by Dale Mayer
And it all surrounded her marriage to an abusive and controlling man. Just as she was about to set it out of her mind, she got a text from her ex. She looked at Mathew’s text in confusion.
No way!
She responded. No way what?
No way am I giving you half.
She stared at it, aware that it was late at night and that she was all alone in the house. It was communication with the person she wasn’t supposed to communicate with, and she’d already done what she wasn’t supposed to do. For some reason, his response struck her as funny, and she started to giggle and laugh. She took a screenshot and send it to Nick, with an apology. Sorry, I already forgot.
And, when her phone rang, she expected it to be him. But instead it was Mack. “Wow,” she said. “What are you doing up so late at night?”
“What am I doing so late at night?” he said, with a chuckle. “I’m just checking up on you, what else?”
“Why is that?”
“Is it wrong?”
“No.”
“Besides,” he said, in a quiet voice, “this isn’t for public announcement, but we found a body.”
She immediately gasped. “Oh no. Is it the gardener?”
“We’re waiting on an ID,” he said, “but I can tell you that he didn’t die in the last few hours.”
“Wow, so he was probably killed shortly after he was picked up. Which means that he obviously didn’t stage all this himself.”
“We also have to consider that,” he said, “which I never considered that seriously anyway. That was all you.”
“Oh, fine,” she said. “It was just a theory. Brainstorming, you know? So how will you get the positive ID?”
“A couple avenues,” he said, “but one will be to ask Denise.”
“Ouch,” she said. “How was he killed?”
“You’ll have to wait on that,” he said. “I just wanted to warn you, in case Denise contacts you.”
“Right,” she said. “It’ll be hard to go to sleep now anyway.”
“I just wish I knew what was going on behind it all and who would have killed him,” he said.
“And was it deliberate or accidental?”
“Since when is murder accidental?”
“The death, I mean. Like, if he was involved with somebody else, and they tried to make it look like a kidnapping. Maybe something went wrong, and he ended up dead. Just a thought.”
“We’re still not sure that it’s him, for one thing,” he said. “First things first.” They rang off very quickly after that, and she went to sleep with troubled dreams.
When she woke up the next morning, she got out of bed slowly, remembering the news from Mack and Mathew, checking her phone for messages. Between Mathew and Denise and now potentially the kidnapped uncle being murdered, things were heating up. But it still didn’t have anything to do with the Bob Small cold cases. And were there threads involving Bob Small to the kidnapped gardener or was there absolutely no connection? Just ones she was looking to find?
The fact that Denise’s uncle Dicky and Bob Small even shared time at the same prison was interesting for instance—if Denise could be believed because Doreen couldn’t confirm that herself. Still, was that enough of a connection to call it one? Hundreds of prisoners had to be there, and any criminal who went into the penitentiary system had to be one of only a few in BC, unless they were sent across Canada to other prisons. She frowned at that, wondering just how anybody would connect these cases, when she got a phone call from Denise. “Hello,” Doreen said.
“Hi,” the woman said, crying unashamedly into the phone. “I have to go identify a body. They think it’s my uncle.”
“Oh no,” Doreen cried out, “but they don’t know for sure?”
“No,” she said. “They want me to go, you know, take a look at it.”
“Ouch,” she said, “that would be terrible.”
“And they’re not even sure it’s him,” she said impossibly.
“Do you want me to come?”
A break came in her sobbing, and then her hopeful voice asked, “Would you mind?”
“No,” Doreen said, as she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering what was wrong with her that she’d even made the offer. “I’d be happy to.”
“Oh my,” she said, “that would be awesome. I don’t really want to go all alone.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “That sounds terrible.” And then she made another offer, again not knowing where it came from. “Do you want me to pick you up? It doesn’t sound like you’re in any shape to drive.”
“I should be okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you there, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “How soon will you be there?”
“I guess I should let you get coffee at least.”
Doreen was nodding crazily into the mirror. She definitely needed coffee first.
Then Denise went on and said, “But I’d really rather get it over with.”
Doreen closed her eyes and said, “So when then?”
“Do you think you can meet me there in, say, fifteen minutes?”
She opened her eyes and glared at the mirror. “Sure, I can do that.” As soon as she hung up the phone, she stood there, hung her head over the sink for a moment, and whispered, “Why? Why would you do that?”
But she had no time to understand her own actions, as she threw on her clothes, set the alarm system, and drove. She didn’t even have time to take the animals outside, and, for that, she was very sorry. As she made it to the morgue, she hopped out of her vehicle and waited.
When she saw a woman walking up from the other end, she knew it was Denise. She walked toward her with her shoulders hunched, and it didn’t look like she was still crying but more like she was shocked. “Let’s get this over with,” Doreen said bracingly.
Denise just nodded, and together they walked to the door, where, sure enough, Mack stood in the open doorframe. When he looked at Doreen, she shrugged and said, “I offered.”
