Evidence in the Echinacea

by Dale Mayer

  “Oh, my dear, that’s why you should come,” Nan coaxed.

  “I’m coming,” she said. “I’ll be down there in fifteen to twenty minutes, Nan.” She hung up and fed the animals, realizing she hadn’t even done that yet, and, while they ate, she finished her coffee.

  When everybody was ready, she grabbed a light windbreaker that might keep her dry from the misty rain and called all the animals to her. She walked down the creek and took the corner toward Rosemoor. Nan was sitting outside but under cover to keep dry. Doreen and the animals hopped across on the stepping stones. As she walked onto Nan’s patio, she said, “I see those stepping stones are still here. Nobody gave you a problem about them?”

  “Lots of people gave me a problem about them,” Nan said complacently. “But I had very valid arguments for keeping them.”

  She wouldn’t say any more, so Doreen shrugged and pulled up her small chair. “I’m glad I brought a sweater,” she said. “It’s quite cold today with the rain.”

  “I know,” Nan said. She ducked inside and returned with a fresh pot of tea and set it down. “Now the muffins, the second batch, just came out, so these are still hot.” She set the little table with fresh muffins, butter, honey, and jam. “And here’s some zucchini bread.”

  Doreen inhaled the aroma, smiling. “I do love muffins,” she said. “The zucchini loaf looks great too.”

  “Any old folks will tell you,” Nan said, “we need bran muffins.”

  Doreen didn’t understand for a moment, then chuckled. “I imagine fiber is your best friend these days, isn’t it?”

  Nan chuckled. “Absolutely. We’re supposed to have so many grams a day. It makes you wonder if there’s room for anything that tastes decent.”

  At that, she sat down and poured the tea for both of them. She urged Doreen to pick up a muffin and butter it. “You know they’re best when fresh.”

  Doreen obediently took one, cut it in half, and buttered both sides. Mugs, encouraged by the smell from the table, lifted up onto his back legs and sniffed the table. Nan laughed in delight, but Doreen was not impressed. “Mugs, down, you know better than to beg, and you certainly aren’t allowed to jump up like that.”

  Mugs dropped to the ground and just looked at her sorrowfully.

  She shook her head. “Now I can’t even give you a piece because you did that,” she scolded him. She lifted her gaze to the muffin on her plate and chewed carefully but immediately wondered why Mugs didn’t persist with his begging. She looked under the table to see Nan feeding him. “Nan, you can’t feed him if I just told him off for begging,” she protested.

  “Ah,” she said, “life’s too short for all those rules and regulations. Even Mugs needs to have some freedom too, you know? He’s had a pretty stressful month since you got here.”

  “Wow,” Doreen said. “It is over a month now, isn’t it?” She tilted her head. “It’s certainly a different life.”

  “Are you sorry that you came?” Nan asked, suddenly serious, her piercing gaze studying Doreen’s face.

  Doreen shook her head. “No,” she said stoutly. “I’m definitely not sorry I came. It’s a very different lifestyle, but it feels much more real to me.”

  “It is definitely real,” Nan said. “Just think about it. It’s a real life. It’s your life. But I think it’s a good one for you. You’re getting a tremendous amount of satisfaction from your gardening and from your work on the cold cases, plus doing something good for the community with each of those endeavors.”

  “Something I never thought I could do,” Doreen said. “I’ve always been good at puzzles, but I never really applied it to anything like this.”

  “If you’d stayed where you were, no way you could have had that opportunity,” she said.

  “No, very true.” She scarfed up the first muffin before realizing it was even gone. Nan chuckled and nudged the plate closer. “I do like to see you eat,” she said. “So eat up, eat up. You should be having at least two more.”

  “One more,” Doreen said. “Two more would be too much.”

  “Then you’ll take them home with you. Did you even eat dinner last night? You were so tired, I was worried.”

  Doreen nodded. “I was pretty tired,” she said. “Lots of physical work for several days in a row.”

