Chapter 3
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Daniel then plunged into a series of questions that they could all answer easily enough. Once he had checked all his boxes, he turned to Doreen. “We’ll have to come into the main house.”
“Even though it was not broken into?” she asked.
He nodded.
Mack stepped in closer, staring him down. “On what grounds?”
“That the murder most likely happened in the house. For all we know, the murderer had a key and got in on their own.”
Mack shook his head. “But the break-in clearly happened in the greenhouse, where the body is buried. However, we’ll walk you around for sure,” Mack noted, “just to alleviate any concerns. As it happens, we haven’t had a chance to get through all of the house yet ourselves.”
“And that is why we came here,” Doreen stated. “Let’s do the walk-through with Daniel, and hopefully I can see if anything is out of sorts.”
“When were you last here?” Daniel asked.
“Over a year ago, and then Robin moved in after I was forced out. So she had been living here in the meantime. I don’t know what changes she may have made that will look different to me.”
“Coming back after all this time must be hard,” he noted, giving her a hard look.
Doreen shrugged, and they got started and walked toward the kitchen.
Goliath now joined Mugs, and both stayed close but out of the way.
Thaddeus snoozed in the fall of her hair.
“It is difficult in some ways, but in other ways it’s very freeing.
This place wasn’t a home as much as it was a cage for me,” she murmured.
“A gilded cage perhaps, but a cage just the same.”
“You never looked very happy whenever I saw you.”
“I didn’t know happiness with Mathew.” Then she laughed.
“I do know happiness now. And you’re right.
I wasn’t very happy back then because this whole place just wasn’t me.
I wasn’t allowed to be myself at all. I was a copy of whatever Mathew wanted me to be,” she shared, with a smile. “That’s all changed now.”
“You definitely seem different,” Daniel conceded, eyeing her thoughtfully.
She nodded. “Freer, happier, more me,” she confirmed, with a bright smile.
“And you think it’s all because of him?” Daniel asked, with a nod toward Mack, who was walking ahead of them.
“A substantial part of it, yes,” she agreed, “but then a large part of it is just because I’ve been free of Mathew.
That was the biggest change in my life when I left Vancouver and moved to Kelowna.
With my grandmother close by, I was reminded about what love really is and what love could do for a person. That has been the best gift ever.”
“You certainly look as if the change has been good for you. You do realize, of course, that, if we’d had anything to do with Mathew’s death investigation, we would have looked at your partner here.”
“You could have looked at him but still found nothing,” she replied. “He’s a moral man, a good man, one who lives by his ethics. Believe me that we were both interrogated over Mathew’s death and Robin’s, particularly since I am the one who found Mathew’s body.”
“You did?” Daniel asked.
She nodded. “That added so much stress to my life at the time. Since they determined I didn’t have anything to do with it, I’ve gotten over that issue.” Daniel eyed Mack suspiciously, and she smiled. “He’s not the bad guy here, Daniel.”
“Maybe not,” he replied, “but I don’t know him.”
“Nope, you don’t. And I guess, for the sake of this investigation, you probably don’t really know me either.”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed, “and that will be something we have to deal with.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
A full tour of the house didn’t find anything amiss per Doreen, and Daniel didn’t find any evidence of a break-in.
Mack confirmed that too. Daniel told her, “As you continue to go through things in more detail, let us know if anything is missing because that could definitely be a connection we didn’t see right away. ”
“Of course.” She didn’t bother saying that she probably wouldn’t know if anything was missing or not, which also made the timing of her visit interesting. Thus, if she couldn’t tell whether or not anything was missing, maybe nobody could tell if something had gone missing before either.
Either way, something was definitely here for her to consider in another light. As soon as Daniel returned to the greenhouse, she looked over at Mack and Nick, both standing at and staring out the window.
“I don’t believe anyone has a key to this house,” Doreen declared. “Seems like a diversion to me.”
Mack considered that. “We did check the inside of the house, all exit doors, even the windows—and there are a lot of windows—and I found no evidence of tampering. I’ll confirm by doing an external search of the residence once Daniel is gone.
