Chapter 34
LILY-ANN
Lily-Ann was the first to show up at Hamilton’s cottage that evening, as usual. She wanted to ensure everything looked okay while meeting the suspect. Though she should probably think of her as “CJ.” She wasn’t sure how to deal with Ocean dating the suspect, so she decided to ignore it.
Anthony stepped inside wearing the Loro Piana polo she’d given him, and Hamilton cornered him with questions about installing a cat door.
Ocean arrived next, with her kids and Mrs. B.
After saying a vague hello, Riley slumped onto the couch with her phone, while Miles went into Hamilton’s office to enjoy his three-monitor computer setup.
Nicholas came in with a plate of Sophie’s shortbread cookies and a box of bunuelos from a bakery on the Lower Eastside.
Sophie followed, chatting with CJ, who was wearing a prettily cut but all-too-gray top and black pants.
She looked drab, at least from the neck down: her elaborate makeup was on point, as ever.
Lily-Ann wanted to suggest that she wear bolder colors.
Maybe once they knew each other better. Or when CJ wasn’t mourning her dead boss.
“There you are!” Mrs. B glided across the room toward CJ, arms wide, the sleeves of her royal blue caftan billowing.
“Give me a hug! You met everyone, I think, except this is Hamilton, he wants to get a cat, and Ocean’s children, Riley and—where’s Miles?
Oh, he’s in the other room, on the computer. ”
“I met him, already. He told me about Montevideo.”
“He does love his computer games!”
CJ nodded, her eyes sparkling. “Thank you again. I was two weeks away from living in my car.”
“Don’t be silly!” Mrs. B waved a bangled wrist, then addressed everyone. “CJ’s been such a big help at the Y. You can tell so much about a person, can’t you, from what they do for no reason? Or for no reward, I should say. I suppose there’s always a reason, isn’t there? What smells so delicious?”
“Eggplant rollatini,” Hamilton told her. “Which are like marinara rollups. Every food should have a rollup variety. Chili con carne, pizza. Everything.”
“Chili dogs and calzones?” CJ suggested.
“Whoa!” Hamilton rocked back on his heels. “I see why Ocean’s falling for you.”
Lily-Ann caught Ocean throwing a sharp glance at him, but she didn’t respond. She appeared to be avoiding CJ, or perhaps simply giving her space.
“Er, there are drinks in the kitchen,” Hamilton continued. “Kombucha and lemon water and beer, except I forgot the beer.”
“Why do people persist in thinking they can improve upon wine?” Lily-Ann asked, pouring herself a glass of the local Syrah she’d brought along.
“Kombucha is like wine,” Hamilton told her. “Except without grapes. And with a symbiotic bacterial growth and yeast culture in a mat of biofilm.”
“Yum,” Ocean said.
“Who wants a glass?” Hamilton asked, a little forlorn. “Anyone? No?”
“Yes,” Anthony said.
Hamilton brightened and poured a glass of murky liquid, then everyone started chatting and eating and Lily-Ann watched for a moment before joining CJ and Sophie at the table near the window. She listened to them talk about the New Vic, then about how CJ sometimes went to trivia nights.
“You’d like that,” Sophie told Lily-Ann.
Lily-Ann preferred puzzles to facts, so she said, “Hamilton would.”
“I’ll invite him next time,” CJ said.
Sophie made an apologetic face. “That won’t work.”
“Hamilton doesn’t leave the house,” Lily-Ann explained.
CJ stopped mid-sip. “Not ever?”
“Only in case of a medical emergency.”
“Oh, well…” She gave a little smile. “Let’s hope he stays healthy.”
Lily-Ann liked that response. She tapped her fingernail on the table, trying to think of something to say that didn’t involve Frank DeYoung’s death. “Have you had your colors done?”
“I’m sorry?” CJ asked.
“Your colors.”
“Oh, Lily-Ann,” Sophie chided. “Not yet.”
