by Dale Mayer
“Has he got lots of food?”
She stood, walked over to make sure herself. “After forgetting a few days ago,” she said, “I felt so bad that I’m probably overfeeding them now.”
In the front hall, she found the bag of birdseed, grabbed a handful, and set it on the kitchen table. Thaddeus went at it. She groaned. “At the rate he’s eating, I’ll have to buy another bag soon.”
“Have you bought any yet?”
She shook her head. “No. So far all the supplies Nan left are holding me in good stead.”
“Good,” he said. “Your money will go a little further then.”
She nodded. “Not very far but far enough. Now tell me what I need to know.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“What caliber were the bullets that killed her? How many times was she shot? What was the cause of death? I’m presuming it was the bullets,” she said, “because I saw her just a short time earlier. However, her neck looked a little bruised, and I don’t remember seeing that earlier.”
“You noticed that, did you?” he said. “I noticed it too.” He tapped his notepad with his pencil. “The thing is, until the coroner has a chance to check her over, we won’t know the details.”
She nodded. “How the hell did the old folks’ home know right away?”
He groaned. “No clue. The Family Planning Center was still shut down since that unpleasantness last week.”
“What unpleasantness?”
He shot her a look. “Didn’t you hear about it?”
“I didn’t even know that building existed until today,” she said. “So tell me.”
“It’s a Family Planning Center, and they’re pro-choice,” he said. “A big kerfuffle occurred last week as a couple of men went in and hassled some of the women in the waiting room. It was bad enough they had to shut down the center while they reconsider security options.”
“Were the men ever charged?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t heard.”
“Do you work active cases or just cold cases?”
He let out a gust of air. “As you know, I do both.”
“So what was the cold case you were going to tell me about before?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t. I want to know more about this couple. Did you hear any of their conversation?”
“I told you that part already,” she said. “So is your cold case a murder, drugs, theft?”
“None of that,” he said.
“Missing kids?” she guessed.
He shot her a look.
She crowed. “I’m right, aren’t I?” She clapped her hands like a child.
He shook his head. “I’m not telling you if you’re right or wrong. The bottom line is, we’re not going there right now.”
She nodded. “Okay, because really we have an active case we need to be working on. You gave me the name of the deceased and said she’s a businesswoman, but what business does she own?”
He sighed. “She’s the one who handled the funding for the Family Planning Center,” he said. “She runs a service that connects financiers to businesses.”
Doreen stared at him for a long moment as the implications set in. “So her body was dumped in front of a building she helped to start?”
He nodded.
She sat back, her hand covering her mouth. “Wow,” she said. “That’s interesting.”
He shrugged.
“Of course it could be worse,” she said. “She could have created a candy shop. Maybe she would have been dumped in a vat of fudge or something.”
He stared at her.
She chuckled. “Okay, okay. You know me. I’m just sorting through all the negatives, then finding something bright and cheerful to balance it out somehow.”
“Finding a body in a vat of chocolate fudge,” he said, “is not cheerful.”
She shrugged, grabbed her coffee cup, and walked over to the pot. “Maybe not but there is fresh coffee, so I’m having a cup.” She poured some and sat back down, waving her hand over the top, wafting away the steam. “It’s a missing kid, huh? Interesting case.”
He ignored her and tapped his notepad. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything else?”
She frowned. “I thought the Family Planning Center building was empty, but I had this creepy feeling that somebody was watching me, you know? But then, when I turned around, I didn’t see anybody in the windows.”
“No. Like I said, it’s been closed.”
“Unless somebody was working, getting caught up, taking care of business while they didn’t have to deal with the public,” she said calmly. “We know a lot of people would do that. What about janitors?”
He nodded. “No one answered the officers who knocked. Just because you have an odd feeling isn’t some reason for me to jump to conclusions that somebody in there was watching you.”
“But not a reason not to say so either,” she said with a chuckle, picking up her cup and taking a sip. As soon as she tasted it, she smiled.
“What’s that smile for?” His voice was suspicious but edged with humor.
Her smile fell away, and she stared at him innocently.
He sighed. “Is it better?”
“To my sadness,” she said, “it is.”
At that, he laughed. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?” he said affectionately.
She shrugged. “But you like me anyway, so it’s all good. How many kids went missing?”
“Three, but they weren’t all connected.” He stopped and said, “Goddammit.”
She laughed. “All boys?”
His brows came together. “What makes you think they were boys?”
“I don’t know. I had good odds of being right, and I’m pretty good at playing the odds.”
“Like grandmother, like granddaughter,” he said with a head tilt and raised eyebrows. “In that case, you should buy a lottery ticket. It would solve your money problems.”
“Hmm. That’s true. The problem with that is, you have to have money in the first place.”
He grinned. “True. I’ll leave you now.” He stood, grabbing his notebook. “Make sure you don’t talk to anybody about the case, please. I’ll probably come back with some more questions later. But I’ll call you before.”
“Good enough,” she said. “Are we still having our cooking lesson on Monday?”
