Save Her Soul: An absolutely unputdownable crime thriller and mystery novel (Detective Josie Quinn Book 9)

by Lisa Regan

  He studied the document for several minutes before saying, “Looks like my dad filed for the permit on this one. This is his signature. They had some pretty extensive plumbing and sewage problems. We had to tear up the whole basement and lower it, re-pour the foundation.”

  Gretchen asked, “Is your dad still around?”

  “No, I’m sorry. He passed last year.”

  Josie said, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Do you have any records of your own from this job?”

  George shook his head. “We only keep records going back seven years. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know anyone who might have been on the crew who did the job on Hempstead?” Josie persisted.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he admitted. “I was probably on the crew. You’ve got to understand, we work hundreds of jobs a year and this is going back, jeez, almost twenty years.”

  Josie took her phone back and pulled up the last existing driver’s license photo for Vera Urban to show him. “Do you remember her?”

  He rubbed his chin. “She looks familiar.”

  Gretchen used her own phone to show him Beverly’s yearbook photo. “How about her?”

  He stared at the photo. “Oh, her,” he said. “Yeah, I remember her. She was a real pain in the ass, that one.”

  Josie felt a tug of excitement at her core. “Why do you say that?”

  “I remember this job now. Look, I don’t remember a lot of jobs. Like I said, we do hundreds every year. Can’t remember them all. It’s the ones that are a pain in the ass that stick in your mind, you know?”

  “Yes,” Gretchen and Josie said in unison.

  “Her mom was sick or something. Disabled. I don’t know. She had a hard time getting around. We never saw her. She was up in a bedroom all the time. But this girl was there to let us into the house in the morning and then she’d come home from school and hang around. We couldn’t get a damn thing done. She had a thing for one of our guys.”

  “Which guy?” Gretchen asked.

  “I don’t remember his name. He was only with us a couple of months. My dad hired him. We tried to train him, but he wasn’t interested in learning the work. He just wanted the money to put up his nose.”

  “He had a drug problem?” Josie asked.

  “Big time. Like I said, he lasted like two months and then one time, the day after payday, he was a no-call, no-show for his shift. Never heard from him again and then saw in the local paper he overdosed.”

  “So he is deceased,” Josie said. Another dead end. “What did Beverly want with him?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to spy on them. We had to get the job done. But whenever she was there, he’d be off in another room with her or outside with her, their heads together.”

  “You don’t remember anything else about him?” Josie asked.

  George took a long moment to think it over, rubbing his chin again; his eyes squinted as if the act of calling up the memories was strenuous. Finally, he said, “Name began with an A. Andrew, Ambrose, something like that.”

  Gretchen took out her notebook and jotted the names down. “How old was he then? Do you remember?”

  “Probably my age, so back then he would have been in his mid to late twenties.”

  Josie asked, “Do you know if he saw Beverly outside of work?”

  “No, sorry. I wasn’t friends with the guy. Only reason I remember him is ’cause he was such a bad hire, and I wanted my dad to get rid of him. It was bad enough he was slacking off on the job. Then he was flirting with a high school girl? That’s not cool. I didn’t like him.”

  “Do you know, Mr. Newton, if that gentleman owned any firearms?” Josie asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

  “How about you?” Gretchen asked. “Do you own any firearms?”

  “No, not me,” he answered.

  “How long did the job take?” Josie asked, before he could ask why they were so concerned with whether or not he owned guns.

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember specifically. Probably the same amount of time they always do. Coupla months.”

  “Were there any interruptions to the job?” Gretchen asked. “That you remember now? Anything unusual?”

  He looked from Gretchen to Josie and back. “You think someone buried this girl under the foundation while we were in the middle of the job? And we didn’t notice?”

  They said nothing.

