by E M Kaplan
Not today. Not this time.
Drew’s schedule had changed. Before, he’d been part of a quaint private practice—homemade johnnies with cute patterns on them, sewed by his mom and his aunts. Each exam room decorated with care. Kind of the mom-and-pop version of family medicine.
His practice, along with the other two physicians, had been swallowed up by a corporate, medical beast, part of a network of clinics and hospitals. All the billing and insurance was under their massive fiscal umbrella, which was good for Drew. But it also meant he spent more hours doing hospital rounds, sometimes staying overnight because it was easier than fighting traffic to get home to their apartment. She’d always thought it would be safer for him rather than drive when he was exhausted, but if it exposed him to the likes of grabby female coworkers, Josie was ready to do a 180-degree turn on her support of that arrangement.
Still stewing, she took Bert for a walk and let him do his business, tidied up the kitchen, and killed some more time by making a batch of pumpkin muffins, gently roasting the slivered almonds on the tops until they were crisp, lightly-toasted, and fragrant.
As the muffins cooled—appetite not in attendance yet despite her new resolution not to let the whims of her vindictive and fickle stomach control her—she scrolled through messages from Drew on her cell phone. Had there been anything to indicate that he might be interested in another woman?
Him, from Friday of last week: Don’t eat. Bringing home dumplings from Freddy Chong’s
Wednesday: Can we make muffuletta? i don’t know how - Call my mom if u need instructions
And Tuesday: Did u know u talk in ur sleep? U were talking bout cheeseburgers & onion rings. Woke up drooling
She scrolled back more, but the messages revealed nothing. Well, other than some terrible grammar and a major food fixation on both of their parts, but that wasn’t surprising given her food column and Drew’s…well, he was Italian. That counted for a lot.
So nothing. No clues. No hints that he might be getting ready to move on.
The whole idea that they might not be permanent as a couple was shocking to Josie. A major blow to the system. Because once she was in, she was in for life. Friends. Family. Friends who became family. For her, there was no turning back once she’d let someone into her inner circle.
Benjy. Susan. Drew. Josie’s aunt, uncle, and cousin in Arizona. Of course, Greta Williams. Though, thinking about that woman tended to make her appear.
And just like that, Josie’s phone rang.
Chapter 2
“I’m downstairs,” Greta said without any preamble.
Josie blinked, fighting an eye roll. The voice of her ersatz mentor, occasional boss, and—dare Josie think it, Svengali—came through the phone as clear as a bell. Greta sounded the same as always—steely, cold, inflexible—though Josie had recently seen another side of the woman. Not softer per se, but slightly more…vulnerable, thanks to the mishap in San Francisco. Thinking about that incident still made Josie’s shoulder tingle, though her scar had healed to a one-inch, raised pink line.
“What? I don’t even get a greeting?” Josie couldn’t resist poking the dragon. Because she had other things on her mind, she was more waspish than usual.
After a pause in which Greta must have been rolling her eyes, she started over. “Josie. Hello. I’m downstairs,” she said with deliberate enunciation, her Back Bay vowels long and open.
“Should I buzz you up?”
“No, I’m in the car with Henry.” That was Mr. Peepers, as Josie affectionately called Greta’s bespeckled driver.
No surprise there. Greta probably had no qualms about diverting traffic in her Queen of Boston livery-license-plated Bentley Flying Spur. She was self-obsessed in a way that only the truly rich or narcissistic and possibly psychotic could be. The jury was still out on which of those classifications fit Greta. Maybe all—which it wouldn’t hurt Josie to remember and proceed with caution.
As much as Josie wanted to further yank Greta’s chain by delaying answering the woman’s imperious summons, she knew that hanging around the apartment, waiting for Drew to text her would drive her out of her mind. Even more than she already was. A distraction might be just the thing.
So she patted Bert on the head, locked up the apartment, adjusted her doormat that said “GO AWAY,” which was slightly askew, and jogged down the stairs.
