Chapter 22
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Doreen woke up in the middle of the night and stared around the room. Mugs woke up and sniffed the air, but then he crashed back down again, completely unconcerned.
She relaxed into bed and murmured, “Now that is lovely. I’m so glad nothing is wrong. I don’t know what got me so alert, but it just felt wrong.”
She crashed soon afterward. When she woke up again during her usual morning hours, the case was running through her mind over and over again.
She was missing something, and she knew it, but she didn’t know what.
She got up, grabbed her notepad, and started writing down the bits and pieces that she knew, and the bits and pieces that she didn’t.
Regardless, she still came up with no viable suspect—outside of Alice’s husband.
Then again, the husband had an alibi, according to Mack.
Although he would talk to Randol again, that alibi would probably still hold up.
The fact that she disliked Randol didn’t mean that he didn’t have something to do with his wife’s murder.
Doreen wanted it to be Randol just because he hated animals and had threatened to shoot Mugs.
Doreen always tried to be fair, except when people were killing people and were threatening to kill her animals. Then it wasn’t about fair at all.
Groaning, she made herself some coffee and sat down in the living room with her notepad.
When Nan called her soon afterward, she asked her, “How are you doing, child?”
“Ah, everything on this case is going around in my head but not making sense. My head is spinning.”
“You know what the answer for that is then.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You have to go back to the beginning. Forget all the hypotheses you have come up with. Forget about everything. Go back to the beginning and start fresh, as if you don’t know anything, and I bet you’ll come up with the answers.” And, with that, Nan ended the call.
Doreen stared at her phone. “Easy for you to say, Nan.”
But, in a way, her grandmother was right.
Doreen had gone in multiple convoluted directions but had yet to come up with anything that worked.
So far, nothing made any sense. Basically, she needed to eliminate everybody, and whoever was left had to somehow be the guilty party.
And then it would be up to her at that point to prove it.
Maybe that was an impossibility. She didn’t know, but right now she wasn’t getting anywhere. So why not try Nan’s suggestion?
With Nan’s advice in mind, Doreen went over to her laptop, opened up a blank page, and started with what she knew about the murder of Katie, Jillian’s mother, from ten years ago in Alberta.
Then Doreen followed that up with what she knew about the murder of Barry, Jillian’s fiancé.
And finally she added the murder of Alice, Jillian’s aunt.
Doreen frowned. All were close to Jillian.
With a shake of her head, Doreen went back to the first murder.
As she sat here thinking about it for a long time, writing off why it couldn’t be each one of her usual suspects, Doreen realized, as she got to the end of the page, how she didn’t really have very many choices left for suspects.
And she didn’t know how she’d done it, but somehow the person at the top of her list for Katie was at the top of the list for Barry and again for Alice.
So that one suspect must have been the killer of all three.
But still, Doreen would have to prove it.
No way Mack would just accept what she had to say if she didn’t have something for him to go on, something for him to convince a courtroom and a jury.
And, just in case she was wrong, she went back over her reasons for tossing out every other suspect, and it always came back to this one person.
But what she didn’t have was the motive, and that was troublesome. As she sat here thinking about what she could do to figure it out, Jillian called her.
“Hey,” she greeted Doreen, sniffing. “Any chance you can find out when my fiancé’s body can be released?”
“Sure, I can do that for you, but I’m pretty sure they’ll say it won’t be soon.”
First came silence, and then Jillian groaned. “Of course they will.”
“It really depends on whether or not they have done all the tests they need to do,” Doreen explained. “They will do their best to release him for burial as soon as they can.”
“I hope so,” she muttered. “I’m heading back to Alberta as soon as this nightmare is over.”
“I’m sorry. I understand it’s been a really rough time for you.”
“It’s been more than a rough time. All I do is cry and stare at the walls—oh, and answer your phone calls,” she quipped on a dry note.
“Jillian, sometimes all I can do is ask questions and hope that I shake something loose.”
“Yet you haven’t shaken anything loose in my brain. I’m still confused, exhausted, and don’t understand why anybody would want to murder such a beautiful man as Barry. He was a gentle soul,” she muttered.
“Did you guys set a wedding date?”
