by E M Kaplan
Josie Tucker Mysteries
A sweet bundle of books 3 & 4
EM Kaplan
Contents
Dead Man on Campus
Part 1: Orientation
Part 2: Study
Part 3: Midterms
Part 4: Review
Part 5: Finals
Full Slab Dead
Part 1: Spark
Part 2: Smoke
Part 3: Flame
Part 4: Inferno
Part 5: Ashes
Dead Man on Campus
A Josie Tucker Mystery
EM Kaplan
Copyright © 2016 EM Kaplan
All rights reserved.
Kindle Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner, including you, Leah. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For my college friends:
Rebecca Goldsmith, Carmen Krejci Meyer,
Mary (Butler) Krupski, Katherine “K.T.” Levin,
Michele Mandel, Erica Roth,
and Elena (Wright) Kramer
Special thanks to
Katherine Cruz
Megan Harris, editor
Esther Kaplan
Part 1: Orientation
Fast food is a horrible misnomer. While it may be speedy in clogging up your arteries with saturated fats and gunking up your liver with poisons and preservatives, it’s not nourishment. It’s not sustenance. It’s the illusion of food.
Remember that three-course meal chewing gum from Willy Wonka’s factory? You pop a pill in your mouth and it tastes like a cheeseburger. You’re seduced into salivating while nothing of substance is being fed into your body. The culinary palette blends into French fries. By God, you can feel the crispy crunch of them, straight out of the deep fryer. A creamy milkshake soothes the salt from your tongue, with a fluffy-crusted blueberry pie as your soul’s final resting place.
Your tongue is cuckolded while your stomach stays hollow and empty.
Josie Tucker, Will Blog for Food
Chapter 1
The barely legal yet gigantic man-child leaned into Josie’s dorm room, dangling from the top of the door frame by his fingertips and looking like Tarzan in a t-shirt. His meaty triceps flexed as he asked, “You’re a transfer student—am I right?”
Ah yes, student life on campus. Now she remembered how it was. Cold pizza. Communal bathrooms. Noisy halls. No privacy.
“Something like that,” she told him with a grimace, unpacking the new pillow and down comforter set for her single bed. At twenty-nine years old, she never thought she’d be a resident in a 20 by 20 foot cinderblock “cell,” a.k.a. a freshman dormitory room. Yet, here she was, Josie Tucker, food blogger and minimally qualified private detective, enrolled in classes at Bader University in the far west Boston suburbs.
She was in college. Again. Granted, she was undercover as a student this time. Still, she was submerged once again in the hormonal cesspool known as dorm life.
“My name’s Brandon. I live right upstairs,” he said with an eyebrow bobble. Because, yay, coed dorms. At least they were separated by a floor, Josie thought. No shared bathroom with the Lord of the Jungle here, thank goodness. “So if you need anything, like someone to show you around, you know where to find me. ‘Cause I’m right upstairs.” He swung on her doorframe, muscles rippling again.
“That’s…great. Thanks.” Her sarcasm sailed over his head like a vine he failed to grasp.
“You’re older, right?”
Josie tuned him out as she smashed her expensive memory-foam pillow into its new striped case. The red, beige, and navy color scheme was so Tommy Hilfiger. Or maybe Polo Ralph Lauren. She wasn’t great with brands—she hadn’t picked out her new decor. Her wealthy benefactor-slash-puppet-master, Greta Williams, had provided everything.
Josie ran a hand over the fitted sheet and suspected with a thread count like this, they probably were designer. So rich, yet utilitarian enough they made her want to tie them into a rope and sneak out her second-story window as soon as possible.
Tarzan did a chin-up on her door frame. “Do you have kids?”
Josie straightened up, frowning at him. The harsh fluorescent lighting from the box over their heads cast a strange, blueish glow on his blond hair. She twisted and peered at her butt in the mirror. “Does it look like I have kids?”
