Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Sixty-Five

The Denton Library was a two-floor stone building designed by a local architect in the early 1900s in neoclassical style, complete with a grand staircase and large Doric columns. Josie had always loved the building; she had spent many hours as a teenager tucked away among the shelves, studying in the reverent hush that presided over the massive collection of books. In the intervening years, much of the building had been modernized, upgrading from tables to computer stations and expanding into conference and activity rooms. Josie explained to one of the librarians what she was looking for, and the woman led her to a computer station on the second floor.

“Would it be on microfiche?” Josie asked.

“Oh no, dear. We moved all that old stuff onto this new database. It’s all computerized now. You’ll see. We’ve got the Denton Tribune, the Bellewood Record, and a couple of the other local papers from the county. When you put in your search terms, it will trawl all of those papers, or only the ones you designate.” The librarian reached across Josie and maneuvered the mouse until an image of an old Denton Tribune cover popped up next to a login bar. She typed in her credentials and gave Josie a short tour, showing how to do a search and narrow down the parameters.

Once the librarian left her alone, Josie glanced at her cell before setting it on the desk next to her—still nothing from the Paynes. Getting to work, it only took a few minutes to find two results. One was from the Denton Tribune dated October 4, 1987. It was on the front page and offered no more than Trinity had disclosed in her alumni magazine interview. The Callowhill fire marshal was quoted as saying the cause of the fire was still under investigation. Josie saved it and moved on to the next article, which was dated December 17, 1987. This article was from the Bellewood Record, on page four, with a number of county items that weren’t newsworthy enough to warrant space on the front page. The headline read: Cause of Callowhill Fire Arson; Police Open Murder Investigation.

Josie skimmed the article, learning that the nanny who had rescued Trinity had died of smoke inhalation after going back into the house to rescue the other twin, making the case a double homicide. There were no leads and no suspects. Only a few months after the fire, the case had grown cold. The article ended with a quote from Shannon Payne that punched a small barb of pain into Josie’s heart. “From the day my girls were born, I never left them alone. That was the only time I ever left them alone with the nanny. I can’t help thinking that if I had been there, we could have saved them both.”

From the day my girls were born. The amorphous shadow in the back of Josie’s mind shifted, making itself known but not becoming clear. With a sigh, Josie saved the second article and went in search of the librarian to gain access to a printer.

As the woman clicked on several drop-down menus and selected a nearby machine, Josie asked her, “Uh, do you have kids?”

“I certainly do,” the librarian answered. “A girl and a boy. They’re grown now, of course. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you looked familiar,” Josie lied. “I thought maybe I had gone to high school with your daughter at Denton East.”

“Oh no, dear,” the librarian said, smiling at Josie. “I only just moved here from Pittsburgh a few years back. Maybe I just have one of those faces. Do you have children?”

Josie was glad the woman was chatty, and she wouldn’t have to work too hard to bring up the subject she was really aiming for. “Oh no,” Josie answered. “I mean, maybe one day. The world is a scary place these days. The thought of bringing a child into this chaos…” She trailed off, and the woman picked up the thread immediately.

“Oh, every parent feels like that, dear. When my daughter was born, I was terrified. It seemed like the world was worse than it ever was. Then, a few years later, my son was born, and it seemed even worse. But life goes on, and you manage.”

“Thanks,” Josie said. A large printer across the room whirred noisily as it spat out several sheets of paper. The librarian bustled over to it and picked them up. Josie thanked her again before she was called away by another patron. Settling back at her computer station, Josie pulled up the newspaper database again and searched the words baby and adopted for the years 1982 and 1983.

The shadow at the back of her mind had fallen away as she spoke with the librarian, revealing what had been bothering her. When Shannon Payne talked about her twins, she talked about the day they were born. When the manager at the Eudora told Josie about his drug-addicted son, he used the same language: the day his son was born. When the librarian talked about her own children, she too used the word born.

