by E M Kaplan
The back wall still stood, which made sense because it was the most reinforced and had previously been attached to the house. However, the front three sides had been fairly well blown out. What was left of Mary Clare’s car was a smoldering white-gray pile of bent metal and tires. Half of a blackened silk flower from the heart-shaped wreath fluttered to the ground next to Josie.
The thought crossed her mind in a spine-shriveling sweep that she’d been going over the garage, digging into the toolbox, and dropping her bottom right into the seat of Mary Clare’s car. She and Lizzie could have been blown to bits if the bomb had already been planted by then.
“I think I’m having a Gulf War flashback,” Skip said, next to her, in a raspy whisper.
She eyed him, looking for the signs of PTSD with which she was personally familiar. Was he seeing the spots in front of his eyes right now? Was his throat closing up? Did his chest feel like he was having a heart attack?
“Are you okay?”
He seemed to consider it, his leathery face taut with worry. Kind of like he was Columbo, mentally patting his trench coat pockets not for his lost keys, but for his emotional stability. Then he relaxed. “Yeah. False alarm. I’m good.”
Dang. She knew how that felt, too. Like walking on eggshells around her own frickin’ psyche. “What do you know about bombs?”
“Not much. They’re violent and noisy and have made it so I haven’t gotten a full night of sleep since 1991. This one was for damage, not injury. No nails or projectiles. Maybe an improvised car bomb? If something looks like a bomb and sounds like a bomb, I’m thinking it’s not a gas leak or a propane tank blowing up. I’m no expert. Just guessing.”
Sounded like some educated guesses to her. Maybe he’d tell her more about that later, but for now, she had something more pressing on her mind. When the explosion had occurred, she’d had her back to the garage. She’d been in prime position to watch the reactions of not only Billy and DJ, but also of Bunny Rogers.
The moment the garage had blown up—the very instant the first rumble had occurred—Billy Blake had lunged toward the garage, only to be held back by DJ, who’d grabbed the big man and enfolded him in his arms, blocking the explosion from his sight. On just the other side of them, a very composed Bunny Rogers had opened her car door and slid back inside.
#
Before anyone could stop Josie and before her common sense could kick in, she marched over to the limo and rapped on the window. With charred bits of the garage and its contents littering the ground around them, she mashed her fists on her hips and watched the glass slowly lower with a silken whirr.
Her lack of forethought, fueled by anger, made her somewhat blunter than was probably wise when she blurted out, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I beg your pardon. Who are you?”
While Bunny may have matched Josie’s boss, Greta Williams, in social stature and dress, the similarities ended there. True, Greta had witnessed some horrible things in her lifetime which should have turned her into an angry and bitter woman. Instead, however, she’d moved forward with her life and put her vast fortune to good use while also meddling in Josie’s life as well.
Bunny Rogers seemed to have taken her grief to heart. Her expression was hard and unyielding, a certain meanness reflecting out from her cloudy blue eyes before she lowered her sunglasses over them.
“I’m a private investigator,” Josie said. Not that she expected her job to have any sway with this woman.
“How very fine for you.”
Granted, the woman had probably conversed with tens, if not hundreds, of reporters and detectives over the decades…all the same, a little decorum would have been appreciated. Then again, Josie had stomped over here and been rude as well.
“Listen, lady, I just saw you turn away from a freaking explosion and nonchalantly check your watch like you suddenly remembered you had a prior dinner engagement at the Driskill Hotel. Normal people don’t act like that in the face of something shocking.”
Josie felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Do normal people make such angry accusations in the face of violence?” Drew said gently.
She blinked. He thought she was having a PTSD episode because of the explosion? She wasn’t the war vet here. She’d survived a shovel attack out in the Arizona desert, not a roadside IED in Kandahar.
Brushing off his hand, she said to Bunny Rogers, “What do you know about this explosion? Do you know who set it? Because you act like maybe you do.”
