Just then Clark waves at his grandma from the rowboat.

Teresa immediately jumps to her feet. “Destiny! You keep that life jacket on, or you’ll never set foot on a boat again.”

Teresa looks at me and shakes her head. “That one will be the one that puts me into an early grave.”

I smile. “The ones that test the limits sometimes do the most amazing things in life. That’s what I’ve always thought.”

“You’ll feel differently when you have a child of your own,” she says.

“I hope to someday.”

We drink our ice tea, and Teresa gets to what she wanted to talk about when she called me.

“Sunday afternoon, I offered to get the cabin in order so that Mr. Warner could leave right away. You know, no one wants to lose a cleaning deposit if they can avoid it, right? It was the least I could do, considering what he’d been through.”

I feel my heart rate pick up. I’d been through that cabin too. “You found something,” I say.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Not really. But I did notice something that seemed at odds with what the news said. They said that Friday, the night before she died, the Warners had dinner at the cabin. Sandwiches or steaks. I’m not sure which they had.”

“And Saturday morning they had waffles for breakfast,” I say.

“Yes,” Teresa says. “I saw that too. There were two plates in the sink and a bowl that had been used for batter. The dishwasher was empty. There were no other plates or glasses or anything.”

“Maybe they ran the dishwasher that night,” I suggest.

“Right. I thought about that. When I went to clean out the refrigerator, I found three store-bought sandwiches. Two were roast beef, and the other was a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly.”

I process her words. “And two steaks?” I ask.

She gives me a nod. “Yeah. Both of them were still in there. It made me wonder when I read the news story. It didn’t seem to add up.”

She is right. It doesn’t.

“The sandwiches were from IGA in Hoodsport,” she continues. “I think that’s probably where the steaks came from too.”

I ask if there was anything else that seemed unusual.

“I know Mrs. Warner was drinking wine when she was taken. The bottle was in the refrigerator. It was a sauvignon blanc, a screw-top. I used it last night to make some steamers the kids and I dug down the beach.”

“Is the trash still in the cabin?” I ask, hoping to fix what I know now is a lapse in the investigation. The idea of a mistake makes me sick to my stomach. Teresa Dibley sees the switch in my demeanor from interested to concern, but she doesn’t remark on it, and I’m grateful for that. I’m starting to sweat too.

She shakes her head and sets down her now-empty glass and motions that Clark is taking his sister too far from shore.