Chapter 21
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Doreen went back to Mack, and he asked her, “Any luck?”
“No, none at all.”
He smiled. “But you went down a pathway, came to a dead end, and that’s okay too. Cross off one theory on your list.”
“Jillian told me that Alice’s husband had come in with somebody else that night. Yet Alice told Jillian and Barry to go stay in another room, while she dealt with them. And she brought them tea and again told them to sit there and to do nothing until she came to give them the all clear.”
“Seriously?”
Doreen nodded. “Which is why I was thinking maybe the aunt drugged the tea and all, but Jillian says that they weren’t drugged, that they were perfectly capable of getting up and working—after they took a nap because they were really tired, which seems odd to me.
But she did say that she told you guys about the visit of Alice’s husband and that he was one scary dude. ”
He smiled. “Yeah, we have heard that about Alice’s husband,” he confirmed, “but just because he’s big and scary and angry doesn’t mean he killed anybody.”
“Maybe not,” Doreen acknowledged, “but I still can’t quite see that many killers are here.”
“I don’t know about how many you’ve already decided are or are not here,” he quipped, “but two deaths could easily be two killers.”
“Could be,” she agreed, “but it doesn’t feel right.” He looked over at her and waited patiently. She finally raised both hands. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe not, but, as we get more answers, … it will.”
“That’s the trouble. … I’m not getting answers.”
“Yes, you are,” he declared, with a nod. “Remember how you go down a pathway, and you go as far as you can, and, if it doesn’t pan out, you discard that one. Then you keep working the other angles until you find more information.”
She smiled at him. “You really do have a lot of patience, don’t you?”
“Sometimes I need it,” he shared, looking over at her with a grin on his face.
“And sometimes—please don’t take this the wrong way—but it’s nice to see you flail around a little bit, instead of making us all look like we’re completely crazy and half incompetent, the way you usually do as you miraculously solve one case after another. ”
She snorted. “You just had to say that, didn’t you?”
He walked over, leaned down, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and whispered, “Believe me when I say, that mind of yours is absolutely brilliant.”
“I don’t know about that,” she muttered, “as I am feeling totally stumped.”
“No, you’re not,” he argued, looking her in the eye. “You just don’t know what direction to go next.”
“Isn’t that the same as feeling stumped?” she asked, with laughter.
“It absolutely is not,” he pointed out. “It’s just a chance to regroup in your head.”
“Oh, and I thought that meant stumped.”
He shook his head. “I get it. For you, it’s all semantics, but really it’s just a chance for you to sort things out and to ask yourself, If it wasn’t that way, then what way could it be?”
“I would say, if we’re walking away from the whole cooler theory and the drugging theory, which is very convoluted, … but, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
“It is very convoluted.”
She glared at him. “Thanks for that.”
“Hey, it was an option.”
“So, what’s your other option?”
“The other option is that they knew the person who came into the kitchen.”
“Have you interviewed all the other people who work here?” she asked.
“There are two waitresses, both of whom have been here for many years, and they both finished their shifts that night. They were picked up by their partners, and both had alibis for the rest of the night.”
Doreen’s shoulders slumped, and she nodded. “Okay, so we’re back to her.”
“Who’s her?”
“The owner, Alice.”
He stared at her. “That means we have two killers then. But what possible reason or motive could there be for Alice to murder Barry?”
“That’s the real problem I have right now,” she conceded, shaking her head. “I’m stuck at that point.”
“If you can come up with something about that, then you may get some answers. But Barry was killed, not Jillian, which screws up any motives relating to inheritance and that sort of thing.”
“Right,” she muttered. “That is a whole different story.”
“It is, and, if it was a case of mistaken identity, an angle you seem to like very much,” he noted, “you also have to remember that the killer could easily have taken out Jillian while she was in the hallway, instead of just knocking her out. So, instead of mistaken identity, he would have just killed an extra person he didn’t intend on killing. ”
She frowned and nodded. “I guess that’s also possible, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Mack declared, “and quite likely. If that’s what happened, … why would they have left Jillian alive?”
“Only if something interrupted the killer, but then he could have just come back to kill her. We don’t know how long Jillian was unconscious in that hallway.”
