Zonked in the Zucchinis (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #1)

Chapter 22

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“Y ou told him it was human?” Mack asked Doreen, when she called to update him.

“I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to tell him yourself or not, but, with the information I had already discussed with him, it needed to be said.”

“And was he surprised?”

“I think in a way he was, yet, in another way, he wasn’t, as if he was half resigned. However, after all this time, maybe surprised that it was confirmed.”

“And, from what I’m hearing, you’re thinking Rose had something to do with the missing man from fifty years ago, that Bartlet Jones she had an affair with,” Mack stated. “That makes no sense at all. You know that, right?”

“I understand. I get it. It makes absolutely no sense, and I’m not sure that’s what I’m really thinking. So don’t go putting that thought into my mind.”

He snorted. “Are you telling me that you hadn’t already considered it?”

“Oh, I considered it, but it didn’t mean a whole lot at the time,” she muttered. “I’ve just been trying to figure out how all of this fits together. And, so far, it doesn’t.”

“That’s the thing about our job, isn’t it?” he asked, with a smile in his tone. “We try to fit random pieces into some rational explanation, but it doesn’t always work. That’s why it’s important to have evidence.”

She groaned. “I hear you. Got it. Point taken. And, yes, I do know it’s all about evidence.”

“Good to hear. Stay out of trouble. I need to finish up here at the office,” he added, “so I don’t know whether I’ll make it back to your place or not. I’ve got to go over to my mom’s.”

“Is she okay?” Doreen asked. “I know she seemed a little stressed when I was there.”

“I think she’s stressed as well. I just don’t know why.”

“Oh, I know part of the reason, but I don’t want to be pressured into anything.”

“Ah, if that’s the reason, I’ll tell her to chill out,” Mack offered, “because I promised you no stress.”

“You may have promised that, but I can see that your promise doesn’t preclude your family from pressuring me.”

“No, and you’ve got the same problem with your own relative,” he pointed out, “because you also know how much your grandmother wants this to happen too.”

“I know,” she muttered, with a wistful tone to her voice. “And I am getting there.”

“Good, take your time, and it’ll all work out.” And, with that, he added, “I’ve got to go. The captain is calling me.” And he ended the call.

She looked down at her animals, quickly dished up their food, and poured herself a cup of tea. When her phone rang again, it was Nan. “Hey, Nan,” she answered.

“So, what’s happened? The whole town’s abuzz.”

“Abuzz about what?”

“You and that old man in the parking lot,” Nan replied. Then, as if she had no time to listen to Doreen’s answer, Nan continued. “And what about the woman in Glenmore? Shirley? Did you speak to her?”

“Right, I did.… It’s been a long day.”

“Come down and have tea,” Nan urged. “We need to have an update.” Doreen looked down at the cup of tea in her hand, then outside at the freezing cold, and groaned.

“Oh, posh,” Nan declared. “You’ll be fine. It’s just a little bit of cold.”

“Yeah, a little bit cold to you,” Doreen pointed out, even while laughing. “Fine, fine, fine,” she muttered, as she moved to bundle up the animals. Thaddeus squawked until he nestled into her hair, and they headed down the creek toward Rosemoor. As soon as they turned in that direction, Mugs and Goliath raced ahead, almost tripping over each other with their antics. She swore to God that Mugs was even trying to trip up Goliath as they moved. She watched as Goliath jumped over her dog and then appeared to jump right in front of Mugs. It was almost a game of leapfrog. She enjoyed their antics, all the way down the path, until finally she made it to Nan’s little apartment patio and called out for her.

The patio door opened, and Nan said, “You should be coming in through the front.”

“I know, but the animals…”

“I understand,” Nan replied. “Come on in, child. Hurry up.”

As Doreen made her way inside, she saw at least six seniors gathered here and this time they all were smiling and looking more like themselves. “Oh goodness,” Doreen muttered, as she stared at them all.

Richie hopped up and announced, “I brought you treats.”

She smiled at him. “And thank you for that,” she murmured, “but you’ll make me fat.”

“This won’t make you fat,” he argued. “Besides, we need to get a little more weight on you before the wedding.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “You do know that most people tell the bride that they need to lose weight before the wedding.”

“Not you,” he declared. “You’ve got to get some meat on your bones.”

