Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  “Dental bridge,” Drew said without hesitation, probably to calm her if her face was showing half as much disgust as she felt. At least they weren’t real teeth and gums.

  A wave of queasiness had come over her, but it passed as realization dawned. Skip had had several of Mary Clare’s receipts in his file and more than one of them had been for dental services—that unpronounceable name on the invoice that Josie was going to look up online later was no doubt a bridge.

  “It was hers,” Ryan said. “I know it was Mary Clare Blake’s. Those things have serial numbers on them. You can look that stuff up.”

  True enough.

  She gestured at the bag that Drew was still holding up, examining it in the sunlight, as it were. “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it when I was working at Smiley’s, like ten years ago. I used to bus tables, scrub floors, wash dishes—all the crap jobs. But I mean, I was in high school and I was kind of an asocial bastard. Didn’t have any friends or manners. I was sixteen. I was lucky they even gave me a job I could walk to, you know? I didn’t have a car and it was close to my mom’s house.

  “I got there one day after school—the restaurant was closed up on Mondays—to do ash duty. That’s when we shoveled out most of the ash from the fire pit. I was all into helping out because I thought maybe if I stuck around and did an amazing job, I could get moved up to the waitstaff or maybe bartend like I do now. I could start getting some tips and make some real money because I wanted to buy a car. Get my own transportation. So I was real thorough, you know. I cleaned that pit like you wouldn’t believe. And down in the bottom under all those layers, this popped up. It wasn’t even melted. I don’t know how it wasn’t. Maybe it was insulated under all that ash, like the ash was a blanket.”

  “And you kept it this long without telling anyone?”

  Josie had trouble believing he could have just pushed such a gruesome discovery out of his mind like that until now. It had been a decade, for crying out loud. Who keeps a filthy dental bridge in a keepsake box for ten years? Rabbit’s foot. Scout badges. Old journal. School pictures. But a dental bridge of a high-profile missing woman?

  Not unless he’s been planning to blackmail someone.

  “At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. I mean, it was gross and I almost threw it out. I cleaned if off and put it in this box of stuff I have at home. I tried not to think about it for a while, but it was always in the back of my mind. It had to have been hers, right? I mean, by the time I was working there, she’d been missing for, like, ten years or something. People weren’t out searching for her anymore. It didn’t seem that urgent.”

  Not unless you’re a mother waiting for a sign that her child is still alive…

  “I actually did forget about it for a long time—until you mentioned it the other night. So it’s kind of your fault. I mean, because of you. If you hadn’t really pushed me about why I quit, I probably wouldn’t have started thinking about it again. But then I remembered I had this in that box in my closet…Could it even last that long in the fire pit? I mean, would it melt or something?”

  “I don’t know how much heat one of those can take,” Josie said. She looked at Drew for his opinion.

  “It’s probably porcelain fused to metal,” he said, holding the baggie closer to his face so he could examine it.

  Gag. So gross.

  His face was alight with pure, intellectual curiosity. “The center part looks like two whole fake teeth—I think those are called pontic teeth, or dummy teeth—and they’re attached to crowns on either side that would hold the whole thing in place permanently. Not one of those bridges you could just pop out like a denture, but one that was fixed in place like any other crown.” He held it at arm’s length. “And it kind of looks like upper front teeth, if I had to guess. Just by the size, shape, and uniformity. I’m no dentist, though. We’d need an expert to confirm all that.”

  Okay, then.

  Mary Clare, the former beauty queen, had a dental bridge for her upper front teeth? In what kind of tussle does a socialite get her teeth knocked out? Josie’s mind flew to all kinds of dark speculation. A DUI, perhaps. Or a fight? Or maybe passing out while on medication…

  She stared at the baggie. She was absolutely willing to believe, based on the dental receipts and coincidence of finding the bridge in the ashes of the fire pit at Smiley’s, that these were Mary Clare’s front teeth. She knew that when she eventually gave the bridge to Skip Richmond, he would be able to track down the serial number on the piece of dental work and tie it back to whoever made it.

