Chapter 22 #2
Mack looked at her in surprise and then quickly pulled out his phone and texted somebody. “We’ll have it in a few minutes. It would be good to positively ID your attacker.”
“Yeah, it would,” she snapped. “He should come with a warning note. I just don’t understand what this guy is into.”
“And I don’t know either,” Doreen replied. “What do you do for a living?” Doreen asked Annabel, knowing something else had to be here, unless this guy was just a complete creep. He could very well be, but Doreen just felt she needed to keep pushing for more info.
She flushed and muttered, “I was working as a bookkeeper.”
“For whom?” When Annabel hesitated, Doreen added, “Look, if it’s dodgy or something underhanded, remember that you’re now the victim.”
“I know,” she replied, “but I don’t want to get anybody else in trouble.”
Doreen shook her head. “Well, you’re the one who’s been attacked, kidnapped, tied up, possibly drugged, then restrained, so …”
Annabel considered that and then asked, “Do you happen to know Birdie?”
Doreen stared at her and then nodded. “I do know Birdie.”
Annabel frowned. “Birdie doesn’t like me.”
“Let me guess. Were you by any chance Devon’s girlfriend at one time?”
Annabel’s eyes filled with tears. “We broke up quite a while ago,” she shared, “and this was my first attempt at dating since then.”
“Ooh ouch,” Doreen replied. “And you do know that Devon’s dead?”
“Yes. I tried to tell all kinds of people that no way he would have committed suicide,” she stated firmly. “But I also know that he wouldn’t get back together with me, so I was trying desperately to move on.”
“Of course you were,” Doreen replied, hoping to keep her talking.
“It’s hard when you really care about somebody,” she began, her tears welling up again. “Really hard, and then all of a sudden, he died, and it just seemed like an impossible task for me to move on after hearing about that.”
“Of course,” Doreen murmured. Just then she heard the sirens. “So, tell me what you were doing that got you into this kind of trouble.”
Annabel stared at her. “It wasn’t something I did so much, but in my spare time—”
“Gambling?” Doreen suggested.
Annabel’s eyes widened. “Yes. I went to the local casino. Birdie loved it too,” she confirmed.
“So, you know about Birdie’s gambling then, and is that why she didn’t like you?”
“That and the fact that I was dating her grandson.” Annabel sounded bitter, surly.
“But you knew Birdie first, before you met Devon?”
“Yes, I did,” she stated. “I’m often down there myself.”
“Are you gambling every time?”
“Not really,” she hedged.
Doreen nodded. “I would appreciate it if you could explain.”
Annabel sighed. “I was … learning how to count cards and to make money off it, but the casino people didn’t like that either.”
“Of course not,” Doreen said. “But you know for a fact that Birdie was gambling?”
“Yes,” she declared. “She’s not a card shark, but she bets on everything, including horse races.
One of the guys in town here, … he runs the tracks.
It’s just something I did for a little bit of extra money too.
Honestly, I do pretty well at it. So, when I’m a little short on money, I go play a bit. ”
“And how often are you at the casino?” Doreen asked.
Annabel nodded. “That’s the other place I go, and generally I’m there more than not.”
“And is Birdie there too?”
She nodded. “Birdie is there almost every night.”
“Interesting,” Doreen muttered. “Devon’s house was targeted for a break-in. Any idea why?”
Annabel winced. “I do remember … maybe that’s what happened. I overheard a conversation at the bar. Maybe that’s how I ended up here.”
“Yeah, especially if you overheard a conversation about burglaries, a breaking-and-entering gang targeting homes in Kelowna.”
“I overheard that they were going to check out this empty house. That the guy was dead, so it would be easy. I casually mentioned that it better not be Devon’s house because his grandmother was still a force to be contended with.”
“She’s in the hospital too now.”
The woman paled. “Oh my God, oh no. Will she be okay? Do you think they did that because of me?”
“It’s possible,” Doreen replied, “but they had already marked Devon’s house as a target. I need to ask you something. Was Devon also a gambler?”
She nodded. “Yes, he was. And honestly, his grandmother got him into it.”
“Good Lord,” Doreen whispered. “I don’t know if you know this, but he went to her, looking for money …”
“He had debts,” Annabel shared. “And if you don’t repay those debts …”
“So, we’re into the kneecap-cracking area.”
Annabel frowned, then shrugged. “I guess that’s as good a term as any.”
“If it’s the right term,” Doreen stated, “then it’s the term I will use.”
“Maybe,” she muttered. “I try hard not to get into that. I would like to think I know when to quit.”
“I don’t think any gambler knows when to quit,” Doreen pointed out.
Tears welled up in Annabel’s eyes, and she nodded. “I didn’t even think that could have something to do with Devon’s death.”
“Do you have any idea who may have wanted him dead?”
“Yeah,” she snapped. “The people he owed money to. I can’t confirm that they were definitely into the kneecap-cracking business, but maybe they used drugs instead.”
“But, if Devon owed them money, it doesn’t make sense to kill him,” Doreen noted. “He surely can’t pay them now.”
“I don’t think they cared about the money, as much as making sure they set an example,” she pointed out, more tears filling her eyes.
Mack silently held up his phone, a picture of Mike’s mug shot on the screen.
Annabel nodded. “That’s him. That’s Mike.”
Mack nodded and walked off, already texting on his phone.
Doreen asked Annabel, “And what about Birdie? She’s at the casino and the race track every night?”
“She still goes every day or night, one place or the other or sometimes both. If anybody is addicted to gambling, it’s her.”
“Oh, I get it,” Doreen replied. “But who could possibly be behind Devon’s death and the attack on Birdie?”
“That’ll be the bookies,” Annabel said. “They run … Well, it’s not so much that they run the casino, but they run the games in the back room.”
“And this back room, that’s where you go when you’re gambling?”
“I was,” she admitted, pushing back the tears and rubbing her cheeks, “but I stopped not long afterward and stuck to the main floor and the slot machines.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Doreen muttered, “but you do realize that you’re way better off to not be anywhere in the vicinity of any casino, especially that one. Particularly now,” she added.
“Oh my,” she muttered, as she curled up into a ball, wrapping her arms around Scout, her dog, the tears building up in her eyes, as the paramedics entered the house. “This is a heck of a wake-up call.”