“Oh . . .” Kyle squirmed. “Just screwing around, you know? Thad had a bottle of scotch he took from his parents’ bar. Like a ten-year-old single-malt. Really good stuff. It was his idea to go drink in the gazebo until sunrise. He heard sometimes you can see those, whaddya call ’em, river nymphos at dawn. We got bored waiting. That stupid bet was his idea!” His voice rose and tightened. “It was his idea, okay? I never wanted anyone to get hurt!”

My tail twitched.

“Who got hurt, Kyle?” I asked.

He shut down.

“Kyle?” Cody asked in a soft voice. “Were you talking about Thad? Or someone else?”

He looked away. “Can I go home?”

Cody and I exchanged a glance. “One last question,” he said. “Did you and Mike and Thad go to the Wheelhouse tonight?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?” He held up a plastic evidence bag with a sodden matchbook with the Wheelhouse’s logo on it. “Thad had this in his pocket.”

Kyle’s eyelids flickered rapidly. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Huh.” Cody contemplated the evidence bag. “There’s a phone number written on it. Was there someone in particular Thad was trying to hook up with tonight?”

“No. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “He must have gotten some girl’s digits in one of the bars.”

“Why wasn’t he carrying his phone?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was taut again. “It must have fallen out of his pocket in the river.”

“He jumped into the river with his phone?” Cody sounded skeptical.

“I guess. I don’t know! We were drunk, okay?”

“Can I see your phone?”

Kyle handed it over. I watched his expression while Cody examined the phone, just as I’d watched Mike Huizenga’s when Cody had gone over the same line of questioning with him. Whatever they were hiding, it wasn’t on their phones.

“Okay.” Cody returned the phone. “Look, I’m sorry to put you through this, but we have to treat any death very seriously, you understand?”

There were tears in the kid’s eyes. “It was an accident!”

“It certainly seems that way.” Cody tapped the evidence bag. “But things aren’t always what they seem in Pemkowet. Isn’t that right, Daisy?”

A twenty-one-year-old kid had died tonight, and his friends were covering up the truth. It wasn’t hard to access a well of simmering anger. I held Kyle’s gaze, feeling the air pressure in the room change. “It certainly is.”

“Don’t worry.” Cody rose. “Whatever happened, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Chapter Four

Four

Since Kyle’s parents lived out of state, Mike Huizenga’s parents drove down from Appeldoorn to retrieve both witnesses. They were stalwart descendants of Dutch settlers, rightfully horrified at the death of their son’s friend, wrongfully furious that Mike and Kyle had been detained for questioning.