Spoiled Rotten Murder: A Plain Jane Mystery (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 5)

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “Of course.” Miranda’s eyes didn’t agree with her words.

  Jane stifled a sigh. She didn’t want to be under Miranda’s wing, which was the wrong attitude, but such was life.

  “Okay. That’s settled. You both go down to connect with Maggie’s parents. Let Miranda lead the interview. Your goal is to get the names of the venders—caterers, bakery, flowers, all of that—from the bride’s mom. Then, hit that list, one item at a time. I want to see all of the orders. It should be pretty easy to see if the wedding plans were legitimate based on what she had ordered, how much she had paid in advance, etc.”

  “But what about the murder?” Jane leaned forward, her heart thumping. It sounded like Flora just wanted to stick to the insurance side of things. But how could she?

  “Our client is paying us to find out if there was any real intention of a wedding or if they had been defrauded. While what is happening regarding Maggie’s work life is interesting, we need to stick with a solid line of inquiry.”

  “Interesting?” Jane goggled. “She’s being hounded, her personal information is spread all over the internet with calls out to harm her. Her groom is missing, and her friend is dead. I’d say it’s not a case of fraud at all.”

  Flora tilted her head, a small smile on her face. “And yet when you found out that Maggie and Kyle had already married, you knew that the case had to be fraud.”

  Jane sat back. “I was wrong.” Her voice was small, and she hated that. She needed to be able to project the confidence she felt.

  “Ongoing cyber-bullying,” Miranda said. “This is a big deal.” Despite the heaviness of her words, her face was calm and her voice light. “I think you ought to keep Jane’s line of inquiry open. We haven’t dealt with a cyber-bullying case yet, but it was only going to be a matter of time”

  Flora frowned.

  Jane watched the dynamic between the two of them closely. Miranda seemed to be handling Flora, easing her over to this idea, without forcing her into it. Jane could learn something from her after all.

  Margot Frances invited Miranda and Jane into her living room. Through an archway, Jane could see the pile of dishes in the kitchen. The living room was full of cartons, papers, stacks of things one expected to see related to a big family event. One open crate near Jane’s chair was filled with rolls of gauzy tulle embellished with little shiny dots. Another, near her feet, was half full of tiny bottles of bubbles. It looked like Margot, at least, had been preparing for a real wedding. “How is Maggie holding up?” Jane asked.

  “It’s sweet of you to care.” Margot had deeply shadowed eyes behind her heavy black framed glasses. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair wasn’t styled, but the cut of her jacket, her trendy eyeglasses, and her manicure, made Jane think Margot was usually on top of those things. “She’s not doing well, as I’m sure you can understand.” Margot glanced at her phone, which sat on a cluttered side table. “She gets off of work soon. I hope you understand, I’d like to answer your questions to help her move forward with this insurance claim, but I would prefer to finish before she gets home.”

  “Of course.” Miranda spoke in disinterested, professional tones. “We merely need to confirm the expenses accrued. If you wouldn’t mind, we can quickly scan your invoices and then confirm the orders. It’s simply a matter of paperwork.”

  Margot ran a shaking hand through her hair. “Of course.” She glanced over her shoulder, and then at her phone again. “I’m just afraid…most of it was handled by Kyle and Maggie. I don’t have…I’m not sure what I have.” She kept glancing from table to table and stack to stack. “I’m not even sure where I would start looking.”

  “You said Maggie would be home soon?” Miranda’s tone had gone from calm to cold. Not downright mean, but Jane’s spine went rigid in response. She could only imagine what Margot was thinking.

  “You know…” Jane interposed, her own voice as warm as she could make it, “if you happened to have the names of the vendors…florist, caterer, that sort of thing, we could contact them and check out the paperwork on their side of things.” She looked at her hands, and then back up. “We realize you are dealing with more right now than just the cancelled wedding.”

  Margot’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes.” She looked at her phone again.

