Chapter 67
LILY-ANN
Every one of Lily-Ann’s therapists had agreed that scouring the house was a coping mechanism. Of course it was, she knew that; it’s why she did it. Coping mechanisms helped her cope, hence the name. Also, she ended up with a cleaner house.
She knelt in the shower, sprinkling baking soda on a rust stain she’d dampened with vinegar.
When she started scrubbing, a lock of her hair dangled in front of her face, and she felt a too-sharp stab of annoyance.
She took a slow breath. Her irritation wasn’t about her hair.
Her irritation wasn’t even about CJ’s disappearance.
What infuriated her was that she’d spent weeks sketching mental pictures of this shifting, cluttered puzzle of a crime.
Then Sunny Wheeler showed up dead and CJ stepped completely off the board, leaving everything newly unresolved.
“Fine,” she said.
When she finished wiping down the baseboards, she poured herself a glass of local rosé from Cote of Paint, then settled on the couch and opened her laptop.
Better to focus on the possible. She didn’t know how to track a missing person, and she expected that was one of the few things the police did well.
So instead, she’d put together the edges of the puzzle by disentangling the deaths of Frank DeYoung and Sunny Wheeler.
From there she’d work her way inward.
She’d keep the others busy, too, so they’d stop focusing on Mrs. B losing the Marigold Cottages. Once the puzzle’s full picture took shape, she’d know why CJ had fled.
And that would reveal how to find her.