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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
'Superlatives can't do this delightful novel justice. Simply put, it's the most charming, heartfelt, and funniest mystery I've ever read' Katy Hays Mrs B, landlady of the Marigold Cottages, only rents to favoured tenants, and they're an eccentric (read: odd, slightly broken) bunch. There's anxious playwright Sophie, agoraphobe over-sharer Hamilton, single mum and sculptor Ocean, perfectionist Lily-Ann, and the ever-mysterious Nicholas. Life in the cottages is peaceful though, until hulking, fresh-out-of-prison Anthony moves in and a dead body turns up. Anthony is arrested and Mrs B, convinced of his innocence, promptly confesses to the crime herself. Horrified, her tenants band together to clear her name, forming the somewhat haphazard 'Marigold Cottages Murder Collective'. But as they dig deeper and a second body is discovered, further secrets are unearthed. Can this motley collection of amateur sleuths solve the case before one of them becomes the next victim? 'By turns funny, smart, and cozy, fans of Agatha Christie and Kat Ailes will whip through this one' Catherine Mack
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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123
TheMarigold CottagesMURDERCollective
Jo Nichols
4
For Lynn Nichols 56
CONTENTS
1
MRS. B
Friday morning found Mrs B rummaging for fruit among the leaves that engulfed two sides of her cottage. The passion fruit vine intertwined with bougainvillea and trumpet flowers, like a quilt sewn together by an old lady with a needle in one hand and a margarita in the other.
When a thorn pricked her wrist, Mrs B grumbled about her papery skin. Still, she appreciated the contrast of fragile beauty and piercing barbs. You took the sweet with the sharp, didn’t you?
She’d planted the first vines forty years earlier, after her late, reckless, adoring husband had invested an undeserved windfall in the Marigold Cottages, a cluster of units a few blocks from State Street. They’d been built following a long-ago earthquake, and she liked to imagine her fairy circle of cottages sprouting from the rubble. There were six Craftsman-style buildings, with tiny front porches, shingled sides, and multipaned windows.
Mrs B had painted them a matching sage green before she discovered that she was more drawn to diversity than uniformity. Now walls of aubergine and gold, chalk blue and forest green surrounded a drought-friendly, 8desert-scaped courtyard ornamented by oversized ceramic pots decorated with marigolds.
She enjoyed how eclectic her vines were, too. She’d spent years coaxing them into a bright, raucous balance, more of a mediator than a gardener. And she was attempting the same with the tenants who rented the cottages.
Nicholas lived in the biggest unit, with his secrets and his stilted heart. Then there was overeager, off-kilter Hamilton, because who else would care for a middle-aged man afraid to leave his house? Beside him came the indomitable Lily-Ann, who needed someone to love, and the wounded Sophie, who needed someone to protect.
Ocean and her children rented the cottage beside Mrs B’s – Ocean was the daughter Mrs B had dreamed of having, before those dreams dimmed. And last was Anthony, with his criminal past and uncertain future.
People were lovely. If you really talked to them, if you really listened, you couldn’t help but notice. Of course, sometimes the loveliness was as well-hidden as a passion fruit buried in leaf litter – because people weren’t merely lovely, they were also broken.
The world didn’t produce unbroken people. Some people despaired of living in a flawed world, but the thought just made Mrs B want to plant flowers and restock her Little Free Library. Maybe she wasn’t clever enough to feel the despair. She’d considered that. Only briefly, though; who had time for self-doubt when there were hummingbirds to feed?
When she finally found a ripe passion fruit, she almost laughed at its wrinkled skin. So familiar.
The flawed, broken – if not wrinkled – people of the 9Marigold Cottages belonged to her, as surely as she belonged to them. And they needed her help, whether they knew it or not. They were as flawed and foolish as she was – but so young, so absolutely brimming with potential. So she’d ask for their help, and she’d show them how to help each other. That’s what you did for the people you loved.
And, of course, you protected them.
2
SOPHIE
The man was at the bus stop again. A big, hulking man sitting alone on the dark street. Long past midnight, even though I knew that MTD bus service ended at 11.40 p.m.
Yeah, I’d checked.
I wouldn’t normally care about him sitting on the bench outside the Marigold Cottages. Minding his own business, not bothering anyone. It wasn’t like the Upper Eastside was a high-crime neighborhood. Of course, neither was anywhere in town, really.
Santa Barbara was safe. Not that I’d come from a rough area. I grew up in the Bay Area, surrounded by every kind of middle-class privilege. A good high school, a great track coach. Summer camps and family vacations and caring – if overbearing – parents. I’d gotten into my top college choice and thrived in the theatre department, and even with my minor in marketing, until my junior year when everything had gone suddenly, terribly wrong.
Safety was a big reason I’d moved here, but every time 10I went for a run on the hilly streets of the Lower Riviera, I fell in love all over again.
The coastline faced south, not west, and was sheltered by the long, low Channel Islands. The fog of the marine layer kept the mornings cool, then rolled back and opened a curtain on to the most glorious set ever designed. The sun warmed the red tile roofs, and the Courthouse tower and Grenada building stood sentry over the bustling, almost-European downtown adorned with flowering trees, perennials, and palms.
So the area was gorgeous and safe, but the man’s appearance at the bus stop still made my stomach knot.
I wasn’t indulging in hypervigilance, though. I wasn’t. It’s just that I’d already caught the man sitting there the previous week, when I’d come home late after drinking with friends downtown.
Well, when I’d staggered home.
I’d never seen him before then, but he’d given me a look that had been much more than a casual glance of appraisal. More like he’d recognized me. Or expected me to recognize him.
