by Dale Mayer
Determined to accomplish something, she got up and grabbed her gardening gloves. She called the animals out to the garden. She was determined to do some weeding at least.
Wandering down to the overgrown bed, she figured she could handle about ten feet without too much stress. Then she would figure out what needed to be weeded where the tarps would be.
With that, she grabbed her digging fork and wheelbarrow and headed to the spot she was working on. She should have brought some music out, and, almost as if reading her mind, the neighbor on the far side—not Richard’s—turned music on. Some symphony. Not something Doreen would have chosen, but, hey, it was better than nothing.
As she listened to the music of an era long gone, she dug, rocking and rolling as she tossed weeds and picked up big rocks and moved them off to one side. She wanted the rocks, but she wanted to place them strategically when she was done, so she had a pile of big rocks in the garden and left the little ones where they were.
She really did need some topsoil, and that would be a problem. She could get one of those giant bags, maybe delivered with equipment over into her backyard, but that had to be at least one hundred dollars, if not twice that. And somehow she would still have to wheelbarrow the dirt in and out. She would probably need one bag for each side alone.
Groaning at the extra cost, but knowing the garden had been severely depleted over the years, she dug back in and kept coming up with more and more roots. She was working to get the roots under the base of the weeds, not just ripping them off halfway.
By the time she’d worked down the bed a good five feet, she realized how much she’d overestimated her abilities, particularly in the growing heat. She wanted to stop and go in for some ice water, but, at the same time, she knew, if she stopped even for a few minutes, she would quit for the day. She kept digging, and, by the time she was almost there to her ten-foot mark, she heard a voice calling out to her.
“Out here,” she yelled back, and it wasn’t long before Mack came striding through the kitchen. He stood at the deck. She lifted her very last shovelful, bent down, and shook all the weeds loose, reaching farther to loosen up some more that were deeper, and then heaped the ground around the plants. She straightened up, groaning. “I forgot how hard this work is.”
“Maybe so,” he said, looking down at the bed along the fence. “But you’re doing a hell of a job.”
She beamed at him. “Well, that’s the established garden,” she said. “I didn’t really want to lose it, but it needed some work. I’d like to find a way to put something along the very back against the fence to stop it from rotting and to also give the whole thing more definition.”
“We could probably put some loose boards along there,” he said. “That would allow you to build the dirt a little bit higher along the back too.” He walked down the few steps and came around to where she stood. Looking at the wheelbarrow, he asked, “Where are you dumping all this?”
“Out in the compost bin closer to the front,” she said. “I was just bringing the bin down here to fill it, but now it’s too heavy.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “I’ll go dump it for you.” He turned and grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow as if it were a tiny toy and wheeled it ahead of her.
She raced past him and opened the big compost barrel near the garage. It was picked up every second week, and this one was definitely full. When he brought the wheelbarrow around, she used her shovel to scoop the contents from the wheelbarrow into the bin. “What are you doing here anyway? You sounded superbusy earlier.”
“I am,” he said. “A bunch of cases have been opened, and a bunch converged,” he said.
She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. “Can you tell me more?”
He shook his head. “Hell no,” he said. “We have enough work to do without you getting in the middle of it.”
She snorted. “On the other hand, if you told me about it, maybe I could cut your work in half.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you insulting us?” he drawled.
“No, just poking a little fun.” She snapped the compost bin closed. “Thank you. That can go back to the garden now.”
Obediently he turned and pushed the wheelbarrow back to where he’d found it. “Are you doing more this afternoon?”
She shook her head. “No. I planned to do that ten feet I just finished, then spread out the tarps and figure out the markers I needed to cut out that part of the lawn and get that done. But it took way more to do the ten feet of weeding than I was expecting.”
“Ya think?” he said. “You’ll need some more dirt in here, won’t you?”
“Yep,” she said. “Though I’m not sure how, or how much it’ll cost.”
“Especially back here.” He frowned. “You can’t get a dump truck in here. He could dump it on the driveway on a bunch of tarps, but you’ll have to wheelbarrow it around.”
She nodded. “What about those big bags they can sling around? Do you think they could drop it alongside the garage here or even around the back?”
He looked at her in surprise, then walked to the side of the house, frowning. Then he nodded. “You know what? They just might. At least that would keep it all contained, and you could just shovel out a wheelbarrow full at a time.”
“That’s what I was wondering,” she said. “Then I could take it down, start at the far end, and work it back. But it would probably take at least two bags.”
“More, I think, if you want to do both sides.”
“I do,” she said, “and I should top dress this grass in the center, but I wanted to get some patio blocks along in the middle because walking on the grass isn’t the best.”
He nodded. “We were talking about a patio in here.” He looked at her. “Where are those tarps you bought?”
She beamed at him. “Let me go get them.” She dashed up the steps and noted a full cup of coffee sitting on the railing. She glared at him. “Do you ever buy your own coffee?”
