Page 94 of The Couple's Secret
“It was Cora’s idea,” Jackson said.
Josie wasn’t sure she believed him but blaming Cora would allow him to confess while foisting as much responsibility as he wished onto a dead woman.
“Did she find Rachel’s purse herself or did you know about it already?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know about it. Dad was already acting kind of scary. In that uneasy brooding way, I mean. Other than the day he killed Gabby, I never saw him raise a hand to anyone. I’m not sure if it was her experience with Dalton or what but Cora had this sixth sense about Dad. Once the whirlwind romance wore off and she was living in his house, basically financially dependent on him, she started to get creeped out. Noticed the way he was always trying to manipulate her. Isolate her from the friends she had before him. I guess a lot of it was stuff Dalton did, too, early on in their marriage.”
“How did this come up between you?” Josie inched her chair closer.
Another tear trailed down his cheek. He kept his head bent, avoiding eye contact. “Everyone was always coming and going from Dad’s house. I would go for dinner or pick Zane up to do something together. There were the days Dalton came for her and Dad and Hollis weren’t close enough to get rid of him. There were times I stopped over and she was the only one home. After a while I noticed something was off about her. She was jumpy, skittish. A couple of times I caught her crying alone.”
Just as Hollis had found her in the diner bathroom. Just as Dalton had found her in the parking lot of the Majesty Motel. Cora’s slow unraveling was a consistent detail in the narrative of the Lachlan/Stevens tragedy.
“Did she talk to you about why she was acting that way?”
He rubbed at the dark spots on his jeans where his tears fell. “Not at first, no. I mean, I was her stepson, basically. Talk about awkward. It really nagged at me though. I knew it wasn’t because of Dalton and all his bullshit. She’d dealt with him for years. Even when he was at his worst, she handled him well. Cora was strong but I just… I couldn’t leave it alone.”
“Because you already knew what your dad was capable of.”
Jackson swallowed hard. “Yeah. One day I just asked her what was going on and she blew me off. It took a long time to get her to talk to me. I had to promise not to breathe a word to Dad. Even after that, she didn’t want to tell me what had her so rattled. Then, little by little, it came out. She’d started finding weird stuff in the house.”
“Like the purse?”
“No, not then. More like weird messages. There was one carved into the bottom of a dresser drawer, underneath a liner. It said, ‘Leave while you still can.’”
Josie wondered where that dresser was at the moment and whether Fanning and his team had missed the message or just hadn’t thought to peel up the liners. It didn’t matter now. “Did you have any ideas who might have left that message?”
“It was Gabby’s dresser, so probably her. Like I told you, she wanted to leave Dad too. Looking back, I wonder if she was skeptical of the story about my mom just leaving. I think Gabby was definitely afraid of him before the day it happened.”
Josie felt a sense of profound sorrow mixed with deep frustration. She had no doubt that Jackson was right. Gabrielle Lachlan’s instincts had been screaming that she was in danger, just as Cora’s had, but in many instances, society drilled into women that those instincts couldn’t be trusted, that they were overreacting. Making something out of nothing. Especially when everything was fine on the surface. Tobias wasn’t violent. He hadn’t hit either of them. From everything Josie had learned about him through Fanning’s files and various interviews, he hadn’t even been the type to lose control and trash the house, punch walls, or throw things. At his best, he was devoted, caring, and attentive. At his worst, he was manipulative and moody. Objectively, there was no reason to feel threatened by him. By all accounts, he wasn’t a threat.
Until he was.
“Did Cora begin to suspect that he’d killed Rachel and Gabby on her own or did you share your suspicions?” Josie asked.
“I told her. She believed me,” he said. “I’m not sure what made her look under the floorboards. Maybe the message in the dresser? That key was in there, too. I didn’t realize why he had it hidden in there at first.”
“But you had already put it together that he very likely killed your mother.”
Jackson nodded. “I did a reverse image search and saw that it went to a Pooley phonograph cabinet and then I knew why he kept it.”
Just as Noah had theorized, it was a trophy. Just like Rachel’s purse. It didn’t appear that he’d kept one from Gabrielle, unless you counted the creepy dresser. Had Tobias known about the words carved inside the drawer? The very thought made her queasy.
“Cora showed you the purse,” Josie said, wanting to move things along.
His tears had stopped but his voice was raspy. “Right. Yeah. At first, I was just going to help her leave but then she found that stuff. I told her to take it to Bruce. On her own. I didn’t know if he’d be straight with me. She thought he could help get Dad arrested but it wasn’t enough.”
“So you went to plan B,” Josie said. “Kill Tobias. Everyone would be safe. He’d pay for his sins and he’d never be able to hurt another woman again. The relationship would be over and you’d be free to pursue Riley, eventually. Tell me, how were you two going to explain Tobias’s disappearance?”
Still, he wouldn’t make eye contact. “Um, we decided we would forge a letter from him.”
“Like your dad did when he killed your mom.”
It was poetic, really. A final and fitting fuck you to the man who had gotten away with murder for over twenty years. That, however, would likely have gotten them caught. They wouldn’t have needed to involve the police if it appeared that Tobias had left on his own. If they somehow came under scrutiny, perhaps Jackson could have convinced Bruce Olsen to cover for them. But Josie couldn’t see Zane or Hollis backing off and accepting that story. Eventually, the house of cards Jackson and Cora had built would have come crashing down.
It was ironic that Cora’s death had made the crime nearly unsolvable.
Josie said, “But then everything went wrong.”