  She needed to know the very specific course of events that had led to the bridge ending up there. A person wouldn’t wander around without it. How had Mary Clare lost her bridge in the pit? How had she lost her real teeth in the first place?

  Billy Blake would be the person to ask. If only she weren’t dreading talking to him.

  #

  After Ryan left them to go clock in on his shift, walking with a lighter step, she and Drew got into their rental car and turned north toward Leandro. Drew rode shotgun because this was her second time going to Smiley’s—if she didn’t count the return trip she’d taken with Officer Louis, Leandro’s finest boy in blue—so she knew where they were headed.

  He’d turned on the public radio station and found an old recording of Austin City Limits with Johnny Cash singing about walking the line for his beloved, which made her think of that passionate conversation she’d heard on the voicemail tape, about how devoted Billy had sounded as he tried to help his troubled wife. And how very distraught Mary Clare had been. Out of nowhere, Josie’s eyes filled up, and she blinked rapidly.

  Somehow, that weight Ryan had been carrying around with him had been transferred to Josie’s shoulders, and she felt the heaviness all the way in the pit of her stomach, almost as if she’d eaten something bad. She knew it was emotional, something she was over-wrought with these days. She wasn’t sleeping well, she assumed Drew would be upset with her when he wasn’t, and she jumped at shadows, especially when she was alone. If it hadn’t been for Lizzie, venturing into the Blake house would have been a fiasco. Speaking of which…

  “You should have seen this house last night,” she told Drew as she merged onto the freeway. “It was amazing. It was all beautiful stone, symmetrical structure with a chandelier that would fit in Buckingham Palace, a massive spiral staircase, and this huge round part of it that went up through the center. Like a tower with a round roof.”

  “What, like a pergola?”

  She squinted at him. “A pergola is type of covered patio.”

  “Oh, so a cupola?”

  “Yes! Oh, my God, yes. A cupola.” Her heart gave a warm thump.

  “Were you scoping out our retirement home?”

  She gave a rueful laugh. “Only if we have an extra five or six million lying around by then.”

  He whistled and turned down the radio. “Yikes. Pretty nice, then?”

  “It had an elevator.”

  “Well that’s perfect for when we’re old and decrepit.”

  Her jaw went a little slack.

  Well, crap. Leave it to the doctor and his aging clientele to think of that.

  “That’s exactly what it was for.” She banged on the steering wheel, causing an accidental honk. Ahead, the woman in the minivan with the Coexist bumper sticker glared in her side mirror at them and flipped her middle finger.

  “What?”

  She rubbed her wrist where the black beaded bracelet chafed. She still hadn’t taken it off to look underneath despite having showered. Talk about being in denial.

  “The elevator at the house was for an older resident. That, combined with this horrible pink room I found—seriously, you would have barfed at all of the flower patterns—and the floral patterns of hers and Mary Clare’s dresses in the family portrait. That was Bunny’s fashion sense, no doubt about it. I think they were planning for Mary Clare’s mother to live with them.”

&nbs
p; “Wait, you’re talking about Bunny Rogers, that crazy woman in the interview transcript?”

  She gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re a fast reader.”

  “You were asleep for a long time.”

  “Okay. Fair enough.”

  She slowed the car as the brake lights ahead of them all went red. They ended up neck and neck, inching forward with the woman who had flipped them off just miles earlier. She pointedly refused to look at them.

  “So, they made a mother-in-law suite. Is that so bad?”

  “That’s not the only room they made. There was a freaky Jane Eyre room as well.”

  “What do you mean, a hidden ex-wife in the attic?”

  “Hidden, yes. But not an ex-wife, just a wife. I think Mary Clare lived in that storage room. Maybe even all those years she was supposedly missing. There were prescriptions in there and newspapers dated years after she had supposedly vanished. I don’t think it was against her will. There weren’t any big locks or bars. It just seemed like someone’s crazy old reclusive aunt had lived there.”

