by Dale Mayer
However, Mugs’s barking caught her attention. She stepped out, wrapped herself in a towel, and asked, “Mugs, what’s the matter?”
He ignored her and kept barking. Then she heard somebody at the front door. Groaning, she wrapped a bathrobe around her and raced down the stairs. She peered through the living room window to see Mack standing there with a glare on his face. She sighed, disarmed the security, and opened the front door.
“And what’s the bee in your bonnet?” she asked.
“Me?” He looked at her in surprise. “It’s early still, and you already look angry.”
“My body is sore from yesterday, and I just got out of bed and into the shower.”
“Good. I’ll put on the coffee while you finish up and get dressed.”
She rolled her eyes at him, then returned upstairs as he headed to the kitchen. She really should make him buy his own coffee to refill her stock, but, the fact of the matter was, she probably still owed him for many meals. So really a pound of coffee wasn’t a hardship.
Dressed and with her hair brushed back but hanging damp around her shoulders, she made her way downstairs.
Mack looked at her and said, “You’re still tired. And have you lost more weight?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “My pants are a bit looser.”
He shook his head. “Did you eat at all yesterday?”
“Didn’t we have sandwiches together?”
He nodded. “Did you have dinner?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I think I had a few crackers with cheese.”
He sighed and brought out a frying pan, then opened her fridge.
“I don’t have any ham,” she said, “but I do have cheese.” She watched with interest as he put toast on and then added butter in the pan and proceeded to crack a full half-dozen eggs. She frowned. “Didn’t you eat?”
“This is for you,” he said in a dark voice. “You have to eat.”
When the eggs were almost done, he picked up the cheese and grated it over the top, then worked it into the soft egg mixture. At the end he sprinkled a handful of chives from her garden into the eggs. She stared at it in fascination and said, “You just made that out of nothing.”
“That?” He smiled. “I made it out of eggs and cheese. Isn’t that amazing? Scrambled cheesy eggs made out of eggs and cheese.”
She glared at him. “You don’t need to be sarcastic.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.” He put the scrambled eggs onto a plate, grabbed the toast from the toaster, buttered it, and plated everything before setting it on the table. “Now, eat.”
“I can’t eat all that.” She gasped. “That’s six eggs!”
He glared at her and said, “I’ll finish what you don’t eat if Mugs and Goliath don’t.”
She sat down as he put a cup of coffee in front of her too. She smiled and murmured to her critters, “He might have arrived grumpy and angry, but I’m quite happy to have something different to eat.”
“What do you mean, something different to eat?”
“I was getting a tiny bit tired of cheese and crackers.”
He stared at her plate for a long moment. “Have you made anything else for your breakfast?”
“An omelet. Have you showed me how to make anything else?” she asked, forking up her first bite of scrambled egg. She stopped, closed her eyes, and sighed in delight. Several more moments went by as she inhaled half of her plate.
Mack shook his head. “We only made you a plain omelet. And you’ve done that on your own. I have the pictures on my phone you sent me as proof. I didn’t show you how to add things to the omelet or how to take the eggs and just make some simple scrambled eggs, like this.”
She nodded. “This wasn’t simple.”
“It’s very simple. You saw me make it.”
“Sure, but it doesn’t have a simple taste. It’s deep and rich with flavor and cheese.” She ate like a starving woman because, at this moment, that was what she was. Before she knew it, only a little bit of scrambled eggs were left. She scraped it onto her toast, lifted the toast, and polished off the first piece. Then she sat back with a happy sigh but looked at the second piece of toast and said, “I don’t think I can eat it.”
“I highly suggest you try.” Mack walked over to the cupboard and brought out the peanut butter and jam.
Doreen slathered both on and cut the bread in half. She gave him half and then started on the other. He picked up his half and ate it in three bites. She watched it disappear while she nibbled on hers.
“That’s the problem with you,” he said. “You put so much effort into your eating, you’ve burned up all the calories before it hits your stomach.”
She ignored his comment and ate as slowly as she wanted. Then she picked up her coffee and asked, “So what’s got you so upset this morning?”
“Where are they?”
She frowned at him in confusion. “Where are what?”
He growled, “The pink satin handcuffs.”
She looked at him and tried hard not to smirk but couldn’t stop it. Her lips twitched, and the first snort of a giggle escaped. And then she burst out in laughter. Mack glared at her. And Mugs, who had been quietly sitting at Doreen’s feet, jumped onto his back legs and woofed at her. She smiled but was still laughing helplessly as she reached down and cuddled him close. And then she heard an even odder sound. She looked over at Thaddeus perched on the windowsill, imitating her laughter. It was the weirdest cackling yet snuffling sound she’d ever heard.
At that, Mack burst out chuckling.
“Wow, we’re all just a mess this morning,” Doreen said, still giggling. She looked at Mack and asked, “Why do you care about the handcuffs? You were all for me throwing them in the garbage last night.”
“I want to see them,” he said.
Snickering, but happy to go along with his request, she hopped to her feet and walked to the front closet. She pulled out the stack of baskets and brought the top one back, so Mack could see the bag with the handcuffs in it.
