by Dale Mayer
“Like I said, Nan has been filling the basement for a long time,” Doreen said, placing her phone on the workbench, the video on. “How are you? You sounded quite upset on the phone.”
Penny nodded. “I’m looking for a book. It was George’s. He used to jot his thoughts down sometimes,” she said. “I didn’t want people to find it and think he’d gone off his rocker.”
Doreen motioned at all the drawers. “I just pulled out the drawers. We moved the benches here, and I stuck the drawers back in again. But why didn’t you check before you told me that I could take it all?”
“I thought it was in the house,” Penny said. “Steve was over last night, and, when he saw everything was gone, he asked if I had taken those books out. I didn’t realize what he meant until he explained George’s journals were here.”
“He knew about George keeping journals?”
She nodded. “Steve is an old friend,” she said. “We’ve known him since we were first married. Maybe even before that. Then there is not much from that time frame I care to remember.”
Something about that struck Doreen as odd. “I did hear through the grapevine you had a pretty rough childhood.”
“I’d hoped that old gossip had died down,” she muttered. “There’s rough, and then there’s hellish,” she said. “Mine was hellish. But, at the end of the day, I stand here all alone with no family except my two daughters, and that’s why I’m trying to sell the house—to get closer to the people I love.”
“Sorry about that.” Doreen nodded. “Hey, take a look and see if you can find what you’re looking for.”
Penny nodded and began her search.
“Was there anything in the books?” Then Doreen said, “You know what? Maybe that’s part of the stuff I took inside.” She ran inside, pocketed the small book, and brought the big one back out. “Is this it?”
Penny’s face lit up. “Oh my, yes, it is.” She snatched it from Doreen’s hands, flipped through it, and then clutched it to her chest. “I should have just burned it,” she said.
“So nobody would know?”
Penny nodded and then stopped and said, “Know what?”
Doreen leaned against the workbench. “That he committed suicide. That he took one of those lovely plants in your back garden and made himself a strong tea and probably did it consecutively for a few days. I don’t know. It depends on which plant he used,” she said, her head tilted to the side. “But he did commit suicide, didn’t he?”
Penny gasped, and tears filled her eyes. Clutching the book against her chest, she nodded. “I didn’t want people to figure that out,” she said. “Everybody loved George, and they would look at his memory so differently. Then there’s his church,” she cried out. “I don’t want any of that to get out to the public.”
“It’s not for me to make public,” Doreen said. “As long as nobody killed him, then that’s on George himself.”
“Exactly,” Penny said. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “He really was a good man. He did a lot for me.”
“I know,” Doreen said, her voice gentle. “And I’m very sorry. I know more than I would like.”
Penny froze and stared at her in horror. “What are you saying?” she cried out. “What do you know?”
“I know he killed your father,” she said slowly. “I’m sorry about that too. If ever a man deserved killing, it was him.”
Penny’s jaw worked, but nothing came out. And then she burst into tears. “You have to understand,” she said, “when my father contacted me after getting out of jail, I went to pieces. I’d been to hell and back already, but to know he was out and in my life again, I just couldn’t handle it. George never told me any details. But he came home one night and just said, ‘It’s finished.’ His tone was so hard, so cold, and just so flat, I knew. I didn’t know how, but I knew what he’d done. The next morning, George woke up as if absolutely nothing had happened. And I was so damn grateful for him. I just held him close all night because of what he’d done for me. My father was a really bad man,” she whispered. “I was abused sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally all my life after my mother passed. But what he did to my brother,” she said, shaking her head, “that was just as terrible, if not worse.”
“Is that why you killed him?” Doreen asked, her voice so very soft and gentle. “Is that why you killed your brother? To put him out of his misery because of what your father was doing to him?”
“If he was dead, my father couldn’t hurt him anymore,” Penny cried out in pain. “My brother suffered so much. He would never have a normal life. He was one step away from being completely mentally incapable. He had brain damage, physical damage, he was emotionally just a wreck. I should have stopped it long before I did,” she said, slumping to the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. She rocked back and forth. “It was a mercy killing of the highest order. At least as long as he was dead, my father couldn’t torture him anymore.”
“But he found out, didn’t he?”
Penny nodded. “Yes, he guessed. He didn’t have any proof. But the night my brother died, my father turned on me in the worst way possible, trying to get me to confess, but later that evening I escaped. I crept out to the road, and a neighbor picked me up and took me to the hospital. And that’s what started the police investigation. They came to the house, found my brother, accused my father, and he finally went to jail and was out of my life for so long. But when he was released from prison …” She shook her head. “He told me that he knew what I’d done, and he was back to take it out on me for killing his only son. I told George everything,” she said, crying, her body shaking from the horrors of everything she’d kept close to her chest for so long. “And I know George took care of it. You have to understand. George would never let anyone hurt me anymore. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in terror. Once my father was gone, I could finally relax.”
“But it bothered George, didn’t it? What he’d done? He was afraid what had happened to Johnny was God’s retribution—or karma or fate or whatever you want to call it—that somehow George’s actions led to Johnny’s murder.”