  Again, he gave them the grimace that indicated he was searching his memories. “A couple of times we had to stop because they were having plumbing work done, if I remember correctly, and we didn’t work weekends. There was some time at the end of the job that the house was empty. My dad had to get the key from the landlord, I think. Back then, we just figured the mom and daughter were on vacation or something. We just wanted to finish the job. That’s all I remember. I mean, I guess it’s possible someone could have put her in there while we were in the middle of the job if they did it at the right time and left everything looking the way we left it.” He shuddered. “That’s a terrible thing. I’d hate to think we poured concrete over that girl and didn’t even know it.”

  Josie took out a business card and handed it to him, telling him to give them a call if he remembered anything else he thought they should know. He took it slowly, suddenly looking dumbfounded and very distressed.

  Gretchen said, “Mr. Newton? You okay? Is there something else?”

  He shook his head and Josie thought she saw his eyes glistening. “It’s just—who would do something like that? Something so awful?”

  Josie said, “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Seventeen

  It was nearing lunch time so they got takeout which they ate in the car before heading to Kelly Ogden’s address. As Josie drove, Gretchen sent a text to Noah asking him to check into the firearm ownership of Calvin Plummer and George Newton to confirm they were both telling the truth. She also asked him to see if he could find a death certificate or obituary for a man in his mid-twenties whose name started with A during the summer of 2004.

  “So, possible suspects: we’ve got the landlord,” Josie said. “Ray, George Newton, and now this guy Beverly was flirting with on Newton’s work crew.”

  Gretchen said, “The list is getting longer with each person we talk to.”

  “It doesn’t help that half of our list is dead,” Josie said.

  They pulled up in front of a crumbling five-story apartment building in a run-down part of Denton that had somehow escaped the flooding thus far. They found Ogden’s apartment easily enough but after ringing the bell and knocking for several minutes, there was no answer. Since Josie had figured out from perusing her Facebook page that she now worked at one of the local supermarkets, they headed there, where they found her working checkout in lane seven. She passed people through her line with a blank-faced efficiency, only talking to customers to tell them how much their bill was and to ask if they had any coupons. As in her profile photo, her brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. In person, she looked much older than her thirty-three years.

  Gretchen left Josie just inside the store while she went in search of the manager. Fifteen minutes later, Kelly led them sullenly out to the parking lot, around to the side of the building. A light mist had begun to fall from the heavy clouds overhead. Beneath a small overhang, a lone ash tray stood among the weeds on the cracked asphalt. Kelly took a long drag from her cigarette and wrapped one arm across her chest like a shield. “I don’t know nothing about that looting last night. I know you got my brother, but I wasn’t there. I was home sleeping, minding my business. I got a job. I don’t need to steal stuff. My brother, you know, he got into the drugs, or whatever. I don’t do drugs. The looting and all that wasn’t even his idea. He started running with that old dude, what’s his name? He got arrested last night too, you know. You should talk to him, not me.”

  Josie and Gretchen stared at her.

  Jo
sie said, “We’re not here about any of that.”

  Kelly thrust her cigarette into the air. “Zeke!” she exclaimed. “That’s his name.”

  Josie’s heart went into overdrive for a few seconds, before settling back down. Quietly, to Gretchen, she said, “Zeke was arrested last night for looting?”

  Gretchen frowned. “I don’t know, boss. Noah and Mett handled it.”

  Why hadn’t Noah told her? Or perhaps he had tried to tell her, but she’d gotten the call from Alice and hadn’t had a chance to speak privately with him since. Did it matter? she wondered. No, she decided. Nothing that Larry Ezekiel Fox did mattered to her. She cleared all thoughts of him from her mind and focused on Kelly.

  Gretchen said, “Kelly, we’re here to talk to you about Beverly Urban.”

  Kelly stared at her for a long moment. She took a final drag of her cigarette, tossed it onto the ground, and stepped on it. Then she took out another cigarette and lit it. After a deep inhale, she said, “Beverly Urban. I haven’t thought about her since high school.”

  “You were good friends,” Josie said.

  Kelly straightened her shoulders and with some pride, said, “I was her best friend.”

  Gretchen asked, “When is the last time you spoke to her?”