He lifted it up and said, “You put it on the paper towel?”
She nodded. “And then I put the paper towel in the bag, in case anything fell off.”
He nodded and carefully looked at the handcuffs still inside the plastic bag.
She refilled their coffee cups, then sat, noting the resigned look on his face. She peered at the bag in his hand, but it was hard to see from her position. Plus the lighting was wrong. “What do you see?”
“Initials MP,” he said. His voice was heavy and deep.
“Initials? What?” She jumped to her feet to look closer. “So, we can return them to somebody. Do you really think they’d want them back?”
“We can’t return them to anybody,” he said quietly. “Because I’m pretty sure these handcuffs belong to a woman, a known prostitute in this town, but one who disappeared about ten years ago.”
Doreen stared at him for a long time. “But the handcuffs couldn’t have been buried there for ten years.”
“No, I suspect not. The material would have rotted away.”
“So …”
“So, we actually had a problem with nonessential evidence from the case disappearing from the station.”
Her jaw dropped. “From the evidence locker or whatever you use to keep all that stuff in?”
Mack nodded. “In cold cases, we don’t throw everything away. Some police detachments do when they run out of storage. But obviously, if we’re still trying to solve a case, we don’t get rid of the various pieces of evidence we have.”
“But this is hardly pertinent evidence, is it?”
“No, it was taken during the investigation, and it didn’t have any fingerprints or anything on it, and her purse was found in the alley, nearby where she was known to work. Everything was photographed, and the digital copies were kept,” he said. “But the purse and the contents went into an evidence box.”
“But you didn’t have anybody to r
eturn it to, so what happened to it?”
He shrugged. “It was kept with forensic evidence for a long time. And then this stuff disappeared. We assumed at the time it had been tossed and no one marked it down. The cleanout was official so no one was really upset …”
She stared at him in fascination. “So you don’t think this is relevant to the cold case on her disappearance, which is probably a murder, but you are thinking it might be related to whoever broke into the storage or the evidence locker or whatever you want to call it.”
He nodded slowly. “Exactly.”
“So, let me get this straight. A woman’s presumably murdered, and you collect all kinds of items for forensics. But, after testing, whatever is of no interest, you have nobody to give it back to because she has no family. So you hang on to the stuff until the theft of the stuff. What … How many years ago?”
“Seven,” he said slowly. “In this case.”
“So, years after the original disappearance, but I’m calling it a murder, somebody dumps the box—which does seem to point the finger at somebody in the police department. At least initially. But maybe then the dumpster was raided, and I’m thinking kids got to it and threw it away here in the neighbor’s yard. And yet it wasn’t important to the case, so the kids stealing it shouldn’t have been important to the case either. More nuisance value. Likely someone pilfered the purse, hoping something worth money was inside, but, not finding anything, they just threw everything away.”
He nodded. “But then where is the purse? Or, in this case, the rest of the box?”
“That could be anywhere. Particularly if the purse was nice. The rest? … Possibly tossed in the bushes as they walked or drove by. … That part we’re not likely to ever know. And it ends up at my neighbor’s front garden,” she said. “See? That says prank to me. Was anyone who worked at the force related to Richard? Maybe even hated him? Or, like I said first, it could have been just some curious kids …”
“Of course it could,” Mack said. “And, more to the point, it ends up in your hands.”
She chuckled. “Is there any way to know what else went missing?”
“The items weren’t considered pertinent for the case. That entire box disappeared.”
“But you had a list of these items somewhere, right?”
Mack shrugged. “We’re checking into that.”
“And, if she was a prostitute, and this is related … You know? Like the pink satin handcuffs, was the rest of the evidence similar paraphernalia?”
He nodded. “Yes, definitely. From what I remember.”
“So maybe somebody knew the box was there and just wanted to have some fun with it?” she asked cautiously, not sure how to put it.
“Most people don’t steal sex toys from a police evidence room. Nor try out used sex toys.”
“No,” she said. “But obviously something happened. Was other stuff taken as well?”
“No. And the box wasn’t important to the missing person’s case—yes, now considered a murder after so long—so no one cared until it went missing. Even then it wasn’t a big deal, just chafed for my friend.”
“So this box could have been targeted but why? More likely it was tossed and no one wanted to get into trouble so stayed quiet. Someone saw the box in the garbage and snagged it without knowing what was in it …” she pondered that.
“And that’s why people did know about it,” he said. “After three years had passed from the original missing person’s statement, we reopened that cold case, trying to find anything new we’d missed. It was decided that the box contents were of no value. And that box was put aside.”
“So, if the box was stolen shortly after the department’s review of the box, that makes it sound targeted to me. But”—she shrugged—“it’s a theft of unimportant items, and that’s unpleasant, but that doesn’t mean it was necessarily criminal.”
“Well, it’s criminal because it’s theft,” he said in a dry tone. “Especially when stolen from a police department. But the originating case file is obviously not at the top of any of our pending files to work on.”
