“Have you been eating?” Jane asked.
“Yes. Yes. Of course.”
A soft knock on the door interrupted the disjointed interview. “Jane?” It was Flora, a concerned look on her face. “What’s up?”
Jane’s mouth bobbed open. She had essentially begged Flora to come after her, but now that she was here, she couldn’t figure out what to say.
Loud footsteps echoed down the hall and moments later two well-dressed men marched into the office. “Kyle. You okay, buddy?”
“No. I’m not. I don’t know what I can say. What I’m supposed to say.” Kyle let go of the door and stared at the men. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Never mind.” The darker of the two men spoke. “You did good work. Why don’t you come with us now?”
Flora stepped between the men and Kyle. “And who would you be?”
Both men popped badges out of their wallets. “Agent Smith, FBI,” the darker one said.
“Agent Millborn, FBI. Internet crimes unit.”
“You weren’t lying?” The words popped out of Jane before she could stop them.
“Don’t say anything,” Agent Millborn said.
“I don’t know what I did. I don’t know. Is Maggie okay?” Kyle stared at Jane’s phone.
Jane put it to her ear. “Maggie, are you there?”
The quiet noise of someone crying over the phone answered her.
“Maggie, Kyle is here, do you want to talk to him?”
“Yes.” Her voice was surprisingly clear.
Jane passed the phone to Kyle.
“Maggie?” His voice broke. “Maggie, I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”
Jane wished she could hear what Maggie said, but by the look of peace that came over Kyle’s face, she knew it must have been words of comfort.
Jane turned to the feds. “What about the murderer of Devon Grosse? Have you found him yet?”
Agent Smith frowned and Agent Millborn offered a condescending smile. “It’s an active investigation that we won’t comment on at this time. Hand the phone back to the girl, Kyle, and we’ll go. I think you’ve had enough of this office, buddy.” Millborn reached for the phone.
Kyle gave it to the agent who returned it to Jane.
Jane stared as Kyle followed the agents out like a lamb.
Agent Smith, frown still securely in place, gave Jane one last look. “We didn’t think we’d get to use this room for as long as we did, so don’t go thinking you disrupted our business, but you need to stay out of important investigations.”
Flora pulled her own badge out. “We’re licensed private detectives acting legally on behalf of our client.”
Agent Smith turned without comment.
Flora shut the door behind him. “We were acting legally, yes?”
“Yes.” Max spoke. “I’m the landlord and I chose to let her in. The feds did not check with me to see if I would approve the use of this office for their work.” His low grumbly voice sounded particularly peeved.
“Just like the feds.” Flora offered him a smile. “Not much you can do about that. Jane, let’s go.”
Jane checked her phone. Maggie had hung up. “Okay.”
They caravanned back to the SCoRI office. Jane took what was beginning to feel like her official place in the threadbare avocado velvet arm chair across from Flora’s desk.
Flora scratched her head. “Well, here’s how I see it.” Her face didn’t give any clues about what she was going to say. “You followed your gut to look into some sidelines related to our insurance case, and to the case of someone fraudulently representing us.”
“Yes.” Jane sat on the edge of the chair, eager to be an active participant in the conversation and not the dumb-struck youth she had felt like every time she sat in here.
“And that led to you finding a missing man.” She rocked her head back and forth. “A presumed missing man. You at least found out where he was and had been for the sake of his bride—which was very much related to the issue of insurance fraud.”
“If he hadn’t had the feds on speed dial, I think we could have gotten a lot more out of Kyle,” Jane said.
“Possibly so, but he was under strict orders. There was no way he wasn’t calling them when you and Max got into the office. Maybe even as soon as he heard Brad trying to kick down the door.”
“Whoever climbed out the office window killed Devon,” Jane said.
“That seems like a reasonable theory.”
“With Brad locked up and Kyle whisked away to parts unknown, how am I going to find out who it was?”
“You have been under strict orders not to pursue that investigation. I said specifically that if you didn’t follow directions, you would be fired.” Her face was grim, but she couldn’t maintain her strict posture and her face softened, slightly. “That’s what the police are for. And anyway, with the involvement of the FBI, I suspect they either already know, or are well on their way to finding out.”
“But what if they aren’t?”
“Jane, this is a hard truth, but the FBI doesn’t need your help.”
“They might not, but Maggie does.”
“Hmm.” Flora narrowed her eyes.
“Because the feds were no help at all with her disappearing groom. She lost a husband and a friend on the night before her wedding. The FBI, and possibly the regular old police, knew where Kyle has been, but they didn’t tell her, I did. So what if the feds have almost solved the murder? They aren’t going to tell Maggie. But I can.”
“I like your spirit, Jane. Stubborn—but stubbornly compassionate. But I don’t think you can do it.” Flora waved her hand, dismissing Jane’s hope. “If the FBI knows but isn’t revealing the killer, you won’t discover him. And if they don’t know who killed Devon yet, with all of their resources, I don’t think you’ll be able to figure it out. You just don’t have the experience yet.”
Implied in her words was the idea that Jane also didn’t have the necessary genius. But…she was now giving reasons it wouldn’t work instead of threatening to fire her if she tried. A glimmer of hope warmed Jane’s heart.
