Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  “We should get you some ice for that eye,” Drew said, and the tone of his voice made Josie cringe. Gone was the over-wrought, angry-on-her-behalf boyfriend. Here was the fed-up-with-her guy who had put up with too much of her crap even before this trip.

  She took a deep breath. If she was going to make an honest go at this whole engagement thing, she needed to grow a proverbial pair and face her problems.

  “I really lost it back there,” she said. As good a place to start as any.

  His eyes widened as he turned to face her in front of the burned out house fire. “Are you kidding me?”

  Uh-oh.

  He said, “You were totally out of control. I’ve never seen you like that before. You were raging like the Hulk, like you were going to do a flying leap and jump that guy.” He flapped his hand as if to imitate her in flight over the driveway.

  “Yeah, about that…”

  “I’ve never seen anything so damn magnificent in my life. You lost it, but you reigned it back in, and then you totally nailed that guy to the wall.” He did a fist pump. “I could watch that a million times and never get sick of it. Do you think Skip is going to send you the video soon?”

  #

  They checked out of the Omni the next day and made it to their hotel in San Antonio in about an hour and a half. The drive south was pretty easy despite the crush of traffic and rainy skies. The Saturday morning crowd seemed to be less hell-bent on getting ahead of itself than on the average Austin weekday. Josie slept part of the way down while Drew drove.

  Josie’s phone woke her up about halfway there.

  “Hey, did you see the newspaper before you left town?” Skip asked.

  “I grabbed it on the way out of our room, but I haven’t read it yet.” She unbuckled her seatbelt so she could reach into the backseat for the paper. “Here it is. Ah, nice front page over the fold. You must have burned the midnight oil for this.”

  He’d gotten the top story of the day with a headline that screamed:

  KILLER CONFESSES IN MARY CLARE MURDER CASE

  Skip bragged, “In bed by ten, lights out at eleven. Slept a solid nine hours for the first time in decades.”

  She skimmed the article and was relieved not to find her name mentioned. She didn’t need or want that kind of notoriety.

  “Nice job,” she told him. “How’s it feel to close the file after all these years?”

  “Pretty good, but I’m still hoping to cover the court days if it drags out into a trial. We’re probably going to have three separate ones after Billy, DJ, and Bunny lawyer up. Unless someone decides to take a deal.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to the restaurant?”

  Skip exhaled on the other end of the line. “It will probably close up, I’m sorry to say. I blame you for that, but it couldn’t really be helped. That’s the real reason I kept your name out of the article. Didn’t want you getting death threats over it.”

  “Well, I appreciate it.”

  “How’s your eye?”

  “Puffy and tender, and it woke me up every time I tried to sleep on it last night. But it’ll heal. No concussion at least. That’s the good news.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “Hey, I have a favor to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “As soon as you know where Marion ends up, can you pick up something I bought for him and deliver it to him? Kind of a pain, sorry about that, but I didn’t know if he was heading to the shelter next or what.”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “It’s a tiara I had made for him by the bead lady downtown. You know, that bead store off Congress? She’ll have it ready for him in about a week. It’s under his name.”

  He chuckled. “No problem. Writing it on my calendar now. Listen, I gotta go. There’s a press conference in an hour. Next time you’re in town, I owe you a cup of tea.”

  “And a muffin that’s not undead.”

  “You got it.”

  Chapter 43

  Despite Drew’s enthusiasm for her inner She-Hulk, she intended to go see her friend-slash-therapist, Victor, to ask what advice he might have about her panic attacks. As soon as they got home, she’d pay him a visit. Living with unexpected bouts of anxiety was a pain in the rear, to put it mildly, so if there was anything she could do to make them stop, she was willing to try it.

  Including talking to someone about my feelings. Which I really suck at.

  Speaking of which, she still had Drew’s ring, and now it was in her pocket instead of her suitcase. She just needed the right moment.

  They’d just finished eating dinner at the restaurant recommended to her by a friend—and he’d called ahead to let his cousin know she was coming, which meant they’d been treated to a whole tableful of dishes they couldn’t possibly eat by themselves, including the best chicken molé she’d ever had in her life. She could wax on about it for her blog later. Right now, she had other things on her mind.

  With a pleasantly full belly, she was enjoying a stroll along the River Walk, holding Drew’s hand.

  “Wanna ride in one of those boat thingies down the river?” she asked him.

  “I kind of like walking,” he said.

