Chapter 10
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Doreen thought long and hard for the rest of the afternoon about the artist and his wife and their response to her visit.
Obviously the wife hadn’t been happy once she realized who Doreen was and had tried to stop her husband from completing the job.
The problem was, it was also obvious that they needed the money.
Doreen didn’t know just what was pissing off his wife, but something was and it seemed to be something that she was quite prepared to make Doreen’s life difficult over—as well as her husband’s life.
If he was any good—something Doreen was still worrying about—then it was obvious that he could make some decent money as an artist.
Although this was a small town, and he would need further exposure to the wider world, it could very well be a godsend for him to get that exposure and to get out there for some name recognition.
He could potentially make some decent money.
She didn’t know if he wanted to enter that rat race, but who knows?
Maybe he did. It depended on whether his art was a passion and enough so to do what he loved and to ignore all the rest.
Doreen got home and immediately made a pot of tea and sat down to wade her way through the research into the Burgon family.
The trouble was, she couldn’t blame the couple’s behavior.
Obviously an awful lot of family stuff was going on and was now surfacing to the public at large and involved plenty of family history.
So they weren’t necessarily to blame for any of that—and certainly not for the recent events.
Doreen could see that Danny and his wife hadn’t had an easy time of it.
Of course that just made her even more curious as to just what was going on.
If she had had any easy answers, she would have done something about it already.
Then again, there were never easy answers in this cold case stuff.
In fact, so much of the time, it seemed as if there were no good answers at all.
With that thought, she sorted out as many of the family lines as she could.
When Nan called later, still in a fussy state, Doreen made a sudden decision.
“Hey, why don’t I come down, and we’ll have tea? ”
“Good,” Nan muttered. “I could use a visit. Is something going on?”
“No, nothing’s really going on,” Doreen replied. “I’m just a little bit frustrated.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Come on down. Let’s have tea, and maybe it will shift the mood,” she muttered. “Getting old is not for sissies.”
Doreen winced because she couldn’t argue with that.
She could only hope that she made it to old age in as good a physical and mental state as Nan had.
Yet Doreen had no guarantees on that either.
She packed up the animals, who were a little bit sluggish about going anywhere, until they realized that she was heading down the backyard to the river.
And then there was no holding them back.
They raced along, dragging her with them.
Doreen gasped, as she finally reached the patio to Nan’s place. The animals jumped onto her little patio and then directly through the open sliding door. Doreen followed them, finding her grandmother. “Apparently everybody needed to come see you,” Doreen muttered, still gasping.
Nan laughed at that, her mood lightening. “At least they’re happy to see me.”
“What’s the problem?” Doreen asked, eyeing her grandmother sharply.
Nan shrugged. “Just every once in a while, you have a fight with some of the people around here, and things don’t go so well. Then you find yourself wondering if you’re really where you should be or if it would be better to be off doing something else.”
That sounded serious enough that Doreen stopped and stared at her.
“Don’t worry about it, child,” Nan replied, waving her hands. “I get like this every once in a while.”
“I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of fun.”
“No, it isn’t fun, but that’s what happens when you have people in your life.
Sometimes you want to do things without people, and sometimes you want to do things with people.
Yet then you have to sort out which people, and that’s tedious and time-consuming,” she shared. “Still, it’s not your problem.”
Doreen chuckled. “It might not be my problem, but it sure sounds as if it’s somebody’s problem.”
“Yeah, … mine,” she muttered, with an eye roll. “They want me to determine all the entertainment that we should be doing over the next while. But why me?” she asked. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Did you tell them that you didn’t want to do it?”
“Sure, I told them, but they didn’t listen.”
“And did you get yourself in trouble for having criticized the schedule after somebody else had already done it?”
At that, Nan shot her a look, which revealed so much that Doreen had to hide her smile. “In which case,” she added, “I’m sure they figured that you thought you knew better. Therefore, you should make up the schedule and have everybody else argue with you.”
Nan harrumphed at her granddaughter and didn’t say anything. Doreen waited but knew better than to push it.
“I might have mentioned something,” Nan conceded, “but really, who could blame me? … The whole dratted schedule was stupid.”
Doreen nodded again. “But, if it was stupid,” Doreen nudged, “then you should have a better idea of what to do.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to though,” she wailed and then pouted.
“Why not?” Doreen asked. “That sounds perfect for you. You get to have control and to order everybody around at the same time.”
Nan frowned at her and then snickered. “I do like ordering people around.”
Doreen smiled. “I know you do, so maybe you can reconsider. This might be a good thing for you.”
“Hmm.”
Nan didn’t appear to be thinking about reconsidering at all.
But Doreen also knew that, if she let it be a little bit longer, Nan would succumb to the temptation of making everybody else’s plans and making everybody else’s life happen on Nan’s time schedule.
And Nan would enjoy it. Yet maybe times have changed for her.
Maybe she didn’t want to engage with others anymore.
Doreen shook her head. It was awfully hard to know from one day to the next.
“So, why don’t you tell me what you’ve got going?” Nan asked.
Knowing that she couldn’t even mention the painter, Doreen shrugged. “I don’t have a whole lot still. We’ve got a family from Alberta. We’ve got two separate murders here—in the same kitchen, no less—and I don’t have much in the way of answers yet.”
Nan studied her. “Surely you’ve been doing something.”
Doreen winced because she couldn’t say anything about that. “I have been doing a lot of research, but none of it has been fruitful.”
Nan backed off. “I’m sorry, child. I’m not trying to make it sound as if you aren’t doing anything.”
“You did quite successfully make it sound as if I’m not doing anything,” Doreen quipped, followed by a laugh.
