Dirty Little Murder (19 page)

Caramel sniffed loudly. “Danae is just a cleaner. She cleans offices all over town. Maybe she used to clean that one, too.”

“Mrs. Swanson, Jane said she doesn’t want to press charges.”

Caramel turned to Jane. Her face was dead and emotionless.

“I think you need to let her go. Okay? You should take a few days to relax, and then find a new maid.” Officer Taylor continued to use her soothing voice, almost like she was clearing up a fight between two of her own children.

Jane flipped her gaze back and forth between Caramel and the officer, adrenaline rushing through her whole body. She didn’t want the officer to make her quit. She wasn’t ready to walk away from this yet. “I don’t mind coming back. I mean, I don’t think she’d do this again. She knows I didn’t do anything. I could give it a few days, though, and just come back quietly, like on Wednesday?”

“That’s not a good idea,” McConnell said.

“I don’t mind.” Jane’s heart was going a mile a minute. Not only didn’t she mind, she was dying to get back into the house alone. She wanted to find out what was really in the boxes, and see if she could wrangle some more information about Danae Monroe out of Caramel.

“Why don’t you go home now, Jane, and think it over?” the motherly officer said. “Go get your face stitched up and then decide if you really want to come back.”

Caramel stood up. “I will decide if I want her to come back.” Her words fell flat. If she had wanted to pull off an in-charge, imperious attitude, it had failed.

Jane walked herself to the front door without another word. Officer McConnell went with her. “Don’t come back here. That woman is crazy.”

“She’s hurting.” Jane put her hand on the doorknob. “And alone. I don’t think she’ll do it again.”

The officer looked Jane up and down. He shook his head. “If you knew how many dead people said that same thing.”

Jane looked at her sneakers. That was true. She sounded exactly like the kind of people that ended up dead. “I’ll be careful.”

Officer McConnell walked her to her car in silence. When she opened the door he spoke again. “I wouldn’t let me wife go back to that house, even if we were about to be evicted. No amount of money is worth your life.” He looked down at his hand.

Jane followed his glance and saw the dull gold band on his finger. “I won’t come back alone.”

The officer returned to his car, shaking his head as he walked.

Jane was coming back; that was 100% for sure. But she’d bring someone… Kaitlyn or Holly maybe, next time.

For a full day,
Jane toyed with the pieces of the very ugly puzzle before her. An ex-wife who was still hurting from the divorce, and possibly the death, though she wouldn’t admit it.

A daughter who saw nothing wrong with her father marrying her sorority sister.

A son who might have been in love with the sorority sister.

A lover who left her phone behind.

A maid no one seemed to like.

A brother-in-law with a history of violence.

Jane thought it fairly obvious that the lover was the maid. As a maid, she was beneath him socially, like
Pride and Prejudice
code names on the phone would indicate. And if she had been both his maid at home and at work while he was the mayor, she was probably the reason Alexandra had left
Douglas
years ago.

But according to Jane’s own work schedule, the maid was still away on her vacation, and quite possibly did not yet know that her long-time lover was dead.

Caramel’s brother had done something ugly to Amy. From the hints Amy had dropped, Jane guessed date rape.

The one day she had met
Douglas
, he had made a comment… what was it? Something about the new ring not being too expensive… but he had said it in a disgusted voice.
Douglas
had not liked Joe, and for good reason. But had Joe hated
Douglas
?

But what about the evidence of the towels and the hamper? They pointed to someone being in the tub with
Douglas
, and still being in the house while Jane was there. Would Joe have been there that morning?

Would Joe have had a dip in the spa with his brother-in-law?

What about Amy? She seemed comfortable at her dad’s house. Had she hopped in the tub with her dad for some fatherly chit-chat and then killed him? Why would she have? For selling the horses?

The people with motive didn’t seem to have access to
Douglas
. The people with access didn’t seem to want him dead.

Jane considered Alexandra again.

Had she come by to see her ex-husband? Perhaps they had rekindled their youthful love at some point? Maybe Alexandra had even pursued
Douglas
with the idea of killing him already in mind?

Jane drummed her fingers on her desk.

The most tantalizing clues were the towels and the phone. Had the lover snuck home early from her vacation? Had she killed
Douglas
and then made off with the clues that she had been there?

