Chapter 28 #2
“Yeah, but they might rally around him because now they know they can blackmail him,” she suggested, with a snort. “And you can bet that upper management won’t want to keep someone who doesn’t follow their policies. Roger is bound to have trouble, no matter which way it goes.”
He chuckled. “You can’t solve everybody’s problems.”
“And,” she added, “I asked him about visitors that day when Birdie was drugged.”
“Did he remember anything?”
“I specifically asked him if he recalled any young guys among the visitors that day, like around the age of Mike and Fin, but he said no. Nobody suspicious, although he didn’t personally know everybody or possibly even see all the visitors.”
When she got off the phone with Mack, she drove home. She made a sandwich, then realized she needed something a little more substantial, and warmed up some soup to go with it.
By the time she was done and her animals all fed, she was wondering what to do next.
Something was off about the whole thing.
She thought some fresh air might clear her head, though it was a little on the cold side.
But she’d never shied away from doing what was necessary before, so she packed up the animals and decided they would all take a nice walk outside.
She grabbed a scarf, a hat, and gloves just in case. Yet, when she got outside, it wasn’t that bad right now. Frowning at the crazy weather that seemed to go up and then down, she loaded up her animals and drove back to Mike’s house, where they had found Annabel tied up inside.
She didn’t have a particular reason to be here, and she couldn’t get inside the house, not without permission from Mack and a key.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little more canvassing around the area.
She knew the police were doing it—and may have completed that already—but she tended to get a very different reaction from people when she talked to them.
So, that’s what she set out to do.
As she got her animals out of the car, put on their leashes, and started to walk the block, she headed up around the nearest corner and watched as one neighbor slowly tottered in her direction, with the help of a cane, and she assumed his home had to be fairly close to Mike’s house because he didn’t look very steady on his feet.
She called out a “Hello” to him, but he didn’t so much as look up.
As he approached, he finally looked up, smiled at her, and noted, “Not very many of us out today.”
“No,” she agreed. “I just wanted some fresh air. It’s not so cold right now.”
He tapped his left ear. “You gotta talk to this ear. The other one just doesn’t work.” Then he smiled as she repeated what she had said.
“Not cold to me,” he stated. “But the doc told me, if I ever stopped walking, my heart would give out on me,” he shared, with a chuckle. “So, I force myself out several times a day to get that walk in.”
“That’s interesting, plus good for you,” she said loud enough for his left ear to hear, then gave him a smile.
He shrugged. “Don’t know about interesting, or at least not to anybody but me,” he clarified, with a chuckle. “Still, nobody else looks after you quite the way you look after yourself.”
“That’s the theory anyway,” she pointed out, remembering to speak loudly.
His grin widened, and he nodded appreciatively. “Yes, that is exactly the theory. And what about you? What are you doing around here?”
“Curiosity, I guess. I’m sure you’ve heard about all the ruckus going on over here.”
“I know they took a woman out of that house just yesterday,” he shared, staring up that way. “So, yeah, I don’t think morbid curiosity ever did anybody any good, but it certainly seems to bring out the looky-loos.”
She picked up on a note of disapproval in his tone. “I actually spoke with the woman this morning.”
“Oh?” He brightened. “How is she doing? I hope she won’t have any long-lasting effects.”
“Did you know her?”
“I don’t even know who they took away,” he said, with a shrug. “I tend to stay fairly close to home, and, outside of my walks a few blocks around, plus doing essential errands, like doctor appointments, I don’t get out beyond that.”
“So, you don’t know your neighbors at all?”
He shook his head. “Not the way most people would assume I would know them, no,” he replied. “However, I can’t imagine that they’re all that great.”
“Why is that?” she asked, frowning. When he tapped his left ear, she repeated her question.
“Seem to be involved in things all the time.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “That always makes us suspicious, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not really the suspicious type, but they’re hardly friendly, and they surely aren’t the kind of people who I would have over for a cup of tea.”
She smiled appreciatively at that. “No, I get it.” Mugs took that moment to walk over and nudge the older man. “I’m so sorry,” she muttered, as he teetered on his feet. “Mugs, you behave yourself.”
The old guy smiled down at her dog. “He’s just introducing himself to me. I would be more than happy to pet this guy,” he offered, “and he looks like an absolute charmer, but bending down isn’t the easiest for me anymore.”
