Page 73 of The Couple's Secret
“It wasn’t relevant. Still isn’t. First of all, Tobias wasn’t a killer and if this got out—that his fiancée was having him investigated for murder only days before they disappeared—all it would do is ruin his reputation. Needlessly. If they were found alive and there was some logical explanation as to what happened to them, then Tobias would know that I betrayed him and that Cora did, too. I didn’t want that. If they weren’t found alive, I didn’t want to ruin his kids’ memory of him. It was the last thing they needed. They were already a mess. Second of all, Cora and Tobias vanished together. If it had just been her and he was swanning around playing the bereaved fiancé, then I might have approached Fanning, but they were both gone and they stayed gone. Whatever happened to them wasn’t Tobias’s doing or else he’d still be here.”
Josie couldn’t appreciate his logic, especially when it was steeped in his obvious and long-standing—possibly blinding—loyalty to Tobias, but they needed to move things forward.
“The first time Cora came to you, she said she’d found this in a hidden spot,” she said. “Did she say if she found anything else?”
“No. She never said.”
Thirty-Nine
“I’m starting to think the skeleton key doesn’t mean anything at all,” Josie said.
Noah stuffed a bag of popcorn into the microwave and punched a few buttons until it whirred to life. “Maybe it was with Rachel Wright’s purse. In a secret hiding place. Regardless, when you hide something under the floorboards, it means something. Something bad.”
It had been twenty-four hours since the visit to Bruce Olsen’s office. In that time, Josie had told off her sister, printed out a list of therapists and left it on Noah’s pillow, scheduled the fitting for her dress, and made peace with the vow renewal ceremony going forward.
What she hadn’t done was make any progress on the Lachlan/Stevens case. Gretchen had driven to Brighton Springs to execute a search warrant on the Lachlan house so she could get a look at Tobias’s secret hiding spot. If there had ever been anything else under those floorboards other than what Cora found, it was long gone. Another dead end.
“Definitely something bad. We can’t match that key to anything. Let’s say she also found it in the floorboards.” Josie fished through one of the cabinets over the sink looking for their big plastic bowls. “I don’t think she got it from Rachel’s purse. It would make no sense to remove it before going to Olsen. So why would Tobias be hiding just a key? A random key all on its own?”
Noah leaned his hip against the counter and folded his arms over his chest. Behind him, muffled pops came from the microwave. “Why did he keep Rachel’s purse for twenty years? If he killed her but managed to convince everyone in their lives—including her own parents and the police—that she’d run off with another man, why keep it?”
Josie found a set of three large bowls in three different colors and put them on the kitchen table. “It was a trophy.”
Noah nodded.
There was a calculated, petty anger in that. A lack of remorse. It was a private sort of revenge, besides the killing, of course. That could have happened in the heat of an argument. Maybe Rachel had tried to leave him just as Cora had intended to do.
“Which would make the key a trophy of some kind.” She had already theorized that the key was symbolic rather than practical. “I get what you’re saying but it doesn’t help get us closer to whoever killed Cora and Tobias. Hell, the idea that Tobias was a murderer doesn’t even help us get there. In a sense, Olsen’s argument that it’s irrelevant holds weight.”
Noah opened his mouth to speak but clamped it shut when Wren came into the kitchen. She wore a Phoebe Bridgers T-shirt. Her cheeks were rosy and there was a brightness in her eyes that Josie longed to see more often. Trout trailed behind her.
“Are you guys coming?” she asked. “We’re ready to start. One of you can be the first judge.”
“We” was Wren, Erica, and Josie’s parents, Shannon and Christian. They’d decided to play some party game that Shannon picked up at a bookstore. As Josie understood from the lively discussion a half hour ago, the game provided cards with various types of odd photos. In each round, one photo was presented to the players. Each player had to write their own caption and submit it anonymously to the judge who would then decide which one was the funniest. After a number of rounds, whoever racked up the most winning captions was the champion.
Shannon had been very proud of herself when Wren and Erica enthusiastically snatched the box from her hands before she’d even made it through the front door. Then she’d taken Josie and Noah aside and ordered them to play. It would be fun, she had said. A way to engage Wren in a group setting. Low-pressure. Show her that they could be cool. Whatever the hell that meant.
From the living room, Shannon called, “We need a judge with a good sense of humor!”
Noah arched a brow. “That implies one or both of us doesn’t have a good sense of humor.”
The microwave beeped three times in succession. Trout’s nose lifted and he sniffed the air, now fragrant with the smell of butter and salt. Wren practically skipped past them and yanked open the door. She pinched the edge of the bag between a thumb and forefinger and carried it over to the table. Trout was at her heels, craning his neck to try to see what she was doing.
“You guys are pretty serious,” Wren said, prying the top of the bag apart. “Like, all the time.”
Josie and Noah exchanged a puzzled glance. Were they? Didn’t they have their light moments? They joked all the time with one another. Although now that she thought about it, those jokes usually centered around sexual innuendo, which wasn’t something they engaged in when other people were around. Josie had never considered their fun quotient. They were fun, weren’t they? Harris thought so. Except that he was eight.
“We’re going to need more popcorn than this,” Wren added, dumping the popcorn into one of the bowls. “No offense, Josie, but your dad could finish this in a minute.”
“So could Erica,” Noah muttered, sticking another bag into the microwave. “Two more bowls coming up. We’ll be right in.”
Wren hugged the bowl to her chest and without warning, flashed them a dazzling smile. Then she was gone, their dog trotting after her.
“Holy shit,” Josie breathed. “Did you see that?”
“I think she forgot that we were, well, us,” Noah said, but a tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Whatever,” Josie said. “I’m taking the win.”
