A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(70)
“I will. And thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. And I really mean don’t. Bye.”
Jane thought about Allison. She had been one of Jane’s friends at Cornell nearly twenty years ago. She was beautiful in the conventional ways—very blond, very white complexion, with blue eyes. Those qualities had made it easy to dismiss her at first. But she had also been quick-witted, with a ferocious critical intelligence that made her one of Jane’s favorites. She had been one of the inner circle at the party on the night when Jane realized that a male friend of theirs who was about to go to prison had another option.
Years later, Allison had become a lawyer in New York City, and she had called Jane. She said, “Remember the night when you helped John?”
“Yes,” Jane said.
“I have a client who’s in the same position. He’s innocent. He’s out on bail during the trial. Sometime tomorrow when the jury comes in, he’s going to jail, and I think this judge will give him a life sentence. Do you think you can still do what you did that time?”
“Are you sure that’s what he needs?” Jane asked.
“He needs to be left alone, and given a chance to live a life. That’s not what’s going to happen if he’s still here when the verdict comes in.”
“I’ll be there tonight,” Jane said.
“What time?” Allison said. “I’ll meet your plane.”
“Don’t,” said Jane. “Be somewhere far from the airport, and be sure there are lots of other people who will remember they were with you. Just give me his address and phone number.”
Allison’s client had been gone for fifteen years now. Jane heard from him by mail about once a year, but he’d never tried to get in touch with Allison again. There was a chance that even now some law enforcement agency might be waiting for him to make that mistake. Their friend John, the first one Jane had taken out, had been gone for nearly twenty.
Karen Alvarez was a partner in Allison’s firm. A year ago when Jane had needed to pretend to be a lawyer in order to sneak James Shelby out of the Clara Shortridge Foltz criminal courthouse in Los Angeles, Karen Alvarez had let her use her identity. Both women were tall and thin, with long black hair and olive skin, and Jane had impersonated her easily. Jane had succeeded in getting Shelby out and into a car, but Jane had not made it far from the courthouse. The memory of it made Jane’s thigh hurt again where the bullet had passed near the bone.
Jane took out the pages she had copied in the business center, and took another look. This time what caught her eye was the name of the man who owned Box Farm Personal Storage—Daniel Crane. She took out her phone, went to Google, and typed in the name with her thumb. She found one in Williamsville, New York, then used her corporation’s subscription service to run a quick background check on him. It took her several minutes of staring at a little wheel spinning at the top of her phone’s screen before things began to appear. She read the new information, turned off the phone, plugged it into the car’s electrical outlet to recharge, and drove.
The house was technically in Williamsville, but the distinctions were a bit vague. Williamsville was surrounded by Amherst, and that was where she and Carey lived, but their house was not near his. She found the proper number on the rural mailbox, drove on, and parked about a quarter mile farther down the road, then walked back.
When she returned to the address, she avoided the curving cobbled driveway and took a shortcut through the brush and trees that hid the house from the road. When she reached the edge of the stand of trees she saw that the garage beside the house was open. One of the cars inside was a black Corvette. The other was a Range Rover.
Jane moved closer and compared the Range Rover’s license plate with the picture on her cell phone. They were the same. Daniel Crane had to be the man she had seen at Chelsea Schnell’s house. The man this girl had been sleeping with was her dead boyfriend’s boss. Jane thought about the revelation without drawing any conclusion yet. People who weren’t supposed to fall in love often did.
Jane walked around outside of the house, staying in the trees, away from the margin of light that spilled outward from the big windows. The house was big and modern, and everything she could see through the glass looked expensive. It made sense that a man who was collecting hundreds of dollars a month for each empty ten-by-fifteen-foot space of a large complex would have plenty of money. He didn’t have to be much of a salesman—the real salesmen had been the ones who had sold the customers more stuff than they had room for.
Jane watched the house all night, and then returned the next day and the next. The neighborhood was an easy one for watching because the houses were so far apart. Down the road was a small, modern commercial district. She found that she could park at any of three medical and dental buildings where each doctor’s staff would assume she had an appointment with another doctor, in the lots of two nearby golf courses where she could approach Crane’s house without crossing a road, or at a mini-mall that contained a supermarket and a couple of restaurants.
She studied Crane’s routines. Every morning, Crane drove off in the Range Rover around eight. Every afternoon around four he returned, showered and changed, and went to take Chelsea Schnell somewhere for dinner. One night he returned alone, and the others he brought her home with him. Chelsea Schnell was always dressed up in the evening, but beginning the second night she brought with her a small overnight bag and changed into jeans in the morning for the trip home. Her clothes made Jane think the girl might be attracted to the man rather than his money. The clothes, both the dress-up outfits and the casual ones, were items Jane had seen hanging in Chelsea Schnell’s closet on her first visit. That meant Chelsea wasn’t taking money from Daniel Crane and buying things for herself.