Mack frowned, shaking his head. “So, you’re talking about the inheritance angle, right? But that means the entire Burgon family needs to die. So, again, why wouldn’t the killer come back and take out Jillian?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s my sticking point.”
“And there is always a sticking point,” he muttered. “So, you just keep chipping away at it until something comes loose.”
She smiled. “Thank you. Is that Detective 101?”
He laughed, put an arm around her shoulders, and added, “Kind of. I’m done here. Do you need more time?”
“Nope,” she muttered, as she looked around. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Mack quipped. “It doesn’t feel very self-explanatory to me.” He gazed around the room one last time. “Let’s get going. I think your animals have been on their best behavior for long enough.”
She nodded, smiling down at them. “Where to?”
“I thought you wanted to go get some food.”
“I do,” she said. “A bunch of restaurants are around here, so, as long as nobody else gets killed in these other restaurants, we can assume it’s a problem localized to just this one, right?”
He frowned at her. “We hadn’t considered that anybody else’s restaurant might be involved, but—”
“I know.” She groaned. “It’s always about the buts with you.”
He grinned. “For this case, at this moment, it could be a competing business. It could be somebody who had absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant industry, or it could be somebody who literally just … didn’t like her.”
“Didn’t like who? Jillian or Alice?”
“Either—or both for that matter.”
“But then why kill Barry?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “We’re still working on that.”
She frowned, then nodded. “Okay, I get it. … Did the uncle ever work in this restaurant?”
“I have no idea, but which uncle are you talking about?” he asked.
“Zev,” she replied, as she pulled out her phone.
“At this rate, they’ll stop answering your calls,” Mack said, with a chuckle.
She winced but nodded. “They probably will, but I still have to ask them questions as they arise.”
When she called back, the uncle snapped, “Haven’t you bothered us enough?”
“Maybe so, and I am sorry, but, if I don’t get answers as the questions come up, it’s hard to work our way through all the potential theories to get to the bottom of this.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled. “What possible question could you ask now?”
“I was wondering if you ever worked at the restaurant.”
“Every once in a while, yes, when I was younger. I did that back home for a while.”
“Back home?” she asked, in a sharp tone.
“Yes, in Alberta.”
“Hang on a minute, are you saying your sister, Jillian’s mother, or your sister Alice had a restaurant in Alberta?”
“Yes, we’ve been in the restaurant business for a very long time. Why is that a surprise?”
“I don’t recall anybody mentioning that.”
“What difference does it make? Every family has something that they gravitate toward,” he stated, “and ours was the restaurant.”
“So, a little mom-and-pop diner or what?”
“Alice’s was definitely bigger than that,” he replied. “She was fairly successful at it, but, then again, she also had more money to get there.”
“More money? How did she manage that?”
“Our parents invested money in four restaurants and gave each of us one to run. Depending on how everybody handled their own place, depending on whether they came out doing okay or not, we each had a try at running a restaurant. So Alice did better and ended up with more money than most of us.”
“So, your sister Alice, when still in Alberta …”
“Yes?” he snapped. “Waiting for a question here.”
“She was doing okay then?”
“It was before COVID, so she didn’t have the same challenges in Alberta that she had here.
Regardless, both of my sisters were more adept at running a restaurant, while the brothers, both Danny and I, weren’t so interested in that, and it showed,” he explained.
“But I don’t know what the restaurant part has to do with anything. ”
“Maybe nothing, but was anybody not getting any money they thought they should have gotten from the original wills, when the others were getting restaurants?”
“It’s not an inheritance. It’s not as if we each got a restaurant when our parents died.
It was our life, our family business to have now, while our parents were still alive and well.
The four of us kids getting those restaurants didn’t all happen on the same day or anything,” he added in exasperation.
“This was over a period of many years—usually when each of us reached the age of twenty.”
“Right,” she noted. “So, did anybody think they should have gotten money doled out to them—or a restaurant—but didn’t get something?”
“I’m sure there was the odd circumstance, probably,” he suggested, his voice stiffening, “but that really didn’t come into play.”
“So, you say,” she noted, “but someone always feels cheated in these things, leaving me to ask you, who would that have been in this case?”
“If there were such a person, I’m sure that some people would say that person would be me.”