The woman, eyes covered again by her enormous, dark lenses, turned her head away from Josie. Still not quite looking at the smoldering remains of the garage, she stared at the back of the limo driver’s head. He certainly was well-trained. Like an automaton, he sat ready for his employer’s next command. If Josie had been in his position, she would have had her cell phone out, snapping pictures—especially of her icy-hearted and suspiciously behaved employer. Screw the job.
“What about Marion, the homeless man you allowed to sleep here on the patio? Did you have him beaten? Did you purposely endanger his life?”
The slightest of indentations creased Bunny Rogers’s forehead. Confusion. Thank goodness the woman hadn’t Botoxed recently or her forehead wouldn’t be moving, even as minutely as it was now.
So, she didn’t know about Marion? Then who paid him to live here?
“And what about selling the house? Was it you who called Cookie Casteñada, the real estate lady, and not Billy?”
Bunny didn’t answer, but her lack of surprise on that point confirmed Josie’s suspicions. Contrary to outward appearances, it had been Bunny who’d wanted to sell the house, not Billy.
Because Bunny’s limo had been the last to arrive, it had a free and clear passageway to the street. As Bunny tapped on the back of the driver’s seat and indicated that she wanted to leave, Josie jogged behind the back bumper of the car and blocked its way, smacking her hands on its trunk to make sure the driver—and Bunny—know she was there.
“What are you doing?” Drew asked. He looked as if he wanted to shove her out of harm’s way.
“She knows what happened just now. I was staring right at her when the garage blew up. She didn’t react. No surprise. No flinch. Nothing.”
“Well…” Drew started. “Maybe she’s on medication.”
Yeah, thanks for that vote of confidence, she thought with a grimace. Was her judgment that unreliable to him thanks to her panic attacks?
Skip came alongside Josie at the back of the limo. “I got this,” he said. “Go get her.” He stood with his thin arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the driver of the limo in the rearview mirror. Before she could resume her interrogation of Mary Clare’s mother, Officer Gorgeous called out to them.
“Hey now,” he said, still calm and authoritative as ever, but with a slight edge to his tone. He’d been radioing in for help and now he was, well, policing them. “Ma’am, I need you to step out of the car. You’ve just witnessed a possible crime and I’ll need to get a statement from you.”
Perhaps Bunny’s Texas-born fatal flaw was an unwavering respect for the uniform. For whatever reason, she obeyed the police officer and opened the door.
Josie sighed with relief. She really had no desire to be run over by a car today. Not even a limo.
Chapter 38
Josie relinquished her mental claim on Bunny Rogers and handed her over to the police, figuring that no matter how much she tried to cajole the woman into telling her the truth, Bunny would never cave. After all, she’d had decades to develop her story about her missing daughter and her own alibi.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Josie said out loud as she picked her way around the debris to DJ and Billy Blake, “I don’t think Bunny set up the garage to explode all on her own. Can you imagine her on her hands and knees planting it on the undercarriage? Nah, neither can I. But I do believe she hired someone to do it. Probably that kid, Ryan.”
The two men stared down at he
r from their distinct height advantage wearing mirror expressions of wariness and disgust, their fair-skinned faces both scowling at her. Her steps stuttered until she could screw up her courage to resume approaching them.
These are not the Williams brothers. I have too many witnesses. I have a police officer. They won’t attack me.
After a deep breath, she pushed forward, hoping no one noticed her hesitation. It probably hadn’t been that obvious. Much.
Stay focused on the task at hand.
Billy’s added expression of abject misery had her doing a double-take. He rubbed a hand over his face, and Josie wondered if it was possible he’d had that much emotional investment in his wife’s car to be this upset. After all, he’d chosen the garage for the location of his shrine to her.
“Why’d she do it?” he asked no one in particular, his voice sounding hoarse and muffled.
“I don’t know, Billy,” DJ said. And now he looked done in. However, he wasn’t looking at the house but at his friend and boss.
“I have to get in there and see what’s left,” Billy said.
