Her Mother’s Grave_Absolutely gripping crime fiction with unputdownable mystery and suspense

by Lisa Regan

  A smile slid across his face. “If you can help me with my son. My oldest. You see, he got caught up in this mess—me being falsely accused and all that. He’s been charged with some things he didn’t do.”

  “I’m sure he has a good lawyer,” Josie said pointedly.

  “Oh, he does. But it never hurts to have the chief of police have a conversation with the district attorney.”

  Normally, Josie would have taken great pleasure in telling a man like Lloyd Todd to go fuck himself. Somehow she doubted his oldest son was as innocent as Todd portrayed him, but she understood a parent’s need to protect his child. She also knew that Todd wouldn’t offer everything he knew and then ask for a favor after the fact. He was holding on to something, and the only way to get it was to make a show of good faith.

  “Let me make some phone calls,” she said.

  * * *

  Two hours later, she was back in the conference room across from Lloyd, handing his attorney the paperwork concerning Lloyd Todd Jr. “I couldn’t get the charges dropped,” she told him. “But I did get them reduced. Plus, he can enter an accelerated rehabilitation program. He goes to therapy, drug and alcohol counseling, job training. He does community service and pays some fines, and if he completes all the requirements, his record is expunged of these charges. That’s the best I can do. He’ll still get a clean slate. This time.”

  Lloyd bristled at the barb, but looked over the paperwork his attorney pushed in front of him, nodding as Josie spoke. He didn’t hurry. After a solid five minutes, he looked up at her and said, “There’s a strip mall on Sixth Street. That laundromat that’s been there for decades.”

  “I know the one,” Josie said.

  “Zeke hangs out there when he’s not under the bridge. So I’ve heard. Hypothetically.”

  Josie stood. She couldn’t believe the words were coming out of her mouth, but they did: “Thank you, Mr. Todd.”

  Her hand was on the doorknob when Lloyd called out to her one last time. “Bowen and Jensen,” he said.

  Josie turned her head. “What?”

  “Belinda’s friends. Their last names. Bowen and Jensen. I remember because together they made the initials B.J. You know, like blow job?”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “Lila Jensen.”

  Noah drove as Josie sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing. She kept saying the name. Trying it out. It wasn’t what she’d expected. Then again, Josie wasn’t sure what she had expected. Lila Jensen sounded so normal, pretty even. Not at all like the devil she knew her mother to be.

  “Lila Jensen,” she said again.

  “Gretchen’s already on the phone with DHS trying to expedite a search of their records. She’s also checking the databases to see how many Lila Jensens there are, or were, in the state, looking for any born between 1958 and 1964—assuming she was between eighteen and twenty-four when Belinda first met her at the courthouse. We know she was older than Belinda, but not by much.”

  Josie blinked, the flashing mountain scenery coming back into focus. “That won’t help you find her.”

  “What?”

  “So we know who she was before she stole Belinda’s identity. She shed her own identity for a reason. She wouldn’t go back to it. She doesn’t want to be found.”

  The strange exhilaration of discovering one of her mother’s secrets was now replaced with a sense of disappointment. Maybe they would find out some things about Josie’s mother before she had become Josie’s mother, but she knew in her gut it would not lead them to her. They still had no way to track her. No photos, even.

  “Dex,” she whispered.

  Noah looked over at her for a second. “What’s that?”

  Josie cleared her throat and spoke more loudly. “Dexter McMann. The boyfriend I mentioned to you. I remembered his name. I need you to find a current address for him. He would be thirty-seven now.”

  “You think he would have photos?”

