by Dale Mayer
“I’m thinking of the blackmailing,” she said out loud, “and what could have been stolen from somebody that was worth one hundred thousand dollars.”
If he sold the credit card information or the privacy information, it could be somebody whose identity was subsequently stolen, and maybe it cost him one hundred thousand dollars to get his life back on track. Hmm, she kind of liked that idea. Not too much in the way of choices here, but the fact of the matter included one dead person and the guy who never did the time he was supposed to do for his own crimes. Whether it was guilt or not that bothered him, the fact remains that his brother, who did the jail time for him, is now dead. That should bother him, but what would Dicky do about it? He had promised his niece that he was no longer doing these kinds of crimes, but who would listen to him now?
Doreen frowned, as she thought about it, because so many things were wrong with this scenario that it was still hard to work her way forward. And, like Millicent had mentioned before, what did it have to do with Doreen anyway? Why did Denise seek out Doreen? Was it a setup, as Millicent had suggested, or was something else going on here? Doreen thought about the fear on Denise’s face as she watched the two men fight, her uncle ending up on the ground. The fear had looked real.
Doreen sat here for a long moment, sipping her coffee, her fingers thrumming on the phone, when a knock came on the door. Mugs immediately barked, and, even as tired and as fatigued as he was, he raced to the door in an aggressive manner. Goliath disappeared once again, and Thaddeus, now woken up from his nap, looked more than a little upset. She walked over to the front of the house, and, when she opened the door, she was surprised to see Denise here. “Hi,” she said.
Denise looked at her and kind of shrugged. “Hi,” she said, “I didn’t really know where to go.”
“What do you mean?” Doreen asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was just really upset, and I was thinking that maybe I could come for a visit.”
The last time today that Doreen had seen Denise, the woman had been definitely upset, though she didn’t know that Doreen had seen that. She opened the door wider. “Come on in,” she said. “I don’t have much to offer, I’m afraid.”
“No, I shouldn’t even be here.” Raising both hands, she didn’t move from the front porch. “I don’t know why I am. It’s just that you seem like such a kind lady.”
“I am,” she said, “at least I would like to think I am. Are you sure you don’t want to come in? We can have a cup of tea out back.”
Denise looked nervously around and then stepped inside quickly and closed the door.
Doreen immediately backed up slightly, wondering why Denise had just done that. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re acting nervous, like somebody is following you or something.”
“I feel that way too,” she said, “but, hey, if you’re offering a cup of tea, that would be awesome.”
“Sure. So I can make tea, or would you prefer coffee?” she asked. She led the way into the kitchen, half turning to look behind her to make sure the woman was following her and not acting even more suspicious.
“Um …”
Denise didn’t seem to know how to answer that. Then Doreen just shrugged and said, “Pick one.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Tea then, thanks.”
“You’re acting a little strange, Denise. You know that, right?”
She laughed. “Everything has been strange in my life for a long time,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No, I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t tell anybody about it.”
“I’m sorry for that because it makes life even more difficult, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” Denise said, with a shrug. “But it doesn’t seem to matter. I can do only so much at any given time.”
“That sounds pretty defeated,” Doreen said.
“I don’t think defeated is quite the right term. Depressed maybe,” she said.
“I’m sorry. If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.” She didn’t even know why she said that because, of course, she couldn’t do much to help anyone else, but it seemed like this woman needed some encouragement. In the kitchen, Doreen motioned to the deck outside and said, “If you want to take a seat outside,” she said, “I’ll put on the teakettle.”
As soon as the woman stepped through the kitchen door and out to the deck, she quickly texted Mack that Denise was here. Doreen knew he would be livid, but she wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do about it. Sure enough, Mack responded immediately.
What the hell?
She winced at the language. But she couldn’t say a whole lot to him right now. This was too important. Something was happening. She didn’t know what it was, but she needed to figure it out fast. And that was a little harder to do right now. She kept up a conversation with the young woman, trying to see what was bothering her, when Denise abruptly turned to her.
“Did you see what you needed to see?”
Doreen stopped and stared at her. “I’m sorry?”
“You were at the house today,” she said. “Did you see what you needed to see?”
“I’m not sure what I was supposed to see,” Doreen said, making no attempt to lie.
“I sure hope you saw enough to make a difference,” she said, “because things will get really ugly soon if you didn’t.”
“What is it you wanted me to see?” she asked in a low tone, as she leaned against the kitchen door.
“You were there long enough,” she said. “You should have seen the fighting.”
“I definitely saw some fighting. That’s true,” she said.
Denise nodded with satisfaction. “I knew it must have been you. I was hoping it wasn’t because that would put you in a difficult spot, but, of course, it was you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Who else did you think it would be?” And she knew now that she was committed to this and that she would be making deep trouble for Mack too.
