Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  Josie didn’t know exactly how to respond. With the truth? Following the letter of the law wasn’t her first concern. A semi-truth? She was more interested in finding out the truth and stopping anyone else from getting hurt. Or the raw reality? She still didn’t have a good theory about what was going on at Bader and she was starting to get worried she might never sort out all the moving parts.

  “That’s a good question. We’ll take my car to Framingham, and after you feed me, I’ll show you why.”

  Chapter 28

  John Dwyer was the mechanic who was going to work on Josie’s car. She had been expecting an older guy in his seventies—someone from her Great-Uncle Jack’s era—but Dwyer was only mid-thirties, tops. Spiky dark hair in a grown-out crew cut labeled him as possible former military gone hipster. Colorful retro tattoos and hoops in both ears identified him as artsy—but not in a bad way.

  “Hey,” he said, coming out of his neat, white-and-blue four-bay garage as soon as they pulled up side-by-side next to Benjy in the Green Giant.

  She held out her hand, which he engulfed in his. “My uncle didn’t tell me what you were going to adjust on my car. He just told me to bring you the car. But there’s a few weird things happening with the exhaust.” Like if she didn’t drive with the windows down, she was in danger of killing herself with carbon monoxide. And also, there were big, earth-poisoning clouds of smoke coming from the tailpipe.”

  He just laughed, but failed to elaborate. Not much of a talker, she realized.

  “How long do you think you’ll be keeping my car?” She was protective of the big green eyesore, not that she ever drove it. It was a physical representation of her Arizona family, right here in Massachusetts.

  “A while,” he said, looking amused. A whole bottle of wine and a week of vacation wouldn’t give Josie a tenth of the mellowness this guy probably carried in his pinky finger.

  “I know you,” Benjy said suddenly. A smile broke out on his face, topped by his floppy hair, turned golden by the sun shining on it. “You’re that guy.”

  John Dwyer smiled. “I am, indeed, that guy.”

  “What guy?” Josie asked. Drew shrugged when she looked at him in search of a clue.

  Benjy and the guy were still grinning at each other. Clearly, Benjy had found one of his own kind. A kindred spirit. Birds of a feather. A landsman. She suppressed an annoyed sigh even though it irritated the hell out of her. Now was no time for a slacker reunion.

  “Sorry for being snappish.” She wasn’t really, but it was always nice to give good manners a try now and then. “I’m not sure what’s going on here. And I’m also hungry enough to chew the tires off my car, so I’m going to let my blood sugar take the blame for my bad etiquette, but who the hell are you and why is that relevant?”

  Drew covered his mouth with his big, stupid hand to hide his smile—as if she couldn't see his huge, glossy white teeth back there. She was more than a little peckish, which meant she was getting ready to slug the closest male, which was him.

  “This guy. He’s on a TV show about restoring cars. He’s super famous,” Benjy told her. He gave a hop, as if his excitement were too much for his wiry body to contain. “He’s like those guys who build fish tanks out of weird things—jukeboxes, VW vans, coffins. Or the ones who go around buying abandoned storage units with all the junk in them, hoping to score a lost Picasso or handwritten Gettysburg address.”

  Eh. Kind of cool, she guessed.

  Josie was rarely impressed with fame. As it turned out, most celebrities were just as flawed and messed up as normal people—maybe even more so. She was more interested in learning what John Dwyer’s skills were.

  “I don’t think she’s as dumbstruck as you are,” he said, which kind of impressed her. His sardonic approach to his apparent celebrity raised him up a notch or two in her estimation.

  “You don’t even know how cool this is. He converts fossil fuel engines so that they can run on recycled commercial waste products.”

  Josie blinked. She wasn’t sure if she was comprehending correctly. “Fossil fuel. You mean gasoline?”

  “Yep. Good old 87 octane, regular unleaded.” John Dwyer’s natural languidness was impressive. He gave the impression of being someone who had his crap together—amazing for someone who hadn’t even reached middle age yet. Josie wasn’t sure if she’d ever reach that emotional milestone, no matter how old and gray she got—or whacks on the head she survived.