“Nope,” he said, “I don’t have to. I just come here and get a cup.”
She rolled her eyes, snatched up her own empty cup, and walked inside. Thankfully there was still a cup for her, but it was cold. She groaned and put on a fresh pot, then checked his cup and found it cold too. She poured them both into a carafe and put them in the fridge. Iced coffee was a lovely thing in the afternoon.
While she waited for the fresh coffee to finish dripping, she went out to the garage, grabbed the two new tarps from her car, and took them out to where Mack was.
“Where’s my coffee?”
“It was stone-cold,” she announced. “That pot was made a long time ago. So I stuck that in the fridge and put a fresh pot on.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re forgiven.”
She shook her head. “The nerve,” she sputtered.
He looked at the tarps with interest. “Hey, I like these,” he said. “They’d be great for camping.”
“These will be great for under the deck,” she snapped.
He chuckled. “There is that too. So what is it you’re hoping to do?” he asked, as he opened one and spread it out.
“That’s quite big, isn’t it?” she said, studying the size.
“Maybe, but not quite big enough, depending on what you’re thinking.”
“I was just thinking to keep some of the weeds down below the deck, so they don’t poke through.”
With that, he took the digging shovel and put a quick line all the way around the outside of the existing deck, then another quick line for the space they were looking at outside the tarp, and yet another line to mark the space they were looking at for enlarging the deck.
“It’ll go a little bit bigger than this,” he said, “but it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a ridge around here. We’ll have to level off the blocks anyway.”
She nodded. “While we have it marked, I could cut out all this sod. The compost bin gets picked up Monday. So I should fill it tonight, take it out so it is emptie
d on Monday, then I can put whatever is left of this sod into the bin on Tuesday.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” he said, and he picked up the shovel again and started slicing it deeper so she could pick up sections of grass and move it. “This section will be tough.” He motioned at the part of the lawn where she stood. “But, as you get closer to the house, it should get easier.”
“Do you think I should just leave it in place and let it die instead?” She frowned, looking at it.
“Your choice,” he said. “We’ll have to dig the blocks down, and you only have what looks like maybe one step all the way around. Because the deck itself can’t be too high. I’m afraid any longer grass will poke through.”
She groaned. “It’s just so much work.”
“Since when are you allergic to work?”
“I’m not,” she said, straightening her shoulders, fortified by the compliment in his question. She grabbed her digging fork, and, while Mack cut cross pieces, she used the digging fork to lift them. Then she beat the pieces a couple times with the digging fork to loosen them and tossed the pieces into the wheelbarrow.
Before long they had a good four-foot strip done. “That went fast,” she said, surprised at the difference having help made.
“Big jobs are easier with more hands than just your own,” Mack said. “Even if just to know you’re not alone in it.”
She thought about that and nodded. “It seems like I’ve been alone a lot in my lifetime.”
“Well, you’re not now,” he said. “You have a community, and that makes all the difference. Speaking of which. Did you find anything else about the jewels?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, but I was thinking maybe you could pull the old records from that burglary. Presumably when your mom turned the jewels in to the police, they checked the jewels against the jewelry heist and didn’t find anything that matched. I’d just like to confirm.”
He nodded without saying anything.
“But it was a long time ago, so I don’t know what you’ll find for records,” she continued.
“I don’t know either,” he said. “We do have paper records, and some of it’s been scanned in, but most of it hasn’t. It’s just been sitting in storage.”
She shook her head. “That makes no sense to me.”
“Mass digital conversion,” he said.
She nodded. “Well, let’s hope something is there. Other than that, I had a not-so-interesting conversation with Aretha in the grocery store today.” Then she filled him in on that exchange.
He looked at her in surprise. “At least you can hold your own,” he said. “You understand women like that.”
She nodded and reached up to wipe the sweat off her brow. “But you know something? The more I think about it, I don’t think she’s as rich as she seems. She didn’t wear one piece of jewelry. After all those years of owning a jewelry store. Her clothing showed age. I remember the crimped look on the jacket that wasn’t supposed to be there. Almost like the grand old dame had run out of steam and money.”
“And now you’ll be sympathetic toward her, I suppose.” He gave her a big smile. “You try to be tough, but you’re such a softy.”
She gasped at that, muttering, “You’re the softy. So who died?”
“A little old lady,” he commented.
She stared at him. “Murder?”
He glared at her.
“Well, it must be, if you’re involved.”
“Other deaths come under my umbrella too, you know.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
He shrugged. “When someone dies, and the person isn’t known to have any particular health condition, we take care of the case until we get back the autopsy results. If nothing is suspicious about it, the case is closed. However, if something is suspicious about it, then we work the case.”
“Is it a little old lady that Nan’s likely to know?” Doreen jammed her digging fork into the ground with a little more force than she needed.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Any connection to my jewel case?”
