Handcuffs in the Heather

by Dale Mayer

  “So, you moved up in life with this marriage, didn’t you?” Doreen asked Lynette’s picture. “Doing the social climb. Well, it’s been ten years, so I wonder how that’s working out for you.”

  What did Doreen really know? She went over the notes in her head, as she jotted them down in order. Was killed by accident? Or was it murder? Did Norbert have anything to do with Manny’s disappearance? Did his wife have anything to do with Norbert’s death?

  “And what are the chances,” Doreen mused out loud, “that the wife had something to do with her husband’s death? A month to remarry is very suspicious, indeed.” Then again, maybe Norbert had committed suicide by stepping in front of a bus or whatever. His life was crashing down around him, and, for all Doreen knew, he might have been in a health crisis as well.

  Once again so many unanswered questions. She sent a note off to Mack, asking if an autopsy had been done or if any underlying health conditions had been found in the banker’s case. Then, knowing he wouldn’t get back to her anytime soon, she stood and made herself a sandwich, even as she eyed the pasta. She would save the spaghetti for dinner.

  She sat outside, sharing her sandwich with the critters and realizing she should have made half a sandwich more, just so she had enough to share. She was determined to get through the third box of Solomon’s research and fully index it, like she had the others. It would take her hours, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  She looked at her garden and deemed it more appealing. But then she’d done half and needed to get the other half finished.

  After eating, she sat down and worked her way steadily through Solomon’s third box.

  It went a lot faster than she had expected. Finally, with that third box done, she put away that box and then grabbed the fourth box. She still had several hours left this afternoon. She opened the box and started working away. By the time a knock came at her door, she had only one folder left. She groaned and straightened, rubbing her lower back. Mugs barked like crazy again. She called out, “I’m coming,” but, by the time she got there, Mack had opened the door and stepped inside.

  He looked at her as she straightened and stretched. “Have you been out doing heavy digging again?”

  She shook her head. “No, I was trying to do an index of Solomon’s files and all his summaries. He had a file on the banker.”

  Mack’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “He did?”

  Doreen nodded. “And, since you have a digit copy of all Solomon’s files too, you can go home and read it on your own time.”

  He laughed. “Well, what made you think to look?”

  “Because I was looking for information online, and it was a little skimpy, so it occurred to me that maybe Solomon had something. Then, when I found it, I realized I hadn’t finished doing the indexing of his boxes I had inherited.”

  “By indexing, you mean …”

  “I mean, typing in all the names and the basics from the summary. I’ve already scanned in all the summaries. I figure I’ll print off the index and keep it handy, so I can easily look anything up anytime I want.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “You’ve got it all digitized though, so …”

  “But it’s hard to search for something in all those folders if you don’t have it organized with each of the names in the front.”

  “So, why don’t you attach the index with all the summaries?”

  “I was thinking of it. I renamed all the scans, so that’s something. Maybe if I have a folder system and rename the folders, I’ll keep everything together and have them a little more organized.”

  Mack stepped out on the back deck and said, “Figured you’d be out here gardening.”

  “I would be,” she said, “if it appealed more than doing this, but I’m one folder away from finishing, and I wanted the job done.” She motioned at him as she sat down and said, “I’ll just do this last one real quick.”

  “Coffee?” he asked, while eyeing her empty cup.

  “Go put some on.”

  “I guess I should bring you some more,” he said with a laugh.

  “No need,” she said. “You’ve been feeding me enough. I can certainly share my coffee.”

  “Actually I was wondering if there was leftover spaghetti,” he said. “I think I’m developing a craving for it.”

  Doreen laughed. “I had a sandwich for lunch so I could save it for dinner. Take a look and tell me how much there is.”

  “We ate quite a bit of it last night,” he admitted.

  She kept typing away, trying to ignore his actions as he made coffee and then pulled out the pasta and the leftover sauce. When she was finally done, she saved everything and put all the physical folders back inside the fourth box and put it in the front closet. She left out the banker’s file though, letting it remain on the kitchen table.

  “Finally done,” she said. “It seems like I had so many unfinished jobs that I never quite got anywhere.”

  “I know the feeling. Right now, we have so many cases where we’re trying to cross the Ts and dot the Is, that it’s pretty impossible.”

  “Right. I’ve kept you busy.”

  “You think?”

  “Speaking of which,” Doreen said, as she returned to the kitchen, “did you find six bodies on Steve’s property?”

  Mack straightened, looked at her, and said, “How did you know there were six?”

  “I went to the property,” she admitted. “All the police tape was gone, and just the markers and these horrible slashes into the property remained.”

  “We did find six bodies,” he said. “I’m not sure if the police are done yet though.”

  “Do we have any IDs on the bodies yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Doreen nodded. “I suppose if we go the DNA route, it can take time.”

