Doreen stood here and waited, and, sure enough, Wendy came back a few minutes later. “I’ll leave the back door open, and we can hear if the front door opens again with the bells on it.” And, with that, she pulled out the few things that Doreen had brought, and Wendy nodded. “These will sell,” she noted. “I was hoping you would have a lot more to sell.”
“You know what? I probably do,” she confessed. “I just haven’t gotten around to figuring out what else I want to get rid of,” she admitted.
“Hey, I understand,” Wendy noted, “but I’ll definitely take these.”
As she went to go back inside, Doreen stated, “I’m not exactly sure when the next check’s coming.”
“I’ll do it at the end of the month, so it should be on a regular rotation now. That means, I’ll do them up in about two to three weeks. And normally I’d pop them in the mail and send emails confirming that, or I will have them ready for everybody the last week of the month if people want to pick them up instead. However, if you need it earlier, I can do yours first.”
Doreen’s face lit up. “If you wouldn’t mind, that would be awesome. I could use it.”
Wendy nodded. But as she went to step back inside, her gaze slowly looked around again.
“They’re gone,” Doreen noted helpfully.
Wendy’s gazed zipped back toward her. “Who?”
“The two guys in the big van.” She hesitated and then offered, “Wendy, if you’re in trouble, I could probably help you.”
Wendy looked at her, shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” But she sounded anything but fine. And with another glance at the back alley, Wendy suggested, “It’s probably better if you come to the front door next time.” And, with that, she closed the door.
As Doreen stood here, she heard a discernible click on the back door as it was locked. She wasn’t sure what was going on with Wendy, but definitely something was.
Chapter 9
The day had crested into being nice and warm. Doreen’s dinner for that evening would be a surprise, as she sat here, looking at the bit of food that she’d pulled out of her fridge. On impulse she typed her ingredients into a Google search, wondering what recipes would come up. She had two carrots, a little bit of broccoli, some green lettuce, and a couple eggs. The one thing that did come up was a frittata, although she didn’t have potatoes, or a salad. She looked at that and wondered. But a salad wasn’t a bad idea.
If she hard-boiled the eggs, she could certainly chop that up and cut the carrot into julienne strips or almost shave them. And, by the time she followed through on the instructions, she was looking at a pretty fancy salad. She quickly took a picture of it and texted it to Mack and then sat down outside on her deck. Her four-footed animals lolled all around her feet, both of them tired from the walk. Thaddeus usually hopped a ride on her shoulder, so he conserved his strength that way, as he was now. However, the animals had fared well in terms of spending the day walking to Wendy’s.
Doreen’s mind needed more information on these two poison cases, and it was getting a little harder to come up with something.
As she sat here eating her salad, Richard poked his head over the side of the fence. “Hey,” he greeted her in a low whisper.
She got up and walked closer. “Hey,” she replied in a low voice. “What’s up?”
“Just a couple things. Apparently Peter bought a brand-new truck last week,” he noted.
She stared at him. “And is that unusual?”
“Yes,” Richard stated. “It is. He works as a bookkeeper for a small company, and he doesn’t make tons of money.”
“So maybe it came from Chrissy’s estate?”
“I don’t know.” Richard frowned. “I can’t figure it out. It’s a big Chevy diesel,” he noted, with a headshake. “Like that thing’s tons of money.” And there was such a note of envy in his voice.
She nodded, considering this new piece of information. “Any chance that he needed it, like maybe for work or something?”
He laughed. “Not as a bookkeeper.”
“Right.” She nodded and thought about it some more. “So maybe there was some money to inherit?”
“Maybe. Well, you’d think there had to be some for her to stay at Rosemoor. Plus, he did look after her, so, if there was anything, it should have gone to Peter. Did you check on Cassandra?”
“I thought I would go up there in about an hour,” she noted, looking down at her watch. “I figured she would probably be on soon.”
He stared at her. “I don’t know that she still works as a dancer.”
“No?”
“No. I think she’s behind the bar now.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I can always run up later and see.”
“Let me know what you find,” Richard stated. “I thought about it afterward, and I feel like I didn’t, … like I maybe didn’t do her a service.”
“It’s okay,” she noted. “I understand.”
He nodded and disappeared.
Doreen took the animals back inside, washed up her dishes, said goodbye to her pets, and hopped into the car, heading up to the bar where Cassandra worked. Doreen didn’t know if she could get a coffee in a place like that, but it was still early enough in the evening that she hoped not too many of the night-time goers would be there yet. She parked outside, in front of what looked like an attempt to be a railing-type fence, maybe to give it a western look.
As she walked in the door, it took her a few minutes to adjust to the shadowy atmosphere and to the heavy smoke. She was thankful to see that the place wasn’t busy. Not too many people were here. However, they all seemed to be smokers.
A woman behind the bar asked, “What can I get for you?”
“Information,” she replied bluntly. “Are you Cassandra?”
The woman’s eyebrows shot up, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Doreen Montgomery,” she replied.
At that, the woman’s eyebrows, already painted halfway up her forehead, seemed to disappear into her hairline. “The one with all the animals?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, with a laugh. “Apparently I’m getting some notoriety.”
“Not that that’s a good thing for you,” she noted, with an eye roll.
“Well, … I’ve been asked to look into your mother’s death.”
At that, the woman lowered her arms, took a step forward. “What?” she asked, her voice harsh. “Are you saying something suspicious happened with her death?”
“No, I’m not,” Doreen corrected. “Just that, now, since she’s gone, people are wondering about how she had repeatedly told people in the couple months prior to her death that she was being poisoned.”
At that, Cassandra just stared at Doreen and then laughed and laughed. “Oh, honey, go on home and don’t bother wasting your time. My mother was forever telling us something about that. Either somebody was poisoning her or something else equally strange.” She shook her head. “Good God, I mean, it just never ended.”