There was an awkward pause before Ocean appeared with Miles in tow. “Hey, CJ, look who’s eager to say hello.”
“Hello!” Miles told CJ. “Also, I didn’t not want to say hello.”
“I dragged him out of a dungeon,” Ocean said.
“It was a feast in the great hall of a castle, Oma.”
“Speaking of feasts,” Sophie stood. “I’m getting more food. Take my seat, Ocean.”
“Are you playing Baldur’s Gate?” CJ asked Miles.
“Ooooh! Are you a gamer? We should start our own guild! There’s me and Hamilton, except he’s already got a guild, and Anthony, except he doesn’t play. He just watches, because he doesn’t like playing, and actually it’s Realm of Rangers.”
“I haven’t tried that one.”
“You should come to game night.”
That sounded like a nightmare to Lily-Ann, but CJ smiled at the offer. Well, maybe not at the offer, but at the sweetness with which it was made. CJ asked Miles what he played and he started babbling about healers and artifacts.
Lily-Ann looked to Ocean for approval about how she’d managed not to ask about Frank DeYoung’s death.
Ocean sketched a little bow of gratitude and refilled her wineglass.
Sophie joined Riley on the couch, and Lily-Ann tuned in to Mrs. B’s story about her frenemy at the YMCA, who criticized her for monopolizing the hair dryer to dry her entire body. “It’s too damp in the locker room to rely on a towel.”
“CJ’s lucky you don’t ask her to towel you dry,” Ocean said.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. B said, and eyed CJ speculatively.
Then Ocean passed around her phone to show off a photograph Riley won an award for at school, which made Riley squirm and Lily-Ann wonder if she preferred photography after all.
Finally, when CJ was halfway through her second glass of wine, Lily-Ann couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to know more about the other guests at the murder scene. “So CJ, how well do you know George and Helene Kagant?”
“Fairly well. They’re lovely.”
“They’re the windshield wiper tycoons?” Nicholas asked.
Sophie nodded. “The ones Angela calls Beard and Bird.”
“Ha!” CJ took another sip of wine. “That’s perfect. They’re great—and trustworthy enough that Frank loaned them money. Helene is the nicest person in the world, and George is dippy for her. Actually, he dated Karina back in the day.”
“Whoa,” Sophie said.
“Long before he met Helene. He was an engineer, she worked at the same place.”
“How did Frank and Karina meet?” Lily-Ann asked.
“I think through George, actually. He invited her to a party at the house, she wowed everyone with her bocce skills.”
Sophie gestured with her fork. “Was she … on the prowl?”
“For a rich husband, you mean?”
“Yeah. Like, if that’s what you’re looking for in a marriage, then you have to wait and wait and wait to buy your yacht, to start remodeling the—”
“We’re not talking about that,” Ocean said, trying to keep the conversation away from murder.
“It’s okay, Ocean,” CJ reassured her. “I don’t mind.”
“I’m pleased to hear that,” Lily-Ann said. “You were telling us about George?”
“Right. Um, he’s clever, funny, a sort of off-kilter intellectual. He needs a Helene, though. A woman who’s smarter than he is but lets him talk. Of course, the difference with George and, say, Sunny, is that George actually knows things.”
“Sunny was Frank’s best friend?” Ocean asked.
“Well, his oldest friend.”
“You don’t like him?” Ocean asked CJ.
She made a face. “Sunny is a lot. But he’s so awful that it comes around to being almost endearing? I don’t know if Frank actually liked him or just loved him. They were more like brothers.”
“Where is his money from?” Lily-Ann asked, angling toward a motive.
“Investments. The story is he hustled his way into a little money young, then spent the last fifty years growing it.”
Nicholas refilled CJ’s wineglass. “He told me about his fake funeral.”
“Yeah. Imagine him bursting out of his casket like a stripper from a cake.”
Sophie made a face. “He’s this old lizard-y bald guy with sunglasses and gold chains.”
