Chapter 8
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L ater the next morning Doreen heard a soft rap on her front door. With one eyebrow raised, she noted that Mugs was wagging his tail like crazy at the door, not barking in any way. She opened it to see Nan standing there, looking around carefully. She was nicely dressed against the cold, and her bright red cheeks matched the bright inquisitive look in her gaze.
She bent closer to Doreen and whispered, “Is Mack here?”
“No, Mack’s not here,” she replied, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”
Nan darted inside. “Oh, good, he’s not here.” She stopped to give all the animals a warm hug and a snuggle.
“Is there a reason you’re avoiding Mack?”
Nan’s eyebrows shot up, but then she quickly recovered. “We don’t want him getting upset at our detective work, do we?” she asked in a calm and quiet tone.
“Our detective work, huh ? I don’t have a clue what you’re even detecting.”
Nan chuckled. “And that’s why you’re the boss because you can keep all this straight, whereas the rest of us have to write it down.” With that, she pulled out a little black notebook.
Doreen frowned at the little hat on Nan’s head. “What’s with the hat?”
“Do you like it? We all got them.”
“But they’re like, it reminds me of…” She stopped, unable to find the words.
Nan supplied them. “Sherlock caps, yeah. Houndstooth Sherlock caps. We ordered six, but, since then, we’ve had to do another order,” she declared proudly, “because everybody wants them.”
“But what’s that on the front?”
“It’s a DD logo.” She patted Doreen’s shoulder. “It’s because of you, dear.”
“What’s because of me?” she asked suspiciously.
“All of this,” Nan replied. “We’re having so much fun that we decided to create the DD Club.”
“DD Club? What is that? Drop dead ?”
Nan stared at her, blinked several times, then noted, “Honestly, that is a great line but, no, dear. It stands for Doreen’s Deputies.”
Doreen opened her mouth, frozen.
“It’s okay,” Nan said. “You can do it, just try again. I know that brain fogs can start at your age, but I wasn’t expecting it quite so soon.”
Doreen sighed, her knees wanting to buckle, as she contemplated a whole group of Rosemoor residents wearing little houndstooth Sherlock caps with a DD emblem on the front. “Oh my,” she whispered. “Mack won’t believe this.”
“He should. I’m pretty sure that he mentioned we should form a support club or something.”
“I don’t think he meant it in this way,” she noted, unsure when that would have happened in the first place, or whether it was something Nan just pulled out of the air to make it seem more reasonable.
Nan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Everybody looked pretty cute in them. Of course some people had to get other colors. Here we were trying for a nice sober respectable club, but you know how Maisie is. She decided she wanted to have one in purple of all things.” Nan pulled off her cap, a black and gray Houndstooth. “Isn’t it lovely?”
“It is,” Doreen said, with a small smile. “And I’m glad you’re having so much fun with all this.”
Nan gave her a bright smile. “Oh my, you have no idea how much life you’ve brought to that home.”
“I’m just not sure management would be all that happy about it.”
“Oh, who cares.” Nan gave a wave of her hand. “We’re pretty harmless and easy to look after now. Everybody is doing so much better with a different gardener and wonderful cooks,” she explained. “Of course, with all this attention turned toward the home, they really had to step up and mind their P s and Q s. So now we get much better service.”
“Even though Richie keeps stealing all the kitchen goodies?”
“He hardly steals them, considering what we all pay monthly to live there.”
Doreen had to admit the caps really were quite cute. As Nan walked around preening, her notebook in hand, Doreen couldn’t help but chuckle. “All you’re missing is the cape.” At the sudden gleam in Nan’s eyes, Doreen rushed to say, “Yet I don’t think that would be very practical.”
Nan narrowed her gaze, as she contemplated the idea. “It would also have to be fashionable. Otherwise it would look terrible.”
Then barely suppressing a giggle, Doreen added, “Especially in purple.”
Nan just frowned at her, not amused. “I’ll think about it,” she muttered, settling down into one of the two living room chairs. Meanwhile, Mugs jumped up in the chair with her, while Goliath stretched out on the back of the chair. Thaddeus came to join everyone and now sat on Nan’s shoulder. “Anyway, what have you found out?” Nan asked, her little notebook out. Her pen at the ready, she turned to Doreen expectantly.