“No reason not to.” He turned and walked out.
Chapter 6
Wednesday afternoon…
Remembering Wendy’s comments to bring her more resale clothing, Doreen took the remaining piece of carrot cake and a cup of tea and walked up to the master bedroom. She’d moved her clothes in but hadn’t moved Nan’s out. A huge double closet ran along one wall. In truth, she’d been saving this chore for a rainy day. But, right now, the distraction would be good, and seeing Thaddeus’s food dwindling down daily was another constant reminder that she needed more money. Since Nan had this habit of hiding or losing track of money in a lot of her clothing, it had been a huge source of extra cash for Doreen the last time she went through Nan’s clothing. So much so that Doreen was still using that found money for groceries.
She started at one end of the closet, pulling out about a half-dozen hangers, all with evening clothes on them. She held up a couple dresses and whistled. “Wow, Nan. When would you have ever worn these?” One was sparkly, looked like a 1920s’ dress from the Gatsby era. But it was seriously stunning and silver. She laid down all the dresses on the bed and hung up that silver one on the back of the door and checked its condition. It was really gorgeous, also in great shape. And, from the size of it, would fit Doreen.
She frowned. “I’ll never have anyplace to wear something like this.” Yet she was loathe to let it go.
She kept it on the back of the door while she checked out the other things she’d pulled out. Each was a dress in a very different style, very unique. They weren’t necessarily Doreen’s style. However, she would never have said they were
Nan’s either. But it revealed Nan’s fashion sense and personality at a much younger age. And, man, she must have been a party animal.
Still, these dresses were of excellent quality and that meant a lot in terms of selling them.
She set aside two more she was interested in for herself, and three she hung on the curtain rod on the small window to decide on later. And then she went to check through all the pockets but found nothing. She pulled out two more dresses, disappointed because no cash was found in the pockets.
She found something in the next dress with padded bra cups—a fifty-dollar bill tucked into one bra cup. Stunned, she pulled it out. But then thought about all the times she’d gone out for an evening. If she didn’t want to take a purse with her, but needed to have some pocket money, this would be a perfect hiding place. That made her go back and check every one of the other dresses. That was the only dress she found more money in, but she did make sure she checked them all out very thoroughly, including the waistbands.
She worked steadily for another hour, going through another good portion of the closet. Some of the items were not today’s style, yet were classical styles Doreen could wear anytime. At least she hoped so.
When her phone rang, she answered it absentmindedly.
“Bitch,” came the stranger’s voice at the other end.
“Pardon me?”
Click.
She snorted. “Well, it’s not like I haven’t been called that before.”
She put down the phone and returned to the dresses she’d pulled out on the bed. One was a hippie-style muumuu. She laughed. It might be fun if she ever gained a couple hundred pounds, but she couldn’t imagine wearing it now. It was made with such a gorgeous material though. If only she could sew; she could do so much with it. She placed it in the pile to be taken to the consignment store.
The next one she thought was a knit dress but instead was almost a floor-length cardigan. It was gorgeous. The material was soft, smooth, and silky. She checked the pockets and crowed in delight as she pulled out a change purse. It was beaded in some kind of gold lamé, which would have gone with one of the dressier frocks, not necessarily the cardigan.
She opened up the coin purse to find it crammed with coins and bills. Carefully she emptied it on the bed. There were a lot of coins, maybe ten dollars’ worth, along with several twenties. As she peeled open the twenties, she found a fifty inside. She stared in amazement. “Nan, how could you possibly have misplaced all this money? I’d have gone nuts if I was missing fifty dollars.”
When the phone rang a second time, she didn’t think anything of it. “Hello?”
“Bitch, you’ll die too.”
Snick.
“Once, okay, whatever. Twice, now you’re being a pain in the ass,” she said.
She waited to see if the caller would ring her a third time. But nobody called back. Checking for the telephone number, she just found Unknown Caller. She wrote down the time of both calls and waited to see if another one would come.
She turned and studied the coin purse. It was such a cute thing that she didn’t want to get rid of it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to sell the long cardigan sweater either. She took it off the hanger and put it on in front of the full-length mirror. It stopped just about midcalf and was a thick sage green with big rolled-up cuffs at the wrists.
She wrapped it around herself and smiled. “I’m keeping you,” she announced. And then the phone rang for a third time. She saw the same Unknown Caller designation on her cell phone screen and answered it. “Hello.”
“You’ll get yours, bitch.”
“You are getting boring,” she said. This time she hung up the phone first.
And grinned.
Chapter 7
Thursday morning…
When she woke up the next day, it was hard to believe it was morning. She’d had a restless night. Even though she’d had the last laugh on her unknown caller, and he hadn’t called back again, the incident had still worked its way into her nightmares. She wasn’t sure what the man’s problem was.
“Or for that matter,” she muttered aloud to the empty room, “if it’s connected to any of the dead bodies I found. He’s obviously a bully, trying to scare me by threatening me. Like Mack would say, just because my caller mentioned me dying too doesn’t necessarily mean he’s connected with Celeste’s murder.”
