Gun in the Gardenias (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 7)

by Dale Mayer

  She loved that idea. She got up and wandered around, looking at the deck. It was pretty narrow and long, but there wasn’t much grass growing on the left side of the house. So if she extended the deck enough for a table and maybe even a little barbecue, she could gate it by the steps and then Mugs couldn’t wander the yard and creek whenever he wanted. She nodded to herself and wrote down another note about looking for plans. She figured that it would be cheaper to do it herself than to hire somebody. Still, it wouldn’t necessarily be easy. She wasn’t sure she was quite up for it yet. Something simpler first perhaps.

  Still, she brightened. “I do have the tools,” she said with a laugh.

  But she put away that thought. After she was done eating, she put the animals back in the house, locked the door, set the security, and grabbed the last bag of clothes for Wendy, plus an armload of coats. She got into her car and headed out. Driving carefully past the few remaining media who flashed cameras in her face, she gave them a bright wave and drove off.

  She started her errands by dropping off all the charity stuff first, delighted Mack was right when several young men did come out and unloaded the car for her. She was tempted to give them the bag and the coats for Wendy too, but then figured that, at least with Wendy’s consignment, Doreen might get some money for those items. With that thought in mind, she headed to the consignment shop, parked outside the front door and walked in just as Wendy unlocked the door.

  Wendy smiled at her, seeing the armload of coats and the single big black garbage bag, and said, “Are you finally getting to the end of it?”

  Doreen nodded. “This is a bag of stuff I was thinking I would keep, but, as I tried them on, I didn’t really like what it did for me. So there could be a few more of these because I did keep quite a bit on the first pass. And, of course, I brought the coats I don’t want too.”

  “Let me grab them,” Wendy said as they walked into the back. They hung the items on hangers. Wendy nodded. “These are excellent quality. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble selling them.”

  Delighted, Doreen said goodbye and drove to the library. She was planning to do the grocery store first but then thought that was foolish because everything would sit in the car while she was doing her research. Inside, she escaped the librarian’s notice because she was busy dealing with other customers. She headed to the back to the computer and the microfiche film. She wasn’t sure this was the best place, but, of course, Bob Small was somebody she wanted to get some older history on. And then she had those six boxes in her living room from the hope chest to research the even earlier years.

  She rolled through the films as far back as she could, but Veronica wasn’t showing up in the year Doreen was looking at. And there were hundreds of microfiche rolls, so she needed to narrow it down. Frowning, she couched that and started on Bob Small—there were tons from ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. She wondered if he was alive now. But nothing said definitively he was the serial killer, although he had been questioned several times. So he was a person of interest, but they never had any proof.

  Which made him a very good serial killer, and she hated that she could even think that because why should anybody be a good killer? That was just so wrong. She sorted through Steve’s articles online next, looking for the arson articles. And then realized they were too recent for the microfiches, and so she switched to the computers. She should be doing this at home really because then she could print stuff off for free. She hesitated and decided she was probably much better off doing this at home because these were public computers. Plus, for all she knew, the librarian could check the history of whatever she did when she was here. On that note, she cleared her cache, grabbed her notepad, and left the library, ignoring the librarian who called out to her.

  She drove to the grocery store. That stop was much harder. By the time she had everything on her list for the spaghetti sauce, it looked suspiciously large and expensive. She had many of the ingredients at home, just not enough of some of them. She grabbed the regular things she needed, alongside the pet food, and frowned to see the bill would be a lot larger than normal. She still hadn’t picked up any other meat. And she did need more. She grabbed cans of tuna and some cheese, then picked up deli meats for sandwiches.

  She didn’t have a clue on how Mack had done those pork chops either. So she walked past the pork chops and wondered just how hard it would be to cook a chicken breast. Not wanting to take the chance, she grabbed a rotisserie chicken and figured that would hold her for a couple days. The bill made her gulp, but she bravely pulled out her wallet and paid for it.

  Inside though, she was shaky and worried that even trying to eat properly would wipe out her bank account. But then she remembered all the money she’d made off the car parts, the extra money Nan had given her for a dump run, and her recent bowl of money at home, and she knew she’d be okay for a while.

  Back home, she unloaded everything, with Mugs more-than-slightly interested in the ground beef she had bought for the spaghetti sauce and the roast chicken as well. She gently moved him out of the way so she could get everything free and clear of him and where it all belonged.

  She was almost done when her phone rang. She answered it, but nobody was on the other end. She frowned and looked at her screen to see it was an Unknown Caller. She hated those. If people made a phone call, they should at least be honest about who they were when calling. She put down her phone and sat back to continue her research.

  She should be going through the folders sitting off to the side, but her mind was stuck on Steve and those arson fires. By researching the individual names of the men who died in the fires, she found the same articles Solomon had printed off. But trying to find anything new wasn’t fruitful.

