Nabbed in the Nasturtiums

by Dale Mayer

  “Oh my,” she said, just a small railing between her and the approaching dog. Mack immediately stood and looked around for the owner of the big dog, still racing toward Mugs, who, instead of being aggressive, was now under Doreen’s chair, staring out between her legs. She immediately reached a hand down and said, “Yeah, you stay safe.”

  As the big dog jumped up against the railing, Goliath jumped up onto the table, then reached out and whacked the big dog across the face. Almost immediately it turned, howling, and it took off. Mack looked at her, looked at Goliath, looked at Mugs hiding under the table. “Wow.”

  “Right,” she said, reaching over and petting Goliath. “Thanks for defending Mugs.” But instead of looking appreciative of her gratitude, Goliath sprawled out across the table, almost knocking over her glass of water.

  She stared at the animals and groaned. “Just when I think I understand them, they do something that makes me not understand anything.”

  “That wasn’t hard to understand at all,” he said, taking his seat.

  “Wonder whose dog that was?”

  “Some dog that got away from his owner for a few minutes,” Mack said, with a shrug. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “No, but I certainly haven’t had any dogs try to attack Mugs either. I don’t like it.”

  “Another reason to stay closer to home,” he said. “The farther away you get, the more opportunity for getting into trouble.”

  She glared at him. “I can get into trouble anywhere,” she announced.

  He stared at her and started to laugh. “No truer words were ever spoken,” he said.

  Then she realized what she’d said. Her grin flashed. “See? I like that about you,” she said. “You do help keep me off-balance.”

  “Is it good that you’re off-balance?” he asked curiously.

  “I think so,” she said. “Nan would say it keeps me on my toes.”

  “And that’s good because it keeps your mind going?”

  “Yeah. Except my mind needs to slow down,” she said. “Between the Bob Small thing and the gardener who got kidnapped and all the Abbotsford connections, it’s definitely worrisome. And then, of course, there’s Denise.”

  He stared at her. “What are you talking about?” As she winced, he leaned forward and said, “Doreen?”

  She sat back, flummoxed. What was she supposed to tell him now? “She contacted me. It’s not my fault,” she muttered.

  “Contacted you how?”

  “Email. About the gardener who disappeared,” she said.

  “Right. Of course she did,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And what did she have to share?”

  Doreen explained everything Denise had said and then added, “Really, she doesn’t know a whole lot.”

  “No, but she knows enough,” he said, “and obviously we’ll track down all those people.”

  “That would make sense,” she said. “I don’t know why you haven’t done it already.”

  “Did you give us the list?”

  “Um, no,” she said, “and I should have. It completely skipped my mind.”

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s the one good source of information we have.”

  “You can call her.”

  “Give me a minute.” He stopped. “And, Doreen,” Mack continued, “stop taking in all these strangers, asking you for help. The least you could do is give me a heads-up, so I can run a background check on them.”

  “Why? You never share that information with me. And maybe you should.”

  “And maybe you should stop letting these people into your house, who then attack you.” He got up, about to walk away, but, just before he did, he leaned over and said, “Order me a burger with everything.” And he disappeared around the corner.

  She stared at him, wondering what was the point of coming to a new Indian place and then ordering a burger. Just then the waitress came back. Doreen checked out the menu, glanced at the waitress ready for her order, then looked at Mack and shrugged. “We’ll both have the special.”

  With that, the waitress scooped up the menus and disappeared. When Mack came back, he said, “I did connect with Denise, and she is definitely overwrought about the whole thing.”

  “It’s her uncle,” Doreen said. “Of course she is.”

  “But, without any good leads, it’s really not much help.”

  “But it could be,” she said. “We just need to figure out more about whether any of these people would have any idea what was going on. And you’ve also got to figure out if they were both in the same prison at the same time.”

  He stared at her. “Who is they? Who were the two in the same prison?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Bob Small … and the gardener.”

  Mack stopped and stared. “Did you say Bob Small is in that prison?”

  “He was,” she said. “Apparently, per Denise, her uncle and Bob Small were friends.”

  “Good Lord,” he said. “How do you manage to get this stuff all so confused?”

  “Me?” she said. “I didn’t get anything confused.”

  “Says you,” he muttered, shaking his head. “We had absolutely no reason to bring Bob Small into this.”

  “Now you do,” she said triumphantly. “So now you have some leads.”

  “That’s not a lead,” he said. “That is a spider’s web.”

  “And one that needs tearing apart,” she said succinctly. “I get that it’s complicated and a mess, but we still have to sort through it.”

  “Do we now?” he asked, staring at her in fascination. “How do you figure that? We don’t have very much information at all.”

  “I know. I’m going through all Hinja’s letters now,” she said. “And, I mean, outside of everything I’ve told you, I haven’t found anything new. The Abbotsford angle keeps coming up though.”

