Gun in the Gardenias (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 7)

by Dale Mayer

  “And you should,” Nan said, “because who knows what you might find? It could be more receipts for Scott too.”

  “And he would like anything and everything we can find,” Doreen said.

  “What will you do with the dishes?” Nan asked.

  Doreen shrugged. “I have no clue. I guess essentially I’ll offer them to the family, if they’re interested.”

  “Maybe if it was the first or second generation,” Nan said, “but I highly doubt any of the subsequent generations will want them. Everybody is more interested in short-term now, not long-term.”

  “We’ll see,” Doreen said. “It’s more of a curiosity than anything. After all this time, there might be a huge family, or there might be nobody.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Nan said cheerfully. “I have the utmost faith in you.”

  Chapter 19

  Sunday Early Afternoon …

  By the time her grandmother left, Doreen was dying to delve into her research. Not only about the Steve issue with the Helmsman payout but also now a name and more paperwork to sort through on these six mystery hope chest boxes. And what to do with them was, indeed, a question that needed answers.

  With her laptop and a sandwich beside her, as the muffin hadn’t been enough hours ago, she sat at the kitchen table and forced herself to rename a certain number of scanned-in files before she did some more research. By the time she was done renaming and researching, hours had passed. She groaned and looked at the amount of notes she had taken. She would need Mack’s help. That arson file was one of them. She texted him the name on the arson and the payout and said, “I think I mentioned this before, but I’m still looking for answers.”

  That’s nice came his text in reply.

  She cringed at that. Then she resumed her research. On a whim, she looked at the total number of Google pages of hits for this search, and it was one of ninety-seven. She clicked to load page twenty, then page forty, then page sixty, and stopped to take a look at each quickly. When she randomly went through a few more pages, a picture came up.

  It was Steve, but a younger Steve with another woman at his side. The woman wasn’t identified, and Doreen wondered how she could find out who it was. She saved it and read the article, which said he had been a benefactor to this woman who had suffered terribly in a house fire. Was that the arson payout she already knew about? She wondered about that and started delving into the different names that came up in the article.

  That was the problem with research. When she found one rabbit hole, it led to a million other rabbit holes. By the time she was done, she had located three more house fires, all with Steve helping out. That really bothered her. She wrote those names down and texted them to Mack.

  Three new names re house fires and Steve handing over checks, she texted. Check into them, please.

  Just then her phone rang. “What are you doing?” Mack snapped. “First off, it’s a weekend, and I’m not in my office. Second, why are you delving into Steve today, when we had this discussion already?”

  “We did, indeed,” she said cheerfully. “But, as I was doing this research, I came up with a bunch of other fire scenarios where he’s handing over checks, and he’s like this big benefactor. What if somebody he knows is lighting the fires? There’s a problem or some purpose behind it, and Steve’s out there, the good PR guy, getting all the kudos for being such a nice man, when in reality he’s part of whatever is going on behind the scenes.”

  “Handing out checks?” Mack said. “But you can’t tell me that is criminal.”

  “No, but three house fires?”

  “Accidents?” he snapped back.

  “One, yes. Two, possibly. But all three? Plus, the Helmsman fire is four. No,” Doreen said. Then she mumbled, “That’s okay. I’ll just wait until I get all the evidence and present you with yet another case to put with your name and make it look like you’re doing all the work.” And she hung up.

  She wasn’t mad at him, just the opposite. This had become some game between them. But then, he really did have access to the information she didn’t. She thought about Solomon’s case files on Steve. Were any of those names involved in fires also mentioned in Steve’s folder? That would be something. Would it be easier to search the PDFs? She wasn’t sure. She opened his computer folder she had created and realized several PDFs for him were there. She searched each PDF for the four names. On the third PDF, something popped up. She read the article, and it was similar to what she had read earlier. She went to the physical folder, pulled out the paper copy, and flipped through it. There it was. Putting a paper clip on it, she set it off to one side and then kept researching the scanned-in PDFs and finding the paper documents in Solomon’s folder.

  Sitting down, she read the accumulated stack and interpreted Steve’s actions as philanthropic, helping suffering people. But these dealt with just three fires, not the Helmsman fire. In the articles on these three house fire cases, the men had died, and the women had received money to help them out. Nan had stated Annette didn’t have house insurance coverage. According to what she’d read in Solomon’s files regarding the other three cases, there was no insurance coverage on any of the houses.

  Doreen thought that was odd. Didn’t anybody else wonder? This was a long time ago, so maybe Doreen would never know if the original investigators were curious about this too. However, if people were broke, paying for insurance might be one of the first things they couldn’t do anymore.

  She texted her findings to Mack. It would keep him on his toes and maybe keep her in his mind. Not that she wanted him thinking about her all the time. Right now, that would probably make him really angry. But she laughed and thought about the work she was doing and how it would benefit everybody. Buoyed with good humor, she started researching Steve as a philanthropist. And then as a corporate lawyer working for the Devil Riders’ biker gang.

