Chapter 10
Doreen locked the front door once Mack and some of the other officers had gone, then, needing a better outlet for her growing frustration, ended up kicking it too.
“Ouch.” Okay, that was stupid. Hobbling gently, she walked to the kitchen window where she watched from behind the curtains as the policemen slowly collected their tools and belongings and then left her garden. When the backyard was clear, she walked into the living room, just in time to see several cop cars pull away.
A few stragglers remained from the crowd that had been outside, standing around, staring and talking. Several even had what appeared to be mugs of tea or coffee. She supposed this was their local entertainment. With a sad shake of her head, she turned toward the coffeepot.
At least she’d learned how to make coffee. If she were lucky, there’d be a cup left.
She perked up at the idea and walked to the pot. No such luck. It was a small pot, and between her and Mack, the coffee had been finished off. She pulled out the coffee from the drawer where she’d seen Mack grab it, and, true enough, the scoop was inside. So now she could make coffee herself. But, just in case, she jotted down his instructions on a notepad so she wouldn’t forget.
She was hungry too and still had her lack-of-food issue to deal with. The Chinese food delivery would have to wait for another day. She was just so tired, but she forced herself to sit down and eat the rest of her traveling snacks. After the first few bites she felt better. By the time she’d polished off her meager meal, she was more than ready to go to bed.
She grabbed several of her suitcases and marched upstairs. She hadn’t unpacked her bags yet, not with so much happening on her first day here.
With all the animals following behind her, she opened the first room to see a small bedroom with ancient wallpaper and dingy curtains on the windows. In spite of the looks she smiled. This had been the room she’d stayed in as a child. There had been a bathroom across the hallway. Crossing the hallway she found the bathroom as she remembered, which at least looked serviceable. The master bedroom was at the end of the hallway. This was Nan’s room. She gasped in delight as she walked in. It was huge. This would work.
Of course it was also jam-packed with all kinds of shelves and old furniture. She had no idea what Nan needed with all this stuff. But amid all this clutter was a very large bed in the center. She walked over and sat down experimentally. Loud squeaks and groans of metal springs erupted from underneath. She closed her eyes in defeat. “Really, Nan?” Was this the same old bed she’d always had? Hadn’t she upgraded anything? Doreen stared at it in disbelief. “This thing will break my back. I just know it.”
Immediately she chastised herself for the uncharitable thought. It was probably all Nan could afford.
Doreen pulled back the bedding to see that, indeed, clean sheets were underneath. Nan had probably left it ready for Doreen’s arrival. Which Doreen appreciated, but, at the same time, she wondered at the sense of just taking the mattress off the noisy steel springs and putting it on the floor. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep on the bed as is. She was starting to feel like the princess with the pea—only right now she was more pauper than princess.
Two very large double closet doors were on the opposite wall, and that was a plus. But as she opened the doors, the closet overflowed with everything else stored away in this house. It would take days, if not weeks or months, to sort through and toss all this clutter. Why hadn’t Nan done this first? She’d known she was leaving this house.
When Doreen had a chance, she’d ask Nan. Doreen’s little Honda was too small to haul everything out of here, and she had no money to pay for somebody else to get rid of it all. The living room and dining room downstairs were full as well. But she hadn’t really expected this bedroom to be also. She turned to see Thaddeus, sitting on the foot railing to the bed. “Oh, I don’t think so. This is where I sleep, not you.”
But as she studied him and the newspaper on the floor under him, she wondered if that really was his sleeping spot. “Oh, my God! Please don’t tell me that you poop in here too?”
As if knowing exactly what she said, Thaddeus gave a tiny squirt, and a white splotch appeared on the floor.
It was just too much. It was all just too much. She could feel hot tears burning in the corner of her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. By the time she cleared her eyes, she could hear a weird groan. She glanced over at the bed again to see Goliath dead center, curled up in a ball. Nan probably had lived with her pets as if they were family.
The trouble was, they were Nan’s family. Doreen wasn’t at all sure they could become hers. Did she have any choice?
Mugs stood up on his back legs, his front paws on the bed, took one look at the cat asleep there and barked.
Doreen rushed over. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not jumping on that bed.” But before she reached him, he lunged and ended up on the bed too. The bed squeaked and bounced with his movements. The cat didn’t even open an eyeball. Mugs sniffed at him hard and then circled around and dropped at the foot of the bed, stretched out, taking up over half of it.
If she’d ever wondered how much her life would change now, here was her answer. The proof was right here in front of her. She would never be the same again.
