Chapter 21
?
After Doreen ended the call, she looked down at Mugs. “I don’t know why I thought Daniel was a friend, but he has certainly become much more of an enemy.”
“We don’t know exactly what he is at this time,” Mack declared. “Let’s see where the evidence takes us.”
“He wasn’t doing his job,” she stated. “I would hate to think that he’s part of this too.”
“The problem was,” Nick said, looking at her, “Daniel focused solely on the money angle. He probably thinks every rich person is scamming the system. And, when you have cash bonds, anybody and everybody is interested because it’s not something that anybody declares.
It’s literally cash. They can take it and run.
They don’t have to sell expensive items, and not everybody has Scott with a network already in place to work on getting you the best price for all these things.
Regardless, Daniel was hyper-focused on the money, in whatever form. ”
“And don’t forget that Christie’s takes a large percentage as well,” she reminded him.
“Of course. That’s how the world works.”
Very quickly they had the animals loaded up, and Mack drove them to the nearby park.
“We could have walked,” she muttered. “I didn’t realize it was so close.”
“Sure, but if we need to get dog food and packing boxes while we’re out, it’s best that we have a vehicle.”
At the park she got out and saw no signs to keep the animals out of the park, although she found a sign that had been knocked down and beaten up by somebody who must not have liked the Keep Dogs Leashed message.
Taking a chance, she let Mugs off his leash and let him run.
He ran and ran, doing zoomies all around the park, making her laugh.
Thaddeus flew down to the ground, strutting around, exploring the new surroundings, and Goliath was already in the middle of the flower garden.
She looked over at Mack. “This was a really good idea.”
He smiled and nodded. “I think Mugs was feeling as tired and as restless as we were.”
“No wonder,” she noted, “it’s been a pretty full day.”
“Day?” he quipped.
She sighed. “Day seven here in Vancouver. One full week,” she corrected. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He smiled. “The same as the rest of us, we’re just taking it one day at a time and hoping to get through each one,” he shared. “It’s all good.”
“Are you sure? You’re not upset about the money, are you?”
Mack shrugged, then began, “I had no idea, no concept of anybody with that … much … money. I realize your grandmother is well off, sharing generously with you. Your good friend Bernard is well off and seems to be a good guy with good intentions. But Mathew’s level of rich, wealthy, whatever, just defies a label.
It doesn’t seem possible. It certainly doesn’t seem real.
And to have this … glut of Mathew’s assets growing, almost by the hour, right in front of me, was taxing, to say the least. My brain deals with facts, but this?
Taxing as it is, I worry about money changing people, changing us.
I don’t want that. After all, we both saw what Mathew had become.
Was he always like this before he got so rich?
I don’t know. Yet I’ve known you for not quite a year.
Never have I seen any greed in you. Even when you didn’t have money for food, you still were working these cold cases for free, never asking for money.
So, no, I’m not worried that this money will change you—or me when we marry, as I benefit from all this coming to you.
As Nan pointed out, it would be foolish to worry.
You’ll turn it into investment money and then give it away to good causes you care about. ”
“True, but that has to wait until somebody makes sure I don’t give it all away, so I don’t ever have to worry about money again,” she stated. “I honestly think that’s the best answer.”
Seeing the grin on her face, he smiled.
“I know that look. That’s your happy look. What are you thinking?” she asked him.
“I am thinking that it would probably piss off Mathew the most.”
She laughed. “If we’re considering Mathew’s feelings, it probably really would.”
Mack added, “And I’m all for it.”
She smiled at him. “He is dead and gone, so he can’t return and hurt me or others anymore.”
“That’s a good thing,” Mack declared, “because I’ve never been so tempted to hurt a man as I am that one.”
“Somebody already did the job for you,” she reminded him, as if he could forget.
“And somebody else may be very upset at not getting a piece of the pie. Somebody who probably has been inside this house and may have overheard something about Mathew’s stashes.
Whether they thought they deserved it or were just prepared to take it, regardless,” she explained, “I can’t imagine it has to do with anything else but greed. ”
She was quiet for a moment, then burst out with a confession. “I didn’t even realize there was such thing as bags full of cash,” she said, with a snort. “That’s obscene, but that’s so Mathew.”
