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.
"I think you do. We all do." Josh’s voice was tinged with sadness.
"Naturally, after Lynn talked to Richard, she would have approached Tara. She’s the CFO. She would know about the finances."
"Tara never said anything about that." Noah looked at Josh. "Did she say anything to you?"
Josh shook his head sadly.
"Of course she didn’t," Sam said. "Tara couldn’t have an audit happening. She was embezzling from the company."
"Now, wait a minute," Noah said. "If Lynn knew about that, she would have told me."
"I don’t think Lynn knew. But if she wanted the financing, they would have to scrutinize expenses. So she must have mentioned that to Tara, and it must have been that night. It was probably the only time she had her alone after she talked to Richard. Maybe she still didn’t want to tell the rest of you until she was sure of what would happen with the financing."
Tara must have been out of excuses—she sat there silently.
Sam continued. "I’m not sure how it happened. I imagine Tara tried to talk her out of doing an audit, and Lynn insisted. Maybe Tara snuck up on her later that night in the woods, or maybe she lured her there. Or maybe Lynn didn’t mention the audit until that night when they were on the beach and it erupted into an argument. Tara hit her with a rock on the beach and killed her then pulled her clothes off to make it look like she had an accident while swimming. But her bra must have floated away, and her pants got snagged. Tara shoved her in the river, tossed the phone in after her, then folded up her clothes and added her own bra so no one would notice one article of clothing was missing. Isn’t that right, Tara?"
Tara dissolved into tears. "I didn’t mean any harm. I was just borrowing the money. I was gonna pay it back when we released the new game and were all rolling in the dough."
She looked up at her friends through her tears, begging them to believe her, but now they were all pushing their chairs back away from her. "I didn’t mean to kill her, but she accused me, and we argued, and then we started fighting. The next thing I knew, I had smashed her with a rock. I had to do something. So I pushed her into the water, hoping it would look like an accident. I threw the phone in too so no one would see if she had calls from that finance guy."
Josh buried his face in his hands. The others looked stunned.
"No. I don’t believe it." Noah looked at Tara in disgust. "And you tried to blame it on me?"
"Unfortunately, we have the evidence to prove it. And now a confession." Sam nodded to Kevin, and he went over to Tara, taking her elbow, gently lifting her from the chair. He read her her rights as he walked her out of the room.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kevin glanced in the rearview mirror at the redhead in the backseat of the police car. She’d cried for a while at first but was quiet now, looking out the window. Accepting her fate.
The White Rock police station was too small to keep anyone overnight. They only had one cell, and it was used rarely. Mostly for drunks to sleep it off. But this girl would be locked up until she could go before a judge, and Sam had asked him to drive her to the county jail. Sam had never asked him to do that before—usually he relied on Jo or Tyler.
Sam had never asked him to sit in on an interrogation before, either. Pride warred with regret in Kevin’s chest. Did Sam trust him and want him to be part of the team?
Would Kevin’s little side job put that in jeopardy?
Watching Sam get the redhead to confess had been interesting. He admired the way Sam went about it. Forcing her hand into admitting she’d done it. Kevin could learn a lot from Sam, and it had felt good to be in on things for once instead of sitting on the sidelines.
And now he felt guilty because passing along that information he’d been paid to look for felt like spying on Sam and Jo. It felt like a betrayal.
The information wasn’t anything that would hurt Sam or Jo. It was just general stuff. Stuff that might help them, or at least that was what Kevin wanted to think. Especially if Sam and Jo weren’t doing anything wrong. And he was pretty sure they weren’t.