Chapter 71
LILY-ANN
Lily-Ann felt a spark of satisfaction every time she introduced Anthony to something new.
She’d never shared her enthusiasms with Piotr, her ex-husband, because he’d mocked or belittled them, but Anthony thrilled to every discovery.
And he’d missed a shocking number of basic experiences.
He’d never eaten lamb or sushi or gazpacho.
He’d never ridden a horse—or been on a plane—and he’d never even left California.
So she bought a rack of lamb home for dinner. She placed it on the cutting board, and when she reached for her boning knife, an idea occurred to her. Using butcher’s twine, she tied the rack into a loose cylinder, which she balanced vertically on the board.
Then she slid a chef’s knife from the block and imagined herself in the rear seat of a car. Holding the knife, reaching around the headrest to slice the rack like a neck. Aiming for the jugular. A vertical stroke? Would that really increase the amount of blood?
She brought the knife thoughtfully forward, then switched her grip and tried again.
The rack was nothing like a neck. She couldn’t even picture the killing blow, yet she felt confident that it would require precision or experience.
Perhaps not surgical precision, but basic knowledge.
She certainly wouldn’t know how to cause a wound like that.
So who would? Hunters might, if they field-dressed deer or—
Her phone rang and she answered hands-free.
“Hey, Lily-Ann!” Sophie said, her voice filling the kitchen. “You saw we had the meeting with Jane?”
She untied her rack of lamb. “You think she’s involved with Sunny Wheeler’s life-extension business.”
“It’s possible, I don’t know. Just a thought. I called to tell you what she said before we forget.”
Sophie relayed the conversation almost verbatim.
Her memory for dialogue was close to perfect, possibly because of her passion for playwriting.
She even gave Nicholas and Jane different intonations.
As Lily-Ann listened she thought about awards and marriages and murders.
What connected Frank to Sunny besides friendship?
What could lead a killer to target them both?
“Losing the Millerbrandt Award pissed Jane off,” Sophie said. “But it’s not a motive for anything.”
Lily-Ann started stripping thyme leaves from the stalks. “Why not?”
“She’s too full of herself. She knows she deserved the award, so there’s…
” She paused. “Riley just texted me. Shit. She sent a photo. She stole a key and searched CJ’s cottage.
She found a note CJ wrote. I’ll forward the file, hold on.
The note says, ‘I’m so sorry. Guilt is a nightmare. I can’t continue.’”
“Well, that sounds incriminating,” Lily-Ann said, and her phone buzzed. “Wait, I just got it.”
“Riley’s afraid to tell her mom.”
Pinch-zooming her screen, she inspected the handwritten note. Ten words on a sliver of awkwardly ripped notebook paper. “Huh. Brief.”
“I’m not sure there’s a minimum length for suicide notes, Lily-Ann.”
“Messy, too.”
“Riley is freaking out. Hold on. Uh, she says she went downtown to avoid her mom. She wants us to tell her.”
“Hm,” Lily-Ann said, then finished stripping the thyme.
After ten or fifteen seconds of silence, Sophie said, “Lily-Ann?”
“Text her that I’ll take care of it. Then call her, don’t text, and tell her that she was actually in CJ’s cottage to feed the birds. That’s when she happened to see the note.”
“Oh, okay. And what are you going to do?”
“Think.”
“Shouldn’t we tell the cops?”
“I’ll handle that. Wait a moment.” Lily-Ann texted, Tell Riley she doesn’t need to do anything. You don’t either. I’ll pass this along to the police. “There.”
“Okay, uh. And are you going to pass it along?”
“That depends on what I think.”
Sophie wheedled for more assurances, but she didn’t give them.
She said goodbye, then trimmed the rack into chops.
She started dry-brining them with thyme, rosemary, and garlic, as she considered CJ’s note.
It struck her as sloppy, though you probably shouldn’t judge the literary merits of suicide notes.
The handwriting looked like CJ’s, but the notepaper was torn at an ungainly angle. That offended Lily-Ann’s sense of propriety. On the other hand, one might tremble while writing a suicide note, or—
A knock sounded at the front door. Not a normal knock, a childish rat-a-tat-tat-tat-rat-a-tat. For a moment, Lily-Ann expected that Riley wanted to talk about snooping in CJ’s cottage, then she recalled that particular knock belonged to Ocean’s other kid.
She called for Miles to enter, and he burst into the kitchen and said, “Are you ready?”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“School’s been out for like an hour, Lily-Ann! Oma said you were waiting for me.”
“Did she?”
Miles hopped happily. “So can we go now? Please? Please please please?”
“Where exactly are we going?”
His little face glowed with hope. “You said you’d take me to the animal shelter to look at cats for Hamilton.”
Ah. She’d planned on bringing both Miles and Anthony, because watching them together pleased her. Of course, she hadn’t planned on visiting the shelter today. Still, she needed time to think, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to keep her body busy as her mind worked.
“Then that’s exactly what I’ll do,” she assured Miles.
“How come you’re not a vegetarian?” he asked, then peered at the counter. “What is that? Is that oregano?”
“It’s thyme.”
“That’s a lot of garlic. Oma says you can’t have too much garlic but Riley says that depends on your breath. She once told me a story about a dragon with garlic breath instead of fire breath.”
He didn’t stop chattering as she shepherded him into her Volvo and then merged onto 101 north.
His voice receded into white noise while she considered the investigation.
Sometimes you needed to look at the big picture without focusing on individual pieces.
Miles was describing cat videos and she was considering George Kagant’s background in medical equipment when she finally parked at the cat shelter.
She escorted Miles inside. The shelter smelled of disinfectant, which Lily-Ann found reassuring. She signed in, sanitized her hands, sanitized Miles’s hands, then stepped into a warm room with rows of neat wire cages and the occasional meow.
Miles swept his phone along the cages as he FaceTimed Hamilton, showing him the cats. “How about a kitten? Oh, there are two in this one. The lady said you should think about adopting two; it’s no more work than one and it’s a … What does Mrs. B call it, when you do something good?”
“A good deed?” Hamilton asked from the phone.
“No, like a matzoh.” Miles panned to the next cage. “Ooh, look at these two gray girls!”
As Lily-Ann trailed after him, a volunteer with long, untidy hair pointed her to another cage. “That’s Cali Berry. She’s nine, I’d love to find her a home.”
Lily-Ann considered the skinny tabby half-covered by a fleece baby blanket. “What happens if you don’t?”
“We’ll keep her until we do.”
“You never resort to euthanasia?”
“We’re a no-kill shelter. We only put a cat to sleep if they’re in distress.” The volunteer adjusted her glasses. “And they know when it’s time. I like to think that they tell us. When there’s nothing left for them but discomfort, we—”
Miles popped around the corner and asked the volunteer, “Are the gray girls sisters?”
“Hm? Oh, no, they’re not. They do look like twins, though, don’t they?”
“Identical twins!” Miles said. “What do you think, Lily-Ann?”
“I’d expect cats of the same color to look similar.”
“No, I mean do you think one of them is right for Hamilton?”
Lily-Ann’s breath caught. Ideas slotted together like figures in a spreadsheet and she said, “I know who killed them—and why.”
“Not the cats!” Miles assured the volunteer. “She doesn’t mean the cats.” He resolutely ushered Lily-Ann toward the door. “We’ll come back another time, thanks.”