Page 45 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Forty-One

Josie sighed and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Exhaustion made them burn. She felt like someone had thrown sand in her face.

The darkness of the CCTV room should have helped but the sense of defeat looming over her was excruciating.

It magnified every irritation, big or small.

Tension knotted at the base of her skull, tightening with the knowledge that they were no closer to solving Riley’s murder or those of Cora and Tobias.

They had theories. Solid, logical theories, but no evidence. No proof.

She needed proof.

This is what Detective John Fanning must have felt like for over half a decade.

Josie watched the CCTV screen as Gretchen finished up questioning Hollis Merritt.

He had been the last to sit for a formal interview.

The day had started with Zane, then Jackson.

Hollis was the insulin-dependent diabetic but both Zane and Jackson had also had access to his insulin pens and the needles that went with them.

While Josie couldn’t figure out why either brother might want to kill Riley, she certainly couldn’t rule them out.

If there was one irrefutable fact about the blended Lachlan/Stevens family, it was that there was no end to the secrets among them.

She hadn’t really expected to get anything earth-shattering by questioning them today, like a confession, but it was important to get written statements from each of them. It locked them into their stories. Later, they’d be questioned again, their second interviews scrutinized for inconsistencies.

It had been over twenty-four hours since she and Gretchen spoke with Anya about Riley’s autopsy findings.

They’d gotten a warrant for Hollis’s home and his office soon thereafter.

While Josie and some of the patrol officers executed the search warrant at Hollis’s home, Gretchen took another team to his office.

Josie groaned as she checked the time. She still had a few hours to go and there was no way in hell she was getting through them without copious amounts of coffee.

She was wondering how lazy it would be to DoorDash two blonde lattes from Komorrah’s when the door swished open and Noah appeared. She smiled, despite the fatigue wearing her down.

“Hey.” He took a seat beside her and slid a paper Komorrah’s cup over to her.

Josie’s hand seized on it. She popped the lid off and inhaled the scent of her favorite latte. “I didn’t think I could love you more, but I do.”

Noah chuckled. “Are you talking to me or that latte?”

“Both?”

“I’ll take it,” he said with a grin before turning his attention to the CCTV. “Anything?”

“Nope.” She slugged down half of her drink, ignoring the way it burned her tongue, desperate for the caffeine to hit.

“What do they think happened to Riley?” he asked.

“None of them believe it’s homicide. Zane and Hollis think she must have injected herself and driven to the boat ramp to die where her mom died.

Jackson got extremely agitated when Gretchen made that suggestion.

He said either the medical examiner got it wrong or someone else did it to her.

Someone we haven’t caught yet. He’s definitely in denial. ”

The door opened again, and Turner sauntered into the room. Just what she needed. She waited for some kind of snarky greeting but instead, he just stood behind them, his fingers drumming against his thigh as they watched Hollis read over his official statement.

“No confession then, huh?” Turner said. “Palmer must be slipping.”

“Shut your mouth,” Josie snapped.

He chuckled. She could feel the heat from his body at her back.

Standing too close, as always. “So irritable, Quinn. Guess I would be too if I was sitting here watching a killer get away with another homicide. Look at this guy. He should give classes on how to get away with murder. What is this? His third one? Hell, there are probably more than that we don’t know about.

He left nothing behind. Not one damn thing.

If you want to nail him, you’re gonna need either a confession or an eyewitness. ”

Groaning, Josie dug the heels of her palms into her eyes again. “Don’t remind me.”

“Well, we know he didn’t do it alone,” Noah said.

“Good luck finding the guys he paid to take out Tobias,” Turner said. “They might not even be alive. What’s a couple more bodies to add on his tab? So, Quinn, what are you thinking? Why’d he do it?”

Honestly, Josie was tired of thinking about this case because so far, it hadn’t gone anywhere.

They just couldn’t find the one thread that would unravel it all.

She drank the rest of her latte so quickly, some of it dribbled down her chin.

Swiping at it with her fingers, she asked, “Why do you think he did it?”

Turner’s finger-tapping paused. “Is this your polite way of telling me that you’re not going to do my thinking for me?”

Shifting in her chair, she glared up at him. “Why would I bother being polite to you? Also, you’re standing too close. Again.”

A grin spread across Turner’s face, as though they were sharing some sort of inside joke.

He took a small step backward. Josie really didn’t have the energy or the patience for this.

Noah must have sensed her growing frustration because he said, “Let’s hear it, Turner.

Why do you think Hollis killed Tobias and Cora? ”

Josie turned back toward the screen where Hollis was flipping another page in his statement.

Turner’s finger-tapping resumed at an increased tempo.