  “And the recycled waste products? What are those exactly?” She could feel her hands creeping up to her hips and her eyes narrowing as her irrational, territorial surge crested. The Green Giant was her car, and no one was going to defile it. The last thing she wanted was for her car to be so green it was actually…well, green…if it were going to run on dog poo or human waste.

  “Commercial cooking oil.”

  She paused, another full-blown squint taking over her face—this time, with her full permission. “My car is going to smell like regurgitated French fries? Like fast food farts?”

  John Dwyer laughed a long, low chortle, but didn’t disagree. “Normally, I’d take a lighter weight car, like a Japanese make coupe or sedan to retrofit with a…” he paused, then smiled again, “French fry upgrade. But your Uncle Jack and I chatted a bit about your Green Giant here and thought it might be a good project for me. I’ve developed a hybrid electric system that might actually be able to boost the power to a big, heavy vehicle like this.”

  Josie shook her head, which was swimming a bit. The afternoon sunlight was bright and making her dizzy. Hunger—it was just hunger.

  Retrofitting her American beauty of a car with parts that ran on fast food oil? Maybe it was apt. Maybe…it was …actually kind of perfect. All those heavy steel gears and parts moving in concert, a happy interaction of several systems…A layer of shiny new parts on top of the old ones. Interconnected but separate, working together, everything tight and snug under the hood…

  She blinked, her vision going wavy.

  Holy crap. Epiphany time.

  She tilted her head, thinking, and abruptly lost her balance. Her ankle wobbled, and she sat down hard on the curb.

  #

  “Oh my.”

  “Whoa. Are you okay?”

  “Holy shit, are you pregnant?”

  “NO,” she and Drew said in unison.

  “Whoever asked that question—and Benjy, I know it was you—I’m going to kill you. Like actual murder. I’m not kidding. Pregnant? As if,” Josie said, attempting to lurch back up on her feet. She changed her mind as another wave of dizziness and nausea swept over her. Doing a quick assessment of herself, she couldn’t find anything majorly wrong. Nothing hurt. The palm of her hand was scraped raw from landing on it, but otherwise, she was recovered enough that the sidewalk with its black chewing gum stains was starting to gross her out.

  A firm hand landed on her shoulder. “Hang on a minute. Don’t get up. Just stay where you are,” Drew said. Good thing, too, because she was still kind of dizzy. Face-planting into the gutter would have been a definite bummer.

  When she was able to look around without getting light-headed, she gazed at Drew. He was crouched next to her, his serious doctor face not quite obscuring his outright concern. The boyfriend face, she thought. She liked it.

  “Dude,” she heard Benjy say to John Dwyer, “you got a donut somewhere around here? She gets hungry. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird. You have to feed her or she turns into a gremlin.”

  “Never did like those cars,” the mechanic said, his voice fading as he ducked back into his shop. He was back in under a minute with a box of some very fine, hand-crafted, honey-dipped beauties.

  Drew waved one under her nose until she chomped it and almost fainted again because it was so delicious. The pastry had to be from Karma’s, but she’d thought they were only available in the financial district of Boston or way out in Saugus or somewhere. But, no, she would swear on her life these were the world-famous Karma donuts.<
br />
  “Thanks,” she told John Dwyer through a mouthful. Though she was only partly thanking him for the sugary bit of paradise—the rest was for the brain flash about what was going on at Bader.

  “I’ll add it to your tab,” he said, joking.

  “Speaking of which, how much am I going to owe you for the work on my car?” She was concerned about that—it sounded beyond expensive. Most environmentally sound ideas were. But more importantly, she wanted to wrap up their exchange so she could get get some real food before she passed out for good. After that, they needed to hit the road. She had one more lead she wanted to track down and then hurry back to campus and stop the escalation of events before someone else got hurt.

  “Your uncle and I have that under control,” he said.

  She didn’t know what that meant, but if Uncle Jack had a hand in it, she trusted both of them to work out something mutually beneficial. Her uncle had been dealing with movie people in Hollywood for decades—they contacted him when they needed a rare or unusual car for a shoot. He wouldn’t let anyone take advantage of him, and oddly, she felt as if she could trust John Dwyer to gut her car and replace its heart—but not its soul.

