“Interesting,” he said. “Well, once the paperwork’s filed, we can’t hide it.”
“No, and that’ll cause some extra issues for me,” she muttered.
“Do you have security here?”
“It’s not even that,” she said, “because I’m out all over the place. I won’t stay behind locked doors. I won’t live like that. He used to tell me when I could go out, what I was allowed to do, and when I could do it,” she said. “I don’t ever want to live like that again.”
“And you shouldn’t have to,” he said. “Never again.”
“Says you,” she muttered. She looked down at her empty coffee cup and said, “Do you want a second cup of coffee?”
He smiled and said, “I’d love one. And maybe then we can sit down and do some of this paperwork.”
Sighing, she snatched their coffee cups and headed for the coffeepot. When she returned, Mack was back, and the two of them were talking.
“You agreed to sign the paperwork?”
“Do you agree that your brother is trustworthy?”
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Yes, absolutely.”
“Fine,” she said. She sat down at the kitchen table, and they started through the paperwork, and, by the time they got to the third page, her eyes were glazing over already, and she just signed automatically. When she handed it back to him, she said, “For all I know, I just gave you everything.”
“What you did was authorize me to go after her and your husband, at no cost to you.”
She looked at him and asked, “So how do you feed your family?”
“I don’t have a wife or children, if that’s what you are asking,” he said, with a smile. “What I will do is make sure that, when it goes to court, and he loses, they cover all the fees.”
“Including your fee?” she asked in delight.
He nodded. “That’s how it works. They have to pay for the court fees and for my fees as well.”
“Good. Then, when he loses, and it comes to that, make sure you charge him lots,” she said.
He burst out laughing. Not long after that Nick stood and said, “In spite of a rough start,” he said, “I’m really happy to have met you.” He reached out a hand, and she shook it in surprise.
“I shouldn’t have been so mean,” she said, “and you’re right. I’ve been avoiding meeting you.” She shot Mack a sideways glance. “Mostly because it’s a period of my life I don’t like to reflect on.”
“That’s fine,” he said, “but sometimes you can’t let people get away with doing all this bad stuff. I’ve heard from Mack about how good you are at making cold cases not so cold anymore and how people are being brought to justice after a long time. Let’s not let this be something that goes on for so long that we can’t do anything about it.”
She smiled up at him. “Okay. I hear you on that one.”
Just then, Thaddeus woke from his nap on her shoulder and looked up. “Big guy, big guy.” He looked over at Mack and said, “Big guy, big guy.”
Both men laughed. Doreen reached up to stroke his head gently and said, “Now if only you could tell me who put the message on your leg.”
“Message? Message? Message?” While he seemed to be confused about the word, he kept shaking the leg that had the message attached to it.
“Thaddeus, do you know who put the message on you?”
Thaddeus rubbed his head against her and said, “Thaddeus loves Doreen.”
“And I love you too, yes, but you’re darn frustrating. I wish I knew who put that thing on your leg.”
“There is that, as one mystery,” Mack said, “but there’s also the person at large who hit you over the head.”
At that, Nick looked at her in concern. “Do you have any idea who that could have been?”
She shrugged. “No, not at all. But, like Mack would probably tell you, I’ve made some enemies in town.”
“But haven’t they been locked up?” he asked, looking to Mack.
Mack shrugged. “Sure, but she has also split up some families because of it.”
“I guess,” Nick said doubtfully. “But that’s an awful lot of hate if somebody came after you personally.”
“Sometimes people do things just out of emotion,” she said. “They see me, and all that anger and pain comes rushing back, and they attack for no other reason than that.”
“Maybe,” Nick said.
She looked at him. “Does anybody know you’re here?”
“My office and a couple other people knew I was coming to visit Mack here.”
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with my divorce case anyway,” she said. “Although you certainly bring in some new suspects.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Are you thinking about your ex again?”
“If I wasn’t around, what would happen to all that money?”
He stopped, looked at her, and said, “Good point.” He turned to Mack. “Are you keeping an extra eye on her?”
“Keeping an extra eye on her is not even close to a solution,” he muttered. “She gets into trouble faster than anybody I know.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “Besides, it’s all part of the work we do.”
“The work I do,” Mack said, glaring at her.
She shook her head and sighed loudly. “Fine, so I haven’t helped solve any of these past cold cases?”
“This deal with the message Thaddeus brought home isn’t necessarily a case at all. For all we know, it’s a child’s prank. I’m more worried about who attacked you at the cemetery.”
She nodded. “But you don’t believe that,” she said, “and neither do I.”
He frowned, dropped his gaze, and said, “But we need a little more than that note in order to backtrack Thaddeus’s whereabouts, when we lost him.”
“Is there any way to know where he went?” Nick asked.
“No, not really,” she muttered. “We went back in that area and found the little boy Isaac,” she said, looking again at Mack. “Did you ever find any Isaacs in the area?”
“The guys are working on it.” He pulled out his phone and called somebody. “Hey, Chester. Any luck tracking down Isaac?” Mack shook his head and looked over at her. “Chester hasn’t had any luck either.”
She frowned. “If somebody has a child at home, and they don’t fill out the paperwork for that child, then there’s no record of his birth, is there?”
He stared at her in surprise and said, “No, not if they were trying to keep the birth secret or just didn’t register for some reason.”
“Well, what if Isaac isn’t registered anywhere?”
“Why would a parent do that?” Mack asked. “We can’t just assume that’s what happened here.”
“No, of course not. But, if we have somebody who’s a captive somewhere around here—and you know very well that there are all kinds of nasty scenarios that could make for such a thing—so what if Isaac’s birth was just never registered?”