Diamond Lil's Gardener

Dug had a bitch of a wife and two nice kids. Bob had a lovely wife and poker. Both marriages went sideways. Dug's dad was a loving father doing twenty for robbery. Bob's dad was a violent thug, inside for life, for killing a guard during the same robbery. A million dollars is still missing. Diamond Lil was caught in the middle of this mess. No, that's not quite right—she put herself in the middle. How the hell was she going to fix things?

This Howdunnit is set on the west coast of Canada, today, though the story covers twenty years. Seventy thousand words.