“Oh goodness,” Doreen muttered, realizing Nan was getting into this role in a big, big way. “All I can tell you is that Mack was just called away, and it has to be something exciting because he refused to tell me about it and wouldn’t even talk to me in terms of whether it was related or not.”
Nan started writing. “We can find out pretty fast. I think Darren is visiting Richie right now.” She pulled out her phone and quickly sent Richie a text message.
“I’m sure Darren won’t want to get caught in the middle of that, not with Mack as his boss.”
“Oh, hush,” Nan said. “Richie, the silly fool, can’t keep his mouth shut, so what will you do except use it?”
Doreen winced. “But we still need to be the same nice people we started out as,” she reminded her grandmother. “And we certainly would never want to hurt our sources.”
Nan’s gaze widened, as she went quiet for a moment. “You are really good at this.” She texted something again to Richie, but Doreen didn’t even want to ask what it was about.
“As far as the DNA,” Doreen began, “we don’t have results yet from the dirt sample we got from Milford, and we haven’t got any more news on the recent shooting.”
“Oh my,” Nan muttered in disappointment. “I started looking for any information on the missing father angle. I wondered,” Nan added delicately, playing with the pen in her hand, “did you happen to check the files from Solomon?”
Doreen’s eyes widened. “That’s a good thought.” She brought her laptop over and, sat in the chair beside Nan, brought up Doreen’s duplicate file copies she had scanned in. “I digitized everything,” she shared. “It’s easier for searching.”
“Oh, good.”
Doreen added, “And I’ve learned to log in my own notes as well. Then I have an easy reference to search for, when pulling related files, should something become relevant later.” Doreen moved her chair closer to Nan’s, so her grandmother could see the screen better. Then the two of them went through the table of contents Doreen had created. There was a section on Missing Men.
“Why isn’t there ever a Missing Women section?” Nan complained.
“There is. It’s down below. See? There it is.… Missing Women.” She tapped the screen.
“Oh my, Solomon really was thorough.”
As Doreen opened the Missing Men section, several old articles and newspaper clippings were referenced. She pulled up the images and quickly scanned through them. “We’ve got somebody from, oh, fifty years ago, but it’s barely a footnote.”
“Oh, that’s mighty interesting,” Nan replied, looking at her expectantly. “But how much information will we find about that man?”
“It would be very challenging, I would think.” She eyed Nan and asked, “You lived here back then, right?”
“Sure did. It was a small town at that point, though.”
“Do you remember anybody going missing?”
Nan frowned at her, surprised. “I should, shouldn’t I? I guess I would officially be one of those actual old-timers.”
“Exactly, but if you don’t remember—”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Nan said, as she wrote herself some notes. “Does it say anything about where this one went missing?”
“Two men are listed here. One went missing fifty years ago. He was Bartlet Jones, thirtysomething back then,” Doreen read out loud. “Solomon’s notes are pretty unclear, and even one saying that little-to-no information was available. The second missing man was Jack Mahoney, who had a cattle ranch and ran quarter horses too, went missing twenty-odd years ago, and he was about fortyish at the time, married, with a daughter, Lynda—that poor woman who was just recently shot,” Doreen added.
“That’s not helpful,” Nan muttered, sounding upset.
“I know, but that’s all right. We’ll keep looking,” she reminded her. “I’m really just getting started on this now. I’ll make another trip to visit the archives at the library here soon.”
Nan nodded. “It’s always frustrating at the beginning, until we get some information.”
“And remember, when we do get information, we’ll have to toss away anything we can’t confirm. Hopefully we’ll get enough information to keep going forward from one little thread to the next little tip, then on to the next one.”
“Exactly,” Nan agreed, with a bright smile. “That’s the way to do this.” When her phone buzzed, she looked down at it. “A text from Richie. He just got back to me.”
When she pulled up the text, Doreen was absolutely amazed and delighted that these two old-timers were capable of using cell phones in that way.
