by E M Kaplan
Susan shook her head again and closed her eyes, clearly overcome. “I just need to lie here for a minute.” She was asleep before she finished her sentence.
Chapter 7
In her short twenty-some years, Josie had had a moderate amount of exposure to death. Her own father had died of a heart attack when she was just a teenager. That had been a quick, but painful passing. She had been with him, waiting with him for the ambulance, and time had seemed to stand still. In college, Drew’s father had died a violent, confusing death. That had been a mess. She had helped Drew as much as she could.
Leann’s death, however, was something distant and unsettling. It seemed Shakespearean to her, in that it had happened “off stage,” so to speak. There was just the messenger who had appeared with the news. Then Gertrude—Hamlet’s none-too-innocent mother—in the form of the vaguely sinister Greta Williams arrived on the scene.
She came alone, stately and straight-backed, just as Josie remembered her from their two brief encounters at the wedding and rehearsal. Greta Williams wore a pale gray suit with a crisp, tailored white shirt, almost masculine. The gray color of her suit made it seem as if she were not quite in mourning, which matched her words.
“I’m sure your friend, Susan, has told you what has happened,” Greta Williams said, very businesslike. She sat on Josie’s worn couch a cool distance from where Susan, still exhausted by her shock, sat at the other end of it. Josie sat across from them and met eyes with Susan. She had not offered her guest a drink. She was sure that Greta Williams would not have taken one, if offered. Why spend the formality on a useless ritual when it would be met with certain rejection? The woman was sitting formally on the couch, as though she thought Josie might serve her a glass of water in a Mason jar.
Josie nodded and struggled to say something appropriate. Condolences weren’t it. Greta Williams didn’t seem to be sad or shocked, even. Her hard, unblinking eyes bore into Josie.
All Josie said was, “Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Let me say first, that it was not my idea to come here to see you.” Greta Williams sat stock-still. It was hard to tell if she had ever been an attractive woman. Perhaps in the Beacon Hill sense—old blood, old families, mental illness, skeletons in closets. That kind of thing. She had a chiseled jaw line like Maria Shriver. Her lips were thin, with creases leading into her mouth as if her mouth were a fissure or a geyser in a topographical scape. Her eyes were catlike, like her son Michael’s. Her forehead was smooth with just a hint of blue veining at the temple. Her hair was steely gray with coarse ribbons of white pulled together in a tight coif. Her posture, however, was lovely—no other word for it. The way she moved, the way she sat suggested sculpture. Frozen movement. A kind of trapped fluidity. Perhaps she had been beautiful once, maybe a hundred charity fund raisers and a million martinis ago.
Greta Williams met Josie’s eye squarely and then, oddly, faltered. “Lydia—Mrs. Ash…likes you.” She said it as if it were an anomaly beyond her comprehension. “She reads your column every week and feels as if she knows you and can trust you. In combination with the fact that you are one of Leann’s friends—”
“Mrs. Williams, let me stop you right there. I didn’t know Leann that well at all,” Josie said, somewhat surprised to catch Greta Williams’s use of the present tense in reference to Leann. “The fact is, I was just filling in for one of Leann’s friends who couldn’t be in the wedding.”
“I know that,” Greta Williams said evenly. “I am here to represent Mrs. Ash, who is not able to travel in her severely emotional state, and to request on her behalf that you continue with your plans to travel to Arizona and to stay at the Castle Ranch. I saw you speaking to my son Michael at the wedding. He seemed to think highly of you.” Josie was momentarily nonplussed, thinking of their brief and bizarre kiss. No doubt, Greta Williams had observed it as well. “My son Michael told me earlier of your plans to stay there. My son, Peter, is still at the ranch. Mrs. Ash is not fit to travel right now. I cannot go myself either. We want you to be our eyes and ears.” She let her final statement dangle with perhaps her true suspicions unspoken, the ones that Susan had mentioned earlier. The, oh, little idea that perhaps the bride had been killed by the groom.
