by E M Kaplan
“I used to babysit Officer Sumbitch here,” DJ told Josie. “I was in high school and this punk was in diapers. I used to wipe his butt and feed him in a high chair while his mama was at work. Now he thinks he’s better than all of us. Thinks he can get to be a super cop by arresting innocent men for murder.”
“I didn’t arrest Billy. I took him in for questioning,” the deputy said. “We all know the sheriff wanted him brought in. I didn’t have anything to do with that decision, so you can stop taking it out on me already. I was just doing my job.”
DJ poked a broad finger at the deputy’s narrow chest. “Well, sometimes the damn job is wrong.”
#
Josie paid her lunch tab, completely forgetting until after the fact that she had a business credit card for her expenses. Drew was trying to help her get organized, but after a lifetime of paying cash—what little she had, when she had it—she was pretty terrible at acting like a grownup with paperwork, taxes, and receipts. She also had one of those black credit cards in the very back of her wallet courtesy of Greta Williams. Josie had only recently learned that the card didn’t have a credit limit. Like, she thought maybe she could buy a jet plane with it, if the circumstances called for a James Bond type of getaway.
So far, she hadn’t used it for anything that exciting. Apparently, Greta thought she might be incurring more medical expenses based on her past behavior.
Pah. That’s not happening again.
DJ rang her ticket up, one eye on the door, probably watching for the deputy still. “You enjoy your lunch? And the show, too?”
She laughed. “Never a dull moment around here, I’m guessing.”
He shook his head, more rueful than amused. “Billy’s not always like that. He does have a notoriously short fuse, but for the past decade he’s had it under control for the most part. It’s just when this idiotic business periodically comes up, he loses his mind.”
She got the feeling DJ was just shooting the breeze with her, not trying to sway her blog post in any way. Smiley’s had enough local and tourist business to keep afloat for the next thousand years, if she had to make a rough estimate. If the building was still standing, it would be them and the cockroaches surviving the next comet impact. A few snarky words on a little-known blog weren’t going to make or break them.
“But you don’t believe any of it?”
How else could DJ work for a man so closely? Be his right-hand man for so many years? But he surprised her.
“That, I don’t know. All I know is the guy I see every day when I come to work. Never shorted me a paycheck. In fact, gave me raises when I didn’t ask for them. Took care of my advance when my car broke down. Never treated me or any of his employees with anything but fairness.”
“So this isn’t the work of a disgruntled employee, someone that he fired?”
“Didn’t say that either. If you’re a pain in the ass and deserve to be fired, Billy will hunt and destroy you faster than a duck on a tick. Same goes if you steal from him or lie to him. People get what they deserve, but I’ve never seen a man more fair or had a better boss than him. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it, but the minute you turn on him, you’re out. Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you, if you know what I’m saying.”
Josie laughed and thanked him, though she didn’t miss the undercurrent of seriousness in everything he said. He wasn’t joking around when it came to Billy Blake and the loyalty he gave to and demanded from others, cute country aphorisms or not.
Chapter 11
On the faded blacktop outside Smiley’s, Josie found Deputy Louie leaning against the hood of her rented car, legs crossed, arms folded against his narrow chest. Her heart thumped in her chest for a minute—her gut-reaction to anyone in a badge, a leftover from her misspent youth trying to avoid the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center. She’d had a lot of close calls in those days thanks to a massive chip on her shoulder and the misfortune of being the new kid at her high school mid-year.
Did the Sheriff’s Office issue parking tickets? I thought that was a Police Department thing? Maybe there’s only the Sheriff in tiny Leandro. Why on earth would I be getting a ticket? This frickin’ lot doesn’t even have any painted lines.
“Can I help you?” She lobbed this generic conversation opener at the deputy, hoping she didn’t sound as defensive as she felt. She tried to school the frown off her face but knew she was only partly successful. She probably had on what her friends called her “dragon lady scowl,” which kind of sounded racist because of her being part-Asian, but she wore it with pride.
“Hi there,” he said, all friendly-like. The smile on his face seemed sincere enough, though not flattering on his lean face. He looked like a wild dog hoping for scraps, upper lip lifted in submission. Josie’s dog, Bert, wasn’t a submission-smiler, but his Golden Retriever buddy down the street from her apartment was.
She didn’t say anything, just raised her eyebrows.
“I see you’re friendly with ol’ DJ in there.”
She didn’t bother to enlighten him that she’d only met the man a couple hours ago, though she felt they had bonded a little hanging out at the counter before his boss’s crazy outburst.
“I was wondering if you could assist me with something.”
Her face must have taken a turn for the skeptical because he held up his hands placatingly.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not going to ask you for nothing too bad. Anyhow, I’m off duty now.”
Like that made her feel better. She’d seen the TV shows.
He straightened up, digging a hand into his back pocket. “You see, the thing is, my mama really likes Billy’s brisket and cornbread. I’m about to go visit her house to fix the kitchen sink which has a leak under the cabinet. But that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m getting to is, I’d really like to take her some lunch, but the thing is, I’m blacklisted from ordering food in the restaurant. Just because of doing my job.”