When she mentioned it, Nan nodded. “I like technology. But I’ve got to tell you, an awful lot of people in Rosemoor just won’t learn anything new.” She shook her head. “It’s as if they’re back in the ’80s or something, and they’re still looking for rotary phones. We gave those up a long time ago.”
“Yeah, but they’re nice to have too, during storms and such,” Doreen pointed out. “And it seems as though anything retro is coming back around again.”
Nan looked at her with interest. “Good, then some of that clothing you have should be coming back around again.”
“Some, maybe. I kept a few pieces, but I also let go of a lot that I didn’t think would suit me.”
Nan nodded. “Oh, but the dress you wore to the party,” she said, then made a kissing sound on her fingers, as if she was a crazy Frenchman, “it was beautiful.”
Doreen’s gaze misted over, as she smiled at her grandmother. “Thank you, Nan. Sometimes I feel like a different person, as if the one who used to know how to wear nice clothing is no longer me. I seem to have lost my sense of self-confidence on how to dress.”
“It’s not that you’ve lost your self-confidence, child,” Nan clarified, looking at her in astonishment. “You just haven’t gained the confidence in this new version of you. You knew how to dress the old you in that environment. Plus, you had old what’s-his-name bossing you around with your every move, but this new you is younger and far more exciting, independent, and adventuresome. Naturally it’ll take you a little bit to figure out what kind of clothing suits, especially as you find yourself needing to dress for different situations—but, for the party, you looked divine.”
“Thank you.”
When Nan’s phone buzzed again, she looked down at it. “Okay, now Richie is finally getting somewhere. He’s one of those people,” she muttered crossly, “who can only do one sentence in a text, and then he has to send another one, then another and another. It’s so darn annoying. You end up getting five buzzes on your phone, and he still hasn’t got his point across.”
Her phone buzzed yet again. “Okay, Darren is there, with an update. He’s heading back to the station. Nobody really knows what’s going on yet. Ooh, that’s exciting.” Nan clapped her hands but then frowned. “Richie shouldn’t text everything. Too much work to text it all.”
“It would be too much effort if he’s texting instead of just calling you,” Doreen noted. Then she frowned at her grandmother and suggested, “Maybe you should go check in with him in person.”
Nan hopped up. “My thoughts exactly. That’s a very good idea. I’ll phone you when I hear the rest.” And, with that, she hugged everybody goodbye and darted outside, exiting through the back door. She was generating so much energy that even Mugs wanted to run behind her in excitement.
Doreen smiled, as she watched her grandmother race down to the river and around the corner of the fence. Doreen walked outside. It was a beautiful sunny day, with no sign of the snow that had threatened earlier, but it was still cold out here. And yet her grandmother hadn’t even seemed to notice.
Doreen stood on her patio, her face toward the sun, and let the moment seep in. She let the sun’s heat soak into her face and smiled as she remembered how different her past year was from her last year as a married woman. She had a lot of firsts in this previous year and knew she would create a lot more. What was still so amazing to her was how much fun they had had last year, and how much good she had managed to do. She never wanted to be somebody in the limelight, who made their mark in the world, made millions, or created dozens of companies, or anything like that. She’d always just been the kind of person who was happy to help out where she could.
Nan had worried about Doreen in her marriage, but now, in this new life of hers, it seemed as if she had found a place in the world for herself, and that had changed Nan’s attitude toward Doreen as well. It was a good thing. Enough was going on in the world where everybody was upset and full of judgment. Luckily, once the estates from her former life and the various pending court cases were settled, hopefully Doreen could finally put all that behind her and continue to carve out her new life, free of drama and trouble. Well, that kind of trouble, anyway.
Right on target was a phone call from Mack’s brother. That also reminded her that she had promised Millicent that she would get over to her place. “Hey,” she greeted him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine. How is our newest family member?”
She blushed at that. “Not quite a family member yet,” she cautioned.
He laughed. “I know, and, according to Mack, he’s not letting you get cold feet.”
“I’m not getting cold feet,” she declared, “but I am also determined to not get pushed into this before I’m ready.”
