by Dale Mayer
“In law enforcement we don’t like coincidences,” he used to mutter to her.
Shrugging and chomping on her apple, she walked in the direction where Denise’s vehicle had disappeared to. No sign of it was up ahead, and that had been the only vehicle on the road that Doreen had seen since walking around here. Or maybe this was just a rural road, with not a lot of traffic. It wasn’t scary, and nothing made her nervous, even when her GPS function on her phone didn’t work, telling her that she had no internet connection out here. Probably all these trees blocking the signal.
But yet she had some bars. So she could call someone—Mack—if needed.
The sun was shining up high. The sky was blue, and it was a beautiful day. And the walk had been really good for calming down the tension she’d felt. As she continued to walk, she looked at the big beautiful farmhouses, except that they looked more like estates. Obviously a lot of money was in them. They had large acreages, and most had fruit trees.
As she kept on walking, she saw a few more dilapidated-looking houses, some older ones that had obviously not been torn down and rebuilt, like the previous ones she had just passed. She thought she saw Denise’s car up ahead, parked outside one of them, so she noted it and kept on walking closer.
As she neared the vehicle, somebody hopped into the car and raced down the driveway, turning onto the main road ahead of her. It was a guy, one she didn’t recognize. But he looked like he was quite pissed. She sent a text to Mack, asking if Denise lived alone.
Mack called her a few moments later. “Why?”
“I’m not sure it’s her exactly,” she said, “but I’m up on the top of a hill behind the eco center, just walking. Now I seem to be where all the orchards are,” she said. “I might need a rescue later too,” she muttered, “but the point of why I’m asking is that I thought she passed me in her car. I mean, it was kind of hard to see her, but I recognized the car.”
“Right, and?”
“Just now I saw it parked up here in front of one of the homes, and then the car came down the driveway fast and took off, and a guy was driving, and I didn’t recognize him.”
“So now you’re investigating her?” he questioned humorously.
“No, but that guy could be her brother that you mentioned earlier, but you never shared a picture of him. Maybe if you shared more with me, then I’d be more willing to share more with you,” she said, point-blank.
Mack sighed loudly.
“I’m just out for a walk to clear my head. I found it hard to settle at home, and I just wanted to get out.”
“Hopefully you had breakfast first.”
“No,” she admitted. “That’s why I might need a rescue later.”
“You know better than that,” he scolded.
“I do, but, like I said, I was just trying to get out.”
“You’ve had a pretty unsettling couple of days,” he muttered, “so okay.”
“How about a couple of unsettling months,” she responded back. “Plus, my ex called, and then I had to call Nick and then—” She stopped, with a wave of her hand. “Anyway, does Denise live alone?”
“I’m not sure we’ve ever asked her that.”
“Who else would be around in her world? Do you have an address? Do you even know where she lives?”
“Do you think something’s wrong there?”
“It feels wrong,” she said, “but again I don’t have any reason to question it.”
“But you just feel like you can’t stop questioning it?”
“Feels wrong,” she said, with a shrug. She walked up to the driveway and then stopped. “See? I’m at the driveway, but I don’t even feel like I can walk past it.”
“Don’t you dare go up there,” he warned.
“But why not?” she asked. “I mean, I’m just out in the neighborhood, and I saw her. At least I think I saw her. Why can’t I just stop in and say hi?”
“Because that’s not how this works,” he said.
“But it could be,” she said. “I mean, if it were anybody else—if it was you, Nan, your mom, or Nick—wouldn’t I be welcome to do that?”
“Sure, but it’s not like you even know who this Denise person is.”
“Maybe not, but, at the same time, I have been invited to the police station and to the morgue with her,” she said. And then Doreen stopped. “Wait. You know something? The guy who just drove away looked kind of like the guy in the morgue.”
“What?”
She nodded. “I know it makes no sense. All I can tell you is that’s what I think.”
“No, you’re right. It makes no sense,” he said. “Exactly where are you right now?”
“I’m not sure,” she muttered. “No street signs are up here.”
He said, “I’ve got a map of Kelowna in front of me. So where did you start from?”
She gave the landmarks she had passed on her walk. “But I really don’t know precisely where I ended up. I just know that lots of big fruit trees and big houses are here.”
“Sounds like east Kelowna. You probably went up the ravine, using some of those old steps there.”
“I did take a bunch of steps up, yes,” she muttered.
“An awful lot of land is up in southeast Kelowna.”
“When does southeast become east Kelowna?” she asked. “Does that mean there’s a north Kelowna and a south Kelowna?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice serious. “It absolutely does. If you ever want to see how the division of the property goes, look at the realty site for the area, and it will show you a map, where it’s all broken down.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’ve never even thought of that.” She looked around. “I don’t see any house numbers either.”
“No? So do you need a lift?” he asked. “You’re quite a long way from home.”
“I just thought maybe I could ask Denise,” she said, looking back at the house, “except that I think her car just disappeared.”
“But you said a man was driving, right?”