“That’s very interesting,” she said. “Still it feels like the items were just tossed away. As if someone had this stuff and just threw it out a window as they drove by. Then, considering that, in all those years—seven since the box went missing—wouldn’t the satin have deteriorated somewhat more?”
“How close to the house were they? Were the heathers protecting them? Where are the sprinklers? Or were the handcuffs just sitting there under the heather branches, dry and protected? Is there any reason they wouldn’t have looked weather-beaten or old by now? I’ll take them to forensics and see if they find anything on them.”
“Be my guest,” she said.
He nodded. “So, when we’re done with our coffee, you’ll show me where you found them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. My neighbor’ll love that.”
The good thing was Richard didn’t even show his face. He was probably too embarrassed. Doreen walked over with Mack and showed him exactly where she’d found them. No pink satin remnants were anywhere around the heather.
“You should take a bunch of photos, I guess,” she said. “But I never thought to when I pulled them up. There’s where the chain between the two of them was or whatever you want to call that piece that connects to the handcuffs. You can see it was dug in slightly.”
Mack nodded and took several photos, then said, “Good. I’ll take these and the handcuffs into the station and see what the chief wants to do.”
“Sounds good,” Doreen said. She stood outside while he drove away, Mugs and Goliath sitting at her side. Both watched Mack, whereas Thaddeus apparently showed a great deal of interest in the heather. He plunked up a stem and tossed it on the ground and went after another one and then another one.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “We don’t ravish plants as pretty as this. Particularly when they’re not ours.” She scooped him up gently onto her hand and placed him on her shoulder. He squawked in outrage and tried to get back to the heather, but she didn’t let him. Back at the house again, she closed the front door and cleaned the kitchen. She was at odds and ends.
With the Steve scenario in police hands now, and, still not sure what to do with the six hope chest boxes she’d found above the front closet, she was tempted to start in on the Bob Small newspaper clippings, but suddenly she was really tired. Deeply tired. Maybe she was tired of humanity acting like this. Humans really were a lousy species to be the supposed king of this planet. Maybe a coffee would help. And, of course, with Mack coming and going, they were running out of coffee. Just as she went to put on some, Nan called.
“How about a cup of tea and a croissant?” Nan asked.
“Well, tea, yes, but I’m pretty stuffed. I had a very big breakfast.”
“Lovely,” Nan said. “If you come down, you can take the croissants back for lunch. They’re full of ham and cheese.”
Doreen brightened. “That sounds wonderful!”
“You must be exhausted,” Nan said. “Maybe I should come up to you.”
Caught by that idea, Doreen chuckled and said, “If you would like to come for a walk, sure. Do you want me to pick you up?”
“No, no, no,” Nan said. “I’m walking outside to my patio now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Put on the tea.”
Chapter 4
Saturday Morning …
Laughing in delight, Doreen knew it was too early to put on the kettle, so she’d wait a few more minutes to give Nan time to walk over. With her gang, she headed back to the creek, where she watched the water during the early morning hours. She was becoming addicted to the sound of the creek as it rippled gently along the rocks. It was rising again but not by much. Maybe a couple inches. It was enough though to make her stop and look at it sideways.
Then she stared back at her property. The house had been here for a long time, but it hadn’t occurred to her that, in the case of floodin
g river conditions, the water might run into her basement. At that thought, she needed to talk to Nan about it. As she turned to look for Nan, Doreen saw her grandmother on the other end of the path. With the animals in tow, Doreen walked to meet her halfway, carrying Goliath, while Thaddeus perched on her shoulder, and Mugs walked with a bounce in his step. Nan immediately cooed to each animal in turn, giving them all hugs and pats and words of love.
“Nan, do you ever get water in the basement?” Doreen asked as soon as they reached her.
“Not really,” Nan said. “We have once or twice over the years, but it depends on how bad the melting snowcap season is. Nothing bad in decades. I did worry about the furniture down there, but thankfully that’s all gone.”
“You don’t have sump pumps, do you?”
Nan shook her head. “No, I don’t. Just keep an eye on it.”
“But you stored all those antiques down there,” Doreen said, struck by the magnitude of that catastrophe, if it had come to pass. “What if they had been damaged?”
Nan shrugged. “Thankfully it didn’t come to that. Most of those were collected in the last ten years. If the river rises too fast, as it comes down your creek, it soaks up in the surrounding ground. That’s why the houses are as far away from the river as they are. It’s still a foolish idea to have a basement when you’re along a waterway like this because it’s not actually the river flooding that can hurt you. It’s groundwater accumulation. It might be something you want to look at though.”
“Look at what?”
“Adding a sump pump. You have the ones outside the house, in case you hadn’t found them yet.”
When Doreen didn’t respond, Nan looked at her and said, “Oh, dear, I haven’t explained about that, have I?”
Doreen shook her head slowly. “Outside the house?”
“Two of them, in fact,” Nan said. “It stops the water from going into the basement.”
“But you said it did flood several times?”
“Only if the sumps aren’t working. Back then I didn’t have those. They were added in later.” They walked into the backyard, and Nan headed to the corner of the garage, moved some of the bushes back, then pointed at a round wooden lid. “Lift that up,” she said.
