by Dale Mayer
“How do I know what is and what isn’t?” Doreen asked in frustration. “I thought I had most of the valuable furniture dealt with, but that’s only what was in the living room and dining room. Then we found the basement full, and I need to get that garage cleaned out because I’m getting George’s tools from Penny. All the workbenches, everything that’s hanging up in that garage is coming to my home,” she said in delight. “And I’m thrilled because I could probably use a lot of it.”
Nan looked at her in surprise and then chuckled. “You know what? That’s a really good idea. Most tools aren’t hard to handle. I don’t do well with a chainsaw,” Nan said, reminiscing. “But I can use a circular saw and drills nicely. Never had time to try those air-compressor things, but they always looked fascinating.”
Doreen just settled back and watched her Nan again. “I had no idea you knew how to use power tools.”
Nan waved a hand at her. “Sweetie, you don’t know a whole lot about me in a lot of ways. But, yes, you should get that garage cleaned out so you can get all those tools. A lot of money is in that. More than that, you never know when you’ll need something. Although you’ll need help moving it all.”
“I know,” Doreen said. “And I need to get it out of Penny’s garage as soon as possible, so do you remember if anything valuable is in the garage? Can we start there?”
“There’s car parts, I know that,” she said.
“Did you say car parts?” She surely hoped she hadn’t because that was something Doreen knew absolutely nothing about.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I just don’t remember why.” And she stared off in the distance, seemingly lost somewhere in her past.
After another long moment, Doreen nudged her. “What about other stuff in there?”
Nan looked at her, blinked a couple times, and said, “In where?”
Doreen held her patience and said, “We were talking about everything in the garage. It’s pretty stuffed now.”
“It’s the reject stuff,” she said. “Stuff that I paid too much for and found out it was fake, stuff I moved out of the living room when I brought in nicer pieces. You can probably still get good money for some of it, but the stuff in the house is by far more valuable. I did do some big lot buys, and some of it I never even unpacked. I remember one. It had all these car parts, and I was so disgusted I just left it there.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a time when I went to auctions a lot. Got some really good deals there too,” she said. “And one time everything was all packed up on pallets, and I bought the whole thing dirt cheap. I had it delivered to my garage, and there it sits. I opened up a bunch of it, but it was all these car parts.” She shook her head in disgust. “Like what do I want to do with that stuff?”
“Exactly,” Doreen said. “And you can bet I don’t either.”
“Well, maybe ask Mack,” Nan said cheerfully. “You might get a few bucks back. I can’t remember what I paid for it. Not very much. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it. But I was hoping to at least find something in there that would earn my money back, but, as I recall, there wasn’t anything of value.”
“So you’re saying that’s all just sitting there, still in the pallet in the garage?”
“Absolutely. But you can open the garage double doors without having to move it, I think. Once the basement was full, you know, I just didn’t worry about it, and I kept filling up the garage.”
“I noticed, but it means some stuff in the garage could be valuable,” Doreen said and stood. “I’m heading home. I have a lot to sort out.” She leaned over, kissed Nan on the cheek, gave her a quick hug, and hopped out across the stepping stones. If there was one thing she wanted to do, it was to get through sorting something. And not just a layer. Maybe when she got home, she could get into the garage and figure that out first. If she couldn’t work on Penny’s case, at least she could work on cleaning up her house. Maybe she’d get Mr. Solomon’s files on Penny’s family. Doreen grinned, picked up the pace, and called out to the animals, “Let’s go, guys. This time maybe we can do something in a big way with some of this stuff.”
Chapter 23
Thursday Midmorning …
Back home again, Doreen stepped through the kitchen door, putting the spare muffins and zucchini bread Nan had given her on the tabletop. She brought out her laptop and sat down to do some research. It was hard to consider cleaning out the garage when all this other way more interesting information was just waiting to be found…
First, she researched Penny’s father, then brother, and then Penny and George, hoping something new would show up. Oh, what she wouldn’t do for those case files from Bridgeman Solomon. And just because the nephew was supposed to get them to her didn’t mean he would or if he could or even when he’d have that opportunity.
After another half an hour, she gave up her latest search of the Foster family on the internet. Without having particular years to match up with certain events, she wasn’t sure the library would be too helpful when what she wanted was from years ago. She opened the paperwork file Mack had found in the basement and flipped through it slowly. And found not one receipt for Nan’s antiques, yet did see receipts for an expensive handbag, a hot water tank, and even a fur coat. But nothing that Scott was looking for. She closed the file and sighed, her mind returning to the missing case files and how to find out more about Penny and her birth family.
Doreen sat back, thinking about it, and changed her mind, deciding a quick trip to the library would be just the thing. She could spend an hour or two there. She left the house, leaving Mugs barking madly while she was gone. But she did remember Mack’s warning and reset the alarm.
At the library, she walked through with a wave to the librarian who gave her a suspicious look. Doreen beamed at her and whispered, “Just looking for a book or two.”