“Your jewel case?” he said in a teasing note.
She flushed. “Okay, so maybe it’s not a case. But, if it isn’t, then I might as well start looking into serial killer Bob Small.”
“Hey, that’s not funny,” he said.
She shrugged. “I won’t be bored, and that’s been sitting in the basket. I’ll have to deal with it eventually.”
“Or not,” he snapped, digging harder and faster.
She watched in amazement as he crisscrossed his shovel into the ground, making it so much easier for her to remove the sod. “I almost hate to be nice to you,” she said with a grin.
He ignored her and kept barreling through the work. By the time he got half of it done and was well on his way to the two-thirds mark, she was enjoying it. He stopped and looked at her. “What’s your problem? You look like the cat that ate the canary. Why?”
“You,” she said, finally laughing out loud. “To get all this yard work done, I only need to get you steaming mad, hand you the shovel, and, boy, do you plow through it!”
He glared at her, then looked at the amount of work he’d done, and, despite himself, he chuckled. “Did you do that on purpose?”
She shook her head. “No, I sure didn’t. But I’m happy with the result.”
“Except you’re the one who will have to shake out all that sod,” he said, “and you’re way behind now.”
She nodded. “I get that, but I’ve already done a lot of work today. I can finish it tomorrow.”
Just then Mack’s phone beeped, and he looked down and frowned, headed for the house.
“What’s the problem now?” she asked, following him.
“Another old lady,” he said sourly.
She stopped. “Dead?”
“You didn’t hear that from me,” he said, “and, no, I don’t have any details, so don’t bug me.”
“Got it,” she said slowly. “It’s an interesting conundrum, isn’t it?”
“What?” He walked into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. Wiping his face with a damp paper towel, he said, “I’ve got to go.”
She called back, “You really want to talk about it, but you can’t. That’s the conundrum.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said, “but you won’t leave me alone. That’s the conundrum.”
She laughed and whispered, since he was gone already, “Good point, Mack. Good point.” She knew she’d be racing for the newspapers as soon as she got inside to see what was going on with these little old ladies. It just added to her day.
She wondered if either of them were Aretha. That would be sad because, in Doreen’s heart, she knew the lady was lonely and desperately in need of a friend.
Maybe Mack was right. I am a softy.
Chapter 8
Saturday Late Lunchtime …
Back inside, Doreen was definitely hungry now as she looked at the meager ingredients in her fridge, even after her recent trip to the grocery store, and groaned. “I don’t want yet another sandwich, and I had just coffee for breakfast,” she said. And it was Saturday, so Mack wasn’t due to cook today. He was coming back tomorrow to cook. So what the heck would she do in the meantime? Spotting the eggs, she hadn’t had an omelet in forever, and she could make a good ham and cheese omelet. She wondered about adding mushrooms and thought, if she sliced them superthin, it might work out. Nothing wrong with having an omelet for a late lunch.
As she got everything out for the omelet, she sliced the mushrooms as thin as she could and cooked her omelet, putting the thin layer of mushrooms on before she folded it over, then put a lid on to let the cheese melt and the mushrooms cook. When it was done, she was happily surprised to see the mushrooms were just the way she liked them. She served herself a plate and sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop.
No mention of the deaths on the local news yet. But, when she went to one of th
e online newspapers, she found an interesting note about a body discovered. It didn’t say it was an old lady though. Curious about that, Doreen clicked through to see if there was any more information but found nothing.
She wondered if she could now get an address for Aretha. Just something about her struck a chord. Doreen had met so many women like her, and, if not by the grace of God, Doreen could have ended up the same way herself down the road. But, as it was, she would end up more like Nan now. And that was so much more fun.
As if hearing her voice, Nan called on the phone. “Did you hear?” she cried out.
“Hear what?” Doreen asked.
“They found a body.”
And her voice dropped to such a hushed yet excited whisper that Doreen had to settle back and roll her eyes. “People die all the time, Nan. That doesn’t mean anything is suspicious about it.”
“Oh, so you’ve talked to Mack already, have you?” And Nan’s voice dropped with disappointment.
“He told me about it, yes, but they don’t know if it’s suspicious or not.”
“Of course he does,” Nan said, brushing that off. “That’s just Mack, trying not to give you any details.”
With a surprising start, Doreen realized Nan was correct. It was such a Mack thing to do. “Well maybe,” she said, “he has good reason.”
“Of course he does.” Nan laughed. “He’s trying to keep you out of trouble and away from his case.”
“I’m not that bad, surely.”
“Nope,” Nan said, “you’re much better than that. So, when you do find out, let me know, huh?”
“Will do,” Doreen said. “By the way, do you know where Aretha is now? I met her at the grocery store today.”
“Oh. right. I heard about that.”
“What do you mean, you heard about it?”
