by Dale Mayer
Immediately Ella made a sympathetic face. And yet, again, something was off.
Doreen lowered her head, spotted some lady’s mantle and gave it a yank. The herb was helpful in some cases but had a tendency to take over if given half a chance.
“Some people are just unlucky,” Ella said cheerfully.
“Yes, like these two men apparently.” Doreen studied Ella’s face. “Maybe you knew him?” She watched carefully as she mentioned Robert Delaney’s name. And caught a flicker in that steady gaze of Ella’s.
Ella made a mock shudder and shook her head. “No. Thankfully I didn’t.”
Doreen nodded but didn’t believe Ella’s carefully schooled expression. “He worked at the retirement home,” Doreen said. “Actually he worked several places as a bit of a handyman. I’ve been looking into his life and finding out all kinds of things.” She shouldn’t say things like that, but she couldn’t help it. Something about this woman made her want to prick that complacent expression on Ella’s face.
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. It couldn’t be pleasant to have been the one to find him.” She gave another physical shudder. “I won’t take that path again.”
Doreen looked at the garden again, her mind caught on the fact that Ella knew where the man had been found. “Do you go down there often? Maybe you saw something that would be helpful to the police.”
“Oh, I couldn’t talk to the police,” Ella cried out in horror. “That’s just too unnerving.”
“I talk to them all the time.” Doreen studied Ella’s face for a moment. “I didn’t tell you that he was found in the creek.”
Ella stopped and stared. “Didn’t you? Well, somebody did. It’s all over town.” Ella stepped backward, her nervous gaze zipping from Doreen to the garden and back. “That’s another reason I couldn’t possibly talk to the police. I’m always spitting out the wrong information because I don’t hear quite as well as I used to.” She apologized, backing up several more steps.
Doreen watched as Ella retreated again. “Who were you talking to about it?”
Ella stopped—something about her gaze hardened. She snapped, “I’m sure I don’t remember. People like to gossip. Nobody can resist a chance to spread the news.” And she stormed off.
“I just bet they do,” Doreen said to the animals that all watched the woman rush away. She pulled out her phone and dialed Mack’s number, watching as Ella reached her house.
“Yes, Doreen,” he said cautiously.
She frowned into the phone. “Is that any way to talk to me? I am trying to help, you know?”
After a short silence, he exploded, “What have you done now?”
She gasped. “That’s so unfair. I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“I just spoke with Ella, my chatty neighbor. She already knew that the body was found in the creek by my house. How does everybody know so fast?”
“One of the greatest mysteries of life is how fast gossip travels,” he said drily. “Remember how you were behind other houses? Somebody may have seen you.”
“She didn’t tell me who she heard it from.”
Mack’s end of the phone went silent.
She pressed further. “She’s acting really nervous. I think she knows a whole lot more than she’s telling.” Doreen sat back on her haunches as something occurred to her. “And something’s familiar about her face. Maybe she’s related to the two men.”
“Now hold on a minute,” Mack protested. “We don’t even know if the men are related yet.”
“Well, get on it,” she moaned. “Her name would be different because she is married. She could be the sister. I’m working in the front garden right now, so why don’t you come by in a couple hours? You can go over and talk to her then.”
“I’m running an investigation here. Stop interfering,” he retorted.
“Fine.” She smiled. “I’ll see if she does anything suspicious.”
“No,” he said, alarm in his voice. “Leave her alone. I don’t want her to get any more suspicious, just in case she is involved. Back away until I can talk to her. I need you to butt out of my case and stay out.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “We are trained to deal with murderers. You are not.”
She didn’t like it, but it made sense. “Okay, fine.”
“I mean it.”
“I heard you,” she said in exasperation. She ended the call and finished weeding the flower bed. Yet, her mind was consumed. Now she wanted to research this lovely chatty neighbor of hers and see what she had been up to. Because Doreen was sure Ella was up to something. Now to figure out what.