  Then, if Solomon was a good journalist, all this info would likely be in his notes and the rest of the file. Plus, the journalist had access to things she didn’t have. She pulled up the PDF file on Steve from Solomon and sorted through a bunch of it. She was tempted to print the whole dang thing as the file was so large. Plus, it would be easier to read some of this stuff in print form. She looked down at it and saw it was seventy-seven pages long. She winced but decided to print off the notes at least. With that in hand, alongside a pen and her notepad, she did a timeline. The arson fires were all within two months—including the Helmsman fire.

  All in two months. Highly suspicious.

  According to what the journalist had noted, Another gang was trying to move into town. The gangs were engaged in open warfare and had killed one gang member and had burned down his house. The Kelowna gang retaliated. Three house fires and three other gang members killed made sense. Particularly if they were leaders whose deaths would have completely disbanded the rival gang and had the others in the gang either no longer involved or leaving town for better pastures.

  “So four files.” Doreen decided to add something to that note. Four women paid off.

  But after reading that aloud, she sat back and wondered. What would be the purpose of paying off the women? Did the Devil Riders feel guilty and did the women need this money? Or had the women helped kill the men or at least knew something about it?

  It was all fascinating and confusing, but, as she read through Solomon’s notes and articles, she found he had been extremely linear in his note-taking and had included damn-near everything she needed. So what was the motive behind those checks? It made Steve look like a philanthropist—a good guy—if the checks came from his own account. So what she and Mack needed to do was find out if Steve had been reimbursed for those checks. That made sense to her, if he acted as corporate counsel to the Devil Riders. But she wondered what was required for the police to get a warrant to check out Steve’s financials.

  She frowned, pondering the issue for a long time. She certainly didn’t have that skill, and obviously, the journalist hadn’t gotten that far. He likely couldn’t get access. And what would it matter if Steve had handed over those checks? Outside of the fact he could be a lawyer
for the gang or the insurance company, it didn’t really mean Steve was involved in anything criminal, which was what Mack had said earlier. It was obvious to her that Steve was involved in something criminal, but how did one prove it?

  Steve was too darn slippery. The fact he broke into her house and stole his own file was irritating too. The fact she told him all were scanned in meant he knew his attempt to steal all this information had failed. She wondered what his next move would be. If it was her, she would probably pack up and run because there was no way to stop the digital files from spreading. Once digital, it was always digital, and it could go anywhere. Particularly to the police. And cloud storage meant, even if he came back and stole her laptop, he couldn’t remove all the copies she had.

  Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try that though. Doreen opened an email and sent copies of the folders to herself and to her new special email she had created earlier and didn’t share with anyone else. Steve wouldn’t have the logins for that, so she could always access it. Now, who else could she send it to?

  Mack’s brother, the lawyer. She frowned at that because she didn’t really want to start dumping additional work on him—not when she couldn’t even pay for the work he was doing for her. But he could be a good additional holding place. Then she decided to avoid that contact for the moment. Better she leave it all with Mack instead.

  Although Mack would need her to speak with his brother at some point, … she’d push it back a day, … a week, … a month or two. But knew she couldn’t push it too far.

  As she mused on what else to do with this information, she decided to put on a pot of tea. As she did, her mind wandered to Nan. She picked up the phone and called her.

  “Good morning, dear,” Nan’s bright voice answered on the other end.

  “Good morning, Nan,” Doreen said with a chuckle. “Don’t you sound fine this morning?”

  “I am, indeed. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve stirred up this place with new life. Now there’s more gossip than ever. It’s keeping me busy.”

  “Too much so,” Doreen said. “It’s obvious Steve’s been working for the Devil Riders’ gang for decades, but there’s very little proof as to him having done any wrongdoing.”

  “There will always be proof. You must dig a little deeper.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’m trying to locate the women who accepted the payouts to find out why they were given them. But then it’s not like anybody is still in town. At least not according to my research.”

  “No, I wouldn’t imagine so,” Nan said. “If they were smart, they probably changed their names. Can you go down to the government office and find that information in public records?”

  “I’m not sure,” Doreen said thoughtfully. “But there must be a database somewhere, and there’s probably a fee.”

  “Of course there is. The government will take money from you,” Nan said. “I could ask around here if anyone might have known those women.”

  “Or the men,” Doreen said. “The ones who died might have left a bigger impression.”

  “Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Nan said. “Deaths are more shocking. Really, does anybody consider the survivors?”

  “Exactly,” Doreen said. “You’ve got such a wealth of history at your fingertips down there at Rosemoor. I’m amazed.”

  “Well, just think about it. Solomon is still alive too.”

  “Good for him. I wish he’d had more evidence collected. He gathered lots of information, and it’s obvious in his summary he thinks Steve is heavily involved in money laundering, but how does one prove that? Solomon didn’t collect enough to take to the police himself, so not sure I can either.”

  “True,” Nan said. “I don’t think I’ll have a chance to talk to him. I don’t know.”

  “I hope you will. I certainly won’t,” Doreen said. “So, ask away, and see if anybody knows anything about it.” Then before she hung up, she said, “Nan?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Be careful.”