Which felt worse, somehow.
He’d turned away quickly, almost guiltily. And now he’d returned.
It wasn’t my imagination. Not this time. It was the same guy. No doubt about it.
He was impossible to miss: an intimidating slab of muscle with a shaved head and cheap tattoos on his arms, neck, and face. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and looked like an extra I’d cast to play Serbian Thug or Death Row Inmate.
That is, if my job was casting for a production, instead 11of answering phones and organizing fundraisers at the community theatre company.
Anyway, I was right for worrying, because here he was again. And this time he wasn’t alone. At least not for long.
Mrs B tottered from her front door toward him, wearing one of her finest kaftans, midnight blue velvet with gold embroidery. If I ever managed to write this as a play, the costume designer would have a field day with Mrs B’s outfits.
Mrs B was my gossipy, grandmotherly, strategically doddering landlady who charged a (probably illegal) sliding scale for rent. Dream casting: Judi Dench. When Ocean, the artist who lived across from me with her kids, lost one of her teaching jobs, Mrs B had requested a Protect Trans Kids painting in lieu of rent. Last month, she’d baked Lily-Ann a birthday cake decorated like a sunflower … and Lily-Ann was not a sunflower. She was more of a magnificent, well-rooted magnolia tree, but Mrs B still saw the sunshine in her. Mrs B escorted Hamilton, the older guy who was terrified of leaving his cottage, to emergency dental appointments. She chatted to crows ‘just in case,’ and gave dog treats to the UPS driver to distribute on his route.
In short, Mrs B was an eccentric, beneficent fairy. So when I saw her wandering toward the Serbian Thug in the middle of the night, I grabbed my phone and followed.
I stopped at the mailboxes fifteen feet away and pretended to check my mail while Mrs B sat next to the man at the bus stop. Like directly beside him, absolutely inside his personal space.
The man frowned at the top of her white pixie cut. 12Then he frowned toward the Cottages.
‘My first lover had a tattoo,’ Mrs B told him.
Which was a strong opening line for the play I dreamed of writing, but maybe not the best thing to say to a scary man at a bus stop.
The man didn’t give his line. He just watched her.
‘He was in the Merchant Marine,’ Mrs B prompted.
The man grunted.
‘He had two tattoos. A heart and an anchor. That’s nothing these days, but back then it was a little shocking.’
I started filming, just in case. When I zoomed in on the man, my phone caught details of the tattoo of an angel’s wing on his throat. The feathers became flames behind his ear. As he turned to listen to Mrs B, a sloppier tattoo came into sight on his cheekbone: it said jewels, except the Wlooked a little like breasts.
Which was a bit much, even for my Serbian Thug character.
‘I’m Mrs B,’ she told him. ‘Well, I’m Golda Bakofsky, but everyone calls me Mrs B. And you are?’
‘Anthony. Lambert.’
‘Not ‘Mr L,’ then?’ she inquired, with a burble of laughter in her voice. ‘Well, give it time, you’re still young. Do you have a heart, Anthony?’
‘Depends who you ask,’ he said, his voice a rumble.
‘Ha.’ Mrs B prodded his thick arm with her finger. ‘You know what I mean. A tattoo.’
‘I have three hearts, but no anchor,’ he said, and frowned toward the Cottages again.
Or maybe toward me, like he knew I was recording. I couldn’t tell. My breath came fast and my hands trembled 13and I had to tell myself that this wasn’t anything like What Happened Before.
‘My husband once mentioned me in a speech,’ Mrs B told the man – Anthony – as if they were chatting at a tea party. ‘He said, “After all this time, you still have the eyes of the girl I fell in love with.” So I said, “Yes, in a jar under the bed.”’
Anthony blinked.
‘It was at a fundraising event for organ transplant people. Probably not the place for that particular joke.’
Mrs B tended to blurt out whatever was on her mind, but I wasn’t sure where that had come from. I guess I’d hoped she’d tell the guy to stop loitering at the bus stop and scaring her tenants. Instead she was talking about eyeballs.
‘You live in the front house, right?’ he asked. ‘With all the flowers?’
‘For forty years,’ she told him.
When he stood from the bench, he loomed. ‘Then let’s get you home.’
I lowered my phone, my heart clenching. Mrs B would definitely invite the man – Anthony – into her house, which was cluttered with her collection of possibly valuable baubles from around the globe. A set designer’s dream, but also a burglar’s. I mean, c’mon. A Serbian Thug, at one in the morning?
I needed to do something. I needed to at least call the other tenants. Except I didn’t have time to scroll through my contacts. Why didn’t the Marigold Cottages have a group chat?
‘Is that what you do?’ Mrs B asked the man, resting her hand on his tattooed forearm as she stood. ‘Find lost 14women in the night, and shepherd them home?’
He eyed her with a sudden intensity. ‘That and dishwashing.’
‘Ah.’ Mrs B peered up at him in her birdlike way. ‘So you’re a dishwasher, Anthony?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That sounds terribly boring, but I suppose one must pay one’s bills. I’ve been having trouble with that myself, lately.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s very frustrating. So …’ Mrs B considered as they walked together. ‘Were you ever in jail?’
‘Prison,’ he said.
Well, that cut through my hesitation. I took a breath and marched down the stairs toward the bus stop.
‘Oh, is there a difference?’ Mrs B asked him, with bright curiosity.
‘Mrs B!’ I called. ‘There you are!’
‘Good evening, Sophie.’ She smiled at me, unsurprised, like she’d known I’d been there all along. ‘Any interesting mail?’
