by Dale Mayer
Another load all ready for consignment, she packed it up in a bag, set it off to the side, and dove through more clothes. By the time she was done for the day on this part of the project, she had another nine pieces for herself and fifteen to go to Wendy. She packed them up and decided that was enough. It was already after four in the afternoon. She took the two bags down and parked them in front of the car and then thought no, she’d better put them right in the car. She stuffed them in, grabbed her keys and Mugs, and headed straight to Wendy’s, by way of Goodwill first.
When she walked into the consignment store, Wendy laughed. “I didn’t mean you had to bring stuff down now,” she said.
Doreen shrugged. “I figured I should go through some more stuff while I was thinking about it, so here’s two more bags full.” She handed them over, and Wendy sorted through them.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. “Are you sure you want to part with them?”
“I tried them on,” Doreen said, “and either they didn’t fit properly or I didn’t like the way they looked on me.”
“Somebody else will love them.”
With that, Doreen smiled and headed toward the exit. She stopped and said, “I don’t remember how long you’ve been here. Do you remember a Kelowna Tool Repair?”
Wendy frowned. “I think so,” she said, “but I can’t remember for sure. I think my parents used to go there.”
“Interesting,” Doreen said.
“Is something wrong?” Wendy asked, looking up at her. “Another case to follow?”
“Oh, no, no. I just found some little metal plates from tool handles that got my interest.”
“Oh, I’ve seen those. Yeah, he put them on his tools.”
“Frank, wasn’t it?”
“Yep. Frank Darbunkle.”
“Right, it’s the last name that caught my interest,” Doreen said with a smile. “And they had a sister, didn’t they?”
“Frank and Fred, and, yes, I can’t remember the girl’s name. That was …” Wendy stared off into the distance. “Lovely little girl.”
“If you come up with a name, let me know.”
“Henrietta,” Wendy announced triumphantly, as Doreen reached for the front door.
“Henrietta, okay, that’s great. Do you know the parents’ names?”
Wendy shook her head. “No, I don’t remember them.”
“Perfect, thanks.” With a wave of her fingers, Doreen led Mugs back out to her car. Knowing Mack would be arriving soon to cook dinner, teaching her how to do it herself, hopefully, she drove back home and got out just in time to see Mack pull up behind her.
“Where have you been?” Mack asked lightly.
“Just delivering yet more clothing to Wendy’s,” she said. “Plus a quick stop at Goodwill.”
“Are you done yet?”
“I am, and yet I’m not. I kept back a bunch. Remember? Thinking maybe I would want them for myself?”
Mack nodded. “I remember that, and are you keeping those?”
“I went through those, and I’m keeping about one-quarter of the clothes, and the rest went to Wendy—who is doing a good job of selling them for me, by the way.”
“You’re doing well.”
“Very well. So far I’ll get a couple thousand dollars from Wendy eventually.”
At that, Mack’s eyebrows shot up. “That almost pays for a deck.”
“I know,” Doreen said. “It will be distributed piecemeal though, like the first bit coming in a couple months and a bit each month thereafter, until I’m all paid up. Then I’ll probably go through all the clothes that are still here once again, before I can hopefully call it quits on that front.”
Mack led the way into the kitchen. “I stopped at Mom’s, and she has six of those cinder blocks, and, no, she doesn’t want them.”
“I can work them off,” Doreen offered.
He shrugged. “They’re sitting in the garden shed, in the way. With twelve from a guy I work with and six from my mom, we have eighteen. Plus I have two more.”
“That’s all twenty,” Doreen said triumphantly. She grabbed the notepad she had. “We have twenty of them written down.”
“Right. It works perfectly.” Mack reached for the pen and put a big checkmark beside that entry.
“But we still have to get them.”
“We do. It is better to have them all here.” He looked around and then stepped out onto the small deck. “Maybe we should stack materials alongside the house there,” he said, motioning between her place and Richard’s.
“That’s a good idea. And, if we fill that area, it should kill off the weeds too.”
Mack nodded. “It won’t hurt. And you’ve got a decent-size overhang here, and, with Richard’s house right beside you, it’ll keep these materials stashed there all pretty-well dry from the weather.”
Doreen got really excited. “How do we get the stuff from your friend though?”
“I’ll have to pick those up with my truck to get them all in one load,” he said with a laugh. “Your car could take a couple, but it won’t take many at a time.”
As they walked back inside, Mack stopped, looked at the tool on her veranda table and asked, “What are you doing with an ice pick?”
Chapter 8
Thursday Late Afternoon …
Doreen looked at the tool and then at Mack. “A what?”
He lifted it up and held it in his hand. “This is an ice pick for ice fishing. It’s an old-fashioned one, sturdier than the newer versions.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “We have ice fishing here.”
“I never even thought about ice fishing.” As a matter of fact, she couldn’t think of anything worse. Why would you sit on the middle of a frozen lake with a hole in it to coax fish out?
“It’s very popular,” Mack said, “at least it was when the lake froze over all the time, but it hasn’t frozen over for quite a few years.”
