by E M Kaplan
Josie looked forward to seeing it even if her stomach wasn’t ready to sample it. Her appetite hadn’t come back, but she was dealing better with the food that they put in front of her at Castle Ranch. This morning, however, she had a couple of other priorities. One of them was figuring out what she could take as a gift for her aunt and uncle that night. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take anything homemade—even worse, she had little interest in preparing anything. She was worried by her lack of interest in cooking, but she squelched her anxiety. Just another piece of unfinished business to add to her growing list. She ended up calling the house to ask Libby for ideas.
“I don’t know what you should get them,” Libby told her over the phone. She had the speaking part of the phone close to her nose and mouth, and her heavy breathing made an intimate wind in Josie’s ear.
Another extension of the phone picked up on Libby’s end. “Who is this?” Aunt Ruth asked. She sounded, as always, partly amused yet in perpetual damage control mode, as if she’d already put out some wildfires before eating breakfast.
“It’s Josie,” Libby immediately told her. Josie sighed and said hello, her cover blown. Her covert operation was out in the open. So much for subtlety.
“Well, don’t get me anything, dammit,” her aunt told her. “You should know better than that.” Josie could hear Libby snickering, along with her loud breathing. “If you get me something, I might just have to disown you. Use your common sense, girl.” Her aunt gave a near-cackle.
“All right. All right. I give up.”
“You just bring yourself,” her aunt said.
Which reminded Josie. “Is it all right if I bring a friend with me?”
“A friend? Who’s that?” Libby interrupted.
“Just a friend from here at Castle Ranch,” Josie explained. She still hadn’t figured out who exactly Patrick was, or if her aunt or cousin may have actually heard of him. They were more up on recent movies and TV than she was.
“The more, the merrier,” her aunt said.
“Is he cute?” Libby asked causing Josie’s aunt to laugh again.
“Hang up the phone, Lib,” Aunt Ruth told her. Libby said bye and hung up immediately, probably on to whatever task had made her answer the phone breathless in the first place. Filling luminarias with sand, hanging streamers, or blowing up balloons.
“We’ll see you tonight then, Josie-girl,” Aunt Ruth said, and Josie could hear the smile on her face.
#
Almost immediately after Josie hung up the phone, it rang. She’d hardly had time to walk across the room to look outside the window—she thought she’d heard voices outside, but she went back to answer the phone.
A woman’s voice said, “We met the other—hi, this is Julie. Um. Bosarch. We met the other day—you were at my father’s office. At the doctor’s office?”
Josie frowned at the anxiety in Julie’s voice and took at seat on the edge of her unmade bed. “Sure. Hi.”
“Yes, well—oh, hi. I mean, I think I really should tell you some things.”
“Are you all right, Julie?”
“What? Me? Yeah, I’m fine—I’m just fine. I just have some things I need to clear up. My dad isn’t doing well still. But I should—he’s not doing well at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, well—I hate the telephone. It’s so distancing, not to be able to see a person’s face and how they are reacting. Look, can I talk to you? Today, maybe? I don’t know how long you’re in town. I just want to make sure I see you before you go.”
Josie thought quickly. Though she was dreading it, she knew she had to track down Maria Garza later that day. “I have to run an errand later this afternoon. Can I meet you before that?” Her time in Arizona was starting to run short. She’d planned to stay only a handful of days, but now she needed more. She wasn’t getting very much information and she hated the idea of going back without being able to give anything to Greta Williams.
What was it about her? Josie squirmed uncomfortably. Something about Greta Williams got under Josie’s skin and made her clench her teeth. It was more than simple irritation. There was also, under it all, a desire to please this highly authoritarian woman. That in itself was an extra irritant to Josie once she realized it for what it was. The woman demanded obedience. And Josie was obeying, whether out of instinct or trying to fill some deep-rooted need within herself. Whatever it was, it bothered Josie. But she didn’t know how to deal with it, so she was letting it fester, letting it make her feel duty-bound to find something solid, something concrete about how Leann had died. Or who had made her die.
