Page 50 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Forty-Six

Jackson froze, wet hands still gripping the sides of the Coke machine.

This time, he looked directly at Zane. A flurry of emotions passed over his face.

Sadness, defeat, frustration, love, and then pity.

He shook his head slowly. “Dad was sloppy. Ironic, isn’t it?

How careless he was and he still never got caught?

It doesn’t matter now, Zane. Hasn’t mattered for seven years. ”

Zane stepped forward until his stomach brushed against the tailgate. His sandy hair was soaked through. “Was he going to kill Cora?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Well, what the hell were you planning to do with all of that information? All your suspicions?” Zane asked angrily.

“There were three of us living with him and you knew—you knew for…for years! You said you were twenty when you started to remember. That means you left us in that house with him for three years. Did you ever plan to do anything?”

Jackson turned his back to them, resting his head against the face of the Coke machine. He didn’t answer.

“Did you ever confront your father?” Josie asked.

The puzzle pieces were shuffling around in her mind. Common denominator. Motive. Expanding their definition of a criminal organization. Police corruption. Someone always knew something.

“Jackson,” she said. “Did you ever confront Tobias?”

He lifted his head from the machine but didn’t turn back toward them. “No. Why would I do that?”

Gretchen put away her notebook and pen. “What were you planning to do with your suspicions?”

Three years was a long time to hold onto something like that. To keep working side by side with your father. To let your anger and betrayal fester and grow. To plan.

“I don’t know.” Jackson wiped the moisture from his face and then turned his hat around, the brim keeping the rain from his eyes.

Zane laughed humorlessly. “Oh, so you were just going to sit on that indefinitely. Do absolutely nothing. You had to know Cora was in danger. Riley, too. Are you telling me you would have just left her?—”

“Shut up, Zane!” Jackson whirled around. “I didn’t have plans, okay? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have proof!”

“That’s never stopped people before,” Josie said carefully. “When they want to stop someone from hurting someone else or when they want revenge. You must have been pretty angry.”

Jackson looked down at his hands, twisting his wedding ring around his finger.

Gretchen locked eyes with Josie briefly. They were on the same page. She said, “Plus your dad had all those law enforcement connections through his dad. John Fanning, Karl Staab, Bruce Olsen. They were all on his side. They never looked beneath the surface.”

Josie didn’t miss the almost imperceptible wince at the mention of Olsen’s name. “You must have felt pretty powerless.”

“Zane’s right,” Gretchen went on. “Cora was in danger. Could you have lived with yourself if she was taken from Riley the same way that Rachel and Gabrielle were taken from you and Zane?”

Jackson said nothing.

“Did you know she was planning to leave your dad?” Josie said.

Zane shook his head. “What? Things got that far? Jacks, what about Riley? What was going to happen to her?”

Through gritted teeth, Jackson said, “It doesn’t matter if she was planning to leave him. They’re both gone now.”

“Cora knew.” Josie pushed a wet lock of hair from her forehead.

“She found Rachel’s purse and the skeleton key.

Maybe she didn’t know what the key meant but she understood the significance of the purse.

It belonged to your mother. That’s when Cora knew she was in trouble.

Did she ever talk to you about it, Jackson? ”

He kept twisting his wedding band, watching it turn around his finger. “No, and maybe that was for the best. What could I have done? What good would it have done any of us?”

None, Josie realized. Not for Jackson, anyway. It would have taken Riley away from him. Had he been in love with her back then, too?

“Jackson,” Josie said. “Did you know that Cora was planning to leave?”

He didn’t answer. Twisting his wedding band a final time, he grabbed the dolly and began trying to fit it beneath the edge of the Coke machine.

“You did know!” Zane accused.

It would have been easy enough information to come by given his position in the company and the family.

Working with his father and Hollis. Rescuing Cora from Dalton Stevens periodically.

He might have overheard something. Arguments between Cora and Tobias.

Conversations between Hollis and Cora. Regardless, Josie believed Zane.

“You knew Cora was in danger,” Josie said.

“Knew what your dad was capable of and you let it all slide. Then you found out she was leaving and realized it would sever your connection to Riley permanently. There was no way she’d be with the son of the man who killed two of his romantic partners, who scared her mom so badly that she thought she might be next. ”

Jackson finally fit the dolly’s edge under the machine. “This trip down memory lane has been a real drag but there’s nothing left to say. I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish but I’ve got shit to do.”

“You went to Karl Staab’s retirement party,” Josie said. “But your dad didn’t.”

He didn’t look away from where his hands curled around the handle of the dolly. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”

“They were your dad’s friends. Tobias was the only reason your family had connections to law enforcement,” Gretchen pointed out. “Fanning, Staab, Olsen.”

“Olsen was the one who responded to the 911 call the day your mom went missing,” Josie added. “When we talked with him, he made it sound like his loyalty was firmly with Tobias but that wasn’t true, was it?”

Jackson didn’t answer.

“What is she talking about?” Zane asked him.

Nothing.

“Olsen had a soft spot for you, didn’t he?

” Gretchen said, picking up Josie’s thread.

“You went to him when you turned eighteen and asked him to find your mom. He lied to you and said he couldn’t find her.

