by Dale Mayer
She shoved her spade into the dirt one more time and picked it up, shook off a pile of weeds, and tossed them to the side into her growing weed pile. She would be delighted just finishing off this initial turnover in the garden as it was.
When she walked back into the house to get water a couple hours later, she saw a text from Mack, saying he forgot to leave her money. She laughed. Yeah, and I could use it, she replied. I need groceries.
I’m out running around, he said. I’ll stop by again and drop it off real quick.
Good enough.
She leaned back, finished the glass of water, and then poured herself another one. Of course she couldn’t get her mind off the Darbunkle brothers. She couldn’t let the fact that she didn’t like the gardener brother, Fred, sway her into thinking he was the guilty party, not his brother, Frank, but it was awfully convenient that both brothers inherited something from their parents. And both were still living in the house. So, what was the motive? The house? It didn’t really make sense when the brothers had always seemed to live there, with their parents. With Henrietta.
Doreen hadn’t seen anything to say the parents had been sick. Maybe the parents had just decided they didn’t want to become any sicker. Wanted to leave what little they could to their children, not have it all eaten up by medical bills. Doreen would need to go a little deeper into their lives. She sat down at her laptop and searched everything under the parents’ names individually and together. And thereafter searched both brothers.
Then she came across Fred’s juvie record. Or at least what she presumed was a juvie record. She sent Mack a text, asking about how that worked.
He called her to answer her text. “I can check when I get back to the office,” he said. “But, if it’s a juvie record, we can’t look into it. They were sealed when he turned eighteen.”
“So, once you turn a certain age, you’re good to go?” She didn’t understand that mentality.
“If he was in trouble as a young teen, yes, the records become sealed, and he gets a fresh start. But, if it’s major, like he killed somebody, then he would have been tried as an adult, and his records wouldn’t get expunged.”
“What if he was even younger than a teenager?”
“Then it’s hard to say. It depends on the case.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“Why?”
“Just getting an idea of who this family is,” she said. “I’m interested if the brothers had something to do with their parents’ disappearance or not. With Henrietta’s subsequent disappearance too. The brothers’ inheritance makes them look suspicious, although you don’t seem to think their parents had much to pass on.”
“Someone has to inherit, no matter how big or small,” Mack pointed out.
“So, what else could the motivation be to get rid of Mr. and Mrs. Darbunkle, as well as Henrietta?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing about this job. Sometimes you just don’t get answers.”
With that, Doreen could tell Mack’s focus was off doing something else, and she was no longer at the top of his mind. He hung up shortly thereafter.
And the trouble was, it wasn’t easy for her to let go of all this. She decided she’d had enough of hot and sweaty gardening work. She took a quick shower and changed into shorts and a tank top. Which reminded her that she still had more clothes to go through, so she went through the last of them. Well, she hoped it was the last of them. She probably needed to go through her own reserve too, but she already had a couple more bags for Wendy. She packed them up and took them downstairs in time to see Mack pull up.
He handed her the cash and said, “I’m not staying. I’m heading off to shop for groceries.”
She nodded. “I might take these bags to Wendy and do some shopping too.”
He turned to look at her, as he walked toward the truck. “What do you want to learn to make next?”
She followed along, then frowned, looked up at him, and said, “I don’t know. Suggestions?”
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “Summertime is for barbecues, but you don’t have one.”
She nodded morosely. “I was just thinking about that earlier. Maybe once we have a deck, I can afford to put a little barbecue out there, and you could teach me how to use it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “You need some more basic recipes in your life.”
“I’d love some, but I don’t know what you call basic.”
He replied, “The American dream. Burgers, hot dogs, and pizza.”
She burst out laughing. “I like pizza well enough but not enough to learn to make it. That looks fussy.”
“And it’s cheap enough to buy,” he said, “any time of year that you want it.”
“But burgers?” she said with a smile. “Are they hard?”
Mack shook his head and laughed. “They’re ground meat formed into a ball, flattened, and grilled. It doesn’t get any easier.” He studied her and said, “You’ve never made any, have you?”
“Nope,” Doreen said. “I’m not really sure when I had one,” she said thoughtfully.
He stopped. “Seriously?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve tried one,” she said, “but I don’t know what fast-food place it was.”
“Nope, burgers should be barbecued,” he said. “Anything less than that is sacrilege, but if we don’t have a barbecue …” He tapped the door of his vehicle, contemplating it.
“If you can just fry them in a pan,” she said, “would it be an easy enough thing for me to cook?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t get any easier. What about hot dogs?”
She wrinkled her nose up at that. “I’m not sure what a good hot dog tastes like,” she said cautiously, “but the ones I had didn’t taste very good.”
He nodded. “Well, you probably didn’t have big Polish ones or brats.”
“Brats?” she asked in confusion.
“Bratwurst in a bun, smothered in sauerkraut.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I like sauerkraut.”
“Do you like pirogues?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know what they are.”
