by L A Dobbs
Sam came around to the front of his desk, leaning his backside on it and looking down at the campers in their seats.
"Did you find out who killed Lynn?" Derek looked around at his friends and back up at Sam. "I mean, that’s why you called us here, right?"
"That’s right," Sam said. "Some new evidence has come to light, and I think I know exactly what happened the night Lynn died."
Sam walked back behind his desk, where they had taped up all the pictures from the investigation on a giant corkboard. There were pictures of the pile of Lynn’s clothes they had found in the woods, pictures of the contents of her duffel bag and what they’d found in her tent, and even pictures of her body as they’d found it in the river, which Sam noticed the girls studiously avoided looking at.
Sam pointed to the picture of the pile of clothing. "Lynn was wearing these clothes the night she died. But, for some reason, she took them off. To go swimming in the middle of the night? We didn’t think so." He turned to face the campers. "Our theory was that she was meeting a lover. Something went wrong, and he killed her, then dragged her body down into the river and sent it downstream, hoping it would look like an accident."
"I knew it! It was that guy from the bar," Amber said.
Sam shook his head and pointed to a picture of a receipt. "No. That guy had an alibi. He was pumping gas at almost the exact time that Lynn was killed. There was no way he could’ve killed her, dragged her body to the river, and then run back to his car and driven to the gas station."
Their eyes flicked from the receipt to Sam’s face. Julie spoke up. "Well, then it must’ve been someone else at the campground."
Sam stared at her. "Really? Was there someone else there? I talked to each of you, and no one mentioned anyone else with Lynn."
They shifted in their seats and looked at each other uneasily. "There were some other campers that we talked to a little, but I don’t remember anyone else with her," Josh said.
"Me either," Derek added.
"But wait a minute. If it wasn’t anyone else, that means it was one of us." Julie’s eyes shifted around the group nervously.
"Precisely," Sam said. "Now, imagine our surprise when we discovered that Lynn had something in her will set up so that Noah would get her shares in the company. A fact that Noah conveniently forgot to tell us."
All heads turned toward Noah. His cheeks flushed crimson. "Of course she had that in her will. We agreed on that from the start. It wasn’t a secret. I just didn’t think it was important. That’s why I never mentioned it. I didn’t even think about it, actually."
"Well, it meant that you would gain from her death," Sam said. "And since she was trying to get financing for the company, maybe you either didn’t want the financing or maybe, if she didn’t tell you about it as you claim, she was going behind your back to gain a broader control of the company. You’d broken up, so why would she want to share control with you? Maybe she wanted it all for herself."
The room was silent.
"That’s why I was so confused when someone saw you and Lynn in a compromising position the day she died," Sam continued.
Amber made a squeaking noise and shot a look at Noah.
"I told you, I wasn’t with Lynn. I was in the bar!" Noah started to get out of his chair, but a warning look from Kevin had him sitting back down quickly.
"Too bad no one can corroborate that. Derek and Josh had their eyes on the pool game. They can’t say for sure that you really were in the bar." Sam walked the length of the whiteboard, looking at the pictures slowly. Then he turned to face them again. "And Derek saw someone by your tent at almost the same time Lynn was killed."
Everyone was quietly staring at Noah.
"In fact, we know Lynn was planning on meeting someone because she borrowed a fancy bra from Tara." Sam pointed to the red bra in the pile of clothes they’d found in the woods. "And when I took the statements from you and Amber, I had a sneaky suspicion that each of you was lying about being in that tent."
Amber turned on Noah. "You snuck out to meet her? How could you?"
Sam raised a brow at Noah. "So you weren’t in the tent? Where were you? Did you sneak down to the beach with Lynn and kill her so that you could get control of the company?"
Noah shook his head frantically. "No! I wasn’t with Lynn. I swear!" His eyes drifted over to Julie.
"That’s right. He wasn’t," Julie said softly. "He was in my tent with me. He couldn’t have killed Lynn."
