Baby, It's Dead Outside
Page 24
Will this be the last time she trusts me to do a job for her?
The quiet dragged on until the reason for it suddenly hit Josie. She took the nearest exit off the freeway and parked in the lot of a rest stop. Next to her on the seat, Bert perked up and pressed his nose against the window, his damp breath fogging up the glass.
“This isn’t a rental car, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” Greta said. “It’s in your name although it’s still insured with the rest of mine. You should drive it as long as you work for me, and after that, too, I suppose. It’s yours to keep, sell, do whatever you like with—although I recommend using it since that other old car you have seems to be at the garage for the foreseeable future.”
Josie frowned. She often wasn’t good at interpreting her employer’s unspoken thoughts, so just to be clear, she asked, “This means you would still like me to work for you, correct?”
Greta it seemed had the same difficulty in comprehending Josie’s meaning. She said, “If you’re asking what I’m going to ask you to do next, we’ll discuss that after you arrive home and have time to allow your ankle to heal properly.”
“All right.” So she wasn’t getting fired after all.
Color me surprised.
“You did the best you could under the circumstances,” Greta added and abruptly hung up the phone.
Maybe so.
When the line went dead, Josie sat back in the seat of her new car and ran her hand along the steering wheel, deep in thought about all the things that had gone wrong on this trip and all the other parts that had been out of her control, until Bert nosed her elbow, ready to go outside for a romp.
“Right. Places to go. People to wag at. Things to sniff.”
After all, life goes on…if you’re lucky.
Notes from The Author
• When I was a kid in Tucson, Arizona, one of our neighbors was a member of the Luden’s Cough Drops family. She was quirky and kind, and left us massive chocolate bars every Halloween.
• Although William Falls Wells is a fictional character, filmmaker Orson Welles attended school in Woodstock, Illinois, which he considered his home town. I dropped a few noir Easter eggs here and there. I hope you have fun finding them.
• I met former McHenry County Coroner Marlene Lantz, who died in 2018, at a presentation hosted by Sisters in Crime Chicagoland. She gave a riveting talk about bugs and time of death. (You can also read about it on my blog at www.JustTheEmWords.com.)
• While I was writing this book, Woodstock, Illinois endured one of its coldest winters on record, including a day that had -58° wind chill. I’m happy to report I didn’t slip on any ice.
Grab the next book in this series!
Josie Tucker Un-Cozy Un-Culinary Mysteries
The Bride Wore Dead
Dim Sum, Dead Some
Dead Man on Campus
Full Slab Dead
Hot & Nerdy Romantic Comedies
The Ella Menza Style
The Six Habits of Highly Annoying People (coming soon)
Rise of the Masks, Fantasy Trilogy
Unmasked (Book 1)
Unbroken (Book 2)
Undone (Book 3)
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About the author
EM Kaplan is an Arizonan who lives in a far, far northwest suburb of Chicago with her family. (Yes, she’s cold.) You can visit www.JustTheEmWords.com to find her social media hangouts, sign up for her newsletter, or just say hello, if you want.