A Zen For Murder (Mooseamuck Island Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) by Leighann Dobbs

be cut and dried. Perhaps there was another side to him that she hadn’t seen before. “What do you mean?”
    “Well … I can’t be sure … but I have a theory.” He preened his eyebrows. Then he shook his head. “No, I can’t say anything until I can prove it.”
    Claire studied him. He was on to something, but she knew from experience she wouldn’t be able to get a thing out of him until he was ready. She stood at her car door and replayed their talk with Norma in her head while she waited for Dom to get in the passenger side.
    “What she said at the end—about the impressionist painting—do you think that was some kind of clue?” she asked Dom over the roof of the Fiat.
    “I think she might have been sketching us a clue.” Dom opened the door and slid into the passenger seat while Claire got into the driver’s seat.  
    “You mean the hunting camp?”
    Dom nodded.
    “But Zoila wasn’t killed there.” Claire started the car but didn’t put it into gear—she was too interested in hearing Dom’s theory on Norma’s sketch.
    “We already know where she was killed, so that wouldn’t have been much of a clue,” Dom pointed out.
    “But how could the hunting camp be a clue?”
    Dom shrugged. “Maybe it started there. The argument with the killer. Or maybe there is a clue still there to be found.”
    Claire’s brows crept up. “That could be. But how would we get in? The police must have it locked up tight.”
    “Maybe we need to look at it from another angle. Who do we know who was at the camp before she died?”
    Claire pressed her lips together and thought. “Well, Kenneth and Shane were both there the day before she died. They said so at the diner that morning.”
    “That’s right.” Dom remembered the sand he felt under his feet at the counter that morning after Shane left. Could that sand have come from the zen garden? He pictured his later visit when Shane had been fixing the oven, his round-toed work boots in clear view. “And Sarah and Shane acted awfully jumpy when I asked about Ben.”
    “You know, I hate to say it, but I’ve always felt like Sarah was hiding something.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. Something about her past,” Claire hesitated. “She just kind of has an air about her like she has some kind of secret she doesn’t want anyone to know.”
    Dom nodded, much to Claire’s surprise. “I noticed that, too.”
    “You don’t think she could have anything to do with it? I don’t even think she knew Zoila.”
    “ She might not have known Zoila … but maybe Zoila knew her .”
    “Or her secret.”

Chapter Sixteen

    Claire and Dom knew from experience that they couldn’t just ask Sarah about her secret … especially if it had something to do with Zoila’s murder. Even if it didn’t, she clearly didn’t want anyone to know about it, so they doubted direct questioning would yield any results.
    They took a more indirect route. Claire researched her on the internet, and Dom discreetly tried to find out her whereabouts on the morning of the murder.
    They agreed to spend a few hours on their tasks and meet at a small coffee shop in the cove to discuss their findings at two p.m. Which is exactly where Claire was sitting with her hand wrapped around a steaming mug of green tea when Dom walked in the door.
    He nodded at Claire, then paid for a coffee which he poured from the self-serve carafes before sliding into the booth opposite her.
    “How’d you make out?” he asked without preamble.
    Claire shook her head. “Not good. Or maybe it was good, depending on how you look at it.”
    Dom raised a brow and Claire continued.
    “I did a search on Sarah White, starting with Lowell Massachusetts where she claims to be from, and the only person living there with that name during that timeframe is eighty-seven years old!”
    “Well, that can’t be her. But maybe you got the town wrong.” Dom sipped his coffee. “Or maybe she lived in a smaller town near