Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(28)

Josie examined the other items she and Otto had confiscated from the car and found nothing more of interest. She pulled her camera out of her shirt pocket and turned the power on. She clicked through the pictures slowly, examining the details. On the second time through the pictures she stopped at the picture of the dead man’s work boots. There was a close-up of the seams on the bottom of the boot, and Josie remembered that they had been resoled. The only cobbler she knew of lived out past the mudflats, north of town. Jeremiah Joplin had fixed her gun belt last year, and sewed together a belt and pair of sandals a few years prior. Now long retired, he worked out of his home. Josie figured he had to have been approaching a hundred, but he appeared thirty years younger. She frequently ran into him in town, where they always spoke, with him remembering her name and personal details about her that he would bring up in conversation. He was the kind of person who seemed to be in a perpetual good mood.

She replaced the items in the evidence room and logged out on the clipboard, then returned the key to Lou. Josie found Joplin’s number in the phone book. She called and he told her to come on over, that she would find him on the back porch.

Josie stood at the front door of the police department and unlatched her umbrella. It was late in the morning but the sky was not visible through the sheets of rain pounding the pavement.

Continuing to type at her computer, Lou said, “Not fit for man nor beast. Better wait till the rain quits.”

“I don’t think it’s going to quit.” Josie looked at her watch. Otto was due in to the office any minute to start a noon-to-eight-thirty shift. “Tell Otto I’ll be back in an hour. I’m going to talk to Jeremiah Joplin.”

Josie popped her umbrella open and dashed to the jeep. By the time she got the door unlocked, slid inside, and pulled her umbrella through the door, she was soaked. She pulled a napkin out of the center compartment and wiped the water off her face, then pulled her wet hair back into a ponytail again with her fingers. Her uniform felt heavy and steamy and she thought ahead to the end of the shift: shorts, a T-shirt, and Dillon. It would be a good night.

At the stoplight on the courthouse square, she turned north, and drove toward the mudflats. Josie snaked along the road where Vie and Smokey Blessings lived, crossing sections of gravel where running water ran directly across. Smokey would be working twelve-hour shifts for days. It would take the maintenance guys weeks to get the roads back into shape after the rain finally ended. They were on a shoestring budget, like all the other county and city agencies, and could not afford to dump new rock. They would have to use the county trucks to scrape the rock back into place.

A half mile from Jeremiah’s trailer, the incline was steep enough that the rain had produced ruts running the length of the road where the gravel had been washed away. Josie put the jeep into four-wheel drive and kept her wheels on the high parts of the road. Each year, they lost cars that were carried away because people tried to drive on running water. Four-wheel drive accomplished nothing with water rushing under the wheels.

Josie turned off onto Jeremiah’s lane: it was a mudpit. She cussed herself for making the trip, but she had so few leads that it had seemed worth the risk.

She parked in front of the trailer and grabbed a clear rain poncho and black rubber boots from the backseat. Utilitarian, she thought, but effective. She scooted the driver’s seat back and struggled into the raincoat, then took her work boots off and replaced them with the knee-high rubber boots. Encased in the plastic, she felt her skin steaming in the enclosed car.

She stepped outside and trudged up to a poured concrete walkway that led around to the back of the trailer. Rain pelted her poncho and dripped off the hood in front as she walked. Jeremiah’s place was decorated like a Florida retirement home with concrete statues of rabbits and deer hidden around bushes and benches. Lacy blue curtains hung in the window and a WELCOME FRIENDS sign hung on the front door.

She found Jeremiah rocking in a lawn chair on the porch, a contented smile on his face, watching the rain fall on the patches of grass and desert scrub that covered the land for miles behind his home. He wore black shorts and no shirt. His body appeared completely hairless and deeply tanned. He looked like a sleek sea otter with his round head and leathery wrinkles that stretched across his head, neck, and abdomen. He leaned forward in his seat and shook her hand.

“Good to see you again,” she said.

He patted the chair next to him. Josie pulled her raincoat over her head, draped it across a small end table, and sat next to Jeremiah, facing the rain.

“Haven’t seen rain like this since before Grace passed. That’s going on twenty years now,” he said.

“You’ve kept the place up nice. Even in the rain it looks cheery,” she said.

“She’d be proud. Made me promise on her deathbed that I wouldn’t let her roses die. They were her pride and joy.” He pointed to a trellis-covered bench in the backyard. Splotches of white and red color showed through the rain from where the blooms covered the climbing plant. “Takes a lot to make them grow in this heat. Grace had the touch, though.”

They small-talked about the weather and the forecast before Josie settled in on the purpose for the visit.

“I’m working on an investigation, and I’m trying to make some kind of a connection to a man we found dead with no identification.”

He nodded, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m trying to find something in his personal belongings that will give me a lead to his identity.”