Nan looked over at Doreen. “I really don’t think you should have mentioned it, dear. Mack’s not the kind to handle this well.”
Mack pinched the bridge of his nose, even as Doreen’s lips twitched. He glared at her. “Don’t you start,” he snapped at Doreen. “Keeping a rein on these two”—he pointed from Nan to Richie and back to Nan again—“in this place is hard enough, without you adding to it, Doreen.”
She gave him an outraged look. “I’m not adding to anything. I’ve been trying to be the voice of reason.”
He stared at her. “Seriously, you?”
She glared at him, before turning her back on him.
Richie gave a half-hearted chuckle. “She’s right. Doreen has been trying to tell us to be a little bit more circumspect about our inquiries.” He shrugged. “And, honest to goodness, we didn’t think we would really do anything to seriously generate much interest about it. I mean, Chrissy has been dead for more than a few months already.”
Mack looked at him and looked over at Doreen.
“Chrissy is the woman who told everybody she was being poisoned.”
He nodded. “And I did look into that, and we don’t have an official report of any complaint by her.”
“No, of course not,” Richie snorted. “Nobody ever listened to her. The trouble is, maybe somebody should have because she is dead.”
“And yet, in this place,” Mack explained cautiously, “dead is kind of …” He hesitated, looked back over at Nan, and added, “I don’t mean this in a vulgar way, but it’s a common by-product.”
She stared at him and then cracked a big smile. “You’re right. It absolutely is common. But it’s not that common after somebody has reported that she’s being poisoned. I do blame myself.”
“Why?” Mack asked in a reasonable tone. “Did you poison her?”
She stared at him and then slowly shook her head. “I hope, young man, you meant that as a joke,” she snapped. “Because there’s really nothing funny about finding out that a friend of yours has been poisoned and that you ignored all the signs.”
“What signs did you ignore?” he asked gently. “Because, from what I’m hearing, nobody believed her, then she died. And the coroner ruled it as a death of natural causes, and, for all you know, she wasn’t poisoned at all.”
“But what if she was?” Richie asked. “What if she was?”
Mack stared down at him, not sure how to answer.
“And that’s where I keep coming to every time,” Doreen replied quietly. “What if she was poisoned? And we get your point. Maybe she wasn’t, but we always come back to the question, But what if she was?” She looked up at Mack. “An autopsy would settle this question right away.”
“If she was being poisoned, then it would have been nice to have known ahead of time, in an attempt to prevent a death,” he noted calmly. “Because, at this point in time, getting the forensic information will be non-existent. There’s no way that any local poison that somebody here would have sussed out would have … would still be in the body.”
Then he frowned and added, “I doubt it. Although, various toxins could be found in the hair even years later, I understand. I’ll have to check with the coroner.”
“Definitely won’t be found now,” Nan retorted, “because she was cremated.” Mack turned and looked at her. She nodded. “And that was her nephew’s doing.”
“The nephew who just bought a very expensive brand-new truck,” Richie shared, giving Mack a gimlet eye. “Maybe somebody should look into that.”
“And I did talk to him about that truck,” Doreen noted gently. “Just today, in fact.”
At that, both Nan and Richie turned to look at her, their eyebrows shooting up.
“And,” Mack asked sternly, “did he tell you where he got it?”
“No, he didn’t tell me where he got it, but that he had been saving for years and years, and he did get some money from Chrissy’s estate. And just that he’d been so excited because he’d finally got what he’d always wanted.”
“Well, of course.” Nan sniffed. “I mean, inheritances are free money after all.”
Doreen winced at that because she was in line to inherit whatever her grandmother had squirreled away and whatever Nan had not already spent on Doreen already. And she sure didn’t want anybody else thinking that she would have had something to do with her grandmother’s death in order to speed up any inheritance. At that thought, it’s almost as if Nan had read Doreen’s mind.
Nan leaned over, patted her arm gently, and said, “I know that wouldn’t be you. Besides, we’re having too much fun together for you to want to knock me off.”
“Even if we weren’t,” she replied, “I would never want to knock you off.”
Nan beamed. “That’s because you’re a sweetheart.” She frowned. “However, it’s not the same for everybody.”
“Maybe not,” Mack agreed, trying to corral the conversation, “but that doesn’t mean that every person who’s in line to inherit will turn around and try to knock you off.”
“Maybe not.” Nan turned and looked over at Richie. “Richie, what about your family?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think so. But you know what? Every once in a while, Darren does say something about if I’m not, … if I don’t smarten up and stop getting him into trouble at work …”
Nan frowned. “Maybe we should investigate him then,” she stated in a loud voice, glaring at Darren.
Richie shook his head at her. “I think that would just get him into more trouble.”
Nan thought about it and slowly nodded. “But, if you die,” she promised, pointing a finger at him, “you can bet I’ll raise Cain and have Darren looked at.”
Mack sighed. “Darren’s here to make things easier on his grandpa,” he explained. “So I hardly think he’s in any way a suspect, should Richie here decide that it’s time to meet his maker. Besides, like we just said, a lot of deaths happen at this place.”
“Sure, but Chrissy was relatively healthy,” Nan stated in that know-it-all tone of voice. She wasn’t prepared to listen to any arguments to the contrary. “So natural causes of deaths are understandable here. But murder never is.” Nan was now laser-focused on Mack and Darren.
Mack turned, tilted his head, raised his palms, looking at Doreen.
She just shrugged. “I tried to explain.”
“I don’t think you did a very good job,” he responded in an ominous tone.
She nodded. “I probably didn’t,” she agreed, “but you’re not doing any better of a job at it either.”
He groaned. “No, you’re right there,” he admitted. “Darren and I’ll go talk to a few more residents. Then I’ll meet up with Darren, and we’ll see what we come up with.”
“Good enough,” Nan replied. “And then you come back and report to us.”
Mack stopped at the doorway, looked at her, considering what he would say in response.