.”

  “You don’t look like you could even remember where you are going tomorrow.”

  “I’ll remember in the morning.” Jane rested her head on her fist. “It’s been a trying week.”

  “Want to go out after class then? You seem like you need some kind of break.”

  “Don’t you all have curfew?”

  Sarah smiled and opened her fist. She held a big silver key. “What’s curfew when you have a key?”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “I know it’s no fun to be stuck in your dorm at ten every night but…how do I say this…” Jane looked around the room full of almost-adults. “You all live in Honeywell. What on earth would you do here after ten anyway?”

  “Drive to town, of course. Are you in?”

  Jane sucked on her bottom lip, a laugh bubbling up inside her. “Let me guess, I get to drive.”

  Sarah grinned. “Well, you know. Eddie is the only one with a car and he’s not likely to sneak out after curfew, is he?”

  Jane spied out Eddie. His head was in his Bible. “No, he’s not likely.”

  Jane toyed with the idea. Cram her Rabbit full of repressed eighteen-year-olds for a night on the “town” or go home and sleep?

  Before she could voice her opinion, Isaac Daniels caught her eye. He smiled and crossed the room to join them.

  “How did it go this week?” His voice was low and he sat with his back to Sarah.

  Jane could feel a blush coming on. She was not even remotely interested in sneaking Sarah and her friends off campus. “I don’t know, really. There isn’t much family around to minister to.”

  “It’s early days. Have patience. Sometimes the small stuff, done faithfully, makes a bigger impression anyway.”

  “That’s what it comes to. My only trouble now is they don’t want to pay me until the estate is settled, but I need the income.”

  Isaac frowned, his brows pulling together. “Can they do that?”

  “Anyone can do anything, I guess. I need to figure out who is in charge of the estate and discuss it properly. Someone assumed I had some kind of auto-pay, but it has always been cash. I have to sort out that misunderstanding first thing. Well, I need to get another client or two first thing.” Jane rubbed her pencil’s eraser on her desk, making a small square with the pink rubber. “Or sort out the issue with Marjory first. Or do them both at the same time. Right? The best way to handle a problem is to be unfocused and distracted.”

  Isaac choked on a laugh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh, but I get it. Talk after class?”

  She looked up from the eraser doodle. He watched her with big, sympathetic hazel eyes, but the corner of his mouth was turned up in a smile.

  “Maybe we can brainstorm a solution.”

  “Sounds good.” Jane smiled a little too.

  Isaac resumed his spot at the podium with a bounce in his step. His smile was slightly out of line with the data on families in crisis he quoted. And considering the thin line Jane was walking, her smile felt a little out of line as well.

  The last half of class flew by. Jane found her notes harder to concentrate on and Isaac easier to watch.

  Jane lingered at the back of the class until the rest of the students had filtered out. When the room was empty Isaac joined her. “I have to head back to town.” He ran his hand through his hair.

  Jane’s heart sank. “Oh, okay.”

  “You head back to town too, right?

  “Yes.” Jane sat up straighter.

  “We could meet at Starbucks.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “To talk about how you can be a light right now.” Isaac kept her eyes locked in his as he spoke.

  “Of course.” Jane blushed again, she just knew it, but, at the same time, she didn’t mind.

  Jane and Isaac left the classroom.

  She followed him into town, admiring his aging Range Rover. She had a light, fluttering feeling in her chest for the first time in days. As sure as she was that it was against Bible school rules, she was fairly certain this was a date.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when he paid for the grande non-fat latte, decaf, that she ordered.

  The aroma of fresh-brewed Starbucks, warm pastry, and Isaac, standing close to her, made Jane forget, for a moment, that she was still a mess from work.

  Once they sat down, Isaac appeared more confident, and younger too. The diffident, unsure manner he had used to invite her to coffee had been replaced by a cheerful smile and a more relaxed voice. Plus he had left his jacket in the car.

  He leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on the table. “So you have more problems right now than you expected on Monday, I’d say.”

  “I do. I don’t know how it spun out of control so fast, but I’m kind of up a creek.”

  “Because you are expected to work for no pay, right?” Isaac picked up his paper cup and held it in front of his mouth, blowing lightly into the lid.

  “Exactly.” Jane copied his motion, but not on purpose. The warm cup was a comfort. She took a sip that was still too hot.

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  Jane choked on her coffee. “A lawyer? Far from it. Why would I need a lawyer?”

  “If you need to quit working for them to pick up more clients to meet your bills, the family might make things difficult. Well, only if they truly believe you are being paid still or have been paid in advance.” Isaac’s jaw tensed.

  “I can’t imagine who would sue me.” Jane furrowed her brow. She had expected him to recommend some Bible verses, to pray with her, to make small talk.

  “Sorry. My dad is a small claims court judge so problems tend to appear litigious to me. They might not sue, but even if they don’t you still have trouble.”

  “Yes. Well…I am seeking new clients now so that should help. And you haven’t given any homework yet, so, you know, I’ve got time.”

  Isaac grinned. “Yeah…I haven’t. Do you think that crowd would do homework?”