‘Sorry,’ I said, suddenly conscious of my empty hands. ‘C-could you come to my place for a minute? I have a question about, um … rent.’
The man glowered at me. One of his eyebrows was broken by a scar, and the ligaments in his neck looked like axe handles. I chewed my lip when he watched me for a beat too long, and forced myself not to abandon Mrs B. He turned away suddenly, without speaking. Instead of returning to the bench, he stalked along the sidewalk until the gloom swallowed him.
After that night, I checked constantly but never saw 15Anthony Lambert again, almost as if I’d imagined him.
Until two months later, Mrs B rented him the studio apartment attached to Ocean’s cottage.
That’s when I started jotting down notes. Toying with writing a play about an outsider’s arrival disrupting a small community. Trying to recapture my excitement for the endless possibilities of playwriting. And to calm my fears.
3
LILY-ANN
What Lily-Ann enjoyed, after a long day of work, was curling up on her lilac linen sofa in her cream cashmere robe, and getting a little more work done. She didn’t care about the specific task. Heck, she didn’t care about the specific job. What she loved was ticking items off her list, making progress toward a specific, achievable goal.
A therapist had once suggested that perhaps her perfectionism caused her workaholism. Yes. Of course her perfectionism caused her workaholism. That was obvious. Lily-Ann didn’t mind a little obviousness, but the therapist also wanted to talk about Lily-Ann’s weight. She thought the fact that Lily-Ann’s weight wasn’t a problem for Lily-Ann was a problem.
Lily-Ann loathed leaving things unfinished; still, she only completed three of her eight scheduled sessions with that therapist.
She sipped her Chardonnay, then tapped her laptop as she scanned the purchase order on the screen. She made a few alterations. After a moment, she made a few more. 16Better. Done. Finished, like so many things in her life.
Including her marriage and social life.
Not that she’d entirely ended her marriage, not yet. She was merely separated from Piotr, and from their three-bedroom, south-facing house on the Riviera with its spectacular views of downtown Santa Barbara and the harbor. Lily-Ann used to lounge on the flagstone patio, watching the sun fill the clouds with white light in the morning, then paint orange streaks across the sky at dusk. When she’d gazed over the city, from the volleyball beach to the Mission tower, everything had felt orderly and calm – and expansive.
Now look at her. Living in a cottage with one bedroom and no view aside from the neatly trimmed hawthorn hedge out back. Working for mediocre pay as a proposal manager for a transport company. Alone, without even a cat to comfort her.
A humbling fall from grace. Humiliating, except at the moment she was happily enjoying a glass of Au Bon Climat Chardonnay while making her way through a colleague’s backlog of work.
If she set aside the bitter, nagging awareness that she shouldn’t wholeheartedly enjoy her current situation, Lily-Ann whole-heartedly enjoyed her current situation.
She clicked to the next spreadsheet, and her phone dinged.
Sophie Neighbor
Hey Lily-Ann
Sophie Neighbor
This is Sophie from the front house17
Sophie Neighbor
I saw you through the window and was about to knock but knocking felt weird so I’m texting
Sophie Neighbor
Now texting feels weird
Lily-Ann stood from the couch, replying to the text as she crossed to the front hall. She hit Send a moment before she opened the door, then found Sophie on the narrow front porch, reading her just-delivered text.
Sophie was a slender young woman of the type that wore their hair in a variety of ponytails. She struck Lily-Ann as jittery and high-strung, uncomfortable in her own skin. She looked Asian, probably East Asian, though her surname was Gilman. Lily-Ann almost asked about her ancestry. She liked to categorize things. She liked knowing how they fit together. Nothing satisfied her more than the snap of a puzzle piece into the greater whole. That soul-affirming click.
Sophie jogged most days and left her house with a yoga mat twice a week. Slightly less often, she half-dressed in cropped tops and short skirts and joined her girlfriends downtown. She’d invited Lily-Ann once, which had been sweet. But Lily-Ann had begged off, because the gulf was too wide. The chasm between mid-twenties and mid-thirties, between single and separated, between skinny and fat. Between partying and enjoyment.
Lily-Ann
Do you prefer white or red?18
Sophie looked up from her phone with a nervous smile. ‘Sorry. Any chance of a gin and tonic?’
‘None, I’m afraid.’
‘Then whatever you’re having. If that’s okay. I mean, I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘It’s not much of a bother,’ Lily-Ann said, then spoke over Sophie’s blurted apology. ‘I’m just finishing up some work.’
‘On Friday night?’
‘Mmm.’ Lily-Ann led her toward the kitchen. ‘You’re not going out?’
Sophie pushed up the sleeves on her oversized purple hoodie. ‘I overdid it last week. I’m taking a break.’
‘That’s too bad.’ Lily-Ann poured a second glass of Chardonnay. ‘Breaks are the worst.’
‘I guess.’ Sophie raised her glass in a toast, then looked flustered. ‘Um, so I’m thinking we should have a Marigold Cottages group chat. In case there’s a … whatever.’
‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.’
‘Oh! Sorry. I mean an earthquake or a flood or y’know …’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Stranger danger. Ocean’s kids are wandering around and … I sound like my mom, but we’re pretty open to the street.’
‘Has someone been bothering you?’ Lily-Ann asked, because she recalled hearing that Sophie had trouble with a man in the past.
‘No, no. Sorry. I heard Mrs B is renting to some random guy, and I’m worried. I guess I’m a bit of a worrier.’
‘Random guy?’
‘Like a stranger she met at the bus stop at one in the morning.’
