Her Mother’s Grave_Absolutely gripping crime fiction with unputdownable mystery and suspense

by Lisa Regan

  Her stomach turned. “No,” she answered. “I’m not spending department money on a bad joke.”

  “How long is the backlash to Lloyd Todd’s arrest going to last?” Noah asked.

  “Hard to say. Hopefully not much longer. We’ll take your car. I want to get back to the station before my latte gets cold.”

  Noah smiled. “And leave this crap caked under the handles all day? I don’t think so. I’ll clean this up for you while you tell me about your mom.”

  Josie stood in her driveway, arms crossed over her chest, while Noah moved in and out of her house gathering latex gloves, paper towels, surface cleaner, and a plastic bag. He went to work on the driver’s door first, talking as he cleaned. “So your mom’s name was Belinda Rose.”

  Josie didn’t answer.

  Once he got all the sludge out from under the handle using paper towels, he sprayed it with disinfectant and used more paper towels to wipe away the remnants, depositing all the dirty towels into the plastic bag. The smell wafted over to where Josie stood. Her nose wrinkled, but Noah seemed unaffected.

  “Used to dealing with crap, are you?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “It’s just that the smell at the morgue turns you green in seconds, but you’re practically face-deep over there, and it’s not bothering you at all.”

  “There could be more than one Belinda Rose,” he pointed out, moving to the next handle.

  “With the same birthday?”

  “I thought your maiden name was Matson, not Rose,” Noah said.

  “It was. Matson was my dad’s last name. My parents never got married.”

  “Where’s your mother now?”

  Josie’s chin dropped to her chest. She didn’t like talking about her mother; she’d been actively trying not to think about the woman for the past sixteen years. Her mother had taken enough from her. She didn’t deserve any more of Josie’s time or mental energy. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since I was fourteen. She left.”

  Noah turned and looked at her, one brow raised. “You never tried to find her?”

  Josie’s hands found the lapels of her jacket and tugged them closer together. Her eyes drifted away from Noah. “She’s not the kind of person you go looking for.”

  “How tall is she?” he asked, and Josie knew he was thinking of their post-autopsy meeting with Dr. Feist.

  She sighed. “Tall enough to have hit this girl over the head with a hammer or tire iron. Probably about five four.”

  “Do you have a picture of her? We could work from that.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  You have no idea, Josie said silently. Out loud, she told him, “She destroyed every picture there was of her in the house before she left.”

  At the time, Josie had thought it was exactly in keeping with the kind of spiteful, vengeful monster her mother had always been—mostly because the only photos Josie had of her mother also had her father in them. Josie remembered coming home to find the whole trailer smelling of smoke, and finding the last slivers of photographs in a pile of ashes in the stainless-steel kitchen sink. Belinda hadn’t left Josie a single photo of her father. Back then, Josie figured her mother was just trying to hurt her, like she always did, but now she wondered if there was a more sinister reason for destroying the photos. It sure didn’t make Josie’s job of tracking her down any easier.

  “What about your dad?” Noah asked. “Would he have any?”

  “He passed away when I was six.”

  She waited for more questions, and her body went loose with relief when they didn’t come. Instead, moving to the other side of the car and starting on the handles there, Noah said, “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, look, we can talk more about your mom later if it turns out we need to find her. Right now, I think the first order of business is to confirm the dental records. We’ll have a look at the chart Gretchen’s pulling and go from there.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  JOSIE – SIX YEARS OLD

  Josie’s mother paced the cramped curtained area. One hand pressed against her heart while the other clutched a tissue, dabbing at the tears that fell freely from worried eyes. Josie stared at her, shocked and confused to see her mother cry for the very first time.

  “I was sleeping,” she explained. “I woke up to go to the bathroom and went in to check on JoJo. She wasn’t in her bed, so I searched the trailer. Didn’t find her. The back door was unlocked, so I got a flashlight and went looking for her. I found her lying on the ground in the woods, covered in blood.” A wail tore from her throat. “My baby. My little baby. She was just co-co-covered in it.”

  Josie glanced at the two nurses watching her mother cry, their faces unreadable.

  “She must have fallen,” Josie’s mother went on. “I mean, it was dark and those woods are filled with trash and glass, all kinds of things children can hurt themselves on.”

  “Did you ask her what happened?” one of the nurses asked in the same kind of voice Josie’s kindergarten teacher used when the students didn’t put all their stuff into their cubbyholes.

  “Of-of course I did,” Josie’s mother said. “She told me she fell. That’s how I know she fell.”

  The two nurses exchanged a skeptical look. Then one of them said, “The doctor will be in soon.”

  They left, one of them tossing a concerned look over her shoulder at Josie before disappearing through the curtain.

  Seconds later, Josie’s chin was gripped tightly in her mother’s hand, fingers squeezing against the bone and pulling at the skin around her wound. Her eyes watered with the pain. “Mo-mommy,” she gasped.

  Her mother’s blue eyes were almost black with fury. When she spoke in an angry whisper, spittle sprayed across Josie’s nose. “You don’t say one fucking word, you got that?”

