When Marshall remembered those nights, it was usually in terms of Bets and Bree, drinking too much wine and talking like they hadn’t seen each other in a year. The reality was, they’d probably been on the phone for half an hour earlier that very day. Still, they were seldom face-to-face, so those nights revolved around them.

Trey and Marshall were the cooks, the child minders, and the servers. They chatted about college football and grilling, the only places where their interests intersected. It had impressed him to see a big-time Buckhead lawyer type hosting and cooking and keeping the sandbox cat-shit-free so his wife could enjoy a rare night with her best friend.

Maybe that was a sad statement about men, that this could impress him. But it did. It had. He’d come away thinking that Trey was decent, in the best sense of the word, and crazy about his family.

Marshall ran a hand over his face. He felt scratchy and dirty and guilty and angry all at once.

He turned back to the computer and searched for “Funtime Carousel and Gold Mine.” He clicked the Google Maps link first and found it northeast of the city. They could get there from Decatur in ninety minutes. It was tucked away in some hilly wilderness off an old country road leading up into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

He left that page open and went back to follow a link to a photo-heavy article called “Creepiest Dead Theme Parks in America.” BuzzFeed blamed a new highway that was built in the eighties for Funtime’s demise. It had never been enough of an attraction to be a destination. It was the kind of place families stopped by on the way to something better.

He began scrolling down through the pictures, reading, adding a few more notes as he went. Funtime had been owned by Larry and Mariah Denton. Perhaps it still was. There was a picture of them standing with their arms around each other by a cotton-candy booth.

Mariah Denton was not their perp. Wrong shape of face, wrong coloring. Still, he added Funtime and the Dentons to his notes, then sent a new email to Gabrielle, copying Bree, asking her to research them. They could be connected. People doing serious crimes often went back to their old places and friends. Crime was stressful, and familiarity was comfort. It was one way they got caught.