The Other Mothers: An absolutely gripping thriller with a shocking twist Read online

  The Other Mothers

  An absolutely gripping thriller with a shocking twist

  M.M. Chouinard

  Books by M.M. Chouinard

  DETECTIVE JO FOURNIER NOVELS

  1. The Dancing Girls

  2. Taken to the Grave

  3. Her Daughter’s Cry

  4. The Other Mothers

  Available in audio

  DETECTIVE JO FOURNIER NOVELS

  The Dancing Girls (Available in the UK and the US)

  Taken to the Grave (Available in the UK and the US)

  Her Daughter’s Cry (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  The Dancing Girls

  M.M. Chouinard’s Email Sign-Up

  Books by M.M. Chouinard

  A Letter from M.M. Chouinard

  Taken to the Grave

  Her Daughter’s Cry

  Acknowledgments

  To Leo, for believing in Jo, and in me.

  Chapter One

  Stephanie Roden leapt from her desk and hurried out to the playground of Briar Ridge Elementary School, her cloud of curled black braids bouncing around her head. The end-of-recess bell had startled her out of her lesson planning, and sent an unsettling rush of adrenaline through her. Twenty-minute recesses were great for the kids but horrible for the teachers, giving just enough time to shift into a task, but nowhere near enough time to finish it. She shoved her arms into her black jacket, then gathered her composure as she pushed through the doors into the unseasonably cold spring air.

  Several of her kindergarteners already waited on the strip of grass where the class gathered. She pulled out her whistle, gave three sharp tweets, and watched the little heads spin and run toward her. She smiled as they lined up, their faces cheerful and eager-to-please as she gently guided them into formation. Such little angels, all of them, even if they had moments where they acted like little devils. Lively spirits were important, she liked to remind the trainee teachers who occasionally worked with her—you want to channel their beautiful spirits, not break them.

  She moved down the line, tapping each head playfully as she went. One, two, three… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

  Sixteen—not seventeen, as there should be. Someone was missing.

  She glanced back over the playground. Empty, except for Jim Karnegi, the third-grade teacher, and Karen Phelps, today’s parent volunteer, each walking with lollygagging stragglers.

  Everything was fine, she reminded herself. Someone had probably just gone to the outside bathroom without asking one of the two adults to take them.

  She ran through her class roster in her head. Nicole Marchand, she realized, and a tendril of fear gripped her. Nicole was the missing child, and it wasn’t like her to go missing. She was quiet, cooperative, and never a troublemaker; she’d never go to the bathroom alone without permission.

  She looked back at her students, and kept her voice light. “Does anyone know where Nicole is?”

  They looked at one another and shook their heads.

  She waved Karen over. “I can’t find Nicole. Do you know where she is?”

  “No.” Karen’s huge blue eyes widened, and her blonde ponytail bobbed as her head whipped to scan the playground. “Are you sure she didn’t already go in?”

  “She might have,” Stephanie said, but knew she hadn’t. “Can you stay with them while I go check?”

  “Of course.” Karen turned to the children and started them singing ‘The Hokey Pokey’.

  Stephanie waited until she was out of the view of the other children to break into a sprint. She checked her classroom, but it was empty. She checked the ‘big girl’ and ‘big boy’ bathrooms, but they were empty, too.

  She bolted back out to the yard, then slowed to a walk, shaking her head as she passed to let Karen know she hadn’t found Nicole. With a practiced power walk, she surged down the midway of the playground calling Nicole’s name, hoping to find her crouched behind something, lost in her own private game.

  She followed the perimeter of the yard back toward the school building, bobbing and weaving to check behind the jungle gyms and the utility sheds. They were all abandoned and secured.

  Her heart thumped in her chest. She slipped around the corner and down the ten-foot-wide space where the chain-link fence ran parallel to the school building, ending at the back entrance to the cafeteria. Her fear morphed into panic as she sprinted toward the dumpster enclosure near the door.

  Because the brown gate that fronted the redbrick enclosure was ajar.

  She called Nicole’s name again as she yanked it fully open—and found nothing, except a few errant lettuce leaves on the pavement between the two dumpsters. She dashed to the side of the left dumpster, just to be thorough.

  Nicole’s crumpled body lay sprawled in the back corner, head covered by her puffy blue jacket.

  At the principal’s instruction, Karen Phelps led the kindergarteners into Ms. Roden’s classroom. As the last one filed in, she glanced up and down the corridor. Once she confirmed it was empty, she reached into her jacket pocket and slipped out her phone.

  “No phones allowed in the classroom!” one of the boys shrieked, and ran toward her.