  Jane also looked at it. Margot had missed 217 calls today, and 330 text messages. “Was your phone number part of the information that Voice of the Programmer users released?” She bit her lip.

  Margot closed her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Your poor daughter.” Jane reached a hand out to Margot, but she got no response, so pulled away.

  Miranda cleared her throat. “If you can make a list of vendors, I think we can work with that.”

  Margot picked up her phone, but her hands shook so badly that Jane reached to her again. She took the phone from her hand and set it down.

  “Let me turn that off for you,” Jane said.

  “But what if Maggie needs me?” Margot’s voice sounded stronger. She opened her eyes. It was like being strong for her daughter was the one thing she could rally herself for. She took a deep breath. “Thank you for your concern.”

  Jane passed the phone back.

  Margot took another deep breath, then tapped her screen a few times. She read off a list of wedding vendors. “If that is all you need…” She glanced toward the door.

  “If we run into a snag, we will contact you.” Miranda stood up.

  Jane passed Flora’s card to Margot. “There was just one more thing.”

  Miranda frowned.

  “Maggie let us know that someone came here on behalf of a credit card company claiming to be with SCoRI. I think you can guess they weren’t really with us.”

  Margot stared blankly at the business card.

  “Would you mind giving us a description of the person? Our bosses are concerned about this. Their professional reputation and all…” Jane trailed off and waited for Margot.

  After a moment, Margot responded, “Yes. Of course. He was about your age, I’d say.” She looked at Miranda as she said that. “He wore a nice suit, and thick framed glasses. He had…” she scrunched her face like she was thinking. “He had a scar on his chin, an old one. Like Harrison Ford. I noticed it right away. And…yes, dark brown hair. Almost black. He said his name was John.”

  “Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking a moment to help us. And please, if anything happens, anything at all, related to the game situation, to Kyle, anything we can help you with, please call.”

  Margot laid the card on the table. “Of course.” She led them out without another word.

  Jane was sure the card would be lost in the mess, and she was equally sure the family could use a house cleaner.

  Would it be a conflict of interest for her to come in and clean?

  Or maybe she could call on her old friend Holly who used to work with her.

  Miranda pulled out of the neighborhood with a roar. “Thanks for turning an hour’s worth of phone calls into a day of running around.”

  Jane ignored the dig. Her own inconvenience was nothing compared to what the Frances family was going through.

  Four

  They went to the bakery first, since it was on the same side of town. “You know that the fake SCoRI investigator had a distracting costume on, right?” Miranda asked.

  “Thick glasses are a distracting costume?”

  “Black hair would be temporary dye, the scar would be stage makeup, and the glasses, yes. Thick glasses distract from his eye color. You will never find this guy.”

  Jane squared her shoulders. Miranda made a compelling case, but Jane wasn’t new to the murder-game, and had a strong intuition about the fake investigator. Even if he had been in a costume, she felt like they would ignore him at their own peril. “If he was a complete stranger, he wouldn’t need a costume. So…we start to look for guys your age who would want info from the Frances family they couldn’t get any other way.”

 
“Like who?”

  Jane paused. “Like Kyle Fish.”

  Miranda laughed. “Yes, of course, because a pair of glasses would make him completely unrecognizable to his future mother-in-law. We’re looking for Superman now.”

  Jane stayed silent.

  What if he had been Kyle Fish? What would that mean for basically…everything?

  The bakery was a little shop tucked away on a quiet corner of an old neighborhood. Tall maple trees shaded the entry. The shop was warm and smelled like vanilla and caramel.

  Miranda faked a cough to get the baker’s attention. “I’m Miranda, and I’m doing an insurance fraud investigation on behalf of Cascadia Surety. We had some questions about the Fish-Frances wedding order. Do you have a moment?”

  The baker was a rosy, round woman with greying hair and big brown eyes. Her pink apron was lightly dusted with flour, and embroidered with the name Daphne. “Fish-Frances?” She furrowed her brows. “I didn’t take that order, but the name is familiar. What do you need to know?”