  “Yes, and X-rays of the teeth can help identify each body, which is often what we end up doing. We don’t have anybody to match DNA with in most of these old cases.”

  “By the same token, you probably don’t have too much in the way of dental records either.”

  “Actually we do sometimes.”

  “Good,” she said. “We’re assuming it’s at least the three women who Steve paid off from the house fires?”

  “You know how I feel about assumptions,” he said cheerfully.

  Doreen rolled her eyes at him and realized he was doing something with the noodles. She walked over to see him pouring olive oil into the leftover noodles.

  She looked at it doubtfully. “Do you think there’s enough?”

  He nodded. “There’s definitely enough.”

  “Good,” she said, “because I’m starving. That sandwich, I had to share it times three.”

  Then she realized Thaddeus was on Mack’s shoulder.

  She stared at him. “What’s this? Favoritism?”

  And didn’t Thaddeus lean over and rub his forehead along Mack’s cheek.

  She shook her head at him. “You come over here, steal my food, and steal my animals.”

  “Hardly,” he countered. “I do have some information.”

  She stepped back and asked, “Does it have something to do with why you were called away last night?”

  He shrugged. “Kinda.”

  “Does it have something to do with Steve’s case?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “So, what then? I didn’t see anything on the news yet.”

  “Good,” he said with a note of humor. “It means that some of our methods to keep the media out of the loop worked.”

  “So, what’s the matter then?”

  “We found a set of remains.”

  Chapter 23

  Monday Early Evening …

  “Oh,” Doreen said, “you mean other than the six remains on Steve’s property?”

  Mack nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So, another person?” She shook her head, sad for the loss of life yet again. “Wow. That’s sad.”

  “It is,”
he said. “And that’s why I was out for hours, trying to see what we could find. We had to bring in an anthropologist to take a look.”

  “So, they were old?”

  “Well, they weren’t that old, but no flesh was left on them.”

  “Right. They were in a condition where the decomposition happened relatively quickly.”

  “It was actually on one of the trails out toward Paul’s Tomb,” he said. “The body was only partially buried and more or less just lying there for the exposure to the elements to speed up decay.”

  “Animal damage?”

  “Some,” he said. “Lots of bug activity because, of course, Mother Nature always has an answer for cleaning up her own garbage.”

  “Too bad humans don’t,” Doreen said with spirit. “Because, well, we’ve got a landfill issue everywhere around the world. Particularly the oceans.”

  “Isn’t that the truth.”

  “Any idea who the body is?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sex?” she asked.

  “Female.”

  “Age?”

  “Mature, but we don’t know more than that.”

  She frowned at that. “You should be able to tell more than just that.”

  He glared at her, and she shrugged.

  “Height?”

  “Don’t have that yet either.”

  “You should have some idea.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “If you want the general gist, we’re thinking Caucasian with dyed hair because some of the strands were sitting there as if they were heavily dyed and hadn’t decomposed. Probably in her early thirties to mid-thirties, and the one thing that apparently could be told was when she had had a child.”

  “Right,” Doreen said with a nod. “The pelvis joint.” And then, she stopped, her eyes going wide as she said, “Manny!”

  Mack stopped what he was doing, turned to look at her, and frowned.

  “That would be good. Yet bad.”

  He shook his head. “It would be an answer, but you know we probably have half-a-dozen missing women just from Kelowna fitting that same description?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “If that’s the case, why haven’t I heard of them?” she demanded.

  He just went back to stirring the pasta on the stovetop.

  “It would be great if it was him.” And then she stopped and said, “I’m sorry. That’s incredibly selfish of me.”

  He looked at her curiously.

  She shrugged. “I was just thinking about the fact that it would be nice if he had left with that fairy-tale ending he’d put into his letter to Peter and came back triumphant and successful, having kicked the drugs out of his system, and he was now happily married and doing good works for the world.”

  “That’s a very Pollyanna-like attitude,” Mack said. “Of course we want that for everybody. But chances are, it’s not likely to have happened.”

  Doreen nodded. “I get that. How long until we know?”

  Mack shrugged. “Can’t really pinpoint that. A couple days to a couple weeks.”

  “If it is Manny, there should be some records. And her mother is of course still alive in the old folks’ home, if you’re looking for DNA.”

  “I know. I was just thinking of that. But we don’t know that it is Manny yet.”

  “No, but if you’re looking for somebody to compare it to …”

  Mack pulled out his phone and sent a text but didn’t tell her what it was about. When he put the phone back in his pocket, he said, “Another five minutes and we can eat.”

  “Good,” she said as she poured coffee. “It’s just enough time to have a cup of coffee.”

  He shook his head. “I should have put it on afterward.”

  “There’s no right or wrong time to put on coffee. If there’s one thing I really, really enjoy now, it’s coffee when I want it.”

  “Couldn’t you have coffee before whenever you wanted it?”