“Thank you for that,” she replied, with half a laugh. Just something about this entire scenario always brought tears of joy and in some ways, not quite humiliation, but a sense of what else could they possibly do to her. Doreen didn’t want to say it out loud, just in case they came up with something. As she walked in and sat down on the chair obviously intended for her, she looked over at them. “You all look as if you have something to say.”

“Oh, we do, we do, we do,” Maisie exclaimed, bouncing up and down in her seat. “We found out some information too.”

“Good,” Doreen said. “You first.”

Not giving Nan a chance to interrupt, Maisie lunged into a tirade about how the old guy from fifty years ago used to have affairs all around town.

Doreen nodded. “And do you have any names of any of the women?”

“Yes!” And they gave Doreen the same two names she already had.

“Interesting,” she noted. “Do you know either of them?”

“Lily Dale lives in the other home,” Maisie replied, with a sniff, as if the other retirement home was definitely not as good as Rosemoor was.

“Okay, so I may need to go over there and talk to her.” Doreen turned to Nan. “What about you? Anything on this other lady, Sandra Brown?”

“I don’t know her,” Nan admitted. “I’ve been here in Kelowna all these years, and I don’t think I know either of these ladies.”

Nan seemed almost affronted that they could exist without Nan knowing them. It was all Doreen could do to hide her smile. Then she looked over at Richie. “What about you?”

“Oh dear,” he muttered, flushed now. “I was hoping you wouldn’t put me on the spot. I didn’t find out a single thing, which is why I brought the treats.” When Doreen burst out laughing at that, he grinned at her. “See? Treats have always been the way to get out of trouble,” he explained. “You bring some treat for the teacher, and then, if you’re lucky, she doesn’t put you on the spot while the class is being questioned.”

Doreen shook her head at him. “Oh my, that brings back memories.”

“Right,” he agreed. “These are the little tricks you learn when you are young to get out of trouble.”

“You’re not in trouble,” she confirmed, with a bright smile. “Absolutely no way doing this job should put anybody in trouble.”

“ Ha , not sure Mack would agree with you though,” Nan pointed out, apparently a little miffed that she hadn’t been the one to provide the great news.

Doreen got up, walked over, and gave her grandmother a hug. “Maybe not,” she noted. “You’ve sure done a wonderful job of keeping track of all of our various team members.”

“Oh, I have, haven’t I?” Nan nodded, now with a beaming smile. “And you do need to go talk to that woman.”

“Which woman is that?” Doreen asked her.

“That Lily Dale woman,” Nan stated.

“Why is that? You told me that you didn’t know her.”

“Oh, I don’t know her personally,” Nan clarified, “but I do know of her, and she has a reputation of her own.”

“What about Rose?” Doreen asked, looking around at the others. “Anybody remember a Rose from the medical center?”

At that, Richie let out an audible gasp. They all turned to look at him, and he turned an impressive variety of shades of red. They all burst out in laughter.

Doreen noted, “Richie, it looks as if you won’t get out of this one quite so easily.”

He flushed again. “That is a name I haven’t heard for a long time, but I do remember her,” he admitted with a smile, and then a cheerfully bright chuckle.

“ Aha ,” Doreen replied. “Am I correct in presuming you may have, shall we say, intimate knowledge of this Rose woman?”

He shrugged. “In our day they called it biblical knowledge .”

Nan rolled her eyes. “Good God, Richie. Really?”

“Why not?” he asked. “I was pretty young back then.”

“Fifty years ago, you were still old enough to know better,” Nan said in a droll voice.

“So, was this before or after Rose hooked up with her husband?” Doreen asked.

“Oh, before,” he replied. “And, for the record, she wouldn’t marry any of us. I did ask.”

“Seriously?” Nan looked at him.

“Yes,” he muttered, “but it was a very long time ago.”

“And did she give you a reason for turning you down?” Doreen asked.

He sighed and shrugged. “She had no intention of marrying anybody. I’m surprised to hear you say she got married, though I guess people change over time. However, I don’t know why she would have done it in the end. She was really adamant on the matter.”

“Interesting,” Doreen murmured. “What I heard was Rose got married ten or twelve years ago, out of the blue, but to Milford, the man she had been living with for like five decades. I think he told me that they married twelve years ago.”

Richie frowned. “Wonder what brought that on because Rose always said she would have to be on her deathbed in order to marry anybody.”

