Page 28 of The Couple's Secret
“True. I wouldn’t have bet on finding much in Lachlan’s car because it was in the river but since the windows weren’t open all the way, it looks like a lot of what was in there when they went into the water was still there.” He motioned toward the objects spread across the table. “This is what I’ve got. Everything is still drying out. Once it does, I’ll seal it in evidence bags.”
Josie stepped forward, scanning his findings. A rusted car jack. A handheld air compressor, crusted with dirt, its hose rotted. Two men’s dress boots. Remnants of reddish-brown mud clung to them. Another set of shoes were nearby. Ballet flats, from what Josie could tell. The soles had peeled away. They looked one minor jostle away from total disintegration. Faded, threadbare pieces of fabric, stiff from having air-dried, took up almost half the table. Pieces of the clothing that Tobias and Cora were wearing the night they were killed. A set of keys. A cell phone. Despite the ERT’s efforts to wash away all traces of the river from each object, they were still streaked with grime.
“Would you look at that.” Gretchen pointed to a wallet that had fared well beneath the water. Hummel had removed Tobias Lachlan’s driver’s license, credit cards, and health insurance card. All of them appeared remarkably unscathed.
“Weird, right? What survives years of submersion and what doesn’t.”
Gretchen put her reading glasses on and leaned over the table, peering closely at each object. “No projectiles?”
“Nope.”
Josie sighed. “What else do you have?”
Hummel walked around the table to a countertop along the wall. “This is the rest. Cora Stevens’ things. No jewelry.”
“Not even her engagement ring?” Josie asked.
Hummel shook his head. “Either she wasn’t wearing it or it somehow slipped through a crevice or out the window.”
“Or the killer took it before rolling the car into the water,” Gretchen suggested. “It should be easy enough to figure out if she was wearing it the night they were killed. What else did you recover?”
Hummel waved a hand over another array of items spread across the countertop. “Her purse was on the passenger’s side floor. Zipped up so everything was still inside.”
It was a medium-sized black purse with one long strap that was now broken. Its polyester shell was cracked in places. Just like everything else they’d recovered from the car, a coating of dried mud adhered to it. Its inner liner had started to disintegrate. Cora’s ID, insurance card and credit cards were as near pristine as Tobias’s. Her other possessions still bore the river’s imprint, crusted with dried muck. A lipstick, compact, mascara, hairbrush, a change purse, a pen, a keychain that said “#1 Mom” with four keys on it and a cell phone. All pretty standard things one would expect to find in a woman’s purse.
Except one thing.
Josie pointed to it. “Is that a skeleton key?”
Hummel sighed. “Yeah, looks like it. I can’t figure out what else it would be.”
It was small, not much bigger than a soda bottle cap, and made of some sort of metal. The head appeared to be circular, but it was badly corroded, obscuring any details or design that might have hinted at what it was meant to unlock. Josie guessed there were probably thousands, if not more, of those sorts of keys in the world.
“I assume you’ve got a lecture on skeleton keys prepared for us,” Gretchen said, barely suppressing a smirk.
Hummel narrowed his eyes, glaring at her. “I have a lecture on Google and how you guys can use it, too.”
Gretchen said nothing. Silently, Josie counted off the seconds. When she got to thirty-seven, Hummel shook his head. Blowing out a breath, he said, “It’s not a lecture. More like a bullet point list.”
“Let’s hear it.” Gretchen was full-on grinning now, satisfaction written all over her face.
“Fine,” he huffed, evidently put out by his own thoroughness. “Skeleton keys have been around since ancient Rome, believe it or not. They were originally used on doors, chests, trunks, stuff like that. In the Middle Ages they were used to open a variety of different locks.”
“Kind of like a master key?” asked Josie.
Hummel nodded. “More or less, yeah. There’s a hell of a lot more to their history, but you get the gist. By today’s standards, the locks they opened were pretty low-quality. Skeleton keys are still used today, mostly on antique locks, from what I gathered. Also, replica skeleton keys are a thing now. For decorative purposes.”
Gretchen leaned over the table to get a closer look. “Isn’t it a bit small to be a skeleton key?”
Despite how tiny it was, it had the hallmark features of one with its straight blade and rectangular tip.
“They come in all different sizes.”
“Any way to tell whether it’s from some kind of antique or if it’s more recent?” asked Josie.
Hummel shrugged. “Not sure. I tried doing a reverse image search on the internet, but this thing is too corroded for that. I’m reluctant to try to remove some of the corrosion in case it just disintegrates. That’s above my pay grade. I’m going to send it to the state police lab to see if they can figure out what kind of metal it’s made of and whether it can be cleaned up.”
Josie said, “The real question is why this was in Cora’s purse and how important is it?”
