Page 24 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Twenty

John Fanning’s rental car was small and uncomfortable.

Josie was pretty sure it also lacked shocks.

Entirely. Every time they went over the smallest bump, it felt like she was about to wear her pelvic bone as a neck pillow.

She had wanted to drive but for the purposes of their tour of Brighton Springs, it made more sense for him to do it.

He had met them at the Brighton Springs PD headquarters.

Now, they were in Fanning’s tiny, temporary ride.

Gretchen sat in the front seat. Josie had chosen the back so that it wouldn’t be obvious that she was checking her cell phone every five minutes to see if Wren had responded to her flurry of text messages from earlier that morning.

After hearing Wren’s door close the night before, Josie and Noah had gone upstairs and knocked, hoping to speak to her immediately to clear the air.

She didn’t answer. They could only conclude that she was pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to them.

Josie had had to leave before she woke up.

According to Noah, they’d had a brief and very awkward exchange over breakfast during which Wren had responded to his apology and reassurances with a grunt.

“All right, here’s Tobias’s house.” Fanning pulled onto the shoulder of the two-lane road they’d just turned down.

It was on the fringe of Brighton Springs, where the small city gave way to more rural areas.

There were no sidewalks here, only mailboxes marking gravel driveways.

The homes were spread well apart, each one occupying three or more acres, most of them separated by small groves of trees rather than fencing.

The two-story Lachlan house was big, but it needed work. The brick facade crumbled in some places and spalled in others. One of its gutters hung loose. A handful of roof shingles was missing.

Gretchen rolled down her window. “Guess the kids didn’t use any of the money they were earning from Tobias’s share of the business to maintain the house.”

Fanning laughed. He wasn’t at all the hard-nosed pain in the ass that Hollis had described.

At least, not to them. He was warm and chatty.

Energy practically fizzed from his tall, lanky frame as they discussed the case.

Josie could tell that it bothered him that he hadn’t been the one to find Tobias and Cora, but his relief that they’d finally been located was palpable.

“They spent the money on that,” he said, pointing to a large freestanding garage to the right of the house. It looked brand new, bay doors and clean tan siding gleaming in the sun.

The scent of cut grass and honeysuckle drifted along the warm air. It was another cloudless day. Josie watched two small white butterflies dance across lavender milkweed flowers near the back of the structure. “What’s it for?”

“How much do you know about junk removal companies?”

Gretchen answered, “Once they clean out a place, they typically do three things: recycle anything they’re able to, donate gently used goods, and dispose of the rest.”

Fanning nodded. “Except that Tobias kept finding valuable stuff in a lot of the houses they cleaned out. Antiques and such. When he and Hollis first started out, they got hired by this woman from California to clean out her recently deceased mother’s home.

They found this weird sculpture. Looked really old.

They didn’t know what to do with it. Tobias started contacting universities and art museums and came to find out it was some kind of ancient Mayan artifact. Worth twenty grand.”

“No shit,” Gretchen blurted.

“Yeah, it made the papers here.” Fanning eyed his side mirror, watching a car approaching from behind. “That’s how I know about it. Anyway, legally they can’t sell something they found in someone’s house.”

Josie thought about all the antiques and collectible items littering Jackson and Riley’s home as well as the ones in Hollis’s office. “But they can sell it on behalf of the owner and take a small commission.”

Fanning put his own window down so he could wave the other vehicle around him. “Exactly. Zane started collecting things and storing them in the new, climate-controlled garage while he found buyers.”

Gretchen shifted in her seat, turning to face him. “Then Riley took over.”

“Yeah.” Fanning let his arm dangle from the driver’s side window. “They worked something out with her. She’s good at it, from what I’ve heard.”

Next to the garage sat two older-model vehicles. Their tires were flat. Weeds sprouted from the gravel under and around them. They had been there a while. “What about the cars?” Josie asked.

“One of them’s Cora’s old car,” Fanning explained. “The other was registered to Tobias, but Zane was the one who drove it. After the disappearance, Zane started using his dad’s work truck.”

“Multiple vehicles in and out all the time,” Josie noted, watching as the twin butterflies circled one another while flitting from the back of the garage across the front lawn of the house.

“You’re wondering if Tobias and Cora were mistakenly targeted because of the car they were in?

” Fanning said as he made a U-turn and headed back toward the more populated area of the city.

“Sure. Maybe some asshole was looking for some other asshole driving a Hyundai Accent and got the wrong one. They confronted Tobias and Cora, and things went wrong.”

“That seems like a distinct possibility,” Gretchen said.

“Yep,” Fanning agreed. He motioned toward the road ahead. “I’m driving the route we believe they took to the restaurant based on where their cell phones pinged before they reached it.”

“Tell us what you really think.” Josie watched as the homes became smaller and grew closer together, their lawns shrinking. “Murder for hire? Organized crime? Wrong place, wrong time?”

“Yep,” Fanning said.

Gretchen chuckled. “That’s an answer, all right.”

“Listen.” He continued dangling his hand out the window, letting air slide through his parted fingers as he drove.

“I went through all of Tobias and Cora’s phone records, emails, and social media accounts.

Hell, I even went through their kids’ phones, emails, and social media accounts.

Then I talked to everyone who knew Tobias and Cora.

Their coworkers, customers, neighbors, people they went to school with, cashiers at the stores they frequented, their doctors, their damn dentists!

There was no beef with anyone other than Hollis and Dalton and those two have alibis.

The pings from their phones as well as GPS from their vehicles put them exactly where they claimed to be when Cora and Tobias disappeared.

Dalton was at a pub across town. According to the bartender, he left when the place closed.

Hollis was chasing some woman in Denton although as far as I’m concerned, she could have helped him kill them and dump the car in Denton. ”

“You didn’t eliminate murder for hire,” Josie pointed out.