  “May we see the work order?” Jane jumped in. She edged her way closer to the counter as well. This was her investigation, not Miranda’s.

  “Sure.” Daphne went around to a big wooden file cabinet at the end of the counter. She riffled through the papers and then drew one out. “Here it is. Fish and Frances.” She handed the paper to Miranda.

  Jane restrained from grabbing it for herself.

  “I remember them now, formal cake, but not huge. They paid a deposit, but never paid the balance.”

  “What happens when you don’t pay the balance?” Jane had a small notepad out to take notes.

  “We don’t make it.” She shrugged, a wistful look in her eye. “And we don’t refund the deposit.”

  “But the deposit was only…”Jane leaned in. “Was it one hundred dollars or forty-five?”

  Daphne took another look at the paper. “Ah. Usually it is one hundred dollars, but it looks like Bill discounted it for them.”

  “And they paid cash.” Jane looked over the paper as well as she could while Miranda held it. A six-hundred dollar cake that they had put forty-five dollars down on. “When did they place the order?”

  “Months ago. It looks like it was almost six months ago to the day.” The bells over the bakery door jingled. “Can you give me a moment?”

  “Of course.” Miranda said. “So, what do you make of it?” she asked, as Daphne greeted the customer.

  “It feels a little like they never intended to get the cake, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps.” Miranda watched Daphne as she served the customer. “Excuse me,” she interrupted Daphne. “We’d like to take a copy of this, would that be possible?”

  “Sure.” Daphne turned back to the customer—a young woman with bright eyes and a baby in a backpack.

  Miranda took out her phone, played with the settings, and took a picture. She played with her phone a little more. “There. That will be waiting for us on the printer.” She picked up a sample book and flipped through it.

  Jane examined the goods in the refrigerator case. The prices were higher than she had expected. There were two bakeries in town well known among the wedding vendor set, but this place wasn’t one of them. If you were going to fake a wedding, an out-of-the-way bakery would be a good place to do it at.

  “Excuse me.” Daphne took the sample book from Miranda and passed it to the young mom.

  “Thank you for your time. If we have more questions is there a good time to call you?” Jane felt for the baker. She was out the six hundred dollars or so for the cake, after all.

  Daphne glanced at her customer. “Evening is best. We close at 6:30. Any time after that and you should be able to get someone on the phone.”

  “You mentioned someone named Bill…he took the order originally?”

  “Yes, my husband.”

  “Is evening a good time to reach him as well?” Jane kept her smile warm and her posture open. She didn’t want to pressure Daphne, but she did want to know a little more about the big deposit discount.

  “Usually. Or if you call, I can get him for you.”

  The bells jingled again as Miranda walked out.

  “Thank you.” Jane gave a small wave and hurried after Miranda.

  “That discount on the deposit is pretty interesting, don’t you think?”

  Miranda made a humming noise and pulled out into traffic.

  “It could indicate fraud, or maybe even collusion. I wonder what Cascadia Surety would say about the bakery being in on it.” Jane gripped the door handle as Miranda whipped around a corner.

  “The caterer is across town.”

  The lack of acknowledgment for her idea annoyed Jane, but she decided not to let it stop her. “If she really did plan a fake wedding, put her poor mom into such a state, order a bunch of services she never intended to buy…” Jane felt like she had taste something sour. “That’s a lot of fraud. And it really makes a case for the game community accusations against her integrity.”

  Miranda pulled onto the highway like she was being chased.

  “But even if she was as awful as everyone claims—and just seeing her mom makes me think defrauding the insurance company on this wedding would have been terrible—it doesn’t justify the horrible things the gamers are doing. You know? No matter how bad someone is, they don’t deserve what she’s getting.” Jane Googled Maggie again to see if there was anything new on the internet. There was plenty of new content—literally hundreds of posts—but no new information. She let the phone sit on her knee.

  “We were hired by the insurance company to research the wedding. Leave the gamers fight out of it.” Miranda’s first words sounded tired. When she said earlier that she didn’t like investigation, she must have been painfully sincere.

