"Nana June?—"
"We should go." Her grandmother’s words were said firmly. "We'll be late for church if we don't get moving."
Church. Sara Lee had completely forgotten about church. The idea of sitting in a pew, singing hymns, and listening to Pastor Pete's sermon felt surreal after finding a dead body.
But Nana June was already walking toward home, Pippi trotting beside her, and Sara Lee found herselffollowing automatically. Carl fell into step beside her, his presence steadying.
"Are you really okay?" he asked quietly.
She dragged in a ragged breath. "I saw a dead man this morning. I don't think okay is the right word." Her voice came out sharper than she intended, and her shoulders slumped. "I’m sorry. I'm just?—"
"You don't have to apologize. That was awful, finding him like that." Carl's hand brushed hers, brief and supportive. "Do you want me to stay with you?"
The offer touched her more than it should have. "No, I'll be okay. We’ll drop off Pippi and then head to church. Nana June is right. Keeping to routine will help."
They walked in silence for a block. Then Sara Lee whispered, "She thinks it wasn't an accident."
"What?"
"Nana June. She thinks Raymond's death wasn't an accident."
Carl glanced back toward the park, where Sheriff Gordon and Ted still worked. "The Sheriff said alcohol poisoning."
"I know what he said. But she… she picks up on things… notices things that most of us miss." Sara Lee shook her head. "She reads mystery novels. She knows what to look for."
"Sara Lee, this is real life, not a book. People die from drinking too much. It happens."
"I know that. But—" She stopped, frustrated because she couldn't articulate what bothered her. It’s just a feeling… just the way Nana June looked at that scene, the way she shook her head.
They reached the Victorian house, and Carl squeezed her hand once again. "I'll see you at church?"
"Yeah. See you there."
Inside, she changed into fresh clothes. Her bright sundress now seemed wrong after what they'd witnessed. She pulled on a simple navy dress instead. In the mirror, her face looked pale, her eyes too large.
She'd never seen a dead body before.
The thought kept circling. She'd read dozens of mysteries where bodies were discovered, where amateur sleuths stumbled over corpses and immediately started investigating. Or where the police collected evidence and sent it off to be analyzed for DNA that miraculously was given before the end of the chapter. But this was real. Raymond was alive yesterday, mean and drunk and cruel, but alive.
And now he was just... gone.
Sara Lee pressed her palms against the bathroom counter, taking slow breaths. This was what death looked like. This was what murder looked like if Nana June was right.
Murder.
The word felt too big, too impossible for Meadowlark Creek.
But as Sara Lee went downstairs to meet her grandmother for church, she couldn't shake the memory of Diane's terrified face when Raymond confronted her. Couldn't forget Lucy throwing lemonade at him, Helenalooking sick, Jerry's sneer, all the small cruelties Raymond had inflicted.
Someone at the festival yesterday hated him enough to kill him.
Or Sara Lee's imagination was running wild, and the sheriff was right about a drunk man who'd finally pushed his body too far.
She wanted to believe that. She really did.
But when she looked at Nana June, already waiting by the door with her purse, she saw the same sharp intelligence in her grandmother's eyes that she'd seen at the crime scene.
Nana June knew something. Suspected something. And suddenly it hit Sara Lee… if her grandmother was going to start searching for the reason Raymond was dead, Sara Lee wasn’t about to let her grandmother go it alone.
