The Plain Jane Mystery Box Set 2

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “But it’s not 1950,” Jake said “A car full of teenagers gone for three or four weeks? Everyone assumes they’re up to no good anyway.”

  “There’s normal no good,” Una said. “And then there’s cults.”

  “Why were Ryder and your cousins fighting?” Jane redirected the conversation. It didn’t really matter right now what Una and Eric were willing to share with the town on the whole. Just what they were willing to share with her.

  “Because Ryder was trying to stop them.” Una brushed her hand across her face. “Levi and Amos told Mom they had left the church and everything. She was so, so happy. She bent over backwards to help them.”

  “And then Ryder came?”

  “And she was even happier.” Una took a deep breath. “She was thrilled. But he was only here a couple of days, and it made things really tense. Mia told me about the fight she heard. What I could make of it was that Ryder did not support their plans.”

  “So when he left with them, you felt…”

  “Relief, because he would have the best interests of the girls at heart.”

  “Did you talk to your mom about this?”

  Una shook her head. “She doesn’t want to talk about things like this.”

  “I talked to Carl. I talked to Carl for a long time.” Eric stood in front of the stack of papers. He looked down at them and moved. “He’s scared for his girls.”

  “So what’s he doing about it?”

  Eric kicked the stack of papers. “He’s gone a little crazy.”

  Una laughed, a hollow sound. “Those are his maps and searches. He hired a private eye to find them, and that’s all we got for it.”

  “What’s in those papers?”

  “Nothing. The conclusion was inconclusive. They aren’t back at the Family Group—that’s its official name, if you were wondering. And no one has used a debit card or credit card or anything traceable like that.”

  “What about the text Skye sent your mom?”

  “Mia says Skye couldn’t have sent it. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know. I couldn’t say.”

  “Hannah thinks she saw Rose in the woods.”

  “I know. That’s been mapped too, but nothing came of it.”

  “We want to know what happened to Ryder,” Jane said. “That night that everybody left, someone killed him—possibly shot him in our shed. Who was it? Why was it? You’re sure it couldn’t have been Levi or Amos?”

  She looked at the stack of papers. “No. But everybody knows murder is a sin. If they were taking the girls off to get them closer to God, they wouldn’t have murdered somebody.”

  “What if they wanted to start their own family group?” Jane asked. “What if a group of lost boys were going up and down the coast, collecting wives for each other? Where could we find them all?”

  “According to that stack of papers, we can’t.” Una stood up again and shivered. “We’ve looked. The private eye has looked. My dad has looked. But we can’t find them anywhere.”

  “I’ve driven the back roads up and down the coast, and I haven’t seen a thing,” Eric said. “Even if she doesn’t want to be with me anymore, she can’t be with them.”

  “We need to get everyone in one place.” Jane moved to Jake and took his hand. “My boss, all of the parents, your other friends who knew Levi and Amos. And we need to do it tonight, because Jake and I don’t have much time left. Can you get everyone to our place in an hour?”

  “We can try,” Eric said. “We have to try.”

  Chapter 13

  Rose’s parents, Emma’s parents, Carl Smith, Rocky and Flora, Una and Eric, Mason, and Taylor were all at the beach house within the hour.

  “Thank you all for coming.” Jane had already offered tea and water, but there were no takers. “We want to gather all of the information we all have together. First off, Taylor, can you report on what you have determined?”

  “The dead guy is, as best as I could tell, Ryder last name unknown, who came into town to visit about three weeks ago. He had a distinctive pattern of crooked teeth, and judging by that, I am as sure as I can be that it was him.”

  Carl whistled. “Poor Daisy. This is going to kill her.”

  “Eric, could you tell all of us what Cherry said her reason was for leaving?”

  He cleared his throat. “She said she wanted to know God better.”

  Carl flinched but didn’t speak.

  “And everyone else is aware of Daisy’s background, is that correct?”

  Everyone nodded except Rose’s mom. “I’m sorry, can you clue me in?” She was a small, birdlike woman, and Jane suspected they had kept it from her for that reason. She might wilt under the idea.

  “My wife escaped a horribly abusive cult when she was a young mother. She had had a forced marriage to a much older man…my oldest, Una, was her daughter from that first marriage. We’ve done everything we can to protect our girls from those people.”

  “And yet…” Rose’s mom’s face was firm. She was tougher than she looked.

  “When Daisy’s nephews showed up and said they needed help because they weren’t a part of that group anymore either, we did what we could.”

  “So you set the girls up for this.” Rose’s mom inched her way forward on her seat.

  “I did nothing. Two, three young men with no education, no money, and no one to turn to showed up on my doorstep. We took them in and tried to give them a hand up.”

  “And give them our innocent girls.”

  “That is not how this went down.” Carl turned his back and composed himself.

  “Whatever your intention,” Emma’s dad, a large man with a swarthy complexion and a thick mustache, said, “that was what happened. These boys ran off with our daughters, and I think we all know why.”