  “So, Bob Small was in Abbotsford. Big deal.”

  “Maybe they were in the penitentiary at the same time.”

  “Some of that information is public.”

  “Right, so it’s not like I would get into trouble checking it out.”

  “No, not this time,” he said, “but it’s still not the easiest thing to sort out.”

  “No, it just means, when you go back to the office this afternoon, you’ll have some work to do.”

  “I always have work to do with you around,” he said, groaning.

  Just then, the waitress returned, setting their full plates before them and promptly leaving them alone.

  Doreen looked at it in delight. “Wow, this looks awesome.”

  He stared at his, at hers, and asked, “What happened to my burger?”

  She winced. “I figured that you had absolutely no reason to come to a place like this and order a burger. I’m not even sure it was on the menu. Really, if you come to an Indian restaurant, you should get Indian food.”

  He stared at her, then shrugged and said, “Good point.”

  And he dug in.

  Chapter 17

  By the time Doreen and her animals got back home, she was tired and worn out. Mack had offered them a ride, but Doreen had declined, knowing he had work waiting for him. “Our walk ended up taking longer than we thought, didn’t it, guys?” she said, as she made her way up the front steps. As she entered her living room, she realized she hadn’t set the alarm.

  “Uh-oh, we’re sliding on that point, even with all the danger around. We were doing really good, but now, every time we go out, we tend to forget,” she muttered. And that made her feel even worse.

  But she walked in, checked everything out and realized that it still appeared to be completely fine. Too bad Mack had to return to the office. But then he had a lot of work to do, and she needed to get busy on this case. As she walked into the kitchen, she thought she heard something and looked out to the backyard, just in time to see somebody scrambling down the pathway past her property. She frowned, looked over at Mugs, then opened up the back door. He wandered outside
but appeared to have missed seeing the guy.

  “Trouble is,” she said, “we have such a suspicious nature by now that we don’t know if that was just somebody innocently walking or not.” It’s not like they couldn’t walk along the river, like she and lots of other people did. She just wasn’t used to seeing very many on her property. And, of course, because of all the new stuff she’d been looking into, she was a little on the suspicious side.

  She also realized she was looking around every corner because of Mathew and all the recent drama surrounding him, Robin, and Rex. She pulled out her phone, and, determined to make the most of this moment of courage, she texted Nick and asked if he had any news. Instead of texting back, he phoned her.

  “I do have a document drawn up,” he said. “I need to come by and get your signature on it.”

  “What is the document?”

  “Divorce papers,” he said, “so we can get the divorce done.”

  “That would be lovely,” she said. “Is it, uh—” Then she stopped.

  “Is it what?” he said.

  “Will it piss him off?”

  “Possibly.” And he waited.

  She winced. “I’m really not into long-drawn-out battles.”

  “Once you sign this,” he said, “then I handle the battling for you.”

  “Unless Mathew comes up here, angry,” she muttered, “and finds me alone.”

  “Are you physically afraid of him?”

  “No,” she said slowly, “and yet …”

  “You don’t want to confront him or to see him get angry.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Why don’t I come over right now?” he said. “We’ll get this signed and get the process started.”

  “After I just told you that I didn’t want to deal with anything ugly?” she asked in disbelief, then blew out a huge sigh. “Okay,” she said.

  “Put on some of that absolutely divine coffee of yours,” he said, “and I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  He hung up on her, and she stared down at the phone. “Divine coffee?”

  Nobody had ever called her coffee divine before. Bolstered by that, and still smiling about the lunch she’d had with Mack, she headed to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. As it finished dripping, Nan called.

  “How was your lunch?” Nan asked.

  Doreen rolled her eyes. “Which one of your spies tattled?” she asked, with a laugh.

  “Does it matter?” she said. “You know nothing happens in this town without me knowing about it.”

  As it turned out, quite a bit had happened in this town without Nan knowing about it, but Doreen wasn’t about to burst her grandmother’s bubble on that one. “I’m glad you’re having so much fun,” she said.

  “But the real question is,” Nan said, “are you having fun?”

  “It was nice. It was a restaurant I haven’t been to before, and I don’t get to go out very much on nice luncheons like that.”

  “Ha, so it was a date, wasn’t it?”

  “It was a date,” she confirmed, and Nan went off, crowing and crowing through the phone. “Calm down,” Doreen said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Mack and I have shared a lot of meals together.”

  “Sure, it means something. You finally let him into your life, and he stepped up to the plate. Good man, Mack.”

  Doreen groaned. “Don’t you push us, Nan,” she said. “I won’t be happy if you do.”

  “Oh, never,” she muttered cheerfully. “It’s way too much fun this way.”

  And, with that, she hung up.

  Doreen didn’t have a chance to ask her grandmother any questions. But, with Nick on his way, Doreen figured it was probably just as well anyway. And, sure enough, just as she turned around, she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway. She walked out to the front porch, where she waited on the top step for him to get out of his vehicle and to come toward her.