  “You told lies.” Josie squeaked through the part of her mouth that was still mobile.

  Her mother’s fingers tightened, making Josie feel like her face would tear apart.

  “I told you to shut up. Not one word. What I say is what happened, you got that? If you tell one person—just one person—what happened, you’re going into the closet. Forever. And Daddy and Gram won’t be able to save you. You understand that?”

  Fear set her entire body into a quiver, and she felt a hot wetness spread down her legs and through her nightdress. She whispered, “I promise.” At last, her mother let go, moving to the other side of the room to peek through the curtain. Hugging herself, Josie wished she had thought to bring Wolfie. Then she remembered—the last time she saw him he had been lying just out of reach in a puddle of her blood on the kitchen floor.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Noah had done a good job cleaning up Josie’s door handles, but she was still convinced that the smell clung to her. Standing beside him in the morgue, she sniffed the air but could only smell the chemical odor of death that saturated Dr. Feist’s small basement empire. They had stopped for coffee on the way, but now Josie held her full paper cup in one hand, feeling too queasy to drink it.

  Dr. Feist breezed into the room with Gretchen in tow and headed over to the ancient x-ray viewer that hung on the wall. Dr. Feist snapped it on, and the fluorescent lights inside flickered to life. She took two films from Gretchen and hung them side by side. It didn’t take an expert to see that the dental x-rays Dr. Feist had taken during Belinda Rose’s autopsy were a perfect match to the ones that Gretchen had retrieved from the dentist. Josie’s heart skipped painfully in her chest; if Belinda Rose had been buried in the woods for over thirty years, who the hell was the woman who called herself Josie’s mother?

  “Well,” Dr. Feist said, turning back to the officers. “Now you’ve got your victim’s identity. Guess you just have to find her killer.”

  “How old was she when those x-rays were taken?” Josie asked Gretchen.

  Gretchen put her reading glasses on and riffled through the thi
n file she had brought with her. “Looks like the last exam was done when she was fourteen years old.”

  “What else is in that file?” Josie asked.

  Gretchen shuffled more pages around, frowning.

  “What is it?” Noah asked.

  “Looks like she was a ward of the state,” Gretchen said. “There’s a notation here. She lived in a group foster home in Bellewood.”

  Bellewood, the county seat, was forty miles away from Denton. Josie crossed the room and peered over Gretchen’s shoulder, studying the address. “That place was torn down when I was in high school. There’s a strip mall there now. Is there a contact listed? Someone had to bring her to her dental appointments, sign off on treatment and stuff.”

  Gretchen turned a page. “Maggie Smith.”

  “Let’s find her. If she’s still alive. We’ll write up some warrants and see if we can get this girl’s file from Child Services,” Josie instructed.

  Noah stepped forward. “I’ll run Belinda’s name through the databases.” He glanced at Josie. “We think someone might have been using her identity after she was killed.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  JOSIE – SIX YEARS OLD

  It seemed like an eternity before the doctor came. He was young—he looked young like her daddy—and he asked a lot of questions. Her mother answered them all with the same sad, tear-stained face she used when she talked to the nurses.

  “What about Josie’s father?” he asked. “Where was he when all this happened?”

  “He works overnight at the gas station out by the interstate.”

  “Have you called him?”

  Josie’s mother gave a wavering smile. “For a little cut? No, I didn’t want to bother him.”

  The doctor raised an eyebrow and walked to the bed where Josie lay. Gently, he lifted Josie’s hair and leaned in, studying the side of her face. He frowned at Josie’s mother. “This is not a little cut, Ms. Rose. I’m afraid your daughter is going to require several stitches.”

  Josie’s heart did a somersault. Tears threatened, and she concentrated as hard as she could on holding them back. The doctor’s palm was warm on her shoulder. When she looked up at him, he smiled. “I’m going to give you some medicine so they won’t hurt, okay, sweetie?”

  She nodded, not sure whether to believe him or not.

  The doctor looked at Josie’s mother again. “I think Josie’s father should be here. Why don’t you go call him?”

  Alone with Josie, the doctor called in another nurse, and they asked her a lot of questions: Did her mommy hurt her? How did she get the cut? What was she doing in the woods, and was there another person there who hurt her? And last of all, was she scared of her mommy? Josie knew better than to tell the truth. She kept mumbling, “I fell,” again and again like a broken toy. At first the lie was hard, but the more she said it, the easier it became, until it was as normal as breathing and her body didn’t know she was lying anymore.

  The doctors and nurses insisted on checking her limbs and torso for injuries as well, and they asked more questions until Josie could barely keep her eyes open. By the time the doctor started the stitches, Josie didn’t even care what they were or whether they would hurt. She just wanted to go to sleep. She didn’t have to be held down. No one had to tell her to hold still. She just turned on her side and closed her eyes. The doctor was right. She felt the needle he gave her to make her face numb, but that was it. She didn’t feel a thing.