“I found this tool at the mouth of the river.”
He frowned at that. “Not many people would fish at the mouth of a river because the ice will never be as solid as it is farther down. But there have been years …” He tilted his head, thinking about it. “Honestly, if we talked to a couple old-timers, I’m sure we’d find some tales of years where they went ice fishing at the mouth.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said, studying the ice pick. “Didn’t I say an ice pick could be next?”
He glared at her. “Nothing is suspicious about this.”
She pulled out the two little silver plates she had and held them up. “This is the one Thaddeus found, and this is the one I found when I went back to the place Thaddeus showed me.”
Mack shook his head at that. “Most people don’t listen when a bird wants to show them a place.”
“I’ve learned to listen. My animals have my well-being at heart.”
“Not to mention they’re as curious and as crazy as you are.” He picked up a tag and placed it into the notch on the pick, and it sank in beautifully. “Of course you can’t guarantee this is the same piece.”
Doreen held up the other tag, but it was bigger.
“So that one won’t fit this ice pick,” he said.
“Maybe it went with an even bigger tool? Another ice pick or something bigger? Is there a long-handled ax for ice work?”
“Potentially. You have to gauge the hatchet size with its respective handle, so it doesn’t damage the integrity of the wood.”
Doreen nodded as if she knew what he was talking about, but, for her, it was just a tool. “All that is rust on the head, right?”
Mack nodded, his gaze narrowing as he studied it. “Was it along the riverbank or up on the high part?”
“Where the riprap wall and the loose rocks meet the property fence.”
He frowned. “That riprap is often boosted, depending on the flooding. But, at that section, I’m not sure any work’s been done in a long time.”
“So then our ice pick c
ould have been buried here on purpose like a year ago or Mother Nature could have buried it even as far back as twenty years ago.”
“Exactly.” He laid the ice pick down again and handed her the little metal piece. “Hang on to this.”
Doreen did as he asked and then said, “Is there any reason why?”
“Well,” he said, “like you, I’ve learned to trust your animals.”
She gazed at him in delight. “So, do you think the ice pick was involved in a murder?”
Immediately his hands came up. “Whoa. How did you jump from this little loose tag to our ice pick here being a murder weapon?”
She wrinkled her face up at him. “Mostly because I’m involved,” she admitted.
Mack laughed. “Just because you keep tripping into this stuff,” he said, “does not mean every tool you see—even as you thought or joked about it being an ice pick next—is a murder weapon.”
“Of course not,” Doreen said with a smile. “You know my imagination runs away with me.”
“You’ll have to watch that. And, besides, I’m certain this guy sold hundreds of tools.”
“Sure, but then why would these two tags and this tool be back there near the lake?”
“It wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with the actual maker,” he said. “It could have been left behind by one of his customers. Remember that.”
But Doreen didn’t want to let it go. “Maybe it’s because I don’t like the gardener,” she announced.
He looked at her in surprise and chuckled. “If we looked at all the people you didn’t like, we’d have nothing but issues with people.”
“What do you mean, issues?” she protested. “I get along with everyone.”
He gave her a droll look. “Except for all the people you put behind bars.”
“If they hadn’t been murderers or thieves or God-only-knows-what-other-kind-of-lowlife, I wouldn’t have had to, now would I?”
Mack wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her back into the kitchen. “How come you had coffee this afternoon and left half a pot?”
“I don’t know. I just forgot about it.”
“What were you researching?” His guess had been a little too accurate. She glared at him. He put his hands on his hips and tapped the floor.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I was researching the Carboncles.”
“Darbunkles,” he corrected.
She snickered. “Can you imagine if that was your name?”
“I don’t imagine I’d like it,” he said, “but, the fact of the matter is, it’s their name.”
“According to Nan, their parents disappeared, and so did their sister,” she said triumphantly.
Mack stopped, looked at her, and said, “Seriously?”
“Nan said so, but Nan says lots of things.”
“She is quite a character,” Mack said sympathetically. “And I do understand sometimes that she gets forgetful.”
“You think?” Doreen said with an eye roll. She watched as Mack poured the cold coffee into a pitcher. “What are you doing?”
He just smiled and put the pitcher in the fridge. And then he proceeded to put on a fresh pot of coffee.
“You’re chilling the coffee?”
“Yes, and, when it’s cold, you just pour yourself a glass and add ice, and you have an iced coffee.”
She stared at him in delight. “Oh my, I used to get fancy iced coffees at the coffee shop all the time. Are you telling me that they served me leftover coffee and charged me a fortune for it?”
Mack laughed. “Probably not, but you can do it just as easily this way and doctor it up as you like it—with cream and sugar and flavorings. I see the pork chops are here but not quite thawed.” He poked the top of one, and his finger indented it slightly. “But almost.”
“Yes,” Doreen said, and then she turned back to him and asked, “What do you know about the Darbunkles?”
“Not much. Don’t remember any time they’ve been brought in on a crime.”
“Of course not. Speaking of crime, how is Steve?”
“Steve is Steve,” he said. “Complaining madly.”
