"Can you specifically say that you saw her alive when you went to bed?" Jo asked.

Amber looked down at the floor. "I think so. I did have a bit much to drink, and things are a little fuzzy. But I remember her with that guy."

"He has an alibi," Sam said.

Her face pinched together. "Oh. Well, I don’t know what more I can tell you."

"Do you happen to know where her phone is?" Jo asked.

Amber shook her head. "No. After you came this afternoon, we all looked all around the site, but none of us found it. It’s the weirdest thing. I know she had one."

"And besides her flirting with Noah at the bar, did you see them together any other time?"

Amber’s eyes narrowed. "What do you mean together? They weren’t together. I was with him the whole time."

"What time did you go to bed?" Sam asked.

She thought about it. "It must’ve been around two-thirty, because we left the bar at one, and we weren’t up much longer."

"And you went into the tent at the same time as Noah?"

"Yeah. Of course I did."

"And you were both in there the whole time after that?"

Her eyes flicked to the window. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Of course. I was with Noah all night, so he couldn’t have killed her, if that’s what you’re getting at."

"Is there anything else? Any idea who might have done this? Did you notice anything odd maybe the day before when you were in town or that night at the bar?" Sam asked.

Amber narrowed her eyes as she thought. "I don’t know if I would say this was necessarily odd, but Lynn acted kind of strange when we were planning the trip."

"How so?"

"We talked about different places to go camping, but she insisted we come here. And the day she died, we all went downtown for groceries. She suggested we split up and do some shopping. You know, check out the local shops and stuff. It was all kind of spur of the moment and casual." Amber leaned forward in the chair, her face animated, as if she was suddenly realizing what she was saying could be important. "But Lynn wasn’t acting very casual. She was acting like she had an appointment, and when Julie, Tara and I came out of the secondhand store, Lynn was nowhere to be found."

Chapter Nineteen

After Amber left, Sam and Jo took a break and headed for the coffee maker. Jo had finished her cup during the interview with Noah, and her brain was begging for the sharp tang of caffeine. It was also begging for a jelly donut, but there were none in the station.

Sam let her go first. She leaned her shoulder against the wall, her finger tapping on the mug as she watched him pop his orange K-Cup in and slide the dark-blue police-insignia mug underneath. Jo went back over the interviews in her brain while she waited for his cup to fill.

During the interviews, she’d studied both Noah and Amber for the little "tells" that would indicate they were lying. A twitch here, a furtive glance there. They both hadn’t been straight about something.

"I don’t think either one of them was being straight with us," Jo said.

Sam opened a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee. "And what was that bit about the meeting? Do you think Lynn really had a meeting, or was Amber lying about that?"

"Why would she make that up?"

"And why did Lynn insist they camp here? Do you think Amber made that up to try to throw off suspicion? To make us think she had a local connection to who killed her?"

"Maybe she did have a local connection. This is where her cell phone would help tremendously. I hope Kevin finds it."

"Reese’s got the paperwork to subpoena Verizon for her phone records, but that could take a while. At least Dupont won’t try to block that."

"The way he’s been hounding us, he’ll probably rush it through, but what they have on the servers might not include what we need. Not everything is stored. Having the phone would be best."

The door opened, and Kevin came in, heading straight for the coffee maker. "Thank God, coffee."

Jo noticed he was empty handed. "You didn’t find her cell phone?"

Kevin pressed his lips together and shook his head. "Afraid not. I looked all over that area and didn’t find a thing except dirt, leaves, and rocks."

"Hey, guys, I hate to interrupt, but a bunch of calls came in when you were taking those statements." Reese, who had just come in through the front door, picked up several pink slips of paper off her desk and waved them in the air.

"What have you got?" Sam asked.

She looked at the slips. "Stolen pickles at the general store—Arty’s holding the culprit for you. Joan Freemont called to complain about a fight between Nettie Deardorff and Rita Hoelscher." She looked up at them over the slips. "Said it was getting violent. And there’s been a disturbance reported over at the Rock Ledge campground."

Jo’s brows shot up, and she looked at Sam. "You think that has something to do with our case?"

Sam had already put the mug down and was heading for the door. "I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. The other calls are urgent too. Jo, you take the general store, and Kevin, you go see what’s up with Rita and Nettie. Everybody radio in when you’re done."

Kevin got into his Isuzu and headed out to Prospect Hill, where Joan Freemont lived. He wouldn’t mind having to drive his own car all the time if he didn’t always get stuck with all the crappy jobs. But that had always been the way.

Jo, Sam, and Tyler had always taken all the good calls, and Kevin had gotten the scraps. He was always the one that had to decorate the big tree in the green at Christmas, risking his life on the rickety ladder and going home full of pine pitch and needles. And he always got stuck with traffic duty on the Fourth of July. Not to mention how they always seemed to saddle him with picking up the drunk and disorderlies, who would puke all over him. At least they let him drive the Crown Vic with the screen between the front and back seats on those calls.

Of course, being the one to get the crappy calls did have a lot to do with him being the only part-timer, and by the time he came on shift, that was mostly what was left. Because the important stuff was usually the most urgent.

Still, it wasn’t just the calls. It was the way the three of them had treated him. Like he wasn’t a real part of the team. Maybe if they’d treated him like he belonged, then he wouldn’t have done what he had earlier that year.

Thoughts of what he had done sent a jolt of anxiety through him. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to think that Sam and Jo didn’t see him as their equal.

When Sam had offered him the full-time position this morning, he’d been surprised. He’d thought they didn’t want him, but now… well, it was too late. He’d already formed his alliances, and now that he had, he didn’t need that full-time pay. Maybe Sam and Jo should have started treating him better before Tyler died.

Thoughts of Tyler’s death brought on another jolt of anxiety. He sure hoped the few bits of information he’d passed along didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Tyler. But if it had, that was because Tyler had been up to something bad. And if Tyler had been breaking the law, then Kevin had done the right thing, hadn’t he?

Kevin wanted to believe he had, but doubts swirled in his mind like a flock of vultures. What if he’d acted too hastily? His father had always told him he was too quick to leap before he looked.