“Sure, I guess.” Still, she clasped her hands together, shoulders up, and smiled at Dance with her lips taut. Stress, the agent noted. “That man, Mr. Nagle, said you wanted to ask me about what happened the night my parents and brother and sister were killed.”

“That’s right. I know you were asleep at the time, but—”

“What?”

“I know you were asleep during the murders.”

“Who told you that?”

“Well, all the news stories…the police.”

“No, no, I was awake.”

Dance blinked in surprise. “You were?”

The girl’s expression was even more surprised. “Like, yeah. I mean, I thought that’s why you wanted to see me.”

Chapter 47

“Go ahead, Tare.”

Dance felt her heart tapping fast. Was this the portal to an overlooked clue that might lead to Daniel Pell’s purpose here?

The girl tugged at her earlobe, the one with five dots of metal in it, and the top of her shoe rose slightly, indicating she was curling her toes.

Stress…

“I was asleep earlier, for a while. Yeah. I wasn’t feeling good. But then I woke up. I had a dream. I don’t remember what it was, but I think it was scary. I woke myself up with a noise, kind of moaning. You know how that happens?”

“Sure.”

“Or shouting. Only…” Her voice faded, she was squeezing her ear again.

“You’re not sure it was you making the noise? It might’ve been somebody else?”

The girl swallowed. She’d be thinking that the sound had perhaps come from one of her dying family members. “Right.”

“Do you remember what time?” The TODs were between six thirty and eight, Dance recalled.

But Theresa couldn’t remember for sure. She guessed around seven.

“You stayed in bed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you hear anything after that?”

“Yeah, voices. I couldn’t hear them real well. I was, you know, groggy, but I definitely heard them.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know, men’s voices. But definitely not my father or brother. I remember that.”

“Tare, did you tell anybody this back then?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “But nobody was interested.”

How on earth had Reynolds missed it?

“Well, tell me now. What did you hear?”

“There were, like, a couple of things. First of all, I heard somebody mention money. Four hundred dollars. I remember that exactly.”

Pell had been found with more than that when he was arrested. Maybe he and Newberg were going through Croyton’s wallet and commenting on how much money was inside. Or was the phrase actually “four hundred thousand”?

“What else?”

“Okay, then somebody—a man, but somebody different—said something about Canada. And somebody else asked a question. About Quebec.”

“And what was the question?”

“He just wanted to know what Quebec was.”

Somebody not knowing about Quebec? Dance wondered if that was Newberg—the women had said that while he was a genius at woodworking, electronics and computers he was pretty damaged otherwise, thanks to drugs.

So, a Canadian connection. Is that where Pell wanted to escape to? A lot easier to get through that border than going south. A lot of mountaintops too.