Chapter 14
?
Doreen sat down for a cup of tea the next day, and Nan video-called her. Doreen stared at her beloved grandmother’s face and sighed. “I wish I was home.”
“I wish you were too,” she said, with a kind smile. “We are missing out on all the excitement.”
“I guess in a way you are, but it’s not all that much fun, considering we now have had two deaths on the property.”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to call this morning,” Nan began. “We do have some information on him.”
She asked, “On whom?”
“On the dead man. The second one. Butch Weldon.”
Doreen stared at her. “Wow. That’s fast. Mack only gave you the photo yesterday.”
She laughed. “Yes. I was so pleased when Mack sent us a photo. I guess he doesn’t totally trust the local authorities either. He did tell me that we weren’t to go through proper channels, so we contacted Chester. He ran it through the database, and Butch has a record,” she declared proudly.
“Oh my,” Doreen muttered, and then she laughed. “It was a really smart idea to contact Chester. I’m surprised you didn’t contact Darren.”
“We wanted to but didn’t because we don’t want to get him in trouble. Chester didn’t seem to think that he would get in trouble for anything, so it wasn’t an issue.”
“It might well have gotten him into trouble, but, as it is, thank you. So, Butch has a record then. What can you tell me about him?”
“I just sent you the file. Chester gave us a full rundown,” she stated. “Since Mack wanted us to be acting on our own accord, I did tell Chester that I was acting on your behalf and that you had such terrible reception in that monster house of yours down there that we needed his help.”
“Oh my.” She started to laugh. “I can almost see him wanting to believe that enough to help out.”
“He absolutely did help out,” Nan confirmed, chuckling. “But Mack can’t get mad at him. Remind him how he gave me the photo. No matter, you may have to fix it.”
She opened the file and began reading it. “So, Butch was only let out of jail a few months ago,” Doreen noted. “Yeah, he told me how his ma wasn’t doing too well. So he lied about that for sure.”
Nan continued. “And we asked for a list of his cellmates. Now this part,” she said, raising a hand in excitement, “we’re really proud of.”
“Can’t wait to hear it, Nan.”
“Maisie phoned the prison, and eventually she spoke to Butch’s last cellmate, before Butch was sprung.”
“Oh my,” Doreen stared at Nan in shock. “And what did Maisie find out?” Doreen asked.
“Butch was coming back to get something owed to him. And he apparently told his last cellmate he would get it, … no matter what.”
“He did get something,” she muttered, “but not what he expected.”
“Right, since he’s dead now,” Nan agreed. “However, Butch had a former cellmate buddy, and that guy was also released not very long after Butch got out. This guy, Sam, had been friends with him in prison.”
“And how did you find out about him?”
“We talked to the security guard and to the prison administration, asking if anybody there had been friendly with Butch. The admin office didn’t know about friends, but the guard mentioned how Butch had shared a cell with Sam at some point, and they’d seemed friendly enough.”
“Amazing,” Doreen muttered, “and you realize that guard probably wasn’t allowed to talk to you.”
“The thing was, Maisie played ditzy, supposedly not understanding half the questions the intake guy asked, so he probably just got frustrated and put her through to that guard, who was easily duped by her as well. You know how she gets, like she’s getting ready for a part in some play.”
“Now that sounds exactly like Maisie,” Doreen noted, shaking her head.
“Anyway, you are probably looking for this other guy, Sam, who said he would join Butch. They were both sure a lot of money was in that big house.”
“But where did they hear that? Butch said he had met with Mathew inside the house many months ago. But still? It’s not that Mathew would have given Butch a tour of all the hidey-holes with his running money.
So, yes, there is definitely a lot of money in the big house,” Doreen confirmed, “and we still haven’t gotten to a bank to put it away safely. ”
“You need to do that soon,” Nan urged in a loud tone. “You do not want to be sleeping where all that money is.”
Doreen ended the call the phone, turned to Mack, standing right behind her. She smiled at him. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Most of it, not all though,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“Will Chester get in trouble?”
He shook his head. “No, I sent the photo because of Daniel freezing me out of his investigation, which made me question whether I could fully trust Detective Clark—even Captain Hawkins,” he admitted. “It’s been incredibly frustrating not being in on the local investigation.”
Doreen smiled. “Now you know how I feel.”
