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“Do you have any idea why he decided to stay with Scott, Aisha?” asked Odelia.

Aisha shrugged, but didn’t look up.

“Aisha?” asked Rosa, alarmed.

“Well, the thing is that Todd had a girlfriend,” said Aisha, “and I think he wanted to spend more time with her than with us.”

“Girlfriend?” asked Rosa, who looked greatly surprised by this. “What girlfriend? He never said anything about a girlfriend.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” said Aisha. “You would just have told him he couldn’t see her anymore, not until his grades improved.”

“Who was the girlfriend, Aisha?” asked Chase gently.

“Scott’s sister. Layla,” said Aisha, her eyes still fixed on the carpet.

Odelia and Chase shared a look of surprise, and so did Rosa and Tilton.

“Scott didn’t approve, though, so Todd and Layla tried to keep a low profile. Which is why they hadn’t told anybody, not even me. I caught him texting her one night, so that’s how I found out. I confronted him about the text, and so he told me the whole story.”

“Scott didn’t approve of his sister dating his best friend?” asked Odelia.

“No, he thought it was creepy that his sister would get involved with Todd.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me why. I thought he would have been happy, but Todd said he freaked out. So they told him they’d broken up, just to make him calm down.”

“But they hadn’t?”

Aisha shook her head.“As far as I know they were still seeing each other, only they were making sure that Scott didn’t find out this time.”

“That must have been tough on Todd,” said Odelia.

“Yeah, well, he seemed to handle it just fine.”

“Would you happen to know where Todd’s phone is, Aisha?” asked Chase.

Rosa was surprised.“He didn’t have it with him?”

“We haven’t found it yet,” said Odelia.

“Maybe it’s in his room,” Tilton suggested.

Aisha got up.“I’ll go check,” she said, and quickly disappeared.

“Todd never told me he was dating Layla Walcott,” said Rosa. She looked to her husband. “Why didn’t he tell us, Tilton?”

“Because he was a teenager, honey. Boys Todd’s age don’t confide in their parents, especially about the girls they like.”

“But Todd never kept any secrets from me before—he knew he could tell me everything. Always.”

“I think it’s not unusual for kids not to tell their mother about the girl they’re dating, Rosa,” Odelia said softly.

She nodded, tears trickling down her cheeks.“He could have told me. He knew I would have listened.”

Aisha entered the room again and shook her head.“It’s not in his room. I checked.”

“I’m sure we’ll find it,” said Chase.

Chapter 22

I would like to say that Odelia and Chase went full steam ahead with their investigation into Todd’s death, but they both looked pretty bushed, and that was only to be expected. It had of course been a long night for them, and they hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. Still, they had a job to do, so onward they went, with me and Dooley in tow.

Harriet and Brutus had opted to stay home and engage in one more valiant attempt to teach Scarlett the finer points of the feline language. Though I could see that their initial excitement had already waned to a great degree. I think the experience had instilled in them a newfound respect for the teaching profession, though. Imagine how hard it must be to teach a group of young ruffians the finer points of algebra, math, or grammar?

I was glad I was out and about, instead of being cooped up inside, acting as a private tutor to Scarlett. And so when we arrived at the house where Todd Bond had drowned last night, I was ready for any fate, and to discover what could possibly have gone wrong that this young man had met such an untimely death.

In the drive over, Chase and Odelia had offered all kinds of theories as to what could have happened, but none of them seemed satisfactory in explaining the tragedy that had befallen the Bond family.

The first person we talked to was Layla Walcott. The girl still looked properly impressed by what had happened, but she was composed enough to answer our questions with dignity and honesty—or at least I hoped she was. One never knows if people are telling the truth, of course, and a feline lie detector, unfortunately, I am not.

Still, there is a great deal one can glean from facial expressions, mannerisms and tone of voice, and Layla struck me as fundamentally cooperative.

“Yes, Todd and I dated for a while,” she admitted. “But we broke up about a month ago, which made his staying here pretty awkward, I can tell you.”

We were sitting out on the terrace, even though this was the place where the tragedy had occurred. But the crime scene people had done their jobs, and nothing about the swimming pool area gave any indication of the drama that had taken place there the night before.

“You broke up?” asked Odelia.

Layla nodded. She was dressed in a light summer dress, and if she was bowled over by the death of her former boyfriend she didn’t look it. No Romeo and Juliet scenario here. “Yeah, we both agreed it was too weird, with my brother being his best friend.”

“Your brother knew about it?”