Chapter 22
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By the time Doreen and Mack and the animals returned to Mathew’s home again, they had picked up fresh sandwiches from the local deli as well.
Nick grinned when he saw the sandwiches. “At least you’re feeding me,” he muttered. “I forget the time when I’m working. Plus, pickings are slim here, at least for snacking.”
“It’s the least I can do,” she noted, with a chuckle. “How are things going?”
He shrugged. “Can’t really say they’re going great but better than expected,” he muttered.
Doreen added, “We did talk to Nan and came up with some answers in terms of a female, connected to both of our dead guys, plus a cellmate to another criminal named Sam,” she shared.
“She is the sister to Pete Singer and was a girlfriend to Sam and knew Butch too. Plus, she worked here in this house for my ex at some point.” She gave him the name.
“Nancy. Don’t know if her last name is Singer, like her brother, or not. ”
He nodded. “Okay, so that’s a name we need to follow up on.”
“Exactly. And you already know that Detective Clark is trying to get up to speed, taking over for Daniel. So we can go to Captain Hawkins directly, if need be. He is sharing some info with us, but it is usually delayed a couple days. So if you follow up on Nancy too, that would be great,” Doreen suggested.
“Plus, Mathew’s employment records. Any luck there? ”
“I’m hoping Mathew’s probate attorney will come through, but it’s hard to know at this point. I’ve called him three times so far.”
Doreen sighed. “All you can do is ask. Tell him Daniel hasn’t provided that to you. Now with this newest info, Mathew’s employment records could help ID the man and the woman seen at Mathew’s house before we ever got here. How many agree with me that it was probably Pete and Nancy?”
“Too soon to tell, Doreen,” Mack warned her. “Her boyfriend Sam may have been here, for all we know.”
Doreen frowned. “True.”
Nick seemed to agree with both of them. “Right, let’s hope that, if Clark won’t do it, Captain Hawkins will follow up, then fill us in.”
“And that is where the challenge comes in,” Mack replied. “Just because all this is going on, that doesn’t mean Clark or Hawkins will share. Still, Nan has beat Hawkins to the punch, a time or two.” Mack shook his head at that.
“Exactly,” Doreen agreed. “However, if we can get some of these answers ourselves, from Nan or wherever,” she noted, “it won’t matter what Clark does—or does not do.”
“It will matter,” Mack pointed out, “because we’ll still have to deal with him. Trust me. It will matter in the end.”
She winced and nodded. “I do understand that, as much as I don’t really want to. At least Detective Clark doesn’t seem to take sides. Daniel’s point of view was polarizing,” she muttered.
Mack chuckled. “Just do what I do. Ignore people like him.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s a little hard for me because Daniel was always intent on my being found guilty of three murders, maybe four.”
“What three? What four?” Mack asked.
“Pete Singer, Butch Weldon, Mathew, and Robin.”
“Wow,” Nick interjected. “You do have a problem with him—or he has a problem with you. Maybe he’s busy. We are in Vancouver after all. It’s not Kelowna.”
“I keep reminding myself of that,” she admitted, with a sigh. “You and your brother are far more generous than I am.”
Mack laughed and added, “He’s also a fellow colleague, so I was hoping he was on the up-and-up.”
“Until proven differently,” Doreen reminded him. “Yet … I get that. I really do. From your perspective, he’s supposed to be suspicious and focused on just us as his suspects, while being on the up-and-up.”
He rolled his eyes at that. “Thank you. I appreciate that you trust my judgment.”
She groaned. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know,” he replied, “but let’s give the new detective time to do his job. I hope that he eventually does what’s right and that it will all come out fairly soon.”
“And yet we do know how investigations can take forever,” she muttered.
“Sure,” Mack agreed. “They definitely can, and this one is not an open-and-shut case. Plus, we have no real suspects, just some names to check out.”
“Because they’re all dead or hiding somewhere,” she snapped.
“The fact of the matter is, Butch killed Pete—or at least Butch’s gun was used to kill Pete.
Both had access to some portion of Mathew’s property—the attached greenhouse and the garage apartment.
The note taped to the main house delivered a threat, a warning, wanting something from Mathew, maybe.
Then the delivery had two more threats in it, both addressed to Daniel.