“Yes, yet I didn’t really recognize him. Just that he looked familiar. Familiar, like the guy in the morgue. Listen. Did you ever think,” she said, “that Denise and the guy in the morgue looked a little similar?”
“Yeah, which is one of the reasons we thought that maybe he was the uncle. But he wasn’t, right?”
“Have you got the DNA test back?”
“We’re running fingerprints first,” he said, “because we have prints and DNA for everybody in the penal system. It’s just that the DNA can take longer,” he replied.
“If he is on file, if he has a criminal record, we should find him pretty fast then.”
“But everything takes longer than expected,” he warned her.
“I know,” she said.
He added, “Just keep on walking home, and, if you get too tired, give me a shout, and I’ll come pick you up.”
“Oh, I’m walking all right,” she said, “right up the driveway.” And, with that, she hung up the phone. With the animals in tow and perfectly content to wander along, to smell the flowers, and to sniff the fallen fruit in the air, they all were enjoying the walk.
“We haven’t done one this long in forever,” she muttered. She wasn’t even sure that she’d done one this long ever. She knew, in the back of her mind, that they were too far away for common sense, but she wasn’t even sure how to get back home at this point, if she were honest. She might retrace her steps, but there was a good chance that she would miss the turnoff to the steps again. She felt like she was committed to keep going, even if she didn’t know where it took her.
“You think we’re okay, Mugs?” she asked. He woofed at her. She nodded and said, “Yeah, me too.”
And they kept on walking up to the house. She studied it because it wasn’t one of the big fancy mansions, where somebody had put some time and effort into its upkeep. Like her own home, this one needed some repairs. She walked up the front steps and knocked on the door.
When a young woman opened the door, she stared at her.
“Hi,” Doreen said. The woman in front of her wasn’t Denise. And that, in itself, was disappointing but also reassuring.
The woman nodded back at her. “Hi, what can I do for you?”
“Actually you could tell me where I am,” she said. “I’ve been walking for quite a while, and I’ve managed to get lost.”
The young woman smiled. “You are on the Southeast Kelowna Road,” she said. “Not sure where you’re trying to get to, but most people aren’t up for walking in this area. Still, if you’re walking in any direction, and you’re hoping to head back to town, go that way,” she said, pointing as she spoke.
“That’s the way I’ve come,” she said. “I took some steps up a hill and just kept on going, and now I’m a bit lost.” Doreen smiled at the woman and said, “Thanks. I mean, I figured that, if somebody were here, I could ask for directions, so it’s much appreciated.”
“No problem,” the woman said cheerfully.
Doreen stepped back, not sure what else she could say. And the door closed in front of her. With no other recourse, she followed the driveway back to the road. When she got there, she called Mack. “Apparently I’m on Southeast Kelowna Road,” she said. “I just asked for directions, and she told me to go back the way I came.”
“So was it Denise?”
“No,” Doreen said thoughtfully. “And again I saw a bit of similarity in the other woman, but it’s really hard to confirm, until I see the two of them together. Maybe she’s just a friend.”
“Which comparison you’re not likely to do,” he reminded her, “because Denise isn’t there.”
“Not that I know of,” she said. And then, with a shrug, Doreen said, “I don’t know. It’s all just kind of weird.” She turned to look back up at the house, while still on the phone with Mack, and said, “Some man is out on the side porch, watching me.”
“How many times in a day does somebody walk up a country road like that, with a menagerie of animals, asking for directions because they’ve gotten lost. Kelowna is not that big.”
“It’s big enough on foot,” she muttered. Just as she looked back at the house, she saw the same woman, who had earlier answered the door, step up at the side of the house, as if she were walking to the front, who said something to the man now in the front yard. Then the man immediately turned and bolted back around the house. “Now that’s interesting,” Doreen said.
“Uh-oh,” Mack said. “What’s interesting?” She told him what she just saw. “Any idea who the man was?”
“No, I’m a little bit too far away. But the woman seems to be the same one who gave me directions.”
“Good,” he said. “Now you stay away from them. They are strangers. Remember that.”
“I got it.” But, even as Doreen said that, she studied the area around her, wondering if she had a way to come around and take a look at what was going on at that house from another perspective.
“Remember. No trespassing,” Mack warned. “We have laws against that.”
“Sure, but what if they’re part of the kidnapping?”
He stopped and said, “What led you to that notion? So far, all you’ve said is that you’ve walked up onto a stranger’s driveway and asked them for directions. What on earth makes you think they have anything to do with the kidnapping?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Instincts?”
“Not good enough in this case,” he warned. “I can’t get a warrant on something like that.”
“I know,” she said. “Never mind. Just let me think about it.”
“No, you don’t need to think about it,” he said. “You should walk home or at least get back to the steps, so you know where you are. You’re lost. Remember?”
“Not necessarily lost,” she said. “I am in Kelowna.”
He groaned. “Do I need to pick you up?”
“You can if you want to,” she said. “My feet are a little sore, but it’s my own fault, so I’ll keep going.”