‘Oh! I see. Yes. That is unusual behavior.’ Lily-Ann 19sipped her wine. ‘So a group chat?’
Sophie nodded. ‘Ocean’s on board, and so is Mrs B. Nicholas is away, not that we ever see him anyway, but I wondered if you could talk to Hamilton.’
‘That’s why you came.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. I never know what he’s going to say and it makes me nervous. But you’re not afraid of anything.’
‘I’m afraid of inefficiently loaded dishwashers,’ Lily-Ann said, then enjoyed Sophie’s nervous giggle. ‘I’ll talk to Hamilton. Though there’s no telling what he’ll add to the conversation.’
‘Yeah.’ Sophie bit her lip. ‘Should we not ask him?’
Hamilton was a wiry, gray-haired man with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts – and for spewing random facts like the poster child for a ‘No One Asked’ meme. They should probably ignore him, but now that Lily-Ann had agreed to the task, she was determined to complete it. To cross it off her list. Plus, it would eat at her if every tenant were included except one.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ she said.
4
OCEAN
Listen. Ocean liked how Anthony Lambert looked. She wanted to sculpt him. That big slab of a body reminded her of painting with a palette knife, all hard edges and thick layers. Plus, at first, he’d struck her as tough but when she’d looked closer he mostly seemed sad. So yeah, as an artist? He appealed to her. 20
‘But as a mother?’ she called to Mrs B, as she settled into the love seat. ‘Do I want an ex-con living in the studio apartment attached to my house? Where my kids live? Absolutely not.’
‘Oh! That reminds me,’ Mrs B said, appearing from her kitchen. ‘Should I plant pansies in the courtyard this year, or petunias? Pansies have such sweet faces, like they’re always smiling up at you, but petunias—’
‘Don’t give me your daffy old-lady bullshit,’ Ocean said.
Mrs B sniffed as she sat beside Ocean. ‘You used to be such a nice girl.’
‘And you used to be better at avoiding hard conversations. I don’t want him living here.’
‘Anthony is a good man, Ocean.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I looked into his eyes.’
‘You have cataracts, Golda.’
‘Oh, stop!’ Mrs B said, because she didn’t like anyone knowing that the Marigold Cottages had been named after her. Her husband had called her Marigold instead of Golda, and only Ocean knew the truth.
‘Think of the kids. Riley is teenage-girling like it’s her job, and Miles is having some kind of fourth-grade identity crisis.’
‘That does sound dire,’ Mrs B said, straightening the turquoise bracelets on her wrinkled arm. She’d never avoided the sun and had skin like caramel leather.
‘Miles is okay. He just … he came out to me the other day.’
Mrs B cocked her head. ‘Did he?’ 21
‘Yeah, as straight.’ Ocean felt herself smile. ‘The thing is, he didn’t want to disappoint me. Poor kid, I’ve told him and told him that I don’t care. Anyway, he admitted he’s got a crush on Ami Dubois.’
‘That little French girl across the street?’
‘Mmm. He wants to bake her cupcakes. Cupcakes.’
‘Oh! Should I teach him how to make macarons?’ Mrs B pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Though I don’t actually know how to make macarons.’
‘I mean, Riley can be a real jerk,’ Ocean said, ignoring her. ‘She’s just like me. We’ll fight it out and be fine, but Miles? He’s too sweet for this world. I don’t know what to do with him.’
‘You’re a wonderful mother, with wonderful children.’ Mrs B took one of Ocean’s hands in both of hers. ‘You, my dear, are doing a wonderful job.’
Ocean blinked away a sudden well of emotion. ‘Stop changing the subject. We’re talking about letting this guy move into the studio apartment.’
The kettle whistled before Mrs B could answer. ‘Saved by the screech,’ she said, and bustled into the kitchen to make tea.
Ocean picked at her paint-encrusted finger as she looked around Mrs B’s living room. Family photographs cluttered the top of the piano. A bookshelf was filled with kids’ craft projects, gifts presented to Mrs B over the years. Including two from Ocean: an ashtray in the shape of a diseased lung, because Mrs B hadn’t yet quit smoking, and a fused glass bird of paradise, because Ocean had been an oh-so-artistic child.
The familiarity warmed Ocean. The blue love seat, the 22art deco coffee table, the occasional chairs upholstered in a red silk Napoleonic bee pattern, because Mr B had dreamed of keeping beehives. The three Chinese lamps with their pom-pommed lampshades. Shelves of international keepsakes – netsuke from Japan, muiraquitã from Brazil – and an ironwood iwisa from South Africa. A soapstone carving from Alaska that Mrs B always carefully noted wasn’t truly international. The pictures of ornate hands with Hebrew writing that warded off the evil eye. Nothing had changed in thirty years.
Ocean remembered sitting cross-legged on the floor as a child, gazing at the shelves and dreaming of faraway places while her parents chatted with Mrs B.
She’d stolen a wooden shark the size of her pinky, once. A tiny thing, more of a minnow. When her parents discovered the theft, they’d made her return the shark. She’d apologized in tears, braced for an angry, betrayed speech. Instead, Mrs B had wondered why that particular object had caught her eye. Had it been the subject? Did she like fish? The size, the color, the material? The history, the toolmarks made by forgotten hands?
Ocean hadn’t been able to answer. She’d wanted it because she’d wanted it. Still, that was the first time she remembered looking that closely at anything in her life. The first time she’d noticed her own attention to details and aesthetics.
She peeled the strip of paint from her finger, then didn’t know what to do with it. After a moment, she stuffed it in her pocket and grabbed the sudoku book.