The others gasped, but Sam wasn’t surprised. He stood in front of Julie, arms crossed over his chest. "And you’re willing to swear to this? Why didn’t you tell me before?"
"Yes. Of course." Julie looked at the others apologetically. "We didn’t want anyone to know. Things just sort of happened, and Noah wanted to let Amber down gently. We didn’t want to tell anyone yet because things were so awkward after Noah and Lynn broke up."
Sam looked at Amber. "That’s why you faltered when we asked if you and Noah were both in the tent for the rest of the night, isn’t it? You knew Noah wasn’t in the tent."
Amber looked down at the floor. "Yes. I didn’t know where he was, and I didn’t want to think that he could kill Lynn. But I wasn’t gonna be the one to get him in trouble." She sniffed then scooted her chair away from Noah and fixed him with an angry glare. "Now I wish I did tell you."
Sam nodded slowly then turned to Derek. "And you saw someone at the tent, but you didn’t know what time it was. It could’ve been Noah sneaking off to Julie’s tent or slinking back to his own, couldn’t it?"
Derek shrugged. "I’m sorry. I just wasn’t looking at my watch or anything, so I have no idea. I was sneaking around myself."
"Then it could have been Amber, right?" Sam asked.
"Hey, now wait a minute!" Amber shot out of her chair. "I might have lied about Noah being in the tent, but I was in there the whole time. Why would I kill Lynn?"
"Jealousy?" Sam said then held his palm up. "Don’t worry. Now that we know Noah was meeting with Julie, we know it’s unlikely that you were the killer. If you’d left the tent to follow him, you would have seen him with Julie, and then you’d have no reason to kill Lynn." Sam made a motion for Amber to sit back down.
"Right." Amber sat.
Sam walked back over to the whiteboard. "Seems like there was a lot of sneaking around and lying going on with you people."
They shifted restlessly in their chairs.
"The day you all went into town, Julie said Lynn went to the antiques store."
"She did." Julie seemed mad.
"She collected antiques. Marbles," Noah said.
"But she didn’t go there. She went to see Richard Bannister about financing," Sam said.
"So this Richard Bannister guy was the lover she met that night on the beach where you found her clothes?" Josh asked.
"There was no lover. We think she was fully clothed and the killer took her clothes off after they killed her." Sam pointed to the picture of Lynn’s pants that clearly showed the tear in the fabric. "That’s how her pants got ripped. It’s not easy to get clothes off a dead body. The pants must have gotten ripped in the struggle. But the killer needed to get the clothes off and pile them up to make us think she met a lover. They even left a little extra piece of clothing there to seal the deal… or because they had to."
Josh made a face. "They had to? What do you mean?"
Sam pointed to the picture of the bra he’d fished out of the river. "I found this downstream yesterday. It happens to be the same exact size and make of bra that we found in Lynn’s duffel bag."
Amber scrunched up her face. "So what? A lot of people wear the same make and size of bra."
Sam crossed his arms over his chest. "Sure, but this one had Lynn’s initials on it."
"But she was dragged into the river in her underwear. Her bra probably came off and floated downstream," Derek said.
"I’m sure it did." Sam turned back to the whiteboard and pointed again at the picture of the
pile of clothing. "But how many people wear two bras?"
"What?"
"See, we found a bra in the pile of clothing, too." Sam tapped the picture that showed the bra. "Derek’s right, though, the bra did come off when the killer was putting her in the river. It couldn’t have been easy to drag her in deep enough so she would float in the current. The bra must have come unhooked and floated away before the killer noticed. And that presented a problem for the killer."
"How so?" Josh asked. "I mean, the bra could have come off while she was meeting this supposed lover."
"True," Sam said. "Except the killer’s initial plan was to pretend that Lynn died by accident. It was a pretty good plan, too. Everyone knew that Lynn swam alone at night. She’d been drinking, so it was plausible that she could have gone for a swim, slipped and hit her head, then died in the river. If her death had been ruled an accident as the killer planned, there would have been no investigation, and the killer would have gotten off scot-free."