“Where are we headed?” Josie asked as she slipped onto the leather backseat alongside Greta. The older woman had dressed to the nines as usual, though maybe more casual than Josie had ever seen before. Greta’s ensemble wasn’t quite boyfriend jeans and a Gap tee, but still, loose-cut slacks with a knit sweater-and-top twinset in…mauve? Not her usual funereal dark blue or black. Chunky jewelry completed the ensemble—white gold pieces that looked like costume jewelry but which, no doubt, were not fake.
Greta held up one bony, porcelain finger to demand silence as she finished tapping the screen of her enormous smartphone—not the same device Josie had last seen her with, but a new one, if memory served. The woman had become addicted to mobile technology. Maybe she was trolling message boards and swiping left on Tinder now. Placing phony ads on Craigslist. Pranking people on Periscope. Josie almost chuckled, but she settled for clearing her throat as she waited semi-patiently, watching the Boston cityscape turn into leafy suburbs.
The minutes ticked by, and Greta stopped clicking her screen, dropping her phone into her Fendi shoulder bag. Josie would have never known about Fendi bags if it hadn’t been for her design-obsessed friend, Susan. Now Josie assessed the brown and gray bag marked with alternating up and down letter Fs, wondering how many Chinese takeout containers she’d be able to fit inside one. Maybe six large ones. And a foil tin of dumplings. Maybe the bag had extra pockets for chopsticks or sauce packets.
“Important business matters, I imagine.” Josie nodded toward Greta’s phone.
“Keith Obregon thinks he can confuse me into resigning our game of Words with Friends by starting five more games. A juvenile and ineffective tactic, I must say.” She smoothed the fabric of her slacks while her craggy mouth puckered more than usual. “If he thinks it will befuddle me, he has another thing coming.”
“Not going down without a fight, huh?” Josie knew Mr. Obregon, though she hadn’t spoken to him since her trip to Arizona. He was Greta’s roly-poly henchman with a heart of gold and weakness for homemade apple pie.
Greta pursed her mouth. “There will be no defeat whatsoever. The only one going down in flames will be Mr. Obregon. Words with Friends—hardly. More like Words with Frenemies.”
“I don’t know how I feel about you using that word, ‘frenemies.’ I’m concerned about the crowd you might be hanging out with. Although that seems to include me.” Josie frowned, then shrugged. “Well, I hope playing word games won’t jeopardize a half-century of friendship with him.”
“Longer than that,” Greta said under her breath. “But that’s neither here nor there. What I need to talk to you about is a small issue that’s arisen.”
Josie stared off into middle distance in the luxurious leather tomb of a car and waited for the other shoe to drop. The last couple of issues Greta’d had were neither little nor issues. More like crazy escapades with murder, blood, and dead bodies that had resulted in Josie getting beaten up, stabbed, and hospitalized.
“Why are we going out to the boonies to talk about an issue?” The passing scenery outside the window was thick with trees. Downright forest-y. Josie wondered if she should be more nervous. Maybe if she were smarter and less curious, she would be. Maybe if she had those traits, she’d get injured less often.
For example, right now. Was her life in danger? She didn’t know. Clueless. No survival instinct in that regard. She could be sitting across from a 300-pound, tattooed goon and wondering if he were one of the multitudes of people who would rise to a violent boil if betrayed into thinking the raisins in his cookies were chocolate chips.
So far, she hadn’t give
n Greta a reason to think she was a disposable employee. She’d made herself pretty useful, she thought, enough so that Greta had hired her—sort of. Their relationship was somewhat loosey-goosey. Working for Greta on an official basis was a recent change in Josie’s curriculum vitae, so Josie still wasn’t sure how to classify it.
Josie eyed the back of Mr. Peepers’s—a.k.a. Henry’s—head. She wasn’t full-time on Greta’s payroll, per se. More like an independent contractor. It was…complicated. The P.I. license burning a hole in Josie’s wallet was a lie. Well, the piece of paper was legit, as far as she knew. But her qualifications were phony on every level. She didn’t have any training or special degrees or skills that made her a private investigator—other than the penchant for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
As she was about to do now. Again.