“You might have a challenge with my mother then. She’s intent to see Mack married off before she dies.”
“That’s fine,” Doreen conceded, “as long as she lives to be ninety. That would suit me just fine.”
He burst into laughter. “I have a hunch that nobody will let you put if off that long. Anyway, on another subject, I’m sending over more paperwork,” Nick shared cheerfully. “I’ll send it in an electronic signature format, so you can sign it digitally. Then send it back whenever you’re ready.” And, with that, he disconnected.
She smiled because, as part of the deal with agreeing to marry Mack, she quite liked both Mack’s brother and his mother. As soon as she finished signing the documents, she picked up the phone and called Millicent, who was delighted to hear from Doreen. “I thought I would come over for a cup of tea, if you’ll be home and open to visitors.”
“I would love that,” Millicent replied. “Come away.”
“And the animals are okay to come along?”
“Oh, yes, please do bring them. They’re such a joy to have around.”
With that, Doreen smiled, packed up the animals, then looked outside and frowned for a moment, considering the weather. Should she drive or walk? She quickly decided that the cold wouldn’t hurt her or them and that the fresh air would probably do them all some good. Then, corralling her animals, two on leashes, she opened the door, and she set out toward Millicent’s place.
As she walked up the front walk of Millicent’s house, Doreen looked critically at the grass and the flowers along the edges, poking through the snow.
Millicent opened the front door and said, “Come in. Come in. You must be freezing out there.”
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, as she took the front steps, the animals racing to greet Millicent. They seemed to love her almost as much as they loved Nan. Maybe it was the Mack connection. Doreen didn’t know, but they’d come here many a time over the summer to garden.
As she walked inside, Doreen sniffed the air. “Have you been cooking?”
Millicent shrugged. “I was hoping you would come by, so a couple days ago I made cookies.”
“I’m sure Mack loves the cookies too.”
“Yeah, I sure hope so.”
When Doreen was seated in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a cookie, she looked around and smiled. “You’ve had a lot of good years in this house, haven’t you?”
“Oh my, yes. There was a time when I contemplated going into Rosemoor—or another of the homes around here—but it never seemed to be quite the right choice for me.”
“I guess it depends on how lonely you are.”
Millicent frowned at her. “That never came to mind. However, all I could think about was having all these restrictions and rules, having to eat the food they chose, never being able to cook what I wanted, plus the signing in and signing out whenever I wanted to go somewhere,” she explained. “It just wasn’t the right thing for me, at least not then. I want to keep my independence as long as I can, especially since I own this beautiful home.”
“I get it.” Doreen smiled. “I’m not suggesting you go there at all. I just know that they all seem to be having so much fun.”
“And that would be the one reason I would consider it. They do look as if they’re having fun,” she replied wistfully. “Especially your grandmother.”
“Ah, she is always leading the pack when it comes to creating fun,” Doreen said, with half a laugh.
“She always was like that, even fifty years ago.”
“Funny you should mention that. We are looking at a couple old cases.”
Immediately Millicent’s eyes gleamed. “Ooh, tell me more.”
“I was wondering if you might even know anything about them,” she began. “Two guys are listed in the files I got from Solomon, if you remember.”
“Of course, of course. We’re all dying to know what’s in those files.”
“Solomon made reference to a man who was in his early thirties when he went missing in this area, but that was some fifty years ago.”
“Oh my.” Millicent sat back in shock. “Fifty years ago. That’s a long time to find any leads, much less evidence.”
“I know,” Doreen agreed. “It would be one of the oldest cases I’ve ever tried to solve.
“Plus, did you hear about Lynda Mahoney, the woman who was just shot in town recently? She’s in the hospital, but I hear she’s not doing well.”
“A shooting? My goodness.” Millicent blinked several times. “I didn’t even hear about that.”
“I don’t imagine you listen to the news much, do you?”
“No, no, no, I don’t. It’s all very depressing. They never seem to say anything good about anything these days.”
“You’re right about that,” Doreen noted, with a smile. “Yet it seems everybody rushes to read about the bad news.”