  “I don’t get it,” Drew said. “If so many people were out looking for her, why would she hide?”

  Because she was sick? Depressed? Agoraphobic?

  “That’s a darned good question.”

  Chapter 32

  On the rest of the way to Smiley’s, Josie filled in Drew with the rest of what she’d found out so far, including Marion’s rental agreement and hanging out with Lizzie, the newly minted ghost hunter.

  “Ghosts, huh?” he said.

  Josie shrugged. “I never saw any last night, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”

  “Really,” he said, totally deadpanning. “You, of all people, are going to be optimistic and open-minded about the existence of ghosts?”

  “What do you mean, me of all people? I am open-minded. Well, more about trying interesting food combinations or an unknown wine label. But, heck, even though the existence of spirits that walk the earth seems far-fetched and, I might say, kind of ridiculous, who am I to deny the excitement of a person who’s really into it? Just because I don’t have proof of it doesn’t mean I’m going to roll my eyes and snark at other people.”

  She scratched her wrist where her bracelet had started up a fierce itch, like it was a lie detector that had caught her telling a doozy. Great, just what she needed. An accessory that was a moral watchdog.

  So, fine, she still didn't believe in ghosts. But she did believe in karma. And if Billy had killed Mary Clare, possibly in the restaurant by the fire pit…or in the fire pit…. Ew. She shivered and rubbed her wrist again.

  “What’s going on with your arm there? I saw it was kind of black last night.”

  She stared at where she rested it on top of the steering wheel. Other than the making her want to scratch like a dog with a hot-spot, it seemed normal to her. At least it didn’t sting anymore.

  “Huh. That’s funny. It doesn’t hurt, but I must have burned it worse that I thought.” She hung it over her other arm so he could see it better while she kept her eyes on the road. “Can you take it off and look at what’s underneath?”

  Dating a doctor had its advantages, like checking out her bumps and bruises without that annoying co-pay. That, and constantly reminding her not to Google her ailments because, wow, that was a quick trip to Crazytown on the Hypochondria Bullet Train.

  He fumbled with the bracelet’s tiny clasp and slid it off. She was busy for a minute or two, changing lanes to avoid a slow truck, but then had to wait to maneuver around a clump of cars all going the exact same speed across all three lanes of traffic. She paused to grumble at them, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It took her a while to realize he was still silently examining her wrist.

  “What?” she asked, casting him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye.

  He didn’t answer, so she twisted her bare wrist so she could see it.

  On the outside of her wrist, like a watch face, was the burned impression of the coin from the bracelet. She now had the red outline of a Romany, or gypsy, love charm on her skin. She’d been branded. Permanently.

  Guess I don’t need to buy a souvenir from this trip.

  #

  “Hey, little missy, you came back,” DJ said, greeting Josie at the counter at Smiley’s. “You come in one more day this week and you’re gonna have a permanent spot over there next to Lefty Braunfels.”

  A grouchy old geezer in overalls, bald but for some nearly transparent white fuzz on his head, waved at her to a chorus of cackles at his table. She wasn’t certain, but Lefty might’ve had fewer teeth than Marion, and she wondered how he was fairing with the pile of ribs on his plate. He shouted, “She’s more than welcome anytime—she’s a darn sight prettier than you, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that, old man,” DJ said, taking off his cap and wiping the sweat off his pink forehead. “Keep ‘em coming. Iron-clad ego over here.”

  “Good, ‘cuz you’re going to need it with that face,” one of Lefty’s cohorts shouted to more hooting from his table mates.

  “Is this your fella?” DJ asked her.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he looked Drew over. Then they did that male aggressively hearty handshake thing over the counter while she tried not to roll her eyes.

  “We came here to eat. I’ve been chatting up the beans. Hard to get them out of your mind when you start craving them. I can’t tell if it’s the brown sugar or the bacon, but they’re addictive. And I was also wondering if Billy Blake would be open to talking with me. I’ll be respectful, of course. Just wanted to check and see.”

