The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(7)

Laura chuckled even as tears leaked from her eyes. “She didn’t have a boyfriend. She dated a few times after my dad left, but she always said she didn’t want to get married again. So no, there was no boyfriend. I’m sure my baby brother told you she was loved by many people. She was very involved in her church, and she kept up with her neighbors.”

“Yes,” Josie said. “I know she was very involved in helping local foster children, and Noah said she would often start meal drives if one of her neighbors was having issues. Laura, I know the kind of person your mother was, which makes it even more baffling that someone would want to hurt her.”

“No one would want to hurt her,” Laura said, her voice husky with tears, her words an echo of those Noah had used earlier.

“This could have been a random attack,” Josie conceded. “It appeared from the state of her house that someone was looking for something. Do you know what valuables she kept? If you tell me what someone might have taken, I can get my team to confirm whether or not those items are still there.”

Laura plucked a tissue from the box on one of Noah’s end tables and blew her nose. “She didn’t keep much cash in the house so it wouldn’t have been that. She had some rings and necklaces that her own mother had passed down to her. When Grady and I got engaged, she gave him the ring that my father gave her, and Grady had the stones in it removed and a new ring made.” Laura held up a hand and flashed a thick band of sparkling diamonds in Josie’s direction. “Grady thought it was bad luck to propose with my mother’s ring since my parents got divorced, but he understood the sentiment—that my mother was trying to pass down something valuable and sentimental to her.”

“It’s beautiful,” Josie said. She waited a beat and pressed on. “Is there anything else you can think of that someone might have taken or even been looking for?”

Laura shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Nothing that would be worth killing over, certainly.”

But Josie knew that for some criminals, it wasn’t a matter of things being worth killing for—some people killed as easily as they breathed. On the other hand, if Colette had been out in the garden, someone could have potentially gone through her entire house without her even knowing they were in there. So why go outside and confront her? Why kill her in such a cruel and brutal way? Josie thought of the burglaries-turned-murders she had covered in her career. The perpetrators almost always carried guns. If guns weren’t used in the crimes, there were almost always signs of a protracted struggle. Many times, the homeowners were restrained in some way. Colette Fraley looked like she had simply been digging in her garden and dropped dead from natural causes, except for the soil in her airway. Josie had seen plenty of crime scenes and this one was strikingly unusual. There had to be more to it. Josie told Laura about the rosary beads, and she said the same thing that Noah had said; their mother had been burying her broken rosaries in her garden since they were kids—both in the house they’d grown up in and in the smaller house she had bought after the divorce where she was living when she was murdered.

“Is that the only thing she buried in her garden?” Josie asked.

Laura’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m not ‘getting at’ anything,” Josie said. “I’m just trying to piece together what happened to your mother. It helps narrow the suspect pool if we have an idea as to whether the crime was personal or random.”

“Doesn’t Denton PD have other detectives who can work on this?” Laura asked pointedly.

“Of course,” Josie said. “But we’re a little short right now. One of our best detectives is out of action for now, but we have another officer, Finn Mettner, who will be helping with the investigation. He’ll likely be working through the night.”

“Well,” Laura said, her gaze penetrating. “A word to the wise. The best thing you can do right now is be there for Noah.”

Josie’s face flamed red with embarrassment at her implication. Wasn’t she there for Noah right this second? Hadn’t she been the only person besides Colette in his life for years now? Since they’d grown close, he’d only seen his siblings over Christmas. Josie had been the one to try to breathe life back into Colette’s lungs even after she realized the task was damn near impossible. Still, Josie said nothing. The last thing she or Noah needed was a spat between her and Laura, not while the Fraley children were suffering from the loss of their beloved mother.

“I’ll go check on him,” Josie said, and walked up the stairs.





Five





Josie and Laura spent a good part of the evening making phone calls to notify friends and family members of Colette’s death. Josie went up to bed to check on Noah before Grady arrived. She was grateful to find him asleep. She changed and climbed into bed beside him, drifting in and out of sleep as Noah slept fitfully beside her, waking her every few hours when he climbed out of bed to pace the room. Each time, bleary-eyed, she called him back to bed and held him until he fell back to sleep. Josie knew all too well the horror of waking in the night to realize anew that your entire world had been shattered.

A few times during the night, Josie heard Laura and her husband talking in the guest room down the hall, their voices muffled, their words indistinct. Then, as the light seeped around the blinds in the early hours of the morning, she heard the stairs creaking as Laura and Grady crept down to the kitchen, followed by the faint sound of dishes clinking. When the scent of breakfast foods wafted upstairs and under Noah’s door, Josie’s stomach growled.