  Her magnificent, brain-flash lightning bolt, as she’d sunk to the gunky curb, was that the craziness happening at Bader was the result of several parts working together. She’d been approaching this thing from the wrong angle—that there was a single fulcrum to this Gordian knot. Her confusion hadn’t been helped by the fact that she’d been forced into the situation from a roundabout, backdoor route—the stalker letters. A total red herring, so to speak.

  Those letters had been like a gear shift of a car. They looked as if they were in control of all the motivation, the directional changes, the start and stop of the vehicle. But the gear shift was just a handle. Yes, the letters had brought Josie to campus, but underneath, many moving parts—cogs and belts—were at work.

  Numerous people had their hands in this poisonous mess, and Josie was getting closer to untangling it.

  At least, she hoped so.

  Chapter 29

  “I will never understand how a person of your size can eat so much,” Benjy said. He stared at Josie and then at the last fried spring roll, his fingers tapping with anticipation on the tablecloth. They were at a Thai place called Siam I Am in Northam’s quaint downtown, which Josie had yet to explore, trapped as she had been on campus with no car. Right now, she was prepared to go across the table for the last appetizer.

  Drew said with a wary look, “You probably want to take your hand off that spring roll, Benjy, or you’ll be drawing back a bloody stump.”

  Could she help it she was hungrier than a T-Rex? She felt like she hadn’t eaten since the Triassic. Monday seemed so long ago. She could suddenly see how, if she were forty feet tall, a yellow theme-park Jeep might seem like a tasty candy-coated shell that harbored human-colored nougat. Good lord, did I just indulged in some fantasy cannibalism?

  Benjy eyed the plate again and then looked at Josie. She watched him, not ready to forgive him for that pregnancy crack. Then again, if she ate too much, she might just have a food bump protruding from her midsection that looked like a second trimester pregnancy.

  “This here is what I call a Mexican standoff,” Drew said, watching them as they eyed the last spring roll. He said it in his best cowboy accent, which was quite horrible and would have made her smile if she hadn’t been so focused on the food. Crispy layers of paper-thin wrapper, swaddling delicate strands of bean-thread noodles, cucumber, carrots, and a coarse mixture of shrimp, shallots, and garlic…a.k.a heaven. If she were a gunslinger, she’d go down shooting.

  They were saved from a potential Old West showdown by the arrival of the rest of their lunch. Nam tok neau, or waterfall beef, which was meat marinated in lime juice, chili flakes, and fish sauce—a ubiquitous staple of Thai food—and grilled until it sizzled like a flowing waterfall, then sliced and served over a bed of greens with a bowl of sticky white rice. The tangy meat was charred to a perfect crisp on the outside and pink in the center, just as Josie would have done it herself.

  Also in their order was a curry dish—Drew loved spicy foods—and a slippery noodle dish that passed Josie’s inspection. No complaints from her. She was finally being fed to her satisfaction—although she did take the last spring roll while shooting a not-really-angry but squinty-eyed glare at Benjy. Without further ado, they dug in.

  “So what are we doing next?” Benjy asked.

  “Shhhh, just let me enjoy my first decent meal in days,” Josie said, closing her eyes with a bite of tender beef. She chased it down with a small mound of sticky white rice.

  “Fine. But I’m only waiting through your first helping. If you want seconds and thirds, you have to start talking.”

  “Don’t worry. This won’t take long.” She was only slowing down enough to avoid accidentally inhaling the tablecloth.

  True to his word, Benjy held back his questions until after she was done with the last grain of rice on her plate. Fair enough. She could be accommodating—she wasn’t hangry anymore. Before she went for another helping, she said, “We’re headed to Needham next.”

  “What’s in Needham?” Drew asked. The wealthy suburb was on the opposite side of Northam, about the same distance away as they were now. She was hoping they’d find who they needed to see, but she wasn’t going to rely on fate for that. She pulled out her mobile phone and searched for the number for St. Ann’s Parish.

  “We’re going to get a little religion.”

