Nabbed in the Nasturtiums

by Dale Mayer

  “It’s not like it was addressed to anybody in particular, just To Whom It May Concern. See?” Doreen flashed the envelope to Denise.

  “But why would they put it in his mailbox? I figure that’s from the kidnappers. But shouldn’t the kidnappers already have Uncle Dicky? They could just tell him directly.”

  “Because the kidnappers knew that that mailbox would be monitored by the police,” she said quietly. “That’s how it works. The authorities track everything from Dicky’s mail to his emails, and, if they can, they even get into his phone calls and financial records.”

  Denise nodded. “I guess,” she said. “It’s just that the whole thing’s so horrible.”

  “I’m sorry,” Doreen said. “You’re right. It’s tough news right now. So did he ever mention Bob to you? Bob Small?”

  She nodded. “He was good friends with a guy named Bob. I think that might have been his last name. Wasn’t that one of the guys I listed in the email I sent to you? I don’t know for sure. They were good friends in prison,” she said. “I know my uncle believed that the cops didn’t know anything about what Bob was guilty of.”

  “Was he in for murder?”

  She looked at her in surprise. “Oh my, no. No, not at all. I think he refused to pay a whole pile of parking tickets or something, and they finally jailed him because he wouldn’t make good on it.”

  Doreen started to laugh. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously.”

  Chapter 18

  It was almost too much irony. Enough so that Doreen had to wonder if Denise had any idea what her uncle really had done.

  “He did drive a big truck,” Denise explained, “but I can’t imagine how many tickets he had to accrue for them to get pissed off enough to charge him.”

  “I don’t know,” Doreen said, turning to look around.

  “How long will the cops take?”

  “Hopefully not too long,” she said. “Mack said he’d be right over. Do you have any idea what your uncle supposedly stole? Particularly if it’s worth the six-figure mark.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the letter and shivering. “He said he’d been on the straight and narrow ever since, but obviously somebody doesn’t believe him.”

  “Or somebody thinks that he stole it back then and still either has it or already converted it to cash.”

  “Maybe. I can’t imagine what he was working on.”

  “He could have siphoned money from various accounts he had access to, you know, before he got caught,” she said.

  “If he did, I sure never saw it. He’s always lived very frugally. As a matter of fact, I know he needs this gardening job.”

  “I’m sure he does, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a money stash that he’s still too afraid to spend.”

  Denise stared at her in horror. “I don’t think you realize what my uncle is like.”

  “No, I have no idea,” she said. “As far as I know, I’ve never met him.”

  “He’s a good man, and he’s very honest.”

  Doreen stared at her.

  Denise blushed. “Okay, so he made one mistake in his life.”

  “But what you’re saying is that you firmly believe he’s innocent of being in trouble this time.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, “almost fervently.”

  “So you’ve never seen him show any signs of having any money of the level this guy is looking for? Why would they expect him to have even one hundred thousand dollars?” she said, marveling at the figure. “How many people do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I certainly don’t.”

  “Neither do I,” Doreen said, shaking her head.

  “Don’t you?” Denise asked, looking around. “You have your own house.”

  “Sure, I do,” she said, “but that’s because I inherited it, yet I don’t have any money to fix it. As you can see, it’s not exactly the Taj Mahal.”

  “No,” she said, “but you could sell it, and then you would have more money.”

  She winced. “I can’t even imagine,” she said. “It was given to me by my grandmother, and she’s still alive and living in a home for seniors nearby. She would be absolutely devastated if I sold her home.”

  “That’s the thing. Gifts like that, they come with strings,” Denise said.

  “And have you been helped by your uncle to the point you feel indebted to him?”

  “He has helped me,” she said immediately. “Honestly he’s a good man.”

  “And that’s good,” she said. “I’m really happy to hear that. The question is whether someone knows anything different about him and can explain why somebody expects him to have one hundred thousand dollars to give them in lieu of what was supposedly stolen.”

  “Because they obviously don’t understand what happened way back when,” Denise said.

  “And that certainly won’t be something your uncle or his kidnappers would share either, is it?” she said, trying to give Denise a bit of an easier time.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And, if you think about it, all he has been concerned about is staying on the straight and narrow ever since.”

  “Any chance he’s been afraid that somebody would find him or that maybe he’s been in hiding?”

  Denise looked at her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have said so,” she said, “but he didn’t go out, and he didn’t have any friends really. He kept in touch with hardly anyone.”

  “Who is the hardly anyone?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s anybody. He worked here in town, and, when he wasn’t working, he really enjoyed cooking. He was looking at doing more chef’s training, so he could work in professional kitchens. But I don’t know that he would have gone back to school. Or if he would have even been allowed to. Are criminals allowed back in school?” she asked Doreen.

  “I have no idea. But you would think it would be a good thing for them to do, so they could get out of their wayward life and get into something honest and self-supporting.”

  “That’s what I thought, but he didn’t seem to think he had a chance.”

  “We never really know until we try,” Doreen said.