“I may not have a lot of experience or appear to be a preternaturally gifted sleuth. But if you are willing to give me permission to follow up on a few leads I have, I’d like to try.”
Flora’s lips were a thin line. “We are a small office that handles a dozen cases a year. I manage half a dozen retired investigators who serve part time.”
“I won’t waste your time, I promise.”
“I was just thinking, given the thin nature of our workload, and your need for supervised hours, that following up with this murder might be a good idea.” Flora smiled. “You need hours and experience and I have little to offer you. No new cases on the horizon.”
“So I can?” Jane’s face split into a smile involuntarily.
Flora laughed, but then pulled a serious face, as though that look of hers always hid a laughing heart. “So few girls your age would spontaneously burst into joy at the idea of finding a murderer.”
Jane couldn’t suppress the smile that lit up her face, but she tried to keep it business like.
“Yes. You can. But keep me up to date with regular reports. Come in every day to discuss what you learned with myself or Rocky. Remember that this is on the job training and not just a puzzle to solve.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t call me ma’am. This is Portland, not Texas.”
“Of course, sorry.”
Flora stood up. “If you have an angle to pursue with the rest of your day, you’d better do it. But have some lunch first, okay? You look hungry.”
“Okay. I’ll do both.”
Jane grabbed a hamburger on her way to the Frances house. It was time to get Brenna to spill all her beans.
Seventeen
Brenna pulled Jane straight into her room. “I’ve been monitoring Shane Paige. I don’t trust him.”
Jane’s curiosity was immediately piqued
. “Is there any way to find out what he was doing the night of the wedding rehearsal?”
Brenna pulled her eyebrows together like Jane was speaking a foreign language. “Besides asking him and hoping he doesn’t lie?”
“Yes, besides that. A phone track or a visual from traffic cameras. Anything at all.”
“I don’t know what you think I do with my time, but it’s not that.” Brenna rolled her chair back to her desk.
Jane reined herself in a little. Paranoid, possibly brilliant, Brenna wasn’t going to hand over her carefully archived information for nothing.
“What have you seen recently that has you questioning Shane?”
“His online activity has exploded in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Pretty much corresponding to the call I made to him,” Jane said more to herself than not.
“Exactly.”
“What kind of online activity have you been seeing?”
“He hangs out at Voice of the Programmer. I guess he thinks he fits in because of the game hack books and stuff.”
“Does he write those, or his mom?”
Brenna laughed low, with a derisive note. “I am fairly sure his mom exists as the business owner to save her precious from the tax burdens. I would be one hundred percent surprised if she even knows how to turn on a game console.”
“So what’s Shane doing at VoP?”
“A few things. First, he’s egging on Kyle. You know I spotted Kyle by his writing quirks. Shane was easy to ID as well, if you know what you are looking for. And Shane is really going for Kyle. Answering every post. Answering posts wrong. And now answering posts with hints that he knows his identity. I suppose he could. I’m not the only person in America who’s been trained in spotting writing styles and stuff.”
“What do you think Shane’s end game is?”
“He’s trying to get Kyle to out himself. That much is obvious. But if it’s because he thinks Kyle is the killer or just because he is mad about GameTestGate, as it’s been dubbed, I don’t know.”
“Speaking of Kyle…” Jane had meant to lead with this, but Brenna had caught her off-guard. “I saw him today.”
“Good. I was wondering when you would.”
Jane flinched. “What? How did you know I might see him?”
“It’s what you’ve been after, isn’t it? I knew if you were any good you’d find him eventually. And you found him. So, good. I’m glad someone capable is working on this.”
“Aren’t you curious where he’s been? How he’s been? I think he’s cracked.”
“His posts have given me a good indication that he’d cracked. And though he hasn’t left a lot of clues, there aren’t many places he could be hiding without a helping hand. And if he had a helping hand, there were even fewer places. You’ve already been here. You’ve been to Devon’s apartment. You’ve been hanging out with Ayla. So, I’m guessing he was either staked out at Ayla’s tattoo shop, in her apartment, or at his office. Or maybe Devon’s office.”
Jane frowned. “If you had the answer, why didn’t you offer it to the police?”
“If the police can’t find him, that’s their problem. I have my hands full with the online harassment, don’t I?”
Jane wondered. Brenna had certainly filled her hands with it, but to what end? Could her paranoid hoarding of facts and clues actually solve anything? With online harassment it seemed the further you dug into it, the worse the harassment got. She withheld her opinion, since she wanted more information on Shane. “Do you think Shane is going to turn his online pestering into action?”
“By the escalation of the harassment, I think he would if he could. But he’d have to know where Kyle was, and I don’t think he does.”
“Do you think he might hurt Maggie?”
“Yes, I do. But I can’t get her to take the threat seriously.” Brenna’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Jane. “And yet one of their best friends is dead.”
“You don’t think Maggie is behind that, do you?”
Brenna’s face didn’t change expression. “I think there is a small chance that Maggie killed Devon after the harassment began. She could have thought all of the death threats against her were his fault. It’s conceivable.”
