Mella Sutton was a person who loved walking. She walked in all weathers, the sunshine, the rain, even the snow when she got a chance. Mella spent the early part of her life in the county of Kent in southern England, near to the Romney marshes where even the sheep wore little Wellington boots! Kent is known as the Garden of England; they grow gardens of hops from which they brew the beer. In those days before the advent of hop picking machines - people from London would arrive at the farms – which housed them – in the late summer to pick the hops by hand and earn some extra money. It was a great time for all, even the villagers loved having them there.

No one in Freedom Village walked more than Mella and she was a very inquisitive lady. She looked at everything that grew, and also observed the people she met. Mella liked to think she was another “Miss Marples” and thought she might solve the murder at the Colonial Building where her good friend Celine lived.

This morning Mella was on her way to the Colonial – the Betsy Ross room – to find another jigsaw puzzle to work on. Then she planned to go upstairs to visit with Celine and chat for a while. Mella was also friendly with Minjie and Jacko and the two BTs. Jacko had a favorite gecko which he had named Little Jacko – not what Mella fancied as a pet!

She picked up a couple of jigsaws, then started up the stairs. She was thinking about the murder and wondering if the investigation had turned up any new and significant information. She suddenly remembered the young man hurrying down the stairs the last time she had come this way to visit Celine. How could she have forgotten him!! She hadn’t seen his face clearly since he was looking away from her, and it was just a quick look anyway since he was really hurrying down the stairs. He wasn’t a resident of Freedom Village and his clothes were disheveled and dirty.

Where had he come from? Who was he?

Mella turned around and hurried back to her apartment in the Lexington Building. When she got home she brewed a cup of tea and got her knitting out. Both of these helped her think! How could she have forgotten about the young man? Perhaps it was because she was so excited about fact that her only sibling (her brother) was arriving with his wife from England. They lived on the East coast of England where Mella’s parents had kept a pub for 23 years (they have since popped off).

Mella sent a message to the detectives and Det Tracy insisted that she come down to the station. She said she would pick her up at the Lexington Lobby and Mella got to ride the police cruiser to the BPD. Tracy wanted to know if she could describe the strange man she had seen, and asked her to work with a police sketch artist to come up with a likely resemblance. Working with several police agencies and the FBI they managed to find one potential match. The match was in the FBI files as a known “Hit Man” who had worked for several different mobs.

But Mella continued to think about all the little things she had seen lately around the campus and the story she had heard about an extremely rich – maybe a billionaire – lady from the Colonial. The lady had died, but her jewelry had never been found. It seemed to Mella that all these things were coming together – the furtive figures in bushes and several younger people moving around in the Colonial building.

The murder victim had only been at Freedom Village a couple of weeks, and he had been staying in a Guest Room which was next door to the large apartment the billionaire lady had occupied. Is it possible that he had seen or heard something that he shouldn’t have?

During her visit with the detectives Mella had overheard them talking about the victim, Fairhaven. She thought they were saying he was a descendent of the rich lady, Madame von Pozzi – possibly a grandson or great grandson. Could it be that he was working with the man she had seen on the stairs?

Mella poured another cup of tea and started thinking about how she might be able to get into the empty von Pozzi apartment for a quick look around.