Josie Tucker Mysteries Box Set 2

by E M Kaplan

  Drew spoke up first. “You know, I don’t have any brothers, but I have four sisters and they get that same look on their faces when they talk about me.” Which totally wasn’t true, as far as Josie knew. However, she recognized the white lie as a rapport-building technique, something she needed to practice more. Drew’s older sisters adored him even though they put him in dresses and made them their babydoll when he was small. Their mom had the pictures to prove it.

  After a few heavy sighs and the pursing of the lips behind his snowy Santa beard, Father Michael said, “The thing is, Josh was so much younger than me, I think he was a little bit spoiled. I don’t know if that’s the right word. Entitled, maybe. He was a sweet boy with a rascally personality—and I’m not one to judge on that front because I was the same way—but he never really grew out of some of those weaker tendencies. And I tell you this in the strictest confidence. Just as I keep others’ confessions to myself, I expect you to keep this disclosure to yourselves. As I am your client of sorts, I ask this of you.”

  Josie frowned, not understanding. She glanced at Drew to see if he knew what the priest was talking about. Maybe it was some kind of secret Catholic code she wasn’t picking up on…but no, Drew shrugged. “Sorry, I’m not following you,” she said to Father Michael.

  He put his glasses back on and folded his hands together, interweaving his fingers, which he rested on the desk in a steeple of pinkish flesh.

  “My little brother is the world’s biggest liar-head.”

  Part 4: Review

  Stop cramming junk in your pie-hole. Stick to what’s fresh. Crunchy bites that grew that way in nature, not because they were “baked, not fried.” Foods that are colored by their DNA and not Red Dye No. 5.

  Stay away from pre-packaged, convenience foods. Frosted Toasty Tarts right out of the box. Frozen pot pies with rubber crusts. Woven bricks of starchy ramen noodles and their accompanying salt-bomb spices.

  Fix wayward eating habits. Maybe you’ve gotten to a place in your life when what you’re putting into your gullet finally takes center stage. All your other worries recede just enough for you to realize what’s going into your pie-hole on an hourly basis. Or maybe what you’re eating has propelled you into a health crisis so much so that the issue made itself numero uno on your to-do list.

  Allow me to postulate: nothing is as important as what you eat. Without good food, your body suffers. Without health, well, you’re as good as dead.

  Josie Tucker, Will Blog for Food

  Chapter 30

  “Are you saying the professor doesn’t tell the truth? Because that kind of information would have been helpful to know at the onset of this…endeavor,” Josie said to Father Michael. Good lord, she was chastising a priest. And here comes my personalized hand-basket to hell. However, she kind of wanted to strangle him for his initial reticence when he’d hired her through Greta. Figuratively speaking. She didn’t actually want to murder a man of the cloth. Maybe just kick him in the knee.

  Father Michael’s expression said more than his childish name-calling, and his exasperation was evident. “I’m saying that Joshua is a pathological liar, from his constant cheating on his wife to his very position at the university. I doubt everything he says, all of his credentials, his publications, his personal beliefs. Anything he says is suspect.”

  “Holy—” Josie received another warning elbow, this time from Benjy, who had appeared by her side. Really? Did he think she was going to unleash her potty mouth in front of the priest? She had a little bit of decorum. Well, most of the time. “—crap.”

  “You might be asking yourselves why I would say such a thing. Why did I ask you to help him with the anonymous poison pen letters only to tell you that my brother is a liar?” Father Michael’s face had turned pink. Though he himself might have been fabricating an untruth, Josie was inclined to believe him. Plus, there was that whole gruesome crucifixion thing hanging over his head. Literally, she realized as she looked up at the painting of a gory Jesus hanging above him. Lots of blood, eyes rolled upward. Wow, that is intense.

  “Well, yyyes,” she said, drawing out the word, unable to tear her eyes away from the graphic Son of God above them.

