by E M Kaplan
“Which her would that be?” Josie returned, her guard up. He didn’t seem threatening. He wasn’t giving off any side-long leers or otherwise lecherous vibes. But she withheld judgment to see if his verbal repertoire included any unthinking sexist or racist standbys. Or maybe it was just his wardrobe and health habits that were outdated. Hanging out in a place like this wasn’t helping either of those.
The guy looked at a card in his hand. “Says here you should be Josie Tucker.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” she conceded. They walked over to a booth by the window. He didn’t seem fazed by her smart aleck act.
For her, it was early in the day even for Cheerios, but he was already at the bottom of a beer and had wiped out a bowl of fried Chinese noodles—those worm-looking things that tasted like cardboard. Josie was pretty sure it was illegal to be serving drinks at this hour in the morning, but no one inside the bar was complaining.
“Name’s Obregon. We’re going to be working together on the Ash-Williams case.” He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a notebook. “You got any experience in murders?” What a bizarre way of putting it, like it was a business or an industry that should have been on her resumé.
“Just the desire to commit one now and then.”
“You’re being funny, aren’t you,” he said not laughing, but without any malice. After a pause, he said, “Well, I took the liberty of making out a game plan for us, just so you would know what I’m doing back here at home while you’re out there. First of all, here’s my number.” He handed her his card—the same that Greta Williams had given her except with neatly penciled numbers in the corner. “That’s my mobile number. I always carry it, so you can contact me at any time. You got a cell?” She shook her head. There was no room in her budget for one. “No problem. I already have the number for the room where you’re going to be so we have a direct connection. Here’s a list of contacts for you to check out.” He passed her a small piece of paper across the table with about five names and addresses next to them written in the same tiny, fastidious handwriting. “Now, you don’t have to interrogate them or anything. Just be yourself. Go see if they have anything to say.”
“Good thing, because I didn’t pack my torture kit,” she said.
“That’ll be fine,” he went on with his briefing, straight-faced, barely glancing at her with those bright blue eyes. “I have a lot of work to do at this end. I gotta get that wedding guest list. I gotta talk to family friends. You were at the wedding and saw things first hand. Can you tell me anything about the people there?”
“Just your usual mix of high-brow socialites. People we don’t usually rub elbows with,” she said. She watched him carefully to see if he responded to her inclusion of herself with him as fellow outsiders.
He nodded and pressed her further. “Anyone at all that might shed some light on this tragedy?”
“Well, there was something kind of strange—a couple of her ex-boyfriends and their wives showed up. Not exactly Vineyard types, either, if you know what I mean. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing there. Who would invite them? And why would they want to go to her wedding? I kept wondering if there was some special reason they were there. Was Peter trying to show off and throw it in their faces? Or was Leann maybe trying to let bygones be bygones and show them that there were no hard feelings? I didn’t know what to make of it. It was just weird.”
He made some notes. Again in that fastidious hand. “I’ll look into it. I also gotta talk to the girl’s landlord. I gotta talk to her friends here. So we’re going to see if Mrs. Williams wants me to go out there later. But for now, you’re it. And I got to tell you, Josie, this family is tighter than a drum. If you don’t mind my language—they’re really…messed up. We really have our work cut out for us.” He ran a finger around the inside of his shirt collar, trying to loosen it. He’d apologized for his language then had been unable to follow through with it, old fashioned chivalry prevailing.
She laid her hand on the table in front of them. “Tell me,” she said, “Do you think he did it? Peter Williams, I mean.”
“I don’t know, Josie. I don’t know.” Obregon shook his head. “It’s a darn shame. I heard that she was a lovely girl. I just don’t know how these things happen. We just have to do our best and see if we can bring that little girl home so she can go to rest in peace here with her family.”
Josie considered him again. He seemed too compassionate to have been a cop. The most hardened things about him were probably his arteries. She looked at her watch. Most so-called decent people were probably getting ready for church right now, but if they were, she didn’t know any of them. To her, Obregon seemed like decent people in an old school streetwise way, for sure—maybe one that had graduated with the likes of her father.
