Page 39 of The Couple's Secret
“Really?” asked Gretchen. “Dalton has a history of violence.”
“Dalton Stevens is a dumbass with the patience of a rabid dog. His financials checked out, too. Besides, what did he stand to gain by paying someone to murder his ex-wife and her new man?”
“Satisfaction,” Josie said drily.
He shot her a wide smile in the rearview mirror. “Exactly. They had a kid. Financially, he gained nothing from her death—or disappearance. In fact, he should have ended up with custody of Riley and trust me, this guy did not want that.”
Josie discreetly checked her phone but there were no new messages.
“Fanning,” said Gretchen. “With all due respect, men like Dalton Stevens don’t typically kill their ex-wives and their new partners for financial security. It’s more of an if-I-can’t-have-you-then-no-one-can situation. Maybe he didn’t have the money to pay someone to do it, but he could have compensated them in other ways.”
“Like what?”
“Favors,” Josie filled in, pocketing her phone.
“Well, shit,” Fanning blew out a sigh. “Okay, so I didn’t really consider that, but I did a deep dive into everyone Dalton was associated with. His neighbors, friends, coworkers from the steel plant and the barflies. Brought them all in for questioning. There was nothing that sent up any red flags. I mean, pretty much half the people he hangs around with are scumbags but there wasn’t any evidence connecting any of them to the disappearance.”
Josie looked out the window again, watching as they drove down a street filled with twin homes and turned onto a commercial block. “Any of them own guns?”
“A lot of them, I’m sure,” he mumbled. “Firearms weren’t exactly on my radar, but I did make a list of which witnesses had purchased handguns or admitted to owning any type of gun. Due diligence and all that. Should be in the file.”
By law, Pennsylvania was restricted from creating or maintaining a gun ownership registry. The commonwealth and federal government did, however, keep records of legal gun transactions. Those records were created every time a citizen bought a handgun since they had to fill out forms for the state police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in order to do so. The two organizations weren’t prohibited from keeping records, only from creating a database with them. Local police departments could contact the state police and ATF to request a check for handgun purchases from a specific person.
“Dalton had two pistols but he had to relinquish those when Cora took out the first PFA against him,” Fanning added.
“That wouldn’t keep him from getting his hands on one, I’m sure,” Gretchen muttered.
Fanning slowed in front of an Italian restaurant called Ecco Domani. It was a squat, glass-front building in one of Brighton Springs’ older commercial districts. The rest of the street was filled with quaint shops offering everything from old vinyl records to chocolate and coffee. The restaurant had made an effort to ditch its strip mall look and match the welcoming small-town vibe of its neighbors. The exterior walls were painted to look like faux stone, the effect almost 3-D. The tops of each window were adorned with overflowing flowerpots. Along the bottoms, matching flowerpots stood like little sentries, bursting with color. Josie wondered what they did during the winter.
“Nice place, right?” Fanning said. “Food’s great. Anyway, they were parked back here. This spot, actually.”
He pulled into a parking lot between the restaurant and a small bookstore and took one of the half-dozen spots. The three of them got out. Josie massaged her lower back and scanned the tops of the buildings. Two cameras, one on each side.
“There’s a camera at the front door of the restaurant, same as seven years ago. Caught them walking out—hand in hand.”
Josie had found the footage and viewed it before they left Denton. Tobias and Cora had been the picture of a happy couple indulging in a date night. The film quality wasn’t ideal but it looked as though Cora had worn a necklace and her engagement ring.
“Fanning,” she said. “Did you check local pawn shops for the jewelry that Cora was wearing?”
He closed the car door. “Yeah. Here and in several other places, too. Nothing ever turned up. Then again, I didn’t look as far as Denton.”
Gretchen put her hands on her hips and eyed the camera pointed down at them. “When Tobias and Cora left the restaurant, they weren’t fighting.”
“Wait staff said they had a great time. They were laughing and joking. Cora complimented the food. They shared a dessert.” Fanning shaded his eyes from the sun. “Tobias didn’t have anything to drink. Cora had one glass of wine. Next, we had them on camera here, getting into the car. A witness who had just parked also saw them and said nothing about them seemed off. No tension.”
This was important. They hadn’t rushed out of the restaurant before their meals were finished. There was no emergency. Nothing out of the ordinary. At that point, around nine p.m., everything had been completely normal for the couple.
Gretchen asked, “Did any witnesses overhear them talking about going anywhere after the restaurant? A bar, maybe?”
“Nothing,” Fanning answered. “Come on. I’ll give you the rest of the tour.”
Back in the car, he cruised through the streets so slowly that several drivers beeped angrily and swerved to go around him. Fanning was oblivious, pointing out all the businesses with exterior security cameras on which Tobias’s sedan had been captured.
“Was he speeding?” Josie asked. “Driving erratically?”
“Nope.” He took a left onto a residential street. “In fact, we have them driving past one of these houses around the time that Cora sent the text to Jackson about letting the cat in.”
At this point during their drive home, everything had still been normal. Tobias was driving safely. Cora’s mind was already at home, focused on Captain Whiskers.