“I want a garden party for my funeral,” Mrs. B announced. “Here, in the courtyard, with a soft-serve truck and free tacos. Tons of marigolds obviously. Oh! And churros. Also, egg creams. Does anyone make egg creams anymore?”
“You mean like a Kinder Egg?” Miles asked.
“You’re my Kinder Egg!” she said, kissing the top of his head.
And Sophie said, “Sounds like it’s time for dessert.”
Lily-Ann wanted to keep questioning CJ, but she didn’t want to get the stink eye from Ocean, so she waited until she’d finished the shortbread before asking, “Did you introduce Pax to Frank?”
“Pax is the massage therapist,” Nicholas explained to Mrs. B.
CJ shook her head. “No, Frank heard about him from what he called the ‘raisin vine.’ Which is like the ‘grapevine,’ only more wrinkled.”
Mrs. B hooted. “I like him!”
“Pax almost exclusively works with the elderly. He specializes. Well, it should be special considering he charges three hundred for ninety minutes.”
“Three hundred dollars for an hour and a half?” Riley said, reaching for a second piece of shortbread. “Well, now I have a career goal.”
“If he goes once a week, what is that annually?” Nicholas asked. “Fifteen grand per client?”
“He came four or five times a week,” CJ told him. “Usually four for Frank, once for Karina, and of course he has other clients.”
Nicholas whistled. “Sixty grand a year, at one house. Not bad for nine hours a week.”
“He massaged Karina, too?” Ocean asked, not quite looking at CJ.
“Yeah, she was jealous about the time Frank and Pax spent together. She wanted to get involved.”
“Could they be having an affair?” Riley asked.
“What do you know about affairs?” Miles asked.
“More than you, dingus.”
“Children, please,” Ocean chided.
“Were they having an affair?” Hamilton asked.
“Pax and Karina?” Sophie asked.
“Or Pax and Frank,” Lily-Ann said.
CJ almost spilled her wine. “Oh, god, no! God bless him, Frank was not gay. When I told him I was bi, he thought that meant he needed to refer to me as ‘they.’”
“Ha!” Ocean licked cinnamon off her fingers from the bunuelos Nicholas had brought. “So maybe Pax and Karina?”
“My friend Angela would be so pissed,” Sophie said. “She’s got her eye on Pax.”
CJ wrinkled her nose dubiously. “Maybe. I mean, I’d love to resent Karina for cheating on Frank, but sometimes a massage is just a massage.”
“Pax Heron!” Hamilton said, poking his head in from his office. “He doesn’t have a website, at least not under that name.”
“Not having a website is a flex,” Lily-Ann told him. “It means he’s exclusive.”
CJ brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “He takes clients from word of mouth. He’s got a waiting list. If you know, you know.”
“Dream job,” Riley said.
“You can practice on me, Riley,” Mrs. B told her. “See how much you like raisins.”
Riley tsked. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, Mrs. B. You’re more of a—”
“A prune? Terrible child! Just like your mother!”
“I was going to say ‘a fine wine.’”
“Oh!”
Riley nodded solemnly. “Because you’re always complaining.”
“Zing!” Miles said.
Mrs. B’s laughter rang out so sweetly that everyone else laughed along.
After that, the conversation shifted to the downtown revitalization project and—as always—housing prices.
Which bored Lily-Ann, so she headed into the kitchen to start rinsing dishes.
Hamilton joined her, and twenty minutes later she heard Sophie say, “Welp, you’ve survived your first Marigold Cottages dinner. ”
“I can’t remember enjoying a dinner more,” CJ said.
“If you need anything and Ocean’s gone, feel free to knock on anyone’s door,” Nicholas told her. “Lily-Ann usually works from home, and Hamilton is always here. I like to tease, but he’s a solid guy.”
The last few words carried so clearly into the kitchen that Lily-Ann suspected Nicholas had intended for Hamilton to overhear. And sure enough, Hamilton paused at the dishwasher before he placed the dirty knives in the rack. He didn’t say anything but she could tell he was smiling.