“I’m afraid to.” Justin looked miserable. “And you’re the only person I can talk to about it.”

“What did you find?” I asked. Who was he afraid of incriminating? I had an uneasy feeling I knew.

Justin stuck a hand into his pocket and withdrew something. He held his palm out to me, and lying across it was a gold pen.

“It’s my dad’s.”

“Your dad’s? You mean Ezra’s.” I was so shocked by what Justin had, I didn’t know quite how to respond.

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “I gave it to him for his birthday last year. I had it engraved.” He held the pen closer, pointing to the letters on the shaft with his free hand.

I suddenly recalled Justin’s question when we were sitting in the hotel restaurant. He’d asked me if I thought Ezra had killed Godfrey.

Now I knew why. The evidence lay in Justin’s hand.

But how could Ezra have left the hospital and made it over to the hotel without anyone knowing he was gone? Julia said she had been with him all day, and surely the hospital staff would have noticed if he had been gone for very long.

“What should I do?” Justin asked as we both stared at the pen.

“You have to show it to the deputies,” I said.

“I can’t,” Justin said. “Even after what he did to me.”

I stared at the pen in his hand, torn. Justin’s fingerprints were all over the pen now, and had probably obliterated any others. Deputy Berry already knew he was in the room.

I made a snap decision—with my heart, not my head. I wasn’t keen on suppressing evidence, but until I knew how that pen ended up in Godfrey’s room, I was going to continue to protect Justin—and whichever of his parents left that pen behind.

“Put it back in your pocket, and don’t say anything about it to them yet. Let’s see how things go with their questions.”

Obviously relieved, Justin nodded. He shoved the pen back into his pocket. “Guess I’d better go downstairs.”

“Yes.” I strode to the door and held it open. “Come on, boys.”

Diesel scampered out, and Justin and I followed. The cat had already disappeared by the time Justin and I reached the stairs.

Back in the kitchen we found Deputy Bates regarding Diesel with awe. “That’s really a cat?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s a Maine coon, and they get to be as big as thirty or thirty-five pounds.”

“Dang, he’s bigger’n my dog.” Bates shook his head.

Kanesha frowned at her subordinate while I exchanged an amused glance with Julia. If nothing else, Bates’s reaction to Diesel had relieved some of the tension.

“Deputy Berry, this is my son, Justin Wardlaw.” Julia stepped forward, stretching an arm around the boy’s waist and pulling him close.