Nabbed in the Nasturtiums

by Dale Mayer

  “Yes, but she didn’t,” Doreen said. “Did you ever ask her what haunted her?”

  “Of course, my dear, over and over again. Finally she told me to just stop and that she wouldn’t tell me anything and that the whole thing was her own private hell she’d made for herself and that she had absolutely no absolution from it.”

  “Ouch,” Doreen said. “That’s got to be rough. To think that you’re responsible for something that you’ll pay a penalty for.”

  “I think that’s why she was terrified of death. She never could reconcile the fact that she wouldn’t pay for some wrong, but I never understood that this is what she was talking about.”

  “It is pretty climactic. When you think about it, a tremendous amount of pain had to be associated with losing your niece, and Hinja cared about her a great deal.”

  “Yes, indeed. Everybody did, really. She was a beautiful girl and one of those very open, caring kinds.”

  “And that just made it all the worse. It’s one thing if you detest somebody, but, if you absolutely love somebody, that makes it all that much harder.”

  “It was terrible for Hinja back then, made even worse when her sister committed suicide. That just added to the pain.”

  “Oh, Nan,” Doreen said, wincing, “that must have been awful for her. Worse even because then she would carry the guilt for that as well. The thing is, all Hinja needed to do was come forward and talk to the cops. It may or may not have led to something. The thing is, because she didn’t do it, we’ll never know.”

  “Exactly,” Nan said. “And it is sad, very sad. She used to always say that somebody had fooled her really badly and that he wasn’t who she thought he was.”

  “That fits,” Doreen said. “And to feel guilt for inadvertently leading a murderer to somebody you care about, that’s a terrible burden.”

  Chapter 11

  Monday Afternoon …

  Doreen spent the rest of the day, fussing with the bits and pieces that she’d learned, feeling a little guilty that she hadn’t told Mack yet that Bob Small may have been from here—or maybe had lived here for a bit. She figured she’d tell him when she could confirm that.

  When she checked the clock and realized it was almost time for Mack to arrive, she bolted to her feet and hauled out all the vegetables left by Mack in her fridge, washing them all first. She’d watched as he’d done the prep work for the stir-fry, but, at the same time, she wasn’t sure about the sizes. She wanted to make sure that she was well and truly into this before he got here; otherwise it would look like she’d completely ignored it, which she had, but with good reason.

  Thankfully she had remembered to take the chicken breasts out of the freezer earlier. She looked at them and realized she would have to slice them. She wrinkled her nose, never having had much exposure to raw meat, especially chicken, and she remembered all the warnings about it. Deciding to focus on the veggies instead, she got a knife and a large bowl and quickly worked away on them. She wasn’t sure she was doing it right, but she was willing to bet she would at least get points for trying. Besides, how wrong could it be?

  She chopped away and, at some point, realized she had cut the mushrooms too small and the cauliflower too big. She hoped it would be okay. Maybe it just had to do with how long it would take for something to cook. In that case, it could go in a little earlier. It made more sense that way, yet she didn’t know how much earlier. The last thing she wanted was soft and soggy vegetables. By the time she heard him come in, she was staring at the chicken breasts, wondering how to get out of touching them.

  He walked into the kitchen, greeting Mugs, who was absolutely overjoyed to see him. Mack took one look at her face and asked, “What is that look for?”

  She again wrinkled up her nose and said, “The chicken.”

  “Oh, look at this,” he said, with interest, as he walked forward, nodding with approval at the bowl of veggies. “Those look good.”

  “Yes, they do,” she said, “but I have to deal with this.” She pointed at the raw chicken with disdain.

  “And that’s not a problem,” he said.

  “It’s just kind of gross looking,” she said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. “If you don’t want to touch it, pick it up with paper towel, like this.”

  He wrapped a paper towel around the end of the fillet, laying it on the cutting board, and said, “You slice from this end.”

  “Oh,” she said, “that makes it easier.”

  Working awkwardly, his eagle eye over her shoulder, she managed to slice it thin.

  “See? You did that really well,” he said proudly.

  She stared at him. “I did a terrible job,” she muttered.

  He chuckled. “Come on. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you did a great job. Remember. This is your first time ever to do this all on your own.”

  She shrugged and said, “You’re such a great cheerleader.”

  “It’s important to be positive in life,” he said. “An awful lot of things we can’t pick ourselves up from immediately because they knock us for such a loop. So make sure you always give yourself kudos for trying. And, in this case, celebrate your success.”

  “I forget to do that,” she said quietly. “It seems to me that I’m always dealing with somebody laughing at me, or I’m laughing at myself.”

  “And that’s not necessarily wrong. Come on,” he said. “It all depends on whether the laughter is nasty or not. If you’re mocking yourself, that’s not good, but, if you’re making light of something because you tried and failed, that’s a whole different story.”

  “But how do you tell the difference?” she said. “My ex was mocking where I live, how I live.”

  “Do you care about him?”

  “No, of course not,” she said, frowning at Mack. “Why would you even ask that?”

