Page 84 of Murder on Charity Lane

Hamilton fiddled with a button on his short-sleeved shirt. “Reading between the lines of the statement? Because he’s old, in shock, and lost a good friend.”

“And that’s enough to arrest CJ?” Sophie asked.

“Two extremely wealthy, entirely respectable eyewitnesses, plus the bruising?” Hamilton said. “More than enough.”

Ocean rubbed her face. “I sure can pick ’em.”

“What about motive?” Lily-Ann asked.

“I don’t think they’ve gotten that far,” Hamilton told her.

“Could Karina have paid Sunny to back her up?” Ocean asked. “If he has legal problems like my artist friends mentioned, he probably also has money problems.”

“The fifty grand in cash?” Lily-Ann asked. “Did that go to Sunny?”

“No clue,” Hamilton said.

Ocean took a deliberate breath, so slowly that even Lily-Ann realized she was wrestling with her temper. “But why? Why would CJ hurt Frank? She loved him.”

“I don’t know,” Lily-Ann said, returning the dustpan to the closet. “Maybe she doesn’t know either. It doesn’t matter. Two people saw her.”

Sophie made an unhappy noise. “I guess sometimes the most obvious thing is what happened.”

“The most obvious thing is that he fell,” Lily-Ann said, trying to identify the uncomfortable feeling nagging at her.

“Exactly!” Ocean said. “So what we need to investigate is why these pricks are trying to frame her.”

As the others responded, Lily-Ann gazed toward Ocean without seeing her. CJ could’ve killed Frank in any number of ways, at any point in the past or coming year. Even if she was guilty, that didn’t mean she was stupid. Why commit homicide in public, in front of his friends? Well, maybe that was exactly why: so she’d be shielded by the unlikelihood of her actions. Except what about the Amaretto bottle smashing at exactly the right time? Had that been planned?

“Welp,” Ocean said, setting her glass aside and standing. “I better go tell Mrs. B about this new statement.”

Hamilton looked alarmed. “You’re leaving? What about the pizza?”

“I’ll have Nicholas deliver them,” Sophie said, following Ocean to the door.

Lily-Ann watched them go without saying goodbye and ignored Hamilton as he complained about a lonely slice. She gazed at the hedge through the window until she identified that uncomfortable feeling: it was how she felt when she’d almost finished a jigsaw before discovering that it was incomplete.

A piece of the puzzle was missing.

39

SOPHIE

I called Nicholas and told him to drop the pizzas off at various cottages—the veggie for Ocean and her kids, the cheese for Hamilton, the spinaccia for us, and nothing for Lily-Ann because she’d rather eat her own cooking.

“What about Hamilton?” he asked on the phone.

“He gets the cheese,” I repeated.

“No, I mean—he was planning on hosting everyone.”

“Right, but we’re not there anymore.”

“It’s just, Hamilton loves having people over.”

“Are you worried about hurting his feelings?”

“Of course not,” Nicholas grumbled. “A little.”