Page 72 of The Couple's Secret
Moments later, he located it, against a wall, tucked between two tall filing cabinets. From the box, he took an old purse. It was medium-sized and navy blue with a gold zipper and a shoulder-length strap.
“Cora found this.” He opened it and began pulling items from inside. “At their house. It was hidden under a floorboard in their bedroom, near Tobias’s side of the bed.”
Olsen lined up the contents in neat rows. A small pack of tissues, a compact, a tube of mascara, a lipstick, a travel-sized bottle of Tylenol, a hairbrush, a set of keys, a pen, and a maxi pad. The last thing was a woman’s wallet, easily the size of his hand. He flipped it open, revealing cash, rows of credit cards tucked inside and an ID window that contained the driver’s license of Rachel Wright.
Josie leaned in, studying her picture, recognizing her dark hair, so similar to Jackson’s, and her heart-shaped face from the photos Jackson and Riley had on display in their home. Like most people in their driver’s license photos, Rachel was unsmiling but striking. The expiration date was March 25, 1999. Josie did the math, based on Jackson’s age. She had left him behind in 1998.
Gretchen said, “If she ran off with some guy, why did she leave this behind?”
“Exactly,” Olsen said. “After Cora brought this to me, I started looking for Rachel. I called in some favors. Rachel never renewed her license. Never opened another credit card account. Never filed another tax return. There were no addresses listed for her after she ran off. Basically, she ceased to exist the day she left Tobias and Jackson.”
“She didn’t leave,” Gretchen muttered.
“How many times did you meet with Cora?” asked Josie.
“Twice. The first time she gave this to me.”
“The second time you gave her the news,” Josie said. “That Rachel had vanished without a trace all those years ago.”
He nodded.
An image of Cora Stevens behind the wheel of her parked car in the Majesty Motel assaulted Josie. Crying. Unhinged. That’s how Dalton had described her laughter. He’d threatened to tell Tobias she was having an affair, and her response had been manic laughter directed at the man who’d left over fifteen fractures on her body.
Gretchen motioned toward the purse and its contents. “She left this with you?”
“Yes. I asked her if she was worried about Tobias realizing it was no longer there. She said it didn’t look as though he’d checked it since the day he put it into the floor. The second time she came to me, she was so upset, I’m not sure she meant to leave it. She wanted me to go to the police, but I told her I couldn’t. The purse didn’t prove anything. Certainly not murder.”
“It strongly suggests foul play though,” Josie said.
Olsen sighed. “Yeah. There was no convincing Cora that it was anything but murder. I was going to ask her to let me keep looking into the matter, but she took off, crying. I figured I’d let her cool down. She wouldn’t give me her number anyway. Said she didn’t want Tobias seeing my name come up on her phone. I thought she’d be back but then, a few months later, they were both gone.”
“And you were left with this purse,” Josie said.
“Like I said, it doesn’t prove that Tobias murdered Rachel.”
It was damning though, that was for sure. While it was possible that Rachel Wright could have left her life behind without taking her identification and credit cards, the fact that she never renewed her license or did anything that left evidence of her continuing existence again was a massive red flag.
“What about the guy she supposedly ran off with?” asked Gretchen. “Victor? The note she left behind for Tobias telling him that he could raise Jackson?”
Olsen shrugged. “All I had was a first name which I got from a very distraught child. There wasn’t much I could do with that. Jackson didn’t make for a reliable witness. As far as the note? Tobias showed it to us that day. We had no reason to question it. No reason to look for someone who had voluntarily run off.”
“The last time you saw Cora,” said Gretchen, “what else did you talk about?”
Slowly, Olsen began putting Rachel Wright’s personal items back into the purse. “I told her I’d known Tobias for years and he wouldn’t do something like that. There had to be some other explanation for what happened to Rachel. She wouldn’t listen. Like I said, she didn’t even give me a chance to ask her to extend our contract so I could take a deeper look.”
“She probably couldn’t afford it,” Josie pointed out.
“True,” Olsen admitted. “Instead, she asked me about Gabrielle, Zane’s mom. If I thought Tobias could have killed her, too, but the autopsy findings were pretty clear on that. Anyway, I suggested that Cora talk everything over with Tobias instead of jumping to conclusions and sneaking behind his back so she could hire me to investigate him for murder.”
Gretchen huffed a laugh. “You suggested that this woman ‘talk’ with her husband about whether or not he killed one or more of his previous partners?”
“That’s a pretty fast way to end a relationship,” Josie mused.
Maybe even get yourself killed.
Olsen’s face flushed slightly. “It sounds insensitive when you say it like that but I’m telling you, I knew Tobias. He wouldn’t kill anyone, especially not a woman he loved.”
“You never mentioned any of this to Detective Fanning,” said Josie. “Why?”