Her only child was a fur-baby named Bert—a rescue mutt from the pound—and she didn’t think she’d put on any weight lately. Well, maybe a few well-needed pounds because, for once in her life, she was happy and her stomach wasn't acting like a sieve, set to leak out at the slightest change in her emotional barometric pressure. She’d been doing beginner’s yoga off YouTube and lifting weights, subscribing to the channel of a Turkish woman with big muscles and scary breast implants. Josie was almost back in fighting form, for crying out loud. Not bad for someone who’d been both beaten up and stabbed in the back in the last twelve months. Literally stabbed in the back. Yeah. If she could avoid that in the future, she’d be pretty pleased.
“I just mean you look mature. You know, a little bit older than us.” Half of his mouth turned up in what might have been a sexy grin…if she were seventeen. “And MILFs are so hot.”
Thanks to the Internet, Josie was aware that MILF stood for mother I’d like to…fill-in-the-f-bomb. Her food and philosophy blog kept her up to date on if not the latest acronyms, at least the ones from last year.
“Dude,” she said. “I’m not a MILF. I’m not even an M.” She was not old, for crying out loud—and she was nowhere responsible enough to be someone’s mother even though plenty of her real college class already had kids—as well as MBAs, JDs, and MDs after their names. Like her boyfriend, Drew, who was an actual, real life doctor. And pretty dang hot, too. This kid swinging from her door was cute, but he was no Drew.
“Hey, being a MILF is a good thing,” Brandon the boy wonder said. “It’s a compliment. Did you know that, statistically, it’s one of the most searched for types of porn right now? I mean, not that I’m into porn all that much. Because it’s demeaning to women and detrimental to my relationship expectations. At least, that’s what Professor Blaine says. And if I want to get with the ladies, I gotta listen to my Women’s Studies professor, right?”
“Clearly, your mama didn’t raise no dummy.” Her sarcasm flew over his muscle-bound head again.
“Damn straight. But I’m also an equal opportunity kind of guy. I like ladies of all sizes and ages. All ethnicities. All persuasions.” He drew the last word out in an attempt to be sultry, but ended up sounding like one of those kids in that rude movie about Americans and pie.
“Really.” She couldn’t stop the sarcasm from seeping into her voice again. How old was this boy, anyway? If he walked the walk, he seemed to be headed for man-ho status.
“I mean, yeah. I don’t want to limit myself to a type. You’re super attractive in a Lucy Liu way. She’s Chinese. Not that you are, but kind of, am I right? Like some type of Asian? Not that it’s all about looks. It’s what’s on the inside that counts most of all.”
In fact, Josie was half Thai, thanks to her mother. Most people couldn’t immediately identify Josie’s ethnicity because, like a lot of people, she was a nice, mutt-like mix. Not that she used it to her advantage to slip through social strata. Much. At least, not every day. Maybe weekly. Or every other day…no more than five times a week.
But this collegiate Tarzan in front of her was getting his almost-politically-correct mantras all jumbled up in an overgrown toddler kind of way. Cut
e but annoying.
“So you wanna hang?” The hopeful look on his face brought to mind mastiff puppies—baby rhinos, all cute and bulky with unproven and questionable intelligence.
“I’m sorry. I have to make a call. To my boyfriend,” she said with a pointed look. Brandon would have to acknowledge the brushoff when he heard it. He had to, right?
“Aw, why are all the good ones taken?”
She shrugged and gave what she hoped was a sympathetic smile. Thank goodness he’d taken her meaning correctly. She didn’t want to have to kick the puppy.
“So, wanna hang later?”
After she shooed him out and closed her door with a firm hand and a swift click of the flimsy lock, she flopped down on her newly made single bed and dialed Drew, her real, actual doctor boyfriend. She had some serious explaining to do—namely, why she wouldn’t be coming home to their cozy apartment tonight or tomorrow night or…oh lord, how had she gotten roped into this?
Josie knew exactly how.