Julie said, “Okay, then. I’ll meet you at the office—at my father’s office. The place where I saw you before. In about a half hour? Is that all right?”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll see you there,” Josie told her and hung up, not sure what to expect, but willing to pursue the lead. She slipped on her sandals and headed out of her room back across the pool area into the lobby, unwilling to look at the pool where she’d seen the illicit meeting just last night. Whoever had been outside her room talking earlier was gone now. She had an uneasy thought that Peter Williams had returned and had been bullying Patrick into telling him which room was hers. And maybe handing over the master room key. Not a good feeling in her stomach. Fortunately, the entire pool area was deserted with just the fountain trickling. The lobby was empty, too.
She felt a small pang of concern for Antonio, the owner—because he was an extension of Drew. She was big enough to admit the connection to herself. Leann’s death was adversely affecting business. How long it would take the rich and famous to become complacent about the accident and to begin booking their reservations again? As callous as it seemed, for Antonio’s sake, she hoped that their memories were short. She shuffled her feet down the carpeted hallway to the dining room. It was solidly between breakfast and lunch hours—and with the low guest rate, the place was deserted. Earlier that morning, she’d seen the wait staff go back and forth through a swinging door at the back of the room. She went over to it and poked her head in.
Clay, her usual waiter, was sitting at a long metal counter eating a sandwich roughly the size of his head. She could see the pastrami, cheese, and onions hanging off the hearty herbed bread, which might have been an entire loaf of focaccia. The thin-sliced pastrami had a lace-like fringe of pepper. The cheese was a pale blond and melted to nearly translucent. He had just taken an enormous bite when he noticed her watching him. He tried to smile and chewed vigorously, attempting to clear a space in his mouth so he could talk. He gestured her to come closer. Eventually, he gave up trying to finish his mouthful and jammed a chunk of it in his cheek.
She couldn’t help but vicariously enjoy his eating. He was like a performance artist. “Is it okay if I’m back here?” she asked. “It’s not illegal, is it?”
He chuckled. “This place does have a bunch of rules, doesn’t it? When I first came to work here, I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn’t break any of them. If I break any of the rules, they can kick me out of here.”
“Like not taking bribes from guests for food?”
He smiled. “Right. I know a girl who got kicked off the staff because she brought a chocolate for a lady for 50 bucks. It’s worse with the weight loss clients than people just coming to unwind. Or people like you, it’s harder just to get you to eat. You know, people recovering from one thing or another.” Josie hoped she was recovering, but the jury was still out on that one. True, she hadn’t had any major stomach blow ups since she’d arrived. But it was hard to suffer when the food, as carefully prepared as it was, went down so smoothly. She wondered, briefly, if she should start playing the multi-state Powerball lottery again in hopes that she could hire a personal chef someday. Hey, she only had to beat odds of one in fifty trillion-bazillion. Roughly. Kind of like her odds of making Drew fall in love with her. Which had better odds? She wondered.
“You’re the food deputy,” she to
ld Clay. “So, how long have you been working at this place?”
He managed to dislodge the lump of food from his cheek and finish it. “Since I was a freshman. I’m a junior now.” Then he added, “High school. But I don’t work in the spring because of baseball season.”
“No kidding. High school?” She was surprised. Granted, she hadn’t been around a high school-aged kid in a while, but based on her memory, kids had been a lot more immature back then. But maybe he was an exception, rather than today’s norm. The thought flickered across her mind that maybe he’d had an experience similar to the one that she’d had in high school, one that forced a person to mature whether or not she wanted to.
“I’m big for my age, huh?” He grinned. A woman in a white apron came up behind him and set down a glass of milk and a basket of kettle cooked potato chips in front of him. He thanked her. “I get free lunch,” he told Josie, then pushed the chips toward her. “Help yourself.” She took one out of politeness and nibbled it. It was light on the grease and nicely salty—and had some weight to it because it wasn’t cut as thinly as the store-bought kind.
