“Mara. She took advantage of me when it came to paying for the party, sure. But it went way beyond that…”

“Okay. Why don’t you tell me then? I’m all ears,” the detective said.

“I didn’t like her from the start. And I don’t just mean during the party planning phase. She and Rosalee became friends in college. At first, she was all Rosalee talked about. I was a little jealous, but mostly I was happy for her. I care about Rosalee; she’s less like a cousin, and more like a sister to me. Do you understand?” Tinsley said, finally softening as she discussed her painful feelings toward her cousin.

The detective nodded, waiting for more.

“I tried to go visit. I tried to call. But every time, her stupid friend Mara got in the way. She answered Rosalee’s phone most of the time. Never passed on my messages. Rosalee was always ‘out’, or ‘busy’. I wondered back then if Mara was controlling, but Rosalee’s a grown woman and I had my own life to live.”

“Of course, you did. That’s understandable,” the detective said.

“When we started planning the party, I liked Mara even less. She seemed shady as hell to me and when she kept dodging me about the money, I decided to do a little investigating of my own. I talked to a couple of her old roommates and even reached out to her current roommate.”

“What did you find out, Tinsley?”

Tinsley frowned. “She hadn’t paid her rent in nearly six months. She was basically squatting there and refusing to leave. And her roommate had a lot to say about her… Apparently, she was scamming people for money online. Using phishing software in some cases, bribing married men out of money. Like I said, she wasn’t a good person. She basically survived by taking advantage of and hurting others.”

“Did you tell Rosalee about any of this?” the detective asked.

Tinsley shook her head. “I doubt she would have listened. She’s naïve sometimes.”

“Perhaps you should have been honest and let her decide for herself. She’s smarter than you give her credit for,” the detective said.

“Perhaps,” Tinsley shrugged. “But the tables soon turned when Mara found herself on the other end of a scam. Her own computer was hacked, the small amount of money she did have drained. All of her accounts taken over by bots, credits cards racked up in her name.”

“And who did that?”

Tinsley smiled and shrugged once again.

“You’re smart, Tinsley. I’ll give you that. But you don’t strike me as the computer genius type.”

Tinsley sat back in her chair and started picking at her cuticles, seemingly bored with the conversation now. Acting wasn’t one of her strong suits either. The detective picked up on her anxiety from a mile away.