Greta Williams—that’s how. The woman was both the bane of Josie’s existence and the source of most of its excitement. And Josie was adult enough to realize that she was quickly becoming addicted to the combination. The Boston blue-blood matriarch’s influence in her life was becoming something Josie couldn’t and didn’t want to live without.
“I have a real problem,” she told the acoustic panels of her dorm room’s ceiling.
“Are you okay in there?” Brandon’s voice came through the door.
Josie sat up in bed. “Are you standing out there listening to me talk to myself?”
“Well, kind of,” his muffled voice said, “but not really—”
She crossed the room and yanked open the door. Off balance from leaning against it, the kid fell in. “Whoa. Hey there. I mean, I was kind of just lingering out in the hallway, although I admit I really did want to know if you were actually going to call your boyfriend. Sometimes a girl will say that, you know, just to get you off her back. I mean, is that what you were doing?”
Without a word, Josie held up the cell phone in her hand and, with one finger, jammed the screen where the tiny picture of Drew’s face was. She put the speakerphone on while its metallic ring warbled, praying that it wouldn’t go to his voicemail. If she remembered right, he should be home by now, which was what she’d been waiting and watching the clock for…she really, actually needed to talk to him.
“Hey, babe,” Drew’s voice came through the connection, sounding tinny, yet answering her prayers.
“Hey, boyfriend.”
The sound of his deep chuckle reminded her that she hadn’t heard it in a while. Because of their morning disagreement. Misunderstanding. Current source of discomfort. Whatever it was.
Drew’s voice also successfully slew the hopes of Brandon, who backed away, hands raised in defeat. Finally. She watched him retreat halfway down the hall until she closed her door again.
On her phone, Drew said, “Where exactly are you?”
#
The morning had begun in a very different way—a weird one—worlds apart from her current dorm room digs. She’d been asleep in her bed, home in their apartment.
The first words she’d heard hadn’t been good. Not good at all.
“I kissed Lisa first.” Drew’s voice had filtered into Josie’s ears just as she’d been waking up, her face still mushed in her pillow.
Her brain came online like her ancient laptop—her mind chugging and whirring as the fog of sleep dissipated. …Wait, what did he say?
She lifted her head and blinked at him as the early September sunlight filtered through the window. He knew she wasn’t a morning person. Or an anytime person—her grouchiness was well-documented. Especially with an announcement like this. Usually, the deliverer of such words prefaced them with an I have something to tell you. Or, a We need to talk. Had he said any of those prep words? No, he had not.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued, his weight pressing down the mattress as he sat on the bed—formerly her bed, but now their bed. His aroma of warm dude and clean soap gave her a nose-gasm. She still wanted to burrow into his neck despite his incomprehensible words. “No, scratch that. I have no idea what you’re thinking, but hear me out for a minute.”
She sat up further, the sheets sliding down her summertime sleep ensemble, a tank top and some bikini undies. She shoved back her crazy morning hair. “Are we breaking up? Because this is harsh. I’m not awake. And it’s a Sunday—and you just got home. You’re dumping me, aren’t you?”
Actually, they’d been living together for only a matter of months. They’d been friends for years, but romantic buddies…pals…lovers…only recently, since her ill-fated San Francisco trip, when everything had come to a head like a sublimated chemical process. From a solid friendship into a magical, lovely fairy dust without all the in-between stages.
“NO. For godsake, I’m not breaking up with you.” He looked aghast, his dark eyebrows first shooting up from under the swoopy, dark Italian hair that she loved, then scrunching down into a frown on his GQ-caliber face. Unless he was cheating on her. Then his face was worthy only of the Fingerhut Catalog.
The conversation wasn’t joke-worthy, but she was more confused than upset. Was this the denial stage? Was she headed down dark and dismal Grief Alley, on the way to Heartbreak Hotel?
