The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(41)



Jerry scooted his chair back, crossed one leg over the other, and rubbed at a smudge on his boot as he considered the question. “That’s tough. It just doesn’t look like something local. I guess that sounds na?ve, but it just doesn’t play out like a hate killing. Why kill him and then drag his body back inside that girl’s trailer? You asked about the Gunners. I don’t see anyone in the group killing him in that manner. Just doesn’t work for me.”

Otto finally signed off duty with the night dispatcher, feeling exhausted and frustrated. So far, it appeared the only Gunners with a connection to cartel members were Fallow, Bloster, and Red. Now one of them was dead, and the other two weren’t talking. He called Delores on his cell phone to tell her what time he would be home. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled down his lane. The Podowski ranch lay about ten miles north of the river, and consisted of sixty-five acres of pasture that held a small herd of milk goats. A split-rail fence surrounded a small three-bedroom bungalow covered in white aluminum siding with a deep brick porch on the front of the house. Mangy thirty-year-old bushes lined the front of the house with little else in the way of plantings. Otto drew great satisfaction feeding and watering the goats, clearing the fence rows of brush, battling the invading prickly pear, yucca and cholla, and tinkering on a tractor that spent more hours torn down than up and running. Otherwise, landscaping didn’t interest him, and Delores claimed a black thumb, but the woman could cook like no other.

Each night as he drove home from work, Otto anticipated the smells from his kitchen: sausage, apples, onions, garlic, kraut, meatballs—an endless tribute to Polish tradition. As she did most nights, Delores met him at the door, an apron over her calico-print housedress, her silver hair pulled up into a neat bun behind her head. She smiled, her blue eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and pushed the screen door open for him. After a quick peck on her lips, Otto walked through the living room and into the kitchen, dragging his briefcase. Delores followed on his heels.

“What’s for supper?” he asked.

“I could feel it in my bones. I knew it was a bad one. Apple dumplings with fresh whipping cream. Sit down at the table.” Delores took his briefcase from him and scooted a chair out at the kitchen table. He felt like a boy, a feeling she had nurtured in him since their first date forty years ago. He was perfectly happy letting Delores take over.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said, ushering him to the chair before pouring him a glass of milk.

The smell of cinnamon and cream and butter made him dizzy. He sat at the table and watched her hovering over the stove, his perfectly capable wife, her body soft and inviting. All his life, he had seen other men chasing skinny women in high heels with hard stomachs and hard breasts, and the idea made him shudder. How could anything compare to the vision of Delores on her way to the table with a platter of steaming apple dumplings?

“So, tell me,” she said.

“Not so much to tell as there should be. The man shot at the Trauma Center was killed by rival gang members from Mexico. How do we tackle that? And Josie thinks Red was killed trading guns to the Mexicans. How do we tackle that one, too?”

Delores set the platter of dumplings on the table and stood for a moment, hands on her hips. “You said, ‘Josie thinks.’ Does that mean you don’t?”

“What’s the gossip on the street about Red Goff and the Gunners?” he asked.

“The girls think the Gunners club is a drug cartel, no different from the Mexican versions,” she said.

Otto smiled at her reference to the girls. It was a group of eleven old women who gathered once a week and called themselves the Homemakers. Delores was one of the younger ones at fifty-seven. They rotated homes for meetings, brought food to sample, created a craft project each week, and quilted baby blankets for foster babies. They were a nice group of ladies, but girls they were not.

“For a bunch of old women, you’re on target more than you aren’t.”

She smiled, pleased. “Helen claims her husband buys guns off Red all the time. Claims his prices are better than Walmart.”

“You said drug cartel. What do drugs have to do with it?” he asked.

Delores wove an intricate tale of he said/she said and so-and-so is related to so-and-so, who was arrested for some odd thing. When she talked gossip like this, his attention faded. He nodded and forked another dumpling into his mouth, his teeth sinking into the sweet dough, his tongue distinguishing the subtle differences among the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in the rich sauce. He washed his bite down and said, “In the middle of all this mess, Josie’s mother showed up today from Indiana.”

Delores sat across from Otto with her own plate and glass of milk. “What did she look like?”

Otto’s eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t know. Like a floozy. Josie had a date with Dillon Reese tonight, and her mother showed up out of the blue, demanding attention.”

“Maybe you should invite Josie and her mother over for dinner this week. Help her out a little.”

Otto ignored the idea. As much as he liked Josie, he’d heard enough about Beverly Gray from her to know that he did not want to spend an evening entertaining the woman. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and asked, “No meat tonight?”

“Just dumplings. If we don’t start watching our weight, you’ll end up with both knees on the operating table.”

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