  “I just thought…I just wanted to help him. He told me about that young girl last year. The one he got tangled up with—did you know she was from right here in Needham? Do you know how terrible it is that her parents are part of my congregation and I have to face them every week?

  “And now there are these letters, which I suspect Joshua might be writing himself in a feeble, misguided attempt to win Aimee back into his life. I just thought he might need some help, that this might be the time in his life that all of his lies come crashing down around him. I thought I might be able to help circumvent a disaster, but now I fear I’m too late. I love my brother—and not just as I love all of my fellow mankind. He’s my little brother, and I failed to mold him into a good person.”

  “Are you your brother’s keeper?” Josie asked.

  The priest rolled his eyes—actually rolled his eyes—at her. “Listen. Do you think I haven’t asked myself that a hundred thousand times? When he came to me to tell me he was cheating on sweet, little Aimee yet again, do you think I refused to counsel him? No, of course not. I told him to try keeping it in his pants for once in his life. That’s what marriage is all about.”

  “Divorce is still…not accepted, correct?” She cringed asking him this, knowing full well the pivotal part he’d played in her own annulment of her quickie Vegas marriage. But she had to ask the question, in light of the problem at hand.

  “The official stance is that the Church doesn’t recognize a civil divorce because the State can’t dissolve what is indissoluble. But I’m not going to kick anyone out the front door for getting one. We also have methods of dealing with previously divorced people who are seeking to remarry. Annulments, as you know.”

  Drew was well aware of Josie’s previous situation. In fact, she’d presented him with her annulment papers as a sort of official apology. She didn’t know what he’d done with them—hopefully not filed them away in a Things To Get Mad At Josie About In The Future drawer.

  Glancing at him as he gave the priest his full attention—like the good former altar boy he was—she couldn’t see him harboring a festering resentment about it. She’d taken care of her mistake, hadn’t she? Although…paying her debt to Father Michael was a lasting ramification she hadn’t expected. Maybe the consequences of her stupidity in mistakenly marrying her ex would have further, long-reaching effects.

  “I offered counseling to Joshua and Aimee at one time. They’d refused to go to a secular therapist and, as a last-ditch attempt to help them reconcile, I asked if I could be of any help. I wasn’t surprised when they declined. And of course, it might have become awkward, but I just really wanted to help.” He wrung his hands once, then twice, and then let them fall into his lap.

  Josie’s ears perked up at the mention of counseling. “Did they both decide not to try therapy? Or was it one of them more than the other?”

  “That’s a very good point. My brother, not surprisingly—as the chief offender—was more than willing to try therapy. I think Aimee had had enough and was ready to throw the towel in. And while I think Joshua’s intentions were good, I’m honestly not sure how well the sessions would have gone. He’s made so many promises over the years, only to break them again and again. We teach forgiveness here, of course, but still, that old adage also has a grain of truth in it—‘Insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome.’”

  “What other kinds of disreputable stuff did your brother do?” Drew asked.

  “First, you have to understand, he’s eleven years younger than I am. Right now, it doesn’t seem that big of a deal, but when I was a teenager, having a toddler suddenly running around the house was a little crazy. For a long time, it had just been my mother and me. Then she married Frank and had Josh. And, well, we all spoiled him. Indulged him wh
en he fussed. Said yes when we should have said no. They say you can’t spoil a baby, but you certainly can spoil an older child.

  “A few incidents stand out in particular. I attended Catholic school all through high school because my mother was a secretary in the school’s office. But my step-father wasn’t Catholic, so Josh didn’t go to those same schools. My mother was able to stay home then while Frank worked. I think it was a little bit of a vacation for her, after having been a single working mother for all those years. Not that I’m saying motherhood is easy—it just got a little easier when she didn’t have to be both parents and the breadwinner as well.”

  Fair enough. Josie nodded. So far, she was buying everything the priest was saying, though it might have been due to his appearance. She didn’t think she’d be able to accuse Santa of fabricating stories for his own personal gain, never mind a man of the cloth.

