She smiles in their direction and offers me some ice tea. It’s hot out on the cedar-plank deck despite the cooling breeze gliding off the water, so I gladly accept.

“Something’s been bothering me,” Teresa says, handing me a glass. “I read the news story about the case. And well, I don’t want to be the person who meddles in what you are doing. It isn’t my style at all.”

“No,” I say. “This is good. I need to hear what you’re thinking.”

Teresa sets down her glass. “When Mr. Warner returned from, you know, finding Mrs. Warner?”

She’s upset. I see it in her eyes.

“Yes,” I say. “I know this is hard.”

She looks a little embarrassed, which was not my intent at all.

“Sorry,” she says, reeling in her own sadness over what happened. “Anyway, he was a complete wreck. Just barely able to make it from his car to the cabin. I’ve never seen anyone wrapped up in that kind of grief. And I’ve seen a lot. With my son. My daughter-in-law too.”

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.”