Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“You didn’t find any pictures of your mother in your grandmother’s photo albums?” Gretchen asked.

Josie stared straight ahead from her place in the passenger’s seat of Gretchen’s department-issue Cruze. “I found two photos of her in profile—she was with my dad—but that was it. In both, her face was turned too far away from the camera for them to be of any use to us. My grandmother never liked her and never got along with her, so I’m not surprised she didn’t take that many photos of her.”

“Sounds like a lot of people didn’t get along with her,” Gretchen noted.

Josie turned her gaze toward the window, watching the working-class neighborhoods of Denton give way to the more affluent areas. They were entering the mayor’s neighborhood, where the houses stood tall and regal on acres of meticulously kept land. Apparently, Damon Todd had also moved from Bellewood to Denton after high school, and had done quite well for himself. It had only taken Gretchen a day to locate him, and when she called him, he had agreed to speak to them with the understanding that it had nothing to do with the charges pending against his brother.

When Josie didn’t speak, Gretchen said, “Boss, I know you don’t want to talk about her, and I don’t need to know… the things she did, but I am one of the lead investigators on this case. It would help if I had a better idea of what she was like.”

Josie knew Gretchen was right. In any investigation Josie ran herself, she would ask family members the same questions. You had to know who you were dealing with—what you were walking into when the day came to confront the person you were hunting.

Gretchen pulled over in front of a large white-and-brick colonial with pillars holding up a portico, bougainvillea lining the front of it. She turned the car off and shifted in her seat, pulling her polo shirt from where it was tucked into her khaki pants and lifting it up, revealing pale flesh beneath.

“What are you doing?” Josie asked.

Gretchen was in her forties and carried some excess weight around her middle. Rolls of doughy skin jostled as she lifted her shirt up to just beneath her breasts.

“Gretchen,” Josie said, slightly alarmed. “I don’t think—”

She stopped speaking when she saw the scars. They crisscrossed Gretchen’s upper abdomen, some of them silver and thin and others purple-pink and thick like cords of rope. “Exploratory abdominal surgery,” Gretchen explained. “Do you know what Munchausen by proxy is?”

Josie swallowed. “That’s that syndrome where parents make their children sick for attention?”

Gretchen smiled and lowered her shirt, tucking it back into her waistband. “Yes, exactly.”

“Your—your mother did that to you?” Josie asked.

Gretchen shook her head. “No, various doctors did it over many years. My mother made them think I needed it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Josie said, feeling stunned, as though Gretchen had just punched her. Gretchen was notoriously private. She had been with them almost a year, and no one knew anything about her. Most of the time she wore a beat-up leather jacket that, combined with her short, spiked hair, gave her the look of a biker, but as far as Josie knew, she didn’t own a motorcycle. The jacket clearly had a story behind it, but no one on the police force had had the nerve to ask about it. Josie understood this need for privacy; she was the same way. Gretchen had always done her job well, and neither Josie nor anyone else on the team had felt the need to pry.

“Look,” Gretchen said, “I know this stuff isn’t easy to talk about. It’s not easy to bare your scars, yeah?”

Josie swallowed and gave a stiff nod.

“Even when those scars are here.” Gretchen tapped an index finger to her temple. “Or here,” she added, tapping the same finger against her heart. “But I know a thing or two about toxic mothers.”

“How did—when did your mother stop?” Josie asked.

“When she killed my sister,” Gretchen said. “She’s been in prison ever since. Muncy. Inmate number OY8977.”

Josie said nothing.

The front door of the colonial opened, and a tall man in his late forties with wavy salt-and-pepper hair walked toward the car.

“Well,” Josie said as she opened her door, “maybe my mother will join her.”

Gretchen smiled as she opened her own door. They met Damon Todd halfway up his driveway and made introductions. Up close, Josie could see that he was good-looking for his age—tan and fit with an easy smile. The polar opposite of his burly, gristle-faced brother. He wore a blue polo shirt and khaki pants, as if he were about to head out golfing. He invited them inside, walking them through a large, high-ceilinged foyer with bags of sports equipment pushed up against one wall.

Damon smiled sheepishly as he motioned to it. “Sorry. I’ve got three teenage boys and they all play sports—and now I’ve got Lloyd’s boys as well. The foyer is kind of the dumping ground when they come in.”