Unable to leave it another second, she hurried inside, the animals excited at the change of pace. After washing her hands, she put on a cup of tea, sat down at the table and turned on her laptop, grabbing her notepad of information on the case so far. Thank God, she had had the foresight to make notes of all her conversations with the neighbors. She typed in her chatty neighbor’s name—Ella Goldman, per Brenda—and brought up as much of her history as she could locate on Google.
What did people do to get information in the old days?
Instantly pages popped up. “There she is,” Doreen said aloud.
Sipping her tea, Doreen read through the various articles. The first revealed when Ella got married, another one when her mother had died. Somewhere in the obscure paragraphs of still another article about some charity work Ella had done was a mention that she was adopted.
Doreen sat back and studied that for a long moment. Adopted. She went back to the article and read it again. It didn’t say by who or when. Doreen knew those distinctions mattered because she herself had been adopted by her mother’s second husband.
He’d been a good man with strong beliefs about right and wrong.
There was no way for Doreen to determine the circumstances surrounding Ella’s knowledge of the latest dead man. Maybe it was just a fluke. Or maybe Ella was a liar.
Looking through various articles, Doreen learned Ella had lived in Kelowna all her life. Another said she’d been married twice. Her first husband had died from a heart attack a few years after they were married. To Doreen, that alone was suspicious. Of course, she was looking for reasons to be suspicious. “A heart attack? How old a man was he?” It had been her first husband after all. He could have been too young to have a heart attack.
Ella had ended up with the house, vehicles and whatever money her first husband had left behind, as was normal in most marriages. She’d done very well for herself in the end. That in itself didn’t mean she’d done something to him. It could mean that she just had some compensation to help her deal with the loss.
Mugs barked. Doreen stood, grabbed her tea and walked to the front room. Someone was at the front door, but no one had knocked. Doreen walked over to the living room window in time to see her neighbor Ella walk across her front yard.
Was her neighbor going for a walk? Why would she be at the front door and not knock? Doreen wasn’t sure what was wrong, but things felt all kinds of wrong.
Hidden behind the curtains, she watched what her neighbor would do. Ella was up to something, most likely seeing if Doreen was home. They had just spoken to each other earlier this morning. And Doreen’s car remained out front. Why wouldn’t Doreen be home? On a hunch she waited and watched as her neighbor walked up Doreen’s driveway and around the side of her house. Ella’s hands were empty, and she was smiling. What was Ella up to?
Doreen picked up her phone and called Mack.
“Now what?” he said in exasperation.
“It’s the same neighbor. She’s back in my yard, walking about, acting weird. I think she’s trying to figure out if I’m home, which of course, I am since my car is here.”
Silence followed on the other end.
He was still there from the staticky sounds, like she was losing the connection. “I’m not making this up.”
Resigned, he said, “No, it’s too craz
y for you to have made it up.”
Just then she heard the doorknob on the front door turn. “Somebody’s trying to open the front door,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked in alarm. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I have to go.” She ended the call, pocketed it and watched as Mugs, barking, ran toward the front door. Using his commotion to distract the woman, Doreen headed up the stairs to the first landing on the staircase. From there she waited, listening to find out what the woman would do.
Ella entered Doreen’s house. “Nice dog. Aren’t you a nice dog?”
Mugs wasn’t having anything to do with Ella. He barked and barked and barked.
There was no sign of Goliath. But that was fairly typical. If there was work to be done, Goliath was gone.
Thaddeus, on the other hand, screeched.
The woman cried out. “Oh, my God! She has a zoo in here.”
The woman raced throughout the living room, and Doreen could hear sounds of drawers opening. The only thing in the living room with a drawer was the coffee table. What was Ella searching for? Doreen’s laptop and handwritten notes were on the kitchen table. She wondered if she should grab them. If Ella opened the laptop, she would see what Doreen had been looking at—Ella’s history. And that wasn’t anything Doreen wanted her chatty and possibly insane neighbor to know about.
