"But he didn't do anything."
"Actually, he did. He started stealing from the family company, siphoning money into dummy corporations with phony invoices. He was bankrupting the family but taking it all for himself. Then he got found out. Lori was at his house and accidentally knocked over a stack of papers. When she went to tidy them up, she looked through them and realized that Tom had been sending money into offshore accounts. She told Michelle about it, thinking that her sister would be on her side. Trusting was her mistake. Michelle and Tom had to get rid of Lori or be found out."
Physically shaking, Jenna had to sit down on a kitchen chair. "Oh my God, I still can't believe that they killed Lori. How does Brett come into this?"
"Tom sort of knew Brett from the history club. He got Brett a job at the same company Lori worked for. It wasn't difficult. He'd helped Lori get a job there too."
"He couldn't have known that Brett would become obsessed with Lori, though."
"He didn't. That was pure luck. Lori started to complain about Brett and that's when they figured out that they could use him. So he and Michelle played with Brett's reality. She pretended to be Lori, leading him on, but making it look like he was stalking her at the office. They planned to pin Lori's disappearance on him. You threw a spanner in the works on that by insisting it was my brother Cal."
She rubbed at her pounding temple. The same one Michelle had hit. Luckily, Jenna's sister was in terrible shape and she'd only give Jenna a concussion, not a lethal brain injury. She also liked to fool herself by thinking that maybe Michelle's heart wasn't really in it when she'd hit her. That maybe she'd only been doing it half-heartedly.
I am a fool.
"I owe your brother an apology."
"Trust me when I say that he owes many apologies to many people. He can wait."
Knox had put his family on something of a timeout. They were still his family but he had decided to keep them at arm's length. Even Randy. He wasn't happy about what his little brother had pulled at the birthday party. As for Ben Owens? Knox was officially done. His dad had already had drinking issues in the last few months. Nothing had changed.
"It doesn't make any sense. Michelle and Tom wanted me to hire a private investigator."
"Yes, because they wanted to gently prod the investigation toward Brett Hedgcock. Michelle even continued to pretend she was Lori, visiting him and leaving Lori's things at his house. The poor bastard never had a chance."
Brett was currently receiving outpatient treatment and supposedly making good progress.
"That's so cruel, playing with his mind like that. He wasn't crazy at all. He really was seeing Lori and talking to her."
"I don't think Tom really gave a shit. Just like Detective Mike Bauer. Your brother got lucky there, as well, with a detective that hated his job and didn't want to do it. Tom thought he'd won the lottery and that the investigation would stay closed. If it didn't, and you kept pushing it, he would put Brett up as his star suspect."
"But just because they got rid of Lori didn't mean they were in the clear. There was still me."
"My boss Logan says that criminals are rarely brain trusts and I think he's right. Your brother was pretty smart, actually. He played the long game and he came close to winning it. His mistake was staying in the history club with Brett."
"And hiring you," Jenna said. "Any other investigator would have just gone with Brett and been done with it."
"I'd like to think that most others would have done what I did. Of course, the big break came when Michelle made her mistake and hit you in full view of your mother's security camera. She should have known better."
"I think she was scared."
"She should be."
"So was she the one that sent me the threatening texts from Lori's phone? And what about the garage fire?"
"She did send the texts. She was visiting Brett again as Lori and sent them. As for the fire, Tom set that, hoping that it would scare me off. He also sent Michelle to Lori's townhouse to make it look like a break-in. Apparently, there were more copies of that key than you thought. Tom liked the status quo of the cops thinking that Lori ran off on a vacation but he realized when I came onto the scene that he wasn't going to be able to hold onto that. Also, Michelle never went to Miami. She stayed in the area but out of sight, gaslighting Brett."
It was a lot to take in and digest.
"They were eventually going to kill me? And then the inheritance would be split between them?"
"And make it look like an accident. Tom had suggested cutting your brake lines or putting poison in your food. They were going to wait, though. Probably next year. Michelle had suggested making it look like a suicide, and that you were bereft from Lori's passing."
Finally, the last question to be answered.
"Where...is Lori?"
Clearing his throat, Knox's own eyes were glittering with tears. "Tom buried her on the property
