Free The Probability of Murder by Ada Madison

about thirty pounds.
    “Accounting for the fact that there are fifties and twenties and not all hundreds, I’d say—”
    “One million dollars,” Ariana finished.
    “Give or take.”
    Funny how doing arithmetic always helped me unwind.
    “I’m surprised you didn’t insist on counting the money. Don’t you want to know the exact number?” Ariana asked.
    “It doesn’t really matter.”
    “But you love numbers. You know how many other Sophies there are in the United States.”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “And what rank is it among all the female names?”
    “Number four hundred and sixty-three.”
    “And what rank is my name?”
    “Number eighty-two, with one
n
, fifty-two with two
n
’s.”
    “See?”
    “This is different.”
    “It sure is.” Ariana shivered, though that may have had more to do with her wearing a flimsy shawl on a chilly fall morning than with the accursed money sending cold vibes from the trunk of my car.
    Ariana’s shop, A Hill of Beads, had had a makeover in the last couple of months, and I still wasn’t quite used to the new, streamlined look, neater and cleaner than the disheveled, dusty old aisles—at least for the time being. Organization, which she saw as the enemy of creativity, wasn’t Ariana’s strong suit.
    Through the front window, passersby could see a dizzying array of shiny raw material for accessories of every kind. Counters with box after box of beads, separated bycolor and size. Strings of beads hanging from racks and sample necklaces on headless forms lining the counters. See-through bags of findings, pin backs, and filigree, reminding the crafter of the amazing number of things you could make or decorate with beads.
    As much as I loved numbers, I was glad I didn’t have to count Ariana’s inventory of beads.
    Before she left my car, Ariana reached over and gave me a good-luck hug. She whispered a few syllables in her latest charmed language and I teased her about it, as she’d expect.
    I felt I was making progress—I didn’t feel too guilty kibitzing with Ariana as if it were a normal day and I wasn’t headed for the Henley police station with a heavy bag of cash owned by a recently murdered friend. I could hardly wait to be rid of the whole load.
    But another idea took over as I pulled away from the curb. I looked around and, conveniently, spotted a copy shop across the street.
    It called to me.
    Before I knew it, I was standing at an industrial-size copy machine, spreading seven small pieces of paper on the glass surface under the cover.
    I was less ready than I’d thought to be done with the finer points of investigating Charlotte Crocker’s murder.
    Guilt returned in full force as I sat on a bench in the police station, waiting for Virgil. I held Charlotte’s green-and-gold bag on my lap, a heavy weight. Even heavier, from the guilt, was my purse, hanging from the arm of the bench and now containing the piece of paper from the copy shop with the images of Charlotte’s seven notes, complete with ragged edges from where they were torn from a book.
    I talked myself both into and out of the idea that I’d done something illegal by copying the notes. I simply wanted to be sure that all of Charlotte’s friends—I doubted now that she’d ever had any relatives at all—knew of hermisfortune. I thought of her friend in Florida, where Charlotte had planned to spend Thanksgiving. Surely she needed to be notified immediately.
    Good story. If there even was a friend in Florida, unless she’d hired one.
    The odds that Charlotte had pulled only one con, hiring Noah, were about the same as the odds that I’d win the lottery if I bought my first ticket today.
    With a little more thought, I came up with another rationalization for copying the slips of paper. The police were busy; they couldn’t be expected to offer condolences to these people who were special enough to be in her duffel with a load of money. I could help with that.
    For the third time, I unzipped the