“Me? Nothing, but he was downright mean to Margot, you know that. He was very angry about her thwarting his big-time plans. He bought the two lots behind this building, you know, so whatever he wanted to build here was going to be big, really big. Probably another condo.” His expressive blue eyes glanced out the front window, toward the gray condo complex across the street, then at Betsy. “Margot just hated that thing, you know,” he said softly.

Betsy said, “So you think it was in part to keep Joe from putting up another condo that made her glad she could thwart Joe’s plans?”

“I don’t think anyone knows what Joe plans to put up on this site,” said Jill.

“Well, that’s true,” Godwin conceded. “It could be a business block. It could be a vertical mall. But whatever it was, it was going to be a lot bigger than the current building.”

“How do you know Joe bought the property behind this building?” asked Betsy.

“Because my sister’s brother-in-law owned the gas station up behind here. Joe bought his place nearly two years ago, and is renting it back to him on a month-by-month basis, so he’s been planning this for at least that long.”

Shelly remarked, “You know, holding on to all this property all this time may have given Joe cash-flow problems. I mean, he was all set to start building this spring, but Margot wouldn’t vacate.”

“If Joe is going to put up a big building on this site, he can’t be short of cash,” said Jill. “Besides, he’s collecting rent from all three shops—and the other two don’t have leases, so he’s getting more from them.”

“But big-time financiers are always getting into trouble when they have to delay their plans,” Shelly argued. “It has something to do with cash flow.”

Jill made a dismissive noise. “Like you know anything about big-time financiers.”

“I may not be rich, but I read,” Shelly retorted. “And the Strib has stories all the time about big companies and rich people who get into trouble because they bite off more than they can chew, or they start in doing something big and there’s a delay or a glitch. It’s like one day they’re rich and the next day they’re bankrupt.”

There was a cozy little silence as everyone contemplated Joe Mickels filing for bankruptcy.

“How far would someone like Mickels go if all that stood between him and making a lot of money was Margot?” asked Godwin, serious again.

“And if not doing what he planned meant going broke?” added Shelly.

The sober mood was broken when the shop door opened. Standing in the door was Mike Malloy in a brown tweed suit too warm for the seventy-five-degree weather. “What are you doing off patrol?” he said to Jill in a hard voice.