Gretchen reached into the box and started taking items out. “Let’s see if we can get some of this dried out.”
They laid each possession out on paper towels on one of the empty desks. Mettner found a box fan in third floor storage, and they used that to speed up the drying process. Then he went out on a few more emergency calls while Gretchen tried to track down which salon Vera Urban had worked at nearly twenty years earlier. Josie took on the task of tracking down Mrs. Bassett, who—as it turned out—had been placed at Rockview Ridge, Denton’s only skilled nursing facility, where Josie’s grandmother, Lisette Matson, lived.
Josie stood and began gathering up Evelyn Bassett’s now-dry possessions. “I’ll take these over. I can talk with my grandmother while I’m there. She would remember Vera Urban. Maybe she’ll have something useful for us.”
Rockview Ridge sat on the outskirts of Denton, high atop a rock-strewn hill. Josie’s eighty-three-year-old grandmother had been a resident there for nearly a decade. As Lisette grew older, her arthritis had made it more and more difficult for her to live on her own, so Josie and Ray had brought her to live with them. They’d taken care of her for as long as they could but after several falls when she was home alone, they’d had no choice but to find her a new home in an assisted living facility. It was one of Josie’s greatest sources of guilt, that she couldn’t keep Lisette home with her, but she knew Lisette was well taken care of at Rockview, and Josie had Lisette over to her house whenever time allowed.
Josie delivered Mrs. Bassett’s personal items to the front desk and waited while the receptionist looked up her room number. Josie was intimately familiar with the layout of the facility. She delivered Mrs. Bassett’s things to her in her room and helped her place some of the framed photographs on her dresser and windowsill before going off to find Lisette. As usual, Lisette was in the community cafeteria, sitting at a table, shuffling a deck of cards. Across from her sat a man—with dark hair and broad shoulders. Curious, she picked up her pace, striding over to the table only to discover the man was Hayes.
Josie stared at him.
Lisette said, “Josie, how lovely to see you.”
She pulled her gaze away from Hayes to look at her grandmother. Her smile was strained, the lines around her blue eyes crinkled. “Gram,” Josie said. “What’s going on?”
Lisette pointed toward Hayes. “Nothing new. This is a friend of mine, Sawyer.”
Josie said, “Sawyer?”
“That’s my first name,” he said.
“You’re friends?”
“Josie,” said Lisette.
Sawyer stood, a tight smile on his face. “I’ll go,” he said. “Mrs. Matson, it was great to see you.”
Josie watched him walk off and then took his seat. Lisette raised a brow. “Well, that wasn’t very polite, was it?”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “We had a disagreement yesterday during a rescue. I don’t much care for him, and I don’t think he likes me at all.”
Lisette’s eyes dropped to the table. She shuffled her deck of cards and began laying them out for a game of Solitaire. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“How do you know him?” Josie asked.
Lisette began turning over cards. “We’ve had quite the influx of new residents with all the flooding. Sawyer has brought a lot of people in. We got to talking, is all.”
Josie studied her for a long moment. Lisette wouldn’t look at her. Josie had the distinct feeling there was something her grandmother wasn’t telling her, but she couldn’t imagine what it might be. Unless Lisette was truly disappointed that Josie hadn’t given Sawyer Hayes a better reception. She knew Lisette’s life at Rockview Ridge could be lonely. Who was Josie to deny her friendships? Josie reached over and touched Lisette’s hand. “I’m sorry, Gram. I was impolite. I promise the next time I see Sawyer I’ll make more of an effort.”
Lisette looked up at her briefly before going back to her game. “I would appreciate that.”
Josie let a moment pass, watching Lisette’s gnarled hands mow through a game of Solitaire and begin shuffling again. Finally, she looked up at Josie. “Shall we play Kings in a Corner?”
Josie nodded. Lisette finished shuffling and dealt the cards. “I see on television you’ve got a homicide on your hands. A young girl?”
“Yes.”
“So,” Lisette said as they began playing in earnest, each of them on automatic pilot. They’d been playing Kings in a Corner since Josie was ten years old. “With everything going on in this city plus a murder, I know you’re not here on a social call.”
Josie leaned in toward Lisette. “The body we found? It was Beverly Urban.”
Shock loosened the lines of Lisette’s face. She bowed her head, her gray curls bouncing. “Oh dear.”
“She was murdered, Gram. Shot in the head and buried beneath her house. Everyone thought she had just moved away. As far as we can tell, her mother disappeared around the same time. We can’t find any record of Vera existing after the end of Beverly’s junior year of high school.”
Lisette shook her head. “It’s a tragedy. That poor girl. I know you two didn’t get along. Believe me, I had half a mind to throttle her myself when you were in school, but I always had the sense that she was struggling with something at home.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Josie told her. “I know you had to meet with Vera on several occasions when Beverly and I…”
“Got into fights? Vandalized each other’s lockers? Each other’s cars?”
“I only vandalized her locker and car because she did it to me—and she spray-painted foul words on my stuff. All I did was break the lock on her locker and toilet paper her car.”
Lisette regarded her with a raised brow, but Josie could see a small smile on her lips. “How about the time that Beverly pushed you down the steps at school and so you punched her in the face? She had a black eye. You were both nearly suspended. You both should have been suspended, really. I wore the principal down.”
“She could have killed me,” Josie said. “It’s never okay to push someone down the steps.”
“Is it okay to punch people in the face?”
“Okay, I was a hothead. Is that what you want to hear?”
Lisette laughed. “I’m giving you a hard time, Josie. You were a teenager, raging with hormones, and you were still trying to process all the abuse you’d endured before you came to live with me. I still think you would have benefitted from therapy, but you refused.”
The game finished, Lisette victorious. Josie took the cards and shuffled them for another round. “I didn’t need therapy.”
“Pah!” Lisette said, laughing. “You need therapy right now.”
Josie bristled but said nothing. She knew Lisette would not budge on this issue. “My point is, Gram, that you met and spoke with Vera many times. I need to know anything you can tell me about her.”
“Well, let’s see,” Lisette began as Josie dealt the cards for their second game. “What I remember most is that Vera had barely any control over Beverly. I was essentially a single mother raising a hotheaded teenager, just like her, and I handled it just fine. Vera was… a mess. Weary, as though she was at the end of her rope with Beverly. Then again, she was pretty strung out on painkillers most of the time. At least when you two were in high school.”