Page 125 of Murder on Charity Lane

“You happen to have that memorized?”

She finally smiled. “My mother painted it on my bedroom wall as a kid. My father painted, ‘If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.’”

“I had Charlie Brown wallpaper,” Vernon told her. “How about you, Anthony?”

“I didn’t have wallpaper.”

“Uh-huh,” Vernon said. “So is there anything either of you want to tell me about CJ Moore?”

Ocean wiped her hands on her apron again. “I’m sorry to tell you she’s exactly what she looks like. I know that doesn’t help, but she’s one of the good ones, Detective. She loved Frank. She devoted her entire adult life to him. There just isn’t more to her than that. I like her.”

“Fair enough.” Vernon sidestepped the studio clutter toward Ocean’s sculpture platform. As he got closer, the mound of gritty brown clay resolved into shapes. Its surface was choppy, roughed by one of her tools, but the planes and curves of a man’s back emerged from the chaos.

“Damn, you’re good,” he said.

Ocean spritzed the clay with a spray bottle. “I didn’t take you for an art lover.”

“No, but I can appreciate skill.” He touched a dab of gritty clay on the corner of the platform. “From where I’m sitting, the investigation looks done. But you and your friends have a gift for un-finishing things. So ask around, would you? See what Lily-Ann Novak knows, what Mrs. B feels in her bones. You’re the only one here with any common sense.”

She tilted her head in surprise. “Me?”

“You’d make a good cop.”

“Jesus, Enible.”

“Talk about a low blow,” Anthony added.

That made Vernon laugh. “Just ask around, would you?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

“Break’s over,” Ocean said. “You can let yourself out, Detective.”

“You’re not going to ask me to model?” he said.

Her gaze sharpened on him as she seemed to consider the suggestion.

“Okay, okay!” he said, heading for the gate. “I’m going!”

58

OCEAN

“Anybody home?” Mrs. B asked, opening the front door of Ocean’s cottage.

“In the kitchen!” Ocean called back.

With a jingle of silver bracelets, Mrs. B appeared in the doorway. “So, nu?”

“Nu what?” she asked, scrubbing the clay from under her fingernails at the sink. She’d spent twenty years thinking that Mrs. B was saying “new” before she realized she was saying the Yiddish “nu,” which she still couldn’t quite translate. Something like what’s up?

“I heard the detective talking to you,” Mrs. B said.

“Where were you?”

“In your living room. The window was open.”