Page 29 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Twenty-Five

By the time they reached Tobias Lachlan’s house—which had been his son Zane’s home for the past seven years—the press was already camped out.

Several news vans littered the road. Journalists milled about.

Some gave live reports with the property in the background.

Brighton Springs PD had dispatched two uniformed officers to make sure no reporters snuck onto the property.

After a brief conversation with one of them, Josie and Gretchen were allowed to proceed down the driveway.

Next to the freestanding garage, Josie recognized Hollis Merritt’s truck from when she’d seen it outside of the Denton office of At Your Disposal.

She and Gretchen parked next to it. They were going to ring the doorbell until they heard the sound of arguing from behind the house.

With a jerk of her head, Josie motioned for Gretchen to follow. As they rounded the house, a door slammed.

“I told you not to give her anything else to drink.” It was Jackson’s voice, gruff and annoyed.

“Baby, it’s fine,” Riley said.

“Yeah, baby ,” Zane said. “You know she can do whatever she wants, right?”

“Stay out of this, asshole. We have a three-hour drive home and I don’t want her getting sick.”

“Then she can ride with me, asshole ,” Zane shot back.

This time it was a car door that slammed.

“Come on, boys,” Hollis said tiredly. “Knock it off. This day has been long enough. Nobody wants to deal with your bullshit.”

“What even happened between you two, anyway?” Riley asked.

Complete silence. Josie and Gretchen reached the backyard.

An SUV and a pickup truck were parked side by side in the grass only feet from the back door.

Riley sat in a lawn chair beside it, wrapped in Cora’s yellow sweater, a beer in her hand.

Her strawberry-blonde hair, which had been loose and silky earlier, was windblown and tangled.

Hollis stood behind her, a large paw on her shoulder.

Zane threw a duffel bag into the bed of the truck and glared at his brother, only feet away, near the closed hatch of the SUV. It was a silent standoff.

“Oh, hey,” Hollis cleared his throat. “The detectives are here.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Gretchen said.

“You’re not interrupting,” Riley assured them. “We invited you here.”

“Which we appreciate,” Josie said. “We’ll get out of your hair as quickly as possible. Before we see the house, we had a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

Zane said, “Ri’s drunk, so?—”

“Stop speaking for my wife,” Jackson said irritably.

Riley slugged her bottle of beer and then rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, just stop. I’m not that drunk. Anything that’s going to help find out who killed my mom and Tobias, I want to do it. What do you need to know?”

Josie stepped closer, noticing the way Zane studied Riley, his eyes filled with longing.

That’s what it was between the brothers.

Jealousy. Zane had a thing for his would-be stepsister, too.

She wondered how long this had been going on and why Jackson was so easily riled by it.

Clearly, he’d won her over, if it had ever been a competition.

Had it been? Riley and Zane were only a year apart, and they’d lived together when their parents were still alive.

From everything Josie and Gretchen had heard so far, the kids managed to get into trouble together more than once—hanging out, sneaking out, drinking together.

Enough that Cora had found Zane to be a bad influence on her daughter.

Had there been something between Riley and Zane back then?

It wasn’t as though they’d grown up as step-siblings.

They were both teenagers already when Tobias and Cora got together.

It really didn’t matter though. Not for the purposes of the case. Pushing those thoughts aside, Josie said, “I’m not sure if Zane or Hollis told you but your mother had a small skeleton key in her purse at the time of her death.”

Riley nodded. “Yeah, they said. I was going to call you but then the funeral planning kind of overtook everything else. I don’t know what it was for. I took all her stuff when Jacks and I got married but there’s nothing that needs a skeleton key.”

“A jewelry box?” Gretchen said. “Trunk? Something larger like a cabinet of some kind?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you own anything like that?”

Riley shook her head.

“Jackson?” Gretchen went on.

“Nope.”

“What about something Tobias owned?” asked Josie.

Riley glanced between Jackson and Zane. “You guys would know better than me.”

“After the last time you asked, I took a look around but didn’t see anything.” Zane motioned toward the house. “You’re welcome to take a walk-through. I can even give you a tour if you’d like but I don’t think Dad owned anything like that. Jacks?”

“Nothing that I can remember,” he replied. “Maybe it was from something that passed through? Dad was always bringing stuff home to be sold for customers.”

“Not sure why Mom would take the key to something like that, but that’s the only thing that makes sense.” Riley looked up, patting Hollis’s hand. “Hol, would you still have a record of stuff the company sold for clients going back to before…before…”

He squeezed her shoulder, silencing her. “I’m sure we do. I can get Ellyn to look that up and get that to you.”

“That would be great,” said Gretchen. “The other question we have for you, Riley, is the name of the private investigator you hired to look into the case.”

“What for?” she hiccupped. “He didn’t find anything.”

“Due diligence,” Josie said.

“Bruce,” Jackson said. “Bruce Olsen.”

The name was vaguely familiar. Josie remembered seeing it in Fanning’s case file but couldn’t remember the context.

Zane walked past Jackson, bumping his brother’s shoulder. Stopping at the back door, he motioned Josie and Gretchen forward. “Come on, I’ll show you the inside of the house.”

As Zane led them through each room on the first floor, Josie was struck by a profound sense of loneliness.

It filled the house, making even the brightest areas feel dark.

A musty smell permeated the air. There was a stagnant energy to the place, as if time had been suspended.

She supposed it had for the blended Lachlan/Stevens family.

“Have you made any changes in the past seven years?” she asked Zane as they entered the dining room. A thick layer of dust covered the table and the surface of a matching sideboard.

He jammed one hand into the pocket of his jeans and used the other to brush through his sandy hair.