“Good, huh?” he said. “Annie makes them here.” He gestured toward the woman who had brought them over. She was preparing a fruit salad, slicing kiwis. A watermelon lolled to the side of her cutting area. “Are you hungry? Did you need a snack or something? You didn’t eat your whole breakfast this morning. You left your cantaloupe,” he said, suddenly realizing that she probably hadn’t come into the kitchen just to interrupt his lunch.
“Nah, not so much hungry,” she said embarrassed that someone was keeping tabs on her puny appetite. “I’m actually in a little bit of a bind. I need a gift to take to a party.” He looked puzzled. “My aunt and uncle are having an anniversary party tonight, and I don’t want to go empty-handed, so I want to take a gift of some kind.”
“What? Like some food?” he said.
“That’s why I came to the kitchen,” she said. She couldn’t help her inner smartass from rearing its head, but he just smiled, which made her smile. He was good-natured, even after dealing with attitude-laden clients, the likes of her, all morning long.
“Oh yeah. Right.” He thought about it for a while, but still looked a little clueless. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me ask Annie.”
“Great.” Josie hung out at the counter next to Clay’s uneaten sandwich and picked another potato chip out of the basket. She watched him converse with Annie for a minute, then the two of them came over. Oh God, the woman smelled like warm brown sugar and vanilla. Was that some Madison Avenue scent that they were selling now? Or was she saturated to her pores from handling it? Whatever it was, Josie would totally buy it. After her next paycheck cleared.
“Hi,” Josie said. “Sorry to be a pain in the neck.”
“Oh no,” the woman said. “No trouble at all. I’ve gotten stranger requests than this at all hours of the night. I’m the head chef here,” she explained. “But sometimes I cover the night shifts during the off-seasons. It gives me a chance to catch up on some reading and do a little experimenting.” She seemed pleasant enough—a big-boned woman with strong hands and smiling eyes. “With help around like Clay here, we’re well covered in the event of a rush.”
“I’m going to apply to hotel management school,” he said. “Las Vegas or Cornell.”
“What about a baseball scholarship?” Annie teased him.
“We’ll see,” he said.
Annie grinned at him and turned back to Josie. “Anyway, what were you thinking for your gift? A bottle of wine or something like that? Maybe a fruit or cheese basket?”
“Maybe something a little more um, lowbrow?” Josie said. She couldn’t imagine showing up at the house with a bottle of wine. Especially with Uncle Jack probably into his third or fourth Bud by dinnertime—only because it was a special occasion, of course.
“Oh, I got it,” Clay said. He was looking pleased with himself.
Ten minutes later, Josie was on her way back to her room with a basket on her arm. Inside it were three dozen assorted cookies, each about four inches in diameter. Clay and Annie had given her a mix of three kinds: oatmeal raisin, white chocolate chip with macadamia nuts, and old-fashioned chocolate chunk cookies. As Josie walked across the decking of the pool area, the warm smell of chocolate and brown sugar wafted up and she nearly grew teary-eyed at the simplicity of it. As foolish as she felt, it just seemed that there was a chance that somewhere, some things were right in the world when you could go into a kitchen and a smiling and warm-hearted woman gave you a fresh-baked cookie.
“Snap out of it, you imbecile,” she muttered to herself.
CHAPTER 21
Downtown Puerta was just as deserted as it had been the first time Josie had rolled through with its wooden porches swept smooth by dust, saloon-style front doors with old-fashioned lettering. It seemed desiccated and quiet as a tomb. But looks could be deceiving. And last time, she reminded herself, she’d ended up at the sheriff’s office.
This time on closer inspection, she noticed a flicker of the curtains in the window of the children’s clothing shop across the street. Not long after she parked the Honda in front of Dr. Bosarch’s office, an older man in a pale yellow Guayabara shirt came on to the front porch of the barber shop and began sweeping the steps. She was beginning to suspect that behind the wooden store fronts, a network was already humming with activity triggered by her arrival. She checked her watch. She was about fifteen minutes early for meeting Julie Bosarch. Instead of waiting in front of the office—or breaking into the office, which she ruled out with some self-directed sarcasm—she headed over to the clothing store across the street. The sweeping man in front of the barber shop barely flicked his eyes in her direction, but in the split second he did, she flashed him a big-eyed grin with gritted teeth.
