“All the years we lost,” Doreen said, shaking her head. “Such a shame.”
“Not your fault,” Nan said. “Maybe you had to get to this point to be able to appreciate it. I’m just glad that we’re here together now.”
“Me too. When I saw my former divorce lawyer, and I realized that she’d been turned out by my ex too, I wasn’t jealous and had not a single thought about going back there or even taking her bribe. All I felt was so grateful to be here, so grateful to have the life that I have now. The life,” she said, turning to look at Nan, “that you gave me.”
“No,” Nan said, with a shake of her head. “I gave you a house. You’re the one who turned it into a home and then found a hobby, a calling really,” she said. “This community loves you, and this nice deck is just proof of that.”
“Well, apparently an awful lot of people don’t love me.” She looked at Nan, frowned, and said, “And I didn’t even get a chance to tell Mack about it.”
“What are you talking about, dear?”
“The person who hired this guy to attack me wasn’t my ex at all.”
Nan looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Did he tell you that?”
Hating that she would have to, she pulled out her phone, while Nan watched, and called Mack.
“You know that you could just rest,” he said, his voice brisk.
“Did you catch him?”
“Ah,” his voice gentled. “Of course, you’d be worried about that.”
“That and something else,” she said. “He was hired to do this.”
“Right, that’s what we figured,” he said.
“But, Mack, it wasn’t my ex,” she added.
“What? Did he say who it was?”
“Not in so many words but kind of.” There was a silence on the other end. She sighed and said, “I think it was Penny.”
“What?” he cried out. Even Nan gasped.
“He said that, if I were gone, there’s a good chance that she could get off completely. But, if I’m correct, and I’m around to testify and to explain everything that happened, then she’s likely to go away for a long time. But, other than that, the lawyers would probably get her off with something quite minor.”
“Well, in a way that may be true,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “I didn’t think she had the money for something like this though.”
“Neither did I, but Snoz said that she had enough, and he didn’t sound like he was at all concerned about collecting. Something about the money already somewhere in escrow.”
“That would make sense too. And he actually told you that?”
“Yes, because I kept saying it was my ex, my ex, and finally Snoz got mad at me and said it had nothing to do with him.”
“Oh, he got mad at you? Gee, what a surprise. Some guy is holding a gun on you, and you go out of your way to make him mad? Go figure.”
His voice was deceptively smooth, and she knew he was quite pissed. “Thanks for looking after the animals,” she said hurriedly. “I appreciate it.”
“Wish I wouldn’t have had to,” he said in that deliciously smooth tone, hiding the simmering anger beneath.
“No,” she muttered, “me too.” She sighed. “Okay, fine. But I did get away.”
“You did, but you also got shot in the meantime,” he said, his voice rising.
“Barely, but I also got away again,” she said. “So there’s got to be some benefit to all this.”
“Well, at least we may have a good idea who hired him now, but we still have to prove it.”
“Well, if you had him in your grasp,” she said, “I’m sure you could check his phone records and where he’s been, tracking him around town here and all.”
“Maybe,” he said, with an edge in the voice, “but I was busy.”
She wisely chose to be silent for a moment.
“Did you get him to explain why he attacked you in the cemetery?”
“Yes,” she said and quickly told him what Snoz had said.
“So that would have been an opportunity that he took advantage of, but, when that didn’t succeed, he had to try something else.”
“It was supposed to look like an accident,” she muttered. “How does he think shooting me would make it look like an accident? Even you would figure that out.”
Silence. “Even me?”
She grimaced and looked at Nan, who had a horrified look on her face. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “I’m tired and not feeling good. I’m hurting more than I expected, and I’m just cranky and not thinking about what’s coming out of my mouth.”
“Well, I’ll give you a pass on that one today,” he said quietly, but that edge to his tone definitely remained. “And, no, we didn’t get him. We were all more focused on saving you.”
She sighed. “So, once again, I’m at fault. I get it.”
“No, not necessarily,” he said, “at least everything ended up okay.”
“Well, I’m not sure how okay it all ended up,” she muttered. “You don’t have him, and you could go talk to that little minx of a divorce lawyer until you’re blue in the face, but she won’t help you at all.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, his tone turning brisk. “You’re in the hospital safe and sound, so I don’t have to worry about you, and I can turn my attention to resolving some of this.”
She looked over to find Nan glaring at her. Doreen shrugged, as if to say, What do I do?
“You tell him,” Nan said in no uncertain terms.
“Is that Nan there?” Mack asked.
“Yes, she’s here,” she said, staring down at the phone. “And you won’t like this—”
“Won’t like what?” he said in a sharp voice, before she even finished. And then he groaned, having figured it out. “Damn it, you’re not in the hospital anymore, are you?”
“No,” she said. “I came home this evening and wanted to get back to the animals. So I caught a cab.”
“The animals were fine, you know?”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I wasn’t fine without them.”
He sighed. “You could just look after yourself for once.”
“And I am,” she said. “I’m just sitting here on the deck, having coffee. Nan is here visiting.”
“And she was actually in favor of you leaving the hospital? I’ll be right over,” he said and promptly hung up.
She put the phone down beside her. “Yeah, he is definitely angry.”
“Which part of that conversation gave you that impression?” Nan said, staring at Doreen in fascination. “He’d let you get away with murder.”
Doreen looked at her in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“The way you talk to him, the things that you do and say. The times that he looks after you.” She shook her head. “The man is clearly in love with you.”
Laughter rose up in the back of her throat, and, when it finally burst free, Nan just stared at her with her hands on her hips.