Chapter 7
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As soon as Nick and Daniel left, Goliath appeared from nowhere to wind around her legs. Then Thaddeus poked his head out, rubbing his beak against her cheek. She reached up and stroked his head. Mack studied her and asked, “You seem to have a problem with him. Want to explain?”
“It’s funny,” she began. “When we had met before in my other lifetime here—and I don’t remember in what capacity—but my ex knew Daniel. I also knew him as a young and sweet guy back then.” She frowned as she thought about that. “Is he allowed to work on a case if he knows the victim?”
“Yes,” Mack told her, “just as I worked on some cases where I knew the victim as well. As long as the victim is not family, it’s all good.”
She nodded. “I’m not trying to cause any problems,” she murmured, “but I just get the feeling that I went from being an old acquaintance to a suspect.”
“No,” Mack argued, “you were always a suspect. When first on the scene, there will be some doubts.”
She groaned. “Fine. I’m a suspect, whatever.” She looked over at Scott and asked, “Shall we proceed?”
“I’ve already got somebody coming in from the airport,” he shared.
“Right, good.”
And, before long, multiple people arrived, Mugs alerting everyone with his frantic barking.
So she was busy, going from one room to another to guide people throughout the house.
Packers came in behind them, and, in an efficient way that she had never seen before, Scott was already organizing the shipments of a lot of the furniture and was in major discussions about the paintings now.
When he rejoined her, he explained, “The paintings will take a little bit. I must get the proper transport for them.”
“Now that you’ve had a closer look at all of them, are they in good shape?”
“They absolutely are. Mathew did look after everything well.” She nodded, as Scott went on.
“These possessions were more than just things to him. For many collectors, they are status symbols, somehow replacing something they didn’t have within themselves,” he explained.
“Very few collectors do so because they absolutely love the artwork. They’re collectors because of the value they represent. ”
“And that would have been Mathew too,” she agreed.
Scott asked her, “Is it cathartic being here, or painful?”
“In a way, it’s cathartic,” she shared, with a small smile. “It’s also helping me to understand who he was.”
“And maybe that’s good—or not,” he told her, with a smile. “You seem to have landed on your feet very, very well.”
“If you’re talking financially, yes,” she agreed. “That would be a mild way to put it.”
They went on to discuss the paintings, arranging time frames and the logistics of getting them moved properly.
Doreen asked Scott, “What about the status on the furniture?”
He looked at his watch and nodded. “I have a particular specialist coming in for just that, and he should be here in about twenty minutes. As I mentioned, they’ll be coming in all day.”
And he was true to his word. They came one after the other.
As they each surveyed all the furniture individually, Mack trailed beside Doreen as she did her own individual inspection of each piece of furniture.
She murmured to Mack, “I don’t know why, but, probably because of Nan, I feel as if we need to check every piece. ”
His eyebrows shot up, and he eyed her in question.
“Just for, … you know, hidden treasure.”
“Oh no,” he muttered, as he looked around. “That’s an awful lot to check.”
“Yes, and I am not sure of another way to address this.”
Scott looked over at her and asked, “Is there a problem?”
“I just feel we need to check for hidden treasures in every one of these pieces.”
At that, he studied her with interest and asked, “Was your husband in the habit of hiding things?”
She snorted. “Absolutely. We’ve already found some of his hidden safes and one hidden drawer,” she shared, “but I know there was more.”
“I do love hidden drawers,” Scott replied in absolute delight.
“I think there’s more than one in the desk in his office.”
“I could take a look,” Soctt offered. “I certainly have seen an awful lot of desks with hidden drawers.”
She led the way to the office, and Scott sighed happily as he stared at the desk. Then he turned to her and asked, “Are you okay to sell this one?”
“Sure, but I have to empty it and deal with the contents first,” she noted. He nodded, his gaze fixated on the desk. She laughed and said, “Go for it.”
Mack frowned at her, obviously worried that Daniel would not approve of this. She smirked. “Can you check in on the detective?” He nodded and quickly disappeared.
She stayed with Scott while he went through the desk with a fine-tooth comb. Disappointed, he straightened up and shook his head. “Are you sure a hidden drawer is in here?”
“I’m pretty sure there are two. We found the one with the gun in it and some related paperwork. The reason I think there is another one is because Mathew told me a long time ago that the one was almost a camouflage for the other.”
