Dagger in the Dahlias

by Dale Mayer

  “What is this? Butter and garlic?”

  “Butter with a little bit of garlic, yes, and a bunch of herbs. If you use dried herbs, warming them releases the flavors.”

  “I can definitely agree with that,” she said. “I don’t remember anything quite so aromatic.”

  He chuckled, stirred the contents, dumped in freshly chopped onions and then added ground beef. She watched as he calmly took a wooden spatula and stirred the mix.

  “When do you know it’s done?”

  “When the meat turns brown and the onions turn translucent,” he said. “The garlic you don’t really have to worry about because it cooks so fast.”

  The combination was really getting her appetite going. “I don’t know what else goes in there, but I want to snag a forkful right now.”

  “That’s exactly how it should smell,” he said.

  She watched in fascination as he proceeded to add more ingredients. When she wondered what came next, he reached across and turned her pot of water on high.

  “Grab the olive oil,” he said.

  She looked at him sideways.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Surely you’ve had olive oil served with your fancy meals?”

  She nodded. “So, I’m looking for one of those little glass cruets that you pull a stopper from and pour?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Maybe in your world, but, in my world, we don’t pour olive oil into a crystal jar just so we can pour it back out again.” He chuckled. “Nobody has time for that.” He pointed at the kitchen table. Beside the wine was another bottle.

  She picked it up and read the label. Olive oil. “Isn’t it supposed to say extra virgin?”

  “It does,” he said. “Read the fine print underneath.”

  She squinted. “I would have thought that fine print should be bigger.” She handed him the bottle.

  “It probably is on your bottles,” he said in a dry tone. He took off the lid and poured some olive oil into the Dutch oven. “I count to three and figure that’s good.”

  She looked at the amount swimming on the top of the water. “How am I supposed to learn if you don’t measure?”

  “Are you taking notes?” he asked, while he now chopped tomatoes and celery.

  She gasped, grabbed her phone off the counter, and started videotaping everything. “I completely forgot.” She hesitated, wondering if she should ask him to start again, but he must have caught a sense of what she would say because he held up a hand.

  “Don’t even bother. I am not starting over.”

  She sighed. “Okay, but, on the video, could you at least tell me what you did and how much?”

  “One pound of ground beef, a couple smashed cloves of garlic, chop up a whole onion, and cooked until the meat is brown and the onion translucent. As for the herbs, well, that’s a little hard to remember,” he said. “I’m a cook who doesn’t measure. I add a bit of this and a bit of that.”

  “A bit of what this time?”

  “In the original group,” he said, “oregano and thyme and marjoram, some paprika …”

  His voice trailed off as he dumped in his freshly chopped tomatoes, celery, and she wasn’t sure what the other thing was. She leaned in and asked, “What’s that?”

  “It’s a bay leaf. Not to worry, I’ll pull it out before it’s served.”

  She’d never seen such a thing before. He’d taken a leaf, like one from her plants outside, and plunked it in his sauce. Instead of being bright green, it was dry-looking, brittle. He continued to add what looked like canned tomatoes. “Why fresh and canned?”

  “Because it’ll be too dry if I don’t add some liquid,” he said, “and I didn’t have quite enough fresh tomatoes.”

  She nodded, as if that made sense, but, from her point of view, that was a ton of fresh tomatoes. Still, the aroma was kicking in beautifully.

  He pointed to the pot with the water and olive oil. “Now get the salt and add it in that pot.”

  Obediently she walked to the table, picked up a salt shaker, and put in a couple shakes.

  He looked at her and said, “More.”

  She shook again.

  “More.”

  She shook again.

  “More.”

  Finally she stared at him in exasperation. “How much salt do you want in there?”

  He pulled the top off, poured some into his hand, and dumped it into the pot of water.

  She gasped. “That much salt is seriously bad for you.”

  “It’s going into the water,” he said. “We’re not drinking the water, and I’m not adding it to the sauce. We’ll put pasta in the water. It will get just the right amount of flavor. Then we’ll drain it, so we leave all that salt behind.”

  She frowned, not sure she believed him, muttering that too much salt was bad for their health.

  He ignored her, which was probably a good thing. Then he picked up the lid and shoved it on top of the pot of water with a little more force than was necessary.

  To get back at him, she picked up her cup and poured herself some coffee—but not him.

  He put the spoon down, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared at her.

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s not like you were being nice.”

  “I’m making you dinner.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not fair.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. “Why is that not fair? You should pour me a cup of coffee when I’m making you dinner.”

  “You asked to make me dinner a while ago. So now you’re taking something from a few days ago and bringing it forward to today to get your way.”

  He stood there, confused, then shook his head. “Forget it. Nobody could work their way through that.”

  She decided she should probably be nice anyway. He was a guest, after all. She picked up a clean mug out of Nan’s stack of mugs and poured coffee for him, placing it beside him and said, “Thank you.”

  Once again he looked at the cup and said, “You said thank you. Isn’t it me who was supposed to say thank you?”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, beaming a smile in his direction.

