Three days.

That's how long we have, how long I have before I turn myself and the evidence over to the police. I swallow the lump in my throat as Zoe and I return to the buffet. It's a Sunday morning, and we came as soon as the buffet opened for lunch at eleven in the morning.

Zoe opens the door for me, and we enter the empty restaurant. It feels wrong to return to the scene of the crime after all that had happened. The place is surprisingly normal. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't suspect in the slightest that someone died here two days ago. The striped chairs are empty and cluster around tables that dot the room. The tablecloths match the striped pattern on the chairs' cushions.

"How may I help you?" the hostess says. It's a different hostess than the one on Friday. Thank goodness. I might die from humiliation and panic if the woman recognized me. This hostess has long, straight brown hair with blond tips. A purple diamond sticks out from her nose, matching the larger, probably fake diamonds dangling from her ears. Her hair is long in the back, and in the front, she has two shorter strands that stop just above her name tag, which reads 'Jennifer.'

"We were just curious about one of the employees who works here," Zoe says. "Does Drake Collins work here?"

"Yes, he's working now in the back of the store. Would you like to speak to him?"

"No, that's alright. What are his shift hours? We were hoping to catch him afterwards."

"We're with the school newspaper," I say. "We heard he's really good with programming and we wanted to feature him in an article."

"Really?" Jennifer quirks her head to the side.

"And he did an amazing job on the school play," I add. I cross my toes, hoping that we're convincing.

"Ah. Well, his shift ends today at three."

"Oh man, we won't be here." Zoe snaps her fingers. "I have tutoring at that time. Does he work any other days?"

"Yes." Jennifer puts on a pair of glasses rimmed with cheetah print. "He works Saturdays and Sundays from eleven to three and every other Friday from four to six."

That settles his alibi. He might've been able to scrape by leaving school at ten minutes to four in order to kill Evan, but he couldn't have managed being at the Arboretum on a Saturday morning.

"Did he miss any of his Saturday shifts in October?"

Jennifer's long nails clack against her keyboard. She clicks a few things, looking down at her computer screen. "No, he clocked in every day. Why?"

Zoe shrugs. "We were just curious how he managed to balance the school play along with work."

"That's so funny," Jennifer remarks. "Drake has never told us about being in the school play."

"It's kind of a personal hobby for him..." I hedge. "In fact, if you don't mind, maybe don't say anything about it to him. He might get kind of mad at us if he finds out that we told you."

"Oh." Jennifer's eyebrows furrow. "Okay."

"Do you know the other hostess who works here on Fridays by the way?" Zoe asks.

"Yes. I work from opening time till four, while she works from four to closing time."

"So you were here until four on Friday?" Zoe asks.

"No. I actually went home early that day because I wasn't feeling well." Jennifer swallows. "Why, did you hear something about last Friday here?"

"No. We just had a friend who said they'd meet us here, but never showed up. We ended up leaving around two o'clock, but were curious if they happened to show up."

"Can you try calling this friend of yours?" Jennifer says. She seems more on guard now that we mentioned last Friday — the day Isaac died.

"They lost their phone," Zoe says.

"Ah. I see."

"So, do you think we could ask the other hostess about whether anyone else came in the store during the afternoon?"

Jennifer sighs. She glances around before saying, "look, I'm not really supposed to do this, but you seem like nice people. I want to help you out. So why don't you write down your email and I'll send you the security footage. What's the time period you need?"

"Between noon and three-thirty."

Jennifer tilts her head. "You were here during that time though."

"Not at noon. Besides, we're wondering if we just didn't see the person we were going to interview when we entered."

Jennifer lets out a slow breath. "Do not tell a soul I did this for you." She slides a sticky note pad and a pen across the counter, and Zoe jots down her email. Jennifer takes it back with a knowing grin. "Good luck with your journalism."

"Thank you. We intend to snag that journalism prize at school."

"Be sure to mention us in your acceptance speech," Jennifer chuckles. "Well, not the part about, you know." She flicks her chin vaguely in the direction of the upper righthand corner of the restaurant. My eyes shift there for an instant, noting the black box on the ceiling.

"We won't," I promise.

We leave the restaurant. Zoe kicks a rock on the sidewalk, and it ricochets off the ground with a soft clack.

"So that cancels out Drake," Zoe says. "He couldn't be the culprit. He has an alibi for Saturday, and for Friday."

"But wait, if we're looking for siblings, his sister could've..." I trail off. Zoe's head whirls to face me.

"You think a sixth grader could pull off two murders?" Zoe asks.

"Anything is possible." Case in point: me. I could be the killer.

"I don't think so," Zoe says. "The physical requirements of stringing a boy up by the neck to hang him from the ceiling are too much for her tiny frame to handle."

"True. So who else could it be?"

Who else doesn't have an alibi?

"I don't know. Who else is good with technology?"

Our gazes lock. Our feet freeze on the sidewalk in unison.

"Oh. My. Gosh." I turn to Zoe. "What about autumn? Doesn't she have an older brother?"