However, while the woman was in the living room, Doreen could sneak into the kitchen. Taking a chance, she quietly took the stairs, thankful she was barefoot. In the kitchen, she snagged her laptop, turned. And stopped.
Her neighbor faced her with a feral smile, raising her hand.
Doreen’s jaw dropped. “Is that a gun?” Her gaze locked on the barrel pointed in her direction.
“Oh, my God!” Ella yelled. “Are you that stupid? You really are the typical dumb blonde, aren’t you? Of course it’s a gun.”
Doreen raised her gaze, seeing the anger and determination in the woman’s eyes. “Why do you have a gun? And why are you pointing it at me? What are you doing in my kitchen? That’s breaking and entering.”
“No, it isn’t. The door wasn’t locked,” she said. “Idiot. This may be entering illegally, but I didn’t break in.”
Doreen stared at her, stood stock-still, her mind racing to pull the pieces together. And then it clicked. “You shot the man in my garden.”
“I didn’t shoot anyone,” the woman snapped.
But Ella wasn’t anywhere near as convincing now as she had been earlier. Doreen shook her head. “What did he ever do to you? That man was harmless.”
“He was my brother. He was also an asshole.”
“Oh, my God! You killed your own brother?” Doreen gasped. “He was family.”
Ella glared at her. “No, I didn’t kill him. My brother did.”
“What?” Doreen was too shocked to make sense of that. “So how did he end up in Nan’s garden?”
“I told him to get rid of the body. But he’s an idiot and buried it on your property.”
Doreen felt shaky. Her legs had turned to rubber. “Why did he kill him?” she asked in a faint voice. This was too bizarre.
“It was an accident. They had a fight over a woman they both wanted. Robert punched James hard in the nose, and it killed him. Shoved his nose right into his brain. Robert came to me afterward for help, and we worked out what to do. But, instead of burying him out in the woods, like I suggested, he said he knew a place that had been recently turned over.”
“Of course… He’s a handyman. It wasn’t by chance that he asked Nan if she wanted him to do some gardening work in the backyard. Put in a small extension to the deck so she could walk down easier. It’s been a huge mess, and he knew it was bothering her.”
Ella nodded. “She told him that she wouldn’t bother as you’d be coming soon, and you’d take care of it. He’d seen her digging a few months ago though and figured it would be the easiest place to hide the body, but he was an idiot. You have to bury a body way deeper than that.”
“Six feet,” Doreen said. “Six feet to stop the dogs from smelling it.”
“Well, my brother was lazy. He’s always been lazy.” Ella shook her head. “Now I have to do everything myself to fix this.”
Doreen looked at her. “Well, you didn’t bury your brother six feet deep either. How can you blame Robert for being lazy when you did the same thing? Hell, you didn’t even bury him. You left him to rot in the creek.” She paused and fixed Ella with a direct question. “You did kill him, right?”
The woman waved her gun hand, brushing away the question, as if taking a life was just that simple. “It doesn’t matter. What matters right now is that I need your notes, and I need to know who you may have said something to.”
“Why would you want my notes?”
The woman shot her a look. “Oh, for the love of God. Are you really that stupid?”
Doreen bristled. “Are you really that crazy to keep insulting me? I put up with that crap from my husband for a long time,” she snapped. “I don’t have to take it from you too.”
“I can’t imagine why he stayed married to you.” She snorted, waving her gun around. “Then I read about the divorce online. Saw pictures of him and his new much younger girlfriend. You should have realized what was happening. Once you hit forty, you’re automatically replaced.”
Doreen glared at her. “I’m not forty.”
The woman smirked. “Okay, so in your case, thirty-five, and he was done early. How is that any better?”
“This is a ridiculous conversation. You can’t shoot me. How would you explain my death? And, if the same gun was used to shoot your brother, the police will connect all the murders,” she said, hoping to keep Ella talking long enough to give Mack time to get here.
