Lucy was sniffing at something in the pile. It was soaking wet and filthy with dirt, but Sam could see it had once been white. The little pink bow on it was hanging by a thread. A jolt kicked his chest. Sam reached into the debris and picked it up. The maker was Plain Jane.

"Sam? What the hell are you doing?"

Sam squinted up at Jo, who was standing at the top of the rock embankment. She must’ve heard the call for the accident and rushed down. She had her sunglasses off and a quizzical look on her face. Her eyes flicked from the bra to Sam.

He turned to face her, the bra dripping from his hand.

"I think Lucy just solved the case."

Chapter Thirty-One

Jo took care of calming down the driver and sending him on his way while Sam brought Lucy to the vet. Lucy had only been grazed by the car, the tear in her ear the only injury. Sam called Reese with the good news and told her to assemble the campers in his office in two hours. He had a few things to check into first.

By the time they gathered in his office, it was just past noon. The campers sat nervously in extra chairs they’d brought in from the squad room. Lucy was out in the lobby, being fed a sumptuous meal of steak and carrots. Apparently, she preferred that to sitting in on Sam’s big reveal.

Jo sat off to the side, her notepad in her lap, the eraser end of her pencil tapping on it rhythmically.

Kevin was in the room too. He stood silently by the door in his blue police uniform, his arms crossed over his chest in an intimidating manner. The campers kept glancing at him. It all added to setting them on edge, which was exactly the way Sam wanted them to feel. He knew the more nervous they got, the more apt they were to turn on each other.

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."