“Of course he is,” she said with a nod. “He did murder all those people. At least he can’t be much of a character reference when defending Penny anymore.”
Mack looked at her for a long moment. “That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Steve said Penny denied attacking me, and it would be my word against hers. She was an upstanding local citizen, and everybody trusted her, whereas I was nothing but an interfering interloper.” She hated that her voice dropped sadly at the end, but honestly it was a little depressing.
“You don’t worry about Penny,” Mack said. “Remember? I was there.”
“Sure, but people will say you’re my friend, and you can’t be trusted.”
At that, his gaze narrowed. “I can tell you, for one thing, that’s not what people will say.”
Doreen frowned. “Are you saying you are not my friend?” she demanded.
He groaned. “Of course I’m your friend, but that’s not what people will say.”
“People are people,” she said with a wave of her hand, dismissing his argument. “You know perfectly well they’ll say anything they want to you to get out of trouble.”
Mack laughed. “And I’m telling you that you’ll be fine.”
“At least Steve is in jail with Penny,” she said with relish. “So they’re both in trouble now.”
“They are, indeed.”
“And what about Crystal and that whole kidnapping mess?” she asked.
“It’s too early to tell. It’s been turned over to the prosecutors, and it’s up to them to figure out what they’ll do. And remember. A lot of other missing-children cases are potentially involved around Crystal’s disappearance.”
“Surely the brothers couldn’t have taken them all down to Mexico,” she said.
“That’s what we’re still trying to figure out, but every time we get something completed and off our desk, another case drops on the pile.”
“You mean, every time you try to solve one problem, I come along with another one.”
“In this case, you did a great job,” he said. “Crystal is home. She’s been accepted to university. She’ll be just fine.”
“At least she was loved on both sides of the border,” Doreen said. “It’s got to make it a lot easier for her to understand.”
“Exactly,” Mack said with a big smile. He spied the zucchinis and said, “Now, if only we had a grill.”
“If only we had a deck big enough for the grill,” Doreen said.
“I’ll ask around the division if anybody has any leftover decking stuff. I know a couple buddies built new decks recently. Even if we can get a little bit, it’ll help.”
“It will. It will help a lot.” And, with that, Doreen watched as Mack took the packaging off the pork chops and put them in the microwave to defrost and then sliced the zucchinis to pop into a skillet. He reached into the fridge for the mushrooms and the fresh green onions, and, before she knew it, he had the veggies in a pan ready to sauté together. “That already looks wonderful,” she admitted, hearing her stomach screaming. “I had a sandwich a while back, but it seems like that was now hours ago because I see this food, and I want to eat now.”
“An appetite would be good,” he said, “not to mention the fact that, when you’re resting and recovering like you have been, you need food to rebuild.”
“Says you,” she said. “I find resting means I’m either not hungry or I’m really hungry.”
“Exactly, and you should be trying to regain your strength and healing. You were attacked again. I’m not impressed with that.”
Doreen smiled at him. “Of course not because, once again, you were trying to save me, and, once again, I was in trouble before you had a chance to even get there.”
“I sure wish you would just stay out of trouble,” Mack muttered. When the microwave b
eeped, he sliced off the outside fat on the pork chops, added some spices, and while she watched, turned on the heat underneath a second skillet with a bit of the pork fat and fried the meat.
“That looks absolutely delicious.” Doreen studied the veggies and frowned. “I guess I should have accepted more zucchinis, huh?”
“Does she have more?”
“She had lots when I was there, but who knows now?” She shrugged and added, “We have some greens here. Do you want me to make a salad?”
Mack nodded. “That would be good.”
Doreen washed the lettuce and tomatoes and sliced them up together to make a salad. By the time Mack was done with the pork chops and veggies, she had the salad ready and the outside table set. “Seriously hungry here,” she said impatiently, as she studied the crispy golden tops of the chops.
“I get that,” Mack said, laughing.
“Wow. I don’t know how it happens, but, every time you cook, it’s like I haven’t eaten in weeks.” She rubbed her hands together as she eyed the food on the plate.
He sat down beside her, smiled, and said, “It’s okay. You can eat, you know?”
She grinned. “I can, but it’s been a few days since I had a home-cooked meal.” She picked up her knife and sliced into the pork. It was tender and moist and so flavorful that she sagged back as she chewed with her eyes closed.
“That face,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Don’t bother me,” she said. “This is a Zen moment.”
Chapter 9
Thursday Dinnertime …
Mack burst out laughing. “You really are funny.”
“How can I be funny?” Doreen muttered. “This is too delicious.” She smiled as she attacked the rest of her meal. She had barely laid down her fork when the phone rang. It was Nan. “Hi, Nan,” she said cheerfully.
“Henrietta,” she said.
“Yes, Henrietta is Fred and Frank’s sister. What about her?”
“There were rumors about her and her life. Not nice ones. But I don’t know in what way.” And she hung up.
Doreen set her cell phone on the table. “Nan says Frank and Fred Darbunkle’s sister, Henrietta, had some not-nice rumors about her life.”