  She nodded. “To a certain extent, yes. But not necessarily.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “He didn’t agree with it in the afternoon or evening. He said it causes wrinkles.”

  At that, Mack stopped stirring to stare at the garden and to let out a very long, slow breath. “I really do want to meet this guy just one time.” His tone was conversational, but there was tension in it.

  “I don’t,” she said. “That’s a part of my life that’s over. I’d be happy to never see him again.”

  “Speaking of which, I was talking to my brother last night.”

  Doreen froze this time. She walked over to stand closer, so she could see his face. “And?”

  He turned to look at her. “He wants to talk to you.”

  She winced. “You know I really don’t want to go over anything, right?”

  “I think there’s too much to explain on the phone. He thinks you have a really good case. He wants to take you on, but there’s stuff he needs to know.”

  “A really good case for what? Take me on for how much?”

  “He said he’s willing to do it for his normal fee, but it would come out of the money you got from your husband.”

  “And if I don’t get any money from my husband?”

  Mack smirked. “Then he doesn’t get paid.”

  She stared at him suspiciously. “That doesn’t sound right. I thought lawyers always got paid.”

  “The occasional few will take their money out of the spoils,” he said, “but they usually only do that if they think they have a really good chance of getting you something.”

  She thought about it, walking to the kitchen doorway, where she leaned against the open door and stared at the waning sunshine. It did make sense he would take his money out of the money she was legally due, but she also knew her ex was pretty wily. She didn’t know if Mack’s brother was crafty enough to go up against him.

  “I’m afraid he’ll end up doing all this work for nothing,” she announced.

  “It’s possible,” Mack said as he walked over to the cupboard. He pulled out two plates. “But that’s his decision.”

  “It also depends on how much money he’s expecting to get paid for his work because, if there isn’t enough left over for me to make this all worthwhile, why would I bother?”

  “To make your ex pay regardless,” Mack said with a laugh. “That would be the number one reason most women would do it.”

  She stared at him soberly for a long moment. “Not me,” she said quietly. “I want to move on.”

  “You might want to move on,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that legally he doesn’t owe you.”

  “But how much am I likely to get out of this? You know? Your brother probably wants thirty, fifty, sixty, seventy, or maybe one hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “I really have no clue.”

  Mack named a figure in the middle of that, and she nodded.

  “So, how much will I get that’ll make it worthwhile to pay him to do this? I don’t want revenge to be the motivator in my life. I’d do it for justice maybe. A part of me has been hurt and devastated and wants to know I really was entitled to something after all those years. But I can’t do it just because it’s something a lot of women would do.”

  He smiled at her, leaned against the stove, and crossed his arms over his chest. “And that’s just one of the reasons you are so different from a lot of women.”

  She shrugged. “I used to be like a lot of women. Now I’m determined to be me, uniquely, whatever it is that makes me, me. So I need the right reasoning for doing this.”

  “There’s the fact you would probably never have to work again.”

  Her eyes widened. “How does he figure that?”

  “Because you were there for so much of your husband’s business-building years, so you’re entitled to half.”

  Doreen winced. “I can tell you right now, if your brother goes after that, my life’s in danger.”

  Mack straightened and lost the comfortable slopes
in his stance. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Yes. No way he’ll let me have half. He’d kill me first.”

  Chapter 24

  Monday Evening …

  Mack stared at her. “Are you really thinking your husband would try to kill you?”

  “Yes.” Doreen nodded. “He would. Half of his estate? That’s probably thirty million.”

  At that, Mack’s own jaw dropped.

  She nodded. “I told you that he’s wealthy.”

  “So why didn’t he just give you enough money to live on?”

  “Because he doesn’t like to share,” she said. “And that includes sharing even a little bit.”

  Mack returned to stirring the spaghetti, but she could see his movements were no longer smooth and casual. They were jerky, with the sauce splashing up the sides.

  “Hey,” Doreen said. “You know what? If we don’t go down this path, it’s not an issue.”

  “You can’t let fear determine what’s right and wrong,” he said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  It was obvious Mack was still upset. He served dinner and scooped the sauce over the top, carried the plates to the outside table, and sat down, but he never said a word. He just stared out at the garden.

  “If you want,” she said, “I’ll talk to your brother.”

  His shoulders slightly eased as he looked down at his plate before lifting his head to study her face. “If I want?”

  She sighed. “I should probably at least hear him out.”

  “You should,” he said, “because you don’t know what he’ll do to your old lawyer.”

  “She deserves everything she gets,” Doreen said.

  “And that’s a separate issue entirely,” Mack said. “He’s going after her on his own.”

  “Really?” She looked at him in delight.

  “Yes, because she crossed enough legal lines that he feels he needs to bring them to the attention of the board.”

  “Wow,” she said with a smile. “Your brother’s got a lot of brimstone and fire in him.”

  “And he hates injustice,” Mack said gently. “Remember that.”