“It goes on and on like that for some time. Tyra going off on her mom being weak. Fat. A loser. Just every ugly thing she can come up with. And by the way, she’s skilled at trashing her mom.”

“That fifth one.” I walk to the screen and point. “This message from Tyra took my breath away last night.”

Dad hates her as much as I do. He wishes she’d just die. Last night she was so drunk and messed up on her pills when she passed out, we just left her on floor. She puked and everything.

I return to my seat. “Two weeks before the boating accident.”

Sheriff speaks up. “That’s not our case.”

“Right,” I say. “I know they are related.”

“She’s right,” Marley confirms.

“This text.” I run a yellow highlighter through the words on the printout in front of me.

Dad got Mom more meds. Maybe that will fix things.

“That’s a week before the accident. Troy Whitcomb got new meds. How? Clallam told me that she was only on Paxil and Ambien. They couldn’t account for the Oxy. Troy had a bad shoulder from golf. He had Oxy, but he barely used any.”

I’m flipping through the date sequences. Marley makes a face yet gives me what I need—room right then.

“And here,” I say, tapping my marker against the paper. “This one is two days before the accident.”

My dad wishes she’d just die. I told him that wishing for something is stupid. I told him to divorce her. He said that he’d lose half of what we have, and I’d have to live with her. Fuck that.

“She killed her own mother?” Sheriff says.

I shake my head and look at Marley.

“No,” I say, “her father did.”

“I can see that, I guess. But…”

“Right, not our case.”

Marley isn’t annoyed. He actually seems to be enjoying the exchange between me and Sheriff as we untangle what happened to Tyra’s mom and what happened to Ellie’s parents. It wasn’t as I’d thought. Tyra hadn’t hooked her friend into a let’s get rid of our parents’ murder scheme, after all.

“It inspired Ellie,” I say.

Marley runs his fingers through that amazing hair of his and nods.

“Let’s break down Ellie’s communication first with Tyra, then Josh,” he says, closing the Tyra folder and opening one named Ellie.

“Tyra wrote thousands of texts to all sorts of people, mostly during the period before her mother died, including to Ellie; Ellie, on the other hand, had only two main points of contact—Tyra and Josh. Ninety percent of Ellie’s communication with Tyra was in answer to a text from Tyra. In fact, many of her texts directly to Tyra were unanswered or only responded to with an emoji.”