“But I couldn’t find any proof,” Fanning replied. “Believe me, I tried. If that’s what happened, my money’s on Hollis.”

“Really?” asked Gretchen. “Dalton has a history of violence.”

“Dalton Stevens is a dumbass with the patience of a rabid dog. His financials checked out, too. Besides, what did he stand to gain by paying someone to murder his ex-wife and her new man?”

“Satisfaction,” Josie said drily.

He shot her a wide smile in the rearview mirror. “Exactly. They had a kid. Financially, he gained nothing from her death—or disappearance. In fact, he should have ended up with custody of Riley and trust me, this guy did not want that.”

Josie discreetly checked her phone but there were no new messages.

“Fanning,” said Gretchen. “With all due respect, men like Dalton Stevens don’t typically kill their ex-wives and their new partners for financial security.

It’s more of an if-I-can’t-have-you-then-no-one-can situation.

Maybe he didn’t have the money to pay someone to do it, but he could have compensated them in other ways. ”

“Like what?”

“Favors,” Josie filled in, pocketing her phone.

“Well, shit,” Fanning blew out a sigh. “Okay, so I didn’t really consider that, but I did a deep dive into everyone Dalton was associated with.

His neighbors, friends, coworkers from the steel plant and the barflies.

Brought them all in for questioning. There was nothing that sent up any red flags.

I mean, pretty much half the people he hangs around with are scumbags but there wasn’t any evidence connecting any of them to the disappearance. ”

Josie looked out the window again, watching as they drove down a street filled with twin homes and turned onto a commercial block. “Any of them own guns?”

“A lot of them, I’m sure,” he mumbled. “Firearms weren’t exactly on my radar, but I did make a list of which witnesses had purchased handguns or admitted to owning any type of gun. Due diligence and all that. Should be in the file.”

By law, Pennsylvania was restricted from creating or maintaining a gun ownership registry.

The commonwealth and federal government did, however, keep records of legal gun transactions.

Those records were created every time a citizen bought a handgun since they had to fill out forms for the state police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in order to do so.

The two organizations weren’t prohibited from keeping records, only from creating a database with them.

Local police departments could contact the state police and ATF to request a check for handgun purchases from a specific person.

“Dalton had two pistols but he had to relinquish those when Cora took out the first PFA against him,” Fanning added.

“That wouldn’t keep him from getting his hands on one, I’m sure,” Gretchen muttered.

Fanning slowed in front of an Italian restaurant called Ecco Domani.

It was a squat, glass-front building in one of Brighton Springs’ older commercial districts.

The rest of the street was filled with quaint shops offering everything from old vinyl records to chocolate and coffee.

The restaurant had made an effort to ditch its strip mall look and match the welcoming small-town vibe of its neighbors.

The exterior walls were painted to look like faux stone, the effect almost 3-D.

The tops of each window were adorned with overflowing flowerpots.

Along the bottoms, matching flowerpots stood like little sentries, bursting with color.

Josie wondered what they did during the winter.

“Nice place, right?” Fanning said. “Food’s great. Anyway, they were parked back here. This spot, actually.”

He pulled into a parking lot between the restaurant and a small bookstore and took one of the half-dozen spots. The three of them got out. Josie massaged her lower back and scanned the tops of the buildings. Two cameras, one on each side.

“There’s a camera at the front door of the restaurant, same as seven years ago. Caught them walking out—hand in hand.”

Josie had found the footage and viewed it before they left Denton. Tobias and Cora had been the picture of a happy couple indulging in a date night. The film quality wasn’t ideal but it looked as though Cora had worn a necklace and her engagement ring.

“Fanning,” she said. “Did you check local pawn shops for the jewelry that Cora was wearing?”

He closed the car door. “Yeah. Here and in several other places, too. Nothing ever turned up. Then again, I didn’t look as far as Denton.”

Gretchen put her hands on her hips and eyed the camera pointed down at them. “When Tobias and Cora left the restaurant, they weren’t fighting.”

“Wait staff said they had a great time. They were laughing and joking. Cora complimented the food. They shared a dessert.” Fanning shaded his eyes from the sun.

“Tobias didn’t have anything to drink. Cora had one glass of wine.

Next, we had them on camera here, getting into the car.

A witness who had just parked also saw them and said nothing about them seemed off. No tension.”

This was important. They hadn’t rushed out of the restaurant before their meals were finished. There was no emergency. Nothing out of the ordinary. At that point, around ninep.m., everything had been completely normal for the couple.

Gretchen asked, “Did any witnesses overhear them talking about going anywhere after the restaurant? A bar, maybe?”

“Nothing,” Fanning answered. “Come on. I’ll give you the rest of the tour.”

Back in the car, he cruised through the streets so slowly that several drivers beeped angrily and swerved to go around him. Fanning was oblivious, pointing out all the businesses with exterior security cameras on which Tobias’s sedan had been captured.

“Was he speeding?” Josie asked. “Driving erratically?”

“Nope.” He took a left onto a residential street. “In fact, we have them driving past one of these houses around the time that Cora sent the text to Jackson about letting the cat in.”

At this point during their drive home, everything had still been normal. Tobias was driving safely. Cora’s mind was already at home, focused on Captain Whiskers.

Fanning turned right at the next stop sign. “This is where the camera trail ends. A few folks had cameras on their properties, but none caught the car. Two people walking their dogs along here saw it though, so we know they came this way.”

He wove through several more residential streets. Josie wasn’t very familiar with the city, but this didn’t look like the way they’d come. “He took a different way home.”

“Yep.” It seemed to be Fanning’s catchphrase.

“Any idea why?” asked Gretchen.

“None at all.”