Page 144 of Murder on Charity Lane

Oh, and they found CJ’s

cell phone. On an unhoused guy

outside the Art Museum.

Ocean

Oh. No.

Anthony

Not sure that that means.

What

Hamilton

Some homeless guy found

her phone.

Anthony

What what means

WHAT THAT MEANS

Lily-Ann

She abandoned her phone.

Or someone abandoned it for her.

“Mostly people don’t know what they want,” Jane was telling Nicholas. “Especially rich men. George Kagant wants whatever his wife, Helene, tells him to want. Sunny Wheeler thinks he wants eternal life but he really wants meaning in his meaningless life.”

I grimaced, but didn’t tell her that his meaningless life was over.

“What about Frank?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly, her first hint of real emotion. “He was as lost as the rest of them.”

70

OCEAN

Ocean stood in front of her unfinished painting, trying to focus on it instead of on CJ’s disappearance—but all she saw were flaws. She liked the excessive glossiness and specificity of the hedge, yet her attempt to suggest what the hedge concealed still escaped her.

“I mean, it’s just a shrub,” she told Riley, whom she’d dragged from her lair for a second opinion.

Riley wrinkled her nose. “You’re trying to show what the viewer can’t see?”

“Yeah. To evoke a feeling that is sort of subtextual.”

“What do you think is behind the hedge?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Maybe that’s the problem.” Riley tilted her head. “How come you’re painting on metal?”