Chapter 76
SOPHIE
When I heard Mrs. B calling from above, I felt almost faint with relief. She was okay, everything was okay.
Nicholas and I climbed a set of exterior stairs to a second-floor deck that stretched halfway across the house.
Chairs clustered around a faux firepit that must’ve provided heat on cold evenings, and a bunch of furled umbrellas rested against a tiki bar.
From the deck, the ocean view was even more spectacular, and Mrs. B seemed to be enjoying the vista as she stood with Ocean and Helene and George Kagant, in all their Beard and Bird glory.
Though what the hell were they doing here? What was going on?
“Sophie!” Helene chirped. “Your play is wonderful!”
George’s beard shifted when he smiled. “Oh, this is perfect. We wanted to meet the entire Marigold crew.”
“Yeah, uh, perfect,” I said, trying to sound more cheerful than panicked.
Mrs. B rattled her bracelets happily. “You may be wondering why I asked you all here.”
“The old bat reached out to each of us separately,” Ocean told me, “pretending she was stranded here. This is her big idea. Gather everyone together, like in a goddamn movie, and get to the bottom of things.”
“You called George and Helene?” I asked. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t have their number.” Mrs. B had clearly dressed for the denouement, in a black-and-silver art deco caftan.
She might as well have had a cigarette holder in one hand.
“They dropped in to see Karina, but she’s busy getting a massage.
Every day at four-thirty since Frank died, that’s what Jane told you, remember? ”
“We mentioned that to you?” I asked.
“Nicholas did, and I filed it away. Say what you will, I still have a mind like a steel colander. Oh! Then George and Helene spotted me skulking, though I don’t know how. I was fully enskulked at the time.”
“You were napping on the lounge chair,” George said.
“In any case!” Mrs. B gestured toward the house. “If we speak to Karina together, as a group, I’m sure we can figure this out. We need to find CJ. Lily-Ann will know what to— Where is Lily-Ann?”
Ocean looked behind herself. “Huh. No idea.”
“Well! We can brainstorm without her. Sophie?”
I blinked at Mrs. B. “Yes?”
“You start. You’re the creative one.”
“Uh…” I wanted to slink away, but George and Helene seemed happy to chat, which made this feel less like trespassing.
Also, I wanted to impress them. “Well, we’re still struggling with the same problem, right?
Which is that Karina says she saw CJ push Frank.
So there’s an eyewitness. Two eyewitnesses, with Sunny Wheeler. And, um, uh…”
Nicholas saved me. “How would you analyze this in terms of a dramatic narrative?”
“Oh!” Helene tilted her head, looking even more birdlike. “Is that part of your process? We know your previous project was based on true crime.”
George stroked his beard. “If you were writing this, which facts would you focus on?”
“The trivial ones,” I told him. “Like, uh, the bruises on Frank’s back, the Trader Joe’s bag. Hm. For a play I might turn Jane into Karina’s older sister.”
Helene gave a little laugh. “Oh, she’d hate that.”
“What else?” George asked me.
I almost launched into my suspicions about ice cubes, but Mrs. B spoke first: “There’s that broken liquor bottle, providing a distraction.”
Nicholas prompted me again. “What about Sunny Wheeler’s murder? Is that related, or sheer unsatisfying coincidence?”
“Well, it definitely can’t be a coincidence in my play,” I told him, suddenly considering writing an outline.
“In real life,” Ocean said, her mouth turning down, “Sunny was murdered because of his company. That’s why he was killed so bloodily.”
“That sounds plausibly dramatic,” George said, getting into it. “I wonder if we need more characters.”
“What about Karina?” Mrs. B asked. “That’s why I invited you all here. We need to confront her.”
“How exactly is that supposed to work?” Ocean demanded.
Mrs. B made a face. “With Lily-Ann. She’s the—”
Then the French door slammed open and Karina stormed onto the deck.