Jane had established, to her own liking, that Caramel couldn’t have had a dip in the tub, then hidden in the closet, gotten rid of the evidence, and come back up the driveway dry and dressed. There just wasn’t enough time between discovering the body and seeing Caramel for her to be the killer. But what about an ex-wife set on vengeance?

Alexandra could have done it. She was petite, so hiding in the closet and ducking around bushes and things as she ran away would have been easy.

Jane just needed proof. But first, she had to go clean another house. Groceries wouldn’t buy themselves.

Her phone rang a few times while she drove home from cleaning her client’s house, so she pulled over to see what was going on. The first message was a garbled mess from Gemma, but the gist was that Stephanie had found something weird.

While playing the second message her phone rang again.

“Gemma?”

“Jane—listen! You know how Caramel’s ring has been missing?”

“Yes?” Jane squeezed the steering wheel.

 
“We think we found the matching bracelet.”

“What do you mean?”

“It gets weird. Hold on to your hat. Stephanie was cleaning up a bit, and she found this bracelet… She was using your cleaning stuff—the bucket of stuff that’s at the apartment.”

Her work supplies. Wonderful. “What about the bracelet?”

“It’s really fancy, thick gold with lots of diamonds. It’s not mine, and it’s not Stephanie’s and I’m pretty sure it’s not yours.” Gemma poured the words out breathlessly.

“But why would Caramel’s stuff be in my supplies? I have my cleaning caddy that I take from house to house with me. That one’s just the refills.” Jane had a sick feeling in her stomach She was sure the bracelet was Caramel’s, as Gemma suggested, but the only way it could have made it into her things was too horrible to consider.

“I don’t want you to freak out, but here’s the rest of the story.” Gemma paused for a breath. “Stephanie stripped the bed to do the laundry, and she found a letter in your pillow. I said it had to be from Isaac, but she said it couldn’t be because it was signed ‘D,’ and I said Isaac’s last name was Daniels, but she swears it could only be from
Douglas
, so… Now, don’t freak out, but Stephanie’s a little scared because you have this fancy bracelet, and she thinks you have a love letter from the dead guy.”

“That’s not my letter.” Jane’s jaw was tight. She was being set up.

“But it has to be; it was in your pillow.”

“I saw it after Steph moved in and I thought it was hers. She was sleeping with it in the pillow, not me.”

“I think that’s why she was freaking, because she was sleeping on someone else’s love letter. Not because you were doing anything wrong.”

“It’s not my letter.”

“Okay, it’s not. But the bracelet in your stuff… what do we do about that?”

Jane’s head was pounding. She didn’t want to think that Gemma’s friend had set her up, but if not, then someone else had broken into their place and left behind stuff to frame her. An enemy she didn’t know was even more horrifying than one sleeping in her bed. Jane took a deep breath before she spoke. “Gemma… how well do you know Stephanie?”

“What do you mean?” Gemma’s voice was still high and excited.

“I mean, could she be a klepto? Could she have grabbed that bracelet somewhere and now just be blaming our unusual circumstances for it?” Jane crossed her fingers, hoping this simple answer would fix everything.

“Absolutely not, Jane. Don’t be ridiculous.”

If Stephanie wasn’t an innocent kleptomaniac, then something much worse had just happened. Jane steeled herself for a confrontation. “Where are you? Can you meet me at the police station on Burnside?”

“We’re just having lunch—we’re not far from there.”

“Then get here fast—both of you—and I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

Gemma and Stephanie were so fast that they pulled in right behind Jane.

They went inside together, Jane leading the way to the front desk. “Excuse me?” Jane’s voice cracked like a child’s. She gritted her teeth and tried to steady her voice. “We had a weird incident at our apartment that we think might be related to the death of Douglas Swanson.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes at the girls. “Really? Can you elaborate?”

Stephanie pushed her way forward. “This!” She shoved the bracelet, wrapped in a handkerchief, through the slot in the bullet proof glass.

The receptionist lifted a corner of the handkerchief with her pencil point. “What is it?”

“I found that at our apartment, but it doesn’t belong to any of us.” Stephanie dropped her voice. “Jane is the Swanson’s maid.”