Sam paused, watching them as it sank in.
"The problem was that everyone knew that Lynn swam in just her underwear. So if she took her clothes off to go for a swim, that pile would have a bra in it. In fact, the absence of a bra would be suspicious. So the killer did something she probably thought was very clever. She put one of her own bras into the pile. Later on, when things didn’t go according to plan and the death was ruled as a murder, she even used that as part of her plan B—to make it look like Lynn was meeting a lover." Sam turned to Tara. "She even told us she’d loaned Lynn the bra herself."
Tara sucked in a breath. "I did. I wasn’t lying. Why would I want to kill Lynn?"
"Ahh... That is the question. I’ll get to that." Sam went back to the whiteboard. "Julie said she’d seen Lynn going to the antiques store the day you all went into town."
"She told me that’s where she was going," Julie said. "When I saw her head in that direction, I just assumed…"
"Right. But she wasn’t going to the antiques store. I checked. Her real destination was at the end of the street. Because at the end of the street was an old friend of hers, Richard Bannister. He invests in small companies like yours."
"But why would she be secretive about that? Why not tell us?" Noah asked.
Sam had wondered about that himself. "That, I do not know. Maybe she was afraid the funding wouldn’t go through and she didn’t want to get people’s hopes up. But there was one person here who I think already knew the funding wouldn’t go through. Isn’t that right, Tara?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about." Tara looked at her friends imploringly. "He’s making this up. He’s just trying to pin this murder on me so that he can close the case."
Sam ignored her. "When Tara’s plan to make the death look like an accident didn’t work, she tried to blame Jesse. And when she found out he had an alibi, she tried to implicate Noah. She said in her statement that she saw Lynn and Noah kissing in the alley next to O’Malley’s."
Noah let out an exasperated sigh. "For the millionth time, I was not meeting Lynn."
"I know that." Sam pointed at the picture of another receipt. "She couldn’t have seen you meeting Lynn in the alley because she was three streets over, buying a purse."
"I saw them before that!" Tara was becoming irate, exactly as Sam had planned. People always said too much when they got pissed off.
"The timing doesn’t match," Sam said. "Lynn’s meeting with Bannister was from twelve until twelve forty-five. So she couldn’t have been meeting Noah then."
"It was after that." Tara spat the words out. Sam noticed everyone was leaning away from her.
"You couldn’t have seen them," Sam said. "According to Julie, you left the secondhand store around twelve forty and went to Fern’s. You were on foot, so it takes about five minutes. But Fern’s is two streets over. You can’t see the alley next to O’Malley’s from there. And Josh said you were meeting them. You rushed over from Fern’s, and everyone was already gathered on the sidewalk."
Noah narrowed his eyes at Tara. "Tara, is this true? Why would you do this?"
Tara’s eyes darted back and forth between all her friends. They all had strange looks on their faces, as if they were starting to see that what Sam was saying made sense. The clues were starting to sink in, and she wasn’t going to be able to wriggle her way out of this. He gave the final blow.
"Tara had a reason. When Lynn met with Richard, he told her he couldn’t give your company more financing because your expenses were too high for your income. But I think the truth was, if you look at the company books, you’ll see some of those expenses were overinflated." Sam tapped the receipt from Fern’s. "Tara had expensive tastes, like this three-hundred-dollar purse." He gestured to her outfit. "She’s wearing expensive camping gear, and I noticed her backpack on the first day, as it’s a very expensive model."
"I don’t have to listen to this!" Tara tried to get out of her chair, but Josh held her arm, his fingers making white marks in her flesh.
"I think you do. We all do." Josh’s voice was tinged with sadness.
"Naturally, after Lynn talked to Richard, she would have approached Tara. She’s the CFO. She would know about the finances."
"Tara never said anything about that." Noah looked at Josh. "Did she say anything to you?"
Josh shook his head sadly.
"Of course she didn’t," Sam said. "Tara couldn’t have an audit happening. She was embezzling from the company."
