by Dale Mayer
Doreen walked inside and poured coffee, and, when she brought it out and handed it to him, she realized he was done, laying the last beam with her other decking materials in her backyard. “So we have to wait until Monday’s email replies to figure out what else we might need, is that it?”
Mack accepted the coffee, gave his shirt a little shake from the wood he’d been carrying, and said, “With any luck, we can get some stuff. We won’t likely get enough to do the whole job, but anything will help.”
Doreen motioned at the big blocks of wood. “Particularly when it’s stuff that’s not terribly visible.”
“Exactly. It’s the deck and the stringers that are seen by all.”
“What are stringers?” Doreen asked, before thinking how this set her up to be teased again. “And don’t laugh at me.”
Mack smiled, taking a moment to rein in his words. “The back plates to the steps themselves. The vertical pieces that join the horizontal deck to the horizontal risers.” When she nodded, he added, “We could probably make stringers if you want steps all the way around. That’s only expensive if we buy them. The wood itself can be ugly, but we’ll see what we come up with by scrounging for leftovers with those Monday replies.”
She smiled at that. “So, did you look up those cases on the missing parents? You did cancel on me yesterday.”
He gave her a dry look. “I got a call and had to leave.”
“I know you came here to drop all this off, and I am hugely thankful,” she said, “but I’m also hoping you might have found a little information.”
“You first,” Mack said. She tried to give him an innocent look, but he laughed at her. “I know you’ve been up to no good. So tell me what you found.”
Doreen sighed and sat down at the little table on her veranda. “Bits and pieces, that’s all, and I’ve already told you what I know. I also really want to know who lived at the house where I found the ice pick.”
“The house has changed hands four times in the last two decades, going back to the oldest dates in question regarding the Darbunkles—based on the oldest of those two tags you found,” Mack said. “However, considering it probably didn’t take twenty years for the weather and the ivy to have buried the ice pick—you said you had to dig up almost all of the tool—then the nearest house was probably owned by an old lady, Emma Bennett.”
“Oh, interesting. Did she pass away?”
Mack shook his head, gave her a rueful look, and said, “She’s in Rosemoor.”
Doreen grinned wide. She pulled out her phone and texted Nan. Do you know an Emma Bennett?
Yes. Why?
She probably owned the property where the ice pick was found, at the estimated time of its disposal.
Several question marks crossed her screen initially, and then Nan added, I’ll go talk to her.
Doreen laughed, tossed her phone on the veranda table, and said, “Nan’s on it.”
“You two are getting to be quite the pair.”
“I know. Nan lives near a trove of interesting people with decades of Kelowna info at their fingertips.”
“And sometimes those people don’t always remember things correctly,” Mack warned.
“Nope, they don’t always. And sometimes they remember better than we expect. Particularly from decades ago. I don’t understand how that works.”
“I’m sure the neuroscientists have a heyday with it.”
“So much money is being funneled into research on dementia,” Doreen said, “and I can see why. It’s very distressing when you have to deal with it. I’m a bit concerned about Nan at times.”
“Yes, it’s so hard on the other family members.” Mack agreed, a soft smile on his face. “As far as the case of the missing Darbunkle parents, they did apparently disappear. First a lot of rumors swirled around, and, yes, some about them potentially going ‘back east’ are noted in our files, but the fact of the matter is, the brothers don’t know what happened. The parents were last seen at some point, reported as missing, then declared dead seven years and four months later. The meager estate did pass down to the sons, which they shared equally.”
“Meaning, the house basically, right?” she asked. “Because of the ‘meager estate’ that you just mentioned.”
Mack nodded. “Correct.”
“What about Henrietta?”
“That’s where our file gets even thinner,” he said, his tone dark. “She went missing, supposedly around the same time as her parents, so originally it was presumed she went back east with them. However, when the brothers filed for a declaration of death on their parents, they did so for Henrietta too. She was presumed dead along with the adults, but it remains a mystery what happened to them.”
“Her disappearance is pretty sketchy,” Doreen said, “and how very convenient that she wasn’t part of the inheritance for the sons.”
“She wouldn’t likely have received it directly anyway—it would have gone into her long-term care. Maybe via a trust with an attorney or a banker overseeing it. However, the estate was meager, so maybe no money was there to fund Henrietta’s future care.”
“Same diff but still so sad for Henrietta. And what about her real parents?”
“I had to look that up separately,” he said. “I didn’t realize she was adopted. And technically it wasn’t a formal adoption, but the two couples had a verbal agreement between themselves.”
“Apparently the biological family moved away. The man’s name was unique—Hilly.”
“I’ve heard that a couple times now.”
“It’s still fascinating how this all works. But the thing is, I’ve got an ice pick, a couple little metal tags that indicate there should have been two picks, and I have a missing couple and a missing girl.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mack said, holding up his hands, as if to break her train of thought. “You have absolutely no connection between those two events.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Of course we do,” she said. “A huge connection.”