But the librarian snorted as if she didn’t believe her. Then again, every time Doreen had come here, she got into the microfiche, looking for history on her cold cases. She went back to the same microfiche reader she’d been at before and started pulling up information from way back in the same time frame she’d researched before. Now Penny was already married. Johnny was there; Penny was about twenty-seven, so maybe ten years earlier than that? That would put her at seventeen. Wildly guessing, Doreen ran back fifteen years and then slowly worked her way forward. Of course, way back then there wasn’t a whole lot of news, and much of it wasn’t categorized, so this made for slow reading.
She made it through five years, finding nothing of importance. When she hit the ten-year mark, she found an entry about Penny’s brother’s and father’s case. She read that with renewed interest. Back then, cases went to trial a lot faster, but it still didn’t happen within six months. The boy had been abused and tortured all his life and had died from his injuries. It had been an open-and-shut case with the father having a long history of abusive behavior.
Plus, Penny was a witness for the prosecution. Her mother had passed away when Penny was a child, according to one of the sources. Doreen frowned at that. “I’m sorry, Penny. That must have been a rough childhood. What do you do when you have no mother and your only parent left has fun torturing and hurting his kids?”
Her father was given a ten-year sentence. Ten years for a child’s life? How was that fair?
Doreen moved through the years, checking for more tidbits, but this story, although sensational at the time, had died off, and she moved forward. Eleven years after the court case and Randy Foster’s subsequent move to prison, she caught another notation, showing he’d earned more time inside for hurting another prisoner. Eventually he had been released. He’d only been out six months before being murdered—shot in an alleyway in the dark. Nobody knew who did it or why. Penny’s father hadn’t made any friends in jail or outside and was known as a cantankerous and violent man who you didn’t cross.
The police assumed it was a drug deal gone bad or a disgruntled cohort on a deal go
ne bad. Randy Foster had stayed at a halfway house on Bernard Street, free to do as he pleased. His movements weren’t tracked back then. Not like today. And even today, those from a more vulnerable lifestyle just seemed to slip under the wire, and nobody knew what happened to them or where they traveled to or from or when.
Doreen kept searching through the years but found nothing more. She printed off the little bit she found and then, knowing she had to leave with a book, she walked through the shelves full of new arrivals. To her delight, she found a release from one of her favorite authors.
Another story about murder and mayhem though. She looked at the back-cover blurb, and it sounded fascinating. She pulled out her library card and checked herself out before the librarian could say anything. With a smile and a finger wave but absolutely not a word because she didn’t want to get shushed for making too much noise, Doreen left the library. She could feel the librarian’s gaze boring into her back as she went through the double doors.
But it didn’t matter. Doreen had found what there was to find. Unfortunately it wasn’t much. As she climbed into her car, she put her hand in her pocket, touching the roll Nan had given her. Inside her vehicle, with the microfiche copies and the library book beside her on the passenger’s seat, she pulled out Nan’s gift and took a look. And, sure enough, it was money. She unrolled it and gasped. Five one-hundred dollar bills. She stared at it, not sure what to do with it.
She pulled out her phone and called Nan. “Nan, why did you give me so much money? I always worry about you not having enough.”
“If I didn’t have enough,” she said complacently, “I would have sold some of the antiques and used that money myself. Besides, that’s just my winnings.”
At that, Doreen winced. She stared at the money in a horrified fascination. “Then I’m not sure I can even spend it,” she said. “Is this illegal money?”
“No, no, no, not on the betting pools,” Nan said. “On those scratch-offs. I won a couple of those the other day. They gave me the money at the kiosk, but what will I do with it? Get yourself some groceries, and you should probably pay for somebody to come haul all that crap out of the garage. I feel bad because I should have taken care of that before you arrived. I just didn’t want to be bothered. But now I can see what a headache it is for you too. So either use that to pay somebody to take stuff away or to bring in a Dumpster. It’ll probably cost you four hundred to dump a load like that.”
Doreen gasped. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yes,” Nan warned her. “So be very judicial about what you get rid of that way. Sell as much as you can, then give away, and, as the very last effort, see if you can get somebody to do your dump run because that’ll only cost you ten dollars or so in a dumping fee,” she said. “If you get a Dumpster, it’ll be in the hundreds.” Then Nan said, “I’ve got to go out for lawn bowling. I’ll talk to you later.” And she hung up on her.
Doreen was stunned. Lawn bowling? She hadn’t even seen a lawn bowling green anywhere close by. She was tempted to call Nan back and then decided it didn’t matter. She tucked the five hundred dollars into her wallet, feeling overwhelmingly wealthy for the first time in a long time. That reminded her of the bowl she had upstairs, full of odds and ends and, of course, money she’d found within Nan’s clothes. Doreen needed to finish that job and to make sure she found all there was to find. With that thought, she started up the car and headed home.
Once there, she parked outside the garage and stared at the doors. Before sorting the clothes came checking out the darn furniture … and that meant the garage too. She didn’t see a lock at first, but, as she looked at the handles, she found a lock on the second one.
“So maybe the doors aren’t stuck or broken, but perhaps we need a key,” she muttered. Mugs was jumping up at the door, hearing her voice. She grabbed her library finds and walked up to the front entryway, unlocked it, opened the door, and disarmed the security system. She smiled at Mugs, gave him a quick greeting, and said, “Let’s find a key for the garage door, Mugs.”