“That’s human nature, I suppose.… I seem to remember that Lynda found a long-lost brother or something.” When Doreen cocked one eyebrow, Millicent shook her head. “Don’t mind me. I’m an old woman with random memories wandering around my brain.” She waved a hand toward the cookies. “Have another cookie, dear.”
Doreen looked over at them, and she really did want one. Mugs putting his paw in her lap made her decide that maybe she could have a second one. As soon as she picked it up, Mugs gave a soft woof . She looked down at him. “I don’t know if you’re allowed oatmeal raisin cookies.”
“Just give him a little bit of the oatmeal,” Millicent urged, “and keep out the raisins. Obviously he needs to have something. I meant to buy some dog biscuits, but I never know what to get for the rest of the critters.”
“Not that any of them need anything,” Doreen added.
“No, but need is a very different thing, and, when you’re my age, I don’t think we need very much,” she noted. “But we like to have company, and we like to have things just the way we want them. I think that’s often one of the bigger challenges, you know? How we can no longer get everything we want.”
There seemed to be a bit of melancholy to her tone, which surprised Doreen. “Is there something that you want and can’t have?” she asked.
Millicent shrugged. “It’s not that I can’t have it. Eventually I’ll get it, but I just want to see it happen earlier.”
Doreen realized she should have seen that coming from a mile away, but she didn’t and had walked right into it. “And what is that?” she asked. “You know if I can do something to help you, I will.”
Millicent looked at her with a bright smile on her face, as she replied, “Marry Mack while I’m still alive, please.”
Doreen winced. “You know I do intend to marry Mack, right?”
“I know that, and I’m delighted, but, at my age, I could die any day.”
Doreen gave her a small smile and pointed out, “So could I, Millicent.”
She blinked at that and then nodded. “All the more reason to make it happen fast.” She then laughed and laughed.
“I don’t know about that,” Doreen replied, “but I will take it into consideration. Trust me that an awful lot of people at Rosemoor are also hoping to attend the wedding,” she shared, with an eye roll, “and I’ve already been given that lecture too.”
Millicent chuckled. “I’m sure you have. I should have talked to your grandmother to see if we could apply some pressure to get you to make this wedding happen sooner.”
“That was part of my agreement with Mack, you know? No pressure ,” she said gently. “And I have to admit, it’s helpful to know that I won’t be pressured into a certain time frame that I’m not comfortable with. And I get that everybody knows that my ex was a terrible person and believes that I should just be ready to move right in with Mack and to start my new life,” she shared, “but Mathew was still my husband when I moved here, up until his death even. So a lot of things still need to be cleaned up, his estate and whatever, and I feel that I should sort that out before I can move on.”
“That makes sense,” Millicent agreed, nodding.
“That was one of the reasons I agreed to the engagement,” she added, “because I know Mack will give me the time that I need. So, I’m asking you to give me a little time as well.”
“ A little time , absolutely,” Millicent said, with a beaming smile.
“The question is, what’s a little time to you versus a little time to me?” Doreen asked, with a half laugh.
“At your age, sweetie, a little time could be twenty years.”
“No, no, no. I’m not guaranteeing I’ll get married this year, but that is what we’re talking about.”
At that, Millicent brightened. “That helps, at least it gives me a date in mind.”
“No dates,” Doreen corrected. “Not a date. It gets you a time frame. I am working toward this year, but I won’t promise it.”
“No, no, that’s all good. I’m definitely not trying to pressure you because I know Mack would be all over me if I did,” she admitted, laughing.
“That’s because he’s afraid I’ll back out if people put the pressure on me, and he’s promised me that wouldn’t happen,” she shared.
“Oh my.” Millicent stared at her in shock. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“I’m not planning on it, but that was our agreement, no pressure ,” she murmured. “With that in mind, I’ll ask you to give me a chance to get clear of all these other things, and then we’ll talk about the wedding.”
“Perfect,” she said. Then she hesitated. “Will I be allowed to be a part of it?”
Doreen looked at Millicent, and then realized the old lady just needed reassurance that she was loved and cared for and would be included.
She reached out her arms and wrapped her up in a warm hug. “Of course you will. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”