“He’s always happy to get attention and then tends to think that everybody just wants to give him more and more.”
“As he should,” the old man declared, with a bright tone. “It’s always a good thing to have animals around. I miss mine terribly, but there’s no point in getting new ones when I’m as old as I am.”
“Well, it depends on how soon you’re planning on croaking.”
He looked at her in surprise and then burst out into laughter.
“Oh my, that is very refreshing. So many people dance around the issue, as if they don’t want to even bring up the subject of death.
Can’t say I’ve ever been the kind to be too worried about dying,” he shared, his smile widening.
“On the other hand, we never really know when the maker will call, do we?”
“No, we sure don’t,” she agreed. “I guess you haven’t seen a whole lot of the goings-on around here, huh?”
“Are you asking for a particular purpose?”
She nodded. “Yes, because I’m helping with the case.”
“Are you really though?” He was looking at the animals on the ground near him. Then Thaddeus poked his head out from where he’d been tucked up inside the scarf around Doreen’s neck, announcing, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
The old man gasped and nodded. “I know who you are.”
“Oh dear,” Doreen muttered. “You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”
But he was beaming. “No, no, not a bad thing at all,” he cried out in delight. “I just never thought I would ever see you in my corner of the woods.”
“Well, wherever the trouble, apparently it finds me, so I could turn up in any corner of town.”
At that, he nodded. “Yet I didn’t think of it as trouble before.
Outside of the fact that he and his girlfriend were coming and going at odd times, day and night, this neighborhood is a pretty quiet place.
However, these last few months have definitely gotten a little busier. More people, more stuff.”
“And when you say, stuff, what does that mean?” she asked him loudly—in the direction of his left ear.
“They’ve got a big garage around the back of the house,” he explained, “and they started moving a bunch of stuff out of it here a few days back. I always wondered if they were skipping out of town on the rent or something,” he suggested.
“But it happened a lot, so I then wondered if they were stealing. If so, they have moved their stash to another location.”
“And that could be because somebody got wind of what they were doing,” she offered.
“Certainly. It’s always that way,” he muttered. “That’s okay with me. As long as they stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of theirs.”
“Probably smart, but, other than the girlfriend who was around, you didn’t see or hear anything else?”
“No, just other guys coming around. … I don’t really have a whole lot to do with them.”
She nodded. “And what about the woman who was found there?”
“I didn’t see her, going in or coming out. Just random guys back and forth. I don’t know what the connection is or what they’re up to,” he shared, with a shrug, “and there was one girl for a while, and then I hadn’t seen her for a bit. Then, all of a sudden, she popped back up again.”
Doreen thought it so fascinating that somebody who supposedly didn’t keep track of anything going on in the neighborhood had as much information as he did.
“She was pretty cute, so maybe that’s why I noticed,” he quipped, with a grin. “We’re never too old to look.”
“Absolutely not,” she noted, with a bright smile. “And do you know who this girlfriend is?”
“The same one he’s always had,” the old man said, with a shrug. “It just seemed she was kind of there and not there, then there and not there.”
“Right,” she muttered. “How about this woman?” She pulled out a picture of Birdie. “Did you ever see her around here?”
He looked at it and nodded. “That’s Birdie.” She eyed him in surprise, and he nodded. “I used to spend some time down at the casino. Birdie was there a lot.” He rolled his eyes. “Like … a lot.”
“She passed away last night,” she told him.
“Oh dear.” He frowned, then thought about it and nodded. “As long as she went happy, I guess that’s the most we can hope for.”
“It’s possible,” she replied, “but they’re looking at it as a suspicious death.”
He stared at her in shock. “Oh that’s not good. I mean, when we get to be our age, everybody should just let us die on our own, without having to deal with something like that,” he muttered. “It’s not as if we have much in the way of defenses.”
“She was drugged,” Doreen added, sounding casual.
He tilted his head. “We can make all the assumptions we want, but then the autopsy is done, and it was something completely different.”
She laughed, not correcting him. “I’ve seen that happen a time or two.”
“Of course. And now, if you’ll excuse me. I need to head back in before I fall over.”
“Of course. Let me walk you back to your door.”