Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Twenty-One

Sitting high on a rock-strewn hill at the edge of town, Rockview Ridge was Denton’s one and only skilled nursing facility. Josie’s grandmother, Lisette Matson, had been a resident there for several years now. Lisette was Josie’s last living relative—besides Josie’s mother—and her best friend. Josie visited her regularly and knew exactly where to find her at this time of day. She spotted Lisette’s silver curls the moment she walked into Rockview’s cafeteria; lunch was over, but several residents lingered, reading magazines, watching the communal television and, like Lisette, playing cards. She looked up and smiled, waving Josie over.

“You’re never here this early in the day,” she said as Josie leaned in for a kiss.

“I know. Work stuff.” Josie took a seat across from her grandmother.

A game of solitaire was spread out before Lisette. She snapped a card down onto one of the piles and said, “I guess you don’t have time to play.”

“Sorry, Gram. Listen, I need to ask you some questions.”

Lisette frowned. “Is everything okay? What’s going on?”

Josie reached across the table and patted Lisette’s hand. “Don’t worry. No one is missing, or shot, or dead. Okay, well that’s not entirely true.”

She told Lisette about the discovery of the real Belinda Rose’s remains behind the trailer park. “We believe that my mother stole this girl’s identity. I need you to tell me everything you remember about her.”

Lisette’s gaze slipped to the table. Slowly, she gathered her cards and began shuffling them. “Josie,” she said, and her tone filled Josie with dread. It was the tone she had used when she caught Josie drinking at age sixteen, the tone she had used when she found out that Josie and Ray were having sex; it was her warning tone, the tone that said, “I can’t stop you from traveling the path you’re on, but I’m telling you to be careful.”

Josie’s heart did a quick double tap. “Gram,” she said softly. “If my mother did something to this girl, I have to know.”

Lisette still didn’t look at her. “That woman is best left in your past, Josie. Have you forgotten how hard it was to get her out of our lives?”

“Of course I haven’t. Believe me, if I had a choice, I would run screaming in the other direction. I don’t even care that she’s not who she said she was—but I have a murder to solve, and she has a connection to the victim.”

Lisette stopped shuffling and placed her deck on the table, tapping the sides one by one until the cards were in perfect order. Josie thought she saw her eyes glisten over.

“Gram, please.”

Suddenly her grandmother’s fingers were digging into Josie’s forearm with a strength and fierceness that belied her eighty-five years. Eyes wide, voice low, Lisette leaned in and said, “You think I don’t know the things she did to you, Josie?”

Josie resisted the urge to pull away, even as pain spiked through her arm. “Don’t,” she choked out.

“I know, Josie. I know about what she did.”

“Please, Gram. Don’t.”

“That’s why I fought so hard for you. That’s why I did the things I did. You remember that.”

Josie couldn’t catch her breath. Lisette’s fingers dug in deeper, and Josie swore she felt her skin bruising.

“I should have killed her when I had the chance,” Lisette added.

“Gram!”

Josie looked around, but none of the residents in the room were paying attention, and Gretchen, who had accompanied her to the home, was still at the front desk making inquiries about Maggie Lane.

“I would have,” Lisette went on. “I wanted to, believe me. It would have been the best thing for all of us, but I was afraid I’d get caught and then you’d have no one.”

Josie peeled her grandmother’s fingers from her arm one by one and placed Lisette’s hand on the table. “Gram, please. That’s in the past. Just like you said. I’m not trying to resurrect all of that, but this case has to be solved.”

“You can’t be the one, Josie. You have to stay away from her. You’ve got officers beneath you. Let them do this.”

Josie covered Lisette’s hand with her own. “And they’ll come in here and ask you the same questions I’m about to ask. I’m the chief of police, Gram. No, I don’t have to lead the investigation, but I do have to oversee it. Just tell me what you can remember.”

“You promise to stay away from her?” Lisette said.

“As much as I can,” Josie answered.

Lisette pulled her hand away and stared down at her lap. “I don’t know much more than you do, I’m afraid. Your father brought her over a few times in the beginning, introduced her as Belinda Rose. We had no reason to disbelieve her.”

“What about her past?” Josie asked. “Did she ever talk about family or where she was from?”

Lisette was silent for a moment, and Josie could tell by the way her gaze drifted upward to the ceiling that she was searching her memory for any scraps that remained from before Josie’s birth. “She didn’t have any family,” Lisette said. “That’s what she said. Grew up in foster care. I remember that because I felt sorry for her. She was quite beautiful, your mother. When I met her, she was young, and I remember wondering why wouldn’t any family adopt such a sweet, pretty girl?” She humphed. “Well, now we both know why. Unfortunately.”

“I thought I heard her tell people her family was dead,” Josie said.

Lisette shrugged. “She told a lot of different stories. She told your father and me that she had grown up in foster care. But after she left, I talked with the attorney who represented her in all the custody disputes. He said he didn’t even know where to begin looking for her because she’d told him that her entire family perished in a house fire.”

“Did she ever say where she was from?”

“Bellewood. Said she grew up around there, but that she had been moved from home to home all over the state.”

“Did she have friends? A job?”

“No friends that I ever met. She used to clean houses though, I remember that.”

“For a company or on her own?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. I didn’t ask. She stopped working after you were born anyway.”

“Where did she and my father meet?”

Lisette gave a wan smile. “Where else? A bar. There used to be one down the way from the trailer park, but it was torn down ages ago.”

“The trailer we lived in—whose was it?”

“Your father’s. Well, he rented it from the park owner. When he died, she just kept making the payments. The owner tried to charge me for the damage to the place when she left since it was still in Eli’s name.”

“Do you know if she lived in the trailer park also? Before she met Dad?”

“I really don’t know, love,” Lisette answered. “I don’t think she did. Your father said there were a lot of drugs in the park back then. He always worried about that with you. I wanted him to move back in with me after you were born, but he said your mother wouldn’t allow it. Anyway, I think maybe she knew people from the bar who lived in the trailer park or went there to get high.”

Josie sighed. The bar her grandmother referred to was long gone, and the drug activity that had plagued the trailer park had been eradicated during Chief Harris’s tenure. Josie could have someone canvass the park, but she doubted anyone would have useful information sixteen years after the fact. Besides, by the time Josie’s mother met her father, she had already been using the Belinda Rose identity for over a year, at least.

“Gram, do you have any photos of her?”

Lisette’s mouth formed a straight line. A moment later, she said, “I don’t think so. Your mother didn’t like having her photo taken, and back then we didn’t have phones with cameras, so we didn’t take pictures every single day of our lives. We had actual cameras with rolls of film that had to be developed, and that cost money—”

“Gram,” Josie said, trying to keep Lisette on track.

Lisette smiled. “I’ll give you my photo albums before you leave, and you can go through them.”

Gretchen appeared in the doorway of the cafeteria. She nodded at Lisette, and Lisette waved back at her. “You’re not just here to talk to me, are you?” Lisette asked Josie.

“I’m afraid not, Gram. Do you know Maggie Lane?”

“I know who she is—she doesn’t come out of her room much. Had a stroke a couple of years ago and hasn’t felt like socializing since. Therapy brought her brain and her speech back, but she doesn’t get around very well now. Only ever talked about her husband, and he’s been gone a few years now. Don’t worry, she’s still lucid, but I think she’s just one of those who’s waiting to die. I can take you to her room if you like?”