  “What do you mean?” Jane blew into the lid of her coffee. She wanted to hear what his thoughts on the little Bible school were. Her own concept had been so recently called into question.

  “Well…” Isaac flushed. “I mean it’s not exactly Harvard, is it?”

  “I suppose it can’t draw quite the same caliber of professor.”

  Isaac shifted in his seat. “Touché.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. What do you think about this school? What’s the deal with it?”

  “You tell me. You’re a student there.”

  “I’ll say this much: The catalogue made it look like a great training school for someone who wanted to serve overseas.”

  “It is that.”

  Relief swept over Jane. She tilted her head from side to side, stretching her neck out. That was all she wanted to hear. She was well-trained for the mission field.

  “But it’s not as good as seminary.”

  Jane lifted her eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Look at it this way. At the Bible school you studied some pretty basic theological concepts, some pretty basic intercultural stuff, some pretty basic linguistic skills, and you learned how to get along with PKs.”

  Jane rolled her eyes.

  “Or not how to get along with PKs. Either way it was a pretty basic education. Kind of the Junior College version of seminary.”

  “So then why are you teaching there?”

  “PhDs are expensive.” Isaac shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a drag about your school. I guess I just figured since you are an adult, and live in town rather than in the dorms, that you would get it. Considering all of that though, why are you at Harvest?”

  “Because I want to be a missionary and I didn’t see the point of studying biology and essay writing. I wanted to focus on my goal.”

  “What is your goal?”

  “The ten-forty window.”

  “How do I say this…” Isaac set his cup down. He was sup
pressing a smile.

  “I know.” Jane scrunched up her mouth.

  “You can’t get into the ten-forty window with a Bible school degree.”

  “I said, I know.” Jane did her best not to sigh. She had learned a lot in her almost-two-years at Harvest, including that she needed something besides a Bible school certificate to get into her ideal mission field.

  “But if you knew that, why did you pick this school?”

  “Well, I didn’t know that when I started, did I? But I need to finish what I started. I’ll get where God wants me to be. I’m not worried about that part.”

  “You look worried.” Isaac took a drink from his paper cup.

  Jane looked down at her coffee cup. Why had she said she wasn’t worried? Of course she was worried. “Okay. I hadn’t been worried until Monday. When my clients both died and then Glenda told me that the Bible school certificate was meaningless, I began to have some serious doubts about what I was doing.”

  Isaac reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I can believe it, but listen, we can straighten out the ministry thing at least—we can figure out how you can serve these guys in their need, because in reality, this one family in this major crisis could be the whole reason God has you at Harvest School of the Bible.”

  “God has arranged the last two years of my life so that I could be in your class?”

  Isaac’s face lit up as he smiled. He tried to pull his features into a more somber look, but it didn’t work. “Would that have been so bad?”

  Jane liked the way his hand felt on hers—rough and strong. A shiver ran down her spine. “I plead the fifth.”

  Isaac let go of her hand and took a big drink of his coffee. “So can you anticipate any needs your clients may have in the coming week?”

  They brainstormed household chores that Phoebe and Jake might have until the coffee shop closed up for the night, and then they parted ways. Jane watched Isaac drive off in the opposite direction from her. She assumed he wouldn’t have lied about where he lived, but from the direction he was driving away it did not look like he had needed to come all the way into town.

  Chapter 5

  The window in Jane’s apartment that faced the parking lot was dark. Jane checked the clock on her dash as she parked. It was just after eleven. Sam rarely had the lights out by eleven, even though Jane slept in the living room.

  Her two years in the cramped quarters of a junior apartment with a girl she met on Craigslist were beginning to tell on Jane. She sat in her car and stared at the dark window. Disappointment washed over her like a cold wind. She ought to have been asleep in that dark room. She needed to be up by five tomorrow.

  Her parents had cautioned her against sharing a junior suite—a space distinguished from a regular studio by a partition between the “rooms,” but with no real bedroom door. Her parents had told her not to look for a roommate online either. Her parents had told her to move to Phoenix with them, enroll in Arizona State, but, Jane reminded herself, she knew what she wanted.

  And that, apparently, was a small apartment with a stranger and a half-hearted education.

  Jane turned her ignition off. At least the light was out so she could go straight to sleep.

  Jane ambled up the steps to her front door counting the weeks left until the end of school and attempting to ignore the smell coming from the dumpster at the foot of her staircase.

  May was coming, and with it, freedom from her classes and her commute. She could move to Phoenix with her parents and start her fundraising. Good things were coming in May. A little pang of disappointment hit her. In May she’d be done with Isaac Daniels’ class.

  The front door light was burnt out. The sheltered entry to the apartment was pitch black. Jane stumbled over something as she crossed the landing to her door. She looked down and discovered a small cardboard box with her blanket on top. She frowned and kneeled down. She removed her blanket to discover her pillow, her books from last term, And her half a bag of Chex Mix.

  Was Sam kicking her out? And if so, where were her clothes? She quickly recalled they were in her car, waiting to go to the laundry mat, but what about the rest of her stuff, like the futon she called her bed?