"Now, wait a minute," Noah said. "If Lynn knew about that, she would have told me."
"I don’t think Lynn knew. But if she wanted the financing, they would have to scrutinize expenses. So she must have mentioned that to Tara, and it must have been that night. It was probably the only time she had her alone after she talked to Richard. Maybe she still didn’t want to tell the rest of you until she was sure of what would happen with the financing."
Tara must have been out of excuses—she sat there silently.
Sam continued. "I’m not sure how it happened. I imagine Tara tried to talk her out of doing an audit, and Lynn insisted. Maybe Tara snuck up on her later that night in the woods, or maybe she lured her there. Or maybe Lynn didn’t mention the audit until that night when they were on the beach and it erupted into an argument. Tara hit her with a rock on the beach and killed her then pulled her clothes off to make it look like she had an accident while swimming. But her bra must have floated away, and her pants got snagged. Tara shoved her in the river, tossed the phone in after her, then folded up her clothes and added her own bra so no one would notice one article of clothing was missing. Isn’t that right, Tara?"
Tara dissolved into tears. "I didn’t mean any harm. I was just borrowing the money. I was gonna pay it back when we released the new game and were all rolling in the dough."
She looked up at her friends through her tears, begging them to believe her, but now they were all pushing their chairs back away from her. "I didn’t mean to kill her, but she accused me, and we argued, and then we started fighting. The next thing I knew, I had smashed her with a rock. I had to do something. So I pushed her into the water, hoping it would look like an accident. I threw the phone in too so no one would see if she had calls from that finance guy."
Josh buried his face in his hands. The others looked stunned.
"No. I don’t believe it." Noah looked at Tara in disgust. "And you tried to blame it on me?"
"Unfortunately, we have the evidence to prove it. And now a confession." Sam nodded to Kevin, and he went over to Tara, taking her elbow, gently lifting her from the chair. He read her her rights as he walked her out of the room.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kevin glanced in the rearview mirror at the redhead in the backseat of the police car. She’d cried for a while at first but was quiet now, looking out the window. Accepting her fate.
The White Rock police station was too small to keep anyone overnight. They only had one cell, and it was used rarely. Mostly for drunks to sleep it
off. But this girl would be locked up until she could go before a judge, and Sam had asked him to drive her to the county jail. Sam had never asked him to do that before—usually he relied on Jo or Tyler.
Sam had never asked him to sit in on an interrogation before, either. Pride warred with regret in Kevin’s chest. Did Sam trust him and want him to be part of the team?
Would Kevin’s little side job put that in jeopardy?
Watching Sam get the redhead to confess had been interesting. He admired the way Sam went about it. Forcing her hand into admitting she’d done it. Kevin could learn a lot from Sam, and it had felt good to be in on things for once instead of sitting on the sidelines.
And now he felt guilty because passing along that information he’d been paid to look for felt like spying on Sam and Jo. It felt like a betrayal.
The information wasn’t anything that would hurt Sam or Jo. It was just general stuff. Stuff that might help them, or at least that was what Kevin wanted to think. Especially if Sam and Jo weren’t doing anything wrong. And he was pretty sure they weren’t.
But if his contact was right and Sam and Jo and Tyler had been a part of something that wasn’t on the up and up, then he didn’t want to be an insider in their little club. It was his duty to expose that, right?
Something sharp unfurled in his chest, obliterating his earlier cozy feelings of inclusion. He wasn’t really sure who wanted that information. The large sum of money he’d been offered had been enough for him to accept with no questions asked. But he had to wonder if the sheriff’s department or state police would be paying him so much money. Did they even pay officers on the side like that? Heck, he hadn’t even really given them much information yet at all, and they still kept sending money.
The redhead’s sorrowful sniffle caught his attention, and he looked in the rearview mirror again. According to what he’d heard in Sam’s office, the girl had screwed over her friends. And now she looked miserable. She’d lost her friends and her freedom. Kevin just hoped what he’d done wouldn’t end with similar consequences.