  “Well, I know he was trying, and he was certainly applying to places. But what he really wanted was to get into cooking school.”

  “At the college level?”

  “I really don’t know, but that would have been a smart place for him to start, right?”

  “Well, yes, it would have been. I’m sure the police can check to see whether he applied at the college here. I know they have a really good cooking program. I don’t know if they still have it, but I remember Nan talking about them having a restaurant, almost like a little buffet, and you could go in at noon all the time. Even people who didn’t go to the college and more than the profs and the visitors liked to go. It was open to the public, and I remember Nan telling me how wonderful it was.”

  “That would have been great,” Denise said, looking pleased. “I’ve never even heard of that.”

  “I think they closed it down or changed the format here a few years ago. Which is kind of too bad, since Kelowna doesn’t have very many buffets.”

  “I’ve never been one for buffets,” Denise said. “I’m not a big eater, so, if I go someplace, I just pick up a salad.”

  “But I can make a salad myself,” Doreen said. “I’ve come to learn and to appreciate that going out for a meal should really be something that you’ll enjoy, be something you can’t make for yourself.”

  “Or it should be something that’s expedient,” Denise said, with a laugh. “Sometimes I just don’t have time, so it’s easier to pick up something.”

  In the distance Doreen heard a truck. She smiled and said, “That’s Mack.”

  Immediately Denise spun around to look. “I don’t see him,” she said. She had not even finished speaking when Mack came barreling up the road and turned into the cul-de-sac.

  “That doesn’t look like a cop,”
Denise said, turning to look accusingly at Doreen.

  “He’s a detective,” she explained. “So he’s in plain clothes.”

  “Oh. So he’s RCMP?”

  “Yep,” she said. “There’s no city police in town, which was something that took me a while to figure out. I guess only certain suburbs in the Lower Mainland have them.”

  “Vancouver does, and I think West Vancouver does now as well,” Denise said, muttering.

  “Do you spend much time down there?” Doreen asked.

  “I went to school at SFU,” Denise said. “That university was a godsend for me.” And she turned to look at Doreen with another accusatory look. “My uncle helped me to get through school.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Bookkeeping,” she said.

  Doreen nodded and gave her a brilliant smile. “That’s good,” she said. “You shouldn’t ever have a problem getting a job.”

  “No,” she said. “I do work in the retail industry for a company that manages several retail fashion designers.”

  “Wow,” she said, “that would be nice.”

  Denise shrugged. “It’s just numbers and figures. It’s not like I get to walk down the runway, wearing any designer clothes.”

  “Would you want to?” Doreen asked curiously. She never really understood the appeal of stripping down to almost nothing and wearing the very bizarre clothing they were asked to wear.

  “Sure,” she said, “it would be a lot more exciting than my current life.”

  “Well, maybe,” Doreen admitted. “I guess numbers aren’t terribly exciting.”

  “Nope, they sure aren’t,” she said. “They’re boring, and it’s pretty well the same, day in and day out.”

  “Not necessarily a bad thing—at least you can count on it,” Doreen said. “Something that happens day in and day out that you can depend on, instead of waking up and wondering what’ll happen, you know?”

  “And that’s boring,” Denise said, with a smile.

  Mack parked, shut off the engine, and hopped out. He walked out, his gaze assessing Doreen, who gave him a big fat smile. Then she introduced the two of them. He nodded, looked at Denise, and asked, “Why didn’t you bring that to the police?”

  “Honestly I figured your hands were full,” she said, “and I wanted Doreen to see it first.”

  A thunderous expression filled his face, as he turned to look at Doreen. She shrugged and said, “Hey, I called you.”

  He nodded slowly and said, “And I appreciate you doing that.” He held out his hand, and she gave the note to him, holding it gingerly between two fingers. “Do you think there’s any chance of fingerprints, after you two have handled it?”

  “You’ve already got mine on file,” she said, “so you can easily knock mine off.”

  Denise looked at her in shock. “Are you a criminal too?”

  “Nope,” she said, “but, in the line of my cold-case hobby, I’ve had my fingerprints taken, just to understand all the prints that were at a crime scene.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Denise said. “I wondered there for a moment if I was doing the wrong thing by bringing it to you.”

  “Yes,” immediately Mack said, only Doreen’s voice was louder.

  When she said, “No, of course not,” Mack just glared at her. “Because I understand that I need to give it to Mack too,” she said immediately.

  Mack rolled his eyes at her and said, “I’ll take this back and see if we can get anything off it.”

  “Don’t you want to read it first?” Denise called out anxiously.

  “Doreen gave me a photo of it,” he said. “I already know what it says.” He turned, looked at Denise, and asked, “Why don’t you come down to the station, so we can ask you some questions about it?”

  Her eyes wide, Denise shook her head, stepped closer to Doreen. “I don’t have any answers,” she said, shifting back and forth, like ready to take flight. “I don’t know anything.”