Pretty impressive. Mrs B had finished dozens of puzzles.
The old lady was still sharp.
Except when Ocean looked closer, she realized that the 23numbers didn’t add up. Well, crap. Ocean had moved to the Marigold Cottages as a kid and considered Mrs B a member of the family. A bonus grandmother or less-annoying mother. So flipping through the meaningless jumbles made her heart ache. She’d need to talk to Mrs B – again – about what she wanted to happen when she couldn’t look after herself.
Ocean already checked in on her twice a day, and took care of any Mickey Mouse repairs that a tenant needed. And all the residents kept an eye out for her, at least a little. Not that you could avoid seeing each other in the Cottages. Still, even Sophie, the new girl, contributed by setting up a group chat that so far consisted of Hamilton raving about some comet that should’ve been visible, except the night sky was ruined by light pollution, and also he didn’t have a telescope.
Everyone except Nicholas pitched in.
‘Here you are, my dear,’ Mrs B said, returning from the kitchen with the teacups and a bowl of salt-and-pepper potato chips.
‘Where did you even find this guy?’ Ocean asked, already removing the tea bag from her cup. She liked her tea weak, like her willpower when it came to potato chips. ‘I know you didn’t advertise.’
‘Who, Anthony?’ Mrs B squeezed a slice of lemon into her tea. ‘Oh, I ran into him here and there.’
‘Another one of your lost sheep.’
‘Like your parents.’ Mrs B gave her a bright-eyed look over her teacup. ‘How about this? You show Anthony the studio yourself. If you still object afterwards, I’ll tell him that I changed my mind.’ 24
‘I thought you already signed a lease.’
‘Oh, we did. But he doesn’t have a copy.’
Ocean pointed a potato chip at Mrs B. ‘You’re aware that laws exist, yes?’
‘Property law is simply ancestor worship,’ Mrs B said, with a dismissive jangly wave, ‘enforced by state-sponsored violence. Are chips enough? Do you want macarons, too? I’m about to whip up a batch.’
5
LILY-ANN
The key felt sticky in the front door of the studio, and the curtains in the courtyard-facing window sagged noticeably. Good. Lily-Ann enjoyed problems that were easily addressed, which was why Mrs B had asked her to clean up the apartment for the new tenant. The mysterious Anthony Lambert.
She jiggled the key, made a mental note to return with WD-40, and opened the door.
The studio was small, perhaps two hundred and fifty square feet. The air smelled of mildew and dust. Mrs B had converted the space from a storage area when the attached cottage – now Ocean’s – had been remodeled. No one had lived here since, so the studio had reverted to storage space. Miscellaneous boxes hugged the wall beside the tiny bathroom, old furniture abandoned by previous tenants crowded the already-cramped space, and the curtains were even worse from the inside.
Lily-Ann smiled. 25
Two days later, the key slid easily into the lock. The air smelled fresh, and the curtains were crisp and bright. Lily-Ann had arranged the mismatched furniture into three sections: a sleeping area centered on a single bed with an antique pineapple headboard; a dining area with a flimsy white plastic table and two chairs beside the mini-fridge and cooktop; and a living area comprised of a beanbag chair flanked by a standing lamp and a tiny red bookcase.
The beanbag chair pleased Lily-Ann. She hadn’t known they still existed. Also, they gathered dust in folds and crannies that required real scouring. Though something annoyed her about the placement of the now-spotless beanbag.
After a moment’s consideration, she shifted it closer to the window. Then she wondered if a grown man would sit in it.
‘Lily-Ann?’ Ocean asked, from the open door.
‘There’s always the bed,’ she said.
‘What?’ Ocean asked.
‘The beanbag chair. I’m not sure—’
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Mrs B asked me to give the place a dusting. She’s going to rent it.’
‘A dusting? You furnished it. You hung art. Is that—’ Ocean frowned at the painting on the kitchenette wall. ‘I painted that in high school.’
Lily-Ann wasn’t sure what to say. She’d found the painting in the corner and liked the crisp lines. So she read the title that was scrawled on the canvas: ‘Two Sinks.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s very pretty.’ 26
Ocean made a face. ‘Thanks.’
‘A little like Mondrian. He’s my favorite.’
‘You should look at Anne Truitt’s work,’ Ocean told her, and a shadow fell into the studio.
A knock sounded a moment later, and Lily-Ann turned to see a man filling the doorway. Tall, with a shaved head and broad shoulders. Late thirties or early forties. His tattoos were asymmetrical, as if he’d chosen each one without considering the whole. Which she found distressing and unsightly.
Still, not an entirely valid reason to be impolite.
‘You must be the new tenant.’ She offered her hand. ‘I’m Lily-Ann.’
His hand swallowed hers. ‘Anthony.’
She didn’t often meet anyone who made her feel physically small. In this case, somewhat to her surprise, she enjoyed the sensation. She imagined he could pick her up and carry her. She might like that, despite the tattoos.
Before she’d married Piotr, she’d met a number of men who’d appreciated a big woman. Then she’d married Piotr. And, she reminded herself, was still married to him. Neatness mattered, and so did oaths, which were a sort of contractual neatness, defining relationships and delimiting behavior.
So she simply said, ‘Welcome,’ before heading home to rewrite an explanation regarding meeting client requirements via a third-party application.
6
OCEAN
‘So that’s Lily-Ann,’ Ocean told Anthony, when the door closed behind her.
Anthony nodded.
‘And I live in the other half, with my kids.’ She gestured him inside, away from the doorway. ‘Come in, look around. Sorry it’s so small.’