  She pushed it back into her pocket and stepped inside the room.

  “She’s a teacher, she’s allowed!” one of the little girls called back.

  “She’s not a teacher, she’s a mom,” the boy answered scornfully.

  “Well, it’s nice to follow the rules, no matter who you are,” Karen said. “I have an idea. Who wants to have an extra story time?”

  Nearly all the hands shot up, as Karen hoped they would. She herded the children over to the carpeted area, snatched up a book from the shelf, and cast a frustrated glance back at the door.

  Chapter Two

  Detective Josette Fournier surveyed the stacks of printouts and files dotting her home-office desk. She threw the final file onto what she hoped was the right stack, then pushed away from the cherry-wood desk and stretched her neck. She needed more coffee.

  She smoothed her sweatshirt down over her pajama bottoms as she padded into the kitchen, then filled the bottom of her Bialetti Moka Express with Columbian roast. The little silver coffeemaker had been a gift from Matt Soltero, the man she was dating, after she’d become addicted to the espresso he made with his—or rather, after she’d become addicted to the process of making espresso with it. Purists would scream from the hilltops that it didn’t make true espresso, she knew that. But with the right technique, low and slow and patient, the thick brown liquid that bubbled from the spout was surrounded by a rich, frothy crema just as luxurious as any she’d ever tasted. And there was a satisfaction—more like a soothing magic—in her control over the grounds and the timing and the modulation of the heat that her ‘real’ espresso machine just didn’t deliver.

  And control was something she was in desperate need of right now.

  She frothed a cup of milk as she waited for the magical moment when the coffee would erupt and ran her mind over the work she’d just completed. Her therapist would probably argue that working from home wasn’t quite the two-week respite she’d strongly suggested Jo take to grieve her miscarriage and get a handle on the ‘cumulative PTSD’ it had triggered from years ago. Double the cumulative post-traumatic stress actually, because she’d miscarried after a murder suspect shot her. But even if working wasn’t the best thing for her, being home alone all day—no matter how much she loved her cozy little cottage—left her far too much time to spend in her own head. She needed something to focus her mind on instead of the endless cycling between pain and regret, futilely wondering if her baby had been a boy or a girl, blaming herself because she hadn’t been certain she wanted the baby, feeling guilty because part of her was relieved she no longer had to make an impossible choice, and fighting the consuming terror that everyone and everything she loved would die as the result of her mistakes.

  So, after failed at
tempts to distract herself with novels and binge-watching, she’d decided the healthiest outlet was her on-going obsession with the apparent suicide of Martin Scherer, a serial killer she’d hunted eight years earlier. The process of scouring and categorizing had allowed her to shift from something she couldn’t control to something she could, and now nearly five hundred Golden Gate Bridge suicides were organized in a spreadsheet according to fifty variables, entered meticulously over her two weeks’ leave. Nobody at the Oakhurst County State Police Detective Unit, not even her partner Bob Arnett, understood why Martin’s death had sunk its claws so deeply into her. But what it came down to, at least for now, was her need for a sense of agency and the possibility of attaining closure, and this was a proactive way to work toward both.

  She poured the milk into a mug, then rotated her wounded arm, ignoring the pain as she attempted to stave off stiffness. When the maker sputtered the final drops of espresso into the upper compartment, she flipped the lid closed, poured the contents into her mug, and topped it off with her steamed milk. She sipped, and closed her eyes to savor the warm, milky coffee. Rich, with not a hint of bitterness, and it made her feel human again. The purists could go to hell.

  Anticipation pricked at her as she settled back in front of her laptop, now fully prepared to while away her last day off work in a blur of hierarchical variable searches. But as her fingers hit the keyboard, her phone rang. Tempted to ignore it, she took a quick glance at the screen just in case it was important, then answered it.

  “Bob. Is everything okay?” After pushing her to take the leave, he’d never disturb her unless there was an important reason.

  “Yep, I’m fine. But I just got called out to a homicide, and since you’re coming back tomorrow, I thought you’d prefer to see the scene in real time rather than piece it together after the fact.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t some run-of-the-mill drive-by if you think I need to see it?” Jo cast a longing glance at her spreadsheet.

  “No. I’ll be honest with you—I tried to get Martinez to assign it to anybody else, but since I couldn’t tell him why, he refused.”

  Her shoulders tightened. Their temporary lieutenant thought her leave was only because she’d been shot in the line of duty; nobody in the unit knew about her miscarriage. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m torn about having you work it. The victim’s a little girl. Very little.”