He groaned. “Okay, I’m going shopping,” he said. “I’ll pick up a couple meals’ worth to show you how to cook them, and we’ll do it one day next week, if you’re okay with that—maybe a burger lesson too, thrown in there. And then maybe next weekend, we’ll do pirogues or brats, something along that line.”
“Sounds delicious,” she said. “I’ll pick up salad fixings.”
“Aren’t you eating more than salads these days?”
“Salad, sandwiches, and omelets,” she said solemnly. “Some of the other stuff you showed me is too hard.”
“You mean, the pasta?”
Yes,” she said, “but I should try to cook just some plain pasta.”
“Yes, you should,” he said. “You pick up some, and we’ll cook it tomorrow night. Well, I’m cooking burgers. You could cook your pasta tonight. The pasta can be cold in your fridge tomorrow, and you can warm it up in a pan or the microwave.”
She beamed. “I like that idea.”
“Good enough.” And then he pulled out of the driveway.
Chapter 18
Saturday Noon …
Doreen walked to her car in the open garage, loaded it up, and looked around to see if anything else could be added to her trip. She found a bit more that needed to go to charity, and, by the time she was done, the car was full. Because she was also going grocery shopping, she had to leave the animals behind.
“Sorry, Mugs,” she said, as she led him back into the house. Despondent, his tail down and his ears almost dragging the floor, he walked into the center of the living room and slumped onto the floor. She closed and locked the door, realizing she didn’t really need to set the alarm, but it was a habit now.
Besides, the few belongings left were all she had, so, if somebody stole them, she wouldn’t be impressed. She drove to Wendy’s first and dropped off the bags of clothes.
Wendy took them with a wave, tagged Doreen’s bags with her name, and put them off to the side. Then Doreen headed up to the charity, dropped off the rest of the stuff, and went straight to the grocery store.
Grocery shopping was pretty easy when you didn’t have to buy much. She picked up enough for a couple salads, some sandwiches, and walked into the pasta section, where she was astonished at all the shapes available. She had a real favorite in spaghetti, but she was fascinated with every other kind, from pinwheels to weird shells to macaroni thingies to little shapes that looked like grains of rice. On impulse, she bought different kinds and put them in her cart. She needed a few other things, like oil and some fresh lemons, but she went quickly to add those things to her basket.
She walked to where the hot dogs were and studied them, not really understanding what made a good hot dog versus a bad hot dog. One package on sale looked interesting, but some ingredients in it she couldn’t pronounce, so she figured maybe these hot dogs weren’t real food. She hemmed and hawed until a familiar voice spoke to her.
“Those aren’t the best.”
She looked up to see Mack and smiled. “These things listed I wouldn’t know how to say, so I figured it wasn’t healthy.”
He laughed. “You can knock off 90 percent of the packaged stuff in this store if you don’t buy anything with names you can’t pronounce. You’ll be healthier by far.”
She frowned. “But I was trying to eat healthy.”
“And you can eat healthy,” he said, “but maybe look at other packages of meat to compare.”
She kept looking through a couple more packages, then he led her over to the fresh counter and found some nice-looking sausages.
“Those are bratwurst,” he said, pointing to one row. “I was thinking of those next week.”
“Oh, I like that idea. How many do we need?”
“They’re fair-sized,” he said, “so I’ll need only two.”
She nodded and ordered four, then studied them when they came wrapped in paper. “I really like the look of this.”
“The paper or the sausages inside?” Mack asked in a dry tone.
Doreen shook her head. “Laugh at me all you want, but I’ve never bought meat from a butcher before. And rarely have I bought prepackaged meat, so this is a treat.”
“I’m not sure you would call this from a true butcher,” he said, “but, yes, it’s definitely a fun way to buy meat.”
She put the package in her cart and looked over at Mack’s cart, stuffed full. “How can you eat so much?” she asked. She recognized potatoes and onions and lettuce, but some bigger vegetables she didn’t know. “What’s that yellow thing?”
“A yellow zucchini.”
“They come in yellow?”
“Yep, they do.”
“Okay,” she said, “and can you make bread out of them too?”
“If you’re talking about zucchini bread, yes.” Then he stared at her in surprise. “How come you didn’t bring out the zucchini bread today?”
“Because I forgot,” she confessed.
“I was there twice. I could have had zucchini bread. You did that on purpose.”
“No, I did not,” she said. “I promise.”
“Ha,” he said.
She pulled her cart away and headed toward the cashier but felt someone staring at her. She turned to see Fred and nudged Mack. “That’s the gardener from Rosemoor.”
He looked over to see the portly older man raise his nose in the air before turning his back on the two of them. “The gardener from Nan’s home?”
“Yes, you know? The brother to the one who made the ice pick that’s missing half a set?”
“Interesting that you comment on the ice picks instead of the missing parents.”
“Missing parents and a missing sister.”
Just then a strange voice came up behind her. “You keep your nose out of our business.”
She turned to look at a man who looked just enough like Fred to be Frank. “Hey, you must be the guy who made all those tools,” she said with a winning smile. He looked at her, and she could see his anger warred with his delight at being recognized. She held out a hand and said, “I read about some of the awards you won. Congratulations.”