When he took two steps inside, he filled the apartment. ‘I’ve lived in smaller.’
She didn’t want to think about what that meant. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Fresno, mostly.’ He thought for a second. ‘You?’
‘Here, mostly,’ she said. ‘So there’s no oven, and only a mini-fridge. And if Mrs B told you that you can use her kitchen, you can’t.’
‘Okay.’
‘The, uh, furniture comes with, unless you’re bringing your own, in which case …’ She doubted that Mrs B had thought that far ahead. ‘We’ll get rid of this.’
He frowned at the beanbag. ‘I don’t have any.’
‘Then we’ll leave it.’
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘A beanbag chair. Traditionally paired with bell-bottoms and a lava lamp.’
His mouth didn’t move, but he smiled at her with his eyes. Like he was afraid of fully committing to the expression.
‘Mrs B told me you work as a dishwasher?’
‘At the Sidecar.’ 28
‘That dive bar downtown?’ Ocean almost winced that she’d said ‘dive bar,’ so she blurted ‘do you like the job?’ Then she almost winced at that. Who’d like washing dishes? ‘I mean, doesn’t it get, uh, loud?’
‘I don’t mind the noise. It’s meditative.’
Which surprised her, him using the word ‘meditative.’ And she knew herself; between that and his shy smile, she was screwed. Unless she managed to find a good reason to tell Mrs B not to rent to him, welcome to the goddamn neighborhood.
‘Well, we don’t like it too noisy here,’ she said.
‘I’m quiet.’
‘Except I have two kids. You like kids?’
He considered. ‘I don’t know any.’
‘Oh. Uh, my ex-wife grew up in a big family. Three younger siblings. She half raised them herself. But I was an only child.’
Which she’d said in order to see how he reacted to ‘my ex-wife.’ Except he didn’t react. He just kept looking at her. He seemed to have the emotional range of one of those stone heads on Easter Island. And he found dishwashing ‘meditative.’ He was like a monk who’d spent his life living in a cell. Okay, maybe that was a bad analogy.
She pressed her lips into a smile. ‘And that’s the grand tour.’
‘Just the right size for me.’
‘On account of you’re so petite.’ She exhaled. ‘Listen. Mrs Bakofsky’s been known to take in strays. If you can imagine.’
He showed her his stony-faced smile again.
‘So we look after her. She’s getting up there, you know? We pitch in when we can. Help her out.’ 29
‘Mmm,’ he said.
Apparently the threat of babysitting an old lady wasn’t enough to dissuade Anthony, so Ocean told him about trash and recycling, then left him to poke around the studio in private. She closed the front door and sighed. He seemed okay to her. Plus, he needed a place to live. What was she going to do, say no?
As she headed home, she spotted Mrs B, with a watering can at her feet, gazing at the plastic flats of petunias she’d bought. She was strong enough to heft the hanging pots into place herself, but she hated getting her hands dirty. So instead, she left flats of flowers around until someone else planted them.
Which meant she’d been lying in wait for Ocean, to see what she thought about Anthony.
‘Satisfied, my dear?’ she asked, then nodded before Ocean answered. ‘Yes, I knew you would be.’
Ocean flipped her the bird.
Mrs B let out a guffaw of great satisfaction. ‘I’ll go fetch him the mailbox key.’
7
NICHOLAS
Nicholas spun his chair toward the window. His office in the planning department overlooked De La Guerra Plaza, which was currently a rectangle of dead grass and construction material as the revitalization campaign for the historic square began.
Two pigeons pecking at the ground took sudden flight 30and landed on the roof of the now-shuttered Santa Barbara News-Press building. The once-excellent local newspaper had faded into a shadow of its former self before vanishing entirely.
Nicholas appreciated the daily reminder that even established local institutions could falter and fail without diligent attention. Sometimes that meant innovating while staying true to core values. Sometimes it meant clearing the deadwood to make room for new growth.
He exhaled and turned back to his desk. Okay. Speaking of diligence … he should probably recuse himself from the upcoming discussion, given that he lived at the Marigold Cottages. Well, considering he paid a below-market rate, he should definitely step back.
Yet he didn’t.
Instead, he went down the hall and took his place in the conference room. In the wake of the latest design and development standards, the office had generated a new zone map. And Nicholas’s block – the block of the Marigold Cottages – appeared in orange as ‘proposed high-density housing in accordance with the state-based density concession.’
‘Which allows what?’ his boss asked, wanting clarification on the record.
‘Which allows developers to build to sixty-eight feet,’ Nicholas told her. ‘Multiple-occupant residences. At substantially lower cost, given the new incentives for housing density.’
‘So we’re allowing … no, we’re encouraging apartment buildings in a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes?’
‘Well, that is the goal, after all.’ 31
His boss let out a breath. ‘On the Upper Eastside? That is not an easy sell to the community. There are no buildings of special import in that zone?’
They discussed the significance of the historic Bungalow District, and how the state regulations might take into account the city’s location: tucked between Los Padres National Forest, with a million acres of hiking trails and campgrounds, and the bustling harbor, pristine beaches, and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Not to mention the century of meticulous city planning that had made Santa Barbara the jewel of the central coast. Permitting new construction among some of the most charming houses in town would spark more than a little backlash.
The discussion eventually moved on, but Nicholas kept thinking about the Marigold Cottages and his failure to recuse himself. The city needed more housing. Everyone knew that. And if the Cottages changed hands? Well, you couldn’t both improve things and keep them exactly the same.