Because Tobias asked him to. He must have felt pretty guilty about that, especially after Cora brought him Rachel’s purse.

Maybe guilty enough to come clean with you and tell you the truth about what he found when he actually did search for her. ”

“What?” Zane said. “What is this about a purse? Cora talked to Olsen? Jacks, what the hell is going on?”

“It’s a little strange,” Gretchen said. “You being twenty-three and going to a retirement party with a bunch of guys your dad’s age and older.”

“You know,” Josie said, “Brighton Springs PD has a long history of police corruption. It’s interesting that on the night your dad and Cora disappeared—were killed—you were at a party with a bunch of their officers. Even if they weren’t dirty, you’d only need one of them to give you an alibi.”

“Jacks,” Zane whispered. “What did you do?”

Shaking his head, Jackson reached around the vending machine, pulling it toward him as he tilted the dolly.

“Bruce Olsen was highly decorated,” Josie continued. “Revered. Everyone had been drinking at that party. They might not have remembered seeing you past nine in the evening but if Olsen told them you were there until the early hours of the morning, they wouldn’t question him.”

“Holy shit, Jacks,” Zane said. “Did you do this? Did you kill Dad and Cora? Were you after Riley even then? Did you ever give a shit about me ?”

The machine teetered on the edge of the dolly, its weight pulling it back toward the truck bed. With a grunt, Jackson pushed it forward a couple of halting steps.

“Fanning checked your phone,” Gretchen said, “as well as the GPS in your car but it never occurred to him to check Olsen’s. Why would it?”

Zane’s face crumpled. “Cora, man? How could you? Holy shit. It’s— This is so bad. So…disgusting. You married Riley after killing her mom ? Do you have any idea how fucked up that is? You’re so much worse than Dad!”

This earned Zane a glare from his brother. “You shut your mouth,” Jackson growled.

“Oh God,” Zane said, new horror washing over his face. “She knew, didn’t she? Riley found out. You lied to me about the morning she died, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about, Zane?” Josie asked.

“I thought I heard them arguing that morning. It woke me up. I was hungover and it was none of my business anyway, so I went back to sleep. When he knocked on my door to ask if I knew where she was, I asked him what they were arguing about, and he said he didn’t know what I was talking about.

Said I must have been dreaming. That was bullshit, wasn’t it, Jacks?

It was you. You knew how to kill her with insulin ’cause you saw Dad do it to my mom.

You saw it, didn’t you? That day in the yard.

You told me to wait for you, to hit some more balls, and you went back to the house. ”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackson said menacingly, pushing the dolly closer to the tailgate.

“Maybe you didn’t see Dad inject her, but you saw the pens and needles in the trash, just like I did.

It’s true, isn’t it? You knew what they were—knew how Hol was constantly telling us not to touch them, not to mess with them because an accidental dose could put us in the hospital and kill us.

Even I remember that. He drilled it into our heads.

Then when you started realizing he killed your mom, you remembered those pens, the needles, and the arguing?—”

“Stop talking right fucking now,” Jackson said.

“Nothing else makes sense,” Zane insisted. “Hol wouldn’t kill Riley. How did she find out? After all these years, how did she finally figure it out?”

Gretchen said, “Jackson, this stuff can wait. Let’s go back to the stationhouse. Zane, too. These are things that are probably best discussed in private.”

How had Riley figured it out?

Josie’s brain worked to review everything she knew about the morning Riley died through the lens of Zane’s revelation.

Riley had gone home that morning to get medication for their cat.

Hollis had seen her when she returned but she’d looked pale and shaky.

Sick. He’d assumed it was because she was hungover—and she very well may have been—but what if she’d found something while she was at home that had made her that way?

Something that turned her world on its head.

Something that made her believe that her husband had had something to do with her mother and Tobias’s murders.

But what?

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Jackson said. “You’re all making shit up. It’s like the most morbid kind of storytime. You’ve got some pretty wild imaginations. Zane, help me with this damn thing, would you?”

Josie thought of the punctures on Riley’s palm. Four of them spaced perfectly apart to form a tiny square. She’d been squeezing something so hard in her hand that it broke the skin. Something small, its face square, but those four parts of it sharp enough to pierce the soft pad of her hand.

“We’d still like you to come down to the stationhouse so you can formally respond to these questions,” Gretchen said.

What small item could Riley have found in the home she shared with Jackson that would give her the idea that he’d had something to do with the murders?

One of the only things that hadn’t been in the sedan when they processed it.

Josie might not have thought of it except for the fact that Shannon kept sending her and Noah photos of anniversary bands that would match Josie’s ring, despite them standing firm that they weren’t buying one.

“You kept Cora’s engagement ring,” Josie said. “It was a princess cut. Square in a four-pronged setting.”

Jackson’s head lifted, his dark eyes colliding with hers, the truth of what she said plain on his face.

Zane made a noise of disgust. “Why would you keep?—”

Before he could finish, Jackson shoved the dolly forward with all of his strength, its wheels bumping over the rest of the truck bed and then bowing the tailgate. Josie watched in horror as the Coke machine hurtled forward, flipping over the tailgate and straight on top of a helpless Zane.