Penny dried her eyes as much as she could, but the tears seemed to be pouring in a river down her face. She nodded. “It didn’t matter what I said to him. It didn’t matter how many times that I told George that it wasn’t his fault. He believed firmly he’d brought about Johnny’s death. And he found it so terrible to bear.”
Doreen couldn’t believe it, but, at the same time, she’d already known this much. She crouched in front of Penny and wrapped her arms around her, holding her close. “I’m so sorry. George’s actions did not have anything to do with Johnny.”
“I know, but George had worked so hard trying to find Johnny to absolve his conscience, and George never did get an answer. And I think, somewhere along the line, he finally gave up. But then that asshole came back into our life,” she said. “And that’s what triggered his suicide.”
“What triggered George’s suicide?”
“Hornby,” Penny said. “Allen approached George, saying he knew what George had done. And that he was to blame for Johnny’s death. George went to pieces, and then he went really quiet again. It was that quiet period that terrified me. Hornby wanted money to keep silent. We didn’t have much money, but George paid him. He didn’t tell me what Hornby had done until I got a letter after his death, telling me that George had paid Hornby ten grand to keep quiet and to leave. But Hornby came back, and George knew it would never end. And that’s when he killed himself. It was just the final straw.” She took a huge gulping sigh. “I’m sorry,” Penny added, quietly sniffing. “I’m so sorry.”
“And that’s when you shot Hornby?”
“Not right away,” she said. “But I couldn’t forget what he’d done to George. … I was selling my house, and I was moving, and I was losing everything. And Hornby was out here tormenting all these people, bringing up so much nastiness. Then when I realized what he’d done to Johnny … Yo
u hadn’t proven it yet, but I knew. Oh, I knew,” she said, “and I took the same gun George had hung on to all those years, and I shot Hornby. From the side of the road at the intersection. I just looked at him, and I fired. I knew where he’d be. I’d seen him at the grocery store. And I drove ahead, and I waited. And it was dark out, and I just shot him. Believe me. Nobody was more surprised than I was when I hit him. I didn’t kill him, and that’s a shame,” she whispered. “That man needed to die.”
“Which, of course, he hasn’t, but he will go to jail for having killed Johnny.”
Penny nodded. “And for that I’m grateful. I’m just so damn sad George never learned the truth before he died.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to tell him yourself one day.”
Penny sighed and said, “My God, it’s been such a long lifetime.”
“And you don’t get to quit now,” Doreen said in alarm. “What about your girls?”
“For them to find out their father was a murderer? And that I tried to kill somebody too? Or helped put my brother out of his misery?” She shook her head. “They’re better off not knowing.”
“Stop,” Doreen said. “You might get a few years. I don’t know how the police would handle this, but you’ll still have a life afterward, and you’ll still have your daughters. You’re not that old. You still have decades ahead of you.”
Penny just sagged in place as she looked up at Doreen and said, “It feels so much better to have said all that. Yet, at the same time, a part of me really hates you for having done this.”
“And yet, you’re the one who asked me to look into Johnny’s death.”
“I know,” she said, “but then Hornby said he’d told you that I had killed my husband. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t kill George. Please, you gotta believe me.” She clutched at Doreen’s shirt and whispered, “Please, tell me you believe me.”
“I believe you,” Doreen said gently. And she did. The ramblings of a tormented mind hadn’t left room for doubt. She helped Penny to her feet and said, “I’ll have to phone the cops. You know that, right?” She looked at Penny for a long moment, then seeing the resignation in Penny’s eyes turned toward the kitchen, but a blow smashed down hard on the side of her head, hit the top of her shoulder, and bounced off again. She crumpled to the floor, crying out. In the background, she could hear Mugs barking and howling.
Penny screamed.
Doreen twisted to see Thaddeus on top of Penny’s head, pulling at her hair and pecking at her nose and going for her eyes. Goliath crawled up her back as she hunched over, trying to get away from Thaddeus, and Mugs busily chewed on her ankle. And suddenly the din just got way worse as Mack barreled through the kitchen door into the garage. He brushed all the animals away, turned Penny around, and pinned her up against the nearest wall, her hands behind her back. He turned to Doreen. “Are you okay?”
She groaned and said, “I don’t know what she hit me with, but it hurts, dammit.” She put a hand to her skull and found blood. She looked at Penny and asked, “Why?”
“Why?” Penny said, her tone irate, no longer any sign of the teary-eyed woman. “Why? Because, if you weren’t alive, nobody would know, and this would all go away. And I’d be able to go home and to finally have a few years with my daughters,” she cried out. “All I had to do was get rid of you.”
“When did you decide that?” Doreen asked.
Penny looked at her and said, “Just now, when I realized you were the only credible person who still knew anything. And, once you told the world, I’d go to jail for having shot Hornby.”
Doreen slowly made her way to stand on her feet. “What about your brother? What about for killing your brother?”
Penny just glared at her. “You don’t know anything about that,” she snapped.
Doreen tilted her head, looked at her, and said, “You did kill him. So now we know George killed your father. You killed your brother and shot Hornby, and George killed that nurse, which I don’t understand.”