  “We’re not here to lay the blame on anyone.” Rocky stood up, tall frame filling the small room. “We’re here to combine our knowledge. This young couple came here several days ago to celebrate their honeymoon and were greeted with a dead body. Fortunately for you, Jane is a fine young detective and has decided to find out who this young man was and who killed him. As it turns out, she will probably find all of your missing children as well. Now everyone take turns nicely and tell us what you know.”

  He loomed over the crowd, his arms crossed.

  “Have any of the girls contacted home?” Flora asked. For the first time since Jane had known them, Flora seemed to be taking the role of good cop, her wire-frame glasses and cat sweater marking her out as a sweet grandma instead of the cold, clinical inspector she had inside of her.

  “Dad,” Una said, “Mom claims Skye texted. What do you say?”

  “I saw the text. I didn’t believe it. It didn’t look like it was from her. No texting shorthand. No emoticons. I called the police immediately after I saw it.”

  “But Daisy deleted it?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, before the cops could see it.”

  “She wanted it to be real.” Una sighed. “Poor Mom.”

  “Anyone else get contact?”

  “I did.” Emma’s mom, a tall strong woman who looked like she went well with her husband spoke. “She just sent a smiley the morning she left. Nothing since then.”

  “Have you all contacted the police?”

  “Absolutely.” Emma’s mom again. “They issued a report, they have an alert out for the car. They even seemed to take us seriously, but our kids aren’t the only ones missing. There are girls up and down the coast that all disappeared this summer, I think six or seven total.”

  “If it was just your child”—Jane leaned forward, resting on her elbows, and looked from parent to parent—“where do you think they would have gone?”

  “Mexico,” Emma’s Mom said. “She’s been talking about going to Cabo for the last two years. If she got a vote, they would have found their way to I-5 and driven south until they couldn’t go any farther.”

  “Where else?”

  “Our girls would have wanted to go to the
mountains,” Carl said. “They love camping. Cherry always said she wanted to live in the hills someday, not in town.”

  “So nearby? These mountains?” Jane asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “But the police have checked,” Emma’s mom said. “They’ve checked everywhere.”

  “Nobody has gone into the hills and hunted for them.” Mason sat across the room from Eric and Una, his black eye turning green. “If they ran into the hills to live some weird cult life, they’ve dug themselves in deep. Deeper than anyone would go check.”

  “I looked for them,” Taylor said softly. “I went to some of our favorite campsites, on BLM land, but they weren’t there.”

  “I checked, too,” Eric said. “Some off-the-map places I know, but nothing.”

  “Hannah thinks she saw Rose in the woods one day.”

  Una unfolded a piece of paper. “Right here. This is the map we got from our other investigator. It marks the spot Hannah thinks she saw Rose.”

  The paper was passed around.

  “Is this the sum total of all of our knowledge?” Jane’s heart fell. She had just known if everyone got together, something would spark. They’d remember something, some random word would trigger an idea, a memory.

  “What about us, Jane?” Jake asked. “We know more than we’ve said.”

  “What?” She turned fast. “We’re not withholding anything.”

  “Franny said she knew something, but we haven’t asked her.”

  “That’s right! Give me just a second and I’ll respond to the text.” She sent a quick message, essentially “What do you know?”

  Her phone rang fast in response.

  “This is Jane.”

  “This is Franny, again, I cannot apologize enough, first for ruining your wedding day, then for the sour beer, and all of the messages and things, but when I saw the news that a body had been found and where it was, and oh, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s not a problem.” She gave a slight shoulder shrug to the crowd as they watched her take the call.

  “Did you make it to dinner at Kaiyo Sushi? No, probably not. That’s okay. Kenji wouldn’t have known to say anything to you guys. He’s such an old friend of mine, and he told me just the other day about these folks that came in, looked kind of out of place, confused by the menu, but they paid with cash. Lots of cash. Oh, it was a few weeks ago…a month, maybe? But the thing was, there were a bunch of girls in the car. He saw them because he was working the door. And two boys came in. One ordered and the other went to the washroom. It just felt fishy.”

  “So you think that the missing people came to this restaurant?”

  “What missing people? Are there missing people and a dead body?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. What were you saying?” She scratched her head, stumped. How had Franny known to tell her about a car full of girls if she didn’t know about the missing girls?

  “See, all of that cash seemed odd coming from those young men, so he remembered them well. And later, when he closed up the restaurant that night, there was a gun in the trash can. A cute little one. He thought maybe some girl had dropped it in the trash on accident, like from one of those carry conceal purses. He put it in his lost and found.”

  “He found a gun in the bathroom and didn’t call the police?”

  “He didn’t want any trouble.”

  “He kept a gun because he didn’t want trouble?” Jane couldn’t fathom this and was frankly lost.

  Carl took an aggressive step forward, toward Jane.

  “Your friend Kenji thought the guys with the cash dropped it there or a girl? Which one was it?”

  “He just thought someone did it on accident at first, but then when he heard about the body, he thought hard about the day and remembered all that cash. He thought they must be selling drugs. A drug-related murder.”

  “And so he called the police?”