“Because you arrested Billy.”
“I did not arrest him,” he said, sticking his hands on his hips, bony elbows jutting out. “I was required by my job to escort him to the station for questioning. My personal inclinations in the matter are not relevant. Neither are my past affiliations with the Blake family and Ms. Mary Clare, may she rest in peace.”
Josie blinked, a slightly unethical scheme hatching in her brain. “You know she’s dead for sure?”
She expected Louie to backpedal or deny having implied it.
“Well, duh,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”
#
Josie must have looked surprised. Darned transparent face and all.
He said, “I told you I’m off duty. I’m allowed to say what I want. And it’s just plain as the nose on my face that the woman has passed on. She hasn’t called her family. Her mother near about worried herself to death over the years. And as much as she and Billy supposedly were at each other’s throats, I know those two loved each other up until the very end. I’ve known them since before I was born and it’s always been the case. Volatile as firecrackers in a butane factory, but devoted to each other as much as Elvis and Priscilla. As much as Lyndon B. and Lady Bird. As much as…”
“I get it. I understand,” Josie said, sticking her hand out, fingers wiggling. “Give me the money.”
He gave her a crisp twenty from his beat-up leather wallet. “Brisket platter with cornbread and slaw. Extra side of beans. Mama loves those, too.”
So did most of Austin, apparently.
“Nothing for you?” Maybe he’d soured on Smiley’s barbecue himself. Though, personally, being banned from a restaurant would probably make Josie crave it more, as perverse as her nature was.
“Nah.” He got a hangdog look on his face, his shoulders slumping. The posture looked more natural on him than his hands-on-hips Superman stance at the front of the restaurant when he’d first burst in. His true half-glass-empty nature showed through.
&nb
sp; “Now wait a minute,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re denying yourself because you feel like you don’t deserve it.”
His eyes flicked to the right—her left—and up, a basic tell. He’d handed her money with his right hand from his wallet, which had been in his right back pocket. Looked like he was right-handed, so it would follow that shifting his eyes up and to the right meant he was fibbing.
She stood there, rolling her own eyes until he caved. His resolve melted like a cone of cotton candy in a rainstorm.
“Fine. I betrayed Billy. It’s true. I feel like I don’t deserve to partake of his multiple-award-winning barbecue anymore. Even though he practically raised me—well, on certain days of the week, along with his mother. Not until I make it up to him somehow.” The deputy picked at his fingernails for second. “Which is never.”
“Why never?”
“Because he did it. And there’s not a damn thing I can do to change that fact.”
She shook her head. “What if I could help you feel better about it…in a small way. I mean, no promises, but I can try.”
“Just what are you talking about? Are you digging up that old business again?”
“It seems like it was never buried to begin with.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“So if I get your mama’s lunch, you need to do something for me.”
Yeah. So maybe she was taking advantage of what she thought might be a simple guy just to get more information out of him, but she couldn’t let the opportunity pass her by. Then again, maybe he knew things…and he wouldn’t mind chatting with an outsider who had no stake in the game.
His eyes narrowed. “And just what would that be?”
Or maybe not.
“Just answer a few questions.”
“About Billy?”
“Yep. And his wife. And the restaurant.”
He kicked his boot at a weed growing through the cracked pavement. “You’re not going to record me, are you? Are you a reporter?”
“Nope. Not a reporter. This is purely off-record just to satisfy my own curiosity. I want to see if I can figure this out.”
“Even though hundreds of people have already looked into it? Even though tons of people were out whacking the bushes looking for her remains and not a single one of them found anything?”
Well, when he put it like that…
“Yep.”
“And what makes you think you’re so special, missy?”
She gave him a pass on his condescension, even though the instinct to kick him in the shins was nearly overpowering. He’d asked a fair question. What made her different from anyone else who’d gone before her?
Her innate curiosity? Any number of people had that. She could walk out her front door at home and count five people who knew her dog’s walk schedule and that Josie had a weakness for Girl Scout cookies.
Her track record on solving mysteries? Not so much. The last one had unraveled on its own right in front of her eyes. She was still having trouble living that one down, at least in her own mind.
Her unerring common sense and gut reactions? Meh. She’d used to think she was a good judge of people, but she knew her ability to survive hits to the head and stabs in the back was pure luck.
“Not a darned thing.”
Chapter 12
Luckily, DJ wasn’t at the counter when Josie went back inside Smiley’s to buy lunch for the deputy’s mother, so she didn’t have to explain herself. She stuck to the deputy’s order to the letter. It had briefly crossed her mind to be a Good Samaritan and throw in an extra side of the famous beans for the officer, but she decided against it. Who was she to interfere with the dynamics of the feud? Well, besides being an insufferable busybody who normally would do exactly that…But in this case, the deputy seemed to be doing a self-imposed penance. It would have been wrong of her to be an interloper when she only had a tip of the facts iceberg in sight.
