Corpse in the Carnations

by Dale Mayer

  Doreen could hardly hold back her smile. “How much did she pay for it?” she asked gently.

  “A whole two dollars,” Nan said. “She was really upset.”

  “Did she take it back?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “The store has a no-refunds policy. But she did talk to him about it when she went there the next time. They were not helpful. As a matter of fact, I think they thought she should have been delighted to have found one at all, and its working condition was not guaranteed.”

  Doreen could just imagine. She stood here, grinning like a fool, as she thought about how much coming to Kelowna and living close to Nan had enriched her life. Nan and her friends at that old folks’ home were such characters. “Maybe she should buy another one,” Doreen suggested.

  “Why waste another two dollars?” Nan asked.

  Thinking of Mack’s words earlier, Doreen asked, “Nan, did you leave money in your clothing in the upstairs bedroom?”

  “What’s that, dear?” Nan’s voice sounded distracted. “I probably did. You already found some in the spare bedroom. So why wouldn’t I have left some in the master bedroom?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “It’s all right that you did. I just wouldn’t want you to have done it on purpose.”

  “Why would I do something like that on purpose?” Nan asked, curiosity in their voice. “That would be foolish.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay for money?” Doreen worried her bottom lip. “You can have all the money I find. You know that, right?”

  “We’ve already discussed this before, dear. Yes, I’m fine,” Nan said. “You know I have lots of money. All the money and the contents of that house are yours to keep.”

  “Are you sure?” Doreen asked. “I do worry you don’t have enough money.”

  “Oh, my dear, I’m so grateful that you’re close by. You do warm my heart.”

  As her words replicated what Doreen’s thoughts had been earlier, she had to smile. “I love you too, Nan.”

  And, with that, Nan hung up.

  Chapter 9

  Thursday late afternoon…

  Doreen still had a little of the afternoon ahead of her. As she sat here at her kitchen table, she wondered about the common sense of doing something with that proposal to bid on landscaping the city’s beds. It had to be submitted by tonight.

  Bringing up the website link Mack had given her, she wrote up something, keeping her almost ex-husband’s constant business lessons in mind. Give them lots of details that say nothing. Make it detailed enough that they get an idea. Keep it vague enough that you don’t promise anything.

  She sighed. “I hate to think I’ve learned anything useful from you, you big rat,” she snapped. She left the laptop open with the draft onscreen, then saved it to make sure she didn’t have to redo it all. She only had another four or five hours left to submit her bid. She was still undecided if she should or not.

  She took a look around for food, realizing she had little more than the last of the carrot cake and half sandwich. She scoffed the sandwich only to realize it wasn’t enough to keep her going. She’d need to round out her meal with ramen noodles again.

  She studied the stove for a long moment, knowing she still had days to go until the omelet lesson. Just the thought of an omelet was enough to make her taste buds drool. She looked forward to learning how to cook anything. The internet was full of all kinds of tips, and the food created always looked absolutely fantabulous. Then she looked at all the foodie shows online, but nobody there really dealt with the beginner stuff.

  She grabbed a package of ramen noodles, stuck them in a bowl, covered it in water, and put it in the microwave. She knew that true foodies would be horrified by what she did, but, hey, it was food. She brought out the carrot cake, set it on a plate on the table, and went in search of protein. But she didn’t have a whole lot left. Then she remembered the rest of the rotisserie chicken.

  She pulled out the one-fourth left, and, with a grin at her odd pairing of ramen noodles, carrot cake, and one-quarter of a roasted chicken, she sat down to a meal. Her tummy was almost full when she was done, and, with a cup of tea and the carrot cake she had yet to eat, she moved upstairs to the bedroom.

  There was just something about treasure hunting, about going through Nan’s clothes and finding money. Just like the last time, Doreen brought a bowl to collect everything she found. That included the change purse, two fifty-dollar bills and several smaller bills and lots of little stuff.

  As far as she was concerned, this closet was a gold mine. She kept hoping she could find more in other areas of the house but figured she needed to finish this room first. She hadn’t forgotten about the garage sale idea, but she hadn’t done anything about it yet. Meanwhile, she had to sort more clothes to take to Wendy. That was what she would do now.

  With that thought in mind, she delved back into the master bedroom closet. It was a much slower process in this bedroom because Doreen found a lot of clothes she didn’t want to give away. A lot of them would sell easily at the consignment store because they were so unique. But, at the same time, Doreen didn’t want to let go of anything that she could use herself because shopping for new clothes was horrifically expensive.

  Nan had traveled a lot in her younger years, and it looked like she’d bought a lot of clothes from her various holiday destinations. And thankfully she hadn’t bought touristy things. No T-shirts with the names of Hawaii and various cities on them were found, but several really nice, long flowing skirts she set off to one side after checking to make sure they had no pockets.

  Then she found a cropped jacket that had a small pocket in it. And she crowed with delight when she pulled out a five-dollar bill from the pocket. Nan’s closet was such a life-saver in so many ways. It kept Doreen busy when she was bored. It gave her enough pocket change to definitely keep Doreen alive right now while she figured out how to get on her feet. Then the consignment store sales would bring in more money later.

