“When did he tell you?”

“This afternoon, at about two o’clock.”

“And that was the first you’d heard of it?”

“Yes.”

The detective removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “At what point did you throw the champagne glasses into the water?”

“When I got back from using the phone.”

“And why did you throw them in the water?”

“I already said I was scared. I panicked.”

“Is it true that when Ms. Gluckstern asked why you threw the glasses you said you were “destroying the evidence’?”

“I can’t remember what I said.”

“Ms. Gluckstern told us that you said you were “destroying the evidence.’ I wonder what you meant by that.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. I was nervous that we’d been drinking.”

“Yes,” the detective said. “Judging from that bottle of champagne, it would seem the three of you drank quite a lot. How much would you say Ms. Riley had before she went swimming?”

“Two glasses.”

“Two glasses? A huge bottle like that, and she only had two glasses?”

“That’s right.”

“Ms. Gluckstern suggested that it might have been more like four or five glasses.”

“Well, maybe. I wasn’t counting.”

“Who poured the champagne?”

Kayla shifted in her seat. She hated the interrogation room. The atmosphere was stifling, and she couldn’t think. There was nothing to focus on except for the poster of the Beetle Cat, and the water cooler, which had those cone-shaped paper cups that looked like little dunce caps.

“May I have some water?” she said.

Paul Henry nodded; the detective huffed with impatience. Kayla filled one cup, drank it down, filled it again and drank it more slowly while she stared at the poster of the Beetle Cat. Who had poured the champagne? She tried to jump a step ahead of them. Why were they asking? Her eyelids felt heavy. By now Raoul would have done something about dinner, ordered a pizza or something. She wondered if he would wake Theo. She wondered if Theo would ever be able to sit and eat dinner with their family again. She crumpled the cup and returned to her seat.

“Val and I poured the champagne,” she said. “Antoinette may have poured some for herself, I guess. We all poured it. And there was a lot of spillage, too. I mean, we didn’t come close to consuming that whole bottle. We’re only three people.”

The detective looked at her. “So you poured Ms. Riley’s champagne?”

“Some of it.”

The detective scribbled something down on his legal pad and ended his sentence with two exclamation points, which he wrote with a flourish-dash, dot, dash, dot. Then he stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He left the interrogation room, closing the door behind him.

Kayla leaned back in the folding chair. “Paul, what’s going on?”

Paul Henry pinched his lips together and shook his head. Then he drew a breath as if he were going to explain all the secrets of the world to her, but he let the breath go and said, “You need to do a better job picking your friends, Kayla.”

It was a strange thing to say. Stranger still because what Kayla couldn’t possibly explain to Paul Henry was that she had never picked Val and Antoinette as friends; rather, they’d been brought together in the house on Hooper Farm Road by some larger force- God, fate, the powers that ruled. And Kayla knew from the very first Night Swimmers that she and Val and Antoinette would be lifelong friends. She knew it the way some people knew about love. “I’m furious at Antoinette, Paul, don’t get me wrong. But I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance. And neither did Val. I feel like this clown-” she nodded at the door “-wants to hold us responsible.”

“John Gluckstern…” he said.

“I can’t believe you’re listening to John Gluckstern,” Kayla said. “He’s waging a vendetta against his wife. But that’s between John and Val. It has nothing to do with me.”

“We’ve received conflicting information,” Paul said.

“Because John is lying,” Kayla said.

Before Paul could respond, the door swung open and the detective was back. He looked between Paul Henry and Kayla, frowning. Then he chuckled under his breath like a frat boy about to pull a prank. Kayla wanted to slap him. He sat back down across from her, and with the slow, deliberate movements of a magician, he produced a brown pill bottle from his shirt pocket. Kayla thought immediately of the pills in Antoinette’s medicine cabinet until he said, “Tell me, do these belong to you?” He pushed the bottle toward her. Her Ativan.

“Where did you get these?” she said. She looked down at her feet where her purse lay. The pregnancy test had been in there, and so, she assumed, was the Ativan. Or in her car. Had he gone out to her car?

