Jake forced a smile onto his face.

She looked back to me. “But Harvey was mad. And his voice was louder than normal, but I still couldn't tell what he was saying. Harvey turned to leave and Wayne grabbed his arm. Harvey turned around. Wayne said, 'Just name your price.' Harvey then shook his arm free and stomped away.” She clucked like an old hen. “I don't think I've ever seen him angrier.”

I was trying to take Copper's words with a grain of salt. She clearly enjoyed reporting on all the resort drama and I couldn't help but wonder if she didn't embellish the stories to make them more exciting. Still, even if the gist of what she was saying was true, it was very interesting.

“Why would Hackerman have been offering Harvey money?” Jake asked.

I wanted to ask him why he cared, since he'd made it perfectly clear he was not interested in solving any of the campground mysteries. But I kept my mouth shut.

Copper's gnarled fingers wrapped around the steering wheel to her golf cart. “I have no idea. But that is certainly what seemed to be going on.” She smiled at both of us. “Anyway, I've held you up long enough. Enjoy your...cooling off.”

She stepped on the gas, sped around us and disappeared down the hill.

“She seems a bit...odd,” Jake said as we watched her go.

“You think?”

“I do.”

“Me, too.” I squeezed his hand. “You think she's right? I mean, about what she saw?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. It sounds like Hackerman. But who knows if she's getting it all right or all wrong? I think she just likes being in the middle of it all.”

“Me, too.” I hesitated for a moment. “Maybe there's something there, though. Maybe we should let the sheriff know. It seems like an important piece of information to share.”

“You are not on the police force, Daisy,” Jake reminded me. “It's his job to investigate. Not yours.”

“I know, but now I think he thinks Delilah—”

“Delilah's a big girl,” he told me. “She can take care of herself. If she didn't have anything to do with his death, she'll be able to prove that.”

“She's just so down,” I said. “With Harvey's death and the whole financial situation. I think it might ruin her if the sheriff really thinks she was involved with whatever happened to Harvey.”

He stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Maybe she was, Daisy.”

“What?” I shook my head vehemently. “No. There's no way she would have done something to him. He was like a son to her. She loved him.”

“Love can make people do strange things.”

“She didn't kill him,” I said firmly.

He chewed on his lower lip. “Remember what the sheriff said?”

I waited.

“Everyone's a suspect, Daisy.” Jake's eyes were hard. “Everyone.”

TWENTY ONE

Despite our heated conversation on the way home—or maybe because of it—Jake did get lucky when we got back to the cabin.

Twice.

Then we had dinner, sat out on the deck with a couple of beers, built a campfire in the small fire ring in the lawn and talked about everything but the campground and dead Harvey and just who might be suspects. Which meant we talked about kids and Jake's work and the house.

The sun streamed through the window the next morning and we were both slow to get out of bed. Jake was in the shower when my phone buzzed and I saw Will's name on the screen. My heart immediately jumped into my throat as I imagined all of the possible scenarios of Very Bad Things that might force my thirteen-year old to call me.

I tapped the screen. “Hi, Will.”

“Mom.” Will's voice was slightly agitated but nowhere near panicked hysteria. My heart calmed down a bit.

“What's up?”

“Okay, it's nothing too bad,” he began.

A new surge of alarm pulsed through me. “What?”

“Okay, so I was mowing the lawn this morning,” he explained, his voice coming out in a rush. “Just like I always do. Grandpa helped me get it started.”

“Okay,” I said. “Are you hurt? Did you run something over?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

I waited.

“Well, so Grandpa was looking at the hedges and he thought he should trim them for you guys. Like a surprise or something.”

I leaned back against the pillows. “Okay...”

“So I helped him get it all set up with the extension cord,” Will said. “And he started trimming and everything was fine.”

“Is your grandpa alright?”

“Yeah, he's fine,” Will said impatiently. “But, well, he sorta accidentally cut through the extension cord while he was trimming...”

“What??”

“He's fine. The trimmer is fine. But the cord...is not.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief. “Okay. Well, good. I mean, not about the cord but good that no one is hurt.”

“Right. But that's not why I'm calling.” He hesitated. “Grandpa wants to go buy a new extension cord so he can finish trimming the hedges. But I told him I want to put it back together. The cable stuff. It's a pretty clean cut and I think I can twist it and tape it all back up.”

Will was always tinkering with computers, installing more memory and modifying other hardware. But his extent of knowledge in the electrical department was pretty much limited to plugging cords into outlets.

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.

“What? Why not??”

“Because I'd like to come home to four kids, not three.”

“You're saying you don't trust me? You don't think I know what I'm doing?”

“You don't, Will. It's electricity. Do you remember the field trip we went on? To the electric co-op?”

He didn't say anything for a minute and I knew what he was thinking about. There had been a model house on display with all kinds of electrical hazards highlighted inside. A balding man with a monotone voice explained all of the dangers lurking inside of homes and we were all ready to move into a tent afterward, we were so thoroughly freaked out. We'd told Jake about our harrowing field trip and he'd laughed and promptly turned on every electrical switch in the house.

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “But can I keep it? Just look at it and stuff? I promise I won't plug it in to anything.”

I appreciated his inquisitive mind. I liked that he wanted to know how things worked, that he wanted to take things apart and see them from all angles.

I just didn't want him to die.

“Fine,” I said, sighing. “But if you plug it in, you lose computer privileges for a month.”

“Awesome! Thanks, Mom!”

He hung up and I set the phone down just as Jake stepped out of the tiny bathroom

“Do I even want to know?” he asked. “I heard you say it was Will, so I assume the house burnt down or something.”

“Not that bad,” I said. I told him about the cord and the hedges.

He stretched out on the bed, his towel wrapped loosely around his waist. “Thank God he didn't electrocute himself.”

“I know,” I said. “He could have just decided to test it without calling me first.”

Jake eyed me. “Not our son, Daisy. Your dad.”

“Oh.” I hadn't really thought about that.

Ten minutes later, Jake was dressed and ready. “What's on the agenda today?” he asked, running the comb through his hair.

“I don't know.” I really didn't. He'd let me know where I stood with sleuthing so I knew that was off the table. We could have headed back down to the pool but my nose was pink and Jake's shoulders were red; we both probably needed a day off from laying around in the sun.

“Let's go for a walk and think about it,” Jake suggested. “Get some fresh air.”

I slipped into my flip flops and followed him out the sliding door. The morning air was cool and the birds were singing a symphony in the canopy of trees near the deck. Smoke still clung to the air from the campfires the previous night, but everything felt clean, crisp. Kids were out on their bikes and for a moment, I wished we had brought our four rather than stashing them with my parents. But then I realized I couldn't remember the last time Jake and I had been away together and I knew we needed the next couple of days to ourselves because I wasn't sure we'd get another block of time like this.