Page 20 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Seventeen

If Gretchen was surprised by this turn in the conversation, she didn’t show it. “Answer the question, Mr. Merritt.”

He kept staring at her appreciatively. Gretchen held eye contact, unblinking, her face a mask of total disinterest. Suspects, persons of interest, witnesses—there was always a handful who tried to flirt as a way to deflect from the subject at hand, but Josie didn’t think that’s what Hollis was doing.

Regardless, it was inappropriate and a waste of time.

Josie gave a dramatic sigh and made a show of taking her phone from her pocket and studying the screen as though she was reading messages.

“Mr. Merritt, we’ve got a lot more people to talk to after you and a very long day ahead of us trying to figure out who killed your business partner, not to mention his fiancée.

You can talk to us now or you can come with us to the stationhouse for a more formal interview. ”

His gaze dropped to his mug. “Fine. I saw him at work that day. We’d both been out on jobs. When I got back to the office around three, he was there doing some paperwork. He usually stayed later but he said he was taking Cora to dinner.”

Gretchen made a note on her pad. “Any particular reason?”

“Don’t know. Things between them had been strained. I think he was trying to pay her a little extra attention, try to get them back on track.”

More muffled sounds penetrated the walls of the building. Loud bangs, metal grinding, and the shrill, high-pitched rhythmic beeps of a truck reversing.

“Do you have any idea why things were strained between them?” Josie asked.

Hollis spun his mug around a few times. “It was a little bit my fault, probably. Cora was a waitress at this diner. She’d been working there forever.

It was tough raising Riley herself, but she did it.

After she and Tobias got engaged, he wanted her to stop working.

She didn’t. It was this whole thing about maintaining her independence, but Tobias didn’t see it that way.

He felt insulted, like she didn’t trust him to take care of her.

After what she went through with her piece-of-shit ex-husband, he really wanted to take care of her. ”

“How was that your fault?” Gretchen asked.

“Cora came to me and asked me to talk to him. Convince him that he was being…what did she say? ‘Ridiculous.’ Tell him if he really loved her, he would understand.”

“You and Cora were friends?” asked Josie. “Before she and Tobias met?”

“Nah, not friends. I knew her from the diner. Had been going there and sitting in her section for years before Tobias set his sights on her. I liked her, too. She was real pretty. Sweet as could be, but she never saw me that way. One smile from Tobias, though and—” He gave a low whistle.

“Forget it. That woman was off the market. Once they got together, I saw her all the time ’cause Tobias and I were good friends and running the business together.

Anyway, I guess she figured if we were best friends, I could talk some sense into him. ”

“He didn’t see it that way,” Gretchen said.

“Sure didn’t. Told me I was meddling. Said a bunch of other shit, too, but the gist of it was ‘butt out.’ Didn’t hear a peep from either of them on the subject after that.”

“How long before they were killed did these conversations with Cora and then with Tobias take place?” asked Josie.

“About two months beforehand. Something like that. For a while, when they were together, it seemed like there was tension. Things were getting better, though. I mean, Tobias loved her. That was the bottom line. He would have given her anything she asked for. He’d bought her some necklace or something the week before they went missing.

The evening out was supposed to be part of him making shit up to her for being so stubborn. ”

Josie made a mental note to look into the necklace.

Had she been wearing it out to dinner? Had it been washed away by the river?

Or had the killer stolen her jewelry? She didn’t believe the couple’s deaths were a result of a robbery gone wrong, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that their killer had stolen their valuables at the last minute.

Hummel hadn’t found any cash but perhaps it hadn’t survived seven years of immersion.

She wondered if Fanning had ever looked into the possibility of Cora’s jewelry showing up at a pawn shop.

“They went to dinner,” said Josie. “You had your own date here in Denton. Did Tobias know you were coming here?”

“That night, specifically? No. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to fight over the expansion when he was about to take Cora out. Even talking about the woman I was seeing here got him fired up.”

“When was the last time you saw Cora before that night?” Gretchen asked.

Hollis reached across the table for the carafe, pouring himself another coffee. “A few days before. She stopped by the office to bring Tobias lunch before she went to work.”