  “We can’t really leave it out. If she had intended to get married, and someone mad at her about the game thing has done something to the groom, then it wasn’t fraud.”

  “One step at a time.” Miranda flew onto the off ramp and came to a screeching halt at the light.

  The caterer was surrounded by other similar businesses, a wedding dress shop, a florist, even a print shop. Jane made a note of the location. She did have her own wedding to plan, after all.

  The caterer was on the phone when they entered the shop. Jane gravitated towards a rack of menus. The items seemed pretty standard, at least compared to any wedding she’d been to lately. Chicken kabobs, mini quiche. That kind of thing. No prices were listed. Perhaps it was the kind of place where if you needed to ask, then you couldn’t afford it. The interior made her doubt that, though. Cramped room with concrete floors, chipped countertop. Big box store lighting. Nothing said “Luxe” to her.

  The man behind the counter hung up. “Can I help you?” He looked from Miranda to Jane as if trying to read their body language.

  “Yes. We’re investigating a case of potential fraud on behalf of Cascadia Surety.” Jane held up the card Miranda had given her to use at the coffee shop. The caterer whose name badge said “Steven” didn’t even glance at it.

  “How can I be of service?”

  Before Jane could answer, Miranda spoke. “We are interested in the catering order for the Frances-Fish wedding. The mother of the bride said they had hired you all to cater the event which was supposed to have taken place last week.”

  Steven frowned. “Fish-Frances? Let me check.” He turned to the tablet that stood in for a cash register and tapped the screen a few times. “Ah. Here it is.” He turned the screen for Jane and Miranda. “We opened an event for them, but they didn’t make a deposit. The event is listed as cancelled, but technically, it was never started. Is that all?” He swiveled the tablet back his direction.

  “Would you mind making a print of that for us?” Jane asked. Her heart was in her stomach. Fraud. All signs pointed to fraud. Which meant the murder was just a horrible event on the periphery of their own investigation and not remotely related.

  “Sure.�
� He tapped the screen a few times, then reached under the counter for the paper.

  Miranda took it. “Thanks so much.” She walked out without another word.

  Jane hesitated at the counter. “If we have any more questions, who should we ask for?” She held her pen over her little notebook.

  Steven looked at the screen again. “Ask for Don. He opened the event.”

  “Will do. Thanks.” Jane scribbled the name of the shop and Don on her pad. She refused to hurry to the car, even though she could hear Miranda revving the engine.

  She got in slowly and took her time buckling up. “So, in a hurry much?”

  Miranda got the car back into traffic before she answered. “This is a simple fraud case, and I do have other work to do. If we can just get the information on paper, I can get back to the office and you can spend as much time as you want pouring over the papers. Sorry if my regular work is inconvenient to you.”

  Jane tried to count to ten but only got to six. “Asking a couple of questions, like, for example, ‘if we have further questions, who should we ask for?’ doesn’t take any time and could be invaluable. And if you didn’t have time to come with me, you should have said so.” Jane gritted her teeth.

  “I’m glad you’re an expert.”

  Miranda’s mood had gone from no good to a lot worse over the course of the day. Jane was beginning to think the problem was chemical. As in: hunger. She pulled a granola bar from her purse and dug in. When it was half gone, she held another one out, “Want one?”

  Miranda gave the granola bar the side-eye, but took it.

  They went to the florist in silence, Jane wishing Maggie had had the sense to use the florist next door to the caterer. Her fraudulent wedding had been inefficiently planned.

  The florist was immediately sympathetic. “Oh, that was such a beautiful floral plan. I remember it very well. Such a heartbreak that she got stood up.” The grandmotherly woman who owned Bobbi’s Bouquets shook her head. “I’m so glad to hear she had it insured.” While she spoke, she gingerly set an arrangement of roses and baby’s breath into a shipping box. “I don’t do many ten-thousand dollar weddings.”