Page 76 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“Then do me a favor — read the story before we meet again. If I don’t keel over and go toes-up in the meantime, I’d love to hear what you have to say about it. Especially the knife-fight scene.”

“There’s a knife-fight scene?” Gundry asked.

“A good one,” Nana Mama said. “Lots of blood. You’ll tell us all about it. And now it’s time for Miss Reggie to say goodbye. Until next time — keep reading. I promise it will change your life.”

She nodded to Ali, who signed her out of Zoom.

Bree and Jannie began to clap.

“That was awesome,” Ali said. “I want to read that book.”

“Next year,” Nana Mama said, and she smiled at Bree and Jannie. “Okay?”

“More than okay,” Jannie said. “You were fun, Miss Reggie. They liked the keeling-over-and-toes-up line.”

Nana Mama laughed.

Bree said, “You were relatable because you related to them.”

“That’s right,” Nana Mama said. “And I let them teach each other. It was always my secret weapon and that has not changed a bit. No one wants some old person lecturing them about what to think.”

“That’s true,” Jannie said.

Bree’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “I have to take this,” she said, turning toward the kitchen. “That was great, Nana. I think you’re a YouTube star in the making!”

CHAPTER 68

WHEN BREE ANSWERED HERphone, Elena Martin said, “I haven’t heard from you.”

“Because there hasn’t been a lot to tell,” Bree said, walking into the kitchen.

“And you’ve been looking for things to tell me?”

Bree thought that was an odd thing to say. “Well, I mean, we have a positive ID, Elena. We know it was Leigh Anne in that seat no matter what country issued her passport or how disfigured her body was.”

Her boss was quiet a beat, then said, “But there’s more.”

“Okay …”

Martin cleared her throat. “A member of the Amalgam board — anonymous for the moment — contacted me because of my relationship with Leigh Anne. Turns out the FBI has been investigating Amalgam.”

“What?”

“I swear to God, I just found out. Leigh Anne said nothing.”

“Did she know?”

“Evidently. And she decided not to file a notice of the investigation with the SEC until something definitive turned up.”

“So that the IPO could go forward.”

After a pause, Martin said, “The more I learn, the more I realize that my best friend not only had a secret life — she liked to play right at the edge of the law.”

“What was the thrust of the investigation?”

“That’s fuzzy, but my understanding is that some of the funding sources during the early financing rounds were, uh, sketchy.”

“Sketchy?”

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