“Had either of them been acting strangely in the weeks or days before they were killed?” Josie asked.

“You’re asking me if something was up. Like if they were having problems with somebody or something.

No. Shit was normal. I mean the kids were getting in trouble.

Dumb teenage shit. Zane was a bit of a hellion.

Always getting into some kind of trouble.

Underage drinking, mostly. When the girls moved in, he got Riley into a heap of trouble.

Tobias caught her drinking with Zane and his friends a few times.

Gave her a talking-to but never told Cora. ”

Gretchen frowned. “Why not?”

“Cora had already caught him and Riley sneaking back into the house after curfew totally plastered. It was only that one time but boy, she was fit to be tied. Told Tobias that Zane was a bad influence. Said Tobias wasn’t strict enough—which was probably true—but he didn’t want to hear it.

So yeah, the kids were a bit of a handful together.

Tobias and Cora fought over it on the regular though.

It was nothing new. That was the only thing that I remember going on between them that week. ”

Josie remembered the Herald article she had read and Riley’s admission earlier today about her drinking and how it had caused a rift with Cora. She hadn’t mentioned Zane. Had he also been involved with that particular incident or had Riley gone solo?

Gretchen scribbled on her notepad. “You and Tobias weren’t having any problems or disagreements other than over the expansion of the business?”

“Is this like a ‘gotcha’ thing?” he asked. “Like if you keep asking me the same question, eventually I’ll slip up and give a different answer? No. We weren’t having any problems. No fights other than the expansion.”

“You didn’t hire someone to kill them?” Josie asked pointedly.

“This again.” Slouching in his chair, he sighed heavily.

“Of course not. You really need to talk to Fanning. He went through all my financials. I know I seem like the most obvious choice here. Tobias was my business partner, and he was standing in the way of my big plans. But look, if I was gonna hire someone to kill him, I sure as shit wouldn’t want Cora to be collateral damage.

She was a good woman. Zane and Jackson loved her, and it was real hard for those boys to warm up to anyone after losing their own moms. Plus, she had Riley, and those two were real close. ”

Josie had wondered after reading about the case if the perpetrators had intended to kill both Tobias and Cora, or if only one of them had been the intended target and the other had simply been an unfortunate casualty.

If that was the case, and they could determine which of them was the target, they could narrow the suspect pool considerably.

Throw all their resources into investigating people associated with one person instead of both.

Surely, Detective Fanning had had the same thought and already followed that line of inquiry.

Hollis went on, “Also, if I was going to hire someone to kill him, it would have been better for me if he’d actually turned up dead back then.

Trying to run this place and make decisions without his input when we didn’t know if he was alive or dead was worse than fighting with him over every little decision.

Our operating agreement allowed Jackson to take over for Tobias until Zane came of age and they could split the responsibilities, but those boys were messed up after their dad vanished.

For a long time. It was a lot on me to hold the company together on my own till they got to a place where they could start filling Tobias’s shoes. ”

Hollis made good points, but Josie had the feeling that they hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of the lives of Cora Stevens and Tobias Lachlan.

“Okay,” Gretchen said. “If not you, then who would have wanted to kill Tobias and Cora?”

“That’s easy,” Hollis said. “I’ve been telling Fanning this for years.

The number one suspect should have been Dalton Stevens, Cora’s ex-husband.

Riley’s dad. First of all, he routinely kicked the shit out of her when they were married.

She barely got out of that marriage alive.

After she left him, he was completely obsessed with her.

Wouldn’t leave her alone. He was always showing up at the diner, sitting in a corner booth for hours, all creepy and shit.

He’d send her anniversary cards on their wedding date even though they were divorced.

Send her flowers and shit on Valentine’s Day and her birthday.

Like he was trying to get her back or something, and whenever she didn’t fall all over his sorry ass, he’d get mad and slash her tires or scratch the word ‘slut’ into the side of her car.

He used to come to their house when Tobias wasn’t home and threaten her.

One of us would have to leave work and get over there, drag him off. ”