“What about Mr. Ash? Has anyone contacted him?”
“Lydia has had a restraining order against him,” she said matter-of-factly. “He was physically abusive to Lydia.”
“And Leann, too?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
Sounded like a yes, to Josie. She attempted to prod her into revealing more about what had happened at the Castle Ranch. “What do you need my eyes and ears for?” Josie stared back at Greta Williams, a game of chicken in defiant stares. Josie betted on her own pig headedness to prevail.
Greta Williams spoke, finally. “My elder son, Peter, is despondent and in shock over Leann’s death. He won’t release the body to let them fly her home. Mrs. Ash wants you to bring Leann home. Needless to say, that request seems out of the question to me.” Of course it was ridiculous. Josie was not a member of the family. She didn’t have anything but the most tenuous of connections to them.
“Why won’t he release the body?” Josie prodded again.
Greta Williams studied her, once again meeting her eyes with a level stare. “I think my son killed her.”
Josie considered this flat statement a small triumph. “Why don’t you call the local police out there? If you have these suspicions, I’m sure they would be willing to listen to you.” Most people could hear dollar signs, even over the phone.
“I have talked with them,” Greta Williams said. “The medical examiner has already ruled Leann’s death accidental. The police can’t do anything further.”
Josie nodded. “Unless you have further proof of what you suspect.” She was trying to get back to the part where she was supposed to fit into the picture.
“I’m not interested in proving anything to the police. If I were, I would be on an airplane myself,” she said. “I merely want to know the truth. Naturally, I’ve hired a private investigator,” Greta Williams added, as if to defy Mrs. Ash’s strange—and perhaps misplaced—trust in Josie. Josie didn’t feel all that insulted. “If you agree to do this, you will arrange to meet this investigator before you leave on your trip.”
“And what other terms and conditions will I have to agree to while I’m on my vacation?” Josie asked.
“None. Just tell us what you see. What you notice. You’re not obtrusive. You will see more than some others.” Josie wondered if she should feel insulted by this description of her. Then, she weighed a few things and figured it was more or less accurate. “Of course, I will compensate you for your efforts,” Greta Williams continued. “I consider myself a fair judge of character, which leads me to advance you half of your compensation now, if you choose to accept my offer.” She slipped a folded check from her jacket pocket and handed it across the table. Josie unfolded the check and her eyes swam. Five thousand dollars. And that was half. In a week or so, she would have the other half. Oh, shit. Sweet, glorious income. More than likely pocket money to Greta Williams, but it made a hell of a lot of difference in Josie's world. Her excitement momentarily and completely squelched any qualms she had about taking the offer. She could feel dirty later—after she paid her bills.
Josie folded the check in half and tried to look cool. She nodded. “I’ll think about it, then.” She stood up, through with the interview, ready to show Greta Williams her way to the door. But Greta Williams stayed seated.
“I’d like your answer before I leave here, please.” The “please” was more of a nicety, as natural as coming from a drill sergeant.
Josie stood, unwilling to sit down, even the smallest exchange turning into a battle of wills. This woman irritated her, yet there was something else going on. Josie didn’t know what it was about Greta Williams, but she felt compelled to trust her and to take her proposal at face value. Of course, this was a woman who was u
sed to getting her way. Demanding it. Josie was just another top of a head in a long line of kow-towers. Or maybe that was also part of it—she was such a small blip on Greta Williams’s radar, it wouldn’t even be worth her while to screw Josie over. In the world of Greta Williamses, what was a Josie Tucker?
“Yes, I’ll do it,” Josie said, fingering the edge of the folded check. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Susan’s jaw drop. “And if I want, I will leave Puerta if I don’t feel right.” She felt like she was ripping the woman off. But really, what was ten grand to Greta Williams? One utility bill? Petty household cash? Screw guilt, Josie thought. She was going to Arizona anyway, might as well take this woman’s money to help pay for it. And a small part of her said, go for Leann’s sake.
