Page 107 of Murder on Charity Lane

“Why would I? I’ve searched for senior housing and memory care. I’ve searched if those garlic pills she takes are a scam. I have not, however, searched how to kill her, painlessly or otherwise.”

“Huh,” Lily-Ann said, a little taken aback by the lack of curiosity on display.

“Oh, god.” Sophie gaped at her. “Tell me you haven’t searched how to kill Mrs. B!”

“Not Mrs. B, no. Though I will now.”

“Of course you will.”

“Hamilton and I searched for ways to dispose of a body,” Lily-Ann admitted, “after two of them appeared on the property. We were curious. It’s more difficult than you might imagine.”

“Okay, but CJ isn’t you.” Ocean set her fork down. “What if she actually is guilty? Then she’ll run. And Mrs. B will lose everything.”

“We’ll all lose everything,” Sophie said.

“I don’t think she’s going to run,” Lily-Ann said, trying to allay their fears. “But I’ll admit this puzzle just became much more interesting.”

50

NICHOLAS

To Nicholas’s relief, the monthslong logjam finally broke, and the State Street master plan meeting turned suddenly, shockingly, productive.

“So that’s the quick pitch?” The councilor lowered her glasses and read from her screen. “A pedestrian-friendly city core that connects existing paseos into a vibrant State Street neighborhood with mixed-use buildings and unique tourist appeal.”

“And we’re extending this to the eleven hundred block?” another member asked.

Nicholas said, “From five hundred to twelve hundred.”

“We’re going to piss off a lot of car people,” one of the holdout councilors warned.

Nicholas’s phone buzzed with a text from Sophie, but he didn’t have a chance to respond until he returned to his office an hour later. She told him to expect yet another meeting of the Marigold Cottages Murder Collective when he got home—and asked him to check the county records of all the suspects.

He texted back ha ha, absolutely not, don’t even joke, then he called her.

“In the future,” he said, while searching the databases, “if you want me to break the law you need to tell me using your words, not in an archived digital format.”

“Did you know that Lily-Ann and Hamilton searched how to get rid of a dead body?”

“What?”

“Just out of curiosity, after … Dedrick and Ybarra.”

“Of course I didn’t know, but I’ve never been less surprised.”

When Sophie put him on speaker, he started reading property tax information, building permits, DBAs, and other legal notices. “Huh. Sexy Jane Sheffield owns more property around town than I expected.”

“Can we not call her Sexy Jane?”

“Jezebel Jane?” He frowned at his screen. “Apparently she inherited the properties from one of her late husbands. So maybe that’s worth a second look.”

Sophie didn’t respond, though he heard her chatting with a coworker in the distance.

“Sorry, I’m back,” she said, a few minutes later.

“I found a business license for Pax Heron,” he told her. “DBA Pax Bodywork. What a boring name. If he were a chiropractor it could be, like Pax Cracks. Ooh, Pax Cracks Backs. What’s wrong with Relax with Pax or—?”

“Is there contact info?” Sophie asked.