But DJ wouldn’t let go of him. “No, you’re not going anywhere.”
Was Billy that attached to his dead wife’s car? She’d known people who were car aficionados, but in light of the complete and frighteningly expensive destruction in front of them—the house in utter ruins—the car seemed like it should have been the lesser worry. Wouldn’t he have a photo or a smaller memento to remind him of Mary Clare?
DJ said, “It had to have been that little jack-off, Ryan, we had to fire. She got ahold of him somehow and got him to blow it up. Now he’s her odd-jobs man.”
Holy crap. DJ knew about Ryan? He’d told them he didn’t even know who the kid was. How much else was he lying about?
“You’re Conrad’s son. You’re Levar Ruby,” she blurted out. She was tired of pussyfooting around what she’d been suspecting for a while now. DJ could avoid her questions all he wanted, but she would get to the bottom of it. His ruddy look, which was so similar to Billy’s and, even more so, his dogged loyalty marked him as Billy’s cousin.
However, it wasn’t DJ who confirmed her suspicions.
“Yes. That was his given name,” Billy said, finally looking at her instead of the ruins of his estate. His face was drawn and, well, just wrecked. “He’s my cousin, but he’s closer to me than a brother ever could be. All the things we’ve been through together.”
All what things? She wanted an enumerated list. A spreadsheet. A thesis with footnotes and photographic support.
“You asked why she’d do this,” she said to Billy. “Why do you think? Why would your mother-in-law lure Marion into staying here and then try to kill him?”
“What are you talking about?” Billy frowned. She noticed he didn’t ask who Marion was. “I hired him to live here. I had a bunch of rental forms left over from one of her other properties. She wanted to sell the place, but I didn’t. I was willing to do anything to stop her, even hire some crazy guy to stay here. But I guess that wasn’t going to stop her from burning the place down. All my memories are in there…or they were.”
Well. Thanks to Bunny’s signature on the lease form, she hadn’t seen that kink in her theory coming. But it did clear a few things up.
#
“You hired Marion?” she said again, just to make sure she was hearing Billy correctly.
“Yeah, he’s an icon around town. Well-recognized with his shoes and bikinis and whatnot. Having him stay here at the house would make it tough for anyone to sell it, especially in this snotty neighborhood.”
Josie didn’t bother to mention bunco night and how the neighbors had taken a shine to Billy’s tenant, contrary to his plan. “And your mother-in-law is so intent on getting rid of the house that she’d rather see it burned to the ground than let you keep it?”
None of this made sense. Billy wanted his house. Bunny Rogers burned it to the ground, most likely using Ryan the bartender as her go-to firebug.
Unless…
“Oh my God.” She couldn't keep the words from slipping out of her mouth.
Thunderbolt brainstorm. Big time.
“What is it?” Skip said, walking up behind her. “You figured something out, didn’t you? I knew you would. My instincts are rarely wrong and I knew this about you.”
Staring at her, Billy had turned pale, his pinkish skin draining of its usual color. DJ, on the other hand, looked grim for once. Gone was his charismatic lopsided smile that had drawn her into conversation over the counter at Smiley’s. In its place was a downturned mouth and a furrowed brow as threatening as any stormy sky. As she glanced back and forth between them, the details sorted themselves out in her head.
Mary Clare was here.
Not alive. Not in the well-searched house or car, which had both been thoroughly gone over by investigators at the time, including the creepy storage room with the bad smell. They could have searched that room for days and never found any clues of foul play. Nothing violent had probably occurred in the room. Nevertheless, Mary Clare was here somewhere.
And Bunny had tried to burn the place down. She either wanted to destroy what she thought was evidence of a crime—Billy’s crime—or else she simply didn’t think Billy would let go and allow her to sell the house. She was right about that part. He was irrationally attached to a massive mansion that he didn’t live in. In fact, he was probably the person insisting on its upkeep and periodic modernization. He was clinging to a reality that didn’t exist.