“A friend of a friend of mine has a problem,” Greta said, skirting around the meat of the problem in an uncharacteristic manner. Usually the woman was a bulldozer, a Panzer tank in a bespoke pantsuit. Typically, Josie could hear Greta’s intent rumbling down the street before it bowled her over.
“And this friend is…?”
“Father Michael Sanborn from St. Ann’s Parish.” Greta paused to let that little piece of information sink in. “In Needham,” she added unnecessarily, as if Josie could have forgotten who the man was.
The bell in her head was ringing loud and clear. Father Michael had helped her out with a matter this past spring.
Not just any old thing. Oh, just an annulment of a quickie weekend marriage that almost destroyed her chances with Drew. True story.
Whatever mess she was in now with Drew, she had to clean up herself. Father Michael had given her a clean slate in the eyes of the Massachusetts government and whatever deity she might meet in the afterlife. She hadn’t figured that part out yet.
A debt was a debt, and Josie needed to pay this one off in full. She always paid her debts, whether they were real or in her mind.
She sighed. “What does Father Mike need?”
Chapter 3
“Father Michael has a brother named Joshua who is a tenured professor of Religious Studies at Bader University in Northam.”
Josie thought about it, well aware they were on the Mass Turnpike headed toward Northam, a far west suburb of Boston. She drummed her fingers on the quilted upholstery of the Bentley’s door. She had been on edge before climbing into Greta’s car, and luxury wasn’t making her feel any better. However, a problem outside the confines of her head might just be the distraction she needed.
“A brother brother? Or one of those secret-handshake type brothers or whatever it is that Catholic churches have? Knights of the Templar and Illuminati and hidden messages in paintings? So mysterious. There’s a certain amount of mystique about monks. Big coolness factor.” Josie was trying to get an honest-to-goodness, first-hand-witnessed eye-roll out of Greta, and one day, she might just succeed.
But that day was not today, it seemed.
“They are half-brothers. They share the same mother, who was widowed at an early age. Early twenties, I believe,” Greta said without bothering to acknowledge Josie’s smart-assery. “Which is neither here nor there. Joshua Sanborn, the professor, is the one on whom I wish you to focus.”
“All right. What’s the problem? No, wait, let me take a stab at it. If he’s in Religious Studies, I’m guessing he’s not selling corporate secrets or weaponry to drug runners. But…that field implies a certain relationship with ethics and scandal.” Josie cast a side-long glance at Greta. “Is he sleeping with students? Some terribly inappropriate interaction? I know. Running an off-campus escort service?”
Now Greta looked as if she might roll her eyes—no, she stopped. Josie was thwarted again in her attempt to crack Greta’s icy facade. Damn it.
“In fact, Professor Sanborn is being stalked. By a female student, it seems. It began with messages and items left outside and inside of his office. But it has escalated to threats of violence.”
Josie had been picturing a paunchy, older man with corduroy jacket with elbow patches on his sleeves like a stalwart, over-caffeinated peacock with a Scrooge McDuck flyaway fringe of hair around his shiny pate. But maybe she was mistaken. Maybe he was a young, good-looking guy who kept himself fit.
She frowned…was this dumb reasoning? Did a victim of stalking need to be attractive? Victims of rape certainly did not need to be attractive—but rape was an act of aggression, dominance, and power. Stalking was…obsession?
“Your silence is deafening. What in the world can you be thinking?”
“Ridiculous things. Just ignore me.”
Greta swept some imaginary lint off the crease of her pants. “Then you may as well hear the rest of the story before we move you into your dorm room.”
#
Josie blinked. “I’m sorry—my what?”
“I took the liberty of procuring you a single-occupancy dorm room so you don’t have to bond with a new roommate,” Greta continued as if she hadn’t just dropped a horrible bomb. “However, it is located within the freshman dormitory, Mandel Hall, so there will be unavoidable annoyances, such as sharing the community washroom that’s located on the hallway. And mingling with irresponsible young people who have not lived away from home before. You will have to deal with an unfortunate exposure to numerous germs in combination with grossly irresponsible behavior, I assume.”
