Page 109 of Murder on Charity Lane

4) Was Pax having an affair with anyone?

5) C’mon, he’s hot and this is a bunch of rich people! Surely, they were sleeping around.

“Now CJ,” Lily-Ann said.

“We can’t write down our doubts about CJ,” I told her. “She’ll be here any minute.”

“She can answer them when she arrives.”

“Uh, no. Suspecting her of murder is insulting. For her and—” I glanced at Ocean. “—and maybe Mrs. B.”

“Ah,” Lily-Ann said, and I could tell she wanted to ask why that mattered but she didn’t. “So with CJ, we’re wondering about the bag of cash and the homicidal web searching.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds bad,” I said, and decided not to mention my suspicions about ice cubes.

Lily-Ann cleared her throat, then told Hamilton to start listing the more pressing items.

THE BIG QUESTIONS

1) What if several guests worked together to kill Frank?

2) Did Karina want to remodel the mansion so much that she killed her husband? Why else would she want to get her hands on the money immediately?

3) Was the liquor bottle rigged to fall? If not, did the accident lead to a crime of opportunity?

4) Karina happened to discover the bag of cash? Suspicious timing. What was purpose of cash?

5) What led Sunny Wheeler to “suddenly” remember seeing CJ push Frank? What does he gain from his testimony?

6) Frank bailed Sunny out of a scandal? What exactly happened? Is Sunny hiding something? Did Frank know his secret?

“So Sunny Wheeler is our second priority,” Lily-Ann said, as Hamilton wrote. “Or he’s tied for second with Karina, but the grieving widow is difficult to question.”

“We can corner her at the memorial service,” Hamilton said.

“There’s a memorial service?” Lily-Ann asked.

“Of course there’s a memorial service,” I told her. “And we are not cornering her there.”

“Maybe ‘cornering’ was the wrong word,” Hamilton said.

“Questioning?” Lily-Ann suggested.

Nicholas nodded. “Sure, everyone loves uninvited guests questioning the widow at a funeral.”

“Fine,” Hamilton said. “I’ll cross the memorial service off my list.”

“Why?” Lily-Ann asked.

I didn’t want him to encourage her to crash the memorial service, so I said, “If Sunny and Karina are the second priority, who’s the first?”

“CJ,” Lily-Ann told me. “We need to agree what to ask her before she gets here.”

“Shouldn’t we brainstorm that with Mrs. B?” I asked. “It’s her property on the line.”

“God, no,” Ocean said. “She’ll ask any old nonsense, like she did at the dermatologist.”

“Would you stop dropping hints about that?” I demanded. “What did she do?”