  Her daddy came while the doctor was hard at work on her cheek. She knew he was there because she could hear him fighting with her mother outside the curtain. She only heard some of the words he said. “You… your fault… sick… leaving… never see… police… abuse… custody… hate you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Josie sat behind her desk at the station house, laptop open before her. Gretchen was off writing warrants to get the Department of Human Services foster care file on Belinda Rose. Noah was getting more coffee. Josie opened up the first of several databases to enter in Belinda Rose’s information, but her hands froze over the keyboard. Her scalp prickled. Once she started down this road, there would be no turning back. She had hoped to leave her mother firmly in her past, but that was impossible now. The Denton Police Department had a murder to solve. They needed to know who the girl buried in the woods had been. Since Josie’s mother had clearly stolen the girl’s identity sometime after her death, there was little choice but to track her down, or at least find a connection between the two women.

  The door to her office swung open, and Noah stepped through, a steaming mug of coffee in one hand. She nearly lunged for it. He laughed. “Whoa! Feeling a little tired, are you?”

  Curling both palms around the mug, she sat back down in her chair and sipped it. “Looking for a distraction,” she said. “Close the door.”

  The sounds of her officers moving about in the bullpen outside receded as Noah clicked the door shut. He sat in the chair across from her and raised a brow. “What’s going on, Boss?”

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to solve this murder without actually having to get back in contact with my mother.”

  “Not sure that’s possible,” Noah said. “You know we have to follow all the leads, and if your mother was using this girl’s identity—not that long after the murder—that makes her a significant person of interest. I mean, Belinda Rose doesn’t show up on any of our missing persons lists, so how would your mother have known so soon after her death that she could use her identity?”

  Josie put her mug down on the desk and traced the rim of it with her index finger, keeping her eyes on the steam rising from inside the mug instead of on Noah. “I understand what you’re saying.”

  He waited a beat. Then he asked, “You have no interest in finding out who your mom really was?”

  Josie met his eyes. Her fingers reached up and pulled her black hair down over the long scar on the right side of her face. She swallowed once to quell the dryness in her throat. “Oh, I know who she really was.”

  But I don’t know if I want the rest of the world to know, she added silently.

  “Boss,” Noah said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know who you are too. Don’t forget that.”

  It was exactly what she needed to hear, delivered perfectly.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Noah leaned forward, pulled a rolled-up bunch of papers out of his back pocket, smoothed it out, and pushed it across her desk. “I already did a search using the name Belinda Rose with the October 15, 1966 birthdate to look for a last known address.”

  Josie snapped her laptop closed and looked at the report. As her eyes roved over the addresses associated with Belinda Rose, Noah stood and moved around the desk next to her. He pointed to the first address, which Josie recognized immediately. “This was the foster home run by Maggie Smith,” he said. “We’re still trying to track her down. I’ve got Lamay running some searches. He’ll have something for us soon—as long as she’s still alive.”

  Noah’s fingers continued moving down the list. “The next address was an apartment in Fairfield. The real Belinda Rose would have been eighteen when she lived there.”

  “That’s almost an hour away from Bellewood, in Lenore County,” Josie said. “I wonder if she actually lived there, or if she was already dead by then. It might have been my mother living in that apartment under her name.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be able to make a better guess as to when she died once we have the DHS file and once we talk with Smith,” Noah said.

  “Look at this,” Josie said. She pointed below the Fairfield address. “She had a bunch of apartments throughout Alcott and Lenore Counties before she came to the trailer park—all of them at least forty miles away from Bellewood, if not more. Well before my mother came to the trailer park. I don’t think this is the real Belinda Rose.” Josie remembered vividly how often and how abruptly her mother came and went, abandoning her for months at a time and then ret
urning when she least expected it like a tornado tearing through her life, destroying everything.

  “Okay, so we know it was your mom who lived in the trailer park,” Noah said. “And you think these half-dozen apartments before that were probably her too. Should I have someone go out to these buildings and talk to landlords?”

  Josie leaned back in her chair and took another swig of coffee. “I’m not sure it’s worth it,” she said. “That was over thirty years ago. Some of these places might not even be standing anymore.”

  “Nosy neighbors?” Noah suggested.

  “Make some inquiries,” Josie instructed. “You never know.”

  “Is there anyone still living in the trailer park who would remember her?”

  “I doubt it,” Josie said. “But you can send someone over to ask around.”

  There is someone, she thought to herself, though he isn’t at the trailer park anymore. Josie didn’t even know if he was still alive; she hadn’t thought about Dexter McMann in sixteen years, had put that entire episode out of her mind, just as she tried to do with everything else connected to her mother. She doubted he would know more than she did anyway. She didn’t want to turn that slippery stone over unless she absolutely had to.

  “I think we really need to look at where she went after the trailer park, and there’s only one address listed for Belinda Rose after that,” Josie said.

  According to the report, the year that Josie turned fifteen, her mother had lived in an apartment in Philadelphia, two hours away from Denton. “After that, there’s nothing,” Josie added. “She used this identity until 2002, and then stopped.”

  “Maybe she died,” Noah said.

  “I wouldn’t be that lucky,” Josie mumbled.