Corpse in the Carnations

by Dale Mayer

  She warmed at the sound of the “us” part. “If he’s willing to do something for free,” she said quietly, “he definitely has my deepest thanks. But I don’t have any expectation of him successfully changing my situation.”

  Mack tilted his head and grinned at her. “If nothing else, you might want to consider that Nick will cost your ex some money and your lawyer some aggravation.”

  At that, she laughed. “In that case, go for it.”

  “Good,” he said. “I hate hearing you’re still willing for him to have everything his way. Sometimes you need to stand up and fight.”

  “I fight sometimes,” she said with a smirk. “When reporters approach me, I get quite feisty.” Her phone rang just then. She glanced down and answered, “Hi, Nan.”

  “Hi. How are you?” she said.

  “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered if you were doing anything today.”

  There was something crafty in her grandmother’s voice. Doreen narrowed her eyes and said, “What are you up to, Nan?”

  “Nothing.”

  Doreen groaned, settled back into her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “I’m not so sure about that. You sound like you’re up to something.”

  Nan gasped. “I just wondered if you’ve gotten any information from that nice detective.”

  “You mean Mack?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s who I mean, dear. It’s so nice to know you’re spending time with him.”

  She got up and looked out the window, glancing over her shoulder at Mack. She mouthed, Did you tell her?

  Mack shook his head, his eyes wide.

  “Is he there now?” Nan asked.

  “Why would you ask me that?” Doreen asked, puzzled walking back to the table, laying the phone down on the table so Mack could hear Nan’s voice. “Have you got a betting pool going on?”

  “Well, of course we do, dear. Your love life is very important to us.”

  At that, Mack howled with laughter.

  Nan’s delighted voice perked up. “Oh my, he is there. I do love to be right.”

  “Nan, stop,” Doreen cried out in embarrassment. “He just got here.”

  “Did he now?” she said slyly. “It is a Monday morning. For all I know, you two had a lovely Sunday night together.”

  Doreen tossed up both hands, her face bloodred. “Stop.”

  Nan chuckled. “I can see it wasn’t that good a night. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up.

  Doreen tossed the phone onto the counter, mortified. “I’m so sorry. My grandmother …”

  Mack still howled with laughter.

  She glared at him. “You’re just lucky she hasn’t gotten her claws in you yet.”

  “She’s not going to either,” he said cheerfully.

  “She will if I tell her that you’re interested in me,” she said. “Then she’ll start digging into your life, placing bets on everything you do.”

  He glared at her. “You know what? As a threat,” he said with a nod, “that’s not bad.”

  She gave him a fat smile. “I thought so too.”

  Chapter 20

  Monday mid-morning…

  Mack soon left, leaving behind the money for the gardening she’d completed the day before. She cleaned up the kitchen, bundled up the reusable grocery bags she needed, and headed to the grocery store.

  First on the list was dog food, cat food, and birdseed. With that picked out, and the cost carefully calculated, she realized she only had twenty dollars left. She groaned and walked around to see what she could possibly get for twenty dollars.

  She’d forgotten to get some of the money out of the bowl. That was foolish of her. She had her debit card but was really trying to avoid using that. At least that way she’d keep track of it.

  As she wandered around, she picked up bread, more peanut butter, realizing she should branch out with more choices soon. Cheese would be good.

  Mack had left the rest of the ingredients for tomorrow’s omelets, but she didn’t dare get into that later today. Emboldened by what she had learned, she grabbed a dozen eggs, thinking she could at least make something for herself with them, even if a plain cheese omelet.

  With her purchases paid for and packed up, she headed to the parking lot, placing her bags in the passenger side. As she straightened, she turned to look at a flatbed truck parked right beside her car. The driver glared at her. She glared right back, until she realized who it was, and then she gasped.

  He rolled down his window. “What’s the matter? Surprised to see me?”

  “If you harass me,” she said, “I’ll get a court order to keep you away from me.”

  “You’ve caused enough trouble, bitch.”

  “You’re a thief. You broke into my house, so you’re an intruder. You’re also the one calling me. What were you doing? Trying to scare me into leaving? For all I know, you’re also a Peeping Tom. I think you’re probably to blame for all the thefts at Nan’s retirement home too.” The shock on his face was something to see.

  “You can’t prove I made those calls. Leave me alone,” he snarled. “And I’ll leave you alone. You’re nothing but trouble, not even I want to go down that road.” He turned on the engine, shut the window, and took off, spitting out gravel from under his tires.

  “Like a bat out of hell. Good riddance.” She chuckled at the phrase. “How many times would anybody ever use that line? It really dates you, Doreen. I think that came from a Meatloaf song. You’re not supposed to like any rock songs, remember?” She changed her voice to imitate her husband’s voice. “It has to be classical because that’s the only real music.”

  With that idiot intruder loose, regardless of what he had said, she knew she would have nightmares about him returning to her place. But she remembered the security Mack had put in and grinned. “Yeah, let’s see what he does when he comes around the next time.” She had been sleeping with the fireplace poker, just in case. It wasn’t the best weapon, but it had worked well the time before.

