The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(24)

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.”





Seventeen





Beth Pratt’s single-level ranch home sat along a rural route in the mountains surrounding Denton where each home was separated by two or more acres of land and boasted long gravel driveways. Beth’s house was small and white with black shutters on the sides of the windows. It sat at least an acre back from the road and was surrounded by tall oak trees. There was no porch, just a small stone step leading to the front door.

Josie parked behind a small red Honda sedan and she and Mettner got out. As they approached, Josie heard the low tones of what sounded like a game show playing on a television. Behind the screen door, the heavy winter door stood open, so Mettner rapped his knuckles against the edge of the door frame and called, “Miss Pratt?”