Chapter 31
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Doreen woke in the middle of the night with a real sense of disquiet. Not understanding why, but with her instincts getting her up, she grabbed her robe, headed to her closed bedroom door, and listened intently.
Mugs was with her, as she looked down at him. “You don’t seem to be bothered, but I sure am.” And she didn’t understand that either.
As soon as she opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway, Mugs looked at her, and she nodded, whispering, “Something’s wrong, buddy.”
He immediately went to full attention.
As she crept down the hallway to the staircase, she looked around several times, not sure what was setting off her internal alarms. Just as she was about to head down the stairs, she heard one of the doors behind her open.
And there, fully dressed, was Annabel. Doreen stared at her in shock, but Mugs raced over to say hi.
Annabel bent to cuddle him.
Doreen stiffened, automatically hiding her phone in her hand behind her back.
Annabel laughed. “It was really good that you brought him to the house when you found me,” she said. “And even better that I had a few minutes to spend time with him.”
Doreen called Mugs to her side. He looked at her in confusion but stepped back. Then Doreen saw the small handgun that Annabel held. “Oh, good Lord,” Doreen exclaimed. “I didn’t see this coming because I’ve been so tired.”
“Is that what you’ll tell people?” Annabel asked, with a note of amusement.
“Yeah, it’s been an especially crazy few weeks for me.”
“People say stuff like that all the time, but you’re on a whole new level of crazy.”
Doreen looked down at Mugs, at her side now, but Goliath got her attention, who was sitting on the other side of Annabel, yet at a distance. Doreen stared at Annabel and said, “You may have made friends with Mugs, but I don’t think you would have made friends with all three of them.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Annabel argued, waving her gun. “A cat won’t be an issue, and neither is a bird,” she stated, with a laugh. “That you even think that’s a thing is enough to make me smile because you can’t possibly be that stupid. Can you?”
Doreen stiffened at that. As she glared at Annabel, the woman chuckled.
“I see that you really don’t like being called stupid, but I get it. Nobody does. But stupid is as stupid does.” She snorted.
Doreen nodded. “Meaning that you were playing at being Devon’s girlfriend but not by choice. Let me guess. More so you could get information for your real boyfriend, the lovely person who tied you up? Mike Howard is a real piece of work.”
Annabel glared at her.
Doreen asked, “Or am I wrong?”
“Of course you’re wrong,” she declared, “but then you’ve been wrong about a lot on this one.”
“Have I?” Doreen asked in a nonchalant tone, her finger fumbling to hit Record on her phone. “Sorry to have let you down. As I told you, I’m a little tired.”
“That’s just an excuse,” Annabel snapped. “Incompetence is just so prevalent these days.”
Doreen stared at her in surprise. “Right, so not only do I not understand what’s going on, but you’re obviously way smarter than I am?”
“Absolutely,” Annabel declared with a snort.
“And, most of the time, that is the case. Now Mike Howard? He was much more my style, but he has done so many drugs over the years that he just ended up being … not all there,” she explained.
“So I couldn’t really stick around with somebody like that.
Yet I also needed someone to live with, so Devon was a much better choice. ”
“Right, so you were his girlfriend as long as he was getting the house?”
“The house was in his name. I did that research already,” she shared, “so I don’t waste my time if nothing is in it for me.”
“Right, and did you tell your ex-boyfriend about it?”
“I did initially because we planned to use Devon. I would marry him, then divorce him, and take the house. I didn’t have to kill him. That didn’t work in my mind. I didn’t want to risk doing time for something like that.”
“No, of course not,” Doreen noted. “It’s foolish to take anything to that extreme.”
“Sure,” she replied, but she didn’t seem to be listening to Doreen at all.
Doreen watched as Goliath walked closer and then sat down, right behind Annabel.
Annabel turned, looked at the cat behind her, and snorted. “See? Even this one wants to be friends.”
“They’re good animals,” Doreen stated. “They just want love.”
“That’s all any of us wants,” Annabel declared, but so much bitterness filled her tone that Doreen knew something else was in there.
“And so Mike, your real boyfriend, broke up with you?”
“Yes. He didn’t like the fact that I was looking to get married and to settle down.”
“But were you though?” Doreen asked curiously. “Because maybe Devon realized what your true motives were, and he didn’t want to get caught up in something like that either.”
Annabel stared at her, then shrugged. “Maybe, but I’ll blame that stupid old Birdie for that one.”