  “So in high school, Joshua really hit his stride with his classes. He wasn’t in the upper echelon of studies—he didn’t take the advanced track in anything but English and reading. But he suddenly started to flourish after what had been a rather mediocre start to his academic career. His writing took off and matured. And his grades were really the tops of every class he took, except maybe math, which was a decent B-plus or A-minus.”

  “I don’t understand,” Josie said. “Then what was the problem?”

  Father Michael cleared his throat, his mouth drawing up in a tight purse that reminded her of Greta Williams. “The problem was, he was lying about everything. Those solid grades? He’d printed them out on the dot matrix printer at the library. My mother didn’t know what the public school report cards were supposed to look like. She just assumed whatever he brought home for her to sign was the real thing. I mean, who wouldn’t? He went to all the trouble of creating them and printing them out every quarter. And not only that, but making sure he maintained that lower math grade, so he didn’t appear perfect, just pretty darned close to it.”

  Were priests allowed to say “darned?” Apparently so. Or was he already measuring out those Hail Marys for himself?

  “He was devious. And when he was finally confronted with his lies, he was penitent, grateful to confess, and he promised never to do it again. But when the next semester came around, he did it again. It’s as if he’s addicted to lying. Just as much as if it were a drug or alcohol. And he kept doing it again and again.”

  As Father Michael began to enumerate some more of the lies his younger brother had told in their youth, Josie thought back over her exchanges with Professor Sanborn, wondering if she had to flip them from black to white, no to yes, lie to truth, to figure out the reality of what he’d told her and what she thought she knew about him.

  The iffy points that came to Josie’s mind first were…

  He said he hadn’t slept with the young freshman, Alyssa. If he’d lied about that and had actually slept with her, the act might be criminal, depending on her age. Although the age of consent in the state of Massachusetts was 16 for females—but 18 for males, oddly enough—there was a chance of some culpability of wrongdoing.

  If he were a serial liar and cheater, this was probably not the first time he’d angered his wife, Aimee Kohler-Rowski. His ex would no doubt have more insight about his character—if she agreed to talk with Josie.

  And if he was writing the stalker letters with the bad grammar as a lame Hail Mary pass to get his ex-wife back? Yikes.

  If he had lied about his professional credentials, his entire career was in jeopardy. Those money order stubs from his office, now in Josie’s desk drawer, pointed at blackmail. If someone had discovered a lie on the professor’s curriculum vitae or some type of falsification or plagiarism of scholarly work, he would be an easy target for a blackmailer.

  The room had gone silent while Josie’s mind had churned. Benjy had rejoined them while she’d been off in la la land. When she snapped out of it, she found three pairs of eyes focused on her. Okay, that was a little embarrassing.

  “Is Josie okay? She looks like she’s in a trance. Does she need more donuts?” Benjy asked Drew in a hushed tone. Josie ignored her friends for now—although she wouldn’t forget some deserved payback later. But, right now, she had a mission, so to speak.

  She stood, offering the priest a handshake. “Father, it’s been very enlightening talking with you. Thanks for your time—and I can’t thank you enough for… that other issue you fixed for me. However, I just realized we need to get back to campus.”

  She just hoped they’d get there before things went belly up.

  #

  As it turned out, they hit a traffic snarl on the freeway, right before the spaghetti-noodle interchange with the Mass Turnpike. Josie bounced her knee, thinking she’d make it back quicker if she just got out and walked.

  “Was it just me, or did it sound like Father Mike has more than brotherly affection for his sister-in-law, Aimee?” Drew asked. “If you know what I’m sayin’.”

  Josie did a double-take. No, she hadn’t picked up on any romantic vibes from the priest in regard to Aimee Kohler-Rowski. She squinted at Drew, wondering if he was secretly streaming junk TV on his tablet while she was sleeping. His mom and aunts were big fans of As It Happens, one of those daytime soaps that had been running for decades. Josie would have to check the DVR when she got home—if she could ever figure out how to navigate the menus with the remote with a million buttons. Seriously, the buttons on that thing made her feel like someone’s grandma. Did a remote really need fifty-three buttons?