  “I doubt it,” Josie said. “It’s probably a dead end, but Gretchen is right, I have to at least try talking to him. But first, I want to find Larry Ezekiel Fox and have a little chat with him.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  JOSIE – FOURTEEN YEARS OLD

  Her biggest mistake was letting herself enjoy life with Dex around. He’d been living with them for almost a year, and he was right: he wasn’t a pervert, and he didn’t want to be her father. They’d developed a strange kind of friendship restricted to the hours that Josie’s mother was out of the trailer. She watched ER with him, and he watched Ally McBeal with her. Lisette would have said Josie was too young to watch television shows with such adult themes, but Dex didn’t seem to think it was an issue. He drove her to school each day, picking up Ray along the way, and sometimes even picking them up at the end of the day as well. He took her for ice cream sundaes, swimming in the river during the summer, and sledding in the winter. Once during a snowstorm he’d driven into an empty parking lot and done donuts in the icy slush, provoking screams and giggles from Josie and somehow not crashing the car into any of the light poles.

  If her mother noticed their rapport, she didn’t comment on it. As usual, Josie stayed out of her way, and Dex focused all of his attention on her when she was there. For a time, Josie thought they could go on forever that way. But it couldn’t last forever. That was the silly dream of a naïve fourteen-year-old.

  The first signal came the day Josie sliced her hand open working on a science project. She had chosen to take and compare fingerprints and, after taking her own and Dex’s prints, had broken a glass while reaching for some kitchen roll.

  A wedge of glass protruded from the meat of her palm. There was a lot of blood, but she didn’t even feel the pain until she heard Dex say, “Holy shit!” He sprang into action, wrapping her hand up in a dish towel and rushing her to the hospital. At the ER, they removed the glass, stitched her up, and sent her home, where her mother was waiting for them.

  Josie could smell the booze on her before they were even through the door. She stood next to the bloody glass debris they had abandoned in the kitchen, hands on her hips, glaring at the two of them. Josie knew from the way her eyes narrowed that she was in deep shit now. But when her mother spoke, she was looking at Dex. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  From the corner of her eye, Josie glanced at him, seeing the confusion on his face. He smiled as though he wasn’t sure if this was some kind of joke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

  “Where were you?”

  “I took JoJo to the hospital. She cut her hand pretty bad. She had to get stitches. I—”

  “Did I give you permission to take my fourteen-year-old daughter to the hospital?” Her mother’s voice was hard and cold, sending a shudder up Josie’s spine.

  Dex looked mystified. “Didn’t you hear what I said? She needed stitches. She was bleeding all over the place.”

  “I didn’t hire you to be a babysitter, Dex,” her mother said. “You’re mine.”

  He placed a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “JoJo takes care of herself. She doesn’t need your help with anything. You’re here for me.”

  “She’s a kid,” Dex argued.

  “Yes, she’s my kid. Not yours. You stay away from her and stay out of our business, you got that? I don’t care if her goddamn hand is hanging off. And what the hell is all this?” she waved toward the makeshift fingerprint kit that Josie had left on the coffee table.

  “I was helping her with a science project,” Dex said. “But let me guess, you don’t want me doing that either?”

  A smile curved her mother’s lips. “Now you’re catching on.”

  Dex took a step toward her. “Let me ask you, Belinda, when’s the last time you helped your kid with her science project? Or helped her with her homework, or—”

  “Dex,” Josie said, “don’t.”

  The smile dropped from her mother’s face, re
placed by a look of pure rage. She looked from Josie to Dex and back again. Then, in a mocking tone, she mimicked Josie: “Dex, don’t.”

  “Belinda,” Dex said.

  “I see what’s going on here. You thought that JoJo was part of the deal. And you—” she turned her wrath toward Josie, “you’re just a little whore after all, aren’t you?”

  “Hey!” Dex shouted. He moved in front of Josie and pointed a finger at her mother’s chest. “Watch it.”

  Her mother looked him up and down as though he was beneath her. “Oh? What if I don’t?”

  He sniffed the air, moving his face closer to hers. “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “So? That doesn’t make what you’re doing right.”

  “I’m not doing anything, and neither is JoJo. She’s a kid, Belinda.”

  “And so are you. Get the hell out of my house.”

