The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(43)

Barista reported Sam came at his usual time, ordered his usual drink and seemed normal.





Over Josie’s shoulder, Mettner gave a low whistle. “This guy sure was thorough. If there was anything suspicious to find, he would have turned it up.”

Josie turned more pages, eyes skimming the notes as quickly as she could while still taking in their import. Finally, at the end, something unusual caught her eye.

Who/What is C.F.?





Drew Pratt had answered below it with several possibilities:

Conference? Sam was set to travel to a conference the week after he died. Café? No, Sam went to the café daily. Students? Sam had two current students with those initials but both were in class all day. Chronic Fatigue? Cystic Fibrosis? Was he having some serious medical issue? Would it have shown on autopsy? Colleague? Sam had one colleague with those initials but he was having surgery that day. Affair?





No answer was written beneath the word “affair”.

“Where did he get those initials?” Mettner asked.

Josie’s fingers shook slightly as she dug out the planner she had seen when they first opened the box. “From here,” she said. “What’s the date that Samuel Pratt went missing?”

Mettner took out his phone and scrolled through the entries in his note-taking app until he found the note. “April 14, 1999.”

Josie opened the planner. In the front was Samuel Pratt’s name, his Denton University office address, and phone number. She turned to April. A few things were marked—some office hours, a paper deadline, faculty meetings, the conference at the end of the month and then on April 14th there was only one notation. Two letters.

C.F.

“Colette Fraley,” Josie said.





Thirty





“I thought Colette Fraley and Samuel Pratt didn’t know each other,” Mettner said.

The two of them had cleaned up the unit, put all the storage bins back in place and taken the box marked “Sam” with them after calling Mason for his permission. Now Mettner drove back to the police station while Josie sat in the passenger’s seat with the box balanced on her knees.

“Who else would C.F. be?” Josie countered. “Drew Pratt spent years trying to figure out what or who those initials belonged to. Maybe he never got it because he had no idea who Colette was. I mean, we haven’t been able to find a connection between her and either Pratt brother.”

Mettner frowned. “So we might be talking about an affair. You know that, right? Nineteen years ago, Noah would have been in middle school. When did you say his parents got divorced?”

Josie said, “When he was eighteen. In April of 1999, he would have been about thirteen years old. So yeah, Colette would have been married.”

“An affair might explain why Sam drove all the way to Bellewood. I mean they both lived here in Denton, and yet Samuel Pratt’s car was found forty miles from here,” Mettner said.

Josie felt her heart sink, a cold stone descending into the pool of her stomach. “Back in 1999 probably neither one of them would have had a cell phone. Even email wasn’t that prevalent back then.”

“They wouldn’t have subpoenaed his home or office phone records if it looked like suicide,” Mettner added. “There is a possibility that he and Colette could have been in touch for some time and no one ever found out.”

Josie flipped the box open and took the planner back out. She combed over the entries between January 1st and April 14th. There was only one other entry with the initials C.F. and that was about three weeks prior to the April 14th entry. “I don’t think it was ongoing,” Josie said. “Or at least, it didn’t go on very long. There’s only one other entry here, a few weeks before Samuel Pratt ended up in the river. But if it was an affair, what happened?”

Mettner said, “What do you mean?”

Josie closed the planner and put it back in the box. “One day she meets him at the river and she convinces him to drown himself? Have you seen photos of Samuel Pratt? He was huge. No way someone Colette’s size held him under water till he drowned.”

“Maybe she broke things off with him, he didn’t take it well, and killed himself.”

“That’s a possibility,” Josie agreed. “Especially with his mental health issues.”

“Or maybe Colette had a jealous lover—someone else—or maybe her husband found out, lost it, and killed him.”

Josie hadn’t known Colette Fraley for long, and she hadn’t known the woman that well, but she had a difficult time imagining her as a young temptress carrying on multiple extra-marital affairs. “But then what about Drew Pratt?”

“What about him?”

“Colette had his flash drive, which means she was very likely the mystery woman from the craft fair. How else would she have gotten it? She hid it together with Sam’s arrowhead. There was a connection there. Did she start an affair with Drew as well?”

“Hmmm,” Mettner said. “That seems unlikely. Although even if seven years after Samuel drowned, she met with his brother and they did have an affair, she was divorced by then. Drew Pratt was single. So we can probably rule out the husband as a jealous killer. There would have been no reason for secrecy either. But I don’t think she was having an affair with Drew.”