The Bones She Buried

Sixteen

Laura stood in the doorway to Noah’s kitchen, hands on her hips, and stared at Josie with what could only be described as disgust. “What do you mean you’re not coming to dinner with us tonight?”

From where he sat across from Josie at the kitchen table, Noah said, “Laura, please.”

“Don’t ‘please’ me, Noah. This is our last dinner before Grady and I go back to Bethlehem and Theo flies back to Arizona. She should be there.”

Noah laughed. “Why?” he said. “Josie and I aren’t married, as you were so quick to point out at Mom’s funeral. They’re short-handed at the station now with both of us out. It’s fine if she goes to work.”

Josie put her coffee mug down and said, “I don’t have to go back into work. I’m sure Mettner can handle the interviews on his own. He’s more than capable, and Gretchen is working every lead she can from the desk. It’s fine. I just thought—”

Laura cut her off. “My mother said you were too focused on work. That’s why she didn’t like you, you know.”

Grady’s head appeared over Laura’s shoulder, his eyebrows pulled together in a sheepish look. “Sweetheart, really. Calm down.” To Josie and Noah, he said, “Pregnancy hormones.”

Laura backhanded Grady, striking his chest. “Don’t blame this on the pregnancy.”

Josie stood up. “I thought your mother didn’t like me because I shot Noah.”

That silenced all of them. Josie walked over to the kitchen sink and dumped the rest of her coffee down the drain, taking a deep breath.

“What interviews?” Laura asked, changing the subject. “Are you questioning people in relation to our mother’s case?”

Josie said, “We’re not exactly sure yet. The department is still running down leads.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Laura snapped.

Noah said, “Laura, calm down.”

“I won’t calm down. Did you know one of your detectives called our employers? Mine and Theo’s? Not to mention our housekeeper? She wanted our alibis. In my own mother’s murder case.”

Calmly, Grady said, “I think that’s standard operating procedure, sweetheart. Isn’t it, Noah? Rule out the family first?”

“Yes,” Noah said. “We always check out people close to victims. It doesn’t mean anything, Laura.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Laura snapped.

“Look,” Josie said, before Laura could go on. She turned back to them. “I know your mother didn’t warm to me, and I’m sorry that we didn’t have more time to get to know one another, especially because I genuinely admired and respected her. The last thing I want to do right now is upset all of you more, but I do want to get out there and help find who did this. I want the person who murdered your mother brought to justice. That said, if Noah wants me at dinner, I’ll be there. No questions asked.”

Silence filled the room. Noah’s chair made a scraping sound along the tiles as he stood. He walked over to Josie, gripped her shoulders and pulled her in to him, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. “I love you,” he said. “Now go to work.”

Josie’s eyes filled with tears. It was the first time since they’d found Colette’s body that he’d sounded even remotely like the Noah she knew.

Ten minutes later she was back at the station house, squished between Mettner and Gretchen in front of Gretchen’s computer, watching the grainy footage of Drew Pratt and the mystery woman the indoor craft fair cameras had recorded twelve years earlier. They walked into the frame side by side and strolled down the wide aisles at a slow pace. Their bodies were close enough and in sync enough to indicate they were definitely together, but only once did their heads turn toward one another. The footage was so grainy, it wasn’t even clear whether they were speaking or not. The camera had been set high at an angle that almost looked straight down from overhead.

“I can see why the police didn’t bother releasing this at the time,” Gretchen remarked. “It’s totally useless. All you can really tell is that this woman was shorter than Pratt, relatively thin, and had short, dark hair. This footage isn’t even clear enough to guess her age.”

“Yeah,” Josie agreed. “But if it had been my case, I would have at least notified the public that he’d been seen talking to a short, dark-haired white woman before he went missing and asked that she come forward.”

Gretchen sighed. “Yeah, me too. Google enough articles on this case and you’ll get to the parts where various law enforcement agencies blame one another for it not being solved. They had local and state police involved, the county investigators from the DA’s office, the sheriff and even the FBI all working on this at one point or another.”

Mettner tapped away on his note-taking app as the two of them talked. “No one who was at the craft fair that day remembered her?” he asked. “No one could give a composite?”

Gretchen said, “No. I looked over the file. There were lots of notes and interviews. A lot of people came through there that day. No one even specifically remembered Drew Pratt. He was just another customer. Neither Pratt nor the mystery woman was memorable enough for any of the vendors to give a description or a composite. Unless someone who knows something talks, it’s not getting solved.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Josie said, taking out her phone. She had spent a good deal of the night going through the Fraley family photo albums to find pictures of Colette around the time that Drew Pratt disappeared. She’d then used her phone to snap photos of those pictures which she now showed Gretchen and Mettner. “I thought for a hot minute that Colette might be the mystery woman, but as you can see, she’s always had long hair. I couldn’t find one single photo of her with short hair.”

Gretchen took Josie’s phone and swiped through them. “The build is similar though. Maybe she wore a disguise?”

“But why?” Josie asked. “What reason would Colette Fraley have to meet with Drew Pratt? Wearing a disguise, no less?”

With another sigh, Gretchen handed Josie’s phone back and used the mouse to close out the video and pull up some photos. “I don’t know,” she said. “But look—these are photos of Patti Snyder back in 2006.”

In her driver’s license photo, Patti Snyder’s skin was tanned with wrinkles beginning to form at the corners of her blue eyes and around her mouth. Her dark shock of hair was long enough to run fingers through but not long enough to make a ponytail. The sides of it looked as though they’d been shaved close to her head. The other photo they had on file showed her standing beside a Christmas tree with a reindeer antler headband on her head and a long necklace made of glowing Christmas lights hung around her neck. In the background, Josie saw marble floors and glass walls.

“Well there’s no denying she had the short hair and a similar build,” Josie said. “Did Patti Snyder smoke? Reports say Pratt’s car had cigarette ash inside it.”

“Not according to the file,” Gretchen answered. “Did Colette?”

“Many years ago. I only know that because Noah once talked about how she quit cold turkey and how hard she found it.”

“Well,” Mettner said. “That’s one mark in the Colette column.”

“But the short hair puts a mark in Patti Snyder’s column,” Josie replied. “I assume someone has asked her?”

“The FBI,” Gretchen answered. “They shake her down every couple of years. She refuses to talk to any law enforcement about any of it because she says no one listened to her when her son was sentenced to two years at Wood Creek.”

“Well,” Josie said. “That’s going to make things a lot harder when we go to talk to her, isn’t it? What’s this in the background? Where was she?”

Gretchen said, “Bellewood First National Bank. She used to be a loan officer there.”

“So it’s possible that the bank statements on that flash drive came from Patti Snyder.”

“Yeah,” Gretchen said. “And before you ask, Mett and I couldn’t find any connection between Colette and Patti Snyder. No common ground at all. They lived nowhere near one another. They didn’t go to the same schools, church, doctors—nothing. We even checked to see if there were any connections between her son and Noah and his sister and brother, but we didn’t find anything.”

“None of this is making any sense,” Josie said.

“Right,” Mettner agreed. “Even if we say that Patti Snyder created this flash drive and gave it to Drew Pratt, how in the hell did Mrs. Fraley get her hands on it?”

“Not just that,” Josie said. “But why? And when?”

Gretchen checked the time on her phone. “I can definitely set up a meeting with Patti Snyder—assuming she’ll meet with you and Mettner in prison—but why don’t you two go and see Beth Pratt and find out if she’s got any relevant information.”