Through the door of her shop, the store’s proprietress watched Josie walk over from across the street. The woman kept her eyes on Josie all the way, challenging her. Josie had no doubt she was the person who had called the police while Josie was in the doctor’s office earlier. The woman’s gray hair was freshly permed in tight ringlets all over her head like a granny skullcap. Her yellow, patterned shirt perfectly matched her bright yellow pants, pleated at the waist over her rounded belly.
The place was filled with frilly dresses starched from hems to Peter Pan collars—cute to the point of gagging. In the toddler section, Josie spent a couple of minutes browsing the racks of clothing and selected a yellow overall dress with a duck on the bib. She glanced at the woman, who was still watching her like a hawk. On her way to the counter, Josie picked up a matching hat and some little socks. One way or another, she was going to stimulate some chit-chat with this woman. She prepared to turn on the charm.
“Oh my, this dress is so cute,” she exclaimed as loudly and in as high-pitched a voice as her dignity would allow.
“It’s one of my favorites, personally,” the woman said, finally. Begrudgingly. “The gal who made it lives up on Mt. Lemmon. Comes down with a bunch of these every couple of weeks. She’s one of those old-time, hippy-dippy types, you know. Vegetarian. Makes all of her own clothes. Probably has outdoor plumbing, too, if you know what I mean. But hell, doesn’t matter to me.”
“I’ve just got to buy it for my…niece,” Josie exclaimed, gathering it up. She realized belatedly that it was hand-made. And priced to reflect it. Okay, bonehead move, but she couldn’t see how to back out of it now.
The woman rang up her purchase with some satisfaction. She carefully laid out a sheet of tissue paper and folded the silly dress into it. When she put it in a bag, Josie noticed the countertop was glass over wood, with pictures of children preserved underneath it. Some of the faces were dark-skinned. Josie’s finger rested on one face, extremely familiar, yet transported back in time to the eighties—a young Hispanic boy with hair that was short in the front, long in the back. Nice mullet. He was in a muscle shirt and parachute pants and had a wide, white-toothed smiled on hi
s face.
“Is that Detective Flores?” she couldn’t help asking.
The woman laughed. “Doesn’t look much different, does he? Has a better haircut now, but that’s about it.” She tilted her head to look at him more closely. “Wishes I’d get that picture of him out of here. Embarrassed by it. But,” she shrugged, “He don’t come in here much anyway.”
Josie scanned the rest of the counter. “Who are all these kids?”
“Most of them are local. Just my little collection, so to speak. In this corner up here…” She gestured to a group of maybe thirty pictures or so. “These were all my kids.” And in answer to Josie’s confused expression, she added, “Foster kids. Me and my husband took ‘em in over the years from the county. Had them until they were all placed. Every one of them.” Funny, Josie thought to herself, this woman seemed like the last person that she would have guessed to be a foster parent, the type of woman who would open up her home to others. Open up anything to others, for that matter.
“You have a little girl?” she asked Josie gesturing to her purchase.
“It’s for my niece,” Josie lied again. She didn’t have one. But odds were, Drew had one in the right age range. She could pawn it off on him and hope that she didn’t live to see the day a child would spill fruit punch on this seventy-five dollar get-up. She handed the woman her credit card, crossing her fingers that it wasn’t maxxed out. “I can’t believe what a strange visit I’ve been having,” she began in what she hoped was a conversational manner.
The woman raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.
“I’ve been staying at the Castle Ranch.”
“Plenty of folks stay there,” she finally said. “Those who have the money, anyway.” If she was trying to make Josie feel guilty, it worked. And Josie’s temper flared up. Yeah, like she needed any goading to feel touchy about her class.