“What time is it?” She checked her watch to see if it was legal drinking time. “Mr. Obregon, can I buy you a beer?”
His face brightened. “You bet.”
#
The bartender gave her a funny look when she asked for a draft beer and a ginger ale. What he saw, she wasn’t sure—a small woman with dark features in blue jeans and a t-shirt buying a beer for a paunchy man in polyester, mid-morning. Could have been anything. He didn’t card her though like most people did—he didn’t seem to care. Or maybe it was his habit not to.
“What I would like to know,” said Josie handing Mr. Obregon his beer, “is what I’m up against.” She was starting to worry again about her trip to Puerta.
He shook his head. “You can’t think of it that way. You’re not a trained professional. You’re just someone with a personal interest.”
Josie couldn’t argue with that. She was interested in the situation. And it was for personal reasons, just not the obvious ones that might have occurred to him. “Do you know what I do for a living?”
He shrugged. “You’re a reporter. For a newspaper.”
She shook her head ruefully. “No. Not like Woodward and Bernstein or Wolf Blitzer, not an investigative reporter. I don’t listen to the police frequency on the short-wave radio. I don’t even keep up with the weather reports. I write a food column. I’m the Molly Ivans of Meatloaf. The Dave Barry of Burgers. You know, like pork chops and mint jelly. Hamburger joints and greasy spoons. Fois grois and sorbet palate cleansers. I reminisce about pork fried rice, and wax philosophical about pickled watermelon rind. I don’t know the first thing about investigations.”
“My mother used to make her own jam,” he said abruptly. He got a faraway look in his blue eyes. “Plum and apricot. Those were my favorite. She used to go down to the market and buy them in season. And we could eat the jam all year round even in winter. It was a big production in our kitchen. I’d stand on a stool. I was just a little kid, maybe seven or eight years old. I used to help her sterilize the jars. Well, she’d like me to hand them to her. Because that part was a little dangerous. You know, you have to use tongs to dip ‘em in boiling water. But I guess I didn’t pay attention because I don’t remember how she made them. I could have written it down so that I could tell somebody.” He stared into the foam on his beer. “I got a little apple tree in my yard now.”
It was happening again. No matter how disparate two people seemed, no matter how big the chasm between them, like Obregon and her, they could always be united by their stomachs.
“Apple butter?” she guessed.
“I love apple pie,” he explained. “I could eat a whole one myself.”
She should have guessed. Classic American fare for a classic American. “You like it with ice cream?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “A little vanilla on the side isn’t too bad. But what I really like is whipped cream.”
“You know, some people like cheese on their apple pie?”
He looked at her like she was crazy. “Cheese? You don’t say. What, like Swiss?”
“A little melted cheddar. Kind of strange, huh. Savory with the sweet.”
He stared at her. “Cheese on
apple pie. I don’t think I’d like that too much. I’m more of a whipped cream fan.” He shrugged. “Like they say, it takes all kinds.” Then he asked her, “What’s your favorite thing to eat?”
She blinked. “No one ever asks me that anymore.” She thought about the bubble gum ice cream that she used to love as a kid. Her father used to buy her a double scoop of the pink goo with the tiny tablets of chewing gum mixed into it. Candy in candy, more or less. She felt a sudden gush of undirected emotion, a nostalgic whirlpool around her. “You know what I love, Mr. Obregon, is I like eating breakfast for dinner. Like waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.”
“And bacon,” he suggested.
“Yeah, bacon. But not too crispy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’d be real tasty.”
“So, you make apple pies yourself?” she wondered out loud.
“Nah,” he said. “My sister, she used to say she’d make one for me when the tree got bigger and produced more apples.”
“That’s a nice idea,” she said. “So you might get your pie after all.”
He shrugged. “She died last year. Breast cancer.”