  By the time she was done, she had a better idea of what was going on. The articles dealing with these three men who had died in the three fires were all part of a different gang, called Satan Riders. Nothing suspicious about that. She snorted in disgust. The women with children had all been given a check to help them move on without their partners. She thought about a rival gang who would take out a man and leave his woman and children alone, and then help them out. She wondered at that mentality. If these payouts had just left them financially well-off, that would have been nice. Of course though, Doreen had no way to know if the women received a big-enough check to do them any good. Or if the Devil Riders’ biker gang had a hand in these men’s deaths or the fires. No amounts were mentioned—and maybe it was a case of Take this and disappear or else we’re coming after you.

  Speaking of which, she realized she didn’t even know where Steve lived, other than that he was a neighbor of hers. She searched for his address and found him in an article, standing with his arms around two other men who looked a little rough. They were in three-piece suits though and pretty nicely cleaned up. But she recognized that sharkish look about them. Her husband had the same look. She studied the photo for a long moment before writing down their names and Steve’s address. And then she double-checked online to see if that came up as his address. Two other articles mentioned the street, so she assumed she was on the right track. But contacting Mack now was out of the question, or he’d be truly pissed.

  Searching for the address, she found it a little ways away, on her side of the creek. And just across from Penny’s place and up a couple houses. Which explained why Doreen kept coming in contact with Steve. Several large estate properties were up there. She was kind of jealous of that. He had three acres along the creek, and, according to the images she could see on Google, it was well protected and private.

  Of course, he’d want privacy, wouldn’t he? So how was it that he had a connection to Penny and to all these other women? She didn’t think Penny had mentioned how they’d first met. Not that it was important but it was interesting. Doreen sat back and frowned. Did
she get it all wrong with Penny? Did Steve have something to do with the murders in Penny’s family? But, no, Penny had admitted to killing her brother, and Doreen knew George had admitted to killing her father and the nurse in his journals—not directly confessing on paper but enough to lead Doreen’s imagination in that direction. Then George committed suicide, with the help of Penny and some lethal gardening plants.

  So that took care of that. But that didn’t mean Penny didn’t know about other instances in Steve’s life. How long had they known each other? Several decades at least. From that one photograph Doreen had found earlier, it was obvious they had a very close relationship.

  She shook her head as she pondered this, then looked down at her critters, all stretched out on the floor, and asked, “Anybody want to go for a walk?”

  Mugs went from zero to sixty once more. He jumped straight up in the air and then chased his tail in excitement. Goliath backed out of his reach and stared at him in disdain. Meanwhile, Thaddeus, who had been sleeping on his roost in the living room, flew toward her. He wandered around the corner of the hallway kitchen door, cocked his head at her, and said, “Thaddeus walk. Thaddeus walk.”

  She chuckled. “Maybe we’ll take a coffee with us and a granola bar. We’ll take a look at where our lovely corporate-lawyer-slash-scumbag lives. The fact that he’s so close to me is a little disturbing. I would like to know where the enemy resides before he shows up here again.”

  Of course, Steve had already showed up more than a couple times. She brought a leash with her, just in case they had to be on the street or if they met some undesirables. She didn’t want Mugs completely getting away. He was generally very good, but a little bit of caution never hurt.

  Goliath, of course, had a mind of his own. Doreen was tempted to get a harness and put it on him but thought it would be more of a YouTube sensation to watch Goliath try to get out of it. Since she couldn’t tether Thaddeus, she figured it wasn’t fair to any of them. Tie up one and keep him a prisoner while the others were free? It was much better that they all learned to walk together. Which, she had to admit, they did. They were a very nice and tight-knit group most of the time. Hopefully, Thaddeus wouldn’t get sidetracked, and Goliath wouldn’t take off after him, and Mugs wouldn’t decide something out there was worth chasing.

  She could only hope that today, maybe of all days, they’d behave themselves.

  Chapter 20

  Sunday Late Afternoon …

  The walk up the creek was pleasant until Doreen got to where she always crossed over to Penny’s side. And then she got melancholic and said, “Just think. If Penny hadn’t attacked me,” she said out loud, “or if she hadn’t shot Hornby …”

  She was pretty sure the jury would let Penny off the hook on killing her brother on compassionate grounds alone, since she had been through a similar sort of abuse as her brother. But those recent attacks on Hornby and Doreen? Those were an entirely different thing. With her hands in her pockets, Doreen walked forward, past the stepping stones, wanting to cross over to see how Penny’s garden looked but knowing she was here for an entirely different reason. She had never been up this far either.

  She kept on walking as the creek lost some of its bank, making the traveling a little difficult. But, with the waters still low, she could walk along the creek bed itself. She just didn’t want to end up falling and hurting her ankle and having to call for help. That would be humiliating. Some of the creek up here had really high banks, and she knew that some of them were private property, but along one side was a large pathway.

