"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.