Plus, Mrs B would make a fortune if the property were rezoned. That’s what he told himself. Sure, she was attached to the Marigold Cottages, but she’d be fine. Better than fine.
He just needed to make sure that she never learned of his involvement.
8
SOPHIE
Despite everything, I liked working at the New Vic, our local theatre company. I even liked the walk to work. Santa Barbara mornings always felt vibrant, with the crisp ocean air warmed by the sun and the scent of croissants and coffee wafting from the French bakery. A woodpecker knocked on the trunk of a palm tree, and I wondered how to capture that feeling of optimism – like nothing could go wrong on such a beautiful day – onstage.
Then I arrived at the theatre, and remembered that while I liked the job, working there was basically like hurling myself off a cliff into an ocean of jealousy. Because I wanted to write and direct plays. That was my goal, that was my purpose.
I’d written a dozen stage plays in college, but they were all meh. Probably because I’d aimed for serious themes. Yet now, after watching the chaos unfolding at the Marigold Cottages, I was less interested in the human condition, and more interested in humans. That’s why I’d started to journal, to use the madness as material. If I couldn’t write a halfway-compelling play from all this death and drama, I should just give up.
Giving up was the last thing I wanted to do … yet part of me wondered if I already had. At the New Vic, all I did was organize tickets and arrange promotions, and occasionally pretend I was a dramaturge by writing summaries for the program.
Well, I also spent a good chunk of time trying to ignore 33the worm of envy in my heart whenever I met actual working writers and directors. At least I was still in the world of theatre. That counted for something, right?
My parents worried about me, and how I felt about the slow decline of my dearest dream.
That was nothing new, though. They’d worried about me since What Happened Before. They worried about me before What Happened Before. Then I had the breakdown. And even though I was better now – I was! – they worried more than ever. Which embarrassed me. Nothing even happened, not really. For sure nothing capital H Happened. That was the most humiliating part. I’d completely lost my shit over a few rough months that most people would’ve shrugged off by now.
You suffered from PTSD when you returned from a war zone, not when a stalker scared you in a college library.
My parents didn’t want me at the mercy of roommates bringing strange people around, so they helped with the rent. Also, my mother adored Mrs B, even though they were intrusive in completely different ways. My cottage was tiny, though. The smallest one and the closest to the street. I actually liked the location. It let me monitor … everything.
Like when Mr Ybarra walked the perimeter of the Cottages, nobody noticed except me.
I’d just returned from a run after work, and I’d paused at the front door to check my distance on my running app. Then I’d caught a glimpse of Mr Ybarra, looking like a skinny Santa Claus, with a white beard and rosy cheeks and his red knit cap. Ybarra Properties owned three apartment buildings in the neighborhood, and Mr 34Ybarra lived in one, even though he was rich enough to afford a mansion among the celebrities of Montecito. He was eccentric, like Mrs B. Maybe all the landlords in the neighborhood were eccentric, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed the ones who weren’t.
Anyway, Mr Ybarra strode onto the property, swishing the golf club he carried because he was scared of dogs. He stroked his beard, then ambled in a circuit around the courtyard. In the old pictures Mrs B had shown me, rosebushes and marigold-themed planters edged a lush lawn, but after the droughts it was more desert-y, with pale gravel paths and glossy succulents.
When Mr Ybarra spotted me, he raised his golf club in greeting. ‘So charming!’
‘Uh,’ I said, too sweaty to handle gallant flirtation from a sixty-year-old.
‘Six cottages like pretty little dollhouses,’ he continued. ‘Left over from a previous age. Have you seen Mrs Bakofsky? We have an appointment, but she doesn’t answer the door.’
‘Sorry, no. Sorry.’
‘A lovely woman, but stubborn.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘She refuses to marry me.’ His cherubic smile grew. ‘She thinks I’m only interested in her money, which is insulting. I’m interested in her property.’
I gave a little smile, which was worse than apologizing, and said, ‘I’ll tell her you stopped by.’
‘Twenty more families could live here, on a lot this size. A Spanish-style apartment building. Parking is a problem, but there’s a new zoning map, and I …’ He paused, 35tugging at his beard. ‘I lost my train of thought. Just tell Golda that she’s a monster of selfishness and I wept when she stood me up.’
See? Eccentric.
‘Will do,’ I said, backing into my cottage. ‘Err, got to go.’
He saluted me with his golf club and I shut the door.
My phone vibrated as I watched him leave through the peephole. I locked the door, then checked the screen.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I said.
‘Sophie? It’s Dad.’
My father considered himself a techie, and yet never quite figured out how his iPhone worked. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Have you heard back about the job yet?’
I frowned as I wandered into the kitchen. ‘What job?’
‘You told me you were applying for a job.’
‘No, you told me to apply for a job.’
Dad cleared his throat. ‘Don’t be difficult, Sophie. Did you apply or not?’
I opened the fridge. ‘I have a job.’
‘Raising money for a community theatre company is not a career.’
Instead of responding, I peered at the half carton of eggs, the bag of spinach, and the bottles of diet tonic water that had gone flat.
‘You can do much better than that,’ he said. ‘I know what happened in college really, um, shook you up, but you have to—’
‘Dad. Enough.’
‘You can do so much better, Sophie! There’s nothing 36you can’t do. You need to stop hiding your light.’
I closed the fridge and smiled. That was actually pretty sweet.
‘Or at least get married,’ he said.
‘Excuse me, sir, where are you calling from? Nineteen sixty-four?’
‘Very funny. What about your neighbor’s ex-husband?’
‘Piotr? You’re joking.’