She headed to the catch-all bowl Nan had kept on the kitchen counter. Doreen dumped it on the table with her library stuff and sorted out what looked like five possible keys.
“Doreen, Doreen.”
“Yes, Thaddeus, you smart bird. I love you too.”
With Goliath, Thaddeus, and Mugs in tow, she walked outside to the garage and tried each.
And, sure enough, the last one went in. She turned it with a triumphant click and then pocketed the keys, lifted the handle, and pulled. And just like that, smooth as silk, the door opened up. Then she groaned and slammed it back closed again. She leaned against the door, looked down at the animals, and said, “Mack was right. I should have waited for him.”
“Mack was right. Mack was right.”
Doreen rolled her eyes. I’ll never live that down.
Just then one of her neighbors walked by. Doreen smiled and waved. The neighbor gave her and her menagerie a long stare and hurried past. Doreen muttered, “Still haven’t made very many friends in town, and, the only woman who’s been friendly, I’m wondering if she killed her husband.”
With that depressing thought, Doreen locked up the garage doors again and headed into the kitchen. “At least I know I can get into that garage if I need to,” she said. The fact that it was completely, overwhelmingly stuffed from floor to ceiling sank her mood even lower.
Cleaning up the garage would entail somebody with muscles, like Mack, to help her move stuff to see what was in there before they could do anything with that space. The problem was, they would also have to put it all back up and away, once they figured out what was there because it couldn’t stay outside, and she had nowhere else to put it.
Doreen snagged a file folder from the infamous front closet that held just about anything she might need, and she quickly marked it with the case name Foster Family. She stuffed her papers into it and then sent Mack a text, asking about Penny’s father’s case, whether it was still considered a cold case.
The response came back a little slower than she had hoped, about twenty minutes later while she was in her bedroom, staring at the mounds of clothing still to be sorted.
Yes, it is. Another text came in saying, Why?
Do you have any details on his death?
I can print it off, he wrote. Not much is here. Shot in the back of the head.
All details are welcome, she typed.
Okay, will do. I can only give you what I can give you though.
Understood, she wrote. When are we doing spaghetti? That last dish was awesome, but we still have tons of sauce, and I am craving spaghetti.
Instead of texting her back, he phoned and chuckled. “Getting hungry?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Today’s Thursday. I’ve got your mom’s garden in the morning. I’ll be tired afterward and could use a good meal.”
“Then tomorrow it is,” he said. “I can bring money to pay you for the gardening too.”
“Which is even better,” she said.
“What have you been up to today?”
She gave him the rundown, leaving out most of the details on Penny’s family, and then added, “I got the garage door open too. I didn’t realize there was a key for it.”
At that, he chuckled and said, “And what did you find inside?”
She groaned. “Just so much. Floor to ceiling. I have no clue. I’m waiting for you.”
And then she hung up.
Chapter 24
Friday Early Morning …
When Doreen woke the next morning, she was grateful to find more spring to her step, and her muscles had calmed down. Instead of every movement jarring up her back and feeling the ripples all the way down her shoulders to her sore wrists, she could move and shift quite a bit easier. She took a shower to loosen up a little more, and then, with a look at her still-full bedroom and a heavy sigh, she headed downstairs. She’d gotten a lot done last night but had run out of enthusiasm and had gone to bed earl
y. Now today, she had to work at Millicent’s garden and then try to get a handle on her bedroom again before she could relax as Mack arrived to cook pasta. Her stomach growled at the thought of more real food. She patted it gently. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get fed properly again tonight.”
On that note, she walked into the kitchen, Mugs at her heels, Goliath stretched out full-length on top of the table where he knew he wasn’t allowed, and Thaddeus walking up and down, pacing behind the cat, as if trying to tell him off for doing what he was doing. She turned off the alarms, opened the back door, and propped it ajar, letting Mugs out to the backyard. Seeing freedom, Goliath took off too. Even Thaddeus flew out to the railing. She was surprised he made it. The last couple times he had tried, he’d ended up crashing into the lower part of the railing and then falling to the porch.
With all the pets outside, she put on coffee and stepped out into the morning sun to join them. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said to Mugs. He was wandering through the echinacea bush. She didn’t understand why that patch appealed to him, but, as she watched, he dumped his chubby body into the middle of the plants, knocking them sideways. “Mugs, get out of there,” she said. He just looked at her and rolled over onto his back. She raced down the steps, calling to him. Finally he got up and ran toward her, as if this was a game and he just hadn’t understood they were playing.
She groaned and headed to the echinacea to see how bad the damage was. A couple stalks had been broken. It appeared he hadn’t damaged too many of the plants. A lot of them were gathered together, probably sixty. They were too crowded, but the clump was a good-size collection. It would be a beautiful display whenever the plants came into flower. It made her remember Penny’s echinacea bush and the mess right beside the fence—a lot of old ashes and bits and pieces all around the plants. She should have suggested to Penny that she transplant them. Replant them somewhere else in the backyard. While she was thinking about it, she figured, what the hell, and she texted Penny and mentioned her thoughts. Penny sent back a text with a single question mark.