To the left of the foyer was the living room. The hardwood floors were dominated by a gray microfiber U-shaped sectional that faced a large television. Josie counted three different video game systems on the entertainment center beneath the television. The sleek, dark coffee table with matching pedestal tables on either side of the room boasted faux floral arrangements. Between those and the heavy, gray, pleated drapes, it was obvious that the messy, sports-loving Todd men still had a woman in their lives. Josie knew from the research that Gretchen had done that Damon was now a physical therapist who worked closely with the student athletes on Denton University’s campus.

“So,” Damon said, taking a seat on one side of the sectional. “You’re here to talk about Belinda Rose. I always wondered what happened to her.”

“I’m sorry to tell you that she was murdered,” Gretchen said, taking a seat across from him. Josie remained standing.

Beneath the tan, Damon’s skin paled. “What? When… How?”

“We believe she was killed sometime on or after the night she disappeared,” Josie cut in. “April 26, 1984.”

His brow furrowed. “Disappeared? Word at school was she met someone, and they ran off to Philadelphia together. How do you know she was murdered?”

“We recently found her remains in the woods out behind the trailer park,” Josie answered.

He hung his head. “My God. I don’t know what to say.” They gave him a moment. He took in a few breaths, and when he looked back up at them, he said, “What does this have to do with me?”

Gretchen said, “We’re trying to get a picture of Belinda’s life before she died—who she hung around with, what she was like, places she went, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, well, we didn’t know each other that well.”

“Her foster mother said she dated your brother, Lloyd,” Josie said. “Your brother gave a statement to a police officer after she disappeared stating he was her boyfriend, and you confirmed it.”

“I wouldn’t have said that, and neither would Lloyd. Maybe that’s what the police inferred. That’s what everyone inferred. I mean, people just assumed that.”

Gretchen asked, “Why would people assume that Belinda and Lloyd were dating?”

“And why would Lloyd let them?” Josie added.

He clasped his large hands together and pressed them between his knees. “Well, she spent a lot of time at our house junior year.”

“But she and Lloyd weren’t an item?” Gretchen said.

“No, not the two of them.”

“Then who? You and Belinda?”

His mouth twisted. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” he mumbled, almost to himself.

“What doesn’t matter, Mr. Todd?” Josie asked.

“Belinda was seeing our dad,” he blurted. The effort of pushing the words out seemed to make him short of breath.

Josie and Gretchen looked at one another. Then Josie said, “Your dad?”

“He’s dead now,” Damon said. “Died a few years back of pancreatic cancer. He was an algebra teacher at the high school. Back then, my mom had left us right before my freshman year, so it was just the three of us—me, Lloyd, and Dad. He was tutoring Belinda after school, and things… progressed.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Gretchen said. Her notebook was out, and she began frantically making notes. “When did the affair start?”

“Right before the summer after sophomore year.”

“1983?” Gretchen asked.

“Yeah. That’s right. It was the summer before she disappeared.”

“Did you or Lloyd ever talk to her or your dad about what was going on?” Josie asked.

“We tried. We were both pretty disgusted with him. I mean, we weren’t ready for him to date at all, let alone carry on an affair with someone we went to school with. Lloyd was furious. I thought him and my dad were going to come to blows over it, but my dad made it clear he wasn’t going to stop seeing her, and finally Lloyd just gave up. They didn’t speak for a long while. I tried reasoning with Dad, but he said it was something I couldn’t understand until I was older. He said we could be mad at him all we wanted, but he only asked that we not tell anyone, because it would ruin his career and he could go to jail.”

Josie and Gretchen stared at him.

He spread his hands in a plaintive gesture. “Look, I know it sounds terrible. Looking back, I realize how bad it was, but Lloyd and I were kids. All we had was my dad. If he went to prison, we’d be on our own. I think that’s why Lloyd stopped fighting with him over it. He kept saying it would fizzle out eventually and that as upsetting as it was, it wasn’t worth our dad going to jail, so I just kind of… fell in line.”

“What about Belinda?” Gretchen asked. “Did you ever talk to her about their relationship?”

“Yeah, a couple times. She said she wouldn’t stop seeing my dad and asked me not to tell anyone. She said Lloyd had already agreed to do the same. Like I said, ultimately, Lloyd didn’t want our dad to go to jail. He was in the same year as Belinda, so when people assumed that she was coming over here to see him all the time, we let them think that. She told people at school she and Lloyd were a thing, and he didn’t deny it. She followed him around, and even though he barely gave her the time of day, people saw them together and just assumed they were an item. You know, she had… this is going to sound strange, but she had fangs. Only on the top. They weren’t even really noticeable, but by high school, almost everyone knew she had them.”