They’d bargained for her to accompany him to his mother’s house with the food in exchange for her being able to ask him a few questions. She slid into the passenger side of his department SUV, staring at the millions of buttons and gadgets on his dash. A stand between them had a laptop mounted to it, and she wondered how that wasn’t a cause of distracted driving.
He waited for her to buckle up, the partitioned takeout container balanced on her knees, before he pulled out onto the highway. “You’ve got 15 minutes there and another 15 on the way back. Now what exactly is it you want to ask me?” He glanced at the food, then at her face—his priorities in line—before focusing back on the road. She had to use her time wisely, so she figured she’d cut to the chase.
“If everyone thinks Billy killed Mary Clare, why do they still go to his restaurant?” She’d thought Texans would be less forgiving than to eat at the establishment of a wife killer, no matter how good his food was.
“That’s the thing. There’s no proof that he did it.” Narrow shoulders bobbled in a shrug under his polyester uniform. She could see the glint of silver in his closely shorn hair—he was older than he looked.
“Even though you said everyone knows he’s guilty.”
“Well, yeah. Unless he’s tried and convicted in a court of law, he’s a contributing member of this community. Until that day, we’ll all eat there. I mean, everyone but me.”
“Her body was never found, was it?”
“No, ma’am. But she never contacted her family, her best friends, or anyone else to speak of after that day in 1995. In my book, that’s as good as dead. Even if she was aiming to flee across the Mexican border and start over, I think she would have contacted someone eventually. People are creatures of habit. It’d take a special kind of heartlessness to be able to cut off all ties like that.”
And the food at Smiley’s was that good.
Josie watched the landscape speed by outside her window. Gnarled live oak trees dotted the landscape, their twisted branches clawing against the gray afternoon sky. It was flatter out here than in the rolling limestone covered hills in the city. She’d never sat in the front of a police vehicle before. The backseat once or twice when she was younger, yes, but never up front riding shotgun.
She eyed the deputy’s actual shotgun, mounted inside the vehicle next to his seat. Riding up front was a whole new perspective on life—not feeling like a criminal. The trip was kind of…fun since her heart wasn’t pounding with dread.
“What places did they search for her?”
“The house and, of course, the restaurant. Lake Austin, Lady Bird Lake, also Barton Creek—thanks to a dead-end tip on the hotline. We got so many false leads thanks to that thing. People were calling in the kiddie ball pit at Highland Mall, for the love of God. ‘Course, that mall’s closed now. They turned it into the community college, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, we searched a lot of places, but it was hit or miss, you know? There were a lot of eyes out there looking—hundreds of volunteers putting in man hours. I kept expecting some jogger or some old geezer out walking his dog to call it in. Even the Boy Scouts were out in troops, but no one found anything. Neither hide nor hair.”
An image passed through Josie’s mind of Mary Clare’s hairsprayed coif, her bloodless face with unseeing eyes open, lying in the Texas dirt. She took an unsteady breath. She didn’t know if Mary Clare’s restless spirit had unfinished business here, but it certainly was making her feel unsettled.
“Needle in a haystack,” she said, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. A crackle in the police radio helped disguise her weakness, for which she counted herself grateful. Her professionalism hung by a tenuous thread here as it did in most situations.
“That’s right.”
He clicked his turn signal and took them west. She needed to ramp up her line of questioning because they were almost at his mother’s, though she still had the return trip to Smiley’s to ask him more.
“Okay, so let’s assume Mary Clare is dead.” It seemed heartless, but Josie was try
ing to look at the situation theoretically. If she stopped and thought about it too much, she’d freeze in her tracks, like a lot of the other situations in her life.
“Right. This is the path we went down. I mean, we hoped she was alive, but nothing turned up either way. But in a case with a woman in possible danger, we always talk to the husband first. Sad to say, but there’s a lot of menfolk out there beatin’ up on their women.”
Bringing in Billy for questioning was what had revoked Deputy Louie’s barbecue privileges. Even his life had changed that day.
“But you guys didn’t bring him in for years after she went missing.”
“That’s because Billy kept telling us she was still alive. He kept insisting that she’d just up and left him and that we should let him wallow in his misery and quit harassing him.”
“And you believed him?”
The deputy pursed his mouth for a minute before answering. “Listen. It’s possible mistakes were made. But the thing is, Billy Blake is a respected member of the Leandro community. He and his wife, for all intents and purposes, were both well-liked, were faithful to each other, and from what everyone could tell, in love, even though he’s a grumpy bastard and has always been one. We didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”
Josie did a little math in her head—not her strong suit, but she did her best. Mary Clare had gone missing in 1995. Billy Blake had been taken in for questioning about three years later.
“Just how old were you when you had to go get Billy and bring him in to the Sheriff’s office?”
Deputy Louie jutted out his lean lower jaw, a sign of frustrated resignation, perhaps. “Nineteen. Fresh out of training. Not my happiest day, I tell you what.”
#
“Stay right here. I’m going to drop this off with Mama,” the deputy told Josie as he reached through her window to take the Smiley’s container from her. “And don’t touch anything.”
Well, that’s putting a lot of trust where it hasn’t been merited.