  Doreen had no problem with getting a job she could do, but she hoped not to go into a fast-food industry or waitressing. Although the thought of getting a meal as part of her hours was not something to scoff at.

  She’d definitely lost weight since she’d moved into Nan’s house. Ramen noodles didn’t provide a ton of nutritional benefits, but she was doing her best with what she got. She was proud of how far she’d come.

  Honestly, she was damn proud of helping solve these cold cases. If the police department would even say thanks by way of food, she’d be happy.

  The little jacket in her hand was also gorgeous. She had to put it on. It stopped just at her ribs and looked awesome. It was an emerald green, but it wasn’t flashy. Knowing she couldn’t let it go, she put it off to the side with the other things she was keeping for herself and reached for another item hanging in the closet.

  The next piece was a strapless gown. She had to wonder how long these clothes had been around. Long enough that they were now back in fashion? She knew this dress wasn’t her color, and she’d never wear it, so she searched through the folds to make sure no money was tucked in the bra cups, like she’d found before. Finding nothing, she then put this one in the consignment store pile.

  As soon as she gained more room in the closet, she could get her own stuff better sorted. Not that she had much, but she still had a suitcase she had yet to open. Determined to make a bigger dent in the closet than she had so far, she grabbed ten more hangers and brought them out, laying them on the bed. And one by one she went through them. She found another pocketful of change and a twenty-dollar bill tucked inside one of the dresses.

  Nan obviously didn’t want to go out without money, and she wore designer clothes that absolutely wouldn’t allow for purses or sweaters or jackets without detracting from the overall look. So she had tucked money inside.

  With Doreen very carefully going through each piece of apparel, she ended up with a small fortune in Nan’s pin money. It was a lovely system of us
ing safety pins to keep money in her clothing. Of those last ten items alone, Doreen ended up putting all but one into the consignment store pile.

  Afraid she’d missed something in them, she would go through each piece again before she tucked them into the bag going to Wendy. This was kind of like a sport.

  With those hangers done, she grabbed another ten. As she brought them out of the closet and lay them on the bed, she realized the closet rod was still too full to accept any of Doreen’s own pieces. Nan had jammed in years and years, if not decades upon decades, of clothing in there. Doreen would spend days sorting through this.

  She pulled up the first piece on top of the newest pile, a pantsuit with pockets that held money. She decided this was the best closet-sorting process she’d been through yet. The jacket had money in the inside pocket, which looked like a twenty-dollar bill when she pulled it out. But she was delighted to find a fifty tucked inside it too. She checked all the other pockets, then went through the pants. Sure enough, tucked inside with a safety pin was another ten. It was also an excellent suit, made of wool.

  Frowning, she set it off to the side that she’d keep for herself. She’d try on all these in that pile to see if they would look good on her before making her final decision to keep any. She was a bit of a clotheshorse, and some of these items were quality made, as in a serious quality.

  She went through the next few dresses, more of a shirtwaist style. But only one of them had a pocket yielding a five-dollar bill tucked inside. She put three dresses in the consignment store pile and then found another silk dress to add to Wendy’s pile.

  Doreen gasped when she held up the gold lamé. “Wow, Nan. This is incredible.”

  And again, tucked inside the bra cup, she found a ten-dollar bill. This one was hard to see. It had a slice in the material and just a bill folded up inside. Very smart of Nan. Again this made Doreen worry she’d missed something in all the others.

  She squeezed the dress slightly to make sure nothing more was tucked inside but didn’t find anything. Another stack on the bed had been done. Staring at the growing pile of bills in her bowl, she realized Nan had lost some serious money here.

  She rephrased that because Nan hadn’t lost it. She had deliberately pinned money inside so that, if she was out for an evening, she didn’t have to take a purse. It was an interesting concept. It had also meant Nan had a lot more disposable cash than Doreen had supposed.

  By the time she went through three more stacks of ten hangers, she had created a slight bit of relief in the overcrowded closet. She could now shuffle the hangers back and forth a little with at least an inch or two of room.

  Her consignment store collection was massive too. She grinned at that. But the bowl on the bed with the multitudinous bills and coins made her really smile. Although the stacked clothes she meant to keep were also pretty damn fine. Nothing in that pile would really work for around the house, or for her nonexistent job, but at least it gave her clothes to wear to go out, should she ever get that opportunity. Deciding she’d take one more big stack from the closet, she grabbed what looked like at least fifteen hangers this time. She could almost hear the closet groan with relief, and the rod seemed to spring back up as she took more weight off it.

  “Sorry, old house. You’ve really been abused, haven’t you? Unintentionally of course.”

  She laid the hangers on the bed, once again marveling at the diversity of clothing, everything from pants to jackets to sweaters to dresses to skirts. There was just everything. In the middle of the pile appeared to be two bathrobes too. She held them up, looking at them critically. No money was in either of them, but she didn’t have a decent bathrobe as she’d forgotten her silk one in one of the places she’d stayed. These were quite nice, kind of like those found in the five-star hotels. She set them off to the side and made her way through the rest of the clothing.

