Page 138 of Murder on Charity Lane

That stopped Ocean. It stopped me, too. She was talking about how her ex-husband had attacked her with a claw hammer. Not thirty feet from where she was sitting right now. I hadn’t realized that Piotr’s attack still affected Lily-Ann, which was horrible of me. Of course she hadn’t shrugged off a murderous assault from a man she’d thought she loved.

Yet I’d simply thought, Oh, Lily-Ann is so tough and cold and impenetrable, she’s probably fine. That wasn’t okay. I needed to be a better friend to her, and I saw the same realization in Ocean’s face. Hamilton, on the other hand, focused on pouring himself another kombucha. At least Anthony shifted on the couch until his knee touched Lily-Ann’s thigh.

She didn’t flinch away.

“So we need to talk to CJ,” I said. “And ask about her alibi.”

Ocean nodded. “Okay, fine. If this stabbing gives her, um, reasonable doubt because she was elsewhere? Then our job is done.”

“If her alibi is strong,” Lily-Ann said, “the police will still claim she pushed Frank DeYoung. They’ll just say that, in an unrelated incident, another assailant stabbed Sunny Wheeler.”

Ocean hesitated. “You think?”

“Yes,” Anthony said.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Lily-Ann closed her laptop. “If the police want to disentangle the two investigations, we should attempt to braid them more tightly together. Like you said, reasonable doubt about CJ’s guilt is easy to raise if there’s a murderer running around, targeting another guy at the same party.”

“For all we know,” I said, “the killer was after Sunny, and Frank just got in the way.”

“Excellent point.” Lily-Ann opened her laptop again. “I’ll add that to the—”

The door burst open and Nicholas strode inside, his eyes wild. “She’s gone.”

“Oh, no!” Hamilton said. “That’s terrible! Who?”

“CJ! She didn’t check in with the cops, she’s supposed to check in every—” He turned to focus on Mrs. B. “They can’t find her. She didn’t come home. She’s gone.”

“Fuck,” Mrs. B said.

63

OCEAN

Now there was no choice. Not anymore. Forget about Ocean’s personal feelings, the Murder Collective had to find CJ before the kids lost their home.

After Nicholas shared what he’d heard from the cops outside CJ’s cottage, Ocean tried to believe that she was simply away from home, not missing. Surely, people sometimes blew off a little too much steam, given the stress of the legal system. Not that CJ was given to binges, but a missed check-in was no reason to panic.

Except she’d spent her entire adult life organizing calendars and scheduling appointments. There was no way she’d forgotten her legal obligations in the bottom of a bottle. Especially because she cared about the Cottages. She cared about Mrs. B and … and about Ocean, too. She wouldn’t simply vanish.

Ocean almost managed to reassure herself, but for Mrs. B’s faltering voice and trembling lips. She couldn’t lose the Marigold Cottages. They were her life. Frankly, Ocean worried she wouldn’t survive it.

So she settled Mrs. B onto her couch and draped the rainbow crocheted blanket over her lap. She poured her an overly sweet old-fashioned, then went into the kitchen to make buttered noodles with Parmesan—Mrs. B’s comfort food.

After she set the plates on the dining room table, Mrs. B clutched her wrist. “I’m sorry. I should’ve listened to you.”

“Now that is an evergreen lesson,” Ocean said, and kissed the top of her white head.

“How could I be so stupid?”

“You’re not stupid, Golda. Your fatal flaw is that you’re so good you expect everyone else to be the same. You’re the best person I know.”

Mrs. B showed her a sniffling smile. “Well, there’s Miles.”

“True, but he’s still young. He has decades to disappoint me.”

Her smile crumpled. “Just like I have. What if you need to move? Oh, Ocean. What about Hamilton? Nicholas and Sophie just moved in together! I need to make this right.”