No wonder she was gone.

“I have some very upsetting news,” Tim said.

“Don’t tell me we’ve run out of booze.” Flynn reached for the scotch and topped off his glass.

A muscle shifted in Tim’s jaw. “It was strangulation. Abella Beaudry is dead.”

Reporting a death is never easy. It’s the part of the job every investigator hates. There’s a wide spectrum of misery in the reactions you get from friends and next of kin, and though we always try not to, we absorb some of their pain. Tim didn’t need to feign heartbreak to keep up the everyman act. All day he’d defended these people. And they’d failed him in the worst way.

They had to know what was up before Tim opened his mouth to speak. Abella no longer sat among them. They were all aware that Ned went into that bathroom to check on his friend and came back out alone. But when Tim said what he said, Camilla let out a small cry anyway. Jade’s scream had brought her back downstairs, but her energy was fading, the air around her flat. “That poor girl,” she croaked. “That innocent young thing.”

Flynn threw back the scotch in his glass in one gulp. “Innocent, my ass. She hung herself. Phil, can I get a light?”

Norton moved stiffly toward the matchbox on the mantel. Nearby, Ned flexed his fingers in his lap. His voice, when he spoke, came from the back of his throat. “You’re a fucking prick, you know that, Flynn?” Ned said.

Ned was with Bebe in the shed. Either one of them could have grabbed that rope. Ned seemed genuinely upset over the loss of his friend, but he was sweating again. His skin appeared as clammy as it had during our interview, when he’d hidden what he knew about Flynn and the fight.

“I call it like I see it.” Flynn accepted the matchbox from Norton and lit up. “Right now all I see is selfish whores.”

He looked straight at me as he said it. Fueled by booze, Flynn’s anger was mounting. Tim didn’t seem to notice. He was focused on Norton, who walked around the room filling wineglasses to the brim. Just as in Flynn’s account of the previous night, Jade held up a glass for her share. This time, Miles didn’t protest. I figured he thought his daughter could use something to calm her nerves. Or maybe Miles only disapproved of Jade’s drinking when Jasper was doing the pushing.

Across the room, Bebe glared at Flynn. “You know Nana hates it when you smoke indoors. I’m sorry, Nana. Flynn’s a thoughtless pig.”

“Extenuating circumstances.” Smoke flowed freely from the sides of Flynn’s smiling mouth. “That bitch killed my brother and then hung herself. You’ll excuse me if I’m a little stressed.”

Camilla’s expression hardened. The skin around her hollow eyes was the color of an old bruise. “Stop it, Flynn. My Jasper’s alive. Whatever happened here doesn’t change that. My God,” she said, clutching her throat. “This is my house—my home. Every summer of my son’s life was spent here. Yours, too,” she said to her remaining grandchildren. “How could something like this happen?”