Wrong

                                    

                                          
"That is not good," Jake commented unnecessarily. I leaned against his shoulder so he didn't see me smiling at his observation.
"Hold on, I'm going to put you guys on speaker, too, so that Dan can talk as well. Right. Iris remembered me, and at first, she was very calm and pleasant while she invited us inside. When I told her I was there to speak to her about her daughter again, she was confused and wanted to know if I had heard that Jennifer's quote 'murderers had been caught,' unquote. I explained to her that we heard two people confess to being involved, but it, sounded like an accident not murder. She told me she was certain that they were lying and there was more to the story."
"Did she offer any sort of proof?" Jake queried.
"No, she didn't. And I asked her, but she said something like 'God will reveal all in time.'"
"Oh, please," I snapped. "God can't reveal anything because there's no truth to it. Neither Hannah nor Richy murdered Jennifer." Jake kissed my cheek, trying to calm me. I had a particular pet peeve with people using religion as a veil for their ignorance.
"Yeah, I know," Jessy soothed. "I tried a couple of different ways to get her to tell me more, but that well had run dry. At that point, I switched tactics and asked her if she knew Phil."
"And that went over like a lead balloon," Dan volunteered. "That woman's eyes looked like they would pop out of her head with fear."
Jake and I looked at each other; this was getting interesting.
"Dan," Jessy chided. "I asked her if she knew that Phil and Michael had kept in touch all these years, and she started getting evasive. She said no but I don't think I believed her. Then I told her that losing Michael must have been very hard on her, and that she had my sympathy. She looked nervous and wanted to know why I was saying all these other things if I only came to talk about Jennifer."
"Here's where the bomb gets dropped," Dan narrated. I looked at Jake and shook my head.
"I explained to her that Phil is my brother, and she was irate. She called me a deceiver and screamed that I was doing the devil's work. That since Phil was Satan's child, that I must be also. Then she started throwing things at us while repeating Bible verses and then tried to splash us with some water--"
"--she was trying to exorcise us," Dan howled at the memory. Jake actually grinned and chuckled in front of my disbelieving eyes. He had said, what seemed like ages ago, that I was the only one who could make him laugh. I had treasured that remark from him; it had made me feel special, and as if our relationship was special. It was a happy sacrifice for it to not be true any longer.
"--and that was the end of our talk," Jessy finished, giggling.
I smiled and looked at Jake. "Does this information help us at all?"
"Her irrational behavior does not exclude her as a suspect. Despite his delusions, Phil was perfectly capable of committing many crimes."
"True. Well, if Jessy was reading her right, It sounds like one thing we now know is that Iris and Michael were still in contact up until his death," I concluded.
Jake nodded. "Quite likely. It is also possible that Michael and Phil included Iris in some of their plans, and she intends to carry on with them."
"But would she really go along with something that Phil cooked up? She seemed to both hate him and be afraid of him," Jessy wondered.
"Perhaps she was not aware that Phil and Michael created a plan together. Or she was just acting and really has no problem with Phil whatsoever."
"Jessy, Dan, thank you for doing this," I told them. "I think this was valuable information, and  we're going to see later how this fits into the bigger puzzle."