  “If you don’t care about him, then why do you care about his opinion?”

  That made her jaw drop and then close slowly. “I shouldn’t care, should I?” she said slowly. “But it’s hard somehow, especially when I hear all the refrains of my history running through my mind.”

  “Refrains where he was mocking you for being you? That’s not good either,” he said. “Just remember. You don’t have to accept his opinion. He is nobody to you.”

  She chuckled. “I like the sound of that. But somehow I don’t think he would.”

  “And again, it doesn’t matter what he thinks, what he wants, or what he likes because it’s none of his business. It’s your life, and he’s got nothing to do with anything in your world.”

  “No,” she muttered, “that’s quite true.” She looked up at him. “Have you heard anything from Nick?”

  He shrugged and said, “I figured you would hear first.”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” she said. “It’s just—well, the silence, it’s so odd.”

  “I don’t know if he even wrote up a divorce agreement yet, did he?”

  “I haven’t seen one.”

  “So then I would presume he doesn’t have a finished one to show you yet.”

  “Is he likely to?”

  “Of course, but he has to figure out what assets your husband is trying to hide, so Nick can make sure that you get your fair share of them. Because no way your ex will agree to you getting half of anything that isn’t listed. And, if you list some things and not others, you won’t get your full compensation.”

  “Ah,” she said, “so it’s all about doing your due diligence to find out what he does and doesn’t own.”

  “Something like that,” he said, “but it’s also hard because you don’t want to take too long and give him time to hide things, but you also don’t want to go so fast that you miss things and end up shortchanging yourself.”

  “Right,” she said, as she finished slicing the chicken, then put it in the bowl and said, “I forgot what you did with it next.”

  “Now this is where you get to choose,” he said, “depen
ding on what you have for flavoring. We could do soy sauce. We could do lemon and ginger or even orange. We can do all kinds of stuff. It just depends on what flavors you like.”

  “I like everything so far,” she said cautiously, “but I don’t have lemon or ginger or oranges.”

  “In that case, it means we’re limited to whatever we have then, right?” He went through her cupboards and said, “How about garlic? Are you up for that?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He brought out the electric wok, drizzled it with oil, and plugged it in. Then he pulled out the fresh garlic, and they mashed it together, both working on the cloves, as he said, “Now we’ll add a little bit of these spices.” He pulled spice containers from the cupboard.

  She opened one and, following his instruction, sprinkled in spices all across the oil in the wok. “Isn’t this kind of a lot?”

  “It is,” he said, “but sometimes it works. You have to watch the balance, but these are all complementary spices. These are used a lot in Asian cooking.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m willing to try anything.”

  The smells grew in the pan, as they dumped in spices to sauté. She sniffed the air and said, “Wow, that’s really potent.”

  “Is it ugly potent though?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, it smells delicious.”

  “Good,” he said, “so let’s keep working on that then.”

  And now they dumped in bits of the garlic and then onions and then the meat. By the time the meat was cooked, he was giving her instructions on how to cook the veggies.

  “Now look at the chopped ones that you’ve got there,” he said. “These are thicker, and they’ll take longer. Cauliflower always takes a little bit longer than broccoli. Carrots are the same, depending on how you sliced them. You got these really thin, but the cauliflower is a bit big, so let’s do it in order.”

  And once again she strictly followed his instructions. By the time they were done, she stared at a potful of heavenly glazed smells. “This could grace any five-star restaurant around the world,” she said in amazement. “It smells absolutely delicious.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t always look the best,” he said, “depending on the colors of the spices or sauces that you’ve used. You know? Those various vegetables, if there are too many greens or browns or if you do a ton of cabbage or something, it won’t always have that same look. But it’s the smell to me—it’s all about taste and aroma. The aroma gets your taste buds going, making a promise to your stomach that you really want to keep. Otherwise your stomach will feel like you cheated it this time.”

  With his help, she split the dinner onto two large plates and realized she’d cooked enough for leftovers. She looked over at him and said, “Do you want the same noodles?”

  “Depends on how hungry you are,” he said. “We didn’t cook any rice, so you might want something a little more substantial with this.”

  “Right,” she said. “We still have the noodles, so we’ll just repeat that.”

  “That works for me,” he said, with a smile. They pulled out the noodles and did a repeat of their last dish. They took their plates and drinks outside to the deck, sitting at her hand-me-down table and chairs.

  “I really like this,” she said, after she’d had several bites. “The flavors are wonderful.”

  “Will you remember what you put in there?”

  She laughed. “No, I certainly won’t,” she said. “I’d like to, but I don’t think so.”

  He laughed. “Maybe you won’t have to.”

  “Oh, I think I will,” she said, “but I’ll call you when it comes to that.”

  “And you’re assuming I’ll just remember what we put in,” he said, laughing. “What you should do, right after dinner, is write it down.”

  “Oh, good point,” she said. “I never even thought about that.”

  “Exactly,” he said, “and that’s the best way.”

