Page 51 of The Couple's Secret
The day his ex-wife was laid to rest.
“Let me rephrase that.” Josie picked up her cup and swished the dregs of her coffee around. “It’s not unreasonable that you wanted to pay your respects to your ex-wife, who was also the mother of your child. No one can really fault you there.”
“But you don’t seem very good at reading social cues,” Gretchen said innocently. “Because the kids did not want you there.”
“You just shut the fuck up,” he spat.
Gretchen pretended to think about it. “No. Don’t think I will, but thanks for the suggestion.”
There was Mr. Apoplectic Red again. Josie should really pitch this new color to Crayola.
“Mr. Stevens, you could have waited until the service concluded, until the kids had vacated the area, before paying your final respects. That’s not what you were there to do, was it?”
“I—I just wanted Riley to know…” He drifted off and began cracking his knuckles.
“To know what?” asked Josie.
“You know, that kid turned out just like her mother. A stuck-up snob. Acting like her shit don’t stink. Like marrying her stepbrother was moving up in the world. Just like her mom. Marrying a ‘businessman.’ It’s a junk removal company. They ain’t lawyers or accountants. I’m tired of being treated like I’m the problem.”
Josie knew that Gretchen had a snarky comment locked and loaded that would wind Dalton up, but she restrained herself. They’d both had enough experience with assholes like Dalton Stevens to know that at some point, in order to get to the things you wanted to know, you had to listen to some bona fide horseshit. Once the ill-advised pity party was over and out of his system, he would be more amenable to answering the questions Josie really cared about.
“What’s the problem, Mr. Stevens?”
He rubbed his palms on his thighs. The knuckles connecting his middle fingers to his hands were bulging and unsightly. Boxer’s knuckle. It was an injury to the joint at the base of the finger—usually the middle finger—gained from repetitive impacts. Punching.
“The problem is that everyone is ready to nominate Cora for sainthood and they don’t know nothing about her,” Dalton began.
Josie wondered how many punches Cora had had to endure to cause Dalton to have boxer’s knuckle—on both hands.
“She wasn’t as good as everyone makes her out to be.” He kept going, voice dripping with disdain. “Every time I turn on the TV or go to the diner, people are talking about her like she was Mother Teresa. It’s all bullshit. I never said nothing before, to that other guy, Fanning or whatever his name is, but you wanna know how much of a saint she was? I’ll tell you. Cora was having an affair. She was cheating on Tobias.”
That’s what he’d been getting at when he accosted Riley at the funeral. Josie knew he’d been holding onto something, waiting for the right moment to unleash it. The question was whether it was true. With Cora’s death, there was a finality to his ability to use her as a receptacle for all his anger and inadequacy, but provoking Riley could be his new sport. It was easy to make things up about a person who wasn’t here to defend herself—and was never going to return.
Gretchen now had her notepad and pen out though her posture still shouted casual indifference. “How do we know you’re not just saying that to get Riley’s attention?”
“Riley needs to know the truth.”
“But she didn’t need to know the truth for the past seven years?” Josie asked. “It never occurred to you that maybe Cora’s lover killed her and Tobias?”
“You didn’t think it was important enough to tell Detective Fanning? You must have known that you were a suspect,” Gretchen said.
“Fanning thought Hollis did it. I didn’t need to tell him.”
“Cora was having an affair with Hollis?” asked Josie.
Dalton shrugged. “I think so.”
“But you don’t know.” Gretchen’s pen was poised over her notepad as she watched Dalton.
He folded his arms over his chest again, giving Josie a quick glimpse of yellow sweat stains under his armpits. “I never saw them kissing or nothing like that.”
Maybe no one had seen them kiss. Maybe Dalton was full of shit and they’d never kissed at all, but Josie would bet a week’s pay that Hollis had been infatuated with Cora Stevens for a long time. He had definitely wanted to kiss her. “What did you see?”
“I saw them out back at the diner where Cora worked, talking privately. A few times.”
“In full view of the public,” Gretchen said.
Dalton pushed strands of his dirty-blond hair out of his eyes, giving Josie another eyeful of his tattoo. The angel and demon grinned at one another, both of them looking devious.
