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Mettner said, “Not Mathias?”
Cyrus shook his head. “Nope. Not Mathias. Only Vance.”
Anya said, “But Vance would have been only five years old when Susanna was killed. Maybe six.”
Josie felt the puzzle pieces slot into place, a fuller picture of the sequence of events revealing itself. “Vance didn’t do anything to his mother,” she said. “He found this stuff. Then he put it into this box, and he brought it to Garrick.”
“What are you talking about?” said Anya.
“When we talked with Carolina Eddy, she told us that Vance was a mess after his dad’s stroke. She said that he kept saying he thought he knew who Dermot was but that he had found things out that changed his mind.”
Mettner pointed toward Cyrus’s phone screen. “He found out that Dermot killed his mother?”
“I think so,” Josie said.
“But how?” asked Anya.
“I don’t know,” Josie said. “Maybe there was something in the house? Among Dermot’s things?”
“This stuff,” said Cyrus. “He found these things.”
Mettner said, “Even with the hearing aid, I’m not sure he’d make the connection to his mother. Besides, that stuff looks like it was buried for the last few decades.”
“It was,” Josie said. “When we searched the farm, Lark complained to us that since Dermot’s stroke, Vance was consumed with digging along the north end of the property. He’d told her he wanted to put in a pond. She said he’d been using the bobcat to dig.”
Cyrus placed his phone on the table and ran a hand through his hair. “He wasn’t digging a pond. He was looking for his mother’s remains.”
Anya touched the screen before it could go black. She swiped until she found a photo of the skull plate. “He found them,” she murmured. “Some of them, at least.”
Josie said, “He’s probably been looking for more. That’s why he’s digging all the time instead of working on the farm. Dermot’s not in any condition to stop him now.”
Mettner said, “He put them into his tackle box and went to see Garrick. Why Garrick?”
Anya sighed. “Garrick was like an uncle to him. Vance and Lark were always very isolated on that farm, especially once they were no longer going to school every day, but Garrick was around a lot when they were kids. He was always someone they trusted. Remember, Dermot was the one who talked Garrick into giving me the job in the ME’s office. After I left Vance, even though Garrick and Marie had helped me get away from him, he still listened when Garrick asked him to leave me alone.”
“He didn’t listen,” Josie said. “He obeyed. Dermot raised him to obey the father figure. With Dermot’s health compromised, the next available father figure was Garrick. Vance went to him for guidance.”
“And Garrick told him to exonerate Mathias, first thing.”
Anya said, “I wonder if Garrick told Vance that Mathias is his half-brother.”
Josie said, “I think Vance already knew—or suspected. Jana Melburn wanted to meet with him not about her own biological family but about Mathias’s birth parents. Remember, Mathias told her she was ‘wrong’ and ‘insane’ and he said something like he didn’t know who was filling her head—probably with this idea that he was related to the Hadlees. It’s why he called her meddling.”
Cyrus said, “When she said ‘could be yours’, maybe she meant the farm?”
Anya said, “Dermot would never let him stake any claim on that farm. He would fight him every step of the way, and he’d probably win.”
Josie shook her head. “Lark Hadlee told me that she and Vance have a trust fund that was set up by her mother’s family so that regardless of the income from the farm, Susanna’s children would be provided for. It wasn’t contingent on Dermot at all. Only on Susanna. If Mathias is one of Susanna’s children, that trust is his, too.”
“Jana Melburn wouldn’t have known that,” said Mettner.
“No,” Josie agreed. “Probably not. Unless she overheard it being talked about at the doctor’s office. We’ll never know. Regardless, she would have thought he had a claim to the farm.”
Cyrus’s brow furrowed. “But this doesn’t make any sense. After Jana was found dead, Mathias never said a word to anyone about any of this. If he had, we would have gone right to the Hadlee farm and talked with Vance. What possible reason could Mathias have had for keeping something like this to himself?”
Josie frowned. She thought of Hallie Kent holding a place in her own home for Mathias year after year because once upon a time they’d been a family. She thought about all the photos of Mathias with Jana. “You’re right. If Mathias knew or even suspected that Jana was going to meet Vance, I can’t see him covering that up or keeping it a secret. He would definitely mention it to the police. He went out looking for Jana after she left the gas station. If he’d known or suspected that Vance Hadlee was the person she was meeting, he would have gone right to the farm, but he didn’t.”
Cyrus said, “In the video he does demand to know who she is going to see and it seems like she doesn’t tell him. He uses the words ‘scam’ and ‘suspicious.’ I don’t think he knew anything about the Hadlees. Not then.”
