I nodded, feeling uncertain. I wanted to get this over with, to review the statements I’d made as a twelve-year-old and get the recitation of those memories out of my way. That wasn’t going to happen though, at least not yet.

“Tell us about Isabel,” Lieutenant Jaffe said.

The question was so open-ended, I didn’t know quite what to do with it.

“She was beautiful,” I began. I wished the chair I was sitting in had arms. My hands felt heavy and awkward in my lap. “And she was rebellious. A typical teenager. She snuck out every night to meet Ned at the platform on the bay.” I was quiet a moment, trying to figure out what else I should say about Isabel. The only sounds in the room were the quiet whirring of the tape recorder and the tip of the detective’s pencil racing across her notepad. When she had finished whatever she was writing, she looked up and spoke for the first time.

“How did you know she was sneaking out every night?” she asked. She had rather amazing green eyes, the color of new grass, and I wondered if she was wearing special contacts.

“I knew because I saw her,” I said. “Because I was sneaking out myself.” Surely they already had this information in the old records of the case. But, as the lieutenant said, they were starting fresh.

“What was your relationship with her like?” he asked.

I looked away from him quickly, annoyed with myself for doing so. I did not want to talk about my relationship with Isabel, and I knew that my sudden inability to look at my questioners made me suspect in their eyes. That’s what this is about, I realized. They didn’t care why I thought Ned had done it. They wanted to know my role in Isabel’s death. My anxiety took a sudden, unexpected leap.

“We were close when we were young,” I said, lifting my gaze to look squarely at the lieutenant, then the detective. “But there were five years between us and we drifted apart as she got into her teens, which was only natural. We didn’t have much in common anymore.”

“Did you argue a lot?” Detective Engelmann asked.

“Bickered,” I said with a shrug. “Typical sibling rivalry.”

“And how about Ned Chapman?” the detective asked. “What was he like?”

I felt a hot flash start to prickle and burn on the top of my head. Damn. In two seconds, my face would be as red as my shirt. I did not look away this time, though. I held the woman’s grass-green gaze as I answered. “He seemed nice,” I said. “I mean, I’d known him all my life, since he lived next door to us during the summer. He was the lifeguard at the beach. But you can’t really know what’s going on inside a person. He was nice on the exterior, but who knows what was going on inside him.”

“You had a crush on him.” The lieutenant made it a statement rather than a question.

I shrugged again. “A typical preteen sort of crush,” I said. I was using the word typical too much and wondered if they’d noticed. I could barely breathe for the heat radiating down my neck and chest. I waved my hand in front of my face, looking apologetic. “Hot flash,” I said. “A nuisance.”

They smiled at me as if they understood, but given Detective Engelmann’s age and Lieutenant Jaffe’s gender, I was certain neither of them had a clue how I was feeling. I wanted to pick up the detective’s rapidly filling notepad to give myself a real fanning.

“Were you jealous of Isabel?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked.

My eyes darted away from him again. Damn it. What was wrong with me? I wanted to say, Of course I was jealous of her. Weren’t you jealous of your older siblings? Instead, I steadied myself and nodded. “In some ways,” I said. “I wished that I’d looked like her and that I was her age and could have the freedom she did.”

“Who knew she would be on the bay at midnight on August fifth, 1962?” Detective Engelmann asked.

“I did,” I said. “And Bruno—Bruce—Walker. And possibly George Lewis, although I was never sure of that. If he knew, then Wanda Lewis probably did, as well. And, of course, Ned Chapman.”

“Although according to the old report—” the Lieutenant fingered the file in front of him, although he did not open it to look at the pages “—Ned Chapman had asked you to tell Isabel that he couldn’t meet her that night.”

“Well, yes, but he later said he might be able to.”

“You were really known for your storytelling back then, weren’t you?” the detective asked me.

They were jumping from topic to topic so quickly that my overheated brain could barely keep up, and once again, I was not sure exactly what she meant.

“I read a lot,” I said. “I read Nancy Drew books aloud to George and Wanda.”

“But you also made things up, right?” she asked. “The way you made up stories about events in your neighborhood to excite your friends.”

I stared at her, uncertain how to respond. I felt something like hatred for her building inside me. When I didn’t respond to her question, the lieutenant spoke up.

