Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Forty-Six

“She’s lying,” Josie said.

Back at the station house, she, Noah, and Gretchen had gotten takeout and planted themselves in the conference room, their notes and materials from the Belinda Rose case spread out over the table.

“Boss,” Noah said, “she stopped working at the courthouse long before your grandmother tried to get custody of you. I doubt she even knew about any of it.”

“Unless Malcolm came home and told her,” Gretchen said. “It seems like he liked to come home and share the office gossip with her. You don’t think it would have occurred to him to come home and say, ‘Hey, remember that girl who used to work at the courthouse who disappeared? Well, she showed up today at the courthouse only she wasn’t the same girl.’”

“Or,” Noah said, “there’s more than one Belinda Rose in the state. We don’t even know that Malcolm Bowen knew Josie’s mother from when she worked for the cleaning service. Do men like that really notice the help?”

“He noticed Belinda Rose,” Josie pointed out. “My money’s on him as the baby’s father.”

Gretchen nodded her agreement. “I was thinking that too.”

Noah made a noise of frustration. “That still doesn’t mean he knew your mother in the early 1980s, or remembered her.”

“My mother had something on him,” Josie said with certainty. “I know she did. How ballsy was it to go to the courthouse you used to clean using the identity of a girl you used to work with there?”

“We’re talking fifteen years later, Boss,” Noah said.

Josie was going to argue her point, but her cell phone vibrated, dancing noisily across the glass-topped table. Seeing Misty’s name flash across the screen, Josie snatched it up and answered, listened for a moment, then said, “I’ll do it. Give me a half hour, okay?”

She hung up and, as she stood, she noticed Noah and Gretchen staring at her. “Misty needs me,” she explained. “Both her and the baby are sick. Mrs. Quinn took them to the doctor, but she has to work. Misty needs me to pick up a prescription for the baby.”

They continued to stare, and Josie realized that it was out of character for her to walk away from work in the middle of an active case, even though as chief, she didn’t need to be there. She was supposed to be getting better at delegating. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said. “In the meantime, draw up some warrants. I want a search for any female foster children in the care of the state between 1962 and 1982 whose first name is Linda, Lilly, or Laura.”

Noah groaned. “Boss, with all due respect, that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Gretchen was already taking notes. Josie raised a brow at Noah. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“Is there anyone else your mother knew who might be able to shed some light on who she was or what happened to her?” Noah asked.

“No,” Josie said. “Everyone who knew her would have known her as Belinda Rose. That doesn’t help me. Most of the people she knew were heavily involved in drugs in one way or another. I don’t know their names. I only know them by the nicknames I gave them when I was a child. Most of them are probably dead now.”

Gretchen asked, “Did she have any boyfriends? After your father passed?”

Again, Dexter McMann rose up in her mind. “There was a man,” she admitted. “A boyfriend. But I don’t think he will give us much to work with. He would only have known her as Belinda Rose, same as me. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Do you have his name?” Gretchen asked.

“I don’t—I don’t remember,” Josie lied.

Gretchen gave her a penetrating look. Then she said, “Try to remember. People you date usually keep photos. Could be worth paying him a visit. In the meantime, we’ll get to work tracking down the Lindas, Lillys, and Lauras of the foster care system.”