It took a lot to stun Josie, but she was good and flummoxed now. She eyed the Bentley’s door, semi-seriously calculating if she could ditch out of it at this speed and survive. Probably not. She was an easy bruiser. “Isn’t kidnapping a felony in Massachusetts?”
“I believe so,” Greta said, unperturbed. She checked the shine of her immaculate manicure—short nails with clear polish. Her steely gray gaze met Josie’s. “Are you saying you are unwilling to participate in this investigation?”
“I have things—responsibilities—I need to take care of at home,” Josie protested. How was she going to explain her abrupt disappearance to Drew? Right in the middle of their…problem with Lisa First. Not only that, but Josie had a blog post to write. She was in the middle of writing a piece about comfort food. Bread and butter was literally her bread and butter.
And Bert? “I have a dog,” she said with a hint of desperation. Drew couldn’t be there to take care of Bert with his strange doctor’s schedule. Long hours and being on call meant he sometimes wasn’t home for hours upon hours.
“I love dogs,” Greta’s driver piped up. “I can visit your furry friend three times a day. We can go for walks in the park.” And drink piña coladas in the rain. Probably.
“You’re not helping here, Mr. Peepers,” Josie told him, her eyes narrowing as her glare fixed on the baby-bird fringe of hair encircling the back of his skull.
Greta didn’t seem to mind sharing her driver with Bert. “It’s settled then.”
“Wait. What’s settled? Nothing’s settled,” Josie said. “I didn’t agree to this. I can’t just drop everything for you and come running whenever something comes up.” But then she remembered Father Michael and the annulment.
That debt was massive, the weight of the obligation settling in her midsection, a heavy oppression like the dread a solitary person cooking a 20-pound turkey faces if no one else is around to help eat it. And for Pete’s sake, the professor’s life was being threatened. If she could, in some way, help to prevent the man from being harmed, that by itself was reason enough. Basic humanitarianism.
And really, she could call Drew as soon as he was off work to sort out their…issue. They could Face-Talk on their phones—or whatever that app was. Or she could call a cab and get home, as expensive as that might be. It’d be worth it.
Her mental protestations died to a dull roar, and she found she had little reason to refuse. She was really going to do this.
Crap.
#
Josie’s college days had been marred by a few weird incidents, enough so that go
ing back to college now—even as a pretend student—was causing strange twinges in her stomach, which also functioned as her emotional Geiger counter.
Though her school had been about the same size as Bader, with about 3,500 undergraduates in the student body, her college had been more urban. A mini-Harvard, both in size and academic reputation, her college had served as a stepping-stone for some of her classmates to transfer into some of the more ivy-covered schools during their second year.
She hadn’t wanted to move on, however. She’d found her niche of friends in Drew, Benjy, and Susan, and the four of them had become inseparable and as close as family. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her friends, she might not have gotten through. A few bad parties—semi-serious, self-inflicted alcohol poisoning, and a narrow escape from date rape—as well as a couple of creepy turns as campus security guards over the winter holiday break had had Josie wondering if school was the right place for her. If it hadn’t been for her friends, she may have tucked in her tail and ran back to Arizona.
In contrast to her alma mater, Bader had an almost rural feel. Stands of trees on gently sloping hills hid the sleepy neighborhoods of the town of Northam. Through the Bentley’s darkly tinted window, Josie watched a sprawling cemetery pass by as they approached the school.
Set back from the main road on a hill, the college’s buildings varied between modern glass and steel, and turn-of-the-century—the previous century—stone and brick. An eclectic mishmash of architecture with mature trees, the campus somehow came across as quaint and cute. But Josie knew better. College was a teeming hotbed of anxiety and hormones—and that was just the faculty.
Henry swept the car around the circular campus road that led past what looked like dorms, based on their height and number of evenly spaced windows.