Josie took in that information stoically, just as he delivered it. “Are you alone now, Mr. Obregon?”
He shrugged a little. “I get along all right by myself. I was married once when I was in my thirties. But we split up after three years. But I never feel sorry for myself. It’s a waste of time if you ask me,” he said quickly. He dropped his eyes to his bottle. “I got a nephew in New York. He calls me on my birthday.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Sure.” Then, after a pause, he reached into his back pocket. “I got a picture of him right here.” He took out a beat-up leather wallet, thin and molded by the rounded seat of his pants. He extracted a photo and showed her. “He’s a dancer. He was in a production of Cats once.” The picture showed a handsome young man in his thirties with unnaturally golden hair combed back in a wave. He was deeply tanned in a black turtle-neck sweater, posed with his hands folded on top of another man’s hands—the traditional pose of a newly engaged couple. The other man was older, a little gray at his temples, but also very handsome. They were both smiling. “That’s his boyfriend,” Mr. Obregon said. “Calls him his husband, but I don’t know if that’s recognized in the state of New York. Guess it ought to be. There are enough of them there making up our entertainment industry.”
“Nice looking guy,” Josie said and handed him back the photo.
Mr. Obregon glanced at it before putting it back in his wallet. “Always did take after my sister.” They fiddled with their drinks for a minute or two in companionable silence.
“So,” Josie said. She took a last sip of her ginger ale. “You have any words of wisdom for me before get on my plane?”
He became all business again. “Just don’t get yourself in trouble,” he said. “You’re not armed. And if the girl was killed, whoever did it is probably still there.” He took a long swig of beer and sized her up for the first time. “Let’s just hope, for your sake, that the killer’s not still there.”
Josie’s stomach clenched. Not for the first time, she questioned the intelligence of she was about to do. “Here’s to that,” she said. “No killers. That’d be good.”
He drank his beer, his head tipped back and his eyes drifting up to the ceiling. She watched him drain the bottle before she continued. “Can you tell me more about the Williamses? Who are these people?”
He was silent. His thumb flicked at the label on the beer bottle. “Josie-girl, you don’t really want to know.”
She couldn’t stop herself from shivering. But she squinted at him. “What don’t I want to know? Tell me who they are.”
He kept his eyes on the tabletop and thought before he said, “Let me just say that they have more money than you or I will ever see in this lifetime. And that money keeps them above a lot of things.”
“Immunity to the law?” she asked, thinking of the iron grip Peter Williams had on her wrist the night he'd cornered her in the bar.
He shrugged but wouldn’t elaborate. “My advice to you is, just get in there, do this thing, and then get out. And when you’re done, keep away from these people. You don’t owe them anything—and keep it that way.”
“What about you?” she couldn’t help asking. “Why do you involve yourself with them?”
“I knew Albert Williams back in the service. He was Greta’s husband, much older than her. He passed about nine years ago.” He went on, “It was the war—Vietnam. Not this crazy Gulf thing or Afghanistan we got going on these days. He and I were thrown together, but we made it through. And we made it through coming home, which was harder than the war itself, in some ways. I used to go to those Memorial Day ceremonies. And those other ones for Veterans’ Day, and the people running them would always say something for World War II veterans, Vietnam veterans, and Desert Storm veterans.” He shook his head. “But Albert, he did real well when he came back from the war.” Much as Josie wanted to earn Mr. Obregon’s trust and confidence, she didn’t want to sit through an hour or so of war stories.
“So you said I don’t owe them anything. What do you owe them?” She knew she was probably pushing her luck now, but to her surprise, he answered—and not with a war story.
“He was my friend. That’s all there was to it. His boys, though, they are another story. They’re not like he was. They stick together, sure, but they’re missing something that Albert had.”
“Maybe they get it from their mother?” Josie had her theories about Greta Williams’s absent ability to empathize with the human race. Maybe her sons took after her in that regard.