Only then did Greta Williams stand up, a queen leaving her own throne room. She handed Josie a business card on her way out of the door. “Contact this person and meet with him before you go on your trip. You and he will coordinate your efforts.”
#
Josie was relieved to shut the door behind Greta Williams. She waited a couple of minutes, and then checked out the front window to make sure that the shiny black BMW had pulled away from the building.
Susan sat on the couch with her mouth agape. “I can’t believe you took her money. You’re going to do it?”
“Kind of a pushy broad, wasn’t she?” Josie said.
“A bulldozer would be gentler,” Susan said.
Josie watched the BMW until it was out of sight. Then she lowered the curtain thinking about the poor dead girl with the pancake makeup on her wedding day. Makeup that might have been covering more than nerves. “I feel like I should have known something like this was going to happen. I should have said something to Leann after that night at O’Malley’s.”
“Oh no, no. Is this what this is about?” said Susan, “You can’t feel responsible. You couldn’t have known.”
But it was more than that. More than that—it was that damn eternal question that kept nagging Josie no matter how she struggled to lock it away. Why? Why, why, why? That single word plucked a fiber in her core. And it was the same fiber that drew the skin of her face together in a knot, like the cord of a purse. It closed her eyes on the face of her dead father as she remembered the day that he died. She’d come home from high school and found him collapsed on the kitchen floor. The earth stopped, it had seemed to Josie then. The sight of someone as strong and as big as he was, this same man who had survived months as a prisoner of war in Vietnam…down on the ground, laid out in a heap from a heart attack—it was wrenching.
Standing by the window with her eyes closed, Josie suddenly could remember the detail of the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It was gold and white in a repeating diamond pattern, flecks of brown in the gold, tiny patterned dents in its shine. The damp strands of his gray hair, the part in the front—the only part long enough to move because of his military-style haircut—actually draped on the floor because his cheek was pressed against it where he’d fallen.
Sixteen years-old she was. Home from school—some activity or another, probably cross country practice. She could see herself in her mind’s eye. With her long, straight hair that she had worn pulled back at the temples in a single clip in the back. Dark jeans with deep yellow stitching. She used to run everywhere, always in a hurry.
She’d come in through the back door and had run over to him, her own chest constricting as if her heart were trying to choke her. And somehow, she’d had the presence of mind to stand up, to call an ambulance, her eyes never leaving him. His chest was still moving then. He was breathing although his eyes were closed and his face was papery and pale.
She waded, as if through water, or a dream. And got down on her knees to turn him over. She lifted his head into her lap. But he never opened his eyes, as if he were concentrating on breathing, on putting one minute behind another, stacking them together until someone would come and fix him.
“Please,” she’d said out loud, and had been startled at the sound of her voice. The room was silent. The pounding of blood in her ears subsided. And it seemed as if time stood still. She said to herself, Please. Never let me leave this moment. Because she knew there was no turning the clock back. And the only way to make him to stay with her was to stop everything. She gripped her father, his navy colored polo shirt—the collar had gotten bent up and out of shape under his cheek. His strong arms hung limply at his sides. He never opened his eyes. And then he had died before the world had a chance to start spinning again.
The ambulance arrived and took them away. She rode with him. But they weren’t working on him anymore by the time they reached the emergency room. He had left her back there, on the kitchen floor, on the gold-flecked linoleum.
There was always the thought that she could have done something more at the time. Sometimes, on good days, Josie told herself that all she was supposed to have done was to go into the kitchen, find him, and to hold his hand while he died. And that she had done her job. Those were good days.
But there was still that damn eternal question Why. Why do we have to experience loss? Why do we have to know that someday we all are going to die? That everything we love, everyone we love, and that we ourselves will cease to exist. And why someone who is the foundation of another person’s world leaves such a gaping wound when they depart. And why someone who is just starting out in life departs so abruptly and, perhaps, violently. A new bride, a girl at the mercy of a predator—the thought of it outraged Josie. And despite her fear and the emptiness in her stomach that was only secondarily physical, she made up her mind.
