Page 25 of The Couple's Secret
“How about you?” Gretchen continued. “Did you own a gun?”
Riley’s lips twisted. There was an edge to her voice as she answered for her husband. “Jackson wouldn’t bring a gun into our home. I don’t like them anymore than my mom did.”
“It’s okay, Ri,” he said softly, brushing the hair from the back of her neck. “They mean back then.”
“What? Why?” She turned her narrowed eyes toward them. “Why do you need to ask that?”
“They need to ask everything, Ri,” Jackson soothed. “They need to investigate everyone, even me. They’re just doing their jobs. It’s fine.”
Riley didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t protest. Addressing Josie and Gretchen, Jackson said, “The answer is no. I’ve never owned a gun. No need.”
Josie decided to change the direction of questioning. “Did Hollis Merritt have business associates here?”
Riley seemed momentarily confused by the abrupt shift. “What?”
“We know that at the time of your parents’ disappearance, Hollis wanted to expand the business and open a new location here in Denton,” Gretchen said. “Was there someone here Hollis was connected to that Tobias might have wanted to speak with? Maybe without Hollis being present?”
Riley looked at Jackson again. “Was there?”
Jackson shook his head. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Hol.”
“According to the Brighton Springs police file,” Josie leaned forward in her chair, “before the disappearance, Tobias and Hollis had been seen by several employees arguing about the expansion plans. Do either of you know how serious the expansion disagreement was, or if there were other issues they fought about?”
Jackson answered, “They didn’t have other issues that I knew about. The expansion thing wasn’t that serious. I mean they got heated sometimes but they were still friends. Dad was worried about overextending themselves. He didn’t think they were ready to expand. He thought they should wait. Hol said he’d do all the work himself, but Dad said that wasn’t the point.”
“Jacks started working for them before he even turned eighteen,” Riley explained. “So he was with them a lot.”
Jackson took a long sip of coffee. “I don’t remember them ever disagreeing about anything besides that. I mean small, dumb shit, sure, but nothing that would have led to violence.”
Gretchen lowered her chin, looking over her reading glasses at Jackson. “What did happen in terms of expansion?”
“Hollis went ahead with it,” he said. “When Dad didn’t come back after two years, he asked me and Zane if we’d be opposed to it. Dad and Hol had an operating agreement for the company that if Dad ever became incapacitated, his interest would go to me and Zane. If Hol ever became incapacitated, his would go to his sister. Dad vanishing wasn’t in the agreement, but Hol treated it as though he was incapacitated which meant that he needed mine and Zane’s approval to move forward with the expansion. We were fine with it. We have a place here, and we just opened a new one in Allentown.”
“You came with Hollis to Denton?” Josie said.
Jackson grimaced. “Yeah. Too many memories in Brighton Springs. I moved as soon as Hollis got a place here. Zane was old enough by that time to take over at home. He’d been tagging along with Dad since he was fourteen. He knew how the place ran.”
Gretchen jotted something down. “Who’s in Allentown?”
“Some guy Hollis hired about five years ago.”
Josie asked, “Riley, did you move here to be with Jackson?”
Fourteen
“I know what you’re thinking.” Riley fidgeted with a thread on the sleeve of Cora’s sweater. “That it’s weird that we’re married because we were almost step-siblings, and if you don’t think that’s weird, you think it’s gross because Jackson is seven years older than me.”
Gretchen’s face softened. It wasn’t something she showed other people often. “My husband was twelve years older than me when we got married. I followed him all the way across the country.”
Riley’s eyes lit up. She shot her husband a loving smile which he returned. “Well, I didn’t follow him. Nothing ever happened between us in Brighton Springs. I decided to go to college in Denton for art history. Jacks was already here working with Hollis. They were the only people I knew here so I hung out with them a lot and, over time, we fell in love.”
“You’re still Riley Stevens,” Josie pointed out.
“I never changed my name because we were afraid the press would have a field day. I mean we’re not trying to hide or anything, but I had planned to keep doing interviews about the disappearance, keep spreading awareness of the case so that maybe someone would come forward. Someone must know something, right? Anyway, we thought it might be awkward explaining why I’m Riley Wright.”
Jackson squeezed her shoulder. “We just didn’t want people to get so caught up in the ‘former almost-step-siblings get married’ thing that they stopped paying attention to the case.”
Gretchen asked the question Josie had been wondering about all day. “Wright. Not Lachlan?”
