‘Or be the killer,’ says Lizzie.
Moira holds up her hands. ‘Or he could be nothing to do with it. He could be following me for some other reason.’
‘Like what?’ asks Lizzie.
Moira shrugs. Tells another lie: ‘I don’t know.’
Rick shakes his head. ‘Well, that doesn’t make it any less concerning.’
True, thinks Moira. But she doesn’t want to dwell on it. Instead she tries to distract them. ‘Where are the cops with the investigation?’
Philip shakes his head. ‘Bloody nowhere.’
‘Golding said they’re working a few angles,’ says Rick. ‘Seems the one they’re running with is that it was a mugging gone wrong.’
Moira rubs her forehead. She’s trying to limit her input – doesn’t want them to think she’s anything more than a concerned citizen playing amateur sleuth – but it’s hard to hold back. ‘That makes no sense. If it was, why did the mugger leave the money and whatever was in the bag?’
‘I said before to Philip, maybe they can’t swim?’ says Lizzie. She looks from the murder board to Moira. ‘Can you message me those pictures you took at the crime scene, so I can look at them on my iPad?’
‘Sure.’ Taking out her phone, Moira selects all the crime-scene photos and sends them to Lizzie. ‘Should be with you now.’
As Philip writes ‘non-swimmer?’ as a query on the patio door make-do murder board, Lizzie hurries into the kitchen and collects an iPad from a docking station on one of the counters. She taps on the screen as she walks back to the patio. ‘Got them.’
Sitting down again, Lizzie focuses on the iPad screen, flicking through the pictures.
Moira looks back at Rick and Philip. ‘Manatee Park seems a weird place for a mugging. It shuts at, what, ten in the evening? No one goes there after that. If two or more people met up there last night it had to be prearranged rather than by chance.’
‘Yeah.’ Rick’s nodding. ‘So she knew her killer?’
‘I’d say so,’ says Moira. She glances at Lizzie, but she doesn’t look up. Instead she stays silent, studying the pictures. It’s good she’s getting involved now, but Moira still wonders what the stand-off between her and Philip was about.
‘It’s sloppy,’ says Philip, jotting ‘killer known to victim’ on to the patio door. ‘I reckon they’re only thinking of the mugging angle because of the money.’
‘Could be,’ says Rick. ‘But it raises the question why was she carrying that much cash anyways? Everything here is on account.’
‘She’s too young to be a resident, so she wouldn’t have an account,’ Moira says. ‘Maybe she worked around here somewhere.’
‘True,’ says Rick. ‘Or could be it’s connected to the burglaries?’
‘Maybe, but there’s no way to tell right now,’ says Philip. ‘No one’s reported that much cash going missing.’
Philip adds ‘burglary connection?’ to the query list on the patio door.
‘From what Donald and Clint said, we know she’d been in Ocean Mist before,’ says Rick. ‘And we know she was meeting up with at least one other person here.’
Moira frowns. She doesn’t think the mugging angle has any legs. All that cash, and a spate of burglaries over the past month, seem too coincidental to be unrelated. ‘Could be their meetings took place on the same nights as the burglaries, that’d be something.’
‘It sure would,’ says Rick. ‘We can check back through the patrol logs for more sightings of this woman and the station wagon. Folks might have forgotten if it was a few weeks back and—’