She turned her back on them and surveyed the rest of the room. She couldn’t deal with the animals right now. Later. Spotting a door on the far side, she walked over and pushed it open. And cried out in joy. Of all the things she hadn’t expected, it was this huge en suite bathroom with a large soaking tub, a separate shower and double sinks. When had Nan redone this room? Whenever it was Doreen would be forever grateful. And right now a hot shower would do a lot to ease her mood.
She walked to the window to check if anybody could see her. The master bathroom looked over the backyard. Outside of the neighboring yards, only trees and grass stared back at her. She stood here, slowly unbuttoning her suit jacket as she stared out at the massive garden. Tracks and shovel marks and trampled grass reached all the way back to the dilapidated fence. Such an invasion of privacy. She knew she shouldn’t feel violated, as it didn’t feel like home yet, but she was more outraged for Nan’s sake.
Yet, she knew Nan didn’t give a crap. In Nan’s mind, this was done and gone, and she wasn’t coming home again. And that was just that.
As Doreen glanced back out into the evening light, something twinkled. It winked and flashed as if something metallic or mirrored had moved. She frowned and stepped behind the curtains. Was somebody out there?
Of course people were out there. She had had curiosity seekers watching the events here all evening. Just because the cops had left, did that mean the gawkers had too?
No other houses were behind hers. She should have complete privacy here. Except for whatever was twinkling in the night.
As she glanced up, she could see the moon rising off to the left, sending a sharp ray of moonlight down on the back garden. Well, that explained the twinkling and flashing going on, but what was the moonlight hitting? She contemplated heading out there to look but knew that she couldn’t see anything in the dark. Did Nan have a flashlight among all the stuff stored in this house?
Sleep would elude Doreen while that shining thing was out there. She didn’t know if it was important or just a piece of garbage. But what if it had something to do with the murder?
This was Nan’s house—regardless of what Nan thought or said or did—and Doreen had to do what she could to protect it. With a groan, she buttoned up her suit jacket once more and headed back downstairs, shoving her feet into Nan’s shoes. Doreen searched the kitchen drawers until she found a flashlight and then headed outside.
With both Goliath and Mugs moving excitedly at her side, she propped the back door open so the animals could come and go as they pleased and then headed outside. She went down the veranda steps, carefully making her way around the huge hole that the police had left, striding toward the area where she’d seen the twinkling light. Thaddeus flew up, joining the trio, and landed on her shoulder. She stroked him, her heart more affected than she thought.
He crooned against her cheek, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
And she was so grateful that she would not be totally alone in Nan’s house.
With the animals at her side, the flashlight giving her limited visibility, she slowly made her way through the backyard. Going by the landmarks she’d memorized while looking out her upstairs window, she focused on the big window in the master bathroom, gauging where she’d find the shiny thing. She shone the flashlight around but saw nothing. She walked the area for a good ten minutes but couldn’t locate it.
“Well, Goliath, you’re the one who brought the finger bone inside. Can you find this other thing? How about you, Thaddeus? Can you find the reflective thing?”
Maybe his species was attracted to shiny stuff. Or was it magpies that stole the shiny things? Crows? She shook her head, not having any answers to her own questions. “What about you, Mugs? How about you root around and dig up stuff? Isn’t this what you wanted a garden of your own for?” She knew she was talking out loud just to keep herself focused on why she was here. In the dark. By an empty grave.
Mugs had been denied access to the garden in the big house where they used to live. He had his own little dog run where people came and cleaned up behind him every day. But now he had a real garden, where he was allowed to roll around in the dirt. She knew he’d be much happier here. Just like she would be.
She stopped, took another assessment from the angle upstairs where she’d been and walked about eight feet forward. As she moved ahead, Mugs dove into the grass in front of her. It was tall enough and deep enough that it darn near split and flattened in half with his weight. She shone the light to see what he’d found. And, sure enough, something was in his mouth. She grabbed his collar so he wouldn’t run away with it. She’d had more than enough of that earlier with the finger bone. She shone the flashlight at what was in his mouth, and it was indeed metal. It was a small flat piece. But Mugs wouldn’t drop it easily.
She found a stick and made a trade.
Grudgingly he accepted the stick. She stared at the metal and wondered what the heck it was. Probably nothing but garbage. She checked out the spot where it had been. With the dog now happily chewing on the stick beside her, the cat roaming the garden and Thaddeus staring over her shoulder, she found the rest of it.
It was a small metal box half buried in the garden. She didn’t know if it had been uprooted by the police or whether one of the volunteers had found it or if it had lain here for decades. She dug around it and lifted it from its surprisingly deep home, realizing it had been in the same position for a long time. Nothing was inside the metal box, but, as she removed it, she found something below it. Gradually she moved away more dirt and grass and then reached inside the hole. And what she brought back up made her blood run cold.
Thaddeus squawked in her ear. “Murder in the garden. Murder in the garden.”