She rubbed her eyes, trying to buy some time while she made sense of his words. “You kissed Lisa first? Why are you telling me this now? You kissed someone before me? I mean, we haven’t been…” She waved a hand between them. “We haven’t been officially together like this for long. It doesn’t matter who you kissed first.” Though Josie felt the slight urge to track down this Lisa person and make sure it never happened again. Permanently, in the style of a 1920s mob boss with a pair of cement shoes.
But it couldn’t be as bad as it seemed, right?
“I didn’t kiss her first. I kissed you first,” he said, closing his eyes. “Her name is Lisa First. She’s a new Internist at the clinic. Dr. Lisa First. She just got hired in.”
No, it was much, much worse.
Josie crossed her legs and leaned against the head of the bed, hugging a pillow to her stomach. Questions tumbled through her brain, pushing and shoving, jumping over each other like fans in a collapsing soccer stadium, but words didn’t make it out of her mouth.
Was she the other woman now? Because if Lisa was first, Josie was the so-called side piece. No—back up, brain—First was the other woman’s name. Josie wasn’t the home-wrecker here. Josie wasn’t the one putting her lips on someone else’s man.
“Are you…upset? You look confused. Then again…I woke you up, and you’re really not a morning person,” he said. His cell phone rang, and he cursed. “Worst timing ever. I have to take this—I think it’s about my patient who was admitted this morning. Probably going into palliative care.”
Oh sure, leave her hanging in the worst conversation she could ever remember for some important doctory type stuff. Just because he dealt in life-or-death matters didn’t mean he could leave her to stew, tying her stomach up in more knots than usual.
She immediately felt horrible for thinking that—some poor soul was at the end of the line, the last station on the rails of life, and here she was, whining about…some boyfriend-stealing witch.
He shifted off the bed and answered his call on his way out of the bedroom. Their bedroom.
Josie stared at the ceiling. She was confused. Normally tough, sarcastic, and ready to meet each new challenge with a snarky bon mot, she was…disoriented and off her game.
A rhythmic thudding jarred the bed, and Josie glanced down at Bert, a big, brown mishmash of other big, brown dog breeds. His dark eyes glinted as his tongue lolled to the side.
Was he laughing at her?
“Don’t look at me like that. He is not getting custody of you no matter how hard you beg. You’re mine, do you hear me? I picked you out from all those other dogs at the shelter. I d
ealt with the worst bowels in canine history that first year. So don’t even—” Josie sucked in a deep breath. She couldn’t even say it.
Drew said they weren’t breaking up—he wasn’t leaving her—and of course she didn’t want to be dumped. No one wanted that. A burning sensation flared through the center of her chest, and she rubbed it with the heel of her hand.
When he returned, he was moving at a brisk pace, his classy, designer pants and freshly laundered shirt making that whisking noise that sounded so professional. Bert thumped his tail with more vigor—the traitor.
“My patient coded. I have to go back to the hospital, but I’m not on call tonight, so we can talk about this later. I’m sorry, but I have to go. I owe it to his family.”
“But—” Josie was ready to ask questions now, one in particular. But of course he had to leave, she realized that. No one could be so selfish as to demand he stay and chat about the bombshell he’d just dropped on her when someone’s life might be ending. Loved ones needed to be alerted. Utmost care and focus had to be spent on each patient. Josie knew that.
He grabbed his keys off the night table, but she noticed he didn’t stop to kiss her. Maybe he still had Dr. Lisa’s lipstick on him. Josie’s face heated with another flame of jealousy.
The apartment door shut and she flung the pillow onto the floor, growling her frustration through gritted teeth.
#
Josie went through the motions of showering, not paying attention to much—though she may have flung her soapy bath pouf at the wall and might have suffered a backsplash of coconut-scented soap in her eye. Her mind churned in turmoil as she waited for Drew to return home—or at least to call her. She didn’t want to bother him if he had a crisis to deal with, but for once in her life, she was not going to put this weirdness off. She was going to confront it head-on as an adult, not as an emotionally stunted internalizer of problems.