“Ms. Gluckstern gave them to us. She said she found them on the beach up at Great Point last night. Your prescription for Ativan, a heavy-duty sedative.” The detective put his hands on the back of his folding chair and leaned toward her. “Ms. Gluckstern gave us reason to believe that you slipped one of the sedatives into Ms. Riley’s champagne. She said you were pouring the champagne. She said you threw the glasses in the water to destroy the evidence. She also told us that you mentioned fleeing the island this evening instead of coming to talk to us. And she pointed out that you have a strong motive-your son’s relationship with Ms. Riley. I don’t know how much more plainly I can put it, Mrs. Montero. We suspect foul play on your part.”

“Foul play on my part?” Kayla tried to get her mind around what this wicked man was telling her. Val had given her pills to the police? She’d twisted the facts so that Kayla looked like a suspect?

“Let’s not forget that you put off calling 911,” the detective said. “Why not allow a few extra minutes to be sure that Ms. Riley was swept out to sea?”

Kayla couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Kayla?” Paul Henry said.

Kayla closed her eyes. You need to do a better job picking your friends. First Antoinette, and now Val.

“Val lied to you,” Kayla said. “She knows I only found out about my son and Antoinette today.”

“She said you made a comment just before Ms. Riley entered the water. Accusing Ms. Riley of an affair. And Lindsey Allerton’s statement corroborated this. She said you told her that you’d accused her mother of an affair.”

Kayla wasn’t sure how to proceed. Half of her wanted to deny everything. But this was so unfair, so twisted, that she wanted to set the record straight. “I accused Antoinette of having an affair with my husband, not my son.”

“You accused her of sleeping with Raoul?” Paul asked.

“Accuse is a strong word,” Kayla said.

“So now we have a husband and a son sleeping with the same woman,” the detective said. “This is better than I thought.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Detective,” Kayla said venomously. “But there’s nothing going on between Raoul and Antoinette.”

“Then why did you accuse her?” Paul asked.

“I was drinking,” Kayla said. She could have gone on to explain that she sensed something wrong when she’d looked at Antoinette. But she’d said Raoul’s name-well, because that was what came to mind. Not Theo. Never Theo. She drilled her finger into the table. “I had nothing to do with Antoinette disappearing. Val is trying to deflect blame off herself because she’s afraid you’ll believe whatever her husband told you. She’s lying.”

“Now everyone’s lying,” the detective said. “You already lied to us about the pregnancy test and the phone calls. There’s no reason for me to believe you over Ms. Gluckstern. She was very up front with us. Cooperative.”

“Cooperative about framing me,” Kayla said. “I can’t believe this. Am I under arrest?”

“Did you put a sedative in Ms. Riley’s champagne?” the detective said.

“No,” she said. “I had them out because I needed one. I took one. I must have left them lying around.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“I don’t care if you believe me,” Kayla said. “It’s the truth. I had nothing to do with Antoinette disappearing.” An anger grew in her that was so vile and so dangerous that she felt capable of killing Antoinette, Valerie, and the detective. “Am I under arrest?”

“No,” Paul Henry said. “We’re not sure what to think. The detective believes Ms. Riley is in that water, although I’m not convinced. But we have to consider every possibility.”

The detective rapped the bottle of Ativan on the table. “And one possibility is that you took advantage of this yearly nude champagne-drinking, lobster-eating adventure of yours to make your friend disappear. After all, she was sleeping with your son! You knew Ms. Riley would be drinking, you knew she would be swimming in risky waters in the dark. You knew everyone would believe that she simply got swept away. But some of us are on to you, Mrs. Montero. Your friend Ms. Gluckstern is on to you, and I am on to you.” He smiled. “If we do find Ms. Riley’s body in that water, we’ll come after you first. And since she was pregnant, well, then there’s that life to consider as well.”

That life. The baby’s life.

Paul Henry guided Kayla down the dim hallway by the arm, and Kayla thought for a minute that he was going to throw her into the holding cell, but instead, he led her to the waiting room, which glowed like a laboratory under the fluorescent lights. Kayla was dizzy with the accusations; her vision was splotchy. She had to go to the bathroom.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she said.

They stood in the waiting room. The officer behind glass pecked away at his typewriter, and Paul lowered his voice. “We’ll call you if we find her,” he said.

“Can’t you do anything else?” Kayla asked. “Check her bank account or something? Because for all we know, Antoinette could have disappeared of her own volition. She had reasons, Paul. Her daughter arriving today, the pregnancy. Can’t you make an effort to look for her?”