“—something else was going on and whoever it was might have killed him—yeah, that could work.”

“If it was a fraternity brother pissed about him spilling secrets, he could have grabbed Jay’s keys and then chased him down. Run over by your own car seems like pretty cruel revenge.”

Oliver’s looking between us, his eyes widening as we speak. “Wait a second. I mean, yeah, the secret calls are worth looking into, but I mean, killing someone because of fraternity secrets?” He shakes his head. “That’s ridiculous. The family’s ready to move on, Truman’s on us to wrap up the case—”

“This is new evidence.”

“But does it really change anything? We’re still looking for the car, but everyone’s alibis checked out—”

“And why do you want to wrap up the case so badly?” I spit at him. “Some of your golfing buddies part of Kappa Phi Omicron? Tired of their old fraternity being in the news?”

“What?” He looks genuinely baffled and then offended. “You think I would skewer a case just because a few of my friends didn’t like it? Would you blow up an assignment just because you were getting a little outside pressure?” A twitch of his eyebrow. “No,” he says. “You’d want to know why they gave a damn and see if it had anything to do with the case.”

“Did it?”

Had I asked, Oliver might have gone cagey. But this time, the question comes from Teddy.

Oliver shifts in his seat and then exhales slowly. “No. I think maybe the hazing—I mean ten years ago, it was par for the course, you know? Like a rite of passage or something. Stay up all night tied to a tree. Eat some nasty stuff. Play a punching bag for a week.” He says it casually, like this kind of abuse is no big deal. The way people shrug and say, “Boys will be boys.” As if bullying and bad behavior are written into the Y chromosome.

Oliver’s still talking. “So I think they were probably just remembering some bad hazing of their own and didn’t want it getting out. Nothing connected to the case.”

Except the hazing part, I think. But even if a fraternity hazed its members a decade ago, that doesn’t mean they’re still doing it. Especially now that there’s more accountability, policies in place, and fraternities getting suspended left and right for violations. They’d either tone it down or be really diligent about keeping it under wraps.

I stare out the retrofitted garage windows. Three little kids holding hands, arranged biggest to smallest, trail after their father. A woman carrying her bike helmet and a guy with a plastic bag of takeout zigzag behind them trying to get around, the father oblivious. The woman loses patience, steps out into the street—

I drop my cup.

“You okay?”