Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(36)

For the first time, Kelly seemed to realize the significance of two police officers coming to her place of employment to discuss a friend she’d neither seen nor heard from in sixteen years. “Hey, wait a minute,” she said, pointing her cigarette at Josie. “What’s going on here? Did Beverly do something?”

“No,” Gretchen said. “She didn’t do anything. I’m afraid she’s dead, Kelly.”

“Oh shit!” Kelly said. She walked in a small circle, as if she couldn’t contain her shock. “Oh shit, she was in that tarp, wasn’t she? On the TV? She was under the house? She was, like, murdered?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “We’re trying to figure out what happened to her and who might have killed her. Besides you and Lana Rosetti, was there anyone else she hung around with regularly?”

Kelly shook her head but then she said, “No, we were her best friends.”

“Did Beverly use drugs?” Josie asked.

“No, no drugs. She just had her men, you know?”

“Men?” Gretchen prodded.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “That’s what she called them. I don’t even know if they were real. Beverly liked to talk. Thought she was hot shit. I mean, she kind of was. She could get any guy, really, but she also liked to tell stories, exaggerate. Whenever she had a crush on a guy, she’d act like they were seeing each other, even if they weren’t.”

Josie said, “Do you remember the names of any of these men?”

“She never told us their names. That’s why I’m saying it was hard to know if they were real or not. She talked about them all the time, but we never saw any of them or met any of them.”

“What did she tell you about them?” Gretchen asked, pen poised over her notepad. “Particularly in the months leading up to the last time you spoke with her.”

Kelly tapped ash onto the concrete. “She would tell us, like, what they said to her, like how much they complimented her and stuff and what they were like.”

Josie asked, “Was she having sex with any of them?”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “She claimed they all wanted to have sex with her, but I don’t know if she really was. Like I said, Beverly was a lot of talk. Most of what she said—about anything—was bullshit.”

But Josie knew not everything Beverly had intimated was bullshit since she’d been five months pregnant when she was murdered.

“How many men are we talking about?” Gretchen asked.

“Like, four,” Kelly answered. “I guess she might have really been sleeping with one of them, ’cause he had a tattoo she always talked about. Like it made him badass or something. Everyone’s got tattoos. But we were young and dumb then. Dating a guy with a tattoo was a big deal.”

“What kind of tattoo?” Gretchen asked.

Kelly shrugged and flicked some ash onto the ground. The light mist was turning into steady rain. “Don’t remember. It was big, though, I think.”

Josie said, “Where on his body? Did she say?”

Kelly took a few seconds to consider this. “I don’t really know. I don’t remember.”

Gretchen said, “But you remember she talked about four different guys.”

“Yeah. One of them was, um…” She stared at Josie and bit her bottom lip.

“Ray Quinn,” Josie answered. “She was seeing him?”

Kelly said, “She told us she was, like, behind your back, but I don’t think it was true. Every time I ever saw her try to talk to him, he never gave her the time of day.”

And yet, Beverly had been wearing his treasured jacket when she was murdered.

“What about the others?” Gretchen asked, moving the conversation away from Ray.

“She said they were older. Ray was the only high school guy she said she was interested in. One guy was doing work at her house or something.”

That tracked with what George Newton had told them. Josie asked, “If she never told you their names, what did she call them when she talked about them?”

“She had nicknames for them.”

Josie asked, “Do you remember what they were?”

Kelly shook her head. She took one last puff from her second cigarette and tossed the butt aside. “Nah, I don’t remember after all this time. Sorry.”

“Was there one she was more serious about than the others?” Gretchen asked.

“I don’t know if there was one she liked more than the others,” Kelly said. “But there was one who lost interest in her, and she was pissed.”

“Any idea who that might have been?” Josie asked.

“No, sorry.”

Josie said, “What about Beverly’s father? Did she ever mention him? Did she know who he was?”

“She didn’t know who he was, and all her mom would ever tell her was that her dad didn’t want to be involved. Beverly didn’t believe her, but I think that was just because she didn’t really want to believe that her own dad would want nothing to do with her.”

It was a sad detail of Beverly’s life, and Josie wondered what Vera Urban had been thinking when she had told daughter that. Josie wondered if there would have been a kinder way to explain Beverly’s father’s absence to her. Perhaps there wasn’t, without lying.