"They moved from Canada," Zoe says.

"Yes. But maybe they were adopted by a family in Canada."

"The hair colors don't match."

"They don't have to. Recessive genes, remember?"

"Black-haired Mom, red haired daughter?"

"Brown-haired son," I say.

Zoe nods. I have a point.

"She was also the one who dared me to use the app in the first place. She could've organized the whole thing." My mind is spinning faster. "We sit together at lunch. She wouldn't even need to hack my phone if she leaned over and saw me putting in the password to my phone one time."

"She had the perfect opportunity to take your phone." Zoe shakes her head. "I just can't believe Autumn would do something like that."

"Me neither." Then again, Autumn was always more aloof than Priya and Zoe. She might've been harboring a secret grudge all these years, biding her time for revenge. Or maybe she only recently discovered the botched investigation, like me.

"We have to see those interview files," I say. "We need more clues on the case."

Zoe nods slowly. "They might provide insight into whether or not it was Autumn."

"The question is how we get a hold of them." We pause at the edge of the shops, where they end and if we keep walking straight, we'll be weaving through parked cars and heading toward the road.

"Why don't we take another look at the files?" Zoe says. "Maybe we can find a way to get a hold of the interviews."

"Sure."

***

Mom is at work this afternoon fortunately. She has appointments between three and five today, which gives us the perfect chance to sneak into her room the moment we hear the garage door close. Zoe follows me into the room. I open the drawer where the keys are kept, pulling them out from under a pile of envelopes. My eyes catch on one, and I pause.

"Zoe?" I say. I lift the envelope up for Zoe to see. "Why does this address sound familiar?"

"1109 Marble Street." Zoe frowns. "I don't know."

I shake my head, placing it back inside the drawer. Something about it bothers me in the back of my head, but I move on. I hand Zoe the keys, and she unlocks the case file again. We stare at the open files.

"There are no interviews in here," Zoe says.

"I know." I sit down and rest my chin in my cupped hands. "There's got to be a way to get a hold of them."

"Maybe see if the other files have interviews in them." We pull out a few other files, two from the front, two from the back. The first three have interview transcripts inside of them while the fourth does not. We shove that one back into line with the other files.

When we open one folder, it says at the bottom, to access the rest of the interview, access through the police report portal.

"How do we do that?" Zoe asks.

"I don't know. Sounds like it's a website." I stare at the paper, thinking. "I wonder if Mom would have the website on her phone with the password saved."

Zoe frowns. "That seems like a long shot, no offense. Your Mom doesn't seem like the type to use a password manager, especially for a site like that containing sensitive information."

"Yeah but if we can at least get the URL..." I sigh, my back hunching over with a deflated sigh. "I don't know. It's a long shot."

"Maybe there's some other information we can find here in the meantime." Zoe pulls out the case file. Lori's eyes stare at us as we flip open the cover. What secrets do her eyes hide? She looks so deflated, so beat down by life. I would be beat, too, if I was wrongly accused and sent to prison. Imagine such a horrible, false investigation defaming your character when your husband just died.

Zoe's fingers pinch the page. As she turns it, I suddenly notice something.

"Wait a second." Zoe flips back to the picture. I squint at the woman's black hair. Then I point to the top, to her roots. "See that? It looks like a bad dye job. Mom taught me that if I ever dye hair, you have to get the roots along with the rest of the hair. In this case, her roots are still a light color. Her hair is dyed. She doesn't have true black hair."

"A light color. It looks blonde to me."

"It might be. In which case, depending on the hair color of the father, it could be that Autumn and her brother are their children."

Zoe pulls out her phone and quickly searches up Ronald Keiger. A picture of him pops up. He has a small, round face with a slightly pointed chin and gently sloped nose. Dirty blond hair is closely cropped to his scalp.

"Drat," I say. "He's blond, too."

"Blond and blonde don't really make brown and red," Zoe says. "Does that really rule them out?"

"It might. Especially if Autumn has an alibi." I sigh, plunking my chin in my cupped hands.

"I'll try to find out tomorrow," Zoe says. "Are you going to school?"

"I don't know," I sigh. "It's just been a lot."

"Yeah. Rest up if you need to."

I nod slightly. My eyes turn down to the file. They snag on something I didn't pay much mind to before. "Zoe, look. That's the address of Ronald and Lori."

"1202 Granite Drive. I wonder where that is." Zoe pulls out her phone and looks it up. She pulls up a map. "Wait, that looks familiar." she toggles to her google maps search history. "Look here, it's right by 1108 Marble Street. That's where your teacher lives."

I look at the map. She's right; the street that my former teacher lived on and that the Keigers lived on are right next to each other.

"Maybe Miss Laybrook could be the criminal after all," Zoe says.

"Maybe. But what about Lori's kids? Something just isn't adding up here."

"We need those interviews, that's what we need."

"Yeah." I sit back, hugging my knees to my chest. "Perhaps I can sneak onto Mom's phone tonight and try to get some answers."