She rotated her neck slowly as she sat on the side of the bed. A heavy head landed in her lap as Mugs rolled over and stretched out. She bent down and scratched his long belly, ending up with a cuddle of his ears. She loved those big floppy ears of his. They were so silky. “You can stay here, Mugs, but I need a shower.”
As she hopped up, she saw Thaddeus on her bedroom windowsill, looking at the backyard. She frowned. “What are you doing over there, Thaddeus?”
He turned a gimlet eye in her direction and gave a head tilt toward the window, like saying, Get over here, idiot, and look. About time you finally woke up.
She walked toward him and looked out the window. Nothing appeared to be different. She frowned. “I don’t know what’s bothering you, little one, but I don’t see anything to be worried about.”
He gave a half a squawk and ruffled his feathers, almost as if insulted she hadn’t seen what he’d seen.
She studied the backyard again, but it didn’t appear to be any different. But then a lot had been going on in her backyard, so she wasn’t sure she could write off Thaddeus’s observations that fast. It had taken her a while, but she’d come to realize that the animals really did have some sort of intuitive knowledge of what was going on around them.
Turning away, she headed for a shower. When she came out with the towel wrapped around her, Thaddeus still stood lookout at the window. What really bothered her was his focus. He wasn’t a predator by nature, though she supposed in the wild he would have been. Something out there he was keeping watch over.
She stood beside him, yet again studying the same direction he was so focused on. He stayed fixed on the back right corner. It almost looked like where the fence ended and the creek wrapped around the neighbor’s fence.
She crouched behind him, so she could get a bead on his line of sight. “I know you’re smarter than I am, buddy. But I sure can’t see what you’re seeing.” He never moved. “We could go downstairs and go outside, see what it is,” she said, almost as a peace offering.
He squawked and hopped onto her shoulder.
She chuckled and said, “Okay. I’ll take that as a yes. But let me get dressed first.”
And that he didn’t want to do. She struggled into her clothes, finally forcibly removing him from her shoulder, putting him on the headboard. Once dressed, she put him back on her shoulder and walked downstairs, Mugs at her side.
As she walked down the last set of stairs, she saw Goliath sprawled on the bottom step. She groaned. “Why would you choose to lie there?”
The only acknowledgment she got from him was a flick of his tail. She snorted. “You’re trying to trip me, aren’t you? And then what will you do?” she snapped. “I’ll be laid up with a broken leg, and nobody’ll get you food.”
He rolled over onto his back and stretched. Reminiscent of Mugs’ earlier move, she chuckled, stepped over the huge feline, squatted down, and gave Goliath a couple gentle strokes. She straightened and said, “I’m loving all this animal time, but I’ll turn into an animal myself if I don’t get coffee.”
She walked into the kitchen and put on the coffeepot. All the while, she looked out in the backyard, wondering what had bothered Thaddeus so much. As soon as the coffee was brewed enough that she could grab a cup, she snagged an old worn-out, chipped mug she’d decided had more character than the brand-new flashy ones and opened the back door. Mugs raced through the kitchen and dashed out. He barked and wouldn’t stop.
She frowned at him. “Mugs! What’s the matter?”
Just as quickly, a streak of orange caught her eye as Goliath bolted outside after Mugs. On her shoul
der, Thaddeus squawked loud and hard.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she cried out. “I’m going. I’m going.” She walked down the rear veranda steps and onto the pathway that led through the garden. As she did, she marveled at how much better it looked without the broken-down fence that cut off her view of the creek. It really opened up the backyard. She couldn’t wait to get into her own backyard gardening project. But she wanted to get a workable plan down on paper first.
Her ideas were pretty rough so far, and she didn’t want to do a half-assed job. She took pride in her work, and it was quite possible her own gardens would be portrayed in a portfolio of what she could do for other people’s homes. So Doreen didn’t want to mess it up.
She strolled down the path, quickening her pace. Mugs sat down, his butt firmly planted on the ground, and Goliath sat beside him. Curious, she joined them for a look. “Hey, what’s going on?” she asked. “Nothing is here.”
But they both looked at her in disgust. She groaned, feeling like the animals all thought she was half-baked. Whereas the general population thought animals weren’t as smart as they really were.
She stared down at the area, wandering a couple feet forward, but she still couldn’t see anything amiss. She stepped out farther, wondering if her animals were looking at the creek, which had become the source of all things curious and wonderful and, in some cases, deadly.
As she wandered up and down the edge of the creek, she turned to look at her three animals. Thaddeus had joined the two on the ground, and now all three just sat there, staring at her, as if to say, Come on. Get it, will you?
The trouble was, she didn’t know what they were talking about. She crouched beside the creek but figured, if it were something in the water, they would be at the water’s edge. Instead they all stood back about six feet, looking almost toward her feet.
She studied the distance between her and her animals. Just then her phone rang. Seeing it was Mack, she answered the call.
He said, “I might have some more questions for you today.”