“It was noted in the autopsy,” Josie said. “Supernumerary teeth.”

“Is that what they’re called? Sorry. No disrespect intended. I only bring it up because she got made fun of a lot in school for them. She didn’t have a lot of friends—none, really—and when Lloyd didn’t deny that they were together and let her follow him around, all of the teasing stopped. I think sometimes she didn’t want to bother with guys her own age because all they ever did was pick on her. She never said that. That’s just my take on it. I mean, I told her she should be dating someone her own age, but she said—” he broke off and looked away from them.

“She said what?” Josie prompted.

“She said she liked older men—that they were nicer to her and more sophisticated and treated her better. She made it sound like she’d been with older men before.”

Gretchen’s pen hovered over her notepad. “Did she name anyone?”

Damon shook his head. “No. I thought she was making it up, trying to make herself seem more mature.”

“Did your father ever give Belinda any gifts? Jewelry or anything like that?” Josie asked.

“No. He wouldn’t have. He was pretty paranoid about being caught. People knew he was single, so if he bought jewelry, the town would have been talking. She always wore this locket ’round her neck, but it wasn’t from him.”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “Really? Did she ever say who gave it to her?”

“I never asked her, and she never talked about it. Lloyd didn’t care enough about her to ask her. The other girls at school would bring it up sometimes, but she just said it was from someone special, and that’s all she would say. I used to think maybe she bought it herself. Belinda was a nice person, but she liked attention, and the more mystery she could surround herself with, the more attention she drew.”

“Mr. Todd,” Josie said. “Did Belinda ever mention being pregnant or having had a baby?”

His eyes widened. “What? No. Never.”

Josie knew that Belinda’s affair with Damon Todd’s father would have started four or five months after she’d given birth, but it was worth a try to see if perhaps she had mentioned it to Damon. Josie wondered if Belinda had hidden the pregnancy from everyone. Had she had even one friend to confide in? Would anyone out there know what had happened to the baby?

“So, what happened between Belinda and your father?” Gretchen asked, picking up the line of questioning once more.

“Oh, it didn’t last. By the time the new year came around, they were finished.”

“Who broke it off?” Gretchen asked.

“She did. My dad was crushed. I think he really liked her. She would have been eighteen that fall. They could have been together for real—at least that’s what my dad kept saying. Took him months to stop talking about her. Then that fall there were rumors around town that she had met some guy in Philadelphia and was getting married. I never saw my dad so depressed—well, except for when my mom left.”

“Where did these rumors come from?” Josie asked.

“One of the girls who’d lived at the care home with her was in her senior year, and after their foster mom got a postcard from Belinda, it was all the girls at the home could talk about. Word spread from there. Eventually my dad overheard some of the kids talking about it in class.”

“Do you remember any of the names of the girls she lived with at the care home?” Josie asked.

He rattled off a few of them, mostly first names that were so common they’d be impossible to track down with any accuracy. But within a few days, they’d have the list of former care home girls from the Department of Human Services, and they’d be able to match those names with the names Damon remembered.

“I know you said she didn’t have many friends, but do you remember if she had any close friends that she hung around with? Most teenage girls have at least one.”

“I’m sorry, but no, I can’t think of anyone. She wasn’t popular, and she didn’t really have friends at school—other than the girls who lived at the care home. I mean, if she had friends outside of school, I don’t know. She had a job at the courthouse—she might have made friends there that I didn’t know about. Like I said, she was seeing my dad. It was weird. We covered for them, but it wasn’t like her and I were friends, you know? You could always check the yearbooks. All the girls from the foster home went to Bellewood High.”

Josie wanted to kick herself for not thinking of it. “The yearbooks,” she said. “Does the school keep copies that far back?”

“I don’t know, but if you want, you can have my dad’s. He kept one for every year he taught. They’re in the garage with a bunch of his other stuff. I didn’t know what to do with them. Seemed wrong to throw them away.”

Gretchen stood up. “That would be great, Mr. Todd. We would certainly appreciate it.”

“Sure. My wife will be happy to be rid of them.”