  He snorted and returned to stirring his pot. “You and Nan have a lot in common.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t think you meant that in a nice way.” She looked down at his cup and then back up at him. “Just take a sip before you say anything because I’m pretty sure that whatever comes out of your mouth won’t be nice.”

  “Nan is a great woman,” he said.

  She started to feel better.

  “But she’s also as nutty as a hatter sometimes.”

  She slammed her cup down. “Are you saying I’m crazy too?”

  “No,” he said, “but crazy is as crazy does.”

  She stared at him, trying to understand.

  He waved a hand. “Forget it. Now I’ll let all this simmer.”

  She checked on the contents in his pot that had somehow turned from being a lot of different chunks of ingredients, separate and distinct, into this beautiful-looking sauce. “How did it go from one to the other so quickly?”

  “Cooking,” he said succinctly. “That’s all it takes, leaving it alone to simmer. We’ll add a bunch of peppers, and then we’ll let it simmer some more while we have our coffee.”

  She nodded. “What about the pasta water?”

  “The pot is pretty full, so it’ll take another ten minutes to boil, maybe longer.”

  “Is this one of those dishes that’s better the next day?” she asked, eyeing the pot of spaghetti sauce suspiciously. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

  “In a way, yes,” he said. “It’s definitely something that gets better with lots of time to simmer.”

  “So we can’t eat it today?” She stared at him in horror.

  “I am,” he said with a huge grin. “I’m starving.”

  “So am I,” she admitted. “I had a sandwich earlier, but I also did a lot of work in my garden, so I’m t
ired too.”

  He looked out at the garden and pointed to the far back corner. “Right, and I almost forgot. Where’s the cross?”

  She walked toward the formal dining room table and pointed out the cross leaning against the little window. “There.”

  He stepped closer but didn’t touch it for the longest moment. Then he picked it up and checked to see how the two pieces of wood stayed together. “They’ve used a pinner.”

  “And that means what?”

  “It’s not a nail,” he said. “Anybody could have used a nail, but they’ve used a pinner, which means somebody had good equipment because this looks like an air-compressor pinner.” He rotated it in his hand. “It’s just as likely a father made it for their child to carve the name in and place where they wanted it. Help them deal with the loss of a friend.’

  “Which means it could have been anyone.” Doreen bent closer to see what he was talking about. “It looks like a staple.”

  “Almost,” he said. “This isn’t from a staple gun though. It’s much finer. And there are two of them. That’s why what you see looks to be a staple.”

  She didn’t quite understand, but, as long as he did, she was good with it. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No. But we see similar items at crash sites and often at crime scenes. It’s human nature to want to honor a difficult death.” He set it back up in the window.

  “I figure it had been made specifically for this purpose,” she said, “because you can see how evenly centered the crosspiece is and how the ends go down at an angle. It’s not like this was just two jagged pieces of driftwood tied together.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Plus Johnny is less scratched in as much as carved in.”

  “Exactly. But I don’t understand why. I wondered about it and asked Penny if Johnny might have drowned, like Paul Shore did.”

  Mack turned to look at her. “Was that the same year?”

  She nodded slowly. “Paul went missing in May, just as the high floodwaters hit,” she added. “But Johnny didn’t go missing until August, and the water should have dropped by then.”

  Mack looked out at the creek, as if thinking back. “High water can start anytime in May most years—there are always exceptions—depending on how much snow is up in the mountains and how quickly it comes down, which also depends on rainstorms and other types of weather. We can get heavy flash floods right through July. But you’re right. By August the lake level has dropped, and the creek itself has slowed down to a narrow slow channel. By September it’s completely calm.”

  “Also Johnny didn’t swim well.” Her words were quiet. “So what’s the chance he drowned accidentally? Or maybe had a little help,” she emphasized. “Then whoever was there didn’t want to leave him to be found so moved him to a new location where nobody would ever find him.”

  “All plausible,” he said, “but remember that part about needing evidence.”

  She pointed at the cross. “That seems to indicate somebody thought maybe Johnny died in the creek.”

  “Sure. But we found it down at your place again,” he said.

  “Not quite,” she said. “It was up a bit. Maybe ten feet away from my place.”

  “Close enough,” he said. “It’s hardly worth arguing over.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I’d argue about it,” she said. “Otherwise you’d just pin that one on me too.”

  He groaned. “Even if Johnny did drown in August, there would be a body at that time of year. And, no, I wouldn’t blame that on you.”

  “Unless there was another strange accident,” she said. “You know? Like, did a bridge collapse? Did a truck hit a bank and crash down a bridge? I mean, all kinds of terrible things could have gone wrong. But, yes, I would say the likelihood of finding a body in the dry season would be in the 80 or 90 percent mark.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “So then we’re back to maybe Johnny drowned and was moved,” she said. “Or there was a fight, and maybe somebody held him underwater too long and killed him. You realize that a person can drown in just like two inches of water?”

  “And again we’re guessing,” Mack said in a dry tone. “Have you ever considered writing novels? You have a vivid imagination.”

  “I know,” she said. “But, once my mind gets locked on a problem, it won’t let go.”