  He smiled. “Waiting for me, were you?”

  She shrugged. “I heard the vehicle.”

  “Good,” he said. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand and an envelope in the other.

  “I really would like to see an end to this soon,” she muttered, staring at the envelope worriedly.

  “Me too,” he said.

  She winced. “I’m not being very grateful, am I? I really do appreciate you doing this.”

  “And I’m glad,” he said, “because I don’t want you backing out at the last minute and putting all my efforts to waste.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be very good, would it?” she said. “Okay.” She groaned. “Let’s go in and take a look at it.”

  As they walked inside and into the kitchen, he looked around and said, “You could really use some money to fix this place up, huh?”

  “I could use money to eat,” she said bluntly.

  He looked at her and asked, “Is it that bad?”

  She shrugged. “It depends if the machine eats my check or not.”

  He stared at her silently.

  She laughed. “Apparently it’s normal, but I don’t know,” and she explained about the check that was cut for her today. He laughed. “Mack had a similar reaction,” she said. “How was I supposed to know cut didn’t mean cut?”

  “The lingo of any industry is always fun to learn,” he said. “But you’ve been a good sport about it all, so keep your sense of humor.”

  “I’m trying,” she said. She poured two cups of coffee, and, as he held the back door for her, they walked out to the little table on the deck, with its four chairs.

  “Mack told me that he had snagged the patio set for you.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Doreen asked.

  “But still just the one rocker, huh?”

  “Yep, it takes money to buy a second one,” she muttered. “Plus, I would love a couch and maybe a side table on the new poured patio.”

  “Understood,” he said. “So what do you say that we go about getting you some of that money?” And, with that, he handed her the papers.

  She looked at him and winced. “I feel like I need to read all of these because of what happened last time, but I do find legalese very difficult, and it brings up all kinds of ugly memories.”

  “Why don’t we go page by page?” he said. “That way you can read as we go.”

  Then, true to his word, he led her through what appeared to be a fairly simple document. When she got to the part that really counted, she said, “Half? Seriously?”

  “You were married for fourteen years. He had no business prior to your marriage, and you helped him develop it afterward.”

  “Mathew had some money before,” she said, “so I’m not sure that’s fair.”

  “I’m only asking for 50 percent from the time that you were married.”

  “Okay, well, I guess that’s fair, although he won’t think so.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  She nodded slowly and, with the pen he gave her, she signed. Even as she did, the action felt like something momentous. “How long before we hear back?”

  “Probably pretty fast,” he said, “mostly because he won’t like this.”

  “Of course, and what happens if we can’t come to an arrangement on our own?”

  “Then we go to court,” Nick said cheerfully, “and the judge will help divide the assets. And you can bet your ex will know that.”

  “How will the judge divide it?”

  “In this case, I highly suspect it will be 50/50, just like we’ve got here.”

  She shook her head. “Is that what normally happens?”

  “Absolutely it is,” he said. “That’s very common.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “I don’t want to take anything more than is rightly mine.”

  “I know that,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons why I’m helping you out.”

  She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but she was happy to let it go.

  By the time he was finished with his coffee an
d had packed up his papers, she felt sick and looked at him almost with loathing. “Do you think he’ll contact me?”

  “If he does, just tell him to contact your lawyer and hang up,” he said comfortably. “That’s all you have to do.”

  “And what if he doesn’t want to?”

  “He has a lawyer I’ll be dealing with. So, once we get that going, it becomes a very different problem.”

  “If you say so,” she muttered, and she walked him out and waited at the front door for him to drive away. Then she turned and looked at the animals. “Fun times coming up, guys.” Mugs barked. Just then another vehicle drove in her driveway, and she groaned. “We won’t really get any peace and quiet today, will we?”

  A woman hopped out, looked at Doreen, and asked, “Do you have any news on my uncle?”

  She winced. “No, I don’t. I am looking, but I don’t have anything so far.”

  She nodded. “That’s one of the reasons I came by. This is the other. It came in the mail today,” she said, as she brought something over.

  “Did you take it to the police?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I wanted to show you first.”

  Doreen looked at Denise and said, “If it’s got to do with your uncle’s kidnapping,” she said, “we need to get the cops involved.”

  “And I will,” Denise said, “as soon as you see it.”

  They opened it up, and Doreen winced as she read it.

  You need to give back what you’ve stolen, but I’ll take $100,000 instead.

  Doreen quickly took a photo of it and said, “We need to get this to the cops.” She immediately dialed Mack. When he answered the phone, and she quickly explained, he started to swear.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I took a picture of it too, so I’ll send it now.” She looked at Denise. “The cops are coming.”

  “Good,” she said, rubbing her arms. “I shouldn’t have even opened his mail.”