  Kelly’s chin dropped to her chest. She sucked in some more smoke and let it back out. “Why don’t you ask me when she last spoke to me? We were best friends and then one day she just stopped calling and stopped coming around.”

  “You didn’t think to check on her?” Josie asked.

  Kelly’s brow furrowed. “Check on her? Like what? In case she was sick? She wasn’t sick. I went to her house and she was gone. Her and her mom. They took off. Didn’t tell anyone. Just left.”

  “You didn’t find that unusual or suspicious?” Gretchen asked.

  “Nah… they said they were going to have to leave. They were broke as hell. No way were they getting out of moving. I just didn’t think they’d leave without saying goodbye or that Beverly wouldn’t ever call me again. But it was probably her mom. She had a real bug up her ass.”

  Josie said, “About what?”

  Kelly laughed. “You think I don’t remember you? You were there. About what. Please. You knew what Beverly was like. Always getting into trouble.”

  “I wasn’t friends with her. I need to know what kind of trouble she was in before she left.”

  For the first time, Kelly seemed to realize the significance of two police officers coming to her place of employment to discuss a friend she’d neither seen nor heard from in sixteen years. “Hey, wait a minute,” she said, pointing her cigarette at Josie. “What’s going on here? Did Beverly do something?”

  “No,” Gretchen said. “She didn’t do anything. I’m afraid she’s dead, Kelly.”

  “Oh shit!” Kelly said. She walked in a small circle, as if she couldn’t contain her shock. “Oh shit, she was in that tarp, wasn’t she? On the TV? She was under the house? She was, like, murdered?”

  “Yes,” Josie said. “We’re trying to figure out what happened to her and who might have killed her. Besides you and Lana Rosetti, was there anyone else she hung around with regularly?”

  Kelly shook her head but then she said, “No, we were her best friends.”

  “Did Beverly use drugs?” Josie asked.

  “No, no drugs. She just had her men, you know?”

  “Men?” Gretchen prodded.

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “That’s what she called them. I don’t even know if they were real. Beverly liked to talk. Thought she was hot shit. I mean, she kind of was. She could get any guy, really, but she also liked to tell stories, exaggerate. Whenever she had a crush on a guy, she’d act like they were seeing each other, even if they weren’t.”

  Josie said, “Do you remember the names of any of these men?”

  “She never told us their names. That’s why I’m saying it was hard to know if they were real or not. She talked about them all the time, but we never saw any of them or met any of them.”

  “What did she tell you about them?” Gretchen asked, pen poised over her notepad. “Particularly in the months leading up to the last time you spoke with her.”

  Kelly tapped ash onto the concrete. “She would tell us, like, what they said to her, like how much they complimented her and stuff and what they were like.”

  Josie asked, “Was she having sex with any of them?”

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “She claimed they all wanted to have sex with her, but I don’t know if she really was. Like I said, Beverly was a lot of talk. Most of what she said—about anything—was bullshit.”

  But Josie knew not everything Beverly had intimated was bullshit since she’d been five months pregnant when she was murdered.

  “How many men are we talking about?” Gretchen asked.

  “Like, four,” Kelly answered. “I guess she might have really been sleeping with one of them, ’cause he had a tattoo she always talked about. Like it made him badass or something. Everyone’s got tattoos. But we were young and dumb then. Dating a guy with a tattoo was a big deal.”

  “What kind of tattoo?” Gretchen asked.

  Kelly shrugged and flicked some ash onto the ground. The light mist was turning into steady rain. “Don’t remember. It was big, though, I think.”

  Josie said, “Where on his body? Did she say?”

  Kelly took a few seconds to consider this. “I don’t really know. I don’t remember.”

  Gretchen said, “But you remember she talked about four different guys.”

  “Yeah. One of them was, um…” She stared at Josie and bit her bottom lip.

  “Ray Quinn,” Josie answered. “She was seeing him?”