  She had to inhale a bit before she said that last part. The previous time she’d stood in this spot and encountered Billy, she ended up with black spots floating in front of her eyes. Her heart rate was already jacked up into hypertensive range. She was going to need a geriatric prescription from Drew. If Billy was in a temper today, she might be better off avoiding him, although her time here was running out. If she wanted to confront him, she needed to do it now.

  And by “confront,” I mean ask a couple questions and then hightail it out of here. Maybe even leave the state.

  “Sorry to say, he went out of town for a couple days. He’s on a road trip.” DJ looked at her with a slight question in his expression, one fair eyebrow hiked up just a tad. “Something I can help you with?”

  “Was this a planned trip?” It seemed weird to take off on the spur of the moment when he’d just been so angry about the vandalism painted on the side of the restaurant. But maybe he’d had an itinerary set before that had happened. She noted, also, that she breathed a little more steadily now that she knew he wasn’t in the building.

  What a wussy. When had this happened to her?

  Actually, she knew the answer to that.

  “Nah, sometimes he just likes to drive to blow off some steam. Eat some good food in other cities where people don’t know him or his history too well.”

  DJ hadn’t been around during the time in question when Mary Clare had vanished, but maybe he did have some insight about his boss. She might be able to finesse some details out of him—she glanced at Drew, who was looking at Smiley’s GM with suspicion—if she could get the dogs to call off their pissing match.

  “What do you say?” she asked DJ. “You want to sit for a while and have lunch with us?”

  He seemed to think about it for a minute as he eyed Drew.

  “Let me grab a pitcher of Bud.”

  Chapter 33

  “We met someone who used to work here. A guy named Ryan,” Josie said with what she hoped was nonchalance.

  They’d settled in at a corner table with a platter of pulled pork, slices of that ubiquitous doughy white bread, and a side of beans. She took a sip of her beer while she waited for him to answer. Budweiser was never at the top of her list of things to drink, but she was being polite. Plus, it was draft, which made it a little mo
re palatable. Drew was playing the part of her silent bodyguard, though the eye daggers he shot at DJ spoke volumes.

  Seriously. She wanted to kick him under the table, but she also needed to concentrate.

  “Hmm. Doesn’t ring a bell. Maybe it was before my time here.”

  She wasn’t absolutely sure, but there might have been a slight hesitation before he’d replied, so she pressed the matter.

  “He’s a shorter blond guy. Kinda artsy. Wears weird stuff like leather wristbands or sometimes gloves. He would’ve been a kid when he worked here. After school bus boy type of worker.” When DJ shrugged again, she said, “I guess he wasn’t here long. How many years have you worked here?”

  “Ah, Billy and I go way back. I’ve been here and there over the years.”

  “Way back, like back-back?” she asked.

  Was it possible he’d actually been around while Mary Clare was alive?

  He cleared his throat and swiped a hand across the back of his neck. “What is it you want to know?”

  Her brain was churning, probably giving off smoke from her ears as she raked over the details that had come across her path the last couple of days. But there were still a few things that didn’t make sense…like who DJ was and where he’d come from. She hadn’t missed his evasion of her question.

  “I’m sorry if this is rude,” she said, “but what does ‘DJ’ stand for?” She figured she’d look him up when she got back to the hotel. Maybe even ask Skip Richmond to work his research magic and see what he could find out. Surely DJ was on a few public registers somewhere. Maybe even Facebook or Instagram…though he didn’t exactly seem the social media type.

  “It doesn’t stand for anything. It just says ‘DJ’ on my driver’s license. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Your parents gave you just initials that weren’t short for anything?”

  He gave a humorless grin. “Well, now, I didn’t say that, did I?”

  More evasion, cloaked in cockiness. Red flags were fully flying in her mind. His attitude was all swagger and none of the friendliness from before when it had just been her. She wanted to get back to that easy rapport they’d had previously, but she didn’t think it was possible while Drew was there glowering at him.