  “Plus lots of excitement,” she said, “between the antiques and all your cold cases …”

  “Speaking of antiques,” Doreen said, “I still haven’t found the receipts, the provenance, and that would certainly help, but I finally got into the basement.”

  “Oh, did you? Good,” Nan said in delight. “It’s such a mess down there.”

  “It certainly is. What’s the best way to get the furniture up and out of there?”

  “The garage double doors open up,” she said. “I don’t even know when those were put in. That house is so full of holes.”

  “Yes, I noticed,” she said. “After the rug was removed, I found the trapdoor in the living room floor.”

  Nan looked at her nonplussed. “A trapdoor in the living room?”

  Doreen slowly put down the muffin she’d held in her hand and said, “Did you not know about that?”

  Nan shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. What was in there?”

  “It opened up to the cellar side of the basement,” she said. “Very odd though.”

  “Wow,” Nan said. “I didn’t know. To get the furniture down into the basement, I opened the double doors in the garage. The trouble was, I ran out of room. So we just stacked it the best we could until it was full, and then I started filling the garage.”

  “I thought the stuff in the garage was mostly garbage,” Doreen said.

  “Most of it is,” Nan said, “I bought an estate lot unseen and found out I’d been taken for a ride as it was all junk. I always intended to get rid of it, but I never got to it.”

  “And the antiques in the basement, how valuable are they?”

  “Not as valuable as the set going to the auction,” Nan said. “But they are nice and worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

  “I don’t know which pieces have value and which are just cheap knockoffs.”

  “Well, if I had my say in the matter,” Nan said, “none of them would be. But, of course, like I said, some of them I did get taken in on.”

  “What about all the small stuff up on the mantel, like the snow globe and the vases?”

  “Lots of those pieces cost me quite a pretty penny,” Nan admitted. “But I have no idea what anything is worth now.” She waved a hand and said, “That’s boring. Right now, tell me more about Penny.”

  “You were supposed to check with some of your friends, so you tell me about Penny,” Doreen said in a dry tone.

  “We were talking about dangerous plants once,” Nan said. “Maybe more than once. Penny was asking about the ones that would affect the heart.”

  “And, of course, George died of a heart attack supposedly.”

  “Right, so how do we prove Penny killed George?”

  “It may not be something we can prove,” Doreen said. “And maybe it’s not something we have any business even trying to prove. We don’t know for sure that she killed anyone.”

  Nan chuckled and said, “But we don’t know for sure she didn’t either.” She took a muffin and put it on her plate. “Her father’s name was Randy Foster. Her brother was Anthony.”

  “And?” Doreen eyed Nan carefully. “How do you know this?” Granted, Doreen had already found this out via her internet search. But she still wondered how Nan had come by this info.

  Nan glanced around, as if to make sure no one was listening, and added, “Bridgeman Solomon is a journalist. He’s in here with us. He remembered the case well.”

  Chapter 22

  Thursday Midmorning …

  Doreen stared at Nan. “Any chance I can talk to him myself?” she asked cautiously.

  Nan’s wispy gray hair flew out around her head as she shook it rapidly. “
Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s almost gone.”

  “What do you mean, he’s almost gone?”

  Nan’s eyes widened. “Dead, dying, six feet under, whatever you want to call it. He’s not young, you know.”

  “How old exactly is he?”

  “He’s ninety-two. And not likely to see next weekend, according to the gossip.”

  Doreen groaned. “Is there anything other than gossip going on around this place?”

  “Lots of sex. Lots of betting,” Nan said with a complacent smile. She hopped up and said, “I almost forgot.” She went back inside and came back out and handed Doreen something, more like palmed it to her. “Don’t look at that until you’re on the way home,” she ordered.

  Doreen sighed. “Are you trying to give me more money?”

  “Pocket it,” Nan ordered, her voice turning into a light steel tone. “It’s important.”