  The sun was setting. The rain had cleared up, but the cobblestones along the edge were still shiny and a little bit slick.

  “Just don’t fall into the water,” she said. “I saw they have pub crawls here. I wonder how often people topple over into the river. Or get pushed.”

  He stared at her. “You’re a little bit demented sometimes.”

  “That’s why you like me.”

  “Probably.” He squeezed her hand.

  “Also, I have a black eye, so you’d better be nice to me or people will think you’re a bad, bad man.”

  “Hush, you.” He pulled her in for a gentle kiss. When they broke apart, he said, “Got any room for dessert? There’s a chocolatier right there.”

  Ha. As if he had to ask.

  They went inside, and she spent a good ten minutes poring over the sparkling display cases and rows and rows of chocolate truffles nestled in their ruffled paper cups. Drew waited patiently at a bistro table by the window sipping an espresso while she picked out four truffles. Silver tongs used with medical precision extracted the chocolately delights from their positions and packed into a small cardboard box with tissues and tied up with a gold string. “It’s lovely,” she had told the chocolatier, not bothering to explain that the packaging would not survive the next ten minutes.

  “That looks fancy,” Drew said when she slid into the chair across from him.

  “It is, just like me.”

  He laughed. They both knew it was the opposite of the truth.

  She toyed with the gold bow on the box. In her pocket, she slipped his ring on her thumb. The indestructible tungsten ring that Lizzie had sold her. Surely that was symbolic of their relationship, right?

  “Aren’t you going to eat them?” he asked, looking at the box of truffles between them.

  “Why? Do you want one?” She laughed at his hopeful expression and pulled the box apart, his ring still on her thumb. “I got coconut—sorry, I know you hate that—but I also have a double chocolate, a salted caramel, and a blood orange. Do you want the double chocolate?”

  She stripped off the top layer of tissue paper. It seemed the chocolatier had added a couple more while she wasn’t looking. She lifted the last layer of paper and found…a ring.

  Wow.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “It’s an antique. It was my grandmother’s. It’s not very ornate, but I think it’ll go well with, you know, a t-shirt or whatever.”

  Wow again.

  The ring was a delicate thin band of white gold with a hexagon-shaped setting for a diamond. She thought the sides were elegant with their art deco styling. Also, she wasn’t wearing her usual t-shirt this evening, but a cowl-necked burgundy sweater with her nicest jeans, just for the occasion. And yes, she’d combed her unruly hair nice
ly.

  “I love it,” she said, feeling the smile spread across her face. She gave him a thumbs up with the ring she’d picked out for him.

  Notes from The Author

  Lizzie’s full name, Lizabeta Del Valle Del Jabalí, translates roughly to Lizzie of the Valley of Boars. Kind of weird, but the surname Borden is Old English for “boar” and “valley.” Her name, just as a tongue-in-cheek joke is Lizzie Borden, after the famous axe murderer.

  The character, Marion, is based loosely on a famous Austin icon, Leslie Cochran, a mostly homeless cross-dresser, who ran for mayor several times. In 2009, he was badly beaten allegedly by a group of people with whom he tried to talk to about drug abuse. Sadly, he died in 2012, most likely as a result of his 2009 injuries. March 8, the day of his death, is Leslie Day in Austin, TX.

  The minor character, Yvonne, who competed against Mary Clare in beauty pageants, has the surname, Lugnar, which is similar to the German word, Lügner, which means “liar.”

  Austin has a ton of amazing barbecue places, naturally. None of the places in this book resemble the ones I’ve visited there although the made-up names in this book are in homage of several of them, like Rudy’s and The Salt Lick.

  Have you read the other Josie books?

  The Bride Wore Dead (#1)

  Dim Sum, Dead Some (#2)

  Dead Man on Campus (#3)

  Double Decker Dead (short story)

  Baby, It’s Dead Outside (#5 - coming soon!)

  Did you enjoy this book?

  Please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

  It would mean the world to Emily.

  Even better, tell a friend.

  About the author

  EM Kaplan grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and later lived for almost a decade in Austin, TX, where she worked as a technical writer and ate a metric ton of barbecue. She lives in Illinois with her husband, author JD Kaplan, their two kids, and their dog, Max, a.k.a. the officemate.

  Visit www.JustTheEmWords.com to discover her social media hangouts and blog, sign up for her newsletter, and see upcoming events.