“I don’t think he meant to kill Cora. I think he wanted her for himself but the asshats he hired to do the job screwed it all up.

Then he was so racked with guilt that he stepped in to take care of their kids.

From everything Quinn and Palmer have said, this guy is closer to them than any other person in their lives.

So close that somehow Riley Stevens figured out that he was behind the murder-for-hire plot. ”

Noah pushed his chair out slightly so he could turn and look up at Turner. “Okay. How did she figure it out after all this time?”

“Who the hell knows?” Turner said. “But she was staying at his house for a couple of days. She must have seen something or overheard something that tipped her off. Or he slipped up somehow. Then he had to kill her so she didn’t rat him out.

Maybe he encouraged her to have a drink while he explained that whatever she saw or heard or found wasn’t what she thought it was. ”

“At seven in the morning?” Josie said.

“Come on, Quinn. Don’t tell me that you’d be above drinking at seven in the morning if you just buried your mom, inadvertently launched a viral video from her funeral, and then found out that the man who’s been looking after you and your husband for the last seven years is a murderer.”

“I concede,” Josie sighed. “I would have been drunk by six.”

“Well, damn,” Turner said. “We agreed on something.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she muttered.

Beneath the table, Noah gently squeezed Josie’s thigh and good God, even that simple touch made some of her aggravation melt away.

“Anyway,” Turner continued. “Hollis spun a bunch of lies while he got her good and drunk, and injected her, thinking she’d die right in the house, and it would look like she just had a heart attack or something.

Instead, she took off to the boat ramp. It was dumb luck she didn’t crash before she got there. ”

“If Riley found out that Hollis killed Tobias and her mother,” Noah said, “she definitely would have told Zane and Jackson. I don’t think she would have confronted Hollis on her own.”

“Unless she didn’t know what to do with that information right away,” Turner argued.

“We’re talking about the guy who stepped in to be a parent to all three of them.

This guy’s been more of a dad to Riley than her own piece-of-shit sperm donor, and Tobias, who she only knew for a couple of years.

Maybe she wanted to give him a chance to explain himself before she dropped that bomb on the other two kids.

Maybe she needed to process whatever lies he told her privately before doing anything, so she went to the boat ramp to think. ”

Everything Turner said made sense, but hell if Josie was going to tell him that.

“I’m right,” he went on. “Hollis is behind all of this, and he killed this kid to shut her up. I mean if you’re only looking at Riley’s murder, there were three people in the house with her. Hollis, her stepbrother, and her husband. Why would her stepbrother or husband kill her?”

Josie had been turning the same question over in her head for hours.

There had been a love triangle among the three of them, though Zane’s affection had been unrequited.

Perhaps Riley’s death had nothing to do with Cora and Tobias and everything to do with the rivalry between the brothers.

Had Zane gotten tired of being on the sidelines?

Tired of watching Jackson with the girl he’d been in love with since high school?

While they stayed up to talk and watch Netflix, had he made advances on Riley only to be rebuffed and decided to kill her?

Noah turned his attention back to Josie. “What did the searches of the house and office turn up?”

“Insulin pens and their needles,” she said flatly.

“Used and unused. Hummel is trying to pull prints from the used ones and then he’ll send them to the lab to see if DNA can be pulled from the needles, but if we’re trying to prove that Hollis killed Riley, that’s not going to help.

Even if a couple of the needles turn up with Riley’s DNA on them, that won’t prove Hollis’s guilt.

Of course his prints and DNA would be on the pens.

He’s a type 1 diabetic and they belonged to him. ”

In the interview room, Hollis finally reached the last page of his statement. Gretchen handed him a pen to sign it.

“This guy must have thought he was so smart,” Turner said. “If it wasn’t for the doc being so thorough and finding those injection marks, the kid’s death would have been classified as a cardiac arrest or stroke or something, and no one would be the wiser.”

That had been obvious from the start. It would have been one more secret in the saga of Tobias Lachlan, Cora Stevens and now Riley.

Secrets upon secrets upon secrets. Zane had kept his crush on Riley from her.

From everyone but Jackson, it seemed. Hollis had kept knowledge that Cora was planning to leave Tobias secret.

Bruce Olsen hadn’t told a soul about Cora hiring him or about Rachel Wright’s purse.

Josie flashed back to the discussion she and Noah had had about Tobias’s secrets. She checked her phone again, gratified to see that she’d missed a message from Meredith Dorton thirteen minutes ago.

I emailed you the report you wanted. Let me know if there’s anything else.

She patted Noah’s hand before standing up. Turner stumbled backward as she pushed the chair back hard enough that it nearly hit him. “Watch it, Quinn. Where’s the fire?”

Tossing her empty cup into the trash bin, she said, “I got an email.”