  She drove home, let herself into the house, then put away the groceries before sitting down at the kitchen table, realizing how bored she was. She needed more puzzle pieces to start putting some of this mystery together. She hadn’t heard back from Nathan yet.

  As if on cue, her phone rang. It was Nathan Trusswell. “Hi,” she said with excitement. “Did you learn anything?”

  “A couple buddies are going down and taking a look on Tuesday,” he said. “Just wondered if you wanted to come enjoy the fun.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I would so love to,” she said. “What time?”

  “The guys can all make it that afternoon so about two o’clock or so. They’ll go down for a bit, then take a break, change tanks, go back down again. It’ll be kind of off-and-on throughout the day.”

  “Will they start from your place?”

  “They’ll take my boat out a little way, to where we figured the best chances of finding the truck would be. I explained what we think might have happened, and they were definitely on board to check it out. One of them has some experience with search and rescue and has pulled a vehicle out of the river before, so he has a good idea of what to look for.”

  She was brimming with excitement. By the time she got off the phone, she was dancing around. She just couldn’t believe how well this had worked out.

  “Tuesday,” she cried out to Mugs. “Tomorrow afternoon!” Now all she had to do was get through the rest of today and tomorrow morning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to settle that problem? She felt bad because, once a negative suspicion, like being a pedophile or a murderer, was raised, it never went away. Unfortunately for Henry and his family …

  Chapter 21

  Monday late morning…

  Doreen settled down at her laptop to do more research on Josh Huberts and both Cecily and Celeste Bingham. She didn’t know how far along Mack was getting with his particular investigations, but, if Doreen could solve something, it just a
dded fuel to her fire to solve something else. She checked her research notes and realized something had to be going on with the sisters.

  She picked up the phone, and, as soon as Nan answered, Doreen asked, “Hey, you know the dead woman I found outside the Family Planning Center?”

  “Yes. Celeste,” Nan said. “Cecily is the one who runs the center.”

  “Did you ever hear rumors of anything going on with Celeste and Josh? Or maybe Cecily and Josh?” she added hesitantly.

  Nan took a moment to figure out what Doreen was talking about. “Nothing at all about Cecily and Josh. As for Celeste and Josh, … if you mean their fighting, that’s just the type of relationship they had. Those two have been fighting since forever.”

  “About what?”

  “Celeste didn’t want a family. And her sister, Cecily, was totally on board with her. They were all about women’s rights.”

  “I happen to agree with them,” Doreen said drily. “At least to the point that women have the right to a choice. But what’s that got to do with this now?”

  “If the cops ever come here, they should talk to those of us in the know,” Nan said. “They’d find out that Josh probably did kill himself. He loved her. He loved her dearly.” On that note, she hung up.

  Doreen sat at the kitchen table and stared at her phone. “But love can turn to hate. And to shoot somebody twice usually means there’s a lot of anger, up close and personal too. So what would make him turn on her like that?”

  And then she got it. Doreen picked up the phone and called Mack. “Did you ever get the autopsy results on Celeste Bingham, the woman who was murdered?”

  “No autopsy has been done,” he said. “Or will be done as it’s been declared a murder-suicide.”

  “Don’t you care about the whys behind a murder?”

  “In this case, it’s a murder-suicide,” he repeated. “Really, there’s no mystery behind it.”

  “I still think the reason why he might have done something like that matters.”

  “A falling out among lovers,” he said. “It’s very common.”

  “It might be,” she said, “but that’s why I was asking about an autopsy.”

  “No autopsy.” In exasperation, he asked, “Why?”

  “Have you talked to Cecily?”

  “No,” he said. “She wasn’t around at the time.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “You said the center was closed, right?”

  “Yes. Josh Huberts was actively working to shut it down.”

  “And that’s understandable. I guess one could consider that great passion can turn to great rage. And great rage causes actions that are hard to reverse. So it would make sense why he went home and was unable to live with himself, and he killed himself. But … only if you found more bullets. I did hear four shots.”

  “Yes,” Mack said with patience. “But why are you still questioning the case?”

  “I think she was pregnant, and she aborted it. Without telling him.”

  There was silence on the phone. And then Mack said, his voice sad and gentle, “Yes, that would probably cause it. But we can’t just guess here, you know?”

  “I know,” she said in a low voice. “You might ask the coroner if she’d had an abortion recently, or maybe you can ask her sister. She might tell you.”

  “You think she knew about it?” he asked curiously.

  “Who else would?” she asked. “And it would make sense, if he’d been so desperate to have his own child, and then she turned around and aborted it, well …”

  “Yes, that could send a man over the edge,” he said, “particularly if he really wanted the baby.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “So unfortunately there are no answers on this mystery for me in this case, but I do have a line on another one.” And then, laughing, she hung up the phone.

  When it rang again, she ignored it, snatched her cup of tea, and walked out into the backyard. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough for her. She would love to solve that missing-child case.