“But she has a pretty good alibi for the night he died.”
“Only until midnight. After that, if she had hooked up with Devon, she could have killed him.” Brenna’s voice was absolutely without emotion. Maggie, her own sister, was just another potential killer on the list.
“Do you think she did?”
“No. Her current behavior, apart from a lack of fear, does not indicate a strong sense of guilt or shame. And to this point in her life she hasn’t shown any signs of sociopathic thought tendencies.”
“Well, that’s something.” Jane felt it was especially something for the Frances parents, since it looked very much like Brenna showed some signs of a failure to empathize with other people.
Brenna interrupted Jane’s thoughts. “Are you going to go talk to Shane?”
“I might. I also need to talk to Ayla and tell her that I’ve seen Kyle.”
“Have you told Maggie?”
“She’s spoken to him.”
“I think you should read the conversations between Shane and Kyle before you go.” Brenna handed Jane a tablet opened to the Voice of the Programmer forum.
“Just this one thread?” Jane asked. She didn’t want to spend her whole afternoon hanging out in Brenna’s room reading hateful posts and threats.
“Yes, that will give you a good idea of the way both of them have fallen apart over the last day or so.”
Jane took a seat on the floor and read.
It was horrible.
By the end of the conversation, Shane had made it almost perfectly clear that he knew who Kyle was and where he was hiding. And his final comment, “Anonymity on the internet is a lie, and there’s no hiding from what we all know. Really man, no hiding. You are not hiding from me,” gave her chills.
Jane laid the tablet down. “That was terrifying.”
“Exactly.”
“If I hadn’t come today, what were you going to do about it?”
Brenna looked from her bedroom window to the door. “I hadn’t made a plan yet.”
Jane’s eye swept the room, the labeled cups, the stacks of papers, the dark, covered windows. When this was all over, what would Brenna have in her life? “You’re pretty good at this crime stuff. Ever thought about going into forensics?”
Brenna stared at her shelf full of fingerprint samples. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve got an application packet for a forensics program at a school in California, but I need to read it still.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and looked away.
Jane saw the writing on the wall and was sorry. Brenna showed real promise in crime, but some people were paralyzed by life, and Brenna looked like she might be one of those.
“Come with me to Ayla’s and then introduce me to Shane.” Jane opened the door.
Brenna looked from Jane to the door and shrugged.
Jane quickly texted Ayla before they left. Ayla was at work, but could take five if they came out there.
“I couldn’t do this without you.” Jane kept her face serious, a reflection of the look on Brenna’s.
“Okay.” Brenna grabbed a heavy looking backpack and followed Jane out to her car.
“Now, I know you and Ayla don’t get along, but I think it will be good to have you there with me. I don’t know how she will respond to hearing about her brother.”
“She’ll be fine. She’s not the type to have an outburst,” Brenna said matter-of-factly.
Brenna’s prediction was right. The three girls sat in the breakroom at the tattoo parlor.
“I can’t believe he was at the office the whole time.” Ayla stared into the distance with a dreamy and relieved look on her face. “I can’t believe he is still alive.” Her cheeks pinked a little bit.
“I don’t know when th
e feds are going to let him go home, or if he managed to get them the information they needed to shut down the harassment of Maggie at VoP, but I agree, it’s brilliant that he is alive,” Jane said, “Our next question is: what should we do about Shane?”
“I can’t do anything about anybody right now, but the least you could do is have a conversation.”
“That’s what I think as well.” Brenna sat on a folding chair, far enough from Ayla that she could avoid looking directly at her without being rude.
“Do either of you actually know him? Like in real life?”
“No. I think Kyle does though.”
“He knows Shane’s aunt at the insurance company, anyway.”
“Why not start there?” Brenna sat up, alert all of a sudden. “Start with Hester at the insurance company. Why was Kyle writing her blog posts? Why had he bought insurance from her, even though it wasn’t a great deal?” She stood up and walked to the door as though she was the one who decided where they went next. “And then Hester can give us an introduction to Shane.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Ayla said. “I’m working late tonight.”
“Okay then.” Jane stood as well. “Thanks for meeting with me. I’m glad that Kyle is alive and I hope you get to see him sooner rather than later.”
Ayla’s eyes sparking with tears all of a sudden. “Me, too.”
Brenna and Jane drove to the Cascadia Surety office in silence.
Brenna’s face was inscrutable, but Jane was sure hers reflected every single thought going through her head. Thoughts like: We’re going to harass a perfectly innocent woman at work. We are walking into a hornet’s nest and mare’s nest at the same time. Maybe this Hester was the criminal mastermind—a puppet master holding the strings to all of the programmers. Maybe she had a deep hatred for the Frances family in general and had set out to destroy their happiness. Maybe she was a drug dealer. Maybe she met Devon to sell him drugs and then killed him.
That was ridiculous. Jane laughed out loud.
“What?”
“Sorry. Just my mind is running, and the last idea I had—that maybe Hester was Devon’s drug dealer and had killed him was so crazy, it made me laugh.”
Spoiled Rotten Murder: A Plain Jane Mystery (The Plain Jane Mysteries Book 5) Page 16