  Obediently Doreen slipped the roll into her pocket. “So, if he’s dying, it’s even more important that I talk to him,” she said.

  “I did ask him, but he was being taken away to a hospice. There’s not really room in any of the other hospices in town, so we are setting one up here,” she said with a frown, looking around. “You would think they’d just leave him in his bed then.”

  “Okay, so he’s being moved to another area. Why can’t I talk to him?”

  “I think it’s only friends and family now,” Nan said in a somber voice. “That’s all they ever allow us on the last few days.”

  “Even if it’s the last few weeks?” Doreen had absolutely no experience with death or dying—outside of dying inside at the betrayal from her husband and then from her own divorce attorney. Now that she had way too much experience in.

  Nan shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I could ask, but I don’t think that’ll be allowed.”

  “Can you text him?” Doreen asked hopefully. “I just want to ask him about this case. Maybe he even has case notes,” she said brightly.

  Nan frowned, pulled her cell phone toward her, and sent off a text. Doreen was amazed at how rapidly her grandmother’s fingers moved across the screen. “Nan, you’re a pro at this,” she said.

  “I am,” Nan said with great satisfaction. “Of course keeping the bets online have helped. I have to use my phone a lot for that.”

  Doreen just sighed. “You know you’re not supposed to do that anymore, right?”

  “What? Put stuff up on the internet? Well, of course not, dear. It’s in cloud storage, and it’s under a secure password.”

  Doreen winced. “I meant, not do any betting or run a bookie operation.”

  “It’s not mine. Absolutely no connection from me to that account.”

  Doreen stared at Nan and shook her head. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” she asked slowly.

  “What will they do to me if they catch me?” Nan asked with a big grin. “It was really fun to go into the jail cell, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get locked up for a day or two. It could be fun again.”

  “What are you talking about?” Doreen said, leaning forward. “That would be terrible.”

  “Only for you,” Nan said, looking at her granddaughter. “That’s because you’re not ready to experience life yet.”

  Doreen’s jaw dropped. “So being locked up in jail is experiencing life? How does that work?”

  “You’ll understand when you’re older,” Nan said. She put her cell phone on the table, lifted the teapot, and poured them each another cup. “I’ve texted him. We’ll see if he gets back to me. He could be sleeping. They administer a lot of those heavy medicating drugs, you know? So basically everybody’s in a stupor right up to the end.”

  “I don’t think you should be talking quite so irreverently about death,” Doreen said slowly.

  Nan looked at her in surprise and then laughed out loud. “Oh, my dear, if I can’t, who can? I’m at death’s door. Whether it’s today or next week or in ten years, you know it’ll happen.”

  Doreen could feel tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. She wiped them away, trying not to let Nan see.

  But Nan caught sight of them. “Oh, my dear, please don’t be sad when I go.”

  Doreen gave a half gasp. “How could I not?” she asked. “You know how much I love you, Nan. Please don’t die anytime soon.”

  “No, I figure I’ll be around to torment you for at least ten years. Besides, it’ll probably take that long to get my money back from some of these gambling idiots who don’t have it to gamble with.”

  “You could let them off the hook,” Doreen said. “Imagine the stress if they owe you a decent amount of money.”

  “We tried playing for toothpicks,” she said, “but then everybody got caught stealing toothpicks from the kitchen area. So then we switched to pennies. But that’s really not very satisfactory. So we went back to money.”

  “But pennies are money,” Doreen felt compelled to point out.

  “Just not enough of it,” she said. “When you walk away with baskets of pennies, they’re heavy. None of us wanted to take them to the bank to cash them into something, so we were constantly running our own bank, cashing people’s dollar bills into pennies so they could come and gamble again.”

  Everything she said was done in such a commonsense tone of voice that Doreen could only stare at her. When Nan’s phone beeped, they both leaned forward to see what the message was. But it was upside down, and Doreen had to wait until Nan read it. “He’s awake,” she said, “but he’s got family with him. And his lawyer.”