“No, not really. I wanted to keep everything the way it was in case they came home. It sounds stupid, I know, but even up until the day that the medical examiner showed up to tell me they were dead, a part of me genuinely believed that they were still going to walk through the front door and apologize for putting us through all those years of torture.”

“That doesn’t sound stupid at all,” Gretchen assured him with a gentle smile.

Zane’s cheeks flushed. “Thanks. I thought about changing things up so many times because realistically, I knew they weren’t coming back but it just felt…I don’t know.”

“Wrong,” Josie filled in. “Like you were giving up.”

His eyes snapped to hers, wide with surprise. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“Preserving everything made you feel like you were still close to your dad, didn’t it?” Gretchen said.

Zane chuckled but his eyes filled with tears. “Exactly. I guess this means I’m not crazy for keeping changes to the bare minimum.”

“Nope,” Josie said. “Not crazy at all. Just grieving.”

They followed him into the living room. So far, on the first floor, there were no doors, furniture, or other items that required a skeleton key.

The infamous recliner was there, pointed toward the television.

Its fabric was thin in some places and pilled in others.

It didn’t match the rest of the furniture at all.

It was no mystery as to why Cora had hated it.

Zane touched the back of it reverently. Josie wondered if the sagging chair was the boys’ equivalent of the sweater that Riley clung to in her most anxious moments.

Slowly, they ascended the steps to the second floor.

Framed photos adorned the walls of the hallway.

They told the story of Tobias’s sons. Jackson’s youngest moments were of him as a toddler.

They were similar to the ones that Josie had seen in Riley and Jackson’s home.

Him playing with toys, messily eating ice cream, dressed as a superhero.

In many, it was Tobias who held him, hugged him, and played with him.

Josie stopped in front of a photo of the two of them sitting on the floor of the living room they’d just come from.

Jackson wore a paper birthday hat with the number two emblazoned on it as he rested in Tobias’s lap.

His small hands clutched a brightly wrapped gift.

In the upper right-hand corner of the image something caught her eye.

A sliver of an object. Was that brass? All she could see of it was a small section that looked conical, narrow on one side and flaring slightly on the other before it was out of frame.

Below it was a flash of bright Kelly green.

Something about it plucked at her subconscious. What was it?

“This is my room.” Zane’s voice came from several feet away where he was opening a door to allow Gretchen entry.

Josie moved on, taking in the rest of the pictures as quickly as possible.

There were none of Rachel Wright, which made sense.

Seeing her face each time he walked down the hall would have been devastating for Tobias and likely very confusing for a young Jackson.

The next set of images were of Tobias and a woman with sandy hair, big blue eyes, and a nose ring.

She had the smooth, supple skin of a woman ten years younger than him.

Everything about her was luminous and vital.

Soon, Jackson joined the pictures, looking about seven or eight years old, standing between his father and this new woman.

Vacations, picnics, parties. In each one, the woman’s hand curled protectively around one of his thin shoulders.

Then she was in a hospital bed, cradling an infant while Jackson lay next to her, peering down at his baby brother.

This was Gabrielle Lachlan, Zane’s mother.

More photos of her and the two boys growing up followed.

Then she was gone and it was only Jackson and Zane, both looking sullen and sad.

Until Cora and Riley came along. A small ache formed in the pit of Josie’s stomach.

It had been a long time coming but the two women had breathed life back into this house and the lives of the three lonely souls who inhabited it.

Then everything came crashing down.

Josie was aware that Gretchen had been following Zane in and out of the rooms while she surveyed the visual history of Tobias Lachlan’s life.

“This was their room,” Zane said.

Josie tore herself from the last of the pictures and joined him and Gretchen at the threshold of the door at the end of the hall.

He pushed it open and gestured for them to enter but stayed just outside.

The layer of dust on every surface in the room was twice as thick as that in the dining room.

Here, the musty scent was much stronger, the air close and thick.

Daylight strained against translucent curtains browned with age.

The queen-sized bed was rumpled. One nightstand had a clock, a box of tissues, and a phone charger on it.

The other was barren. It must have been Cora’s since Riley had removed her mother’s personal items. On each side of the bed was a dresser.

The closet door was shut. In the corner of the room was a laundry basket half filled with clothes.

Time had stopped in this room. The entire tableau was sad and creepy in equal measure.

The only thing out of place was the glass gun cabinet.

It was nearly six feet tall, made of solid oak.

Its tempered glass was covered in dust but Josie could see three long guns.

At the base of the cabinet was another glass enclosure the size of a small drawer where a pistol rested.

From the doorway, Zane said, “The key is on the top if you want to look inside. When Dad and Cora went missing, the police went through the cabinet. Didn’t take anything. ”

Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed. Josie straightened up and turned back to Zane. “Did you or Jackson ever use any of your dad’s guns?”

“Nah, no reason to. A lot of kids we knew liked to hunt but Jacks and I were never interested in that.”

There was a crash below them. Glass shattered. Zane spun on his heel and raced toward the stairs. Josie and Gretchen jogged after him. They were halfway down the steps when they heard Jackson’s voice, tortured and pleading. “Ri, you’ve had too much.”

“I haven’t,” she answered but her words were slurred. “It was an accident. Zane will forgive me.”

Zane stopped just inside the kitchen with Josie and Gretchen at his heels.

The tile floor was covered in broken plates and wine glasses.

A thick ceramic mug with the At Your Disposal logo on it lay split in half.

Scattered among the debris were several pieces of flatware.

A dishrack was upside down at Riley’s feet.

She clung to the kitchen counter, legs wobbling.

Jackson was at her back, an arm looped around her waist, holding her upright.

Zane stepped toward her, but Jackson stopped him with a glare. “You’ve done enough. Come on, Ri. Let’s go home.”