  She should have crossed over when she could to remain on the safer path. Bridges, overpasses, and underpasses allowed for the walkway on one side. But, of course, she wasn’t on that side. She kept on walking farther, recognizing some of the landmarks she’d seen on her Google search, and then finally she came to the corner where it looked like Steve’s property started.

  Immaculate lawns spread out in front of her. She could still continue to walk on the rocks and not touch his private property. As far as water rights went in Canada, you didn’t own the water. There were the odd properties that had different rules written into ownership, but that would have been older archaic rules. Along here was a riparian zone, and you owned up to the high-water mark, but, once you got to a high-water mark, the city owned that and controlled what you could do with your land before it too. So she was allowed to walk where she was. It was Crown land. She kept going, only to realize Thaddeus had fallen behind. She walked back and offered him her shoulder. He hopped up, crooned against her, and tucked up along her neck. He was seated but staring up and around avidly.

  “We’ve never been here before, have we?” she asked.

  “It’s new. It’s new.”

  “It is, indeed, new,” she said with a chuckle. Calling Goliath to her, they kept walking until they got to the end of Steve’s property. It was a stunning location. It opened up to more farmland, horse pastures, and what looked like a big riding arena in the distance. Up and down, the path had disappeared somewhere along the line, but she figured that, from the looks of the worn path she was on now, this was an area people used when the water was low. She was probably allowed to walk along the grassy edge, but she didn’t want him to see her.

  It was certainly easy to see that big money had bought this property, unlike Nan’s home, with its rough gardens and overgrown backyard. This place was so perfect she knew Steve had full-time gardeners and landscapers to make sure everything was tickety-boo. She knew it because it was exactly what she’d had before when married.

  As soon as she passed his property, she climbed up the bank onto the real path and kept going. At least he wouldn’t see her here. All she’d really learned was that he had a beautiful, expensive place and that he hadn’t suffered by handing out money. But maybe if the biker gang realized Steve had something to say or that Doreen had something to say about his activities, that might change things.

  She wandered down, hearing running footsteps behind her. She turned, wondering who it was. Then frowning, she slipped off to the side and took the stepping stones across to Penny’s corner. If the water rose much more, she wouldn’t get across easily. And, for Goliath, it would be traumatizing. She stopped midstream to look back to see him meowing at her. She returned, picked him up—and not even trying to stay dry—walked through the current to the other side. She just made it to the treed area on the other side, when she turned to see who was coming. A man ran past where she’d been. And, sure enough, it was Steve. She stood, frowning. Had he seen her at his property? And then she realized that, while she was here, he could be heading to her house.

  On that note, she dashed back across the creek to her side, carrying Goliath, her heart racing with the realization she had once again not set the alarms and all that paperwork was there. She saw no sign of Steve anywhere. As she came around the corner, dashing up to her house, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. Until she got inside and made sure everything was still here and safe, she had no way to know.

  She raced inside the kitchen door only to hear the door out front slam shut. Mugs barked, and she went through the house to the front door. There was no sign of anyone now. Of course. Where was the media busy taking photos when she needed them? She ran back to the kitchen door, worried he’d come around the side. But as she went around the side toward the garage, she saw somebody disappear over the fence.

  She called out, “It’s all digital!” At that, he tripped and missed a step but kept on going. “It’s all right, Steve. I’ve already handed it all over too.”

  But he didn’t stop. And she didn’t know what else to do. She headed back into the kitchen. Sure enough, the physical folder with his name was gone. The clipped pieces she had removed from the file were still here, facedown, but not the folder itself. It was a good thing she’d scanned everything. But she’d wanted to keep all the paper copies too.

  Chapter 21

  Sunday Early Evening …

 
Doreen called Mack.

  As soon as he picked up, he said in exasperation, “I haven’t had a chance to look up any of those names yet.”

  “Steve was just in my house,” she snapped. “He stole his folder.”

  There was a short silence before Mack responded. “Did you catch him?”

  “He jumped my neighbor’s fence, but I did call out to him and told him that I had scanned it all. He damn-near fell on his face at that.”

  “Damn,” he said. “Are you sure it was Steve?”

  “He had on a black hoodie, but it was his body shape. I haven’t checked if there are any footprints. I suppose I should have done that first,” she said, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “That was foolish of me.”

  “Hang on. I’m coming over right now,” Mack said. “Did you finish scanning all those files?”

  “Yes, I did. And he didn’t grab the things I had removed from his file, pages I had set off to the side. I was researching those this morning. They were upside down with paper clips on them. He just grabbed his folder and ran.”

  “But now he’ll know what you know,” Mack said. “And that could be bad news.”

  “Well, he won’t know about the stuff I removed from his file. But maybe he’ll wonder if there’s more,” Doreen said. “Because he found one folder, that doesn’t mean it was the only one.”

  “You just have a nose for getting into trouble, don’t you?”

  “Are you already in the truck and driving over here? If you’re not, I’m walking over to my neighbor’s.”

  “I’m in the truck,” he said. In the background, she heard an engine start up.