Penny looked over at Mack and then at Doreen and said, “What nurse?”
Doreen mentioned the name and said, “We found the ID tag in the ground. Actually it was in that echinacea bed at the fence. All the pieces of the ID tag were burnt, as if George had tried to destroy them.”
Penny looked at her, and her face crumpled again. “He didn’t mean to. He said she was a friend. And he’d been telling her about my father, and she came up with all kinds of solutions for how to kill him. But, after George had done the deed, as soon as the body showed up, the nurse wanted to talk and to tell authorities it was him. She worried about being an accomplice. Thought this would clear her of any wrongdoing. George followed her home one night and just snapped her neck.”
“Just like that?” Mack said. “You go from killing one person to killing two?”
“He had to,” Penny said. “Don’t you understand? He had no choice.”
“And you knew about that too?”
Penny nodded. “He told me that same morning.”
“What did he do with her body?”
“She’s in the lake. Wrapped in old wire fencing, with some big rocks tied around her ankles and her neck and her waist. He didn’t want to take any chances. He said he took her out in a small boat and dumped her in.”
“And we’ve never seen any sign of her in all this time?” Doreen asked incredulously. “That doesn’t sound normal.”
Penny just shrugged. “Who knows? Probably a whole pile of unidentified bodies are coming up from that lake.” Doreen looked over at Mack and said, “Are there?”
Mack shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I’ll look into it.”
“Did her body ever surface?” Doreen asked.
“I don’t think so,” Penny said, “but it wasn’t her real name anyway. She was a runaway. She took a different name entirely.”
“But she went to nursing school and all the rest. How did she do that under a fake name?”
“Things were much easier back then,” Penny said. “Besides, I’m not sure she really was a nurse. George had helped her do something way back when. That’s why he thought maybe she could help him this time. But then he didn’t trust her.”
“Holy crap,” Doreen said as she leaned against the workbench. “Is that all you guys think about, killing people?”
“All I wanted was to have a nice peaceful life,” Penny cried out.
“And yet, you killed your brother.”
“To save him,” she whispered. “I killed him to save him.”
Unbeknownst to Doreen, Mack had already called the cops, and they arrived a few minutes later. Mack led Penny to them and explained some of what was going on. The cops looked from an obviously injured Doreen to Penny and asked, “Did you attack Doreen?”
She stared at them defiantly. “She was going to tell everybody. I couldn’t let her do that.”
The men just sighed and moved her into the back of the cruiser. Mack told them, “I’ll be in later. There’s a ton of paperwork to do. You have no idea how many cold cases are about to close.”
One of the men, Arnold, looked at Doreen, gave her a mock salute, and said, “No, but we’re starting to understand,” and they took off.
Mack turned to Doreen and said, “Let’s get your head checked out.”
From her point of view, Mack was growing two heads and turning blurry. “I think I’m better, but I’m getting a hell of a headache.”
As she sat in Mack’s truck, and he drove her to the ER, Nan called.
“Seriously, Penny attacked you?”
“Hi, Nan. How did you hear the gossip so fast?”
“Arnold’s mom had called him at work about something else. He said he was taking Penny into the station and would call her back when he wasn’t so busy. After that, it was just easy to figure out.”
“I don’t know how easy it would be to figure out from that little tidbit, but, yes, she attacked me. I’m heading to the ER to get my head checked, but I’
m fine.”
“Is Mack taking you?”
“Yes, Mack is taking me.”
“Perfect,” Nan said. “I’ll just up those bets a little bit more on that relationship thing. You take care of yourself now. Bye.” Nan chortled before ringing off.
Doreen put her phone away and said, “Nan is betting on us having a relationship. She thinks the fact that you’re taking me to the hospital helps her odds.”
“It probably does,” he said. “Unless, of course, you want me to dispute that and put a siren on top of my truck and take you in officially.”
She looked over at him and grinned. “Can you do that?”
“Absolutely I can do that. But it’ll make your head worse.”
She groaned at that. “How about we don’t?”
“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Why don’t you just sit there and relax?”
“I can’t. I’m still trying to figure out how many cold cases we have involved here. Because we’ve got Penny’s father, and we’ve got the nurse. But we also have the nurse as a runaway child, and we have to figure out who the hell she really was, and we have the Hornby shooting.”
He said, “Not bad, not bad. One of these days, you might make a decent police officer.”
She turned to him in outrage. “One of these days?”
He was still laughing as they pulled into the emergency entrance. After parking, he helped her out of the truck.
She stood in the sunshine for a long moment and smiled up at Mack. “You know what? Life’s not too bad today.”
“You solved an awful lot of cases,” he said, “and, even better, you found out that sometimes you’re not always right.”
“You mean, the fact that Penny didn’t kill George?”
“Right, that was just Hornby spreading vicious gossip.” Mack led her toward the building. “Let’s hope Penny feels like talking when she’s at the station,” he said, “because we need more details.”
“I don’t know how interested she’s likely to be by the time she gets there.”
“If we keep George’s role in this to a minimum, it might help,” he said. “That seems to be what she was really concerned about.”