At that, Scott’s face lit up, and he went back around to the other side and pulled out the secret drawer Nick and Mack had found earlier. With that out of the way, he checked deeper inside, and, sure enough, a second drawer opened up. “And there you go,” he exclaimed, with a happy crow of delight.
She walked around to see paperwork upon paperwork. “Now, this is interesting,” she muttered.
“You don’t know what this could be?” Scott asked.
“No, of course not,” she declared. She opened up the paperwork, but she didn’t understand it.
Scott raised his eyebrows when he glanced at the docs over her shoulder.
When Mack returned, she handed the stack over to him and asked, “Do you recognize what these are?”
He looked at them, and his face paled.
She noticed right away. “Uh-oh, not good news?”
“For you,” he replied. “I mean, … technically these could represent very good news. We’ll have to get Nick in here.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“Cash bonds, bearer bonds, plus some original stock certificates.”
She stared at them and then nodded. “Mathew always talked about having a getaway bag or a getaway fund—like the large sum of cash hidden away in the toilet tank.”
“This would be one hell of a getaway fund,” he noted, pointing to the paperwork, shaking his head.
Scott grimaced as he looked over at him. “It takes a bit to get used to, doesn’t it?”
“More than a little bit,” Mack clarified. “I never really considered how different it would be to have large sums of money. Yet, every time I turn around, she keeps falling into more and more.”
“Oh, I love that phrase,” Scott said, truly fascinated as he stared at him. “Falls into fits because that’s really what she’s doing. If she believes in all that stuff about manifesting and whatnot, I would have to say she’s doing one heck of a job.”
“I would say she is too,” Mack countered as he turned to her. She just silently shrugged. He noted, “Whatever she is doing is certainly working.”
“I’m hardly doing anything,” she muttered. “This was all Mathew. He was always so very paranoid.”
“And do you know why?” Mack asked her.
“Not specifically,” she replied, “but I would guess an awful lot of people were probably very unhappy with him.”
“You’re thinking about the Pete Singer, our dead man buried in the greenhouse?”
“Yes, and I’m afraid that poor man was probably killed because of something that Mathew did.”
After hearing that, Scott jumped when his phone buzzed.
He checked it and smiled. “We’ve got more people on the road,” he told Doreen.
“I’ve also got trucks coming.” When she frowned at him, he shrugged.
“We really need to get moving what has been packed to date. As we all know, an awful lot of stuff is here.”
“And what are you moving first?” she asked him.
“The bedroom furniture.”
“Which one? Mack and I will get a head start, checking to see if anything’s hidden.”
“Oh, that’s a good point,” Scott noted, eyeing her anxiously. “You told me that you wanted me to get started, and I didn’t even consider that, not until you just brought it up today.”
“That’s understandable, but this is, … well, not a normal situation.”
“That’s an understatement.” Mack chortled.
Ignoring him, she turned back to Scott. “Just give us a few minutes, and hopefully we can clear a couple bedrooms. So confirm with us before they’re okayed to pack stuff. Which bedrooms are being done today?”
“I was hoping to get all the guest bedrooms done today.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Then we need to get moving.”
With that, they roped in Nick to help them. Gathering the animals, Doreen and Mack and Nick all raced up to the second floor, checking the guest bedrooms, starting with all the bedding, all the drawers, and everywhere else they could think to look for secret places.
In the first bedroom they found nothing. In the second bedroom they found nothing. In the third bedroom they found nothing.
Nick asked her, “Are you sure there’s a point to this?” She just shrugged and continued her search.
In the fourth guest bedroom, she found a safe behind the wall.
“Oh no,” Nick muttered. “Any idea what’s in there?”
“Nope,” she replied, staring at it. “And I don’t know where we’ll find the code.”
“We can always get somebody in to crack the safe,” Mack interjected, “but, if we can do without that, it would be better. Right, Nick?”
Nick agreed.
She didn’t say anything more but went to work on the rest of the room. By the time they were more or less done, she looked around and muttered, “It still feels as if we’re missing something here.”
The two men frowned at her. Mack asked, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly. … I don’t know how to explain it. Yet, if Mathew put a safe in this room, then it should be an important room to him.”
“But the safe could be empty, as he had the other safes as well,” Mack pointed out.
She considered that and then nodded. “That’s a valid point.”
“Thank you,” he quipped, taking a mock bow.