  With that done, she put Steve’s name on the new physical file folder and copied off the summary and her page of notes, then put it back into Solomon’s file boxes. Between the four boxes of Solomon’s case files and the six hope chest boxes, she was running out of room in that big front closet. She grabbed bundles of paperwork that Nan had kept on the shelves here, thinking they were by year, only to realize they were a complete jumble. She groaned, cleaned off the kitchen table and opened the smallest of the bundles. Then she sorted the receipts and the household maintenance documents, like insurance.

  She stared at the insurance, shook her head, and whispered, “That’s a half-million-dollar life insurance policy.” She didn’t even know if Nan was still paying for it. Good Lord. She set it off to the side and kept going. There were several receipts Scott would likely want, but she didn’t even know if he had those pieces or not. She also had that stack of paperwork from Scott that she had just dumped on a shelf in the pantry. And that would be something else she had to organize and label in its own folder. Groaning, she realized, once again, that just when she thought she was done, she wasn’t even close. Definitely needed to scan in those Christie’s docs and save them somewhere safe.

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday Afternoon …

  It was well past the lunch hour when Doreen sagged in her chair. She’d gone through all the jumbled bundles of Nan’s paperwork, had organized those by years, and then each year was further broken down into Nan’s different expenses. Doreen had massive stacks of that paperwork in front of her. She hadn’t even gone through Scott’s stack yet, the receipts for the antiques he took to sell at Christie’s. But she had an empty file folder that she now labeled, where she placed all her Christie’s paperwork so she didn’t lose track of anything and so she had it all together.

  Doreen scanned in the receipts and the like from Nan’s records which Scott might be interested in. It was laborious as some of them had to be manually scanned, like the small original receipts. But, with that stack done, she put them into a separate folder and labeled it. Now, with two folders organized and labeled, she went through the other stacks. She figured one was garbage but wasn’t sure. She’d have to ask Nan. All kinds of insurance forms had been filled out, but Doreen didn’t know if they were completed or not. Some of them looked like evaluations for a rebuild on the house, and that just astonished her. Had Nan seriously looked at leveling this house and building a new one from scratch?

  She didn’t even know what that would entail. And, for a moment, she felt oddly protective of her home. After that, she set the paperwork she didn’t understand off to one side and put a big clip on it. She might head to Nan’s later this afternoon for a cup of tea and see if Nan had any answers. Another stack appeared to be legal documents, like insurance, deeds on the house, and some personal papers, like weddings and funerals. She clipped those together. Then she took the paper trash outside to the recycling can in the garage.

  Now that she had all that done, and the scans of receipts sent off to Scott, she opened the folder she’d created for all the items Scott and his team had removed from her place. So many pieces were listed, including the artwork taken by Agatha and the books by John. She looked at the book list and remembered how John had taken damn-near every book she’d stacked up for him to consider.

  She looked over at a bookshelf in the pantry and saw the four he hadn’t taken. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep them either. She brought them down, looked at them, and shrugged. She wrote down the titles, the authors, and the copyright dates to ask Nan about, and then reshelved the four books. Nan would say they were valuable, but John hadn’t seemed to care. Doreen went through the rest of the Christie’s folder to refresh her memory but then put it all away.

  With everything tucked away except for the stuff for Nan to review, Doreen considered visiting her grandmother right away so she could get this mess off her plate. But she should probably call and let her know she was coming
. Otherwise, Nan could be off doing something else.

  Apparently, Nan was even lawn bowling these days. And that blew Doreen away. She’d yet to see the lawn bowling field, but it sounded like fun. One of the reasons she’d never really liked bowling much was the closed-in atmosphere and the loud noises. Not that Doreen had ever bowled. But she had attended a couple family-owned business events held at bowling lanes, clients of her then-husband.

  She didn’t understand that whole game; plus it had been very confusing with all the women in their high heels trying to walk on the bowling lanes. They weren’t supposed to, and the staff had been beside themselves trying to keep these high rollers in check. But it also went along with the lifestyle she used to have. Just as she was figuring out what to do next and a little bit at odds with herself, Nan called.

  “You should come for tea,” Nan said.

  “Why’s that?”

  Nan’s voice lowered. “I have something for you.”

  “Did you talk to Solomon?”

  “No, I can’t get in to see him. It’s something else.”

  Doreen jumped to her feet. “Well, I’ve got a couple things to ask you about too.”

  “Perfect,” Nan said with pure satisfaction. “Make sure you bring the animals. I’ve got treats for them.”

  At that, she hung up, and Doreen chuckled. “Well, we’ve gotten a lot done today,” she told her pets. “We might as well have a nice social visit. I really didn’t want to do any more heavy work in the garden today anyway.”

  The fact of the matter was, she needed to work on her garden in a big way. One bed at a time for the moment wouldn’t be a bad idea because she had to still get the weeds out. Then suddenly feeling guilty for having neglected her own space and her own plants, she rushed through her backyard with the animals in tow until her poor bedraggled yard was out of sight. She promised herself that tomorrow she’d get out in her yard and set up a plan.