‘Is it a joke that I want to see you settled? Santa Barbara’s expensive. He drives a BMW hybrid.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I noticed last time we were there. It’s a plug-in, so I was interested.’
‘Well, did you also notice that he still sleeps with Lily-Ann? They’re not even divorced yet.’
‘Sophie! Save those conversations for your mother,’ he said repressively, before his tone softened. ‘You know I love you, right?’
‘I can’t imagine we’d be having these conversations if you didn’t.’
My parents did love me, and they also loved pretending they wanted a rich man for me. Yet what they really wanted for me wasn’t wealth but security. After What Happened Before, they thought I was brittle and lonely. They’d briefly met Lily-Ann’s almost-ex-husband, Piotr, at the Marigold Cottages, and now held him up as some sort of paragon.
And sure, Piotr was rich and hot and charming, but he was smarmily charming. Dream casting: Tom Hiddleston.
Also, fortyish was too old for me. My dad thought anyone with a full head of hair couldn’t be older than 37thirty-two. Not that I could attract someone like Piotr anyway. Lily-Ann was so out of my league: an emphatically plus-size, redheaded ice queen. Always immaculately dressed in outfits that cost more than my rent, and OCD enough that she just did her own thing. I was in awe of her. I didn’t understand why she was living at the Marigold Cottages, though. Maybe she didn’t get any money until the divorce went through? She’d been in her current place for four years already. Slowest divorce ever.
Though my parents weren’t entirely wrong about me being lonely.
I messaged college friends. I chatted with people at work. I … I kept myself busy. But I didn’t engage. I didn’t take risks. I was too afraid of losing control.
Well, except for those nights when I lost control completely.
Every now and again, I needed to blow off steam. To open the valve on the pressure cooker of my life. Not my life, my past. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t a timid flinching victim, still living in the shadow of my stalker.
So I’d meet some friends, and I’d dance and sing and match them drink for drink. Until eventually, we’d end up at a seedy bar like the Sidecar.
Well, not ‘like’ the Sidecar.
Apparently we always ended up at exactly the Sidecar; because apparently I always insisted. Which I only knew on account of my friends mocking me about it. Every time drinking switched my brain off, I demanded the Sidecar.
However, not only did I barely remember going there, I never remembered wanting to go. Drunk Sophie loved 38the Sidecar, but I found it dingy and depressing.
Which was the second weirdest thing about my nights out. The first weirdest was that I never got a hangover the next day. Instead, I usually woke up early and felt pretty good.
And sure enough, on the Saturday morning that changed everything, I felt fine as I drowsed in bed, watching the sunrise slide across my wall. After a time, I grabbed my phone and scrolled through messages from the previous night. I didn’t remember anything about the Sidecar, which meant I’d blanked my entire experience there.
Again.
Luckily, my drinking buddies always texted dozens of snaps to fill me in. How kind. They loved taking pictures of me sloppy drunk and usually added hilarious messages that made no sense the next day.
I winced at the pictures. I looked ruined. Still, at least I didn’t look timid. Didn’t look like I was apologizing for existing.
I drank a liter of water, then peed and started the shower. While I waited for the water to warm up, I watched the street through my window and—
Okay.
Okay, even writing this for my play freaked me out a little.
Okay, deep breath. I watched the street through the window and nothing moved except for the crows. Two of them hopped around the fence, then darted to the ground beneath the bushes, where …
Where a man was sleeping.
My throat turned dry and I belatedly felt a hangover 39start. A man was sleeping in the bushes ten feet from my bathroom wall. That was fine, I told myself. No problem. Probably just an unhoused guy. I’d never begrudge anyone without a bed a place to sleep.
Except it wasn’t an unhoused guy, considering his expensive shoes. So, fine. Someone had gotten drunk and passed out in the bushes.
No judgment. I’d been there myself.
The shower pattered behind me as I watched a crow land on the man’s shoulder and peck at his head. His unmoving head.
Then the crow tore off a strip of flesh.
9
LILY-ANN
The coloration of the corpse startled her. The man couldn’t have been dead long, but his skin looked almost purple in the dim light beneath the hedge. He stank a little, too, though that didn’t alarm Lily-Ann. She’d expected that.
She’d never seen a body outside of a casket. She’d always imagined that death itself was essentially tidy, the equivalent to crossing someone off a list. Yet the corpse struck her as messy. Physically, but also intellectually; the embodiment of unanswered questions. She thought about that as she heard Ocean take a sharp breath behind her.
‘Is—is he dead?’ Ocean asked.
Lily-Ann peered through the leaves. ‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘His blood is pooling. Beneath his skin.’ 40
‘Oh, god. Do you recognize him?’
‘No. At least, not with him being so … unliving. He looks extremely like a corpse.’
Ocean exhaled. ‘He does, doesn’t he?’
‘I’ll call the police.’
‘I suppose we shouldn’t move him.’
‘No.’
‘No, of course not. Okay.’ Ocean waited for Lily-Ann to call the police, then said, ‘Will you go sit with Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make sure she’s not too upset,’ Ocean added, as if Lily-Ann might not have understood the subtext, which was kind of her. ‘I’ll tell Mrs B.’
They separated, but not for long. Apparently Mrs B had insisted on checking in on Sophie, so she and Ocean soon joined Lily-Ann in Sophie’s untidy house.
Then the police and ambulance came. The detective arrived later, along with what Lily-Ann thought were CSI technicians. She watched them with interest. She suspected she would have excelled at either of those jobs – detective or crime scene technician – as both focused on putting puzzles together. Although perhaps she would’ve been better at the latter, where the human element was, for the most part, dead.
10
