“Hell no,” Joe said. “I know she’s your sister and she’s dead and all, but I don’t think anybody ever victimized Tanya Carnahan. Unfortunately, she was able to sweet-talk an assistant district attorney into dropping the charges against her. The minute that happened, she was gone. And of course, she skipped out on her motel bill.”

“Oh God. I’m sorry…”

“It was almost worth it,” Joe said. “To get that son of a bitch Chuck away from Ava. If he’d hung around any longer, he would have bled her dry.”

Letty’s thoughts immediately strayed to the suitcase hidden under the bed that contained Tanya’s go-bag, and the wad of cash she’d stashed in it. Tanya had claimed it was her savings, but Letty had never really believed her sister had managed to save that much money from her faltering acting career.

Was the cash part of the loot from the gold-and-silver-buying scam? Whose money was it? Should she admit to Joe what she’d been hiding? Her head was starting to throb—either from the wine or the prospect of admitting to the crime of omission.

“Remind me again of how you figured out they were fleecing people?” she asked.

Joe toyed with the plastic lei around his own neck. “One of our guests here—a regular—pulled me aside one night, I think it was after a barbecue. She was mad and at the same time embarrassed, because she’d sold a piece of jewelry she’d inherited—her grandfather’s antique gold watch—to Rooney, who’d told her it was only worth the value of the gold, maybe three thousand dollars. Later on, after she confided to a friend what she’d done, the friend helped her look up the value of the watch on eBay. Turns out, it was a rare collector’s piece that was worth at least ten times what Rooney paid her. She didn’t dare tell her husband what she’d done, because the guy’s a real tight-ass, but the friend convinced her to tell me about the way she’d been fleeced.”

Letty considered the roster of Murmuring Surf regulars she’d come to know over the past month. “You’re talking about Trudi Maples, right?”

Joe’s silence convinced her she was right.

“I can just see Merwin throwing it up to her about getting ripped off,” Letty said. “He’d never let her live it down.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Joe said. “I promised the victim that I’d keep her identity confidential.”

“Tanya told Rooney that she didn’t have the money. She pointed the finger at Chuck,” Letty said.

“And now Chuck’s dead,” Joe said, his expression grim.