  Doreen just rolled her eyes at that. “Great,” she said. “That’ll never get me in there.”

  “I told you,” she said. “They do keep us locked away.”

  “I just wanted to know more about Penny’s family. Does he still have his case files?”

  Nan was busy with her fingers on the keypad as she sent yet another text. Finally she got another answer back while Doreen sipped her tea. “He says he does. He’ll try to get them to you.”

  “Really, he would do that?”

  Nan held up her phone and shook it. “That’s what he says. But don’t forget, he’s dying. He may not make it through the night.”

  Doreen felt terrible for thinking only about the case file when this poor man was nearing his last few breaths. “Wow,” she said. “Now I don’t feel very good about myself. Here I’m more concerned about the information he’s taking to the grave than the fact he’s actually going to the grave.”

  “Right,” Nan said. “It’s a fine balance, especially around here. We tell death jokes as a commonplace occurrence, but it’s really a way for people to ease up the uncertainty and fear about where we’re all going.”

  “Understandable,” Doreen said. “I noticed a couple churches close by. Do many people attend?”

  Nan nodded. “Absolutely,” she said, “lots do, and then they head on down to the coffee shop afterward. It’s almost like a Sunday outing. Everybody looks forward to it.”

  “Even you?”

  “I’ve tried most of the churches,” she said in a conversational tone. “I just haven’t quite found the one that fits.”

  Doreen knew she should get off the topic, but she couldn’t help herself. “Fits what?”

  “Me,” Nan said brightly. “It’s like clothing. You can’t just wear any religion. It’s got to be the one that fits inside. It’s got to fit you outside as well, but it really has to make you feel good inside.”

  Nan’s phone rang again, and Doreen sat back and thought about her grandmother’s church comments because they were excellent words of wisdom. She’d just never had that conversation with Nan before. Nan looked up and said, “He will try to send them over with his nephew. He doesn’t want the lawyer to know about them because otherwise he’ll make sure it’s part of the estate. But, if he hands them off before he dies, then the lawyer can’t do anything with them.”

  “That would be great. Does he know where to sen
d them or should I pick them up?”

  Nan was muttering to herself as she answered him back. She looked up and said, “You know what? If I had just called him, it would have been a lot faster.”

  “Sure, but could he have a phone conversation?” Doreen said. “Or would all the family have gotten upset hearing it?”

  “Quite true,” Nan said. “So many people are just plain busybodies.”

  “A lot of people would consider me a busybody,” Doreen said in a dry tone. “I keep sticking my nose into other people’s business.”

  “Yes, but you have a purpose, my dear.”

  Doreen looked over to see Thaddeus waking from his small nap on the table and eyeing her muffin. She broke off a little bit and laid it down in front of him. Instantly Mugs dropped a heavy paw on her knee. She scratched him gently, running her hands down the length of his silky ears. “I don’t think you need any more bran muffin,” she said to him.

  But he stared at it with such a painful intensity that she finally gave in, but, instead of giving him a piece of the bran muffin, she gave him a little dollop of butter. He scoffed it up like it was ice cream. She chuckled. “You know what? I think you’d eat anything.”

  “Of course he would,” Nan said, putting her phone down yet again. “He’s a dog. By nature they eat anything.”

  Doreen smiled and said, “Thanks for being the go-between for me and this friend of yours.”

  “I’m the go-between for a lot of people in here,” Nan said thoughtfully. “Through all their support we got to keep those steps outside my place, and you can bet the gardener is not very happy with me.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Doreen said, “but it does make my life a lot easier.”

  “Exactly, and that’s what life should be about,” she said. They waited a few minutes longer, but there was no further answer from her friend. Finally Doreen said, “I need to head home. I’ve still got such a mess in the house.” Then she sat back down again abruptly. “Do you have a list of what’s really valuable in the house, so I don’t just give it away in a garage sale for a few pennies?”