  Jane pulled out her keychain and clicked on her L.E.D light. By its small glow she read a note scribbled on the side of the box. Rent overdue. Evicted. She bowed her head. “Oh dear God, what on Earth?” She didn’t pray it, so much as turn the question over and over in her head. She was too confused to pray. She was absolutely certain that her rent was not overdue. She pressed the palm of her hand to her chest. Her heart thumped against her hand like a drum.

  “Okay, Lord. Just give me my next step.” The words of the Psalm came to her mind. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

  What did the Bible say she should do? No stories of twenty-year-old girls on their own kicked to the curb in the middle of the night came to mind so she pulled out her phone and called Sam. She hoped the phone would wake her up from a deep sleep. Anger was beginning to replace her confusion.

  The phone seemed to ring forever, but right about when voicemail should have clicked on, Sam answered.

  “Let me in,” Jane said.

  “I can’t. We’re evicted.”

  “What do you mean, ‘We’re evicted’? Just let me in to get the rest of my stuff at least.”

  “I can’t, idiot. We were evicted.”

  “But rent wasn’t late. What do you mean ‘rent was late’?” Jane rocked back on her heels.

  “About that…”

  “Samantha, did you not pay the rent?”

  “I was going to, but something came up.” Sam’s voice was slurred.

  “How often did something come up, Sam?”

  “Listen, I have a lot of expenses and I had to use the money for some stuff and now we are evicted. Deal.”

  “Where are you?” Jane’s mind was spinning. Some unbefore-met part of herself wanted to find Sam and punch her in the nose. The rest of her just wanted to find a place to spend the night.

  “I’m out of town. Sorry about this. Hey. I didn’t box your stuff up, the landlord did. Talk to him about it.”

  “But my furniture? My bed? My dresser? My privacy screen? What about that stuff?”

  “Yeah, so, he needs that to sell for the past rent or something. I don’t know. My dad came and cleared my stuff out for me. Maybe your dad can come. The landlord is kind of a bully, but whatever. I’m busy right now. Just get a hold of him yourself and deal with it.” Sam disconnected the call.

  Jane stared at her phone. Unless her lock-box was in the cardboard box on the front-step, her emergency credit card would still be inside the apartment.

  Jane stood up. She brushed the dirt from her knees. With a shaking hand she pushed her key into the lock and attempted to let herself in to the apartment. The lock resisted her key. It had already been changed.

  She stepped backwards from the door and tripped on the box of her stuff. Her little safe had to be in that box. She pulled out the blanket and the pillow and the bag of Chex Mix again. She dug through the short stack of textbooks. She pulled out the pile of fashion magazines that were actually Sam’s. No lock-box. No emergency credit card. No place to sleep.

  Jane looked down at her rag-top Rabbit. Even with her winter coat on she was shivering in the early March night air. She’d freeze to death if she tried to sleep in her car. She grimaced. She wouldn’t actually freeze to death, but it would be really cold. She tapped the face of her cell phone. She wanted to call her daddy to make it all better. He could pay for a hotel room over the phone, couldn’t he?

  She paused. Her parents were on a cruise. Did she really want to panic them in the middle of a vacation they couldn’t leave?

  Something Isaac said over coffee came to mind. Sometimes serving others meets our own needs in ways we didn’t anticipate.

  Isaac wouldn’t have wanted her to move in with Jake, would he? Could that have been the message God was se
nding her?

  Jane sat down and folded her cold hands. She closed her eyes. “Okay, God.” This time she prayed out loud. “I don’t want to move into the Crawford house. I don’t want to live in the same house alone with Jake. I don’t want to be a live-in housekeeper, but is this your plan? Is this what you meant for me to do?” Somewhere outside of the apartment complex an owl hooted. Jane waited in silence until her legs went numb.

  She would go to the Crawfords’ house because she had nowhere else to go.

  In ten minutes she had reached the Crawford house. She pulled into the side drive and parked around back by the mudroom door. One hundred years ago, when the house had been built, it was considered the servants’ door. Very appropriate. She left her car in the little round drive where Pamela had directed her to park on the days she worked.

  The whole house, like her small apartment, was dark. She didn’t want to go in. The night couldn’t have been warmer than thirty and the cold nipped at her cheeks as she sat in her car.

  There was an empty, warm bed inside that house. There was probably an old school friend inside that house, and according to the luggage she saw today, there was a dragon in that house.

  Jane shivered from cold. Marjory might be a dragon, but she was asleep. The cold night was awake.

  She let herself into the mudroom and took her shoes off. She tucked them under the bench and shuffled in her sock feet to the door. She pulled the door open slowly, hoping it wouldn’t groan. It didn’t. She was desperate to get in unnoticed. This morning’s invitation might well have been forgotten. Or the inviter might already be gone.

  She debated which bedroom to take herself to as she made her way to the bottom of the back steps. The third floor of the Crawford house was mostly the original ballroom, but behind the ballroom were two small bedrooms for staff that the family who originally built the house used to keep. Like the other bedrooms, they were dust-free and had fresh linens. Barring the bodies in the master bedroom, the Crawford house was always ready for company.

  The third step of the back stairs squeaked, but otherwise the trip up the first flight of stairs was uneventful.