  With that, she sauntered off to her bedroom at the back of the trailer. Josie let out the breath she’d been holding. The center of her palm was on fire. Dex stared at her for a long moment. “You okay?” he asked.

  Josie nodded.

  She assumed he would leave. They always did. But she was wrong. Instead, he followed her mother down the hallway, kicking open her door with a loud bang and slamming it closed behind him. Josie stood rooted to the spot, listening as the shouting turned to gasping, and the familiar sound of her mother’s bed springs creaking filled the small trailer—faster, louder, and longer than Josie had ever heard before. She fled to Ray’s house, staying until well after midnight, but when she came home, she could still hear them.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  As much as Josie wanted to arrest Zeke herself, if she intended to press charges against him for the robbery of her house, she knew it would make things much easier on the district attorney if she had one of her patrol officers pick him up. Just as Lloyd Todd had promised, they found Zeke sleeping across two plastic chairs in the back corner of the laundromat.

  Once he was brought in, Noah had him put into the interrogation room. He didn’t ask for an attorney. As his teenage accomplice had told them, he wore a drab green jacket, frayed at the edges and missing all of its buttons. His face was creased with lines from age and hard living, and his long gray beard was yellow at the end. Across his forehead he wore a bandana that had lost all of its color and was now a dingy gray with a faded pattern on it, scraggly white hair snaking out from beneath it. Josie watched him on the closed-circuit television as he chain-smoked the cigarettes Noah had left with him, lighting one from the end of the last.

  “A thousand cigarettes will not cover up his stink,” Noah remarked as he walked in, handing her a file. “This guy needed a bath ten years ago. Homeless most of the last decade. Did a handful of stints for drug possession, manufacture, intent to sell—that sort of thing. No known associations with Lloyd Todd, just like Todd said.”

  Josie flipped through the pages of the file, which contained arrest reports, docket entries from his various convictions, and a few old mugshots. There was one photo from seven years earlier that caught Josie’s eye, and something niggled at the back of her mind. She riffled through more pages until she found another one from thirteen years ago. With fewer lines on his face, his features were a little clearer. They were familiar, she realized. But why?

  “Do you think Todd was telling the truth about the robbery and the ads?” Noah asked.

  Josie didn’t take her eyes off the file in her hands as she looked for more photos. “You know I don’t make a habit of trusting lowlifes like Todd, but I don’t see why he would give me so much information but lie about something like that. He hypothetically admitted to the most costly of the incidents. Why hold out on the other stuff? There’s no benefit.”

  “I guess. But that begs the question: Who is behind the robbery and the craigslist ads?”

  Josie motioned to the television. “Maybe Zeke can tell us.”

  She suddenly found what she was looking for: a third mug shot, this one taken twenty years earlier when Josie was ten. A gasp escaped her throat as the rest of the contents of the file fluttered to the floor.

  “Boss?” Noah said. “What is it?”

  Josie could hardly get the word out: “Needle.”

  “What’s that?”

  She looked up at the television screen. “I have to talk to him.”

  Noah was hot on her heels as she dashed out of the viewing room and down the hall to the interrogation room. “Boss,” he called out, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  The door banged open and Needle stared up at her. She walked slowly to the table as Noah slipped in behind her and closed the door. She could sense that he wanted to say something, to stop her, but he kept silent. Josie placed a palm flat on the table and leaned toward him, the smell of smoke and stale body odor nearly overpowering her. “Do you remember me?”

  He stared at her, a toothless smile splitting his face.

  “Do you?” Josie demanded.

  “Little JoJo.”

  Behind her, Josie sensed Noah startle. No one ever called her anything but Josie or Boss. Only Ray had had the privilege of shortening her name to Jo. Hearing her childhood nickname after so many years gave her a jolt as well, but she did her best to hide it.

  “You knew my mother,” Josie said. “What was her name?”

  Needle laughed. “You know your mother’s name.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “Belinda,” he said easily. “Belinda Rose.”

