Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Thirty-One

Josie and Gretchen lugged several boxes of Bellewood High School yearbooks back to Josie’s office at the station house. While Gretchen went to check on the warrants, Josie pored over the yearbooks from 1981 through 1985, looking for her mother’s face among the hundreds of photos.

“There’s nothing here,” she said when Noah appeared.

He sat across from her. “So, she didn’t go to school with Belinda Rose. We still have the care home girls, and I set up an interview tomorrow with a lady from the courthouse who worked there at the same time as Belinda.”

With a sigh, Josie pushed the last yearbook away and spun her chair to look out the window behind her desk. Night had fallen, which meant it was time for her to go home, alone, to her empty house, a bottle of Wild Turkey, and the now stirred-up memories of a mother whose greatest kindness to her had been to leave.

“You okay, Boss?”

She spun back around and offered him a wan smile. “Fine,” she lied. “What’s up?”

“Maggie Lane says that Belinda’s locket was not among the personal effects left behind at the care home. She says she doesn’t know who gave it to her, but Belinda started wearing it around Christmas after the first time she ran off. I already had someone go back to the crime scene and take another look. Nothing turned up.”

“Interesting,” Josie said. “Maybe we’ll find out more when we track down some of the girls who grew up with her.”

“Hopefully.” He motioned toward the dark window behind her. “It’s pretty late, Boss.”

“I know.”

Noah was always looking out for her. She thought about asking him to go for a drink, but decided against it. Two years ago, she’d had an easy answer to this cloying sense of dread and anxiety: sex. Two years ago, she’d been in a committed relationship where sex with her fiancé was readily available, uncomplicated, and—above all—numbing. Her body yearned for the kind of physical sensation that would blot out the blackness creeping into her head. She knew Noah wouldn’t say no, the same way she knew it was a bad idea. She pushed the thought away; she didn’t need to make her life any more complicated. She stood and fished under the piles of yearbooks for her car keys.

“I’m going home,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow? I’d like to be there for the courthouse interview.”

“You got it.”

Josie left the station behind, wending her way through Denton’s quiet streets, her mind on the bottle of Wild Turkey waiting on top of her fridge—the next best thing to sex—but she knew something was wrong as soon as she pulled into her driveway. The lights in her bedroom windows glowed bright and gold in the darkness.

Someone was in her house.