“Well, I wasn’t,” she said. “It’s one of those anxious and I don’t know what I’m doing kind of things.”
“If you say so,” he said, looking at her. “Let’s get some nachos made up, and then we’ll see.”
“Did you say you have to go to work afterward?”
He nodded. “I was up late last night working,” he said, “so I’m going in late today, and I’ll do a late shift again.”
“Why were you working late?” she asked in surprise.
He just looked at her and then said, “Because somebody dumped an awful lot of paperwork on us.”
“Sure,” she said, “but that you could do during the week.”
“And today is Tuesday,” he reminded her. Then he turned and unpacked the groceries. As he pulled out a bag of corn chips, she walked up to see more.
“So, what will we do?”
He brought out a block of cheese, handed her the grater, and said, “Start grating.” As she grated, he fried up ground beef and put some interesting sauces and green chilies in it.
“Is this your version of nachos?”
“Yep, it’s a family favorite,” he said.
“And you’re using it to distract me from the conversation.”
He laughed. “Yeah. I absolutely am.”
“Wow,” she said, “that’s not fair.”
“Is it working?”
“Well, you’re making me hungry, that’s for sure,” she said. “But I still want to know what you were doing working so late on a Monday night.”
“Fine. We were trying to figure out this Isaac thing,” he said.
“Well, I just figured it out for you. Talk to Randy, since he’s looking after him.”
“Yeah, but at the same time I need to have a little bit of knowledge before I go storming in there. Like, why this little boy has no birth certificate, and why he’s not in school.”
“Because I don’t think he is Randy’s kid, Randy is just looking after him. This one old lady also said it was a cold case,” she said. She gave him a bright smile. “Which means it’s part of my domain.”
“News flash, Doreen. You have no domain,” he said in exasperation. “There’s the law, which I am employed to fight for and to uphold,” he said, “and then there’s you.”
“What about me?” she said, her brows drawing together.
“You and your job seem to be all about getting into trouble,” he said, as he gave her a fat smile. “So, you just keep grating cheese.”
Chapter 23
Not much later, when Doreen was presented with a delicious-looking nacho mess, she was absolutely enthralled. Melted cheese, corn chips, diced tomatoes, guacamole, onions, and even ground meat sprinkled over the top. It was beyond her imagination to have considered he could make something like this. Not only had he done it but it seemed simple and without any fuss. She realized that, if she prepared a slight variation of it, she could make something even simpler and faster for herself. They sat down at the kitchen table; then Mack looked outside and frowned.
“Now what?” she asked, in exasperation, as she reached for her first chip.
“We should be eating outside.”
“We should be,” she said, “but that puts one of us in a chair and one of us on the footstool, or both of us sitting on the steps.”
He nodded. “Not ideal for a dish like this. We need to get you a table.”
“Well, that’s why I went out to the secondhand stores with Nan,” she said. “We went to lots of places, but there just wasn’t anything right for the space and really affordable.”
“No,” he said, “you have to go to the right places at the right time to get the deals.”
“And how are you supposed to know what the right places are at the right time?” she asked, looking at him in surprise. “Because Nan is a pretty smart shopper.”
“She is,” he said, “and I’m sure she got you a heck of a good price on that chair, but you know there are deals that can be had at other places too, like estate sales.”
“Which we would have done, if we’d known about any,” she said.
“True, plus there are other secondhand stores. I’m sure we can roust up something.”
“It would be nice,” she said, looking out the kitchen window. “To have that beautiful deck and not be able to sit out there is kind of criminal.”
“Don’t even mention that word,” he said.
She frowned. “I don’t do it on purpose, you know?”
“I know,” he said, slowly lowering his head to look at her. “That almost makes it worse when you just seem to be a magnet for trouble.”
“Well, I didn’t attack myself, and I just went looking to see what I could do about Thaddeus and the little boy.”
“I get that,” he said, “but you walked right in where angels fear to tread.”
“That’s because they need to be worried about not getting back to heaven,” she said blissfully. He stopped and stared, but she just shrugged. “I don’t know what that means either,” she said. “Look. I’m just trying to help. If you could find out what was going on with little Isaac, then I wouldn’t have to.”
“We’re on it,” he said. “Somebody should be going out there to talk to Randy now.”
“Why not you?”
“Because I know Randy, and they didn’t want that to be an issue.”
She slowly popped another melty cheese-laden nacho chip into her mouth, loving the flavors that burst through her taste buds. “I get that,” she said, “but sometimes isn’t it better if you do know people?”
“Sometimes, but not always.”
“Besides,” she said, “it’s not as if I have anything else to do.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “Recover from that last injury.”
“Another crime you have yet to solve. A current crime at that, so it’s definitely on your docket.”
He nodded. “And we have managed to track down various people we found who were at the cemetery, but nobody can place them where you were found.”
“Of course not,” she said. “I was deliberately walking away from everybody because I was emotional.”
“You were emotional? Never,” he said.
She glared at him.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
“Of course not,” she said. “But the thing is, I just wanted to be away from people for a bit. There had been a lot of deaths, and I wanted these poor little old ladies to have some respect as they headed off on whatever journey comes after this.”
“When somebody saw you and took advantage of that,” he said. “You appear to have amassed a few enemies.”
“Maybe. I also wonder, though I don’t have any reason for thinking this,” she said, “but I do wonder if it could have been my ex.”
He stared and said, “I thought you were pretty adamant it wasn’t him.”