  Kelly said, “She told us she was, like, behind your back, but I don’t think it was true. Every time I ever saw her try to talk to him, he never gave her the time of day.”

  And yet, Beverly had been wearing his treasured jacket when she was murdered.

  “What about the others?” Gretchen asked, moving the conversation away from Ray.

  “She said they were older. Ray was the only high school guy she said she was interested in. One guy was doing work at her house or something.”

  That tracked with what George Newton had told them. Josie asked, “If she never told you their names, what did she call them when she talked about them?”

  “She had nicknames for them.”

  Josie asked, “Do you remember what they were?”

  Kelly shook her head. She took one last puff from her second cigarette and tossed the butt aside. “Nah, I don’t remember after all this time. Sorry.”

  “Was there one she was more serious about than the others?” Gretchen asked.

  “I don’t know if there was one she liked more than the others,” Kelly said. “But there was one who lost interest in her, and she was pissed.”

  “Any idea who that might have been?” Josie asked.

  “No, sorry.”

  Josie said, “What about Beverly’s father? Did she ever mention him? Did she know who he was?”

  “She didn’t know who he was, and all her mom would ever tell her was that her dad didn’t want to be involved. Beverly didn’t believe her, but I think that was just because she didn’t really want to believe that her own dad would want nothing to do with her.”

  It was a sad detail of Beverly’s life, and Josie wondered what Vera Urban had been thinking when she had told daughter that. Josie wondered if there would have been a kinder way to explain Beverly’s father’s absence to her. Perhaps there wasn’t, without lying.

  “What can you tell us about her mother?” Josie said. “Vera?”

  “She was, like, disabled.”

  “In what way?” Gretchen asked.

  “She had a bad disc in her back. Had to take a ton of Percocet and oxycodones to do the simplest thing.”

  “Was it from an accident or something?” Josie asked.

  Kelly pulled out her crushed pack of cigarettes
and shook another one out, lighting it. The rain pattered on the aluminum overhang. “It was a fight.”

  Gretchen and Josie looked at one another. Josie knew Gretchen was thinking about the criminal record they’d found for Vera. A couple of speeding tickets and a dismissed charge for writing a bad check. Nothing violent.

  “It wasn’t, like, at a bar or anything,” Kelly said, as if fights only happened in bars. “Her and Beverly got into a fight. They were always fighting. Beverly’s mom could be a real bitch. In middle school they got into a real doozy, and Beverly pushed her down the stairs.”

  Josie said, “Beverly pushed her mother down the stairs?”

  Kelly laughed, blowing a stream of smoke into Josie’s face. “That surprise you?”

  “No, I guess not. I just assumed she only took out her anger on people she didn’t like.”

  “What makes you think she liked old Vera? I’m telling you, Vera was a pain in the ass. Wouldn’t let Beverly do a damn thing. They never got along.”

  “Do you know why?” Gretchen asked.

  “Are you listening at all? ’Cause Vera was a bitch!”

  “Okay,” Josie said. “Kelly, we have some other questions about Vera. You said she was disabled with a bad back. Do you know if she worked before that?”

  “Oh yeah, she was a hairdresser. She stopped after Beverly knocked her down the steps. She had to. Couldn’t stand all day, she said. She had surgery on her back, but it just got worse.”

  “Did Vera have a boyfriend?” Gretchen asked.

  “No, she never did. Beverly used to tell her she needed to get laid and she should get a boyfriend and then Vera would say no man would have her because she had a rotten teenage daughter.”

  Again, Josie felt a stab of sympathy for Beverly even though she hadn’t been able to muster any when they were in school together. Then again, Josie had had no idea what Beverly’s home life was like back then.

  Josie said, “Just one last question, Kelly. Did Beverly ever mention anything to you about being pregnant?”

  Her eyes widened. “No. Never. You think she was pregnant?”

  “We really can’t discuss it,” Gretchen said. “How about any friends of either Beverly’s or Vera’s named Alice? Do you remember anyone named Alice?”