  Mack frowned at her initial response and glanced at Doreen, before facing Denise again. “You haven’t yet heard our questions, so we would like to ask you some.”

  She immediately turned to Doreen. “Could you come along?”

  Doreen stared at her in surprise. “Um,” and she looked over at Mack for help.

  He shook his head. “Doreen doesn’t need to come. We’re not accusing you of anything. We’re not attacking you. We’re not charging you with a crime. We just need to ask you some questions.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, “but I would feel better if she came. I don’t really know anybody here.”

  “Fine,” Doreen said impulsively, “I’d be happy to come.” Mack groaned. She added, “It can’t hurt, can it?”

  “No, maybe not, but you have to stay out of the questioning,” he warned.

  “Of course,” she said, with a brilliant smile. “Of course I will.”

  He said, “I know that’s a lie. You haven’t managed to stay out of anything yet.”

  “I could now,” she said, as she looked at her animals.

  Mack shook his head. “Leave them behind.”

  She glared at him. “You know I don’t like doing that.”

  “You’re coming to the police station,” he said. “I highly doubt you’ll need them for defense there.”

  “No, but I may need them for support,” she said, giving him a smile.

  “That won’t help,” he said. “You’re supposed to be the support.”

  Doreen could really say nothing to that. She looked over at Denise and said, “Go ahead down to the station. I’ll follow along.”

  Denise immediately nodded and reached out to grab Doreen’s hand. “Thank you. Thanks a lot.” Then she dashed to her car down the driveway and called out to Mack, “I’m on my way.”

  He looked over at Doreen and asked, “What was that all about?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I really don’t.”

  “You better get down to the station fast,” he said, “because I’m not sure where this is going.”

  “Me neither.”

  As he drove off, she walked back inside, looked at her animals, and smiled. She wondered if it were possible to have the animals turned into therapy animals. “You know something, guys? Maybe, just maybe, this is a career move we could make. All four of us together.”

  Mugs barked. Thaddeus looked at her, tilted his head to one side, and said, “Thaddeus has a job. Thaddeus has a job.”

  She laughed. “One of us needs to, big guy, because I sure don’t.”

  She went upstairs and quickly changed, then fed the animals a little to get them settled in and locked up the house. Could she really get behind that therapy-animals idea? Maybe she could take them to the hospital for the kids who were sick or could go to the police station as support animals for other people being interviewed. She’d talk to Mack about that. But then, she really didn’t need to talk to Mack at all. She could maybe do something on her own. At least she could do the research into that; she was good at research.

  As she locked up the front door, Goliath wandered through the curtains in the front window, and Mugs jumped up on his hind legs, trying to see out. She winced because she hated to leave them all home. But she didn’t dare take them all down to the station for this. Mack was right; Doreen was supposed to be focused on this woman and helping her. And that brought up another whole issue too.

  Doreen walked to her car, mulling it over, as she opened up the garage, got in, and backed out, so she could close the garage door again. Then she reversed down to the cul-de-sac and slowly headed to the station. She saw why some people would want someone there for support, and maybe, because this woman was alone and the missing man was her only living relative, Denise wanted Doreen there. But it still seemed a little off.

  The minute she’d been asked to go to the station, Denise had almost panicked. And maybe for good reason. Maybe she had bad memories from her uncle being sent to prison, or maybe she’d had some kind o
f trauma herself. Maybe she was a criminal in her own right.

  Doreen had to stop and think about it. An awful lot of elements here were starting to twist in on themselves. The fact that Abbotsford—the city and the penitentiary—Bob Small, kidnapping, and ransom were all now involved was definitely intriguing. But the fact that Denise wanted Doreen as support while at Mack’s interview and that Denise had sent the information to Doreen instead of the police was fascinating.

  With a big smile on her face, Doreen pulled into the station and parked.

  Chapter 19

  Doreen walked into the station, waving at Chester, who stood on one side, among several of the other guys that she recognized. The captain leaned against his doorjamb, talking to two officers, his cup of coffee in hand. As she walked by, she patted him gently on the shoulder and kept on going.

  “Doreen?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked back at him, flashed him a bright smile, and said, “A request from somebody who’s come down to give a statement.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Got yourself another case, have you?”

  “No,” snapped Mack, from the other end of the hallway, where he waited for her.

  The captain looked at him, one eyebrow cocked.

  “You won’t believe it anyway,” Mack said, “but I do need to fill you in.”

  The captain detached himself from the group to walk toward them, just a few steps behind Doreen, and said, “Okay, tell me more.”

  Doreen listened, while Mack quickly explained.

  The captain looked at her and said, “Why would she come to you?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said, her voice low. “It’s very odd.”

  “It is,” he said. “I know you’re getting a heck of a name for yourself as somebody who champions the underdog and all, but this is an interesting twist.”

  “And I don’t know if it’s just out of a concern that you guys won’t look after her uncle’s case because he was a criminal or what,” she said. “I could understand, if she’s had some bad experiences, that maybe she needs to push her uncle outside of regular law enforcement channels.”