“I was really hoping it wasn’t you,” she said, “because now they’ll be after you.”
“Isn’t that why you brought me in on this in the first place?” she said, with a sudden guess.
“Yes, and no. I wasn’t thinking that you would get into trouble or that you would take as many chances as you have.”
“I’m not very good at not taking chances,” she murmured.
“Maybe, but some of these things that you’re doing are dangerous.”
“Only some,” she said, with a note of humor.
The woman looked at her, and her lips quirked. “Right. But then my own life has become that way lately, and I don’t even know how to get out of it.”
“Maybe you should explain more about how you got into it.”
“Love, betrayal, greed,” she said, “all the usuals.”
“A little more of an explanation would help,” Doreen said.
“I can’t,” Denise said. “I’m just not exactly sure what you did and what you’ll do with it.”
“Do with what?”
“With whatever evidence you garnered.”
“I didn’t get any,” she said.
Denise looked right at Doreen. “They sent me here. You know that, right?”
Chapter 27
“I hope not because that would mean a couple things. One, they saw me. Two, they think that I’m that easy of a pawn. And, three, that you are working for them.”
“I’m not working for them,” she said emphatically.
“No, but maybe you’re off on your own agenda,” Doreen said, quietly staring at her. “Because, whatever is going on, the repercussions are pretty huge now that a body is in the morgue.”
“And I don’t know anything about that.”
Doreen didn’t say anything because she knew more than what she had said. She knew an awful lot about it; she just wasn’t ready to say so. As she leaned against the doorjamb, she cons
idered something. “Are you in danger, Denise? Is this a call for help?”
“A call for help?” She gave a bit of laugh. “For me? Things are so messed up, there is no help.”
“That’s not true,” Doreen said softly. “You can always improve your situation.”
The woman shook her head. “No, that’s not true,” she said.
“What happened to your mother?”
Denise seemed stunned. “You know about my mother?”
“I know your parents are dead.”
She snorted. “My dad died a long time ago,” she said, “and my mother remarried.”
“And where is she now?”
Denise looked at her, shook her head, and said, “You don’t know, do you?”
“I know that she’s supposedly dead, but dead doesn’t mean dead any more than the right person going to jail means the right person went.”
Then Denise’s eyes opened wide. And she whistled. “Oh, wow,” she said, “you know just enough to be dangerous.”
Doreen stiffened. “Not enough to solve the problem apparently.”
“I understood you were good at cold cases,” she said. “I was hoping that maybe you could help out with a couple of them in my life. But I don’t expect that you’ll be much help at all.” And, at that, she seemed almost distracted by something.
Doreen shook her head. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”
“No, of course not,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “That would be too simple. And I can’t tell you, so it is what it is.” She hopped to her feet and said, “Skip the tea. I’ll just go.”
“Interesting choice. You come here, try to talk to me, but don’t make it clear what you want or why you’re even here to begin with,” she said, while looking at Denise closely to see if the woman was on some kind of medication or drugs that she hadn’t detected earlier. “And the minute I mention your mother, you get irate.”
“It’s not that I’m irate,” she said, “but I was—” Then she stopped, shrugged, and said, “It doesn’t matter. Nobody can help.”
“That’s not true. But, if it’s a cold case, I might help, if I have information. If I don’t have any information, I’m not sure what you think I can do.”
“You probably can’t do anything. I was dreaming.”
“This thing you wanted help with, it has nothing to do with your uncle, does it?”
Denise looked at Doreen and shook her head. “No,” she said, “my uncle is already a mess. I was looking for help for my mother.”
“Your mother who is dead?”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know that she is or she isn’t. My stepdad says she ran away, then other times he says she just disappeared.”
“And do you believe him?”
She immediately shook her head. “No, but then I want to believe that she’s alive.”
“How long ago did she run away?”
“Fifteen years,” she said softly.
“And is your stepdad the man who beat up your uncle?” It was stab in the dark but a good one.
Denise looked at Doreen in shock and then slowly nodded. “You saw that, did you?” She took a slow deep breath. “You know you can’t tell anybody what you saw.”
“I know,” Doreen said, “and you’re also petrified of him, your stepdad, which is why you wanted to come here to see if I could help find your mother,” she said. “But you had to come up with a reason for coming to see me because your stepfather would have a heyday with it. And he doesn’t know that you would be looking into your mother’s case because you think he killed her.”
“I know he did,” she cried out passionately. “But then that other side rears its head, where I want to believe him and to not think that he would do something like this. So I keep wanting to believe that she’s alive.”
“But you don’t really believe it, and that’s where the problem lies.”
“That’s just one of the problems,” she said. “I’m a bit of a mess.”
“A bit?” Doreen asked, with a smile.