“It seems … he had an awful lot of problems.”
She smiled at him. “Hang on a second. Am I hearing a hint of some sympathy for him?”
“No,” he declared, “but it doesn’t hurt to understand him better.”
“As long as you realize he’s not an enemy anymore. He’s dead and gone.”
“And that,” he stated, as he looped an arm around her shoulders, tucked her up closer, and gave her a kiss on the cheek, “is another reason why I don’t care so much about his money.
He abused you, treated you badly, didn’t love and respect you.
So I can understand how you could transfer those feelings toward him onto his assets.
However, if he were still around, it would be a different story for me. ”
She patted his cheek. “And the good news is that he’s not around.
We don’t have to worry about him anymore, and our life is completely different now.
If you wanted to, you could retire,” she suggested.
When he frowned at her, she shrugged. “As it’s been pointed out to me, a ton of money is here.
I don’t think we would have to work again, … not ever.”
He gazed at her, and his lips twitched. He added, “We might not have to, but I would want to.”
“And would you want to do it just because you’re worried about what somebody might say about being a kept man?” she asked, finally voicing a worry that had been plaguing her.
He shook his head. “It’s your money, and I’m confident you will spend it wisely. However, I don’t need you taking care of me financially or any such thing,” he shared. “So, take that right out of your mind.”
She smiled at him. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. I just … I didn’t want you to back away from me because of the money or because of what others might say.”
“Nope,” he said. “I was willing to take you on poor, so I think I should be willing to take you on when rich.”
She smirked. “Yeah, and just think, at least this way, if I never learn to cook, we can always hire one if you don’t want to. I mean, you say rich, but I think now it might be more like … filthy rich.”
“God help us,” he muttered. “And no hiring of a cook is needed. That just will not happen.”
“Good,” she admitted. “I really don’t want people in my house all the time.”
“It wasn’t your house though, not here, and that was the problem. Mathew never gave you a chance for that mansion to be your house. It was always only his.”
She nodded. “That’s a good way to look at it too,” she muttered.
“You two didn’t share much.”
“Ya think? You did see how only one chair was in that man cave.”
Mack sighed. “Believe me that I understand a whole lot more about him now, after seeing his house and realizing to what degree he was all about himself. That man was one selfish jerk,” he noted. “The best thing you ever did was leave.”
“Even if I didn’t leave on my own?” she asked, eyeing him sadly.
“Does that bother you?” he asked. “Thinking that you were supposed to leave before it got to that point?”
“I probably was supposed to leave before it got to that, and the good news is that he did kick me out, and it did help me get to where I am today,” she shared, now deep in thought. “Without it, … well, I don’t know where I would be.”
“I think you would have come to your senses eventually,” he suggested, “and it doesn’t matter because that stage of your life is over. There is no more worrying about Mathew, not for you or for me.”
“Good.” She studied him for a brief moment. “Did you ever give any thought to psychics?”
He frowned at her. “No. … Why?”
“It’s just that sometimes I get the feeling that he’s around.”
“Mathew?” he asked, turning to her in astonishment.
She shrugged. “Yeah, Mathew.”
“And how much of that,” he began hesitantly, “is because you’re back in Vancouver, back in his house?”
She smiled. “I like the way you say, his house.”
“No way that was ever your house,” he declared, “and you may have lived there, but it wasn’t anything that you were a part of, and he made that very clear.”
She smiled. “I hadn’t considered it in that way.
” She called for Mugs, who was roaming a little too far off the pathway for her to be comfortable.
When he raced back and collapsed on the ground beside her, she bent down and cuddled him.
“Obviously you are enjoying this run,” she muttered.
Then Thaddeus flew up to her shoulder. She stroked his feathers as he seemed happy to stay here for now. “You okay, Thaddeus?”
“Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here,” he squawked. She had to smile at that.
Goliath joined her soon afterward, and she looked back at Mack. “Thank you for thinking of this.”
“I should have done it before,” he noted. “We were all feeling pretty penned in. Amazing how that works in a mansion the size of a small planet.”
She nodded. “I just … Is it wrong that I just want to go home?”
“I can’t see that it’s wrong,” he stated, laughing, “because I want to leave too.”