  And that’s what she did. By the time she was done, he was still working on a second plateful. So she grabbed a notepad, and, after some discussion, she wrote down the recipe. Satisfied and perfectly happy, she said, “That’s the best thing that’s happened all day.”

  He looked over at her, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “What’s up?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just been pretty upsetting, going through Hinja’s journals.”

  He said, “Tell me more.” Doreen went on and explained everything she had found. He looked at her and said, “She didn’t call the cops?”

  She shrugged. “Nan says she did something about it later on, but I can’t say that for sure. Nothing in the police file indicated Hinja did anything at the time, and, without telling what she knew, the authorities had no way to really do anything about her niece’s disappearance.”

  “Why do you think that is?” he asked.

  “I think it was fear,” she said. “I think inside she knew, and his threat, when he walked out, was something she took to heart. If she had seen those photos from the envelope, he may well have killed her. And, if she had turned him in, he would have come back on her too. He gave her the option to stay alive, and she took it.”

  “At the cost of her niece?” he asked incredulously.

  “The question really is, would coming forward with that information have saved her niece, or was it already too late?”

  “What about all the women who came afterward?” he asked. He shook his head and tried to mute the harshness of his tone. “We see it time and time again, and it’s hard because you get, like a rape victim, who doesn’t want to go through the entire ordeal of coming forward, accusing somebody and going through a trial. But what ends up happening is that the criminal runs free, and often they continue their behavior, so the number of victims just keeps on growing.”

  “You and I can see both sides of it,” she said. “I’m not sure that I could go through a police investigation and trial on something like that either. I’m finding it difficult enough just dealing with my ex, and he never really hit me”—Mack glowered at her on that issue—“Okay, not continually, so I already know that he isn’t that dangerous.”

  Mack snorted at that. “Yet he had you kidnapped by his goon Rex. Mathew’s dangerous alright. You’re still under his thumb, at least mentally, not completely out from under his influence. And that could get you really hurt because you go out to dinner with this guy, who, for all you know, committed murder himself or via another goon.”

  Doreen shifted uneasily. He wasn’t wrong but it was hard to hear.

  “So stop talking to him, texting him, answering the door when he’s there. Keep your doors locked. Set the security alarm. Call Nick and me if anything happens.” When she remained frozen, he continued, “Doreen, did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding.

  “I mean it, Doreen. Your actions have bad consequences sometimes, and I really hate to scare you, but I’d rather that than having to ID somebody I know in the morgue,” he said, his voice softening. “And I understand how difficult it can be to speak up, but it’s very frustrating for us when we see a criminal, like this Bob Small, let off because people won’t testify against them. And the killers come back to repeat their crimes again and again. So, not only are we dealing with the one victim who has no leads for us, but we deal with more and more victims, plus all their families, all wondering why we haven’t done anything to stop him.”

  “And I guess it’s the typical catch-22,” she said. “Witnesses don’t want to get too involved, and victims don’t want to relive the horror of what they’ve already been through.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “It’s not easy for anybody.”

  “But, at the same time, it’s obviously something I need to work on. Because that’s something we need to change. If the women felt more protected, then maybe they’d come forward,” Doreen said, “but, at times, they feel violated all over again by the process.”

  He nodded. “Understood,” he said. �
��I do really understand that. And it’s hard. But, like you know all too well, you’ve been in an abusive and controlling marriage. Maybe you could help other women through this scenario.” He dipped his chin, as he stared at her. “But … help yourself first.”

  Chapter 12

  In an effort to lighten up the conversation because neither of them could do much to solve the ills of the world at the moment, she said, “So fill me in on your Nabbed in the Nasturtiums case.”

  “There is no Nabbed in the Nasturtiums,” he said instantly. But the quirk of his lips belied something.

  She dug a little deeper. “Come on. I fed you,” she said, “and it was a good stir-fry, right?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “It’s was a great stir-fry,” he said. “Wonderful.”

  “So then surely you can tell me a little bit about the nasturtium case.”

  “The gardener was working in the nasturtium bed,” he said. “That’s hardly a reason to call it that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It seemed like a good name to me. Was he a chef?”

  “No, a gardener, and he has worked for the city, assigned to that particular set of gardens, for quite a while. Seven years, in fact.”

  “Oh, where was he before that?”

  He looked over at her, one eyebrow raised, and asked, “Why?”

  “Just wondering.” She chuckled. “You just don’t want to share anything,” she accused him gently.

  “I can’t share anything,” he reminded her.

  She nodded, sat back, then looked around her backyard from her position on her new deck and said, “You guys sure did a wonderful job in this garden.”

  “We did,” he said, but he was looking at her, as if waiting for the next question.

  She shrugged. “An awful lot is going on,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out what Nick and Mathew are up to and how it’ll impact me. Then I started in on this Bob Small business to take my mind away from it all. Now I’ve gone down a rabbit hole on that,” she admitted.

  “Not necessarily. It could be a positive rabbit hole.”