Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  “Crap. Sorry,” she said, springing up from her chair with such nervous speed she scattered her notebook and pen on the steps next to her. The pen rolled and bounced downward until some kind soul stopped it with his foot. Face red and getting sweaty, she grabbed her notebook off the floor, waved the pen saver off to tell him he could keep it, and made a dash for the door. Her last glance back at the front of the room showed Leah giggling into her hand and Professor Sanborn rolling his eyes as Josie fumbled for what she hoped was the mute button on her phone.

  Bursting into the daylight outside the building, Josie held the phone to her ear, hoping she’d successfully sent her Uncle Jack to voicemail because, at last, the blasted song stopped playing.

  “Hello,” she said into her phone, just in case.

  “Josie-girl,” her uncle said. “It’s you, right?”

  “It’s me. Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he called her every day instead of, oh, maybe never. “Got a question for you.”

  Outside in the sunshine, and her embarrassment from the classroom dying down, she was glad to hear her uncle’s voice. He lived way out in Arizona, and she hadn’t seen him since the incident at the Castle Ranch resort…when she’d almost bit the dust. She missed him, her Aunt Ruth, and cousin Libby. Uncle Jack and Aunt Ruth were actually Josie’s great-uncle and great-aunt, and they were getting up there in years, so unexpected phone calls were enough to jangle Josie’s nerves. Though the both of them were probably going to outlast Josie at the rate she was going.

  “What’s up?”

  “You still got your car?”

  “The Green Giant? Yeah, I still have it.” It was currently wedged in her assigned parking space below her apartment near Fenway. They paid extra for Drew to be able to park his Jeep next to it.

  “Well, I tracked down a guy in Framingham who can modify it for you. You’re not too far from there, aren’t you?”

  “Modify it? What do you mean?” She had visions of a chrome turbo charger kit plopped onto the hood of her magnificent beauty. But Uncle Jack would never allow someone do commit such a heinous crime as that on her beast.

  “Aw, you know, make some changes and calibrations. Fix it up a little. It’s been a long time since it really got checked over, I’m guessing.”

  Well, he had her there. While she hadn’t outright neglected the Lincoln, she hadn’t been giving the old beast the attention it probably required.

  “So I’ll give you the address of the guy I know. He’s name is John Dwyer. Met him at a classic car convention a few months ago and forgot all about it until yesterday. Called him up on the phone and he says he has time next week to look at your car. Think you can get it out there in the next couple of days?”

  Yikes. Not only was the car parked back at her apartment, but Framingham was in the opposite direction from where she was now at Bader. Getting a cab back to her place was going to cost a small fortune. Then after she got the car out to the guy in Framingham, she’d have to get a cab back to the university. Major pain in the hindquarters.

  She had some friends she could ask…maybe Susan if she wasn’t under deadline. She was running her own design company, throwing her heart and soul into it since her breakup with the software dork last spring. Drew, obviously, was busy with shifts and hours and kissing women who weren’t Josie. Benjy might be free. He worked sporadically and might actually like to come out and see Josie at Bader. The two of them had had some bizarro experiences together—almost worthy of a buddy movie—in college. Yeah, she’d call Benjy to see if he could help with the car.

  She assured her uncle getting the Green Giant over to his mechanic this week would be no problem and then jotted down the address on the back cover of her notebook when he didn’t give her time to flip to a blank page.

  “I knew you could do it, Josie-girl,” he told her. “Everything else going good for you? You see your ma lately?”

  “A few days ago.” Though Josie’s mother hadn’t recognized her during this latest visit to the the care facility. Not a good day in La La Land for her mother, who had dementia—and had had it since her late forties. Unfairly early, especially since she’d had Josie late in life.

  “Good for you.” He didn’t add any message to pass along. No kisses or hugs to bestow on her mother. He knew it wouldn’t have meant anything to Josie’s mother anyway. “And you’re keeping out of trouble?”