  “You should get off the freeway and take South Street,” Benjy said from the back seat of Drew’s Jeep.

  “We’re exiting at South Street anyway,” Drew said. “It’s getting to South Street that’s the issue.” He waved a hand at the standstill traffic. An irate driver was edging out into the emergency lane, pulling an illegal maneuver just to get ahead one car. “Just where do you think you’re going, buddy?” Drew addressed him. Though his tone was mild, his knuckles gripped the steering wheel tighter. Still, that was the extent of his road-rage, and Josie was in awe of his restraint. If it had been her at the wheel, the f-bombs would have been blitzkrieg-ing like confetti in a Disney World parade.

  “Maybe there’s an accident,” Benjy said.

  “Maybe it’s 5:15pm on a weekday,” Drew said.

  A helmetless motorcycle rider zipped by them on the white road stripe, splitting the lanes. Two violations for the price of…oh, maybe his life.

  “Organ donor,” Benjy said, though Josie had known him to ride without a helmet now and then—but mostly so she could use his if she rode with him.

  “Nothing left to donate. That guy’ll be a grease smear on the pavement,” Drew said, and Benjy gave an uh-huh of agreement, momentarily bonding in their mutual condemnation.

  Josie knew they were trying to give her some space to figure things out. She wanted to clue them in on her current theory, but it was only half-formed in her brain. If this case were a car like the Green Giant instead of a messy situation, the entire engine would be disassembled and strewn around in a thousand pieces on the garage floor.

  All she needed to do was put the parts back together.

  Chapter 31

  “Professor Blaine, I’d like to speak with you,” Josie said.

  She’d asked Drew to drop her off near the Humanities buildings on his way to parking the Jeep, thinking she might be able to catch the Women’s Studies professor before the buildings were locked for the night.

  After arming Drew and Benjy with the cell phone numbers for the members of the Scooby gang, she’d assigned them the task of gathering the kids for a pow-wow in her dorm room. In particular, she wanted to chat with Sarah.

  Lydia Blaine was just leaving her office for the night. She turned as Josie called her name, one hand poised to turn the key to her office door. Though this building was separate from the one that housed Professor Sanborn’s office, it was a mirror image of the Religious Studies department. In fact, Profess
or Blaine’s office was the exact spot as Professor Sanborn’s in this building’s twin.

  The tall, fussy Women’s Studies professor was in a pantsuit—an ensemble that might have been a cast-off from Greta Williams’s wardrobe, had Greta ever considered shopping off-the-rack. Navy on navy, with a stern navy-striped shirt underneath. No jewelry today other than a gold chain of links around her neck. And tasseled loafers on her long, narrow feet, which made Josie frown.

  Women wear loafers? Josie would have to ask her fashion-expert friend, Susan, about that. Of course, people could wear whatever they wanted, but for Josie, who used cues and tics to try to suss out a person’s behavior, tasseled loafers seemed significant. Then again, she was often abysmally wrong at reading these very same clues—and she wasn’t sure what hidden meaning tassels might have, other than a possible weakness for Bright Lights, Big City and Reaganomics.

  “I can’t stay. I’m on my way to meet someone,” Professor Blaine said. She seemed flustered, if the sudden blotchy stains on her neck were any indication.

  “We’ll talk while we walk to your car,” Josie said. She’d learned that trick from watching a show on con-artists—she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. See, I can still learn new things after all.

  “Sorry. What do you want to talk about?” The professor hiked a heavy shoulder bag over her arm, and as they exited the building indicated the direction they should take.

  “I was looking for some information about Aimee Kohler-Rowski, actually. I know she’s a friend of yours, and I was wondering what she thought about all this business with the dean and the stalker messages.”