Kim shook her head. “Something else I didn’t know about, Beth. You should have asked.”

“You would have said no,” Beth said.

Kim didn’t answer. Her daughter was right.

“Pretty,” Annie said. The silk folds of the kimono swirled as Beth turned the hanger.

“It was a gift from my father when he went to Japan,” Kim said.

Annie took the hanger and spun the garment around. “I see some loops here for a belt. Do you have that?”

Beth glanced at her mother, and then turned to face Annie. “No,” she said. “I used a couple of neckties from my dad’s closet.”

“You what?” Kim asked, trying to keep her cool. While Beth’s mom could conjure a poker face when needed, this was not one of those times. She was mad.

Beth knew what was coming, but she didn’t feel like backing down. Her mom treated the remnants of her sister’s and father’s lives like they were precious artifacts. She didn’t see it that way. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t use Christina’s Holiday Barbie for an art project or why her mother hung onto her dad’s clothes as if he were going to come back one day and wear them.

“It isn’t like Dad needs them,” she said. “They were skinny ties anyway. In style for about five minutes then back out again. Besides, I put them back.”

“Can you get those for me, too?” Annie asked.

Beth left the living room and returned with two silk ties. Her eyes were downcast, and her hands were shaking a little. She stood there, not saying anything.

“What is it? What happened?” Kim asked, rejecting the urge to add “now” to punctuate the litany of disappointments hurled at her daughter since Annie’s arrival.

“I can’t find the third one,” Beth admitted. “I used three.”

“What color was the third one?” Annie asked.

“Pomegranate,” Beth said.

Annie looked a little confused. “Pomegranate?”

“Deep red.” Beth reached over and pressed a fingertip to a frilly chrysanthemum painted on the bottom of the right sleeve. “This color right here.”

Annie’s eyes swept across the hem of the kimono’s sleeve. She felt sick to her stomach, and it had nothing to do with her all-protein diet. A speck of dark red pigmentation, a different shade from the chrysan-themum, stood out against the garment’s silk pattern. Port Gamble’s police chief recognized the color and shape: blood spatter.

Oh no, Beth, not you.

Trying to maintain her composure, Annie kept an even tone to her questioning. “I see. Can I borrow all of these? I promise to return them, but it might take a while.”

Kim Lee’s anger dissipated. Something bigger was afoot, and she knew it. “Why do you want them?” she asked.

“We need to examine all the evidence,” Annie said.

“What kind of evidence?” Kim stopped and waited, but Annie didn’t answer right away. “Is Beth some kind of a suspect?”

Annie, who’d known Kim through the worst possible times—the bus accident that killed Christina and her husband’s suicide—looked down at the floor. It was a moment of awkwardness that sucked the air out of the room.

“I can’t really say,” she said.

Beth wondered if she was in trouble. If so, it had to be big trouble. The police chief didn’t come around collecting evidence because she had nothing better to do.

Beth stood up. “You didn’t answer my mother. Am I a suspect here or something?” she asked with both force and fear in her voice. “I admit that I drank. I admit that I had a fight. But that’s it.”

Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Annie took the garment off the hanger, carefully folded it, and slipped it into a large, clear bag that she retrieved from her eco-friendly canvas tote. “Just procedure,” she said, her eyes fastened on Beth’s worried stare with a look she hoped conveyed reassurance.

“I wasn’t even there when Olivia died,” Beth said. “I got sick, and we left the party early. Hayley, Taylor, Colton, and me. She was alive when we left. She was having a blowout with Bree.”

“Just procedure,” Annie repeated.

Annie tried to diffuse the drama by asking Kim how things were going at the mill.

“I hope you’re not one of the layoffs I heard about,” she said.

Kim, her worried expression undiminished by the casual tone of the conversation, stood and strode decisively toward the door. Turning her hand on the knob, she said, “No. Not me. At least, not yet. But housing starts are down, and if things don’t get better, they won’t need an accountant.”

Annie took the hint and said a hasty good-bye. Kim managed a smile and shut the door after her.

Three rooms away, two worried twins waited for their friend. The walls were thin in Port Gamble’s historic homes. As a breeze blew the Doritos bag into the neighboring yard and darkness shuttered the sky over the bay, Hayley and Taylor heard every word.

What had Beth Lee done?

Chapter 8

LIKE ALL VICTORIA’S SECRET STORES in the world, the one at the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale, a few miles south of Port Gamble, was an eruption of pink, a tidal wave of lace, and a ginormous Slip ‘N Slide of satin. Amid the thongs, French-cut panties, lacey bras, and whatever else a girl thinks she needs or a boy hopes she wears, Drew escorted Brianna toward a table next to a white-and-black mannequin with a bored-to-tears expression. That her bedroom on Desolation View Drive was drenched in Olivia Grant’s blood seemed far from either teen’s mind.

“You’d look so hot in that,” he said, indicating the microscopic panties and sheer bra.

“I look hot in whatever I wear—or don’t wear, for that matter,” Brianna said. “I’m glad you understand that, Drew.” She kissed him, held up a light-pink thong and grinned.

“I had a slingshot like that once,” he said.

“If you did, then you’re a total dork,” Brianna said, as she sorted through thongs and bras in various shades of pink.

“Do you like carnation or rose?” she asked.

Drew raised his brow. “They look the same to me,” he said.

“Don’t be dumb,” Brianna said. “Carnation is lighter, a more pure shade.”

“I guess so,” he said, checking her attitude. “Whatever you say, Bree.”

Brianna nuzzled her boyfriend again as they made their way across the store toward the cashier. Neither of them knew they were being watched, but they were. Certainly store security personnel always keep extra alert around teenage shoppers. But aside from the video camera fixated in their direction and a skeezy man who was shopping for the “wife” he didn’t have, there was one more set of eyes riveted on them.

Watching the young couple from across the store was classmate Starla Larsen’s mom, Mindee. Like everyone, she’d heard what had happened at the Connorses’ home. Instead of concern, she actually felt a little relief. Maybe now the people of Port Gamble would stop their incessant finger-pointing in her direction? It wasn’t all her fault that Katelyn Berkley had died in her bathtub last year. Certainly, she accepted a small, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny part in the events that led to the death of her daughter’s former best friend. Yes, Mindee had faked those bullying e-mails. Yes, she had written terrible things about the fifteen-year-old. But she’d had a good reason. She was defending her daughter. All those judgmental moms who had stopped being her clients at the hair salon would have done the same thing. She was sure of it. Yes, she played a role in the whole mess, but it was tiny, and Katelyn’s electrocution was proven to have been an accident. Mindee’s part in it was merely a bad decision.

A bad decision just like those thongs Brianna Connors was buying with her embarrassingly horny boyfriend in tow.

Brianna’s and Mindee’s eyes met briefly, and Mindee waved from behind a rack of padded bras.

Brianna pretended not to see Starla’s mother and hoped she wouldn’t turn her in for skipping school. She considered Mrs. Larsen a total loser, one of those moms who never understood that she was older and should stop trying to dress like her daughter. Her chance had come and gone. The way Brianna looked at it, over time hotness turns to lukewarm, then to cool, then to cold. Sadly, Mrs. Larsen had her home-manicured claws dug in, clinging to the lukewarm zone.