Chapter 8 #2
Doreen refused to listen in. She trusted Mack and his captain. She made coffee, yet warm brewed coffee was already there. Shaking her head, she looked out the window but saw the greenhouse, which just made her even angrier, not less.
Mack wasn’t gone long and soon approached her.
“Uh-oh, I know that expression. Tell me.”
Mack grimaced. “Daniel never called my captain. He’s checking around to see if anybody in the department got a call from Vancouver, checking on my alibi.”
“I knew it. Daniel can’t be trusted.”
Mack added, “Let’s not jump the gun, but this isn’t a good start.”
Doreen snorted. “Speaking of guns, can we find out more about the weapon that killed Pete Singer, if it was registered, some background on Singer? Or do we confront Daniel to his face? I vote that we take on this investigation as our own.”
Mack sighed. “We will wait for confirmation from my captain.”
Doreen nodded. “Then?”
“Then,” Mack added, “maybe it’s time I spoke to his captain.”
“Yes, please,” she whispered, her gaze downcast. “I don’t know what it is about Daniel, but he’s pushing all my buttons,” she muttered, bending down to hug her animals. “Anyway, how did you make out with the garage?”
He shrugged. “That is an incredible hoard of cars down there, and I still can’t envision why anybody would own them all.”
“That’s the thing. Mathew didn’t even drive them.
Maybe it was because he wrecked that first McLaren.
If you have one that you love, and you want to drive it all the time, or even on certain occasions, I get that.
Yet to have all those vehicles that you never, ever drive makes no sense to me at all.
I mean, aren’t you supposed to recharge the engine or whatever by driving each car for ten minutes or so a week or whatever? ”
Mack chuckled. “Some things with Mathew never really add up.”
At that, Mugs barked at her several times. “I know, buddy. I get it. Shall we go out to the garden and forget about this for a while?”
So, with Mack in tow, the three of them stepped out into the backyard. Mugs immediately raced around the yard.
She looked around and asked, “Where’s Goliath? He was just with us.”
“I have no idea,” Mack replied. “And where’s Thaddeus?”
“I left him on the roost in the master bedroom, which is just the valet chair,” she shared, scrubbing her face.
“Are you okay, honey?” He massaged the back of her neck.
“It’s all been more exhausting than I thought,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have come down here.”
“Oh, you definitely should have,” he corrected, still massaging her neck. “You’re finding all kinds of stuff.”
“Yes, but some of it? … I’m not sure I wanted to find.”
Just then the captain returned Mack’s call. “Captain?” Mack answered, then listened intently for less than a minute.
Doreen stared at him and knew immediately. “Daniel never called anyone, did he?”
Mack grimaced and nodded. “You call Nan and prod her memories on Daniel. Meanwhile, I will call Daniel’s captain, asking for some professional courtesies from him in lieu of Daniel’s inaction on this investigation.”
Nick joined them, asking, “Did you tell him?”
“No, I didn’t.”
At that, Mack handed Nick the paperwork they’d found earlier in the second secret drawer in Mathew’s office. Nick read over the paperwork, while she told Mack about what she and Nick had found in the one guest bedroom with the safe in it.
He stared at her. “Duffel bags of cash?” he whispered.
She nodded. “Yeah, I filled duffel bags with cash. So, maybe I could ask for your help later.”
“And what help would that be?” Mack asked, staring down at her.
She shrugged. “Charities that need help.”
He asked her, “Is that all the cash means to you?”
“Of course. It means more charities get help,” she replied, staring at him. “What else will I do with it all?”
A smile started at the corner of his mouth, and, by the time it was fully developed, it had crossed his entire face. He was smiling at her in a way she’d really never seen before.
“That makes you happy?” she asked in a questioning tone.
“It makes me very happy,” he whispered. “I have to admit it’s a little daunting to think that you could have all this, and now … you do have all this. Yet you seem happy enough to … just be with me.”
She stared at him. “I’m totally happy to be with you,” she declared.
“None of this means anything to me, not now, not before. Even worse, it’s Mathew’s money, and I wonder how he got it.
So please, don’t ever, ever compare the two of you or the cost of his things or the amount of money he hid everywhere.
Everything with Mathew is dirty, tainted. ”
From behind them Nick snorted. “Good thing you said that because I just checked the current stock prices of one of these companies, and it has soared. It’s a social media company, and Mathew has had these stock shares for a very long time,” he muttered.
“You can sell them, get cash,” Nick pointed out.
“Those alone amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
She nodded. “So, we need to go to a bank. We have to close out Mathew’s accounts and put them in my name anyway, right? So we can also deposit all this cash we have found so far. Plus, do whatever with the cash bonds so we get the cash, not somebody else.”
“Do you want to cash it all in, even the stock?” Mack asked her, just to be sure.
“I don’t know. Do I?” she asked. “It seems to be the safest solution, right? Because Nick said these were the same as cash, correct? As for the stocks, I defer to you, Nick.” She turned and looked from one brother to the other.
“Sounds good to me, but, in the meantime, all of these,” Nick said, holding up the paperwork, “need to be in a safe place.”
“Yeah,” she quipped, adding an eye roll. “Along with the duffel bags.”
“Good God.” Nick shook his head. “Just seeing that much cash makes me rethink my life.”
“Not a whole lot of rethinking needed,” she said, as she turned to face him.
“I was just explaining that to Mack. Absolutely nothing in all this matters to me more than people and my animals,” she shared.
“So, if you can help me put together a list of charities that need help, it would mean a lot more to me than anything we found here.”
“Then we’ll set it up as investments,” Nick shared, “so we’re not just handing over straight cash to them. We’ll invest the cash instead, and the interest is what goes to the charities.”
“You must have a reason for that. Why?” Doreen asked.
“Plenty of reasons,” he began, “but, for one thing, you will never run out of money, and, for a second thing, you will always have money to give to the charities.”
She blinked at that and then nodded. “I like that idea.”
He smiled. “I thought you would. But then again, you’ve forgotten that we’d already discussed this option before.”
“I do remember that vaguely.”
Nick turned to his brother and shook his head. “Filling those duffel bags was unbelievable.”
Mack nodded. “And that’s what my life will be like now?”
“We won’t keep coming up with duffel bags,” she clarified, staring at him.
“Are you sure?” Mack asked, giving her a wry smile.
She winced. “No, I’m really not sure, but we’re just fine as we are.”
Together they trouped up to the master bedroom where the duffel bags were stashed in the closet. Mack took one look and whistled as he opened one of the bags. “Good God,” he muttered. “We’ll have to find a way to get all this into the bank … and fast.”
“I know and maybe sort the stuff in the safe deposit boxes too.”
Both men froze.