Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  She eyed the siren box and its “yelp” and “wail” settings. She would have given in to temptation to play with the buttons and flip switches, but he’d warned her that his mother would be napping. She worked the early morning shift in the local grocery store bakery decorating cakes, and Josie respected that. Her own mother had gotten up before the sun many times to prep for her restaurant. The woman deserved her naps.

  He re-emerged from the modest single-story house just a little while later, empty-handed.

  “Thanks for that,” he said, sliding back behind the steering wheel. “She’ll be pleased to wake up to the smell of Smiley’s in her kitchen. Lord knows I would be.”

  If the woman’s house had been more lavish and if she’d been taking her rest on a velvet fainting couch, Josie would have been inclined to think he was trying to buy himself into his mom’s favor. Maybe get a bigger inheritance. The right meal could make Josie have a change of heart about almost anyone. But the house was modest, the yard tiny but tidy. Had Josie been the type of person who was in touch with her feelings with words at the ready for expressing those emotions, she would have told the deputy he was a good son. Instead, she remained silent and stared out the windshield straight ahead of them.

  They’d pulled back onto the road before Josie asked her next question.

  “How long after Mary Clare went missing did Smiley’s burn down?”

  “She disappeared in fall of ’95. Smiley’s didn’t burn down until 2007.”

  “Huh. More than a decade later. Twelve years.”

  Any evidence that might have been destroyed by the fire would have been sitting around for anyone to discover for a dozen years. If the fire at Smiley’s had been arson, it didn’t strike Josie as having been an urgent attempt to destroy evidence, to put it mildly.

  “There was an arson investigation, as you can imagine,” the deputy said. “For insurance purposes. They didn’t find any accelerants or points of origin of the fire other than the fire pit. I think the official finding was that it was ember or spark that caused the whole place to go up. Purely accidental.”

  “Who investigated the fire?”

  “Funny you should ask that. There were two separate investigations. One was conducted by the Leandro Fire Department. They have something like three investigators on payroll that searched for the cause and origin of the fire. There was some question about spoliation.”

  Josie felt her forehead crinkle. Her confusion probably made her look like a Shar-Pei.

  “Well, when a crew of firefighters goes to a scene, they can sometimes ruin potential evidence while they’re putting out the fire. Not on purpose, of course, just in the rush to get the flames out.”

  “But that wouldn’t destroy evidence of, say, an accelerant, right?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. The chemicals would still be there.”

  Josie frowned. “And there was a second investigation?”

  “Yes, Mary Clare’s parents hired an independent expert from California—some fire bigwig who’s written a bunch of books and teaches forensics classes somewhere. They brought him in not two weeks later. He comes poking around, stirring things up, stepping on toes over at the Leandro FD. But his report came back as it being one hundred percent accidental. No question about it.”

  “Wow, I’ll bet they were disappointed. Probably not what they were hoping after going to all that trouble and expense.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sure they spent a pretty penny on him, but I guess he told them to drop it because there was nothing there. Mary Clare’s family—her mama in particular—kind of let it go after that.”

  “I imagine it’s a pain in the neck to insure a smokehouse against accidental fire.”

  “Like living on the Gulf and trying to get homeowner’s insurance to protect against hurricanes,” he agreed. “You got to be richer than God.”

  “Or get crappy coverage.”

  Which was an interesting thought. Which case was Billy Blake? Rich or poorly insured?

  “What about Mary Clare’s assets? I heard her family was fairly wealthy. They’re up in Dallas, right?”

  He hedged a bit as he turned the vehicle back onto the main highway, spinning the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “I’ve heard they’re well-to-do. You know, some people are flashy-rich and others just are. I think they are the latter. To be honest, that’s only what I’ve seen on the news. I haven’t had any personal interaction with them. I’ll tell you what, though…if Billy killed her for money, he sure wasn’t greedy about it. Other than their big ol’ house that’s just sitting there empty, he’s living the exact same life he was always living. Wears the same shirts until they get holes. Drives the same old truck until…well, he still is driving it.”

  “How long do you have to wait after a person goes missing before you can get them legally declared dead?”

  “That’s generally seven years,” he said. “If you don’t have any evidence the person is actually not alive, all you have to do is wait it out seven years. Say, you’ve seen your neighbor get swept away by flood waters, but they’ve never been found. You last saw them in a situation of ‘great peril,’ so it would be more likely a judge would declare them dead before the seven years timespan was up.”

  Josie drummed her fingers on the door’s arm rest. More mental math, which was probably making smoke come out of her ears. She was really only good at calculating cooking conversions—teaspoons to tablespoons, ounces to cups.

  “So, seven years after Mary Clare’s disappearance would have been around fall of 2005. Billy could have gotten her declared dead by then, collected any life insurance money or other funds tied up in her name—anything that wasn’t already jointly owned, and fixed up the restaurant legitimately. He wouldn’t necessarily had to have waited until 2007 to burn the place down if it was all about money.”

  She knew there could’ve been other unseen factors at work. A mistress. Blackmail. A gambling debt. Addiction. Any number of things could have created a huge need for cash on Billy’s part that would have been hidden from an outsider like her all these years later.