“But the difference is, I’m still working the case.
I’m just … not necessarily getting anywhere.
And that is always a challenge, especially early on,” she muttered.
“I just feel as if all these people have all these answers, but nobody wants to say anything.”
“And we haven’t found anybody in this home or the other home who’s connected, right?” Nan asked.
“No, none that I can find,” she stated ruefully.
“And everybody who seems to be connected appears to be dead?” Nan had stated this with such relish that Doreen frowned at her. Nan shrugged. “Sometimes dead is not a bad place to be.”
Doreen winced. “And you could be right. I just really hope that dead isn’t a place you’re planning on going anytime soon.”
“Good Lord, no,” Nan declared, looking at her. “However, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it if some other people choose to go.”
“Ooh, you really are having a tough day.”
“No,” she clarified, “I’m just wallowing in being miserable. I brought it on myself, and now I don’t really know what to do about it.”
“Are we still talking about the schedule?”
“Of course we are,” she snapped, looking at her sideways. “What else could we be talking about?”
Doreen studied her grandmother’s face for a long moment and asked, “Did you and Richie have a fight?”
Nan glared at her. “Now why would you say that?”
“Because there’s very little in life that upsets you more than when you’re on the outs with your friends.”
Nan’s shoulders slumped. “He’s the one who told me to take over the job.”
“Ah, so it was his job beforehand?”
“Sure, but it was stupid.”
“If it’s stupid, then you need to take it over and do a better job.
Otherwise, maybe you should apologize to him for whatever you said.
” At that, Nan reared up, but Doreen shook her head.
“No, you and I both know that sometimes we just need to suck it up and to not make a big deal out of everything.”
At that, Nan stared at her. “When did you get to be so wise?”
“I would say from you, but you would probably just laugh it off and say that it couldn’t possibly be.”
“True,” she admitted, arching her brows, “and you have become very wise. I just didn’t realize how much you have managed to make things happen in your world, and here I’m stuck, trying to make things happen in mine and not getting anywhere.”
That was such an odd thing for her to say that Doreen faced her and asked, “Is something else going on here that I don’t know about?”
“No, no, no.” Nan gave another wave of her hand. “I’m just fussing.”
“I know, but it’s also not normal for you to be fussing—which means something’s upsetting you.”
“Doesn’t matter if it is or not. And it’s still just the same old thing.”
“Then it seems you need to sit down, make up a schedule, and take it over to Richie, involve him in it, and see if he agrees that some of these suggestions might be better.”
“You mean the two of us do it together?” Nan asked.
Doreen smiled. “Sometimes the best way to get people on your side is to involve them in the process,” she noted, “particularly if you’ve put some noses out of joint when you stated your viewpoints.”
Nan snorted. “Of course I put noses out of place,” she declared, “and I think that’s what I do best.”
“You certainly know how to do it. But I don’t know if you do it the best, or if the best is even what you want to do,” Doreen clarified, as she eyed Nan. “You didn’t used to be terribly abrasive.”
“Yes, I did,” she spat. “You just never saw it because you love me.”
Doreen smiled. “And I still love you,” she said. “However, if you and Richie are on the outs, you know that you won’t feel better until you make up.”
She snorted. “I don’t know about that,” she snapped, waving both hands now. “I’m certainly not ready yet.”
“Then take your time,” Doreen said, holding back her smile. “But remember that there is only so much time, and you don’t want him to just not wake up one morning, especially if you haven’t had a chance to clear the air.”
“I’m not apologizing.”
“I didn’t say you should. Yet the bigger person, the one who apologizes, does the best.”
“I’m still not apologizing.”
“Nope, I know. I heard you,” Doreen replied, still holding back a smile.
Nan shook her head. “You’re making too much out of this.”
“Of course I am,” Doreen conceded. At that, Nan just glared at her. Doreen smiled. “And maybe you aren’t making enough out of it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it. You’re in a good position, in good health, and you’re a whole lot younger than he is. So, maybe he’s finding things a little taxing these days. If so, your comment may have made him feel a little old and useless,” she explained. “You know how that feels.”
Nan’s shoulders slumped yet again. “That’s not fair.”
“And why not?” Doreen asked.
“It’s just not, and of course he’s feeling that way. We … we all feel that way.”
“So why would you want to add to how bad he feels by piling on or letting him continue to feel that way?”
Nan sighed. “You can’t just fix everything because you want things to go your way.”
“And you can’t just have everything go your way either,” Doreen noted.
Nan stared at her. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that. In the meantime, are we having tea or not?” Nan was obviously struggling, so Doreen replied, “I guess that means we aren’t having tea. Nan, I was happy to come out for the walk and for a visit, but, if you need some space and time, that’s okay too.”
“No, I don’t,” she grumbled. “I really did need to see you.”
“In that case, let’s make a pot of tea, sit down, and we’ll have a conversation about something completely unrelated.”
“Good,” she muttered. “I was really hoping you had something on the case to keep me busy.”
“Did you know any of the family here locally?”
“No, I sure didn’t,” she replied. “I would have told you if I did. Seems as if I don’t know anybody anymore. They’ve all changed and grown. The town seems different now.”
“The town is, indeed, different now,” Doreen confirmed. “It’s not the way it was so many years ago, and that’s what happens. Life goes on, and everyone … moves on.”
“I don’t like it.”
At that, Doreen burst out laughing, and Nan glared at her for a moment, then a reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “It’s good to hear you laugh,” Nan said.
“It’s good to laugh,” Doreen agreed. “I didn’t have a whole lot of that in my world before.”
“I know, and that’s one of the reasons I enjoy seeing you around Mack. He makes you smile, and that’s incredibly important.”