“Laura Hillman,” he replied. “Another—” And then he stopped and fell silent.
“Another what?” She glared at him. “Don’t you dare say something that’ll insult Nan.”
“Another nosy body,” he said succinctly.
She winced. “Well, some people might call Nan a nosy body,” she agreed. “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but she’s definitely a caring woman, and, right now, she’s feeling very guilty because Chrissy died. And, even though she’d been telling everybody for months that she’d been poisoned, nobody looked into it. Nobody raised any caterwauling about her death either.”
He stared at her. “Seriously? Nobody even thought to let the police know?”
“Nope, not at all.” She shook her head. “And that is a trigger for Nan.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed.
“’Course Nan also tells me that I should probably go home and start working on the Bob Small cases. I just know that that’ll be a lot of work to get my brain wrapped around, and right now it aches.”
He stared at her, a worried expression on his face.
She shrugged. “Okay, so it’s not really aching,” she admitted, waving her hand. And just then Goliath jumped up onto her lap, surprising her. She snagged the cat, gave him a big hug, and added, “But you know what I mean. Like, the Bob Small cases will be fairly intricate and involved.”
“Anytime you get a suspected serial killer,” he noted quietly, “those cases can be convoluted. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that you have to get involved in any of it.”
“Maybe not,” she stated, “but it feels like I would be just lazy if I didn’t solve it.”
“You know what? Just because you solve a whole pile of these doesn’t mean that you must do that Bob Small one too.”
“Yes, I do,” she replied candidly. “An awful lot about that case doesn’t make any sense yet. But I’ll get there. Maybe it’s not even so much trying to get my head wrapped around it as much as realizing that parts of it need to jell.”
“I’ve done that a time or two,” he agreed. “You get all the information in your head, and you just let things sit for a while until it comes together.”
She nodded. “That’s what I was questioning. It’s also hard to know at what point in time to go back to it.”
“Not until you’re ready,” he noted. “You are tired.”
“Am I? I don’t know. We took the weekend off and had quite a nice break.”
“It was nice,” he agreed. “You want to do something this weekend?”
“Sure, but what?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we leave it open? We could try paddleboarding again,” he teased, wagging his eyebrows.
She snorted at that. “Why don’t we just go to the beach for a picnic or go for a hike first and then to the beach for a picnic, and we can go for a swim too?”
“That too,” he agreed, “but I really enjoy paddleboarding.”
She nodded. “It was nice to sit on the paddleboard,” she agreed. “I don’t know about the actual trying to do something with it though. It was pretty hard to stand up and paddle easily.”
“Maybe.” His phone buzzed again. He looked down at his screen and sighed. “I’ve got to get to work.” He hopped to his feet, handed her his empty coffee cup. “Thanks for the morning coffee. I’ll call you about the weekend.”
She nodded. At that, she got up and followed slowly behind him. When he got up to the kitchen, he asked, “How about dinner tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night?” she asked, her ears pricking up. “Why not tonight?”
“I’ll probably be busy,” he replied in a deliberately neutral tone of voice, “but we can do something tomorrow.”
“Like what?”
“What do you have on hand?”
She laughed. “Not a whole lot of anything.”
He frowned. “Fine. I’ll think of something.” He stopped, stared at her, and asked, “What will you do now?”
“I should stop at Wendy’s and see when I’ll get the next check,” she noted. “Not wanting to hassle her, but I did find a couple scarves and a couple pieces of Nan’s clothing that I won’t keep. Maybe we could sell them.”
“Good enough,” he said, and, with that, he was gone.
But he was distracted, focused. As if he’d gotten a call about another case or something important on this case about Alan. And considering the autopsy report on Alan, it could be a police meeting. She fancied herself contemplating where and what was possible, and then decided that she really should head to the consignment store.
She looked at the animals and thought about taking just Mugs or all of them, then considered walking there, although it was a longer distance. However, the walk might do her some good, and she was just unfocused enough that maybe that’s what she should do. So she gathered everybody and put the leashes on Mugs and Goliath, then put on her good pair of walking shoes, grabbed the bag designated for Wendy at her front door, and headed out.
As she got outside on the front lawn, she heard a gasp from beside her. She looked over to see Richard’s front door slamming closed. She rolled her eyes at that. “Good morning, Richard. Have a good day.” And she walked past his house with a hand wave. There was just something about that neighbor. In fact, something was strange about all her neighbors on the cul-de-sac. She had pretty well made herself persona non grata after the Japanese tour buses started coming here, just to point out Doreen’s house. Nobody wanted the notoriety that came with the media attention. Of course Doreen didn’t either, but, hey, what was she supposed to do?
She enjoyed the walk. It took about forty minutes to get there today, with her and her animals taking their time and dawdling. When she walked up to Wendy’s shop, Doreen saw lots of people in the front of the store, so she wandered around to the back alley. As she headed toward the back door, two men took one look at her and hopped up into the front seat of a nearby van, and they took off.
She stopped, her jaw dropping. That was fast. Matter of fact, it was too fast, as in suspiciously fast. Reminded Doreen of how odd Wendy had acted the last time Doreen had been here.
Doreen crossed her arms, her fingers wrapped around her upper arms, as she thought about it more. She just barely remembered the first three letters of the license plate on that van. J-E-P. She pulled out her phone and made a note of it, but she couldn’t describe the vehicle. It just looked like a big moving van with a door that opened from the top down. The vehicle was white, and she hadn’t seen any logos on it.
She got up closer to the back door and on impulse knocked. When no answer came, Doreen knocked again, and, just as she was about to leave, Wendy poked her head out, fear on her face as she looked around. When she saw Doreen, relief washed over her features.
“Hey,” Wendy greeted her. “Did you bring some stuff?” she asked, pointing to the bag Doreen carried.
“I did, but I also had the animals, so I couldn’t come in the front door.”
She nodded. “Give me a second. I’ve got one last customer. And then I’ll come back out here.”