“Ah, you might blame Birdie, but that’s not fair either.”
“I don’t care if it’s fair or not. That woman was a menace.”
Doreen smiled. “I can agree with that. Apparently she spent a lot of her time ruining other people’s lives.”
“Yeah, and Devon was absolutely insane over everything she was doing. Yet they were two peas in a pod.”
“And you know that because you used to gamble with them.”
“And that’s how I know how much money they used to blow all the time. It made me absolutely crazy. The fact that he was as old as he was and still blowing money like that was just so … wrong.”
“Maybe,” Doreen conceded, with a smile. “However, it was his money and his life.”
“Yeah, his money, his life, and such a waste. Other people could do better things with that much money.”
“So, what then? You just drugged him to get rid of him?”
She stared at her in surprise. “That’s the thing. I didn’t.”
At that, Doreen nodded. “Of course not. You went back to your ex, told him about the house, how it would be empty, and how they were already in so much trouble with the loan sharks and all.”
“Pretty easy to clear up because Mike’s on good terms with the loan sharks,” she shared, with a smile.
“So, he talked with the loan sharks, and they decided to clean out Devon’s house and get at least something out of it, but, when they were there, …
Devon came home. He was in a winning scenario, so he was happy and alive.
When he got inside, they took the money from him.
Things just went from bad to worse. One of the guys clipped him lightly, and he went down.
At that point, they were milling around, wondering what they would do next, but Devon had already seen them all and knew what they were doing. ”
Doreen nodded. It made a sad kind of sense.
“The big guy himself, the boss of the loan sharks, was there that night, and he doesn’t normally go anywhere in public, not wanting to be seen.
He had my ex take Devon outside and fill him full of drugs.
If he lived, he lived, but, if he died, even better.
Even if he lived, he wouldn’t remember anything because of the drugs, and, if he died, well, problem solved. ”
“Right.” Doreen shook her head. “So, why the heck are you involved in all this?”
“Well, there’s still that house,” she stated, with a smile. “And I’m trying to figure out how to get it.”
“Ah, the house,” Doreen noted.
“Yeah, I’ve spent a lifetime without a house,” Annabel admitted, disgust in her tone.
“And here Devon had one, and he didn’t even look after it,” she said, glaring at her.
“All these people just … have so much money, and it was just dropped in their laps. They don’t do anything to deserve it, and I’m tired of everybody else getting everything and me getting nothing. ”
“So, you decided to take matters into your own hands.”
“I didn’t take anything into my own hands.”
“Yes, you did,” Doreen argued. “You knew where Birdie was.”
“Sure, I talked to her multiple times. She didn’t like me.”
“No, but she also understood you.”
“No, she didn’t,” Annabel countered, with a wave of her hand.
“Ah, so if she really understood you, she would have realized how much danger she was in.”
Annabel gave her a flat smile. “Now you’re just fishing.”
“No, I’m not fishing,” Doreen corrected. “I’m just really sad for Birdie. I don’t know if you got the same loan shark or boyfriend to take care of her or what, but you were behind it all. Still, I don’t quite understand why you had to kill Birdie.”
She stared at her. “Mostly because I realized she owned the house. She was supposed to sign it over to me. I even had the paperwork all ready, but …”
“But what?” Doreen asked curiously.
“She refused to sign it. Birdie kept saying no.”
“Ah, that makes sense. But then, when I talked to her, she didn’t remember anything.”
“Some really good drugs are out there,” Annabel noted, “and, most of the time, they don’t even remember what happened. So, when she returned to the old folks’ home, it was pretty easy to just give her the drugs. It’s liquid, you just put it into her drink, and it’s done.”
“So, a different drug than her grandson was given?”
“Of course. Otherwise it would look like it was the same person.”
“And that would have gotten you off the hook,” she pointed out, “because they would have assumed the same person had done both.”
Annabel frowned. “I was trying to make it look more like she’d done something on her own, like an overdose.”
“And yet, depending on what drug you used,” Doreen noted, “it wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, hopefully, she didn’t get a chance to say anything in the meantime.”
“She was at the hospital for some time before she passed.”
“Well, that’s too bad, but she probably didn’t remember anything at all.”
Doreen nodded. “No, she didn’t. But she was concerned about what would happen to the property she owned and wanted it to help those in need.”
“Oh, she would do that too. All she had to do was give it to me.”
“Sure, she could have, but why would she? She wasn’t known for being that kind of a person.”