He shook her hand and shuffled his feet. “Thanks.”
“Do you still do that kind of woodworking?” she asked curiously.
He shook his head. “Not really. I tried to make a go of it as a business, but that didn’t work out so well. No one wanted to pay for handmade quality.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I went to your old shop and found it was now a knife-sharpening place.”
He gave a snort of disgust. “Yeah, not exactly what I had envisioned. But sometimes life just hits you sideways, and you can’t keep it up.”
“I’m sorry. It looked like the work you were doing was great stuff.”
“Maybe,” he said, but he sported a pleased smile.
“I found one of your pieces too,” Doreen said thoughtfully. She could feel Mack behind her stiffening.
Frank looked at her and frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, my bird found two little silver plates with names and numbers on them, and then I found an ice pick. One of the plates looks like it fits into the ice pick. But I didn’t find a second tool for the other one.”
“The ice picks?”
“Yeah,” she said, “but honestly I didn’t know whose they were. I just found them down at the mouth of the river.”
He shuffled his feet again, almost like a little kid. “I made quite a few ice picks,” he said with a frown.
“Like dozens?”
He shook his head. “No, not really. Maybe half a dozen. There was only one matched set. Don’t suppose you remember the numbers, do you?”
She supplied both numbers off the top of her head; then she’d always been good with numbers.
His eyebrows shot up, and he swallowed hard. “That is the matched set,” he said. “Ed Burns bought that off me.”
“That’s what I wondered,” Doreen said. “It’s an interesting thing, but I found it along the Mission Greenway at the mouth of the river.”
“Weird, because you don’t ice fish at the mouth of the river. As far as I know, he still had that set before he died.”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know how it ended up down there, and I have no idea where the second one is either.”
“If you ever want to get rid of it, I’ll take it back.”
“For money?” she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “No. Just so I can restore it. I imagine, if it’s been lying out in the weather like that, it’s probably in rough shape.”
She looked up at Mack. “I’m thinking that’s a good description. What do you think?”
Mack nodded. “The tool itself, the head is all rusted, and the wood is dried out and looks like it’s splitting.”
Frank winced. “I’d definitely like to have it back then. It would be nice to keep it in decent shape. I put a lot of work into that handle.”
“I understand that,” she said. “I’ll keep looking for the second piece of the set.”
“They were both with Mr. Burns,” Frank said, “so maybe talk to his son to see if he’s still got the other piece.”
“Great idea. I’ll have to track him down.”
“I saw him over at the gas station not five minutes ago. I would have stopped and asked him about it, if I had known.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
Frank’s voice dropped into a sneer. “He’s got a Porsche. You can’t miss it. He drives like a crazy animal around town.” And, with that, Frank carried on toward the check-out lanes.
Doreen looked at Mack. “Nothing suspicious or something suspicious?”
“Nothing suspicious,” he said firmly. “I’m heading to the cashier. What about you?”
“Me too,” she said and looked at her meager groceries. “Except I hav
e to go to the bakery.” She detoured across to the bakery, picked up a loaf of bread and a few fresh buns, and returned to the registers. As she studied the lines for the shortest, Frank caught her attention and pointed to somebody standing at the Express lane, holding a bag of coffee. Doreen raised her eyebrows and asked, “Burns?”
Frank nodded, and she changed course for the Express lane.
Burns looked at her cart and said, “Another person who can’t count.”
She stared at him. “Wow,” she said, “I came to talk to you.”
“Oh, great,” he said, “another panhandler, looking for money.”
Doreen knew Mack could hear their conversation because he was only one aisle over, and she also could see the anger radiating from his gaze and from the stern set of his shoulders. “Hardly,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure,” he said. “I heard about you. You had to sell everything out of the house in order to put food on the table.” He sneered. “Talk about a loser. Get a job like everybody else.”
“What’s your job?” she asked with interest.
“I run several businesses,” he said in a haughty tone.
“Ah,” she said, “so the businesses your father built and you inherited, right?”
He narrowed his gaze.
“You’re a Burns, Ed Burns’s son. The only heir to his fortune. Even your two sisters didn’t get anything.”
“Why should they?” he said, stiffening. “They don’t deserve anything.”
“I wonder how they feel about that?”
“If they’d had any money, they could have hired lawyers to fight it,” he said. “But, of course, they don’t have any.”
“No,” she said, “because you’re the only one who got any money from dear old dad. But I wonder if you rewrote the will so you’d get everything?”
By now, Doreen knew everybody nearby was listening to their conversation. But Kid Burns stiffened, glared at her in outrage, and said, “That is slander.”
“Well, you’re being pretty obnoxious yourself,” she said calmly. “And, by the way, it’s your turn. Go buy your little pack of coffee.”
He glared at her, dropped the coffee at the cashier, paid for it, and, as he turned to walk out, he said, “Don’t forget to do the dishes so you can pay for your groceries.”