“Yeah, just a bit,” she groaned. “I know you shouldn’t even be talking to me.”
“Probably not,” Doreen said cheerfully. “But I’m not really good at doing what I’m supposed to do.”
“I know,” she said. “That was another reason why I thought to come to you. Because you are so unorthodox, and you get into a lot of trouble.”
Doreen winced. “Wow, so you came to me because I’m a mess?”
“I’m a mess too,” Denise said, “so I figured that maybe we could help each other.”
“Help you get out of this scenario? Out of the fake kidnapping?”
Denise’s eyes widened yet again. “Don’t let them know that you know that,” she warned.
“Will you tell your stepfather?” Doreen asked curiously. Mack would be screaming at her, if he heard this conversation.
“I don’t know what to tell him,” Denise said.
Just enough honesty was in her tone of voice that Doreen wanted to believe Denise. But again, this woman had kept Doreen off-balance since the beginning. Definitely something was off about her now as well. Doreen didn’t trust her, and that was a big part of it. “I find it hard to trust you, even now,” Doreen said.
“And you shouldn’t,” she said. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to survive, and trying to survive doesn’t mean that we’re always very nice people.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to continue to be the bad guys either,” Doreen murmured.
The woman laughed. “No,” she said, “but sometimes that comes more naturally.”
“Again, that’s a choice,” she said, “and you can do something to improve yourself.” Doreen hated the fact that, even in this situation, she was here and anxious to try to help this woman, yet who obviously didn’t want any help. And how frustrating because this girl could still do so much with her life, if she wanted to. But Doreen was hardly a cheerleader type. “And I’m sorry to say,” she said, “but I don’t think your life has been all that easy.”
“It hasn’t been easy at all. He used to beat my mother,” she said. “All the time.”
“And did he ever hurt you?”
“Sometimes, but not the same. He stopped out of the blue too.”
“Your stepdad probably realized he pushed the line when he killed your mother, and now he’s just trying to keep the status quo,” Doreen mused. “And your uncle became the punching bag, didn’t he?”
Denise nodded slowly. “How’d you figure that out?”
“Because he just took the beating,” she said. “He took it like he’d taken it many times before.”
“My stepfather really does hate my uncle,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure why, but …” Then she shrugged. “There’s lots of rumors, but just suffice it to say my stepdad has no respect for my uncle.”
“And that probably goes back to the relationship with your mother that the two men shared.”
“Exactly, and, of course, my uncle has never said anything about my mother’s death and never let me know if my stepfather had something to do with it or not. So I’ve never really known if that was on his mind too.”
“You’d think that you would ask him about it,” she murmured, staring at Denise, wondering how long it would be before Mack came.
“Maybe,” she said.
“So the two of you are walking around on eggshells around this man, your stepfather, as if he did do something?”
“Of course,” she said, with a half a laugh. “We don’t know what to do, so we do nothing, and it’s the doing nothing part that cripples us. But because we don’t know what to do, we can’t do anything.”
“I get that, but, at the same time, the suspicion is killing you. Did you ever ask your stepdad flat-out if he did it?”
She nodded. “Once. I did and got belted across the face for it. He told me that I should never even think something so horrible and that he’d loved my mother.”
�
��Loving somebody doesn’t preclude murder,” she said, “particularly in abusive situations.”
“I don’t think my mother was abused.”
“You said he used to beat her up.”
“Yeah, but he said she deserved it.”
At that stunning comment, Doreen looked at her in shock.
And the woman sighed. “See? See what I mean? I slide back and forth.”
“That is just complete garbage,” she said. “Don’t you ever get sucked into that kind of thinking.”
“I don’t want to,” she cried out. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got a lifetime of those thoughts going through my head.”
Doreen wasn’t sure exactly what was going on here, but she didn’t trust anything this woman said at this point. Part of the problem was the glint of what almost seemed like laughter in her eyes, as if she were deliberately pulling Doreen’s leg. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at her. “You don’t seem to be too distraught, so I doubt that you’re suffering. Is it more about curiosity now?” Or is she truly setting me up? Using me … but for what?
“Nope, I’m not distraught anymore over my mother,” she said, “and you’re right. This is probably a good time to call it quits. I’m sure you don’t want anything to do with looking into my mother’s death, but it would be nice.”
“Yet now you say death, when before you said disappeared. I don’t get it.”
“It’s been fifteen years,” she said. “It’s easier for me to think that she’s dead rather than think she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
That moment of bald-faced honesty—and the tears that came with it—hit Doreen as being the truth. “I might look into it,” she said. “But I need whatever information you have on her in order to do that.”
“I can give you what I have,” she said. “I wrote it up for a private investigator at one time, but I never could come up with the money, so I didn’t get anywhere with it.”