Chapter 23
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Doreen and Mack approached Nancy’s address that they’d gotten from the probate attorney’s files regarding Mathew’s former employees.
Doreen looked around at the area and sighed.
“This apartment building and its surroundings certainly have seen better days. No wonder she was majorly hoping for something out of Mathew’s will. ”
“Yep. And she has no record, at least not under Nancy Singer. But, on the plus side, Mathew’s list of former employees was short.
I’ve got Darren running them through the department’s database, since we expect Mathew to hire criminals.
Once Darren reports back to me, we’ll know what else to put on our to-do list.”
The neighborhood was rundown, so anybody who lived here was probably chronically short of cash.
As they parked, Mack looked around hesitantly, and she asked, “Are you afraid it won’t be safe here?”
“It’s definitely that kind of a neighborhood,” he muttered.
“Let’s go see if she’s home. If not, it’ll be a fast trip.”
“Good, because it’s not my home turf. I don’t know anyone here, and I’m not familiar with the area. I don’t have backup.”
As they drove around trying to find a place to park, she gasped, then grabbed his hand. “Look.”
He stopped and asked, “What? Look at what?”
“There.”
Right in front of them, a block away, was Daniel, only he wasn’t in a cop car. He was in a private unmarked vehicle.
“Now that is interesting,” Mack whispered beside her.
“What do you want to bet that he knows exactly who Nancy is?”
“We don’t know anything just yet,” Mack noted. “It could be that he’s just doing some investigation, as we are.”
“But he’s in a personal vehicle,” she commented.
“As am I.”
She frowned and nodded. “Fine. Maybe it isn’t a suspicious visit.”
“No,” Mack noted, “maybe it isn’t.”
“Or you could let him see you, and then we’ll watch for his reaction,” Doreen suggested, keeping an eye on the wayward detective.
Mack offered, “Or we go talk to Nancy first, and then we see what his and her reactions are.”
“Good point,” she muttered.
He sighed.
“I know. I know,” she grumbled, raising a hand. “You’re way better at this than I am.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” he noted. “You certainly have made us look like idiots back home.”
“Ouch,” she murmured. “You know I don’t try to, right?”
He muttered, “That makes it even worse.”
He quickly parked, and they unloaded the animals. She walked up to the main entryway for the apartment building, still looking around. “It really is a struggling area, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he muttered.
As they walked closer, she kept glancing around.
“Problems?” he asked.
“It’s just a little unnerving.”
“Is it you affecting Mugs or Mugs affecting you?”
Mack was holding the dog’s leash, and Mugs was acting in the exact same way as Doreen was. The dog was alert, glancing around at each of the apartment buildings.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but something feels … off somehow.”
“I don’t know if it’s off as much as odd.”
“Odd works,” she replied.
The main entrance was not guarded, not locked, and required no code to get inside. So they stepped inside and took the stairs. When they found the right apartment, she knocked on the door. When no answer came, she knocked again, harder. The door popped open, but no one was there.
“Ah, darn,” she whispered, looking over at Mack.
He nodded, his face grim. “You stay here.” Leaving her outside with the animals, he stepped inside, then immediately yelled to Doreen, “Call for the cops and an ambulance. She’s still alive.”
Doreen immediately pulled out her phone and called, giving the address. Then she stepped near the open doorway and asked, “Can we come in?”
“No,” he yelled, “you stay there. Do not come inside. You and the animals need to stay out there. Did you call for an ambulance?”
“Yes.” She looked at him as he stepped back. “How bad is it?
“Looks to be a drug overdose, but I don’t know for sure.”
So they waited, but it wasn’t very long before the ambulance showed up. The EMTs took charge, and, when she turned around, an official-looking man in a suit stared at the two of them. Probably a Vancouver detective.
She pointed to Mack. “He’ll explain.”
Mack snorted, but he pulled out his ID and explained who they were first. The officer pulled out his badge as well, which Mack regarded.
When the officer wanted to know what they were doing here, she gave an explanation but knew it was a little garbled because he didn’t have any of the backstory.
The officer stared at her. “So, you’re interfering in an investigation?”
“No,” she stated. “I’m trying to figure out what happened, and this person, Nancy, was apparently employed by my late husband and had contacted Mathew’s probate lawyer to see if she was in the will,” she explained.