He gave her a sharp look. “I don’t know anything about that. Greta’s a survivor and a strong woman. She married into that family and she’s made the best of it. Greta’s the type of woman who might have had a successful career. But she gave it up for Albert. He was everything to her, and now all she has left is those boys.”
Josie balked inwardly. She couldn’t imagine Greta Williams being hopelessly devoted to a man, hands clasped together like Sandy in the musical Grease. Greta Williams devoted to anyone? Devotion was for the likes of the defenseless. For lapdogs. Loyalty was another matter. Greta Williams would be fiercely loyal to someone worthy of it—with the tenacity of a bulldog. Clearly Greta Williams and Mr. Obregon had a past that went way back. His implication was that anything Josie knew about her was superficial knowledge only.
He left off messing with his beer bottle. “Whatever happens out there, just don’t get yourself hurt, you hear me? Just get in there, and get out.”
“Yes,” she said, and nearly added a “sir” as she would have answered her father once. Obregon reminded her of her family. He’d called her Josie-girl, the same thing that her people sometimes called her. And there was no mistaking his genuine concern for her, and more than that, there was no mistaking his warning. These people—the Williamses—were not to be taken lightly. Least of all, Greta Williams.
Mr. Obregon shifted his eyes uncomfortably. She knew their little pow-wow was over. She wondered where this roly-poly henchman of Greta Williams would go after leaving the bar. Maybe to call an old contact in the police department to see what information he could dig up. Maybe he’d just be going home to his Barco-lounger, fifth of Jim Beam, nineteen year-old cat, and Price Is Right on the tube.
CHAPTER 9
Before Josie left for the airport, she made a call. Actually, she had already gone out the door and locked it behind her before turning around and going back in, muttering to herself that she was becoming neurotic. She ended up talking to voicemail again.
“Hey Drew, it’s me. Looks like I caught you while you’re out again. No big thing. Just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving now. Thanks again for taking care of Bert. You’ll probably think that you’ve stepped into some alternate reality the next time you’re over here, but don’t worry, the place hasn’t been broken into or anything like that. I cleaned
it up. Don’t be too shocked. And I no longer have any houseplants that you have to pretend to take care of, so don’t worry about that. I guess that’s about it. Thanks again for setting this trip up. I‘ll say hi to your cousin Antonio for you. And I guess I’ll see you when you when you get back. I mean, when I get back…Whoops…You know what I mean.” She stammered lamely for a couple more seconds before abruptly ending the call.
Later, as Josie sat on the plane thinking about her awkward voicemail message, her face got warm with embarrassment. She clicked the buckle on her airplane seatbelt, lifting the metal, letting it snap back down. Lifting, clicking. Her feelings about Drew were getting more insistent despite her efforts to ignore them. Why now, after all these years? Maybe what she was feeling was a simple byproduct of being sick, being dependent on other people, and having him as her physician. Maybe it was the culmination of fifteen years of solid friendship. Fat chance. Things were never that simple.
It’s just jealousy, she told herself. He’s dating more, spending time with other women like this latest one—hopefully horse-faced Patrice. He was busier with his patients, too, so of course there was less time for hanging around with Josie. Who had time anymore? It was a natural turn of events that she hadn’t seen him for more than a few hours in the last couple of weeks. They were both busy people. She just missed him. It was just a normal level of missing him. Okay, maybe not.
Probably because she couldn’t shake the idea that the annoying depth of her feelings had been there all along, and that she was only now acknowledging it. A song popped into her head—a funny little English-Portuguese song called Dilema by a cabaret singer Susannah McCorckle that she’d heard on NPR in the waiting room at the doctor’s office—Drew played NPR in his offices because he said soft pop made him feel murderous. The song Dilema had a trickling South American melody and the English words went something like If I tell him will I find a great love or will I lose an old friend? It may be the beginning. It may be the end. It was the kind of song that would have made Josie smile if it didn’t ring so true.