Chapter 7
?
L ater Mack walked in the door and called out to Doreen.
“I’m in the kitchen,” she called back.
He walked through the house to join her there, his nose raising appreciatively. “Now that smells good.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and tugged her into a hug.
She rested there for a moment, before twisting and looking up at him. “It does smell good, doesn’t it? Of course that doesn’t mean it’ll taste any good.”
He chuckled. “You’re doing just fine.”
She frowned. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“I’ll give it a taste, and then it might just need some seasoning adjustments.”
She watched worriedly, as he picked up the spoon and grabbed a little taste from the simmering pot in front of her. She watched as he tested it, nodded at her, took another spoonful, and said, “It’s really, really good.”
“Really?” She wanted to believe him, but her tone noted her doubt.
“I picked up some French bread as well,” he added. “So, how about we turn it into garlic bread?”
She looked at him in delight. “That would be perfect.” It took them a few more minutes to finish off the soup and to get the garlic bread ready. Before she knew it, she was sitting down to a hot meal. As she took several bites of the soup, she nodded. “It’s really encouraging that I could make a soup from scratch,” she said.
He smiled at her. “You’re doing a wonderful job with your cooking. You know that, right?”
“No, you’re doing a wonderful job with the cooking, with your patience while teaching me.”
He laughed. “That has nothing to do with it. You’re doing just fine. Remember that this isn’t a race. It’s a marathon.”
She rolled her eyes at that.
“You have plenty of time to learn to cook and to do other things that you want,” he noted. “You don’t have to learn it all right now.”
“Yet some people seem to just walk into a kitchen and make a hot meal, and it smells and tastes absolutely wonderful. However, I need recipes and time to figure out what I need and how to even do it,” she complained. “And that’s long before I ever get to the point of cooking.”
“Lots of people are that way,” he noted, with a shrug. “You will get to be a cook who can walk in and cook things after you’ve done it for ten years. But, until then, you need recipes, and some people always use recipes. Some people always measure. Some people never do.”
“It would be nice to get there,” she admitted.
“And you will,” he said. “You’re doing fine. Just remember that.”
“So, this woman. Lynda Mahoney…” she began, as she pushed away her empty soup bowl. He stiffened and glared at her, but she just shrugged and continued on. “She came to town because her father disappeared.”
“What do you mean, her father disappeared?” Mack asked.
“The local gossip is that she came to town because her father disappeared somewhere in this region, and I will say that it’s a really wide region and goes as far as Kamloops. Apparently he disappeared some twenty-odd years ago.”
He stared at her. “Okay, but I’m not sure we have a cold case on it.”
“I don’t know whether you do or not,” she pointed out. “Did the daughter say anything to you?”
“Nobody has told me anything about her being here for that. The woman we interviewed and who knew Lynda stated that she had asked if she could come up for a visit. They apparently used to be school friends. Anyway, while Lynda was here for a couple days, she was off exploring, as far as the friend knew. Then when Lynda returned to her friend’s house, she was on the front step, looking down at her phone for something, and somebody shot her.”
“Drive-by shooting?”
“There seems to be a little bit of confusion on that element, as nobody saw a vehicle.”
“Then not a drive-by.”
“Maybe,” he replied. “The thing is, there is traffic at that hour of the day, and there was definitely traffic that day, but nobody could say that a vehicle pulled up, shot, and then took off. The house is, however, on a major road, so has lots of traffic.”
“Ah.” Doreen nodded. “That adds to the confusion.”
“At that point in time, traffic was heavy with people who were coming and going from home to work. So finding a witness who knows something is a different story. Nobody that we have spoken to at this point,” he shared, frowning at her, “has mentioned anything about her coming here to look for a missing father.”
“Interesting.”
“Do we know the story about why the father went missing?”
Doreen shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
He groaned. “Sure would be nice if the people would talk to us and not to you and Nan.”
“Nobody is talking to me,” she pointed out. “This is a case of somebody at Rosemoor who knows the neighbor who was visited by the lady who got shot. So I’m not saying that the information I’m getting is clear and honest because I haven’t had a chance to confirm it,” she clarified, waving her garlic bread at him as she took a bite. She looked at it and smiled. “This is really good garlic toast.”
“It is really good garlic toast,” he agreed, “but that won’t get you out of answering my questions.”
She shook her head. “Of course not.” She stuffed another piece of bread in her mouth. “It’s just a reminder that you’re a good cook.”
He sighed. “You’re really trying to distract me, huh ?”
“No, of course not,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
He stared at her suspiciously, as she batted her eyes at him. He chuckled. “If this neighbor could be trusted, we would expect to see her coming down to the station and talking to us.”
“Oh, that’s not likely to happen,” Doreen noted. “Of all the things I’ve come to understand about people right now, it’s that nobody really wants to go to the police station and talk to the cops.”
“But Crime Stoppers is always offering rewards and looking for information.”
“But then the callers would have to give all their own personal contact information, and that is enough to stop people from speaking.”
“And yet she’s quite happy to speak to this neighbor friend of Nan’s.”
“Of course, and why not? It comes under the heading of gossip.”
He studied her, while snagging a big piece of garlic bread, and nodded. “Apparently that’s enough to make a difference, isn’t it?”
“I think it makes all the difference. If they go down to the police, the cops will just say that they can’t verify anything and that they can’t say specifically for sure in a court of law, blah, blah, blah . But this ‘between-friends’ way, they get to tell their story, relish it a little bit and enjoy it, being a little part of this whole drama,” she explained. “So, when you bring the police into it, it becomes official, and everybody’s lips are sealed tight in case they’re caught saying something wrong, and they get in trouble.”
“And yet if people would at least tell us what they know without embellishment, we could probably put a stop to this pretty quickly.”
“Maybe,” she agreed cheerily, “but gossip is a popular activity for a lot of people. It doesn’t matter what walk of life they come from. Loads of people just want to gossip.”
He groaned. “It’s not helpful,” he muttered.
“Nope, it sure isn’t.” Then she got up, grabbed her bowl, and took it over to the sink, which she filled with hot soapy water.
Just as he walked over with his dishes, his phone rang. He looked down at it and winced.
She turned to him and asked, “Something interesting?”
“No.”
His short response was a complete and immediate giveaway. “Oh, I’m so glad you don’t lie well,” she stated, with a big grin on her face.
He sighed, then kissed her gently. “It’s a no, a no to you, a no to Nan, a no to anything. You just stay put.”
“Wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” she said, “but you should know that Nan was talking about going to the hospital.” He stopped and looked at her with a perplexed expression. She shrugged. “I told her that she shouldn’t go, but I’m not sure she’ll listen.”
“Why would she go to the hospital? Does she have a friend there or something?”
“Ahm, no, not a friend.” She winced. “She wanted to go see Lynda, the woman who was shot.”
He closed his eyes, pinched his nose, and whispered, “Jesus, Nan.”
“I did tell her that it wasn’t a good idea and that you wouldn’t be happy.”
“But I bet she didn’t listen, did she?”
“No, I don’t think she did,” Doreen agreed. “That’s why I gave her a list of questions they could mull over at Rosemoor, hoping to distract her into chatting with the resident friend of a neighbor instead. Still, it’s a long shot. It is possible that Nan calmed down a bit, but she was pretty excited.”
Immediately his eyes popped open wide, and he looked at her in astonishment. “I’m sure you have noticed as much as I have that they seem to be getting way worse, if that is even possible.”
She burst out into laughter. “Honest to God, if I could enjoy my old age as much as they are, it’s hard to make a case for stealing their joy.”
“Maybe,” he grumbled, “but they are also a pain in the butt.”