“Dani’s still married,” Josie blurted out before she could stop herself.
Griffin managed a wan but patronizing smile. “You work with her husband, don’t you? Has he said they’re happy together? Dani was very unhappy when we met. Her husband was absent, neglectful—no offense to your colleague—and she planned to divorce him. The news has been calling her Dani Schwarber, not Turner. I believe that was her maiden name. It sounds to me like things haven’t changed between them.”
It was the first mention of the fact that Dani and Cassidy had been abducted, indirect though it was. She knew that should be her focus, but it was difficult to concentrate when all she wanted to do was punch Mr. Lovelorn Homewrecker directly in the face, which was weird because she had no allegiance to Turner. Even Turner had admitted that his marriage had been a disaster for a long time. Maybe Griffin’s words bothered her because she knew now that the damage caused to Dani and Turner’s marriage was based on a lie.
Noah took over. “When did you and Dani start seeing one another?”
It was something they’d want to get in his initial statement, but on a personal note, Josie wanted to know to satisfy her own curiosity. Had Dani been having an affair before Turner helped Zara, or had she started one because she believed Turner had been unfaithful? Either way, the answer would wound Turner deeply and she found that she didn’t like the thought of that at all.
“I met Dani about four years ago, but we didn’t become more to one another until several months later.”
One year before Dani accused Turner of cheating on her, turning their marriage into a war zone. Josie’s stomach churned. She wasn’t even sure why it mattered. Why it somehow made things worse that Dani had been unfaithful long before Zara wasa factor. Josie wondered if Turner would find it easier to swallow if he thought his wife cheated as some kind of reaction to her misguided notion that he had done so first. For some reason, she thought he would.
“Did you and Dani break up before she came to Denton?” asked Noah.
“Well, we were on and off. Things would be amazing but then she would become distant for a while. I should have seen it coming, I guess.” He gazed down at his hands. “We did break up before she moved here. Not my choice. She said she wanted to focus on her daughter, at least until she graduated high school. It’s always the same. They promise you the world, act like they feel about you the way you feel about them and then, suddenly, they need to focus on something else or someone else. If she was worried about her daughter, I could have helped her.”
“Cassidy already has a father,” Josie pointed out. “Don’t you think it was fair of Dani to want to make her marriage work?”
For the first time, the features of his face hardened, giving them a flash of something darker, something angry. “Her marriage had already failed. She didn’t even realize it. They don’t even live with one another anymore.”
Josie’s heartbeat skittered. “You’ve been to her house here in Denton?”
“Well, um, no. I don’t know where she lives. I ran into her at the café near her new office building a few months after I moved. We chatted and she told me she and her husband were separated, but I had already met Maxine.”
Josie highly doubted that they’d “chatted” or that Dani would have offered up the fact that she and Turner were separated, but she already knew that Griffin’s reality tended to be skewed.
“Besides running into Dani in the café here in Denton, did you keep in touch with her after she broke things off?”
“No.”
“Did you send her yellow chrysanthemums before she moved to Denton, after she ended things?” Josie said.
His mouth dropped open. Josie counted the seconds before he recovered and closed it again. After a long swallow, he answered, “I, um, might have done so. I was angry with her. We’d been broken up—again—for a couple of months when she called to tell me she was moving. It was so final. I may have overreacted.”
“The yellow mums were a message,” Josie said.
“Um, yeah.”
“What was the message?” asked Noah.
With a sigh, Griffin lifted his head to the ceiling, eyes tightly closed. “Oh, they mean a lot of different things, some very contradictory. These days they symbolize happiness, good fortune, well wishes, joy…the list goes on. Had she looked them up on the internet, that’s what she would have seen, but she knew how I grew up. I’d told her how my dad used to leave my mom messages with flowers. He preferred the Victorian language of flowers over all other sources that ascribed meaning to flowers.”
“Did she contact you when she received them?” asked Josie. “Did she ask about the meaning?”
“She messaged me to say never to contact her again. She didn’t bother asking about the meaning. I’d sent enough to raise her husband’s suspicion if he saw them all, so I’d made it clear I wasn’t conveying happy feelings.” On a heavy sigh, he opened his eyes and looked at them again. “In Victorian times, they represented slighted love.”
Before she could continue questioning him about Dani and Cassidy, there was a knock on the door. The Chief poked his head inside and the look on his face set Josie’s insides on fire. It was a miracle she didn’t knock over her chair in her haste tostand up. She didn’t spare Griffin another glance but heard Noah politely excusing them.
Once the door clicked shut behind them, the Chief said, “We got into his phone. GPS puts him not only at the festival the night the Barnes women were killed but also very close to Dani’s house the night she and Cassidy were abducted. The time frame matches. After he left there, he drove back to his house.”
Adrenaline shot through her so fast, her head spun. “That’s it,” she breathed. “We’ve got enough for a warrant to search his house.”
The Chief nodded. “Palmer’s getting it signed by the judge right now.”
FORTY-FIVE
Josie couldn’t remember ever serving a search warrant and having the combination of dread and anticipation that now caused nausea to roll slowly back and forth across her stomach. They’d managed to secure the search warrant for Griffin Holt’s home in record time even though it had felt like an eternity. Now she stood in the driveway of his million-dollar home, and the sickness in her gut roiled in time with the little voice in the back of her mind that wondered:What will we find? What will we find?