The receptionist pursed her lips. “Hmm. Why don’t you all take a seat. I’ll get right back with you.”

They shuffled back to the waiting area. Jane kept her eye trained on the receptionist who made three phone calls in a row.

“What do you think they are going to do with us?” Stephanie sat on the edge of her seat, her legs shaking.

“Hopefully, they will get hold of Detective Bryce and interview us.” Jane picked at a scratch on her phone case, but kept an eye on Stephanie.

“I think you need to let Jane do the talking, Steph.” Gemma spoke low in the reassuring tone Jane had heard her use with her birth doula clients when they called in a panic.

“But Jane wasn’t the one who found the stuff!” The color drained from Stephanie’s face.

“Sit back and take a deep breath. Let me get you a glass of water. You are about to have a panic attack.”

“We don’t need that.” Jane smiled at Stephanie and patted her leg. “I appreciate your help. I am sure we will all get a chance to say what we know.”

Gemma was getting water when the receptionist called Jane and the girls back to the offices.

“Detective Bryce is in right now, and would very much like to hear what you have to say.”

The young detective with the cute dimples was sitting at his desk, looking over a file folder when the receptionist opened the doors. He stood up and held out his hand to Jane. “Good to see you, Jane. What’s up?”

Jane blushed, all attempts at feeling mature and in-control fleeing. Then she steeled herself for the job at hand. She wanted to lay the whole story in front of him before Stephanie had a chance to talk about the letter or jewelry.

“Why don’t you all sit down and just start at the beginning.” He indicated the chairs in front of his desk where the bracelet was lying. “So, Jane, why do you think this was related to the death of your boss?” The question, and the smile, were friendly, but there was a hard look in the detective’s eye that made Jane shiver.

“Okay, so I’ve still been cleaning the house, and I’ve had my eye out for the missing towels and hamper.”

Detective Bryce lifted an eyebrow. He smiled with just one side of his mouth, dimpling on that one side.

“I didn’t find them.”

“No? That’s too bad.”

“But I did find a funny phone in the guest bedroom.”

“Go on.”

“So, thinking I might have stumbled on something important, I turned it on and looked through it.”

“Of course you did.” Detective Bryce chuckled.

“It only had one phone number stored on it. It had pictures of
Douglas
in bed, and it had text messaged to ‘Darcy’ talking about meeting at ‘Pemberly.’”

“Continue.” Detective Bryce’s face was mildly amused.

“That’s all. It seemed like code to me. I assume it was his lover’s phone.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I left it on the dresser.”

“To see if it would cause a stir?” His mildly amused smile turned into a mildly irritated frown.

“Well, yes. I guess so.”

“Tell me about this.” He lifted the bracelet with the end of his pencil.

“I found that! I found it in Jane’s cleaning stuff!” Stephanie’s blanched face was animated, her eyes bulging and jaw shaking. She sort of bounced on the edge of her seat like she was very anxious. “And I found this, too, in her bed.” She pulled the crumpled paper out of her pocket and tossed it on the desk.

Detective Bryce looked at Jane with a lifted eyebrow.

“That’s why we are here. It looks like someone has been planting evidence on me.” Jane glanced at the gray wall covered in certificates and the metal filing cases that filled the room. Her body went cold, and her head felt light. “Frankly, I’m scared.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Stephanie, goggle eyed, shaking her head no.

Detective Bryce knit his eyebrows together. He looked directly at Stephanie. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Stephanie stopped, her mouth opened in a little o. “Nothing. Just. I mean, the letter, in her pillow. Signed “D” like Darcy or Douglas. I mean…” She glanced at Gemma, who stared at her, red faced.

“I’m glad you brought this here.” He pulled the letter toward himself with a pencil. “I can have it dusted for fingerprints.

Jane shook her head. “I’ve read that letter. I found it in the pillow, so my fingerprints are on it.”

“Then we will expect to see yours and… What’s your name?”

“Stephanie Frances.”

“We’ll expect to see prints from both Stephanie and Jane. But we’ll see what else we can find. On the bracelet as well. If I am correct, this bracelet was reported stolen not long ago.”

Stephanie slumped back in her chair.

“Is there anything else?” He looked at each girl, one by one.

Gemma shook her head, and Stephanie chewed her bottom lip.