Page 54 of Fish and Chip

Dexter leans over and whispers, “She’s very knowledgeable about embezzlement.”

“I’ve heard rumors it might be professional research,” I whisper back.

“Or professional experience.”

“Shh, I’m trying to look innocent.”

“You’re wearing a cursed doll head and sitting in the third row of a murder panel. That ship has sailed, sunk, and been featured on a documentary.”

“Ooh, what kind of documentary?”

“Unsolved Theme Park Crimes. It’s low budget, and heavy on the reenactments.”

I bite back a smile. He’s not wrong, which is becoming an annoying habit of his.

Gertie pulls up a presentation on a screen behind her, a PowerPoint titled “How to Steal Money and Get Away with It (in Fiction).”

“The key to writing convincing corporate crime,” she says, clicking to the next slide, “is understanding that most white-collar criminals don’t set out to become criminals. They start with small justifications. ‘I’ll borrow this and pay it back.’ ‘The company won’t miss this amount.’ ‘I deserve this after everything I’ve done.’ And before you know it, you’re embezzling seventy-five thousand dollars and praying no one audits the quarterly reports.”

The room goes very quiet. Fifty pens freeze in midair. Somewhere in the fake canopy, a mechanical macaw screeches, which about sums it up.

“In fiction, of course,” Gertie adds. “That’s a plot I used in book four.”

Seventy-five thousand. Not a round hundred. Not fifty. A weirdly specific number for a hypothetical, but sure, we’ll call it fiction.

A thought comes to me and I sit up straight as a pin.

That’s the exact dollar amount Felicity mentioned that Gertie helped herself to. Or at least according to the rumors Belladonna was perpetuating.

Delora leans forward, completely engrossed. Ree’s scribbling frantically in her notebook.

“Write faster,” Georgie stage-whispers. “She’s giving away the good felonies.”

Gertie walks the crowd through various embezzlement schemes. Shell companies, falsified invoices, creative accounting, wire-transfer manipulation. She explains how audits work, what triggers investigations, and how clever criminals cover their tracks. I run a theme park where our biggest financial scandal is churro shrinkage, and even I’m tempted to grab a notebook.

“The beauty of corporate crime for mystery writers,” Gertie says, “is that it’s complicated enough to seem sophisticated, but simple enough that your amateur sleuth can unravel it with a little digging and a lot of determination.”

“She’s basically teaching a master class in how to get caught,” Dexter murmurs.

“Or how her characters get caught,” I counter.

“Same thing.”

From the photo op line, Fish’s voice drifts into my skull. The woman on stage has now explained four separate ways to steal money without so much as consulting her notes. I’m not saying she’s done it. I’m saying she could do it before lunch.

I have no opinions, Chip chimes in. A toddler just dropped an entire elephant ear, and no adult has noticed. I am clearly needed elsewhere.

At least one of us is thriving.

A hand shoots up in the audience, belonging to an elderly woman in a cardigan covered in cats. I like her immediately, obviously.

“Yes?” Gertie calls on her.

“How do you make the murderer sympathetic? Because in your books, even when they’re embezzlers and killers, I find myself feeling bad for them.”

Gertie’s expression softens. “That’s the heart of a good cozy mystery, isn’t it? Understanding that people do terrible things for human reasons. Desperation, fear, protecting someone they love. The best villains aren’t evil. They’re people who made bad choices in impossible situations.”

“Like being blackmailed?” someone else calls out.