  “Her real name,” Josie demanded.

  A look of genuine confusion crossed his face. “Be-linda Rose,” he repeated.

  So her mother hadn’t confided in this man. Josie changed tactics. “Why did you rob my house?”

  “I didn’t rob no one’s house.”

  Josie rolled her eyes. She slapped her palm against the surface of the table to keep his attention focused on her. “Cut the shit, Zeke,” she said. “I have two witnesses who not only put you there, but will testify that you put them up to it. Why? Why me? Why now?”

  His fingers fumbled to get a cigarette out of the crushed pack in front of him and light it off his last. “You were a cute kid, you know that, JoJo?”

  Josie said nothing.

  “Made your mom a little crazy, I think. Having such a pretty thing around. Everyone always paying so much attention to you. Your dad—he didn’t care a lick for your mom once you came along. That never sat well with her, you know.”

  Without conscious thought, Josie’s hand reached up and traced the scar that went down her jawline. Needle motioned to her face. “That was the worst I ever seen her,” he said. “Well, up until that night.”

  “You stopped her,” Josie said.

  He nodded. “She scared me that night. I seen her do a lot of things, but that was something different.”

  “Did you take me to the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  Josie’s throat felt like it was in danger of closing up altogether. When she asked her next question, it came out nearly a whisper. “Why didn’t you go inside and tell them what she did?”

  He shrugged. “Wasn’t my place. Besides, you don’t cross a woman like that.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, the ash glowing bright orange. “You oughta know that better than most.”

  She said nothing. Smoke hung in the air, unmoving. Quietly, Noah took a step closer to the table, watching the two of them. Finally, he shifted his gaze to Needle and said, “Zeke, we’ve got you on the robbery. Just tell us what you did with the jewelry. Did you sell it?”

  Needle shook his head.

  Noah said, “You didn’t sell it?”

  “I don’t know what happened to it.”

  “It just disappeared from your hands, did it?” Noah asked.

  “Did you know it was my house?” Josie interjected.

  Needle met her eyes, and she was taken back to her childhood, hiding behind the couch or under the kitchen table, Needle catching her eyes, smiling at her,
offering her a piece of his sandwich or a sip of his soda. She was always hungry. Then there was the day he had walked in on her mother trying to sell her for a paint job and told her to go outside and play. Josie never knew what had transpired after she ran off, but when she’d returned home, the man was gone. The paint job was never spoken of again. Needle had been in the right place at the right time. He had been kind to her. As kind as someone like him could be.

  He smiled a sad smile. “I’m sorry, little JoJo.”

  “Why were you nice to me when I was a kid?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No reason not to be. Seemed like you were in a pretty bad situation there, especially after your dad passed.”

  Again, she was struck by the fact that his kindness and sympathy had only gone so far. Yes, he had been nice to her, had recognized what could only be called abuse, but he hadn’t gone so far as to help her out of the situation. The world was full of people like Needle. People who noticed when others were in trouble, but whose sense of self-preservation ultimately outweighed their sense of justice.

  “Why?” Josie tried again. “Why did you rob my house?”

  Needle shook the pack of cigarettes, but there were no more left. He stubbed out the last butt in the ashtray Noah had provided and let out a lengthy sigh. “You’re smart, JoJo. You can’t figure it out? You haven’t figured it out yet?”

  Josie felt the cold fingers of fear scuttle up her spine. “Figured what out?”

  Needle leaned back in his chair and folded his nicotine-stained hands over his stomach. “I’m about done here. If you’re gonna charge me, charge me, and I’ll take that lawyer you said would be appointed for me if I can’t afford one. I got nothing else to say.”

  Noah and Josie stared at him for a long moment, waiting to see if he would change his mind or ask for something, but he was relaxed in his seat, whistling an unrecognizable tune to himself. Finally, Noah walked to the door and Josie followed. He held the door open for her, and she was about to step through it when Needle spoke again.