  “Of course, all this is off the record,” the deputy said, turning back into the lot at Smiley’s. He drew up alongside her rental car. “Lots of gossip about Billy and Mary Clare. Nothing ever came of it. And you have to know, every one of those old-timers in there.” He stabbed a long, bony finger in the direction of the restaurant. “Every soccer mom, software programmer, or what have you, who comes to eat here has his or her own theory about what happened to Mary Clare. And not one of those theories has held water. Not one.”

  He gave her a pointed look, which she understood to mean he thought she didn’t have a chance in hell of unraveling the mystery.

  She turned back after opening the door on her side. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”

  He knuckled his forehead, tipping an imaginary hat. “It was a good trade-off.”

  “And I think you’re being too hard on yourself.” She nodded toward the restaurant.

  Because even she could admit, those were some darned good beans.

  Chapter 13

  “What’d you do today?” Drew asked as he dunked a French fry into a splatter of mayo on his plate, trying to hide the fact that he preferred the ecru goo over ketchup on his fries. As if she didn’t know by now. As if she would kick him to the curb for this minor though disgusting character flaw.

  “Chased down some crazy and fascinating barbecue leads,” she said, not exactly fibbing, sipping her microbrew ginger ale through a straw—spicy, bubbly, and delightful, if overly trendy. “What about you?”

  They were sitting outside, tucked away in the back patio of a cute little beer bar in the warehouse district, enjoying what had turned out to be a mild night. If this was late fall in Austin, she was almost ready to give up her primo apartment with its grandfathered-in low rent. Cold was cold. Enjoying patio weather in November was priceless.

  Drew was drinking s
ome kind of stout with chocolatey overtones—she shivered just thinking about it. Ew, not her thing either, like the mayo. But she liked to watch him—her man—drink it.

  “New directions in monitoring diabetes.”

  She nodded, trying to keep an interested expression on her face—it wasn’t too difficult. Though she wasn’t as fascinated by his topic as he was, she was engaged by him. He gestured with his hands while he talked, like all the people in his large Italian family. Whenever she pictured his mom, Andrea was standing in her little kitchen gesticulating at her kids with a spatula. Maybe that was part of Josie’s instant love for him and his family—they were always cooking, and the love of food was at the heart of her existence, her essence. Along with family and friends, of course. She wasn’t a complete hedonist.

  As the daylight faded around them and the fairy lights intertwined through the tree branches overhead sparkled on, she listened to the deep thrum of Drew’s voice and thought, This would have been a perfect evening to ask him if he wanted to get married. Of course, she’d left the ring in the hotel room, and she had no idea if she had ketchup on her chin. So perfect was a relative notion.

  “Hey,” he said, breaking off from his somewhat one-sided medical speech. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I was waiting for the right time, but now seems about as good as any.”

  She blinked at him, a swallow of ginger ale caught on her tongue in limbo before she squeezed it down her throat. He couldn’t possibly be asking her The Question. He was so much more prepared than this. He’d do something big, make a grand gesture. Violins came to mind. Him on bended knee. A ring in a fancy box. Basically the opposite of anything she would come up with. So, no, there was no way he could be pre-empting her popping the question.

  Do a couple of inhale-exhales and he won’t notice my freakout.

  Just as she got her breathing back to normal, he said, “You haven’t been sleeping much lately, have you?”

  Her lack of REM was not a topic she wanted to discuss. In fact, she’d been actively avoiding it because then she’d have to admit her nightmares had been ramping up, never mind the little panic episode she’d had in Smiley’s this afternoon.

  So she did what any other woman of the world would do.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  The thing was, lying was not second nature to Josie. She couldn’t even school her face to follow through with the B.S. coming out of her mouth.

  As soon as she reiterated her state of fine-ness to Drew, he laughed. He paused to take a swig of his stout, but burst out laughing again at what must have been a sour look on her face. “Tell me another good one,” he said.

  Laugh it up, fuzzball.

  “A man walks into a bar,” she said.

  “That must have hurt.”

  She took a sip of ginger ale and contemplated spitting it at him. The bubbles stung going down her throat.

  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

  “To get away from the person who was asking her why she’s not sleeping at night.” He added, “Chicken.” Just in case she wasn’t following him.

  “Why doesn’t a rooster wear pants?”

  “Because his pecker is on his—Hey, are you calling me a peckerhead?”

  She gave up, having burned through the three lousy jokes in her repertoire.

  They sat in silence for a few more rounds of sipping their drinks, with him giving her that half-smile accompanied by an occasional shake of his dark head. After he flagged the server down for another beer, she threw in the white flag.

  “I’ll go see someone when we get home,” she said at last, having been worn down by his blasted, indomitable good nature.

  He nodded his head, not adding an I told you so or anything at all, for that matter. He knew when to back off, especially after a victory like that. Smart man.

  And more than a match for her thick-skulled pig-headedness.

  Chapter 14

  Josie was due for a good night’s sleep, but her sub-consciousness wasn’t about to pay that debt. She spent the night tossing and turning until she moved to the second queen bed in the room, afraid that her nocturnal Pilates would wake up Drew.