  “I noticed.” He walked back to the stove and gave the sauce pot a stir.

  Doreen joined him, watching over his shoulder, and could see these lighter-colored bubbles popping up through the center before Mack turned them under into the mixture. Then he lifted the lid on the pot of water and put it back down again.

  “It’s a nice little stove,” he said.

  She nodded. “It looks nice, fancy, modern. In a way it almost doesn’t fit the atmosphere of my kitchen for that reason alone.”

  “Sure, but you’re learning,” he said. “And you’re a blend of old and new yourself.”

  “I certainly am while living here. I could go check up and down the creek for more evidence,” she said thoughtfully. “The only thing is, it’s been twenty-nine years.”

  “True,” he said, “but you still found the cross.”

  “Goliath and Mugs did.”

  At that, Thaddeus squawked. “Thaddeus did. Thaddeus did.”

  She reached out her arm, and Thaddeus walked up it.

  “Where have you been, big guy?” Mack asked, stroking his feathery back.

  She could tell Thaddeus had just woken up. “He sleeps a lot,” she said. “Is that normal?”

  “No clue.”

  “But then we are doing lots of activities,” she said thoughtfully. “So he likely needs his beauty rest when he can get it.”

  Thaddeus sat on her shoulder and pecked at her ear.

  “He’s hungry,” she said in surprise. She looked around, and, sure enough, all the animals’ food bowls were empty. She groaned. “I still can’t seem to get in the habit of feeding them at a regular time.”

  “So does it mean he’s hungry when he pecks you?” Mack asked, studying the bird. “Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “No, not at all.”

  Heading to the front closet, Doreen got Thaddeus’s food and placed a little on the kitchen table. Immediately Thaddeus hopped off her shoulder and sat on the table, pecking away at his food. And then, out of the corner of his eye, his gaze fixed on the green piece of celery stalk, leftover from Mack’s chopping tasks. Thaddeus hopped up to the countertop, walked over, and pecked at it.

  Doreen glanced at Mack. “Do you mind?”

  He shook his head. “It’s going in the garbage anyway.” He moved it over to the kitchen table, so Thaddeus could have better access. Between the bird seeds and the celery, Thaddeus appeared to be quite content.

  She fed Goliath then, but he only made his appearance when she banged her spoon against his bowl and placed it on the floor. Then he was right here, winding between her legs.

  “I already put it down for you, silly,” she said affectionately, reaching down to rub his ears.

  As soon as she did that, his nose came up high enough that the aroma of his food hit the right spot, and he launched himself forward and started to eat, crouched down on all fours.

  Mack chuckled. “At least they enjoy their food.”

  “Yeah, they do,” she said.

  She fed Mugs, who seemed to be much less interested in his dog food than in the pot on the stove.

  Mack noted Mugs’s focus and shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t, big guy.”

  Just then the front door bell rang. Mack looked at Doreen, his eyebrows raised.

  She shrugged. “I don’t have a clue.” She picked up a towel, wiped her hands, and walked to the front door.

  The alarms weren’t set because she and Mack were inside. She opened the front door and found Hornby, grinning like a crazy man.

  He pushed past her and said, “I thought I’d come by and have that cup of coffee.” />
  “Don’t bother,” she snapped, pointing toward the front door. “Get out.”

  “Why should I?” he said. “It’s obvious you live all alone and need somebody to keep you company,” he said with a half leer, half sneer.

  Insulted, she shook her head. “Get out, or I’ll call the cops.”

  Mugs, who had followed her, obviously didn’t like her tone of voice because he growled at Hornby.

  Hornby looked down at Mugs. “God, he’s ugly.”

  She gasped. “Don’t say that.” She stepped to the fireplace and picked up her poker. She marched up to him and held it out like she would hit him. “Get out of my house.”

  He laughed at her. “Oh my. Aren’t you so cute. What’s the matter? How come you’re not friendly to a single guy like me? I just want some company too.”

  “I choose my own company, thanks, and you’re not on the invitation list,” Doreen snapped. “Now get out.” Then she noticed his gaze roaming the living room, looking appraisingly at all the knickknacks and furniture. She took a few more steps toward him, threateningly. “Get out now.”

  He turned to sneer at her. “Or what?”

  Chapter 21

  Saturday Evening …

  “Or else I’ll arrest you for trespassing and any other charges that apply,” Mack said from the kitchen doorway, his arms across his chest. He looked at Doreen, the fireplace poker ready for her time at bat, and raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s assessing the contents of my living room,” she said, “not to mention threatening me.”

  “I didn’t threaten you,” Hornby said, sauntering toward to the front door. He turned an eye on Mack. “What the hell do you want with this dried-up old prune anyway?”

  She gasped and charged after him.

  He laughed, stepped onto the front porch, and slammed the door in her face.

  She opened the door and yelled, “I’m warning you. Get off my property and stay off.” She slammed the door again as she stepped back into the living room. She watched through the window as he drove down the cul-de-sac. But something about his small car made her wonder. “Does that bumper belong on that vehicle? And, on this side, there’s a panel of a different color.”