“Of course it won’t be related. I’ll shoot you in such a way that it looks like you shot yourself.” Ella’s gaze turned crafty. “Overwhelmed with guilt for having shot my brother.”
Doreen’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t kill your brother.”
Ella rolled her eyes. “No, but the cops don’t know that. See? They’ll get all the evidence together, proving that you shot him, and then you came home and shot yourself. After all, you’re depressed and despondent about losing your lifestyle and your husband.”
Glumly Doreen wondered if that would work. Surely Mack would see she had no motivation for these killings. Would Mack fight for her cause? Would he understand she wasn’t that stupid and how he had been tipped off that Doreen was suspicious of Ella first? Or would he not care, as it would nicely close several cases for him?
Hopefully he was already on his way here right now.
Suddenly she remembered the insurance office. “Was that you making a mess at James Farley’s insurance office too?”
“No, that was my stupid brother. Tried to make it look like a robbery and kidnapping or some such thing.”
Mugs sniffed around the woman’s legs. Thaddeus was in the corner of the kitchen. Doreen could see him walking back and forth in obvious distress, his head bobbing up and down, his wings flapping as he looked around. Somewhere in the mix was Goliath. What Doreen really needed was a sneak attack from Mugs or Goliath or Thaddeus or all three. Something to distract this woman so Doreen could grab the gun.
She looked down at Mugs and said in a determined voice, “Attack, Mugs.”
Mugs jumped toward Doreen, barking.
“Not me, Mugs, her.”
Ella chuckled. “You’re such a mess. Your dog doesn’t know what that means.”
But a streak of orange flew into the kitchen as Goliath raced forward, dodging between Ella’s legs. Ella shrieked, stumbling a bit, and grabbed the doorjamb to stop herself from falling.
Mugs turned, barking at Goliath, chasing him back out of the room again. Both of them bumped into Ella as she tried to right herself and to also get out of the way of the animals.
It gave Doreen her chance. She stepped forward and kicked the crazy woman’s legs out
from under her. As she went down, Doreen knocked the gun out of Ella’s hand and smacked her hard across the face with her closed fist. It wasn’t really a punch, but considering she still had rings on her fingers, it would do major damage to the woman’s cheek, and that wasn’t all bad in this particular situation.
With Ella down on the hallway floor just outside the kitchen, Doreen sat on her. She looked around for something to hold her here but found nothing to use.
Ella arched her back and tried to dislodge Doreen. When that didn’t work, Ella scratched Doreen’s arms and screamed, “Get off me.”
Meanwhile Mugs barked like crazy, Goliath howled and Thaddeus flew about the kitchen.
Doreen shook her head and grabbed one of the great big books sitting in a stack on the floor off to the side—another of Nan’s perpetual collection of useless things, until now—and smacked Ella over the head with it. It shouldn’t have been a hard blow, but her eyeballs rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed, unconscious.
Just then both the front and back doors burst open, and cops streamed toward her. She held up her hands and pointed at the floor where Ella’s gun had landed. Mack picked up the gun and asked, “What just happened?”
Slowly, as the cops holstered their guns, Doreen stood. “The man in the creek was her brother. She shot him, as far as I can tell, because he didn’t bury their other brother deep enough in Nan’s garden.” The cops looked at her, then at the woman unconscious on the floor and back at Doreen. “If you can believe anything Ella says, Robert Delaney accidentally killed James Farley. Then Ella killed Robert Delaney because he messed up the burying part of James’s body.” Doreen smirked. “Talk about family love.”
Mack shook his head. “Can’t you stay out of trouble for five minutes?”
She glared at him. “I’d be happy to.”
“So there is no connection with these recent murders to the things found upstairs?” Mack asked, frowning.
“I didn’t really get a chance to ask her about the rest, but I think these three siblings were Jeremy Feldspar’s children.”