Whether Bunny knew what happened to Mary Clare or not wasn’t clear to Josie yet. All she knew was that Bunny had wanted to burn the place down to the ground, and when the job hadn’t been completed last night, she’d gotten someone to come back and finish the garage today. By blowing it up.
How close did Lizzie and I come to being blown up with it?
Meanwhile, Billy was obsessed enough with keeping a house that was much too big for him alone—which wasn’t even owned solely by him—that he was willing to hire Marion to squat there. Not the most rational, well-thought-out, or effective plan, rather like Billy himself. And why was he so concerned about the house? Why couldn’t he let it go?
For what reason?
Josie stared at the smoldering remains of the garage. Curls of smoke rose upward. The only thing left under all the debris was probably the cement slab.
Evidence? They were looking right at it.
Chapter 39
“Mary Clare is in the garage,” she said.
In her mind she pictured the skeletal remains of the woman encased in the cold cement of the garage floor. Mary Clare’s Acura was a steel and fossil fuel monument, marking her tomb with her gravesite portrait and silk flowers hanging on the wall overlooking her.
Chills went down her neck as if someone’s icy fingers had run across it. Josie swept a hand over her hair to brush off some half-lit ashy debris that had landed on her. The last thing she needed was to catch on fire thanks to an errant ember. The gray flakes caught on her beaded bracelet and she shook them off.
“But that garage has been searched a million times, including that blasted car he’s obsessed with,” Skip blurted out. “There’s no way they could have missed her. Hundreds of people have been in and out of there. All over it with their fingerprint dust and Luminol checking for latent bloodstains. You’re telling me they overlooked her?”
But neither Billy nor DJ looked surprised at her statement. She was on the right track. She knew it. No wonder the man—the gentle giant from the secret tape recording—had never unloaded this monster of a mansion. It was his wife’s tomb.
“Is it the floor? Is she buried in the cement under the car?” she asked them. She needed some kind of confirmation. She watched their eyes for any signs, any tells.
Mary Clare’s final resting place could have been behind the wall right where Billy had constructed his memorial to her, but that didn’t seem like a safe enough place for her body to stay hidden all this time. No, a
cement floor would be more permanent and marked by a two-ton steel gravestone, namely her Acura. She would be preserved forever. As long as Billy kept the house.
Billy sighed, but DJ looked like a storm cloud gathering, ready to unleash a torrent of…something. Her heart rate took off toward the stratosphere and she started breathing harder. She took a step backward and bumped into Skip, who was holding up his cell phone, capturing the whole exchange.
Okay, good. She had a video recording of all this if she were about to be pummeled to a bloody pulp. She hoped it was a good quality video so a jury wouldn’t have any reasonable doubts.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” DJ said, his shoulders expanding and filling up her line of vision.
Yeah, she needed a quick panic level check. Her perception was going wonky again, and her hearing was momentarily blocked out by the rush of blood to her head.
“I think I might,” she said, though maybe not as bold as before.
“You’re making some wild accusations that are going to make you need an army of lawyers. You got that kind of backup ready?” DJ looked livid, and now it was Billy who held him back instead of the other way around. From where he stood by Bunny Rogers, Officer Gorgeous threw them a concerned glanced. To be fair, they were giving him more than one officer could handle.
Drew had joined them again. Josie felt more emboldened, so she demanded to know, “Was this the primary crime scene, too? Did she die here or did you bring her body here later, after it was done?”
With the tooth bridge from the fire pit—if Ryan’s story could still be trusted—Josie was fairly certain that Mary Clare’s life had ended at Smiley’s. The thing was, the timeline didn’t match up. She’d been missing since the mid-90s, but Smiley’s had burned down in 2007.
Brain flash. Aha, I got it now.
“Yes, the house and the garage were searched at the time,” she told them, explaining it now to Skip. “But Mary Clare wasn’t in the garage in 1995 or even 1998, for that matter. That whole timeline doesn’t even matter.”