He stared at her. “And what’s this huge connection?”
She gave him a beaming smile and said, “Me and Mugs and Goliath and Thaddeus.”
Mack’s shoulders sagged, and he looked so deflated that she had to burst out laughing. “I’m only half-joking, you know?”
“And I’m only half upset about it,” he said, “because it is a connection. One I didn’t really want to think about.”
“I could help. … Haven’t you got enough work to do for a while?” she asked.
“How about too much to do?” he grumbled. “Steve is still hollering.”
“His problem, not mine. He shouldn’t have attacked me. For that matter, neither should have Mary or Penny or Dean.” The names rolled off her tongue of some of the people who had attacked her from her work on related cold cases.
“In your most recent cold case, we’re dealing with a wife—who’s besotted with Dean, her second husband—and she doesn’t want to believe he killed her first husband or a tramp who used to work the streets.”
“Manny deserves as much care and attention as anybody,” Doreen said quietly. “Her circumstances weren’t easy. She did the best she could.”
Mack’s smile was gentle as he said, “Believe me. I get where you’re coming from. I totally agree with you. But my earlier statement? That was just recapping the killer’s attitude. Or rather, the wife of the killer’s attitude.”
She nodded. “And such a wrong way to look at life, judging people like that.”
“We have a lot of cases we’re working on, and, of course, Crystal’s case is ongoing too,” he said. “It alone could take us years to get to the end of that, as we’re still searching for more possible missing children. We’ve got districts all around the province looking into their missing kids too.”
“And to think those brothers were just trying to save the children from abusive home environments.”
“Which gives us hope that maybe some of them are still alive.”
“As for Crystal, I don’t think the brothers ever wanted to harm her. As long as they kept Crystal and maybe these other kids away from Crystal’s very disturbed stepmom Mary and others like her, then there’s a good chance those other missing children are all doing just fine.”
He nodded, then muttered, “The captain is considering setting up a task force for you.”
She stared at him. “For me?”
“For the cases you keep dumping in our lap. We have a lot of other pending cases too, you know?” Mack said in a wry tone. “We have all manner of break-ins, muggings, car thefts. It’s just you seem to have this capacity to dive in for some of the deeper, darker, uglier ones. And the captain wondered about getting a task force together to handle your cases alone.”
Something inside her warmed. “You know something? I really like that idea.”
“I figured you would,” he said. “At least you’d know we’d be giving those cases all the attention we could.”
“But more than that,” she said, “I’d have somebody to go to when I came up with more information.” And she beamed at him.
“I don’t think that’s the way the captain meant it.”
“But you know that’s how I’ll treat it. I get that you need to put a specialized team on this cold-case area because we’ve unearthed a lot of cases that have very far-reaching threads, each needing to be tracked down,” she said in all seriousness. “But still, as you know, I’ll always be working on a new case and needing more information.” She smiled and pointed back to the front closet, holding all the journalist’s investigative files. “Think of all of Solomon’s cases that need further attention.”
“You’re still a civilian,” Mack warned. “It’s not like the captain can release information to you without getting himself into legal hot water.”
Doreen thought about that and nodded. “So, as long as you guys keep telling me what I can legally have, we could work up a great partnership.” She could feel her enthusiasm rising as she thought about it.
Mack shook his head and said, “I don’t like that look on your face.”
“That’s okay,” she beamed. “I think we have the start of a perfect friendship.”
“I thought we were already friends,” he said suspiciously.
“Start of a great partnership?”
“Pretty damn sure the captain isn’t thinking you’ll be any cop’s partner,” he said, laughing.
“Fine,” she said. “How about an amicable working relationship? Mutual info-sharing?”
“I still think you’re pushing it. We’ll be handling the cases which you’ve brought to our attention with new evidence. If you go off and bring more cases to our attention, obviously we’ll look at them too, but that doesn’t mean we’ll help you get into trouble.”
“No,” she said, “I appear to do that all by myself.”
At that, he burst into a fit of laughter.
Chapter 16
Saturday Midmorning …
Doreen chuckled. “I can’t see them letting me into their echelons,” she stated.
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Mack said. “We are grateful that you find evidence and don’t treat it like junk, which most of the public would probably do. So we really do appreciate you bringing all these cases to light.”
“Well, some of you do,” she said with a smile, “but I’m not doing it for you guys. I’m doing it for the families.”
“And that’s the true reason to do it,” he said, “that and for justice in the name of the victims.”
Her laughter waned. “So many victims,” she said quietly. “Things that you don’t even realize would ever lead to murder. People you didn’t even know were dead and gone, yet labeled as missing.”
He nodded. “The thing about police work is, you never know what you’ll find, once you start turning over rocks. All kinds of nastiness crawls out from underneath.”
Doreen nodded. “So, are we listing that Darbunkle couple as open cases now?”