  As far as the dead couple, she worried about Josh’s motivation. It was none of her business again, but … would Cecily talk to Doreen about her dead sister? Then, why would she? Not to mention this had to be a painful time for her. Dredging up her sister’s death wouldn’t be a popular idea. Doreen frowned, thinking about it, wondering if Mack would follow through on their recent conversation and ask more questions.

  Yet, he probably wouldn’t—couldn’t—proceed further, his hands tied by the murder-suicide decision made by some clueless higher-up. She guessed he had to live with those nonsensical decisions that probably happened all too often in his job. She was the one who couldn’t let it go. Still, she could hardly broach the topic with the dead woman’s sister.

  Could she?

  Finally unable to help herself, she loaded Mugs in her car and drove back to where she had found the body. Everything was cleaned up, more or less. The carnations were flattened, which just reminded her how she’d missed the government application deadline. She’d been so caught up in all the day-to-day stuff that she’d forgotten all about it.

  She wandered around the garden, studying the area, when a woman called out from behind her.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  Doreen turned and smiled at the approaching woman. She looked vaguely familiar, and then she realized this had to be Cecily, the dead woman’s sister. She reached out a hand and said, “Hi, I’m Doreen.”

  The woman frowned at her and didn’t shake her hand.

  Doreen’s hand fell to her waist. “I’m sorry. I’m the one who found the woman’s body.” She rushed forward. “I just wondered if there was anything I could do to help memorialize the location where she died.”

  “It’s a huge garden, for Christ’s sake. Isn’t that enough?”

  Doreen’s back stiffened. This was not the kind of reception she’d expected. Nor the tone of voice she’d have predicted. She nodded slowly and said, “Often we see on the media how wreaths, cards, teddy bears, things like that are left for those who were lost.”

  “She wouldn’t have wanted anything childish,” she said, her tone cold, bordering on waspish. “She didn’t like children, never intended on being a mother.” She waved a hand at the garden. “And obviously enough damage has been done to the garden already.”

  “I’m so sorry. Apparently you have strong feelings about the issue.”

  Cecily looked at her and snorted. “Ya think?”

  “I heard her boyfriend who shot her then committed suicide,” she offered. “I don’t know if that’ll help your family find closure or not.”

  “Not likely,” the woman said. “She was my sister. She was headstrong and willful. I told her to leave Josh a long time ago. He wasn’t like us.”

  Doreen studied the woman in front of her. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what that meant but was afraid she wouldn’t like the answer.

  Cecily’s anger simmered under the surface. Fine lines spread outward from the corner of her eyes, and her mouth was pinched too tight.

  Something was going on here that Doreen couldn’t quite pinpoint. And now she wanted to assess everything. Another puzzle had reared its head, and she was desperate to sort it out. “I’m sorry for your loss. It’s hard to lose a sister.”

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “I think it’s time you left.”

  Crestfallen, Doreen backed up. “I wanted to find closure myself. It’s not often you come across a dead woman,” she whispered. She was probably putting the act on a little too heavily, but she was being honest. Finding Celeste had been rough. That young woman was in her prime, not old buried bones. The feelings were very different but both required time to process.

  The woman made a brushing motion, as if to wave her away.

  Doreen hesitated, not sure how to crack through that tough facade. “Well, I guess I’ll go then,” She looked at the building behind her. “Is the center really closed?”

>   The woman glared at her.

  “A friend of mine may be in a position to need its services.”

  At that, the other woman hesitated. “It’s closed for the moment,” she said. “Our funding has been cut, partly due to my sister’s boyfriend, the bastard.”

  “Ouch. That hurts, particularly when he was almost part of the family.”

  “Yes,” she said with a sniff. “He knew what we were trying to do, and yet, he went behind her back, telling everybody how wrong it was.”

  “It’s a fairly difficult decision for a lot of people,” she said. “It’s a subject that causes strife all over the world.”

  “A woman’s body is a woman’s body,” Cecily said. “It’s her right to do what she wants.”

  Doreen had no intention of getting into an argument about that one. She didn’t think anybody would win it. Besides, to a certain extent, she agreed. “Why was he so against it?”

  “Who knows?” she said. “I think an old girlfriend was pregnant with his child and aborted it. Apparently he was really traumatized by that. So, when my sister got pregnant, he just about lost it.”

  “In joy or in anger?” she asked, almost gratified to hear she’d been right about Celeste.

  At that, the woman laughed. “Isn’t that the dilemma? Child support or raising a baby?”

  “Well, for many it would be the baby,” Doreen said sympathetically.

  “That’s what he wanted. He was desperate to have his own child. Particularly after losing the other one.”

  “I can kind of see that,” Doreen said.

  “My sister got what she wanted. And, in this case, she didn’t want him or the baby,” Cecily said with a sneer. “And he got her for it too.”

  “Oh my, so they broke up, and he turned around and killed her?” She winced at that, thinking about how angry and heartbroken he must have felt. But could Doreen trust Cecily? Or was she spouting off lies that suited her? “He must have really cared for her then.”

  “That’s the theory,” Cecily said, turning to walk back up the steps. “Most likely he was just concerned about losing something he wasn’t ready to lose. Men need to be in control at all times, and they want to be the ones who do the breaking up,” she said.