But when Josie and her team interviewed Sophia Bowen, she had said that she stopped working in the summer of 1983 “when we brought our eldest son home.” Something about the phrasing had stuck in the back of Josie’s mind, needling her, begging to be examined further. Maybe she was reaching. She was no longer chief and didn’t have a police department to run to keep herself busy. Maybe she was just making things up to keep herself distracted from the fact that her life had fallen apart, and neither she nor the Denton PD were any closer to finding Lila Jensen. Perhaps Sophia Bowen had merely been referring to the day they’d brought their eldest son home from the hospital.

It was a long shot. She knew that. Adoptions weren’t the sort of thing that ended up in newspapers—not in the ’80s, and not now. But if a prominent judge and his young bride adopted a baby, there was the tiniest possibility it would have been newsworthy on a slow day.

With time on her hands and a research database at her fingertips, Josie had nothing to lose.

Most of the results were articles having to do with changes to the adoption laws in the state, lawsuits, and adopted children searching for their birth parents. Her heart leapt as she found what she was looking for in an issue of the Bellewood Record from December of 1987—the same year as the fire that took the Paynes’ daughter and their home. It was just a small piece buried on page eight of the paper next to the announcements of the schedules of various church services over the holidays.

Five Years Later, Alcott County’s Manger Baby Plays Joseph in Live Nativity.

When he was only a few days old, little Andrew Bowen was the unwilling star of the Maplewood Baptist Church’s outdoor nativity. Just before Christmas of 1982, someone left him swaddled in white cotton towels in the manger of the church’s nativity scene. Residents of Alcott County were shocked by the discovery. The Manger Baby, as he became known after he was discovered, had been left in the freezing cold during an evening church service. Members of the congregation heard his cries as they left the service and called the police. Although the baby’s parents were never found, he found a family with local judge Malcolm Bowen and his wife, Sophia.

The Manger Baby’s case came across the judge’s docket after he was placed in the foster care system. “As soon as I saw him, I fell in love,” Judge Bowen recalls. “My wife and I were already trying for children, and I came home after seeing that baby for the first time and said, ‘Sophia, what do you think about adoption?’ Of course, she was on board immediately.”

The Bowens were able to bring the Manger Baby home in the summer of 1983, when he was six months old. “It was the happiest day of my life,” Sophia Bowen exclaimed. “I became a mother.”

Five years later, young Andrew Bowen is thriving in his new home—he even has a little brother—and this year he will star as Joseph in the live nativity at the very same rural church where he was abandoned as an infant.

“We’ve made our peace with what Andrew’s biological parents did to him. We’ve forgiven them, and we hope when Andrew grows up, he will too. We don’t know what type of desperate situation the mother was in that she would give up such a precious little baby. What I know is that God gave us a gift,” Sophia Bowen said. “Andrew made us parents for the first time. There is no greater gift than that.”

Just in time for Christmas.

Knowing what she knew about Malcolm Bowen and Belinda Rose, the cheery, saccharine tone of the article made Josie’s stomach turn. She thought of the photos of Andrew Bowen she’d seen in Sophia’s home, and of the times she’d met him in his capacity as a criminal attorney in Denton. He was the spitting image of Malcolm Bowen, except blond. Was it possible that Malcolm Bowen had arranged to adopt his own son? Had Belinda left the baby in the manger?

Josie thought of the locket Belinda had returned with after she disappeared to give birth to her baby. It was one thing for her to go off and have the baby and then abandon him somewhere, but she had been gone for months, not days. Belinda Rose had had a plan. She had had somewhere to go. She had had help. Malcolm Bowen would have had enough power and influence to make sure that his own son ended up with him and Sophia.

On her phone, Josie googled Andrew Bowen’s office number and called it. His secretary told her that he was in court. She left her cell phone number and asked that he call her when he was out. She was still reeling from her discovery about the Bowens when her phone rang in her hand. She recognized the number immediately and answered.

“Chief Quinn?”

“Mrs. Payne?” Josie said. “Shannon Payne?”