“They’re technically revived cold cases, yes. The declarations of death didn’t resolve the missing persons’ reports but neither did the assumption of death provide further evidence to support an investigation. Not that we were aware of.”
“Not much of a foofaraw was made at the time, was there?”
Mack shook his head. “The parents were listed as missing—both here and back east, to cover their last known addresses—and a parallel investigation was done, but our guys found the couple’s vehicle was at home, and it seemed just as if they walked away. Their bank accounts were never touched, neither were they working any longer. They just upped and disappeared. It didn’t take long for all the leads to run out and for the case to go cold on our end. And the back east cops had no more luck than we did either.”
“And, of course, with the brothers not doing much to bring the case to the media to keep it alive, it died a fairly quick and inevitable death, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but, according to our file, the brothers were looked into pretty heavily. I only got a recap on the back east file, but it was light on facts.”
Doreen nodded. “And what about Henrietta?”
“She was a completely different case. There was talk of her having gone to visit another family.”
“Or her own birth family, and obviously she didn’t go without permission. She was fourteen and had Down syndrome.”
“Again the brothers were investigated. Frank’s business too. No one found anything amiss or questionable,” he reminded her.
“Right, and it’s not necessarily been enough years yet for anybody to talk,” she said, staring off into space. “Because I really do feel like most of these cases are being solved now as people realize the main event was just so long ago that it doesn’t seem to make a difference to stir the pot now.”
“And yet you and I both know it makes a hell of a difference. Especially if murder is involved. Canada has no statute of limitations on murder suspects.”
“It seems like time loosens all tongues though.”
“Very true,” he said.
“I don’t know if this is an official cold case or not, but it’s definitely a mystery,” Doreen said as she pointed to her notepad.
Mack looked at the notepad with all the deck measurements and said, “What are you talking about?”
She laughed, flipped over the page, and said, “These are my notes on the ice pick.”
He said, “I do want to see that ledger.”
Doreen hopped to her feet, walked inside, and brought out the clean bag with the ledgers and the papers she had clipped together. “This is what he gave me.”
“You could charm the socks off a rattlesnake. You know that, right?”
“Do rattlesnakes have socks?” she asked with interest. “I know they have a rattle …”
Mack rolled his eyes at her, reached for the ledgers, and flipped through them. “These records are definitely sales,” he said. “Prices are marked on the side.”
“And yet Ed Burns is the one who bought the matching set of ice picks. They won awards for Frank.”
Mack thought about that, brought up his phone, and made a couple notations. “Something was odd about Ed’s death,” he said.
Doreen brightened and leaned forward. “Really?”
He nodded. “But I’m having trouble accessing anything on my phone. I’ll have to wait until I get home again.”
She nodded and sagged back, disappointed, but knowing there was no point in pushing the matter now. “And his son inherited the house, business, et cetera, and the sisters got nothing. So we have another case of brothers doing well and the sisters not.”
“I said I’ll look into it,” Mack said with a warning. “You stay out of it.”
“I’m not staying out of anything because there isn’t anything to stay out of,” Doreen announced triumphantly.
“Have you heard from Scott?”
It took her a moment to figure out who he was talk
ing about. “Are you changing the subject?” she asked suspiciously.
He opened his eyes wider. “Hey, the man from Christie’s will make you a ton of money. Of course I’m interested.”
“He did say something about furniture repairs and pictures needed to be cleaned, and that was just the start, so I’m not sure how much money I’ll end up getting—or when.”
“I guess we didn’t consider expenses like that, did we?”
“No, neither did he really, when we were talking. Likely he assumed I knew already. But it does mean any funds coming my way will be pushed back by several more months.”
“Ah,” he said, “which is why you’re so worried about the cost of expanding your deck.”
“If I can’t afford it now, it’ll have to wait.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I’d really love to have the deck this year. This summer even.”
“And again, let’s wait until Monday,” he said.
Chapter 17
Saturday Late Morning …
Mack took his leave soon afterward. Doreen watched him drive away, delighted he was collecting supplies for her deck. He was a really nice guy, inside and out. He hadn’t said anything about the ledgers, aside from taking photos, but that was it. He probably thought it was all junk. To a certain extent, she agreed. But there was still the missing ice pick.
She turned around and headed out to her back garden to work on her own weeds. She kept looking around to see where the garden would stop and where the deck would start, and it was almost impossible to not feel the excitement surge through her. The fact they had come this far without a penny—and, no, it wasn’t very far, she admitted that—but it was something. It was enough she could see it taking form.
She still clung to her hope that maybe, just maybe, it would become a reality. Soon. She wondered what the chances were of having a small barbecue at the end of it all. Maybe not this month, maybe in a few months. Of course, if she didn’t know how to cook on a stove, how the heck would she learn to cook on a barbecue? But, of course, her mind answered immediately that it would be Mack’s job. She laughed.