“Considering the fact that she died of breast cancer, maybe there was another incident of a cancer scare before that,” Doreen suggested. “Or maybe Rose simply changed her mind.”

Richie snorted. “You could be right, but, at the time, I was devastated. Yet, then again,” he added, with a groan, “so were another dozen men around town. She dated rich and poor and usually married, but she preferred the good-looking ones with money.”

Doreen smirked. “I did hear that Rose was beautiful and led a fairly active social life.”

“Yep, she sure did. But then she up and disappeared a numbers of years back. I think she got pregnant, though I really don’t know what happened, and I’m not even sure who the father was. Then the gossip was that she ended up with that Milford guy, and she moved to be with him in the Joe Rich area. I might have seen her around town once, maybe twice over the ensuing years, but it wasn’t much more than that.”

“Rose did end up at Milford’s place. I hadn’t heard anything about a pregnancy, but who knows?” Doreen stated. “All that fun she was having, back when birth control wasn’t so readily available, could certainly have had some side effects.” As it was, Doreen had to wonder about whether she’d had any children with Milford over the years. She smiled at them. “It sounds as if you’ve all been having a wonderful time, while sleuthing out all kinds of information.”

“We have,” Maisie declared. “So, will you talk to the Lily Dale woman?”

“I will, tomorrow. Now I didn’t ask Mack if I could tell you this, but, if you don’t pass it around, I think I could share it.”

They all leaned forward.

“The soil samples that we tested up at Rose and Milford’s place came back but they weren’t able to determine human blood.”

“Ooh,” they all exclaimed in disappointment and sat back.

Doreen looked at the two new people in the room. “Now, I don’t know you two as well as the others, but I do need this to be strictly confidential as so far we have nothing evidential to go on. Heresay can be so hard to work with and in this we only have Milford’s word.”

“Of course, of course,” they promised.

Doreen knew—the minute they went out that door—everybody would know. Doreen sighed, then looked over at Nan, whose eyes were twinkling. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve put a bet on this one.”

“Of course not,” Nan replied, with an offended expression. “I didn’t place any bets. Richie did.”

Doreen winced, then looked over at Richie. “Seriously?”

He chuckled. “We have to pay for our little games one way or another,” he said, with a big smile in her direction. “And you do keep us entertained.”

“Keeping you entertained is one thing,” Doreen noted, with a smile, “but remember that I could get in trouble with Mack, and that could change things totally.”

“Oh, we can’t have that happening.”

All of them nodded.

“We’ll keep quiet for Mack’s sake,” they agreed, “because it’s way too much fun to be a part of this to lose it.”

“Exactly,” Doreen agreed, “and, therefore, we have to honor what Mack requires.”

“Of course, of course.”

On that note, Doreen realized it would be completely useless to expect this much from this group regardless. She quickly sent Mack a text, telling him that she’d told the Rosemoor gang that there was no evidence of human blood in the sample they brought back from Milford’s farm in the Joe Rich area. He sent back a response with several question marks, a sequence of dots, then a resigned Whatever . She snickered at that because it was almost as if he knew exactly what she was like, in addition to what these sleuthing seniors were like, making the sharing of information almost a foregone conclusion.

Doreen continued. “Okay, I’m off to see these two women tomorrow, if I can find an address for the second one, that is, and then we’ll have to sort out what exactly happened to Rose during her missing period .”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you need to go to her sister for that,” Richie muttered.

Doreen turned to face Richie and said, “Nobody has mentioned a sister yet.”

He nodded. “She had a sister, though I’m not exactly sure if she’s still alive. We are all growing older. So this Bartlet case will have you fighting even harder to find witnesses.”

“Was the sister younger or older?”

“She was younger, so that’s in your favor. If she was older than Rose, I wouldn’t give you a glimmer of hope in finding her,” he muttered.

“Okay, so any suggestions on where I might start?”

“At the other home,” Nan suggested. “Check it out while you’re there visiting with Lily.”

“Do we have a name for the sister?” Doreen asked the group.

Richie thought about it for a long moment and nodded. “Poppy.”

“Poppy?” Doreen repeated, looking at him.

He nodded. “Poppy. Their father named them after flowers.”

“I guess it could be worse,” Doreen quipped, with half a smile in his direction. “They could have named her Crocus.”