Chapter 7
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Doreen wasted no time and phoned the niece. When a woman answered, her voice so tired and exhausted, Doreen suspected that Jillian had been crying all night. Doreen winced, then hesitated for a moment before introducing herself.
“Oh, it’s you,” Jillian replied. “I’ve had people tell me how I should contact you and get you to help.”
“I did speak with your uncle,” Doreen confirmed, “and he did want me to look into the case to see if we could do anything to help you.”
“I don’t even know if there’s any reason to worry anymore,” she shared sadly. “My aunt also just died in the restaurant. Thankfully I wasn’t there to see that too. I think I’m quitting. I’ll head back to Alberta.”
“Not if you’re involved in a murder investigation. You likely won’t be allowed to leave the province. I’m not even sure you can leave town.”
“I can’t do it right away anyway, but I can’t say the move here has been a good one.”
“But your family was already here for about ten years, right?”
“Sure, but not for long, not for me,” she clarified. “I did my schooling back in Alberta, but I hated it there and wanted to come back here, so I did. That turned out to be the worst decision ever.”
“And was the chef who passed away also your partner?”
“Yes, we were engaged, planning for a summer wedding. Now we’ll plan a winter funeral instead.”
“I’m sorry,” Doreen whispered. “That’s got to be even harder.”
“It’s always hard, but this just makes no sense. He was the sweetest guy, through and through.”
“Any idea why somebody would want to kill him?”
“No, none at all,” she cried out. “You don’t understand. He’s just not the guy who people kill.”
Doreen wasn’t sure there was a type for getting killed, but, the more Jillian talked, the better potential Doreen had to get more information about everything.
Jillian continued. “He’s one of those guys who brings you flowers and who picks you up after work because you’re tired.
He’s the one who will arrange to have food brought in so you don’t have to cook, just because he knows you’re tired.
He was one of the good guys,” she wailed, tears flowing through her tone.
“You know that saying about only the good die young? I never really understood it until now.”
Doreen sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s a hardship to lose somebody you care for.”
“I thought I would spend the rest of my life with him,” she whispered. “And now? He’s … just gone.”
“And he was stabbed, is that correct?”
“Yes, stabbed, … multiple times.”
Doreen wrote that down on her notepad. “I’m so sorry to ask these questions. I know this is a really tough time to talk to you.”
“The police have done nothing but talk to me,” she muttered, her voice fading with emotional exhaustion. “So not sure your questions will make it any worse.”
“Were you there at the time of your fiancé’s death?”
“Yes, but I got hit from behind and the police seem to think, because there was very little bruising, that I might have just done it myself.”
“Ah, but instead you were knocked out cold, didn’t see what happened, and woke up to find your fiancé dead?”
“Yes,” she whispered, sobbing anew. “And that was a sight I’ll never get out of my head.”
“I’m so sorry,” Doreen whispered back. “Was anybody else working at the time?”
“No, it was just the two of us.”
“Did you keep the doors locked?”
“No, we didn’t worry about it. We had each other, and we did this often.
We were doing prep for some event the next day, where they had booked a couple meeting rooms, and we were catering,” she explained.
“So, it required a little bit of extra prep work, and that was fine. We were happy to come in to do the work.”
“Which is nice of you,” Doreen noted. “Not everybody is happy to do that.”
“No, they aren’t,” she agreed, “but we were both okay to do it. We were working on getting more skills and experience so we could, you know, move up in life,” she shared. “So, it shouldn’t have been a big deal for anybody that we were working there.”
“When you were hit from behind, did you hear anything?”
“No, I didn’t hear a thing,” she wailed, “and that’s also something that’ll haunt me. I still can’t begin to wrap my head around it.”
“Maybe he came rushing to your aid.”
“That doesn’t help me feel any better either,” she replied bitterly.
“Right now I don’t think anything will help you feel better,” Doreen pointed out.
“You’ve lost somebody you cared for, so now it’s all about the what ifs.
What if I’d woken up earlier? What if I had been standing somewhere else in the kitchen?
What if I’d heard something? There will be a long line of what ifs. ”
“Oh, yeah, you’re not kidding,” she quipped, with a mirthless laugh. “That seems to be all I’m asking myself right now.”
“Was there any other way in and out? Would there have been anyone you would have suspected?”
“No, and no,” she replied. “Obviously there was the back door, and that’s how we all came and went, particularly in the evening. The restaurant itself had just closed, and the pub section was still open, but we were in the back prep kitchen which isn’t open to the public.”
“Hang on. … The pub was open?”
“Yeah, the pub part was open, but they were just winding down and like I said that area isn’t open to them.”
“But there could have been any number of people out there still, right?”
“Sure,” she muttered, then stopped. “That’s right. Anybody who knew the restaurant or knew the building layout would have known they could have come straight back there,” she cried out. “And that just means there are any number of suspects.”
“Right,” Doreen agreed.
“Interesting how I hadn’t thought about that,” Jillian noted, her voice gaining in strength.
“Sometimes you need to talk to people just to get a better idea of what could be going on because you don’t think of everything right away,” Doreen pointed out.
“I didn’t think of it at all, and now I have to wonder if I forgot something else … or missed something important.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said, “but that’s not the issue right now. If you do come up with something important, then you need to contact the police.”
“Why not you?” she asked, her tone turning belligerent. “I really don’t want to talk to them anymore, especially that big guy.”
Doreen winced. “Are you talking about Corporal Mack Moreau?”
“I don’t know who he is, but … he’s big, and he grumbled a lot and growled—totally growled. I was terrified.”
“I can understand that being scary and off-putting,” Doreen began, “but that corporal in particular is very good at what he does.”
“Maybe, but, if he thinks I had anything to do with this, he’s barking up the wrong tree. So, the sooner he gets it right, the better off I am,” she stated, but then she started to sob again. “I miss Barry so much.”
“Of course you do,” Doreen muttered. “Nobody wants to go through this.”
“He’s … he was a good man,” she murmured. “A really good man. He didn’t deserve any of this.”
“How old was he?” Doreen asked.
“Twenty-nine. One of the things we were talking about at work was what we would do for his birthday.”
“And when is his birthday?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Did you make plans?”
“No, we were still discussing it, trying to figure out what to do, what would be special,” she muttered, sobbing again. “And instead of having a birthday party, I’ll be burying him,” she muttered.
Doreen couldn’t argue about that. “Let’s hope that, by then, we have answers, and maybe, if nothing else, you can put him to rest.”
Leaving Jillian still sobbing, Doreen ended the call.