  Josie refrained from clearing her throat—her own telltale sign of when she was lying her butt off—that awkward ahem noise that was almost as bad as Professor Sanborn’s What? no verbal stutter. Her pause before answering was probably just as telling, but she said, “As best as I know how.”

  “I thought so.” He knew her too well.

  Before hanging up, he admonished her to be careful, otherwise her Aunt Ruth would kill her. Which was the honest truth.

  Chapter 14

  Josie hesitated about three seconds before deciding not to go back to class. And how liberating was that? Playing hooky without the guilt.

  But the simple fact of the matter was, she didn’t think she was going to find the stalker by giving the evil eye to the groupies in Sanborn’s classes. What she needed to do was find a better way to narrow down the possible suspects. She needed insider information that she wasn’t going to get from the cagey-slash-oblivious professor. She needed someone on the inside who was observant and ever-present.

  On her way back to the Humanities office in the Goldsmith building, Josie dialed Benjy. She forgot to check the time on her phone—he was a night owl and a late sleeper, but she wasn’t sure how to deal with her phone screen after she dialed. Would it hang up the call? Probably not. And she was in too much of a hurry to mess around. Hopefully, if he was asleep, his ringer would be off—that much even she knew how to do.

  “Hey,” he said, answering on the second ring. When he sounded alert and chipper, she breathed an inward sigh of relief. Not that he would yell at her if she woke him up—she was making a concerted effort not to be a jerk to him ever again. He was sweet, loving, affable, totally irresponsible—and she had a bad track record of biting his head off when her grouchy inner bitch reared her ugly head. Which was more often than she liked to admit.

  “Hi, whatcha doing?”

  “What do you need?” he said immediately, which was enough to make even her prickliest of hearts soften just a tiny bit, like a porcupine being stroked the right way.

  “A favor. And I will totally pay you back.”

  “What do you need?” he said again, and she could hear the smile in his voice. Why didn’t Susan love this guy instead of all the self-absorbed morons she always dated? For that matter, Josie could have fallen for him if not for Drew. Because with Drew around, no other guys existed, as far as she was concerned. She frowned, a pang hitting her right in the solar plexus, at the uncertainty that Drew might not always be around.

  “If you’re not busy in the next few days, I need someone to help me drive the Green Giant out to a mechanic in Framingham. I’m stuck at Bader University for the immediate future, doing a job.”

  Again, not the slightest hesitation before he said, “I can do it tomorrow.”

  “Seriously?” She didn’t deserve a friend like him. And she needed to spend the rest of her life telling him so. “Aren’t you working right now?”

  She could have kicked herself.

  Benjy’s perpetual unemployment, his continual slipshod approach to his financial future, was a sore spot among the four of them—and it was the main reason Susan had never viewed him as a serious romantic contender. Here Josie was trying not to be a big jerk, and she’d gone and stuck her foot directly into her mouth.

  “Oh,” he said, without giving a real answer, that forgiving smile still in his voice, “I have a few things going on. But as it so happens, the next couple of days are open.”

  She swallowed hard, realizing that he’d given her a graceful escape from her clumsy blunder.

  �
�Can you come pick me up here on the way out to Framingham?” She knew he’d have no problems getting into her apartment—she and Drew had given him a key. Susan had a key as well.

  “No prob,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get there so we can find each other.”

  “Thanks. And the car keys are in the fish bowl on the window sill.”

  “Yep. I knew that.” She’d long ago emptied out the fish. It was much better keeping keys in the bowl rather than condemning yet another fish to a death sentence by her adopting it. Now if only people would stop giving her plants to murder as well. She was definitely a serial flora killer.

  As she made her way up the steps of the Humanities building, her feet slowed. “Look, Benjy. I’m sorry I brought up working.”

  A silence spread out so long across the phone, she thought she’d lost the connection. She nearly asked if he was still there. In truth, Benjy was a weird mix of rich and poor—a trust fund kid who’d lost his inheritance because his father had stolen it, gambled it away, and then earned it back—but by then, Benjy refused it, having cut his father out of his life. He’d been raised in the lap of luxury, yet it hadn’t affected him. His sincerity and optimism were intact.

