Murder on Charity Lane (Marigold Cottages Mysteries #2)
Chapter 1
MRS. B
Wednesday morning found Mrs. B of Marigold Cottages at her kitchen table, filling her weekly pill organizer.
She ticked in the white ovals, the peach oblongs, the pink circles, then the golden flaxseed that Ocean insisted she take.
Finally, she added the squooshy vitamin Ds, which delighted her for some reason.
She enjoyed the process in a juvenile way, like a toddler with a match-the-shapes toy.
Of course, when you got older, young people tended to treat you as a child whether you liked it or not.
Mrs. B kept her edibles in a different case, the embroidered Peruvian pouch that her husband had brought back from a business trip.
She adored shopping in the marijuana dispensaries that had sprung up around Santa Barbara like, well, psychedelic mushrooms after a purple rain.
The clerks loved a woman of her age asking about pot gummies, and their surprised pleasure amused her.
She closed the pill bottles, then said, “Oh, shit,” because she was trying to swear more often. At her age, you needed to try new things.
“What’s wrong?” Ocean asked, from the stove.
“Nothing, just practicing.”
Ocean glanced at her. “You just took them.”
“I know that!” she said, though actually she’d forgotten if she’d taken her pills before she filled the organizer.
When she thought back, she distinctly remembered swallowing them—but she didn’t distinctly remember when. She wouldn’t admit that to Ocean, though. Ocean was like a daughter to her, which meant she wasn’t obliged to tell the actual truth, just the emotional truth.
“I was just thinking about my Little Free Library.” She snapped a pill compartment closed for emphasis. “I haven’t added new books in weeks.”
Ocean ignored her and added beans to the chili simmering on the stove.
Her own range was acting up so she borrowed Mrs. B’s every day or two to make dinner for her kids—though she’d leave an extra bowl on the counter, naturally.
Mrs. B looked forward to it as she went into the foyer to rummage for books.
She’d asked the other tenants for copies of recent favorites, and had them stacked on the sideboard.
She put three of them in her mesh bag along with a few rags, then headed outside and surveyed the property.
Her haven and her heart. Six cottages encircled the drought-resistant courtyard of gravel paths, decorated with succulents, lavender, and puffy white fountain grass.
The petunias in the clay pots were beginning to look ragged, though.
Time to replace them with marigolds for the fall.
She’d send Anthony to the nursery. He didn’t know the first thing about flowers, but he appreciated when she asked him to learn.
As she walked down the steps to the sidewalk, a raven watched from the roof of her Little Free Library.
“Just a few new books,” she told the raven. “There’s no Poe, I’m afraid. Or are you a crow? I never can tell.”
The bird took flight, soaring above the parked cars before landing in a sycamore down the block.
Her street library looked like a two-story dollhouse version of one of the Cottages.
She cleaned the roof with her rags, then added a picture book called The Baby Who Stayed Awake Forever, which made her laugh, and a couple of fantasy novels.
One was called Asunder and one was called Foul Days.
Hamilton had raved about them, but together the two titles felt a little foreboding.
Or maybe that was just her.
Six months after the murders at Marigold Cottages, life had returned to normal. Which was lovely, of course. Still, a teensy part of her thought back fondly to those terrifying, fascinating days of everyone working together.
Obviously she wasn’t hoping for another death. Of course not! Yet she couldn’t deny that she missed the solidarity and camaraderie of a shared goal—to keep herself and everyone she loved out of jail. She missed the Murder Collective.