Chapter 20
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After a quick search outside, Mack entered Devon’s house. Doreen moved quietly at his side, watching his every move, which was such a lesson for her because he really was great at what he did.
And he was right; there should be much more openness and appreciation for the job that the police did. Mack was out here every day, just trying to keep people safe, but the public was always more interested in what she was up to, and that wasn’t fair to any of them on Mack’s team.
Just when she thought that Devon’s house would be more or less undisturbed and completely uninteresting, Mack stopped and stared at something on the wall.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as she joined him.
He pointed to the artwork. “That’s his grandmother.”
She studied it carefully. “Birdie is so much younger there. She’s with her daughter too.” It was sad to see two generations gone, and now there was just Birdie. Doreen turned to Mack. “Did we ever hear how Birdie is doing?”
“Not yet,” he replied, “but I haven’t checked in for an update from the hospital either.”
Doreen turned around, looking for other framed photographs, finding a picture opposite the mother’s. She walked over and muttered, “I wonder if this is the father.”
“Maybe, but which father?” Mack asked quietly. “We have Devon’s stepfather in jail and Devon’s birth father nowhere to be found.”
“Right,” she noted. “I should look up Duke’s mug shot and see if this is him in this photo.” Still, she nodded and pointed. “Also suspicious.”
“Not suspicious at all,” he stated, turning to her. “What’s suspicious about that?”
“You would like to think that a young man like Devon would have a father figure involved in his life.”
“He did have a father figure for a while with the addition of his stepfather.”
“But where was his biological father? He should have been on the scene from the beginning,” Doreen pointed out.
Mack shrugged. “The birth father may not have even known Cassandra was pregnant,” Mack suggested. “For that matter, she may not have even known his name. Given that she seemed to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, a one-night stand may have given her Devon.”
Doreen sighed. “Family scenarios. This one looks to have enough drama for everybody.”
He smiled, then asked her, “What do you mean?”
“Just that so many people from this one blended family are already involved in this mess. We’ve got two in prison, one dead, and one who’s been drugged,” she explained.
“Now we have a group of thieves who have moved in on a house associated with both victims—and very, very quickly, which is suspicious in its own right. So who knows what else is going on in this particular underbelly in Kelowna.”
“We’ve picked up two from the B&E gang, and both will be released fairly quickly if we don’t come up with some evidence that will allow us to keep them.”
She nodded. “In that case, we should head over to their houses and see what we can come up with there.”
Mack nodded. “You wander around with the animals and see if anything here hits your radar—or theirs. Meanwhile, I’ll make some calls.”
She wasn’t sure whether it was a deliberate move to put her off and to keep her out of the way or not.
He often stepped off to the side when it came to making phone calls, so she couldn’t really take it personally.
Lord knows she’d put him through enough this morning already, so maybe he just needed some distance.
She wandered around and got the lay of the land, then headed back to the two bedrooms, where she knew Birdie would have been staying in one of them.
As she entered the first bedroom, she nodded.
Birdie probably really was staying here, considering the amount of clothing in the closet.
Doreen went through it with an eye to the quality and to the money involved in purchasing these items and realized that Birdie had spent a fair bit of money on this wardrobe.
Her money certainly wasn’t limited to paying rent at Rosemoor.
No shortage of assets existed here. She looked at Goliath, lounging on the thick rug.
“So, what do you think? Was pretending to live at Rosemoor just a game to Birdie, or did she want to be part of the Rosemoor community, yet didn’t necessarily want to let go of the rest of her life? ”
Doreen found it hard to understand why Birdie was trying to hide her wealth—when she boasted about it all the time—or what she was protecting in her life by staying in this house with her grandson, Devon.
Everybody knew about Devon as well. Doreen shook her head.
Something was going on. She quickly went through Birdie’s bedroom.
When Mack rejoined her, he looked around and asked, “You’re thinking this is Birdie’s room?”
She nodded. “The clothes in the closet are super expensive,” she shared. “The furnishings too represent a fair bit of money that has been spent all around this home, it seems. So why was she sometimes late in paying her rent at Rosemoor?”
Mack shrugged. “Unless it literally was a cash flow issue and she was all about trying to make more money via her gambling.”
“So why does she have her little black book of blackmailing targets, that we found back at her apartment in Rosemoor? I’m not seeing anything here related to gambling or coercing people.”
“We haven’t gone through all of it yet.”
She nodded. “I would like to think that something else would be here. I can’t imagine that Birdie kept only one record.”
“Why not?” he asked.
Doreen suggested, “For her criminal enterprises, two sets of books were insurance for her, in case one was stolen.”
“Yet,” Mack noted, “to update two handwritten copies of her records would be time-consuming, especially if she wasn’t using a computer. And I haven’t seen any electronics in here so far.”
Doreen turned to look around, frowning.
Mack continued. “I get it. Birdie’s old school, so potentially there’s an age issue in terms of technology, which we do see on a regular basis,” he pointed out. “So, what did you expect to find?”
“That secondary record of her blackmailing at least,” she replied, “because she’s keeping up two residences. I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be duplicate records at both places.”
“We can look for that,” Mack stated. “Where do you want to start?”
“I want to tear apart the whole house,” she muttered. “I mean, those B&E guys were here for some reason.”
He frowned at her and asked, “You’re thinking blackmail as well?”
She winced and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Good God. She did like to ruffle the feathers of some tough customers.”
“Why not?” she muttered. “We know she’s already been heavily involved in blackmailing the current mayor and your former police captain, both noted by name in her records.”
“You’re right. So, let’s find what she’s keeping here.”
“And I would think,” Doreen added, “depending on how much she trusted her grandson, or how much she felt he was under her control, she would keep it here.”
“But she also stayed at Rosemoor a lot of the time. Roger told us that much.”
“But she wouldn’t keep both copies of her blackmail info in the same apartment.
So … I wonder if they have safe deposit boxes there or something for personal belongings.
” She frowned, quickly picked up her phone, and called her grandmother.
“Hey, Nan. Do you have safe deposit boxes for valuables over there?”
“We have a big safe that we can keep stuff in, and management looks after it,” she shared.
“Most of the time it’s not really important stuff.
Most people here have either gotten rid of, sold, donated, or whatnot with that level of money or valuables,” she added.
“Yet definitely some people hang on to some nice pieces.”
“Interesting,” she muttered. “Any idea if Birdie used it?”
“I don’t know,” Nan muttered, sounding startled. “That would be a pretty good question to ask management.”
“It would, indeed,” Doreen agreed, with a smile. “I’ll talk to Roger in a little bit.”
“Are you coming back here soon?” Nan asked.
“I don’t know about soon,” she clarified, as she glanced around the room, “but relatively soon.”
“Make sure you stop in and fill us in,” Nan ordered. “We want to confirm that everything is going to plan.”
“If you say so.” Doreen chuckled. “I’m not sure there is any plan at the moment.”
“Oh, there is, absolutely there is,” Nan proclaimed with glee, “just not necessarily any plan that you were expecting.”