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."
"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."