“It should still be in an envelope in my car.”
“Well, it’s not, Jana. I’ve looked at all the inventories. Of your house. Your car. Everything. There was no cash found in your vehicle.”
“Then it was stolen, like I said before. I bet one of the sheriff’s deputies took it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He took a seat across from her. “What did you do with it?”
“I told you, I left it in my car.”
“Is it possible that Waylon Pike could have gotten the cash from your car? Is it possible that he thought you’d left it there for him to keep if he killed Braxton?”
She shook her head but said nothing.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever tell Waylon Pike you wanted him to kill Braxton?”
She blinked but didn’t answer.
“Jana?”
“I mean, I may have kidded with him some.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, but all wives do that. Braxton was screwing around on me. I was lonely. Waylon was at the house a lot. I might have had a couple glasses of wine and said something like ‘I wish you’d kill Braxton’ or something like that.”
“So his statement’s true?”
“No, it’s not.”
“The part about you asking him to kill Braxton in the past.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled it out. “This part here. ‘On several occasions, Ms. Rich told me that she wanted me to kill her husband.’”
“I guess so, but he knew I was joking.”
“Did you ever put a number on it? Did you ever tell him you’d pay him $15,000 to kill Braxton?”
Her eyes fluttered up at the ceiling. “I may have asked him how much killing Braxton was worth, and he may have mentioned a number like that.”
“Good lord. You did it, didn’t you? You paid that sonofabitch to kill Braxton.”
“No, I did not. I’ve been framed. I definitely joked with Waylon about it, but I would have never gone through with something so horrible. I got to where I hated Braxton, but I would never have taken my girls’ father away from them.”
“Did you tell Waylon anything on July 3 and 4 that might have made him believe you were serious about wanting him to kill Braxton?”
“Not that I can recall,” she said.
“That’s not good enough, Jana.”
“No,” she said.
“Is it possible that Waylon Pike found that money in your car and felt like you were making the payoff for him to kill Braxton?”
“No,” Jana said, and Jason was relieved that she hadn’t hesitated. “I think Waylon must have told someone else about my jokes, and he and that person set me up to take the fall. Someone who had as much or more reason to want Braxton dead than me.”
“Who could that be? I’ve investigated Trey Cowan and his family, and they don’t have the money.”
“What about the bitch Braxton was screwing?”
“Colleen Maples,” Jason said. “She could have paid Pike, but have you ever known the two of them to be around each other?”
“No.”
“And hadn’t Colleen and Braxton been old news for a while? What would prompt Colleen to have wanted him dead so long after their breakup?”
“Didn’t you say she sent him a text a couple hours before he was killed?” Jana asked. “Wasn’t that the last text he received?”
Jason had gone over the state’s investigator’s report with Jana, and he was impressed with her recall. “Yes and yes.”
“She clearly wasn’t over him.”
“But Braxton was about to divorce you. He’d met with an attorney. He’d told you about his plan in front of the girls. Wouldn’t that have allowed Colleen to get back in the picture?”
“Based on her text, it doesn’t sound like he’d told Colleen anything about the divorce.”
Jason peered down at the table. On this point, Jana was right.
“Besides, there’s no way he’d have gone through with it.”
Jason frowned at her. “Jana, come on. He had an attorney. He told you he was going to file, and he said so in front of Niecy and Nola. Isn’t it delusional on your part to think he wasn’t going to follow through with it?”
“OK, this meeting is over.” She got up and walked toward the door, then hit it three times.
“Jana, are you telling me everything about what you did with the money?”