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A young woman came out of the house, looking sleepy.“What’s going on?” she asked. But then she saw the body of the teenager lying next to the pool, and a look of horror crept up her face. “Oh, my God, Todd!”

She moved forward, but Scarlett held her back.“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you can do,” she said.

“What happened!” the girl cried, tears springing to her eyes.

“I don’t know,” said the kid. “I went to the bathroom ten minutes ago and saw him in the pool.”

“Oh, my God!” the girl screamed, and looked beside herself with what could only be terrible grief.

“Who are you?” asked Gran, addressing the girl.

“She’s my sister Layla,” said the kid.

“And you are?”

“Scott,” said the kid. “Scott Walcott.”

“And you’re a friend of Todd?”

The kid nodded.“Yeah, we’ve been friends forever.”

“So what happened?”

Scott shrugged.“I don’t know. He must have accidentally stumbled into the pool.”

“And you didn’t hear anything?”

“No, our bedrooms are on the other side of the house.” He buried his head in his hands. “If I hadn’t gone to the bathroom, we wouldn’t have found him until tomorrow morning. He’d have been in that pool all night.”

Sirens could be heard, and moments later the police arrived, and an ambulance. It was as we’d surmised, though: nothing could be done for Todd, and the doctor pronounced him dead at the scene, estimating that he’d probably been dead for over an hour.

Gran glanced at her watch.“It’s two o’clock now. Which means he died around one. What time did you go to bed, Scott?”

Scott was rubbing his face, while Scarlett had taken his sister inside, so she wouldn’t have to be confronted with the turmoil that followed these terrible events.

“Um… must have been before midnight. Eleven thirty, eleven forty-five, I think.”

Chase now arrived, followed by Odelia, and when Odelia saw the dead boy’s body, she grimaced. “Todd Bond,” she said immediately.

And as Gran brought Chase and Odelia up to date, Dooley and I, along with Brutus and Harriet, decided to head inside, and see if the Walcotts had any pets that could tell us what happened.

Unfortunately for us they didn’t. No dogs, no cats—not even a goldfish.

“Odd,” said Dooley as we headed up the stairs. “Most families have at least one pet.”

“Yeah, not everybody likes pets,” I said. All was quiet upstairs, as the activity was now focused outside and in the downstairs kitchen, where Scarlett had made Layla Walcott some hot tea to drink. We came upon what was presumably the bedroom of Scott, and saw that a second bed had been slept in. “Looks like Scott and Todd were bunking,” I said as we studied the room, which was a big mess.

Nothing immediately drew our attention, though, and so we moved to the other rooms on the second floor: one was clearly a girl’s bedroom, and a third room was the parents’ room, which was neat and tidy, the bed not slept in.

“Looks like the parents aren’t home,” I said.

Which would explain why Todd was staying there and nobody knew about it.

“So Tilton Bond was right,” said Dooley, “when he told Odelia that Todd was probably staying with a friend.”

“Yeah, but that still begs the question: how did he drown?”

“Maybe he couldn’t swim, and he got drunk and stumbled into the pool?” Dooley suggested. “It happens a lot.”

“It does happen a lot,” I agreed.

“About the baby, Max,” said Dooley, giving me an anxious look. “What are you…”

“Trust me, Dooley, I’m not going to do anything to stop Odelia from having a baby. In fact I’m absolutely convinced that if Odelia and Chase do have a baby, they won’t kick us out, like Harriet and Brutus seem to think, but will make other arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll all have to go and stay with Gran for a while?”

“That wouldn’t be so bad.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” I gave my friend an encouraging smile. “I’m glad to see you’re taking the news so well, Dooley.”

And he was. Once upon a time he’d been the one to get all in a tizzy over the news that Odelia might be having a baby.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Max, it is that Odelia is very fond of us, and so is Chase, so I don’t think she’d ever kick us out, whatever Harriet and Brutus think.”

“No, you’re absolutely right. They wouldn’t kick us out. Baby or no baby. And for what it’s worth—I don’t think there even is a baby. Otherwise Odelia would have told us.”

We had returned to the bedroom Scott had shared with Todd, and Dooley sighed.“Poor kid.”

“And poor Rosa. Not only did she lose a husband, now she’s losing a son.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and moments later Chase arrived, along with Odelia, and followed by Scott. Scott showed them the bedroom, and said,“Todd often stayed over, so when he called me and asked if he could spend the weekend, I figured his mom knew.”

“He didn’t mention that he hadn’t told her?” Odelia asked.

“No, he didn’t. Though he did look tense when he arrived.”

“Tense, how?” asked Chase.

“Well, Todd has never been the life and soul of the party. He’s always been this serious kid, you know. But now he was even more quiet than usual.”