“Let me try to summarize what you’ve told us so far,” he said. “There was some sibling rivalry between you and your sister. You were jealous of her. You knew where she’d be that night. You regularly sneaked out of the house.You had a crush on—”

“Stop it.”I stood up, the chair scraping the floor. “I didn’t come here for this,” I said. “I came to help in your investigation. I came to tell you what I remember, not to be accused of murdering my sister. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re getting at. I would never have hurt her.”

“Please sit down again,” Lieutenant Jaffe said calmly, and against my better judgment, I did so. I sat on the edge of the chair, though, ready to make my exit.

“We have to look at everyone involved,” he said. “Everyone who could have been in the same place as your sister that night. That includes you.”

I held on to my anger. If I didn’t, I knew I would start to cry. “I didn’t kill my sister,” I said, slowly and deliberately. “I had nothing to do with it.”

The lieutenant suddenly looked at his watch, then stood up. “We’ll be talking with everyone,”he said. “And we appreciate you coming in.”

Was that it? I’d been expecting the handcuffs to be produced at any second. I was thinking about my lawyer, who’d never handled a criminal case in his life. But now, free to go, my thoughts shifted to my mother.

“Are you going to need to talk with my mother?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet. Detective Engelmann was still sitting at the table, still writing. She didn’t even lift her head from her work.

“Most likely, yes,” Lieutenant Jaffe said. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

I shut my eyes, holding on to the back of the chair for balance. I felt a little dizzy, and my mind was slow and logy. If I answered yes to his question, it would look as though I was afraid of what my mother might say. If I explained that my family never talked about Isabel’s death, it would look even worse. I opened my eyes and spoke the truth. “I don’t want my mother to suffer any more than she has,” I said. “I don’t want her to endure…” I waved my hand through the air, encompassing the room, my two questioners and the entire situation. “I don’t want her to have to deal with all of this,” I said.

“We understand,” the lieutenant said. “And we’ll keep that in mind.”

CHAPTER 20

Julie

1962

“How about we go to the beach today, girls?” Mom said. All the women in the family—my sisters, grandmother, mother and myself—were relaxing around the porch table after a breakfast of fruit salad and French toast.

“Okay,” Lucy said. “Just don’t expect me to go swimming.”

“Not if you don’t want to.” My mother leaned over to brush a crumb from Lucy’s lip, then she sat back to admire her youngest daughter. “You’re turning a nice nut-brown color,” she said.

Of the three of us girls, Lucy was the least tan, since she spent most of her time indoors reading or playing cards with Grandma, but it was impossible to be at the shore and avoid the sun altogether.

“I promised Mitzi and Pam I’d go to the beach with them,” Isabel said, then added quickly, “but I’ll see you there.” She was sitting on the side of the table closest to the house, the seat that would give her the best view of the Chapmans’ backyard. Her huge, almond-shaped eyes darted in that direction every twenty seconds or so. She was so obvious I couldn’t believe my mother never caught on. Did Mom think for one minute it was Mitzi Caruso and Pamela Durant that Isabel wanted to hang out with at the beach?

But I supposed I was no less skillful in masking my real intentions.

“And I want to stay around here,” I said, wishing I could turn around in my seat to see if the Lewises had arrived yet across the canal.

My mother raised her eyebrows at me, obviously suspicious, and I ran my fork through the syrup on my plate to avoid her scrutiny. “Maybe I’ll fish and catch something for dinner,” I added, for something to say. I waited for her to admonish me not to cross the canal, knowing I could not disobey her direct command to stay in our yard, and I was relieved when she didn’t give it. Instead, she turned to Grandma.

“Why don’t you come with Lucy and me today, Mother?” she asked. Grandma always seemed content to stay in the house, sweeping the floors or doing the laundry, an arduous job without a washing machine.

“Well, maybe I will for a change,” she said, surprising everyone.

Perfect, I thought. No one would be around to care what I did. Grandpop was on an all-day fishing trip with some of his buddies. He’d invited me to join him, but I’d gone with that group last summer and had felt like I didn’t belong—which I didn’t. Everyone took off for the beach after we’d cleaned up from breakfast. I grabbed my bait bucket and walked to the end of the road. Happy in my freedom, I made up a little song about the dragonflies as I walked along the path through the tall reeds until I reached the area where Grandpop kept his killie trap. I dropped to my knees in the damp sand, tossing my binoculars over my shoulder so I didn’t get them wet, and was pulling the trap from the water when someone called out, “Who’s there?”