  Her new location wasn’t much better. In fact, it had the added drawback of being cold and lonely. Eventually, she got out her cell phone, aiming the light away from Drew, and started watching videos of a street vigilante who trawls the seedy L.A. streets at night rescuing stray dogs. Though she would deny it by daylight, a tear or two may have leaked from the corners of her sleep-deprived eyes.

  Just after 10:00 a.m., she woke up to an empty but pitch black room. Drew must have drawn the funky, geometric blackout drapes and hung the Do Not Disturb placard on the hotel room door handle, thoughtful guy that he was. She peeled her face off her phone and used her shirt to rub off the greasy impression of her cheek and half her mouth from the touch screen.

  It took three futile presses of the power button on her phone to realize its battery had died. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she sat on the second hotel bed and waited for her brain to come back online. Somewhere deep inside her skull, a puny fluorescent light box was flashing sporadically, powered by a weak backup generator, the last outpost in deep, dark, pitch-black space.

  Tink, tink, tink…

  After a few minutes, she gave up on being fully functional and dragged herself out of bed to her suitcase. She swiped her hand inside the front of it, then the back and sides, searching for her phone charger. She managed to unfold almost every article of clothing left in her bag and brush her knuckles against the box with the ring she’d bought for Drew, reminding her she’d yet to come up with a plan to ask him.

  When she failed to locate her charging cord in her suitcase, she opened Drew’s to borrow his. He might have taken it with him for the day, but it was worth a look—she didn’t want to invade his privacy, but he’d be more upset with her if she walked around without a phone.

  When she tipped back the lid and saw all the neatly folded piles of socks and t-shirts, she sat back on her heels, knocked for a loop by the beautiful order. A glance back at the disarray of her bag compared to his, laid out a dilemma in front of her as plain as day.

  What is he doing with me?

  Here was a handsome guy who had all his ducks in a row, as his mother would say. All his crap together, as she herself would say. He was solid, loyal, smart… Yeah, she could go on about his good qualities, his generosity, his thoughtfulness, and how he turned her on like nobody’s business. She could even list his annoyances and foibles with a certain bemused affection.

  Like insisting on giving directions using “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west” as if she carried a compass with her. Or falling asleep the second his head hit the pillow while she stared at the bedroom ceiling. Or the way he’d somehow mesmerized her dog into loving him more than the mutt loved her.

  Here she was, wanting to grab Drew and hold on to him forever because he was clearly the best thing in her life, but…she was mess. A non-sleeping, possibly PTSD-having, food critic fraud who couldn’t eat most of the time. An over-thinking busybody with a made-up career blogging about food and philosophy, who had a bad habit of getting herself into stupid situations. And yet another bad habit of pushing people away when they got too close.

  A puff of air escaped her mouth and blew back her hair from her eyes.

  Am I dragging him down for my own selfish reasons?

  She closed his neat, organized suitcase, the little window into his world. Her search for a phone charger didn’t feel important just now. And some thoughts were better left unthought for the moment. Especially first thing in the morning, and especially on an empty stomach.

  #

  Downstairs in the hotel’s atrium restaurant that swept upward into several cavernous stories of the glass hotel lobby, Josie opened her laptop at her table and pushed aside a salmon salad that failed to hold her interest. She spent some time answering comments on
her blog, blocking a few lewd trolls and spammers, and checking her ad revenue. Before coming to Texas, she’d set up and scheduled a blog post to go live later this afternoon, so she was covered for a while. After she got back to Boston, she’d have time to go through her photos and write up her trip later.

  Her income-rustling work taken care of for the time being, she went back to a couple articles about Mary Clare she’d bookmarked for reading.

  In the late 1980’s, Mary Clare had competed but not placed in a Dallas Fort-Worth area beauty pageant. Josie found a group photo of all the contestants of that pageant that particular season, but couldn’t determine which puffy-headed, toothy grin was Mary Clare’s in the huge mass of skin and swimsuits. The women—or teens, actually—in the front row of the photo were 1980’s-thin, stomachs sucked in further to make their ribs jut out.

  The website that hosted the article was pro-pageant and made no beans about it. In flowery terms, it extolled the virtues of pageants, listing the high demands they expected from participants in terms of talent, time, and qualifications. It also enumerated the vast sums of scholarship money it doled out to winners.

  Okay, fine. They’re not just beauty contests, they’re scholarship pageants. In which you have to display your abs. While wearing high heels.

  During one of her more-sick-than-well episodes with her stomach, Josie had become more acquainted with reality TV than she’d ever publicly admit. She’d watched a few shows about children and beauty contests with the same avid and equal amounts of horror she’d devoted to Ghost Seekers and Aliens Built the Egyptian Pyramids. She wasn’t proud of it, but it made her feel slightly more patriotic, more American. At least she knew what people were talking about a little more now.

  She was wary about beauty…pageants, but at the same time, she knew they were a long-revered tradition in many of the Southern states, most assuredly including Texas. As far as she could tell from her Internet searches, Mary Clare had a short-lived history with them. Just one and done.