“Do you know who she might have gone to the party with?” Archie asked the Watsons. “A female friend?”

“Lisa didn’t really have girlfriends,” her father said.

“She has a lot of friends,” Lynn Watson corrected him. She glanced at her husband sharply and then her face softened. “She just isn’t exclusive,” she explained to Archie and Henry. “She doesn’t have best friends. So she doesn’t talk about them much. We haven’t met them. But she is very popular.”

“She moved home last year,” her father said. Archie saw him steal a look at his wife, and knew that this fact had been a bone of contention between the two.

“She’s a junior at PSU,” her mother said. “She took a few years off, but now she’s studying physical education.” She caught herself and lifted a hand over her mouth. “She was studying.”

“She went out a lot,” Peter Watson said. “But usually alone. I can give you the names of some of the people she knew in high school if that might help.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Archie said.

“You pressured her too much,” Lynn Watson said to her husband.

Peter Watson’s face colored.

Parents blamed themselves. The cause of death didn’t matter. They always blamed themselves, or each other. Archie had seen it before.

“All your stupid tennis dreams,” Lynn Watson said to her husband. “He gave her a racket when she was two,” she said, looking from Henry and Archie. “By the time she was six he made her practice every day. Camps all summer. She couldn’t take the stress. She’d started partying by senior year. They caught her drinking on campus and kicked her off the team. She couldn’t cope.” She glanced back at her husband again. She was rambling, not even pausing for a breath. “We shouldn’t have let her move home. If she hadn’t moved back home, she wouldn’t have even known about the party.”

“She was nationally ranked,” Peter Watson said again, his voice catching.

Lynn Watson stumbled toward Archie, her eyes glassy—lipstick staining her front teeth. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. “You find who did this,” she said.

Her eyes went back in her head and Archie just had time to get an arm around her before her knees gave out. Water slopped out of his cup and onto the floor. “Breathe,” he told her. “Long, deep breaths.” She nodded, and put her weight into his shoulder, and he held her as the hyperventilation passed, while Peter Watson sat motionless on the yellow chair. “Promise me,” she said to Archie, clutching him. “Promise me you’ll find who did this.”

She trembled against his body. The barking in the backyard had grown frantic. “I promise you,” Archie said.

Henry cleared his throat.

Archie glanced over at his partner. “I promise you that we’ll do everything we can,” Archie clarified.

Chapter 30

CHAPTER

30