The Bones She Buried

Thirty-Nine

Josie trudged into the great room at the station. All the adrenaline from her meeting with Zachary Sutton and the potential lead on Ivan had leeched away during the drive back. Three separate texts and one phone call to Noah to see how he was feeling went unanswered. She prayed that Chief Chitwood’s door was closed or that he was otherwise engaged, but she wasn’t that lucky; the moment her rear end hit her desk chair, Chitwood’s voice boomed across the room. “Quinn!”

She swiveled in her chair and looked at him standing in his office doorway, his trademark wispy white hair floating wildly around his balding head. “Sir?” she said.

Josie was prepared for a tirade about the attention the Colette Fraley-Beth Pratt case was drawing with the latest fire but all he said was, “How’s Fraley feeling? You talk to him this morning?”

Josie swiped a hand over her face. “Yeah,” she said. “I did. He was still a little dazed, had some pain, but he was okay.”

Chitwood nodded. “I stopped in during the night after he was out of surgery, but you were both asleep.”

It was exactly what Josie would have done when she was chief and two of her officers had narrowly escaped a fire, but didn’t seem in keeping with Chitwood’s abrasive personality. She wondered if perhaps he was warming up a little? He said, “You, Mettner and Palmer, in my office at four sharp to brief me on this catastrophe—and I expect some progress.”

“Maybe not,” Josie muttered under her breath as Chitwood’s office door slammed.

She had just found a current address for Brody Wolicki when Gretchen appeared beside her, depositing a paper coffee cup and a bag from Komorrah’s Koffee onto her desk.

Josie snatched up the bag and tore it open to find two cheese Danishes inside. She looked up at Gretchen who sat at her own desk, sipping from her coffee. With mock seriousness, Josie said, “I think we should get married.”

Gretchen laughed, drops of coffee spilling down her chin. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her jacket. “Noah might have something to say about that.”

Josie bit into a Danish and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

She filled Gretchen in on the morning’s awkwardness with Noah and his sister.

“Well,” Gretchen said. “It is better if he’s not in the area. Safer. If he wants time, give him time. He does love you, you know.”

Josie sighed. She wasn’t sure that was going to be enough, but there were more serious issues to attend to than her own hurt feelings. “Well I’ve got some exciting developments—I think. Let’s get Mett up here.” She called him on his cell phone and five minutes later, he was sitting at Noah’s empty desk so Josie could fill them in on the Wolicki article and on her meeting with Sutton. Mettner tapped away excitedly on his phone as Josie spoke.

“How long do you think it will take to get the personnel records?” he asked.

Josie shrugged. “If they go back that far? Possibly a week. I asked Sutton before I left. How’d it go with the Catholic church?”

Mettner nodded to Gretchen who picked up a sheaf of papers from her desk and handed it to Josie. “Here is a list of students enrolled in St. Agatha’s elementary school between 1958 and 1966. Colette’s name is on here. No one named Ivan.”

“What?” Josie said, skimming the names on the pages. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was,” Gretchen said. “Especially if those personnel records don’t pan out. Anyway, that’s the bad news. The good news is that I’ve got another lead. Look at the faculty names.”

Josie found the names of the nuns and lay teachers who had taught at St. Agatha’s when Colette was a student there. “I see them.”

“There was a nun there, Sister Mary Elsa. Her real name is Tracy Schmidt. She left the church in 1967.”

“Left the church?”

“Yes, left it. Apparently, it was quite the scandal.”

Josie raised a brow. “How do you know that?”

Gretchen smiled. “The church secretary is in her late seventies. She’s been working in the school office since she was twenty-five years old.”

“But she’s never heard of an Ivan?”

“No, but she said she was never great with student names,” Mettner said.

Josie laughed. “Well, that’s a good school secretary.”

“That’s a lot of students to remember,” Mettner replied. “All those decades of working at the school. Faculty and staff last a lot longer. What she does remember is the gossip, and Sister Mary Elsa, otherwise known as Tracy Schmidt’s departure from the church was quite a scandal.”

“What happened?” Josie asked, setting the list aside and taking a sip of her coffee.

Gretchen said, “She’s not sure why she left, just that she left. That was the scandal. Nuns take their vows for a lifetime. Back then it was quite a big deal for a nun to break her vows and leave the church.”

“So,” Josie said. “The school secretary thinks that this nun might know something?”

“Apparently she and Colette were quite close,” Mettner said.

“And then, at some point in high school, Colette switched to Episcopalian and never looked back,” Josie said.

“Yes. They both left the Catholic church,” Gretchen pointed out. “So there’s definitely something there.”

“Something that’s going to lead us to this Ivan person?” Josie asked hopefully.

Gretchen shrugged. “Hard to say. Won’t know unless we ask.”

Mettner stood up. “Let’s go talk to Tracy Schmidt.”

“Hopefully she’s still alive,” Josie said.