“No, we didn’t. We were, you know, waiting to confirm that this was where we wanted to be,” she shared. “Of course, now I wish I had set a date.”
“Of course,” Doreen agreed. “Would you have invited your aunt?”
“Yeah, I would have invited them all. Family was important to me, and it still is.”
“What about your uncle Zev? Would he move back with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what his plans are,” she replied.
“We were really close, and then, when I hooked up with Barry, some of that closeness dissipated, which is normal and natural, I guess. However, when we had so much trouble in Alberta, we decided we needed to go somewhere else. Uncle Zev was the one who opted for Kelowna and suggested that we come along, since my Aunt Alice had the restaurant and would give me and Barry a job, and we could hit the ground running.”
“And that was a really good plan,” Doreen noted.
“I know. I know that. It’s just so hard.”
“I get it,” Doreen said. “Anyway, let me contact the detective and see if we can get an answer for you. Actually I’ll just contact the coroner myself.
Give me a few minutes.” She ended the call and phoned Elizabeth, sharing that she had just spoken to the family and that they were wondering when the body could be released.
“Give me a couple days, maybe even by tomorrow. I’ll contact them directly, so they can make plans for the funeral.”
“I think they’re already deciding on the process.” Doreen spoke with her for a few more minutes.
Then Elizabeth suggested, “Anytime you want to come down and have an in-depth look at what happens in my corner, you are welcome.”
“I would love to,” Doreen exclaimed.
“Really?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yes, I’ve never seen an autopsy, never seen the tools or anything. If nothing else, it might help me sort out some of the problems I have with these cold cases sometimes.”
“I don’t know how it can,” Elizabeth replied, “but we can set it up in a week or two, if you want.”
“Sure,” Doreen said, “maybe when we get back from Vancouver.”
“Vancouver?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to go down and sort out my ex’s houses,” she explained, with a sigh.
“Wow, at least you have houses to sort out.” Elizabeth laughed. “That’s … not a bad way to be left.”
“No, it’s not a bad way,” Doreen conceded. “With most of the murder cases I’ve seen, they’re all about gain, one way or the other. It’s always about power, revenge, or love.”
“Nah, I would say money is the biggest of them all,” Elizabeth countered.
“I’m afraid you’re right.” Doreen sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what this one is about too.”
“Yeah, but they were just broken-down restaurants, right?” Elizabeth asked. “So where’s the money in that?”
Doreen snorted. “And you also know that people would kill each other for a cup of coffee. It’s all about priorities.”
“If it isn’t about money, what else could it be?”
Then it hit her. Doreen sat back and grinned. “Thank you very much, Elizabeth. You may have just solved it.”
“Solved what?” she asked, with lively curiosity.
“Got to go.” With that, Doreen ended the call with Elizabeth.
Doreen shook her head. She wondered if she had really gotten it so wrong right off the bat. She thought maybe she had, but once again she still had to have some answers for it all.
When her phone rang again, she didn’t recognize the number. She sighed, picked up her phone, and answered it. It was Danny Burgon.
“I have the painting nearly done,” he announced. “I think you should come and take a look and see if it’s what you were wanting. I guess I’m worried that you won’t like it.”
“I’ll be happy to come,” she replied in a delighted tone. “Do you want me to bring the animals in case you need more pictures?”
“I would love to see them anyway,” he stated in a mild tone. “So, sure, bring them along. When do you want to come?”
They set up to meet in a couple hours, and Doreen added, “I’m looking forward to it.”
“I hope so.”
Just enough nervousness filled his tone that she sighed. “You don’t do this very often, do you?”
“No, I sure don’t,” he admitted, with a snort. “Most people don’t want to pay for commissioned work.”
“I guess there can be a negative connotation on a commission too, isn’t there?”
“Not really, most of us have had to do commissions in order to pay for bread and butter in our world,” he explained, “but it’s not always that easy. You have to do whatever it is that the client wants you to do, instead of what you want to do yourself.”
By the time she got off the call, she was a little less struck by her current solution to the three murders problem.
But it was still something she couldn’t let go of.
Letting it walk around in her mind, she got up and tried to turn her attention to some mundane chores, like putting on laundry and feeding the animals.
She filled the time with tasks until she could leave to see the painting.