So Pete and Butch and maybe Daniel were searching for treasure, hoping they could find it, or were they looking for something very specific and didn’t know where it was? ”
Mack nodded. “I agree with your premise. In this case, most people intent on stealing stuff wouldn’t be here trying to remove fancy heavy furniture or even paintings,” Mack pointed out, “because they wouldn’t necessarily know the value of that.
However, they could surely strip what’s available and what’s easily carried out of here—like TVs and jewels—but they would still need a fence to sell it, if they even found the safes where the jewels were.
Plus, we can’t confirm anything was taken from the main house. ”
“Many of these guys, even those fresh out of prison,” Doreen noted, “could already have a fence available because of their other criminal experience and contacts.”
“Yes, that’s certainly possible,” Mack pointed out. “A lot of other things could be happening too, including involving the actual caretaker, who we have yet to find.”
“I was wondering about that. Even though Butch said he was the caretaker hired by Mathew, we have another caretaker hired by the property management firm who was then told not to come, right?” She turned to Nick.
“You want to call back the probate lawyer, or just call the property management firm directly, and ask either of them for the name of that caretaker? It could have been Pete Singer, since he was the first to die. Also ask the local probate attorney if he knows the woman’s name who thought she would get some of Mathew’s estate. ”
While they stood here, Nick phoned him back.
The lawyer apologized for not getting back to him sooner.
“I’ve been tied up with nonstop probates in court all week.
” He didn’t know anything about the hired caretaker.
He mentioned how the property management firm doesn’t know how he was suddenly fired, after they had just hired him.
Then he told Nick that the woman in question was somebody Mathew had hired at some point in time.
“I have a short list of former employees, including Nancy. I’ll send that text to you in about five minutes. Why are you asking about her?”
“If her name is Nancy, maybe last name Singer, she’s associated with our two dead men.”
“Oh my, really?”
“Yes.”
Doreen tried hard to listen for any deceit in his voice. But it was hard to tell if anything was going on there. She shrugged as she glanced at Mack and Nick, before asking the probate attorney herself, “Can you tell us when Nancy Singer worked for Mathew and in what capacity?”
“Not quite a year ago,” he replied, with no hesitation, “as a secretary. She only lasted a few months.”
“Did he say why he got rid of her?”
“Yes, she was hired in between you leaving the house and Robin moving in. Mathew needed help with a bunch of paperwork, filing, and stuff for him. He was getting a little more organized, and then Robin came along and had a problem with Nancy. She was getting a little too, … shall we say, comfortable in the house. A little too pushy and making the moves on Mathew, but he wasn’t interested. ”
“Ah,” Doreen muttered. “So, in Nancy’s mind, she expected some money coming to her.”
“She probably did think that but had hardly worked long enough to even be a twinkle in Mathew’s eye. Employees remembered in the wills of their bosses are rare in my experience, and, at best, only those with many decades of service.”
“True, but people do have strange expectations. Did you ever get a feeling of disgruntlement from her?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with her except the one inquiry about the will. Robin would be the one with the lowdown on her.” Then he winced and added, “Sorry, I guess that’s not an option.”
“Nope, it sure isn’t,” Doreen said. “Yet we’ll have to ponder that.”
Silence came from the other end.
“Anybody else contact you over the will?” she asked.
“Nope, it’s been pretty calm and quiet, but then again Mathew didn’t have much in the way of friends.”
“Right, and we have received two more threatening notes,” she shared. “Did Mathew ever say that he owed somebody or that he was expected to give somebody something?”
He snorted. “Mathew wasn’t the kind to give anything to anybody.”
“I know that all too well. I just wonder where the threatening notes are coming from.” The two men looked at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, handing out money wasn’t really a thing that he did.”
“No, it wasn’t. I’m not trying to say anything against the guy—he’s dead after all—but any sense of philanthropy was sadly missing,” the probate attorney shared.
Doreen continued. “And you don’t know of anything he owed or anybody he screwed over when it came to the property or to work?”
“No, nothing I know of,” he replied, “and again anybody could make that claim when doing business with Mathew, just hoping to get some of his money. But, for purposes of the probate of his estate, those debts must be proven and then submitted for approval to be paid. I’ve received no such notices nor any inheritance claims from anyone. ”
“What about workmen who did jobs on his various homes in Vancouver? Do you know if all the bills were paid?”
“Nothing’s been done or was commissioned to be done in several years that I know of, so I don’t know what it would be.”