And, with that, she hung up and kept on walking a few paces down. She turned to look back to see that the woman she’d talked to was halfway down the driveway and following Doreen’s progress. Doreen turned and kept on going; at least she was following the direction that she’d been told to go, but still it felt kind of creepy. As if the woman were making sure Doreen was leaving. And that in itself was strange as well.
At the corner, and out of sight a little farther, Doreen kept turning back to make sure she wasn’t being followed, and, when she realized she was free and clear, she went cross-country, through the apple trees up the side of the property—or the neighbor’s property perhaps. She wasn’t even sure whose property she was on. It seemed like these orchards just kept on going from place to place. She couldn’t see any division in the land, so she wasn’t sure if it were all one big orchard or if nobody had bothered to fence them individually.
She saw a deer in the distance and thought it would probably have a heyday in a place like this. She hadn’t really had to deal with a deer just yet, since moving to Kelowna. And she wouldn’t mind if she had that opportunity; she did love animals. She wasn’t sure she would get the experience that she was hoping for because a lot of people said some of the deer were quite aggressive. That seemed odd to her, but she didn’t have any firsthand knowledge otherwise, so what did she know?
By the time she wandered up through the trees, still keeping a wary eye on her surroundings, she saw the house in question ever-so-slightly ahead of her and down a little bit. Apparently she had climbed a hill without realizing it, though she wasn’t very high up. It was just enough to give her a little bit of a lift, so she could look down. Seeing yet another rise off to the side, she changed direction and climbed up what appeared to be more of a hillock area, with more trees on a plateau above it. She nodded approvingly. “They’ve made good use of this space.”
Indeed, they had, and it was amazing to see how enterprising the original people who planted these trees had been. But she really appreciated the use of all the land. As she took another look back at the house, she shook her head because, right in front of her, she saw several people, and they were arguing. She hunkered down, with Mugs and Goliath tucked up close. Thaddeus had been snoozing for the last while, tucked up against her neck, but, as soon as she stopped moving and sat down, he perked up and cried out, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
She immediately shushed him. “We’re on a mission. Let’s not let anybody know we’re here.”
He stared at her with this wide-eyed look, flapped his wings, but stayed quiet. In fact, he curled up against her neck and nodded off again. She worried about him for a moment; then she realized that all this fresh air was likely to have had just as big of an effect on her as it was on the rest of them. Goliath immediately stretched out below her, looking for all the world like he was ready for a good snooze too. She smiled at Mugs. “We haven’t done a long hike like this in forever, have we?”
He woofed quietly, then snuggled up against her and stretched out, nodding off too. “Okay, so I guess this is a very necessary break,” she muttered.
With the sun up, it was definitely pleasant. Sure, she was trespassing, but she wouldn’t focus on that. And she had no reason to believe that anything was really wrong down below, but, when she’d seen the guy disappear around the corner of the house earlier, that had made her immediately suspicious, but apparently she had a suspicious mind.
Just as she was about to settle back and close her eyes for a bit of a rest for herself, she heard a loud noise as somebody yelled. She looked at the house, wishing she could have gotten closer, but, with so many people around, it was hard. She watched as the man she had seen earlier hit another man. The fight went on, and nobody appeared to be stopping it. She leaned forward, looking around the area to see if she could find a better vantage point.
Seeing one, she hopped up, and, dragging the animals with her, she quickly snuck a little clos
er. The yelling was still going on, but now it was more like cries of pain. She held out her phone and tried to get a video, but it was hard because they were still just that far away. She also didn’t know who was involved, and, of course, she had no right to be here, but that wouldn’t stop her.
Somebody was hurting somebody else, and Doreen didn’t know whether she should get involved in it or not. Mack would no doubt say no—or perhaps something stronger—but she had yet to listen to him. Although that voice of reason was telling her it might be a good time to begin. Finally in her new vantage point and having taken advantage of all the chaos below to make the move, she studied the players, and, sure enough, there was Denise, standing by the fight, a hand over her mouth as she watched it. Doreen couldn’t identify the two men involved, but surely one would be the uncle.
The one who had supposedly been kidnapped.
As she watched, all of a sudden, the one man seemed to have exhausted himself, and he pulled back, then took another step back, as if distancing himself from the mess. “You can’t do anything right,” he roared at the man. “This was as simple as disappearing for a while and have them not find you. You know? Like take off and get a new life somewhere else. Instead you kill your brother and put him on a slab in the morgue.”
The man on the ground said something, but Doreen couldn’t hear what it was; she just hoped that something was being recorded on her phone that Mack could amplify somehow. She quickly sent Mack a text, explaining what was going on, saying that it looked like the uncle was here. But no sooner had she sent it, when the conversation below got even more heated.
“It wasn’t me who killed him,” the supposed uncle roared. “That was you.”
“I didn’t kill him,” snapped the other man, who had beaten him up. “That was you. You and your stupid plans.”
“He was my brother,” he whined.
“That’s nice. Too bad you didn’t give a shit about him.”