  “Yes, of course, but his fingerprints were all over the gun at that point and he’s a little scared. But he works so much and the security cameras provide him with an alibi, so I don’t think he needs to worry, but I thought if I could share that with you about the boys and the little gun in the trash can maybe it could make up for my trouble during the wedding.” She choked up.

  “There was no trouble,” Jane soothed. “We’re just glad you are all right.”

  “Oh, you are too sweet, really too sweet.”

  “I might call you again later, would that be okay?” Jane had a feeling Franny wouldn’t say no.

  “Oh, darling, I don’t want to bother you on your special vacation.”

  “Of course not.” Jane blushed and tried not to laugh at the irony. “But if I had more questions, I could call, right?”

  “Anytime, sweetheart, any time. And you sure were such a pretty bride.”

  “Thank you, Franny. You have a good night.”

  She hung up.

  “First, Jane,” Flora said, “you didn’t find out what kind of gun it was or what it looked like.”

  “Er—”

  “Flora…” Rocky interrupted.

  “This is a training case,” Flora said.

  “But this isn’t a good time.”

  Flora looked around the room at the angry crowd. “Yes, of course. We’ll discuss the call later.”

  “So the gist was they may have found the murder weapon and everyone may have had sushi for dinner.”

  “Where at? I want to see this guy, hear his description of them,” Carl said.

  “What do you think?” Jane turned the question to Flora.

  “I think it’s a good idea. We need to send someone with an investigator’s license and someone who can ID the boys down to the restaurant.”

  Jane jotted the name down on a scratch paper and handed it to Flora. “You and Una, maybe?”

  The other mamas turned to face Flora in unison. “Yes, and you as well. Taylor, would you like to join us?”

  She shook her head no.

  “We’ll report back as soon as we know more.” Flora led the two mothers and Una out of the house and to the car.

  “What do the rest of us do now?” Eric asked.

  “Taylor, where do you think they went? To the woods or out of the country?” Jane asked.

  “I think they went to the woods, but it’s just a gut thing. There’s a lot of nothing out there, and who knows who all lives in it.”

  Jane closed her eyes and shot a prayer up to God. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next.

  “It’s not too dark yet.” Carl opened the door. “We could search out a few more places, maybe start from the map and just go in.”

  “Hannah didn’t find them, and she spent a couple nights in the woods,” Taylor said.

  “Hannah doesn’t know the woods as well as we do.” He nodded at Emma’s dad.

  Emma’s dad stood. “I’m in.”

  “Me too.” Mason stood.

  It was beginning to feel like a kind of crusade. Jane didn’t want to crush their moment, but she didn’t want them all lost in the woods or mauled by bears or whatever.

  “Then you go,” Rocky said. “And take great notes. It would be best if you men find them. If you don’t, we start again tomorrow, working outward from where you’ve already been. Real systematic, real careful. You understand?”

  “Sure do.”

  “And phones don’t work out there,” Rocky continued. “So you men had better go get your walkies. I know you have them.”

  Carl grunted. Clearly he didn’t want to go home first.

  “Hold on.” Jake opened the hall closet. “We have some, and the batteries are all charged.” He tossed four walkies to the men. “I’ll keep one with me in case you run into any trouble.”

  “Thanks.” Carl clipped the walkie to his belt and the four men left.

  “They aren’t going to find them tonight, are they?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t expect so, but we weren’t going to be able to keep them away.”

 
“This still doesn’t explain who poisoned Coco.” Taylor leaned against the wall. “Wasn’t Mason, wasn’t me.” She shrugged.

  “Let’s, you and I, go see that guitar fellow.” Jane shoved her phone in her pocket. “I feel like we haven’t had the conversation with him that we need to yet.”

  Taylor glanced at her phone. “It’s eight thirty…I bet I can find him. Miller is a junior. They live by the grade school. He’s an ASB kid, so I know he’s home doing school stuff right now.”

  “In August?”

  “Yeah, those kids go all year long, I swear. The point is we’ll find him at home right now and we can ask him whatever we want.”

  Taylor led them to Miller’s house. He was home. He was out back playing his guitar in front of a small fire, with Coco draped over his shoulder.

  “Hey, Mill. What’s up?” Taylor sat on a stump across the fire pit from Miller.

  “Nothing.” He set the guitar down.

  “How are you feeling?” Jane asked Coco. “It’s good to see you up and around.”

  “I’m okay.” She leaned back, away from Miller.

  “I wanted to ask some questions about the other night. Do you mind?” Jane directed the question to Coco again. She wanted to talk about Coco, not to her, but she had to work with what she had.

  “I’m swearing off of all of it. The whole mess.” She waved her hands in front of her like she was waving away her past mistakes.

  “That’s probably smart.” Jane chuckled. “But I just wanted to know…what all did you drink that night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do, Co,” Taylor said. “You hardly drank anything.”

  “I had that beer you brought.” Coco emphasized that it was Jane’s fault.

  “I am so sorry about that one.” Jane meant it. Miller was a high school junior. She had no idea how old Coco was. Her face flushed. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might have been contributing to underage drinking. “What had you had before that?”

  “One beer right after work, with Taylor, to take the edge off, right, Tay?”

  “Yup.”