As I watched her walk toward the entrance, I decided to run by the nursing home to see Thelma. It was five minutes away, which meant I had time for a quick visit before I needed to get back.

I bounded into the Greener Pastures Nursing Home, pausing only to wave to my two friends, Roberta and Gladys, who sat at their usual table in the main living area, working on a puzzle.

“Where are you goin’ in such a hurry?” Roberta barked. She was notoriously grumpy and would likely hold this over my head for months. Especially when she discovered I hadn’t brought her and Gladys a new puzzle or a bag of candies.

I just gave her another wave as I headed down the hallway toward Thelma’s room. I was going to pay for that later.

When I reached her door, it was partially closed. I started to knock, but an orderly in the hall said, “She’s in the garden. Her friend brought her some new plants last week, and she likes to dote on them.”

I knew exactly who she meant. In fact, I was the one who’d first brought Emmaline Haskell to see Thelma. Thelma loved flowers, and Emmaline’s property and small greenhouse were bursting with them. They’d hit it off, and Emmaline had made several more visits to see Thelma without me.

I let myself out the door to the courtyard, and sure enough, Thelma was leaning on a four-footed cane with one hand while she wielded a garden hose with the other, watering the plants. Emmaline had brought rose bushes on our first visit, but the space was now planted with multiple varieties of flowers.

“Carly,” she exclaimed in surprise, leaning on her cane as she loosened her hold on the sprayer nozzle at the end of the hose. The flow turned to a trickle.

It was good to see her up and moving around. She had a bad knee and refused to have surgery, so she spent most of her time in her room. But the project of beautifying the courtyard had gotten her up and moving.

“You and Emmaline have been busy.”

Her face beamed. “It’s a real garden now.”

“It is. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“What brings you here today?” she asked, squeezing the handle and moving the stream of water to the next plant.

“I’d love to say it’s just for a chat, but I don’t have much time, so I need to be more direct.”

Her smile faded some, but the cheerfulness didn’t leave her voice. “I’m listening.”

“Do you want to sit?” I asked, gesturing to a concrete bench.

“I’ll keep watering, but you sit so I don’t have to look up at you.”

I took a seat on the bench even though she was only a couple of inches shorter than me. “Did you hear about the murder of the insurance agent a few days ago?”

She shook her head. “That’s the beauty of a place like this. I don’t have to hear about what’s goin’ on outside these walls.”

“The woman who murdered him is one of my customers at the tavern. She’s as sweet as they come. I would have thought her incapable of harming anyone.”

“Do they have enough evidence to charge her?”

I grimaced. “There’s no question she did it. She walked in and shot him in front of three witnesses. There’s even security camera footage of her walking out of the office with the gun in her hand. Then she drove down the street and waited for the police to come arrest her.”

Confusion filled her eyes. “Then what…oh.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

She laid the hose down in the flower bed and hobbled over to sit next to me. “You think Bart called in a favor.”

I nodded.

Her shoulders drooped. “Tell me everything.”

And I did, including the lack of an apparent connection between Pam and Jim, what I’d learned on my visit to her house, and how I’d just dropped Ashlynn off at the county jail.

“I remember the mess with her son a couple of years ago,” she said with a faraway look. “I know the family of the man he hit. Karl Lister.”

“Really? I didn’t know his name,” I said. “But I did hear there was a potential lawsuit. Do you think Bart might have had something to do with it?”

Her gaze turned to me. “I don’t know all the details, but Karl struggled to walk after the accident. His legs were broken in multiple places and he had several surgeries. But I’m pretty sure the boy’s insurance paid for most of it.”

“So what was the lawsuit for? Pain and suffering?”

“And some medical bills,” Thelma said. “I know he received a settlement of some kind, but I don’t know how it came about or even how much he got.”

“So if there was a lawsuit, I might be able to get the details from the courthouse.”

“That’s a good place to start. Tell Rosemarie that I sent you.”

“You know just about everyone around here,” I said with a grin. At least it felt that way.

“Not everyone, but enough of ’em.”

We were silent for a moment before I asked, “What’s your gut on this, Miss Thelma? Do you think Bart had any involvement in Jim Palmer’s murder?”

“It’s hard to say,” she said. “You’ll definitely need more evidence to prove it, but it’s a new case. A fresh trail. If he was involved, you have a better chance of tracing it to him than any of the old cases. The question is: are you sure you want to pursue this?”

I wasn’t surprised she’d asked. While she’d volunteered information in the past, I knew she was concerned about me getting too involved in Bart’s business.

“Of course I want to pursue this. If we’re right, he coerced—likely threatened—a woman to kill a man. A woman who can’t even put out mouse traps because she doesn’t like hurting living creatures. That kind of evil needs to be stopped.”

Her lips pressed tightly together, she gave me a brisk nod. “Well, then. Do you know where to start?”

“I have a few leads,” I said, reluctant to say more. While I trusted her, Marco was right: I could never be too sure about who might be listening.

She didn’t look offended that I didn’t elaborate. “When he’s done this in the past, he’s had help covering it up. You might see if the same deputies handled the previous cases.”

“Good idea.” The first place to start was my notebook full of cases—a few of the news articles had listed the investigators’ names but others hadn’t—and I might be able to get copies of the police reports for the rest. The Hensen County Sheriff’s Department had earned a reputation for being corrupt, but not all of the deputies were cut from the same cloth. Some of them were good people who’d felt powerless to change things…but had hung on because they feared the situation would get worse if they left. Marco was a perfect example.

“I think I found something else worth mentioning,” I said. “A family of five that died in a house explosion. It only happened about twelve years ago, so I think it’s a different case than the one you told me about before.”

Her face paled. “There seems to be a lot of gas explosions around these parts.”

“So I noticed. There was another one too, five years ago, but thankfully the family wasn’t home.”

“Could have been a warnin’,” she said.