He gave a partial headshake and ignored her. Then they went through an interesting process, where the body was viewed behind a screen.
Denise stared at it and then shook her head. “That’s not my uncle.”
Mack looked at her warily and said, “It isn’t?”
She said, “No, not at all.” She frowned. “It might be his friend, but I can’t be sure.”
“Which friend is that?”
She looked over at Doreen. “I think it’s his friend, Bob. The one you were asking about.”
Mack stared at Doreen. She stared right back, then faced Denise to ask, “Bob Small from Abbotsford penitentiary?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s the one.” She stared at the body again, shrugged, and said, “At least I think it is, but I haven’t seen him in a few years.” But she beamed with a broad smile and said, “Regardless it’s not my uncle, so good news, right?”
“It’s good news in that your uncle is not deceased,” Mack said, “but not good news in that we haven’t gotten any closer to finding him.”
Denise motioned at the guy on the table. “Check his handwriting against the handwriting on that note,” she said. “I bet they’re a match. I thought they were good friends, but you know what? He’s just as likely to have tried to blackmail my uncle.”
“Did they ever do any jobs together?” Doreen asked her.
She frowned, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about that question.”
Mack nodded and said, “But they did have a history.”
Denise laughed. “They certainly did in the penitentiary but before that? I don’t really know,” she said. “My uncle did not talk about his crimes.”
“Good enough,” he said. “Thanks for that bit of help. We’ll run his DNA and see what we can come up with.”
“Okay.”
Mack said, “Thanks for coming.”
“It was an experience,” Denise said, tak
ing a last glance, then she turned and left.
Mack looked at Doreen and asked, “I wonder what’s going on here?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, looking back at Denise. “I’m also not sure I believed her.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, turning toward the body, now covered by a sheet.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t get a read on her.”
“When she looked at the body,” Mack said, “she expressed no grief, no recognition.”
“No,” Doreen said, “there wasn’t any, but there also wasn’t any joy.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that it felt—” Then she stopped. “I can’t explain it. I just can’t explain it.”
“You don’t like her?” he asked.
“Like has nothing to do with it,” she said. “There’s just a lack of authenticity that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around. And, for all I know, it’s because she’s very closed off or protective. Maybe she has just shut down because of all this fear. I don’t know. Obviously I don’t want to say too much and make it look like she’s guilty, especially when she’s not.”
“Interesting,” he muttered. “But now we have a body that we need to identify.”
“Right,” she said. “Any way to check if it is really him?”
“But Denise just said it wasn’t.”
“I know,” Doreen said, “but maybe you should check anyway.”
He raised his eyebrows, tilted his head, and shrugged. “I can do that. It would be nice to know why Denise wouldn’t ID her uncle though.”
Doreen looked at him, nodded, and said, “I’d really like to know why too.”
Chapter 22
Wednesday Late Morning …
As soon as Doreen got home, she put on coffee, desperately in need of the caffeine. Her mind was in chaos. And finally, with her coffee in a travel mug, she reached for the dog’s leash, and soon, with the animals at her side, she stepped outside, this sense of confusion, chaos, and tension coiling through her. A good walk would help. At least she hoped it would.
She wandered the streets, not really watching where her path took her, struggling to sort through all the conflicting thoughts and emotions running amok in her mind. Of all the cases that she had seen so far, this one was the one most puzzling. And she thought it was because of Denise herself. It made no sense; none of it made any sense. Mack had mentioned she had a brother, … but, as usual, had another call and abruptly ended their discussion.
For that reason alone, Doreen was trying not to think about Denise but to view the whole thing from a completely different perspective. While Doreen was out wandering around, she found herself in the back of Mission Creek, on the pathway going up and down the hills. When her phone rang, she was surprised to see it was her ex. She answered it. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said, without preamble.
He snorted. “You never were very good at listening.”
She frowned. “Did you have a reason for calling?”
“If I called you, then I did, didn’t I?”
She hated that tone in his voice. “Then speak up,” she snapped.
“I thought you weren’t allowed to talk to me.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and glared into the phone because, of course, she wasn’t supposed to speak with him. She shouldn’t have answered the phone call to begin with, and now he was reminding her of how much of a jerk he could be. Just something in his tone suggested he knew something she didn’t and that he would always know something she didn’t because she was simply too stupid to understand.
“I’m hanging up in three seconds,” she said, “if you don’t start talking.”
“Wait,” he said, the first sign of alarm entering his voice.
“Wait for what?”
“I think you need to rethink this document.”
“I haven’t got any document here in front of me,” she said, “so what are you talking about?”
“The divorce papers,” he said, his voice turning surly. “No way you’re getting this much.”
“Well, look. If you hadn’t tried to cheat me out of everything,” she said, “it wouldn’t have come to this.”
“Hey, I didn’t cheat you. That was your lawyer. You’re the idiot who got the lawyer involved.”