  A blinding pain flashed through Jo, and the vision she’d been seeing in her nightmares, of a young girl who called her mommy, appeared before her squeezed-shut eyes. She gripped the desk with her free hand, surprised by the intensity of the anguish that took her over. She forced herself to shift into slow, deep breaths.

  This wasn’t acceptable, she told herself. Of course she didn’t expect to work everything out in two weeks, but she’d expected to have it under a functional amount of control. She’d taken time away to heal, and spent an hour nearly every day with her therapist talking it all through. The nightmares had finally stopped, and she was feeling almost normal again. Happy, even, excited about picking up a trail on a long-past case. But everyone had pain, everyone had bad things happen to them, and everyone had to find a way to deal with it all. The time for self-indulgence was over, and she couldn’t let a case destroy her progress—this was her job, and she had to pull it together and do what needed to be done.

  She took a deep breath, then pushed the anguish down and slammed her protective walls back up. A quiet numbness replaced the burning pain.

  “How soon can you pick me up?” she asked.

  Ten minutes later, Jo climbed into the undercover black Chevy Malibu and buckled in as Bob Arnett pulled out from the curb.

  “You look like hell,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you after all.”

  She glanced down briefly at her gray utility jacket, academy sweatshirt, jeans, and trainers, admittedly a far cry from the blazer and slacks she normally wore when working, then shot him a skeptical up-and-down look. His salt-and-pepper hair was scruffy, and his brown eyes peeped out from dark circles. “I’m gonna go ahead and ignore that coming from the man with the Louis Vuittons under his eyes and the marinara on his shirt.”

  He rested a hand on his small paunch. “Yeah, but that’s my resting state. This isn’t normal for you. In twenty years I’ve never seen your hair doing whatever you call that.” He pointed at her head.

  “Hey, if you surprise me on my day off, this is what you get.” She laughed, but one hand shot up to smooth the messy bun of chestnut hair as the other pulled down her visor. She did look more tired than she should, her green eyes puffy and slightly red. But what else could you expect from someone who’d spent the last two weeks processing grief counseling and staying up till all hours compiling spreadsheets? “Don’t worry, Bob, I’m fine. I promise.”

  He nodded, and swung on to the pike. “Good, because there’s something I didn’t mention on the phone.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  He avoided looking at her. “The reason I wasn’t completely heartbroken when Martinez wouldn’t let me hand this off is, the scene’s in Harristown. At Briar Ridge Elementary.”

  Jo winced her eyes shut. Her sister Sophie lived in Harristown, and her two nieces went to Briar Ridge. “How old did you say Nicole was?”

  “Five. She was a kindergartener.”

  Jo stared out at the forest lining the pike. Her niece Emily was in the first grade, while Isabelle was in the third. But even if Nicole wasn’t in either of their classes, Sophie was sure to be freaked out by it all. “You did the right thing. She’ll be calling me in hysterics either way.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Laura said. She sends her love, by the way.”

  Jo smiled. “How is she?”

  “Good. She decided to take a drawing class at Oakhurst Community College this summer. We’ll see how long that lasts.”

  “Now, now. You’re being supportive, remember?” Jo waved a finger at him and laughed. Laura, his wife, had struggled with becoming an empty nester, particularly in light of the long hours Bob worked. She’d had an affair and they’d almost divorced over it, until he’d agreed to give her more time and attention. That had translated into a string of new hobbies she wanted to try out, usually with Bob. “At least she doesn’t want you to do this one with her.”

  “Truth. Even she can’t deny my art skills begin and end with stick figures.” Arnett pulled off the pike.

  Jo caught sight of Briar Ridge Elementary in the distance. Harristown was the sort of quaint, quintessential New England town you found in movies, filled with redbrick and white clapboard, steepled churches and town halls, and abundant colonial architecture. Right in line with it all, Briar Ridge Elementary was a modern take on a classic schoolhouse, and in actual fact had started out that way. The original structure, built in the early 1700s, formed the center of the school, with newer redbrick wings extending out and around on either side, built up through the years as needs changed. One of two elementary schools in the small town, Briar Ridge was private, and part of the considerable tuition parents paid went to keep the original schoolhouse in pristine condition. It was quite a point of pride for Sophie, for whom those sorts of things mattered.

  Arnett pulled into the U-shaped drop-off driveway that cut through the school’s front yard and parked behind a squad car. Jo stepped out and pulled her jacket closer against the cold; despite a few warm days the week before, spring was refusing to give way to the promise of summer any faster than it had to. The tall, uniformed responding officer crossed over and introduced himself.