A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(58)

Jane looked at him through the corner of her eye. “Do you happen to have any cars you’ve fixed up at the shop right now?”

“A couple.”

“I’m wondering if you have one I could rent for a while.”

“So you found Jimmy.”

“If you knew something like that, then sometime you might get asked about it under oath. You’d have to tell the truth. Fortunately I don’t know who you’re talking about. But what about the car?”

“Sure. I’ll rent you one.”

“I’ve got to be clear about this. I might not be able to return it in mint condition or right away. But I’ll pay for anything that happens to it.”

“Fine,” he said. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then returned his eyes to the road ahead.

They drove up to Snow’s garage and he parked Jane’s car in a row of other cars of various makes and models. He walked over to a Ford Mustang that was red with black stripes running along the hood, roof, and trunk. “I put a five-liter Racing Crate Mustang Boss 302 V8 in there. It’s supposed to deliver four hundred forty-four horsepower, but I brought everything else up a notch too, so it should be faster than that.”

“I was thinking of something quieter, a little less vivid.”

“I’ve got that too,” Ray said. He stepped up to a small navy blue car and patted it on the trunk. “This VW Passat is a good, reliable car, and one you can hardly see if you’re standing beside it. I haven’t done anything but a tune-up, because it runs great and doesn’t have dents or scratches. That’s not the kind of car that interests me much.”

“That’s perfect. Dull is good.”

“Hold on a second.” He went into the shop and opened a drawer behind the back counter, then came back with the keys. He handed them to her.

“What about my Volvo? Can I pay now for the work you did?”

“No. It’ll be easier to handle everything at once when you come back. Besides, I heard something when we were driving on the thruway a few minutes ago—a little faint whine. It could just be a fan belt, or it could be a transmission problem. I’ll have to keep it to check it out. That VW is your free loaner until your car is ready.”

“Gee, Ray. You’re such a lousy liar I’ll trust you forever.”

“Thanks. By the way, the car came from Pennsylvania. The old license plate is still in the trunk, and it’s current. Maybe you’ll find a use for it. Say hi for me to, uh, any old friends you happen to meet.” He took Jane’s suitcase out of the backseat of the Volvo and put it in the backseat of the Volkswagen.

“I’ll do that.” Jane got in and backed the VW out of its space. She could already hear the smoothness of the engine. She drove down the road a few miles to the thruway, and then east to Rochester and stopped at the Hyatt Regency hotel on East Main Street adjacent to the Convention Center. The hotel was large, fairly new, and had been renovated within the past couple of years. She checked in and gave the desk clerk a credit card in the name of Janet Eisen.

Jane had built Janet Eisen over a period of six years, beginning with a birth certificate that had been inserted into the records of the county clerk’s office in Chicago. She had gotten an Illinois driver’s license, a diploma from a long-defunct local parochial high school, St. Luc’s. In time Janet Eisen had submitted her resume to a few online employment agencies. The resume listed a BA degree from North Ohio Business and Technical School, an entity that had gone bankrupt in the 1990s, but had a ghostly afterlife due to the efforts of a man who sold artfully concocted academic transcripts. Janet Eisen had also applied for everything she could get without much risk or effort—library cards, gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, frequent flyer -programs—so within a year or two she had been firmly established in an online existence. Jane had even inserted a few articles about her in online publications so anyone checking her name on Google would find her. Jane had hired her to work in McShaller, Inc., the consulting business Jane had incorporated fifteen years ago. Jane used the business to run credit checks and buy information, but it also allowed the fictitious Janet Eisen to give imaginary people jobs, employment histories, and glowing recommendations.

Jane didn’t have a clear idea of who might be searching for Jimmy—or for her—or what resources they might use. Today she was making sure that if someone searched, she would be in a spot that was far down the list of likely hiding places. This hotel was big and full of business people just like Janet Eisen who were in Rochester for conferences, business meetings, and sales visits to local companies. As soon as Jane had checked in at the hotel she walked down Main to the convention center and registered for the convention that was starting that day. It was a convention for the medical information storage and transcription industry, and would last a week. She paid a two-hundred-dollar fee, accepted a folder full of information about meetings and presentations, and a map of booths in the Convention Center. While she waited, her name badge was printed and inserted in a plastic case that hung from a lanyard. She put it around her neck so she looked like everyone else, then walked back to the hotel with a few of the women from the convention.

She went to the hotel business center and signed on to a computer using the account of McShaller Systems, her consulting corporation. She read the Buffalo News, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Livingston County News. She scanned every article about Jimmy Sanders or Nick Bauermeister. They all had the same things to say about the case: Bauermeister had died of a single rifle shot fired through the front window of the house he shared with his girlfriend, Chelsea Schnell, age twenty-three. Police had interviewed neighbors, friends, employers, co-workers, and then begun seeking Jimmy Sanders for an interview because he’d had a fight with Bauermeister and been charged with assault. They had left messages, but had not connected with him yet when a man came forward claiming to have sold a .30-06 rifle and a box of ammunition to Jimmy at a garage sale a couple of weeks before the murder.