She was going down there, to Arizona, to find out what had happened to the poor dead bride. To Leann.
Aloud, she told Susan, “Yes. Of course I’m going.”
Part 2:
The Honeymoon
On Aphrodisiacs—It's a common conception that some foods heighten arousal and enhance the sexual experience: mangoes, oysters, avocados, and sushi. What is it about these foods?…For starters, they’re all slimy. Is it coincidence that they share that characteristic with sex? Or the emotion you’re left with after an unpleasant encounter, that you have been slimed. Call me unlucky, but nine times out of ten, a bowl of guacamole with chips has satisfied me more than any relationship.
Josie Tucker, Food for Thought
CHAPTER 8
A honeymoon. What a strange and slightly creepy notion.
Josie wondered if her parents had gone on a honeymoon. She didn't know. When they got married, they hadn’t even spoken the same language. For all intents and purposes, they were strangers, alone with each other for the first time, traveling in an unfamiliar place. No friends and family to rely on. No emotional 9-1-1 to call. Maybe that was the idea: the honeymoon was the boot camp for marriage. Newlyweds were tossed together and forced to rely on each other for survival.
It was hard to imagine—a young G.I. from Framingham and a tiny Thai woman, only 4’8”. From the one remaining photo of her mother from those days, Josie knew her mother had been very pretty. Josie kept the snapshot in a sheath of white paper at the bottom of her cedar memento box. The picture was a “reject” passport photo, one from a series. Even now, her mother was still pretty with hair that was mostly dark. The staff of the nursing home liked to brush and braid it. Once when Josie had gone to visit her mother, she found that someone had put a fresh flower in her mother’s hair. A hibiscus, red like a star fruit. Though, who knew where it came from—the tropical bloom was out of place in Massachusetts.
She shrugged to herself. A honeymoon was not a bad story to make up about her parents now that there was no one left to ask. If she tried to ask her mother about it now, the conversation would probably go something like, “Hey mom, did you guys go on a honeymoon?” And her mother, mired in that faraway place inside her mind where only early memories existed, would look up at Josie with a wide, trusting smile and say, “You pretty girl. What your name?” And then she would look out the window, already washe
d away again by the undertow of distant memories from another country and long-dead faces that Josie had never met and would never know about.
As Josie rode the number 43 bus into town to meet Greta Williams’s detective, she realized how cynical her thoughts had become. Ideally, in a world of charming country churches and fondant wedding cakes—where the worst thing to go wrong was that the hem of the fifth bridesmaid’s dress was slightly longer than it should have been—a honeymoon was a dream. Set in a tropical splendor, the new husband and wife could toss their cares away and delight in each other without any other people nearby to dilute their attention. For the thousandth time, she told herself to lighten up, but then she wondered what there was to lighten up about.
Outside, the morning was warming up with a thermal ferocity usually reserved for untimely funerals and gridlocked traffic. Josie was purposely late, about fifteen minutes after she’d agreed to meet with the private detective Greta Williams had hired. She walked into the Lucky Charm bar with its neon green clover sign. What a misnomer. The bar was neither lucky nor charming. It smelled bad, like urine, body odor, and vomit. If that other sports bar, O’Malley’s, had Irish aspirations, then the Lucky Charm had Irish apparitions—gray-faced, unshaven wraiths clustered near the bar wearing overcoats like 1950s hobos, oblivious to the heat wave outside. Not her choice of meeting places. She looked around at the clientele and took an easy guess at which one was the detective. He was the only one looking back at her. As she approached, he got up to meet her.
“Are you her?” he asked in a thick Southie accent that made it sound like “Aw yah huh?” He was a walking heart attack, in his seventies, she guessed, about forty pounds overweight, and dressed in plaid pants. His silver crew cut hinted at a former police or military career or the desire to have had one. His face was pink—the effects of either alcoholism or rosacea—and the pores of his skin were visible even in this dim light. He had jowls that moved ever so slightly when he talked. His eyes, however, were bright blue, clear, and intelligent.