I also noted, and didn’t share with him, that the security system seems offline. ”
Doreen grimaced, shaking her head. “Mathew would have it on permanently. Can you find out when it was shut down?”
“Theoretically,” Mack replied. “I’ll give a call to the monitoring people.”
Doreen sighed. “So, do you think we’re off the hook?”
“Nothing to be off the hook about,” Mack declared, turning to smile at her.
“Good, I’m getting hungry though. Thoughts on food?” she asked.
Nick agreed. “I’m starved. Let’s order in?”
Mack concurred. “Sure. That sounds more reasonable than trying to find a place and leaving the animals alone.”
“Also, I don’t want to leave the animals alone in the house while the greenhouse is full of strangers, so ordering in is best.”
Mack turned to her and asked, “What would you like?”
She frowned, then shrugged. “Just food, I’m really not too fussy. We did stop for brunch on the drive down, but we didn’t eat a whole lot there.”
It didn’t take long for them to just order pizza. She laughed. “That would be a first. I don’t think a pizza delivery has ever been made to this house. … I wonder what happened to all the staff that Mathew had,” she muttered, looking over at Nick.
“The local probate attorney dealt with that,” he replied, “and I’m sure they were all given their final paychecks.”
“What are the chances that one of them decided they hadn’t been paid quite enough and, knowing something about what Mathew may or may not have been up to, decided to help themselves?” she asked, turning to view her surroundings.
“I noticed you didn’t tell Daniel that you may or may not have known about anything missing,” Nick pointed out to her.
“That’s because a part of me is not sure what might be missing versus what might not be missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Robin lived here for a few months, right? So there is that. Otherwise I think I just need to be here for a bit while I figure out where things are again and just what Mathew might have done with various bits and pieces.” The two men just stared at her, and she shrugged.
“I know how that sounds, but he was paranoid, so he had other options for where he could have hidden things. I have to walk around and figure it out.”
“You do that,” Mack stated, with a nod, “and, if you think of anything else or of any other secret places, we will help you open things up.” He and his brother chuckled.
She smiled. “You guys are just plain enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“It is interesting. I’ll give you that,” Mack conceded. “I am enjoying being on the outside in an investigation.”
Doreen noted no frustration in his tone and perhaps even a sense of relief that he wasn’t on tap for this one. “It’s also a good thing because you need a holiday.”
He smirked at her. “Because it’s Mathew’s house and Mathew’s headache—but in your name now—we don’t want anything to put us in a bad light, which just ends up causing us trouble,” Mack explained.
“We don’t need all that while we’re here for just a few days, with plenty other issues to take care of. ”
“But we didn’t do anything,” she said.
“No, we didn’t. So, let’s just stay out of everybody’s way, and hopefully they’ll come to that same conclusion.”
“Do you think they’ll make life difficult for us?”
“We weren’t here when the murder happened. The house had been unoccupied for a while, and it got broken into,” he summarized, with a shrug. “Not a whole lot more we can say to that.”
“And chances are, they’re already trying to figure it out,” Nick added.
“Yeah, I would think so,” Mack muttered. “Any detective worth his salt would be on it.”
They watched the forensic guys for a little bit longer, and then Mack turned to her. “Even more reason for us to stay here now. Unless … you have a problem with that.”
“No, I think it’s for the best,” she agreed, “particularly considering we had the break-in. And remember how Jefferson said that a man and a woman were found walking around the property? Maybe casing out the place?”
He nodded. “Exactly what I thought. Maybe the street cams can give us more info. I’ll check with Daniel, see if he’ll share that with us, once we’ve been cleared of murdering the man in the Vidalia bed. Shall we go to the bedrooms and stake out one for each of us?”
“Sure,” she replied, with a shrug.
They grabbed their bags from the front entranceway and headed upstairs. She went to the guest rooms, making assignments to each of them. “These are the nicer bedrooms.”
“You don’t want to sleep in the master?” Nick asked.
She screwed up her face, wrinkled up her nose, and declared, “Nope, I sure don’t, but we should take a closer look at it.”