  “Jesus,” he said at last, making her cringe. The solemnity of his tone spelled it all out. Here came the boom, the other shoe falling. He was finally going to call her out on her bitchiness. He was going to jettison her butt and her flimsy efforts at friendship.

  Standing still on the steps, blocking foot traffic, Josie waited for his pronouncement. His final words.

  “Did you…did you just apologize for something?” he asked. “You? Josie Tucker? Apologized. Waitaminute. I think I might be dreaming. Because this can’t be what I’m hearing. Why, oh why, didn’t I record this conversation? I need an instant replay. Because I can’t believe it!”

  Head hanging down for a minute, Josie snorted, then resumed her climb of the steps. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I deserve that.”

  “Holy crap. Another meteor hits. The earth shakes. Major landslides crash down! Did you just accept the blame for that?” He was on a roll now, and she didn’t want to stop him for the world. Instead, she just sighed into the phone, making sure he could hear her windy, defeated noises over their connection.

  As she pulled the handle of the building’s door, she wrapped up their chat. “I gotta go, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You know you love me,” he said in his silly sing-song voice he always used when he knew he was right.

  “Yep, I do. I really do.”

  Chapter 15

  “Are you Jane?” Josie stood opposite the woman at the desk just down the hall from Professor Sanborn’s office in the Humanities building.

  The admin was a petite blonde with tight, corkscrew curls that surrounded her head in a fuzzy cloud. Her trendy, cat-eye glasses were black and turquoise, and though she wore no makeup, she was pretty. The deep color and freckling of her skin marked her as an outdoorsy type. Coupled with her thin build, Josie guessed she was a runner. Or a hiker. Someone who spent way more money on athletic apparel and shoes than Josie.

  “Hang on a minute,” the woman said. She stuck one finger up in the air. A female student had come up with some question about paperwork for dropping a class. “You need to get the signatures of both Professor Sanborn and the dean,” Jane told her.

  “What dean?” the girl asked, popping her gum. She was wearing blue flannel pants with cartoon bananas and monkeys on them, and Josie realized she had an identical pair at home. And that they were pajama bottoms.

  “Dean Handley.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Jane rolled her eyes and stuck out her hand. “Give me the paper. I’ll get the signatures and turn it all in for you. It needs to be in by the end of the week anyway. That’s the deadline.”

  The girl handed over the sheet, looking doubtful but grateful nonetheless. Yet, Josie noticed, she didn’t offer Jane any thanks for her trouble.

  “Freshmen,” Jane said with a mixture of affection and contempt as soon as the girl got out of earshot. Then she turned to Josie. “Okay, how can I help you? I’ve got about a half hour until this big-shot luncheon I’m supposed to attend. But I’ve never known a problem around here that couldn’t be solved in fifteen minutes.”

  “Well…” Josie started, angling for the right approach. She didn’t know how much she was at liberty to reveal.

  Holding up a thin, tan hand with nails cropped down to the skin, Jane said, “I know who you are and what you’re doing. Just tell me how I can help. Like, really, how can I help you? I take it very personally that someone is screwing with the balance of this office. I try to run the smoothest ship possible, and clearly, Professor Sanborn is not at his best because of this. We could lose grants, funding, donations, you name it.”

  Blinking, Josie readjusted her strategy. Just as she had suspected, this woman had her finger on the pulse of the department. She was an untapped resource, waiting for Josie to pick her brain. She might very well have her own list of suspects, persons of interest.

  “Do you know who’s sending Professor Sanborn the letters?” So much for a subtle, calculated approach. Josie wanted to slap herself upside the head. Every once in a while, a filter on her brain-to-mouth connection might be useful.

  Jane rolled her eyes. “If I knew, do you think I’d sit here and not do anything about it? That’s just ridiculous.”

