Page 12 of Outlaw Ridge: Griff
Griff nodded once. “You said they’re the kind of people who don’t get their hands dirty.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back slightly. “What about Hannah’s sister? Margo. You mentioned her name earlier.”
Lily’s gaze drifted toward the far wall, unfocused. “Margo’s… complicated. I’m not sure she could do something like this, but I don’t really know her.”
Griff’s forehead bunched up as he no doubt processed that. “Is there anyone else in Hannah’s family who might’ve wanted to shut you up?”
She shook her head. “No. Parents are both gone. Her dad died a year before the murder. Her mom passed away a few months ago. It’s just Margo now.”
“And?”
Lily hesitated. “She and Hannah were only a year apart. Real close in age, but not close in the way people like to pretend siblings are. They had this kind of fire between them. Always competing. Hannah was the pretty one. Homecoming queen. Everyone knew her name.”
“And Margo?” he pressed.
“Margo was the smart one. Quiet, intense. Valedictorian. Always in the library or the science lab. But she hated being in Hannah’s shadow. I remember hearing them argue. They used to fight loud enough that the neighbors could hear.”
“Jealousy?”
“Resentment,” Lily said. “Of what Hannah got. Of how people looked at her. I think part of Margo wanted to be seen the same way, but she never was.”
Griff didn’t speak right away. He didn’t have to. The possibility hung there between them, taking shape.
“She left town right after the murder,” Lily added.
“But she’s back now,” Griff said.
Lily nodded. “Yeah. And that feels like more than a coincidence.”
The glass in her hand had gone warm, forgotten.
If someone was willing to kill to keep the past buried, Margo Cole was starting to look like someone who might have a shovel.
Lily leaned back into the couch, the cushions too soft beneath her. She stared at the ceiling for a long beat.
“There’s someone else I want to talk to,” Lily said, flipping through the case file in her head. “The lead detective on the original case. Rhett Hale.”
Griff looked up from his screen, attention sharpening. “He still around?”
“Yeah. Lives just outside town. Not on the force anymore. He got pushed into early retirement about five years back. Officially it was for ‘health issues,’” she said, adding air quotes. “Unofficially, he rubbed too many people the wrong way. Loud. Aggressive. Didn’t play well with others. Definitely didn’t play politics.”
Griff leaned back in his chair. Listening.
“Back in high school, he was a football star,” she continued. “Big name. Super jock. One of those guys everyone thought would end up running the place someday. By the time Hannah was murdered, he was in his mid-thirties. And he had a reputation.”
“For what?” Griff asked.
Lily shot him a dry look. “Being a smooth talker with no off switch. Rumor was he hit on the mayor’s wife. And most of the women in town, if we’re being honest.”
Griff raised a brow.
“He even tried a line on me once,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I’d just finished the academy. He cornered me outside a training exercise and said something about needing help with his ‘handcuff technique.’”
Griff gave a quiet snort.
Lily muttered, “I should’ve cuffed him to a parking meter and walked away.”