He rolled his eyes at that. “And your new friend Clark hasn’t been willing to share much of anything.”
“No, of course not,” she confirmed, “especially when you and I are looking to be really good suspects even to the latest detective on these cases.”
“Which is complete and total bull-crap.”
“Of course it is,” she declared. “You and I both know that, but he’s trying to close a case. I hope he’s at least better at investigating than Daniel was. I don’t think the facts were really on Daniel’s mind too much.”
He smiled at her. “I want to trust and believe in law enforcement, as least in Captain Hawkins, as Daniel clearly had his own agenda.”
“Finally you owned up to it. You didn’t trust Daniel either. However, mostly because of you, I will trust that Captain Hawkins is honest and open-minded.”
Mack looked over at her, a big grin on his face. “I’m really glad to hear that. So, what all did Nan say exactly?”
“You may have heard the bulk of it,” she began, “but, as far as she’s concerned, our supposed caretaker, Butch, had a partner, Sam, both cellmates for a while.
So that partner is likely nearby with a key to the garage apartment, for all that does for them.
It doesn’t get them into this main house.
Regardless, Butch had a key, so maybe he copied one to give to Sam.
And, if Sam heard about the bags of money inside the main house,” she theorized, “then I’m sure he’s still eager to look for them. ”
“But,” Mack pointed out, “they can’t get in the house. Not without a key to one of these doors. Not with all of us here. Not with the cops here almost every day too.”
“Right,” she agreed, “unless somebody got inside, dressed as a mover, an EMT, a … cop.” She shared a glance with Mack, who seemed to agree with her.
“This place is big enough that I’m not sure anybody ever has to leave the house for fear of being found,” Mack added. “In that same vein, somebody could be hiding in this mansion. It’s big enough, for sure. So somebody could be in the house now.”
“I don’t think so because Mugs never barked, unless at Daniel,” she noted. “It happened before though.”
“What happened before?” Mack asked her.
“Someone hiding in this mansion. Mathew hired somebody, didn’t like their performance, fired them, but they were still in the house days later, and my husband didn’t know because they’d been hiding.”
Mack frowned. “Odd, but it could happen. Our dead guy, Pete Singer, was found in the greenhouse, which is directly connected to the main house. Maybe he’s related to Sam or Butch or just another jailbird set free.
Maybe he was scouting out the place, until the other two were both out of prison.
Still, we now know Butch killed Pete. So who killed Butch? ”
“Sam, maybe. That would make a lot of sense to me, not having to share the loot,” she suggested. “Will you bring it up with Detective Clark or with Captain Hawkins?”
Mack sighed. “We’ll make sure the Vancouver police solve these murders correctly on their end. Otherwise we will always seem to be a part of this.”
Doreen noted, “But we are a part of it, in a way, just not the murdering part. I wasn’t expecting to have to defend myself. Every time Daniel was here, he got more aggressive with me than the last time.”
“And,” Mack added, “he never offered the professional courtesies that I got from other departments. At least Detective Clark isn’t like that.”
“I noticed,” she muttered.
“Let me talk to my captain and see if we can coordinate our departments and get Pete’s fingerprints run against any recently released inmates.”
“Other than the killer, there may still be a third person, an informant or silent partner or whatever,” she pointed out. “One who told Sam and Butch about what’s in Mathew’s house.”
“And that could have been another disgruntled employee, another criminal, a friend or a cousin to said ex-employee or criminal, or just somebody with some connection to this house, like repairmen or cleaners or painters or whatnot.”
“Goodness, that’s a pretty large pool.”
“So, for a start, we’ll need employment records of those hired by Mathew and then get it cross-referenced with our dead criminals and any cellmates and such,” he suggested, thinking out loud.
She beamed at him. “Now that’s the Mack I’m used to.”
He snorted. “This Mack has been a little overwhelmed by the size of the job here just to gut this house for sale, much less the size of this house and the cash money we found, … with more money popping up every time I turn around.”
“Which also goes along with the criminal activity scene that Mathew was involved in because, for almost anybody, if they knew cash bonds were here, literally anyone could have grabbed those.”
“Which is also why I’m surprised that previous employees didn’t.”
“Maybe they did,” she pointed out. “We know what we’ve found but not what we haven’t, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah, good point. Is it just me or is the simply getting rid of the house job here getting bigger and more complicated by the day?”