  #

  They were headed to church. A Catholic church, no less. The last time Josie had set foot in a church, she’d been part of a wedding in downtown Boston. That church had been a pointy Romanesque structure built more than a century ago. Spires, steeples, bell tower, decrepit priest and all. Incredible and unforgettable. Especially after the bride died.

  As luck would have it, Father Michael, the original client who’d brought Josie out to Bader in the first place, was in his office in Needham. He had been willing to shift his appointments around so they could speak with him, which was more than generous.

  “This is the father’s brother?” Benjy asked from the back seat of Drew’s Jeep.

  “No, this is the professor’s brother, but he’s a father,” Josie said.

  Drew chuckled.

  “He has kids?”

  “A whole flock of ‘em, I guess.”

  “Are you messing with me?” Benjy asked, a frown marring his usually smooth forehead—but just for a second. His easy grin came back in no time. He was smiling when Josie would have been ready to kick him in the shin had their roles been reversed.

  “Yes, I am.” She took mercy on him. “We’re going to see Father Michael Sanborn. He’s Professor Sanborn’s brother and the reason we’re all gathered together here today.”

  “Are we getting married?” Benjy asked—we meaning Drew and her.

  Josie cast a side-long glance at Drew and was surprised to see him watching her expression, deep thought making him seem serious. And just what did that look mean, mister?

  “No, but I have a few questions about the good father’s brother.”

  As they pulled into the parking lot of St. Ann’s Parish, Josie had to readjust her expectations. Rather than one massive church, the parish seemed to be a cluster of mid-twentieth century, low-slung buildings. A funky, bricked bell tower rose from the side of one building in a disturbingly asymmetrical configuration. Probably didn’t even have steps. So much for finding Quasimodo.

  Drew, her resident Catholic, looked at her and said, “You were expecting something else? A parish is more like the community, whereas a church is the actual building, I would say.”

  They wandered up a cracked cement walkway until they found the parish offices.

  “I’m going to walk around and explore,” Benjy told them.

  “Don’t spill any holy water,” Josie said.

  “Why? Are we going to need it to fight vampires
? No one told me there’d be vampires,” he said as he chose a different walkway to follow.

  Josie nearly said, God willing purely as a joke. But she wasn’t clear on the rules about being a smart-ass on religious grounds.

  “You must be Josie. I’m so glad to meet you.” A voice behind Drew and her made them both pivot a full 180 degrees.

  Josie gaped. Santa? Luckily, her initial surprise kept her from blurting it out. Father Michael was a picture-perfect St. Nick. A blue button-down shirt stretched over a jolly belly, which probably shook when he laughed. Behind wire-framed eyeglasses, twinkly blue eyes—not much different from the professor’s—with laugh crinkles at the corners hinted that Father Michael was full of chuckles. A full, fuzzy white beard rounded out his ruddy-pink face.

  “Wow, you look just like—” she started to say when Drew jabbed her with his elbow. He knew her too well…but not this time. She gave him a look. “Your brother. There’s a strong family resemblance.” He seemed to be in his 60s. The professor was in his 40s, but Greta had mentioned they were half-brothers, which explained the age difference.

  Father Michael smiled. “It’s the eyes. Our mother had the same bright color. It got me out of a lot of trouble when I was younger. And into some other trouble altogether, I’m not gonna lie.”

  He invited them into his office, where they sat across from him in a setup that had her comparing it to chatting with Professor Sanborn. Where the professor was disheveled and disorganized, Father Michael was tidy. His office was small and weathered—scuff marks on the linoleum floor tiles and scratches on his metal desk—but nothing was out of place. Pens standing straight in a pen cup—check. Phone aligned with the edge of the desk—check. Stack of bibles at his elbow—check. He rested said elbow on his desk and braced his chin on a big, meaty hand.

  Those massive hands were probably great at making toys and steering a sleigh.

  “What can I do for you folks? I’m assuming you’re here to talk about my poor brother.” The way he said it made Josie frown. She may have done an intrigued head tilt. Whatever the case, Father Michael shook his head, as if wrestling with himself internally, then he removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, still silent but obviously struggling with what to divulge.