“Yes,” Nick said.
Pierce drew a notepad from the file and started taking notes. “Did you ever party there?”
“Of course,” Nick said. “Everybody did during the summer. We all had friends with cabins on Lilac Lake. Most of the kids from Silverville spent summers over here.”
“Even I did,” I hastened to add. My sisters and I attended parties there during the summer, as well. It was very common. “Do you have any more details about the room in which the bodies were found?”
Pierce tugged a picture from the file that showed a square cement room. “Yeah. There was a hidden room in the basement that must have been a place to store canned goods or weapons at one time,” he said. “The excavators didn’t find it last week until they’d taken half the basement out.”
I shivered. I couldn’t believe it. All those times we’d drunk beer and talked about the haunted mansion, wandering through its halls, and there had actually been dead bodies decaying there? “How did they die?”
“Homicide,” Pierce repeated.
I glared at him. Why wasn’t he giving us all the facts?
Nick pressed a finger to the picture and pulled it toward himself. “I believe my attorney just requested the cause of death. Any reason you’re withholding that?”
Pierce watched Nick carefully. “You said you went hunting that weekend.”
“Fishing,” Nick corrected. “Wasn’t hunting season.”
I wondered if Pierce would show us more of the pictures. “Do you have a photo of the bodies?”
Pierce planted a hand on the file folder. “I’m under no obligation to share that at this point, Counselor.”
Fire raced through me. “We’re under no obligation to speak with you, Detective.”
He looked at Nick. “Who do you think could have killed them?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “My dad was a real asshole, and I don’t know much about Imogen, but she didn’t seem to be a very nice person, considering she ran off with the jackass. I’d talk to her husband.”
“Like I said, we’re looking into it. Do you know where your mother was that night?” Pierce asked.
A heat swelled in the room, scalding hot, and I caught my breath.
“My mother would never kill anybody,” Nick ground out. “Don’t even think about going down that road.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Pierce said. “I’ll be talking to her next, as well as to your brothers. Did you like to hunt as a kid as well as fish?”
Nick studied the innocuous blue folder. “Of course. I grew up in northern Idaho,” he returned. “We hunted, we fished, and we did all the outdoor sports you can think of. Why?”
“Did you have a hunting knife?” Pierce asked.
Nick swallowed. “Everybody has a hunting knife in Idaho.”
Awareness ticked through me, prickling the skin on my nape.
Pierce texted something on his phone. “That’s my understanding, yes.”
Nick leaned forward. “Were they stabbed to death?”
“Yes,” Pierce said.
The door opened, and a young female deputy brought in an evidence bag to hand to Pierce. He plunked it on the table. I swallowed at seeing a dirty, blood-encrusted hunting knife. One side of the blade was serrated—perfect for cutting through wood or bone. The other side was razor-sharp, even after all this time, despite the dried blood and muck stuck to it. Through the bag, I could tell that the handle was wood and possibly reinforced with rubber. What a wicked-looking knife.
“This yours?” Pierce asked.
Nick cocked his head and looked at the bag. “I don’t know.”