“So, I wanted to meet with her personally and see why she had that expectation. Considering the fact that I’ve had threatening notes left on my doorstep, I wanted to know if it was her, wanted to find out if my husband had done something wrong. ”
“Why go there at all if he’s passed on?” the officer asked suspiciously.
“To consider a wrongdoing? To right a wrong? My late husband was not a nice person,” she shared, “and I wanted to know if Nancy had been wronged.”
The detective frowned, unsure whether he believed her or not, so he looked to Mack, who just nodded.
“I know it sounds convoluted, but it is, indeed, the truth.”
“And you can always talk to your colleague,” she suggested.
“Detective Daniel Sherwood.” He looked at her in surprise, so she added, “He just left here a few minutes before us. We saw him drive away.” When he stared at her for a long moment, she pulled out her phone and displayed a clear picture of Daniel driving off.
“I didn’t know you took that,” Mack noted.
“Yeah, I wanted you to notify Daniel that we were here, but he was already pulling away, so I just snapped the picture,” she explained.
“Surely you’re not thinking he had something to do with this?” the detective asked her.
“I have no idea, but, if he got the same information we did, then I presume he was here to talk to Nancy Singer, or whatever her last name may be now. Maybe I’ll give him a pass and assume the door didn’t pop open when he knocked, getting here before us,” she shared.
“But the door did pop open for us, and definitely nobody else was here except Nancy.”
The detective didn’t say anything, just took notes.
She groaned, turned to Mack, and asked, “Why don’t you call Daniel now?”
“Yeah, I can do that.” He pulled out his phone and contacted Daniel, who sounded snappy and short-tempered.
“Now what do you want?” he bellowed.
“Well,” Mack began, glancing over at Detective Davis nearby, “were you following up on the woman who had contacted the probate lawyer about being in the Mathew’s will?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped, still sounding brusque. “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I was.”
Mack didn’t have the call on Speaker, yet Daniel was practically yelling. Therefore, all three of them on the other end heard Daniel clearly. “So, you weren’t at Nancy’s place today?”
“No, I wasn’t,” he spat in an aggrieved tone. “What are you doing questioning me?”
“We waved at you, but apparently you didn’t see us.”
“When?” he asked, his voice suddenly sour but very, very quiet.
“When you drove away from her apartment just now,” Doreen interjected.
In an ugly tone of voice, he snapped at her, “Are you following me now? Because I will rain down so much trouble in your life, you have no idea.”
In shock, Detective Davis listened to Daniel railing at them, staring at the phone in Mack’s hand.
Doreen explained, “We weren’t following you, Daniel.
You can rest easy on that. We came to talk to Nancy, and the door opened when we knocked.
The poor woman was down and in desperate need of medical attention,” she told him.
“So, considering that you were here too, we wondered what your role in all this was.”
When Detective Davis glared at her sharply, she shrugged.
She continued. “Daniel, we saw you. I even took a picture. So, did you have something to do with this poor woman’s condition?”
“Good God,” he yelled. “Why are you questioning me?”
Doreen snorted. “Detective Davis is here, overhearing this conversation with all your yelling going on, so, if not me questioning you, Daniel, you can bet someone from your own department will be questioning you soon enough.”
“They only have your word,” Daniel retorted in a surly tone.
“No, that’s not true. I just took a very clear photo of you in this very neighborhood with my phone camera, so it’s got the time and date stamp on it.”
Daniel’s tone turned surly as he cussed a long streak of threatening words.
Detective Davis took the phone, further identified himself, and told Daniel to report to the station for questioning within the next two hours. She heard Daniel protesting, but Davis was strict and didn’t budge.
Handing the phone back to Mack, Davis turned to Doreen and ordered, “Send me that photo right now.” She sent it to the number he gave her. He stared at her and added, “I don’t understand what your role is in all of this.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “Nobody ever really understands my role in these things. I’m used to it.”
Mack sighed beside her.
“And he struggles with me too,” she muttered. “I am sorry. I’m not trying to be a trial, but sometimes …” Mugs barked at her several times. “And, of course, I have Mugs here with me too. He’s quite the little sidekick.”
“Good God,” Detective Davis muttered.
Mack added, “We’ve also been dealing directly with your captain, Captain Hawkins, and Detective Clark.”
“Why is that?” Davis asked.
“We are getting better cooperation out of them.” Davis seemed to get the underlying message.
“When are you guys returning to Kelowna?”