  “But you have theories?”

  “Every professor develops his or her own set of special students. And by that I mean crazy ones. Professor Sanborn has more than his fair share.” She tapped the side of her thick-framed glasses. “It’s the eyes. They’re like Paul Newman’s. Attractive as hell. No one is immune.”

  “Not even you?” Josie was only half-kidding.

  “Yeah, right.” Jane scoffed. “If I felt that way about men, maybe. As it is, I find his powers of attraction annoying. All the extra students clogging the hallways after classes. I mean, I’m fine with the students who legitimately have issues and questions—don’t get me wrong. You’re not recording this conversation, are you?” Her thin shoulders twitched as she dry-coughed. After a second or two, Josie realized the woman was laughing, not choking. “If you are, I do love my job tremendously. I really want to see whoever’s writing these letters spoken with. I really don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “I have the letters,” Josie said.

  “Oh, good. All twelve of them?”

  “All—what?” She stared at her. “Five. I have five of them.” Twelve? Twelve letters?

  “Well, hell. I hope he didn’t misplace the others. I’ll let you into his office after lunch—I don’t have time right now. I think he’s out for the afternoon after we eat, so he won’t be in our way when we’re mining through that disgusting landfill of a desk.”

  “You got yourself a deal.”

  “The doozy was the one that was attached to his door with the knife through it. Did you get that one? It’d have a hole in the center from the blade.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “I take it that’s a no.” Jane gestured toward Professor Sanborn’s office. “That’s why he hung that Escher poster up there. To hide the hole from the knife. He must still have the knife in that desk of his, too.”

  “This is way worse than he led me to believe. I really think he should have involved the police.” As Josie digested this new information, her gaze wandered as she planned her course of action—and rested on the potted plant in the corner of the room.

  “And that’s the plant?”

  Jane nodded.

  “And there were no clues in it? No hints about who’d brought it?” The pot was huge, not like someone could sneak it into the office in a backpack. It was probably a five-gallon container. The plant itself was at least two feet tall with broad, green leaves. A rubber tree, as the professor had mentioned earlier.

  Ridiculous. This was not a method of stalking Josie believed in—unless the recipie
nt were a person like herself who felt guilt every time she murdered yet another houseplant. Being crushed under the weight of her dread of responsibility wasn’t exactly a huge threat.

  “I don’t know if it’s a big deal,” Jane said, echoing Josie’s thoughts—or perhaps, reading her notoriously transparent face, “but it’s my plant now.”

  Okay, so fine. The plant was nothing. However, the knife was definitely something. Why weren’t these people calling the police? Then again, Josie had a recent history with knives. Was she being over-sensitive?

  She pondered that for a few seconds. Getting stabbed had messed with her perspective. Was she finding dangers were there were none?

  “Oh, and before I forget, Professor Sanborn had me print out his class rosters for you.” She handed Josie some papers that looked like spreadsheets. “Those lists include students who dropped the class already and also ones who haven’t dropped yet, like our little genius who was just here. If you have any trouble figuring out the codes in column D, just ask.”

  Josie nodded and hoped one of her actual high-IQ geniuses in the Scooby gang would be able to help her decipher the lists. They looked lengthy at first glance. Lists of names without faces or personalities weren’t going to be a whole lot of help to her.

  “Tell me about Ida Mae Rubens,” Josie said, going back to the ultra-conservative guest lecturer who was due to speak at the university in a few days. “Whose idea was it to bring her here for a talk?”

  Jane rolled her eyes again. “That woman. Apparently, she graduated from here, but seems to have had some kind of traumatic brain injury—just a guess—or something that made her reverse her political views in a complete 180 turnaround. A filthy rich university donor in the upper echelon wanted Ida Mae to speak here, so Eric rolled over like the doormat he is. In fact, the donor is the one whose lunch I need to attend today. So, Eric is the person who helped sponsor the talk along with the CSA—one of our student organizations.”