“I had to get a lawyer involved because you had a lawyer involved.”
“Yes, but it was our family lawyer,” he said, his tone turning persuasive. “You could have just left it at that.”
She laughed. “Really? Is that what you think? Personally I think my lawyer couldn’t have been any worse. But then, of course, you were sleeping with her as a way to get her even more on your side.”
“I didn’t have to even sleep with her,” he said. “The woman was a psychopath.”
“I’m not sure you’re any better,” she said cheerfully.
“You can’t mean that,” he said, his tone injured.
She frowned, then shook her head, warning herself not to even get involved in this. But knowing she’d already made that mistake, she said, “Speak up, if you’re going to.”
“I just want you to rethink things,” he said, trying for a convincing tone. “We had a lot of good times together.”
“What’s that got to do with the divorce?” she asked. “You cheated on me. You ousted me from the house, and you got my lawyer to cheat me too. So where in all of this do I owe you any loyalty?”
His voice darkened, deepened into a threat. “You better, or you’ll regret this,” he said. “You haven’t heard the last of me.” And he hung up.
Knowing that she would get in trouble for it, she quickly texted Nick and said that Mathew had called, giving Nick the gist of the conversation.
And why did you answer?
The truth? Out of habit.
Her phone rang then, and, as she wandered up and down the pathway, she saw a beautiful fallen tree trunk up ahead, and she perched on it, while she answered. “I know I wasn’t supposed to,” she said, “and I really did try to get him to make his point, and all he would say is, he wants me to rethink the document, and I don’t deserve half. At the end though, it sounded more like a threat.”
“What kind of a threat?”
“Something about I’ll regret it.”
“Yeah, that’s a threat,” Nick said, obviously writing something.
She heard scratching on a pad. “Are you taking notes?”
“Of course. It’s all powerful information to give to the judge.”
“Ugh,” she said. “You know how I feel about a court and a judge.”
“Doesn’t matter how you feel,” he said. “You still have the process to get through.”
“I could just walk away.”
“You could, and you could go back to living on the streets and having nothing to eat too. Is that really how you want to live your life? This isn’t money you’re stealing from him. This is money he is stealing from you. If you put it in perspective, it makes things a whole lot easier.”
“But he’s one scary dude,” she said.
“And yet you had dinner with him,” he said, but no rancor was in his voice, no judgment, just curiosity.
“I was trying to help Mack,” she said.
He stopped and said, “Oh, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Nothing,” he murmured in a much more cheerful voice.
She frowned. “Don’t you read more into this.”
“I won’t,” he said on a burble of laughter.
She frowned. “Why does everybody think there’s more between us than there is?”
“Because there is,” he said. “You’re just taking some time to figure it out.”
She frowned. “I’m really not stupid, you know?”
“Absolutely not, and no way I would ever think that,” he said. “That’s not the kind of person I am, and you’ve shown that you’re very intelligent. Look at how many cold cases you’ve solve
d.”
As soon as they hung up, she hopped off the log to her feet. Feeling the tension inside her increasing, and, with the animals in tow, she raced down the big set of log steps. She raced back to where the eco center was and then headed up the pathway about half a mile. Up there was another set of steps, which she took on up. Wandering aimlessly, her mind still confused, she found herself on a deserted road, surrounded by orchards and country homes.
She smiled in appreciation, as she saw the apples and the pears on the trees all alongside the road. “That’s the wonderful thing about Kelowna,” she said out loud to the animals. “Beautiful fruit trees. It’s a really great temperature for growing them.”
There were so many good things about being here in Kelowna, starting her new life. She stood still, thoroughly admiring the countryside. She eyed the view behind her and stopped for a moment to admire the city laid out before her. Hearing the sound of a vehicle, she walked to where the road was, then stepped out of the way as she came up upon it suddenly.
A car whipped past, and she surprisingly recognized the vehicle from her recent trip to the morgue. It was Denise. Frowning, Doreen wondered what Denise was doing up here. She headed down the same road that Denise had taken, not even exactly sure where Doreen was at this point. She was also afraid to get herself caught up too far away or with too long of a walk to get back home.
But then she automatically felt comfortable, knowing that, if she called Mack for help, he’d come and pick her up. Still it wasn’t the smartest idea to get lost, and there were plenty of places in town that, if you weren’t driving, were quite a distance away.
Chapter 23
Doreen and her animals had come already quite a distance, and she hadn’t brought any food, water, or treats. She shook her head because she should know better. Still she wondered if it would be okay if she took an apple from one of the trees beside her. Even as she watched, one fell to the ground, and she picked it up, checked it over, and then took a good bite. She laughed.
“This is awesome,” she said. She wondered about Denise showing up here, but Doreen didn’t even know where the woman lived or who her friends or family were. It made no sense that Doreen would run into Denise out here, and it must just be a crazy coincidence. But then she heard Mack’s voice in the back of her head, snorting at the concept.