  When she came to four pairs of pants, she pulled them out one by one, checked the pockets, found money in every one of them and several pieces of paper. She dumped all the contents, checked the pants over thoroughly, and held them up to her waist, finding they were all too short for her. When she thought about that and considered the capri styles of today, she couldn’t just throw them out. They were good quality, and she might have a need for them. She put them in her pile to keep and found she was running about fifty-fifty on the pile sizes.

  For a long moment she felt guilty about that because, if she could sell something, she needed the money more than the clothes. And then she realized it didn’t matter, since this was just her first round. She would end up trying on twenty or thirty of them, keeping only one in ten hopefully. She just needed to keep doing what she was doing.

  The trouble was, she was getting tired, and it was dark out. Tomorrow would be a whole new day. She sat down on the bed. When her phone rang, she picked it up and looked at the Unknown Caller designation. She snorted and answered it. “What do you want?”

  She heard a startled gasp on the other end.

  Getting angry, she added. “Stop stalking me.”

  “Me?” the person asked. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Well, you called me,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “I was talking to Wendy at the consignment store,” the man nearly yelled.

  Immediately she realized what she’d done. “Oh, my goodness. Is this Fen Gunderson?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Who did you think you were speaking to?”

  “Somebody made three nasty phone calls to me last night,” she said in a rush of shock. “I’m so sorry. I assumed it was him when I saw it was an Unknown Caller.”

  He sounded mollified at that. “Wendy said you’re looking for some assistance with antiques.”

  She bounced off the bed. “Yes! Nan’s house is full of them, but I don’t know what might be worth anything and what’s really better off at a garage sale.”

  “I could come by and take a look, if you’d like,” he said. “But apparently you’ve got an awful lot going on. Maybe you don’t want me interfering.”

  “I’d love your help,” she said. “Honestly, … if you wouldn’t mind, I would absolutely so appreciate your assistance.”

  “When?” he asked. “I don’t have too much free time.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Anytime that works for you would be great.”

  “Maybe tomorrow?” he asked. “Tomorrow is Friday.”

  “Tomorrow is perfect. What time?”

  “I start at the Mission Bible Thrift Store at noon,” he said. “How about I come by, … let’s say, at ten o’clock?”

  “Perfect,” she agreed. “And again I’m so sorry.”

  “If you have a phone stalker, I can understand your reaction. You stay safe now.” And he hung up.

  “Oh, my goodness. I’m so bad at this. I didn’t even give the poor man a chance to speak,” she told the animals.

  Goliath looked completely uninterested, as if he expected that from her.

  Mugs was stretched out on the bed with his eyes closed. She’d covered him up with half the clothing as it was.

  She would never get to bed if she didn’t at least sort through the mess she had piled there. So she grabbed one of the large bags she’d found in the bottom of Nan’s closet, confirming it was empty first, and then went through every piece once more before giving it to the consignment store. She found another ten-dollar bill, but that was it.

  With all the clothes bagged up for consignment, she made a heap on the nearby chair of all the clothes she contemplated keeping. Then she quickly undressed, got ready for bed, and curled up under the blankets.

  Thankfully no more threatening calls came that night.

  Chapter 10

  Friday morning…

  She woke up the next morning, bouncy and full of energy. She would finally get some answers about all the antiques on the property. And then she’d talk to Nan about it because no way would Doreen sell specific pieces of value without Nan’s permissi
on. Regardless of its worth, maybe Nan had an emotional or sentimental attachment to some of them.

  Breakfast first, then a little bit of gardening in her own backyard, and she found herself waiting impatiently for Fen Gunderson to arrive. When she finally saw a vehicle drive up and park in her driveway, she rushed out the front door. The older man who walked up had a cane and appeared to be one step away from death. But then he smiled at her, and she realized he was probably only about in his mid-seventies.

  She walked down the front porch steps to meet him. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said with a bright smile. “Let me apologize again for the poor reception you got from me on the phone last night.”

  He waved away her words. “No apology necessary. Particularly when you live alone. One can’t be too careful.”

  She agreed. So far, she hadn’t been too concerned for herself or the house, but, if valuable antiques were here … She led the way up the front steps, then turned to him. “Did you know my grandmother?”

  He stopped and frowned. “Did she pass on?”

  “Oh, my goodness, no,” she said. “She used to live here, that’s all. That’s why the past tense. She’s at Rosemoor Manor.”

  A look of relief settled on his face. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “I’ve known Nan for a long time. She’s quite a character.”

  Doreen wasn’t sure from his tone whether he meant that in a good way or a bad way. She imagined Nan had created both her share of enemies and friends.

  Doreen led him inside to the living room. “She left me everything in this house,” she said. “As you can see, it’s incredibly overstuffed. And I would like to sort through what is of value and what isn’t.”

  He stopped in his tracks and looked around the room. “Wow. She has packed it full, hasn’t she?”

  Doreen chuckled. Mugs, who’d been on the front porch steps with her, kept sniffing around the old man’s trousers. She reached down and pulled him back. “Now you stay out of the way, Mugs.”