Nan continued to let the call ring on Doreen’s phone.
Doreen quickly answered it, before it went to her voice mail. “Hey, Nan.”
“What were you doing? Sitting there with coffee?”
Doreen laughed because it was so close to the truth. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee,” she admitted, “and I was afraid to answer the phone, in case you would want me to come down for a visit, and I would lose out on the fresh-brewed hot coffee.” She had explained in such a woebegone voice that her grandmother laughed.
“I would have at least waited until you’d had your coffee,” she noted, still chuckling. “Besides, you do need to come down. We have some information.” And, with that, she hung up.
Doreen stared down at the phone with a gasp. “You did not just do that.”
What was with everybody hanging up on her? And, of course, she wouldn’t discuss the fact that she hung up on Mack all the time. That was Mack; he deserved it. But for Nan to hang up on her own granddaughter? Surely Doreen didn’t deserve her grandmother hanging up on her all the time. Mystified at what they could possibly have found, and yet, at the same time, worried and wondering what Doreen should be doing about it now, she sipped her coffee, considering her options. When her coffee was cool enough to drink, Doreen almost chugged it.
She groaned. “And that’s why I didn’t want to answer Nan’s phone call,” she muttered to herself. She looked down at the animals, staring up at her hungrily. “And we didn’t even eat,” she muttered. She fed them a little bit of dry food and quickly made herself a sandwich. When everybody was done eating, and the prep mess was cleaned up, Doreen sent her grandmother a text. On my way. She didn’t get an acknowledgment, but, hey, she was pretty sure that her grandmother had gotten the message and would wait for her.
At least this way Nan could put on the tea. She had the uncanny ability to figure out exactly when Doreen was coming or how long it would take her to get to Rosemoor because, every time she and her animals appeared for a visit with Nan, the tea was already steeping. By the time the group of them walked down to the center today, Nan was sitting outside, waiting for them.
Doreen smiled. “How do you always know when I’m coming?”
“Well, you did text me,” Nan replied, her eyes wide, as she stared at her granddaughter.
“I did,” she agreed. “I just figured, when I didn’t hear from you, I didn’t know if you saw it.”
“Of course I saw it,” she stated, with a wave of her hand. “No point in responding since you were on your way.”
“True.” She sat down, as Nan gushed over Mugs and Goliath. Thaddeus, not to be outdone, walked down Doreen’s arm onto the table and pecked a musical rhythm against the hot teapot. Nan just laughed at him.
“You are such a joy to have around.” And, sure enough, he walked up her arm and sat on her shoulder and just cuddled in.
“I don’t think he’ll ever forget you,” Doreen noted. “You two have quite a bond.”
“So do you two.” Nan chuckled. “And that’s the way it should be.”
Doreen wasn’t sure what that meant but was happy to just wait and to let her grandmother talk when she was ready. By the time ten minutes had gone by though, Doreen was getting impatient. “So what information do you have?” she asked.
Nan looked at her. “I’m not sure I’m ready to share it yet.”
Doreen stared at her, nonplussed. “I thought that’s why you wanted me to come down.”
“I always want you to come down and visit,” she stated. “That’s not the point.”
“No, of course not,” she agreed, and then she sighed. “So this is just a visit? You don’t have anything concrete?”
“Well, of course we have something concrete,” she stated in astonishment. “I wouldn’t have told you that we had something if we didn’t.”
At that, Doreen groaned. “Nan, could you just tell me what you found out?”
“Oh, sure.” Nan smiled. “As long as you realize that our investigation isn’t complete.”
“Of course not,” she replied. “Investigations are always ongoing. We aren’t looking for complete as much as we’re looking for information to lead us into the right direction.”
“Well, in that case,” she added, “I definitely have something.”
Doreen looked at her and waited.
“Let me get my notes.” Nan got up and went into the other room, and, when she returned, she had a notepad. “Chrissy started talking—as far as anybody here knows—months before she died.”
“Talking about what?” Doreen asked, all down to business.
“Talking about being poisoned.”
“And did anybody tell her to go to the doctor and to get checked out?”
“Oh, yes, of course, dear,” she stated. “Several of us told her to call the police. But she was starting to, you know, get a little bit …” Nan looked up at Doreen, looping her finger in a circle around her ear. “You know? She was getting quite forgetful, and she was quite fanciful, I guess is a good word,” she noted. “So, over time, we all just stopped listening to her.”
“And when you say, over time, you mean in the months before her death?”
“Yes, of course. It couldn’t have gone on any longer. She died, dear. Pay attention.”
At that, Doreen let out her breath slowly and then nodded. “You’re right. Go ahead.”
Satisfied, Nan looked down at her notes, reading something before speaking again. “And then, about a month before she died, she started saying that it would happen soon. It would happen soon.”
“And do you know what it was?”
“She wouldn’t clarify. She kept saying that she would be dead soon, and we all assumed that’s what she meant. It would happen soon, as in, she would die soon. Which, of course, as you know, she was totally correct because she did.”
“Right,” she agreed carefully. “She did die soon, but it was still another month later, right?”
“Yes, exactly,” Nan confirmed, “so it wasn’t all that soon. Or it was, depends on your definition of soon.”
As Nan looked to be gearing up for another discussion on the perspective on time and soon, Doreen asked, “What other notes have you got written down there?”
Nan’s focus returned to her notes. She mumbled through something, as she ticked off and crossed off a few things. “Her nephew inherited everything,” she shared. “We thought that was suspicious.”
“And why is that?”
“Because she has a daughter.”
“Okay. Any idea why her daughter was excluded from the will?”
“No, that didn’t make any sense to us,” she replied. “Chrissy rarely talked about her daughter, but she was family, so we naturally assumed that her daughter would have been at least mentioned in Chrissy’s will.”
“Of course. And where does the daughter live?”
“I don’t know.” Nan looked up at her, with a frown. “We haven’t been able to figure that out.”