Doreen looked over at him, placed a finger against her lips, and spoke up before he could. “Honestly, it’s probably better to just walk away now.”
He glared at Doreen. “We’re the police. We don’t report to any civilians.” And, with that final parting shot, he turned and walked out.
Nan looked at her, looked at Richie, and announced, “Now we need to have a meeting.”
“Sure,” Richie agreed. “But I shouldn’t say anything. I don’t want you getting hit again.”
“Nope, I don’t either,” Nan agreed, her fingers rattling away on the top of the nearby sofa side table. “How will we find out who did it though?”
“Well, it would have been nice if there were security cameras to access,” Doreen noted quietly. “But apparently you don’t have cameras in the hallways.”
“Nope,” she confirmed, “and I don’t have any cameras in my suite.” Then she batted her eyes at Richie and added, “Neither does Richie.”
He had the grace to flush ever-so-slightly, and Doreen wondered just how close their relationship was at this point but then realized she really didn’t want to know. “So that leaves us without any way to know who was in the hallway at the time, unless somebody saw something,” she added quickly. “We need to find an eyewitness. And in order to find one, we need to locate somebody who may have seen something, so we have to talk to everybody. Even if it seemed not out of the ordinary, we need to know who was near Nan’s apartment recently. After all, it could have been somebody who lives here in Rosemoor.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Richie groaned. “I’m tired already. And I’m not talking to that Magnus guy.”
Doreen turned and looked at him and asked, “Who?”
And Nan spoke up and replied, “I’m not talking to Maude either. Some of these people here are really crazy,” she noted. “They’ll invent information, if it makes them feel important, if it gets the spotlight on them, however briefly. Just ask the staff. They know.”
Doreen wasn’t sure what to say to that, so wisely kept her own counsel. But to think that anybody would have something to say to her about this, and that they wouldn’t want to talk to her because they didn’t happen to like the person in question who was viciously attacked, well, that would just make the case even that much more complicated.
“Maybe I should be asking,” Doreen offered gently. “Who here would want to, you know …” And then she stopped because she was going to say, kill Nan. That wasn’t exactly something Doreen wanted to bring up.
“Hurt me?” Nan asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Nobody,” she responded. “I get along here with everybody.”
At that, Doreen frowned and added, “Except for this Maude and a Magnus.”
“She’s just a know-it-all,” Nan retorted, with a wave of her hand. “He’s just… weird. Can’t stand those people.”
Doreen stared at her grandmother, fascinated, because Doreen was pretty sure that a lot of people would say that her grandmother was a nosy body, a know-it-all, a gossip. She ran those bets about all manner of personal matters—who was dating whom, who was breaking up first, who was having a baby out of wedlock, how soon Doreen solved a cold case, how soon Doreen and Mack started dating, now how soon before Doreen and Mack were engaged. But obviously truth was in the eye of the beholder, and, in this case, it was all about Nan’s version.
“And what about you?” Doreen asked, looking at Richie. “Do you have any idea who doesn’t like Nan?”
He looked incredibly uncomfortable.
Doreen nodded. “Maybe you’d like to have this conversation in private?”
Nan, suddenly realizing that Richie might have some information, stepped up and demanded, “What are you talking about?”
He looked over at her and softly replied, “You have a tendency to make some people irate.”
She stared at him, then shrugged. “So, what of it?” she asked. “Not everybody likes my flamboyant style, my popularity. And not everybody likes the fact that my granddaughter is here to see me all the time,” she noted in a quiet tone. And she looked over at Doreen and added, “You have no idea how much that irks some people here, who never get to see their grandchildren, or in a lot of cases their own children. They are so jealous that they can’t be happy that I have family who wants to come see me, who wants to spend time with me, who won’t just forget about me in here. Maybe if they were more thankful that you came to see me, then maybe their own family would wise up.” Nan gave an emphatic snort at the end of her diatribe.
Doreen stared at her. “But would they be angry enough to hurt you?”
Richie and Nan both turned and faced Doreen. Richie shrugged. “You know what? It’s pretty hard to know what people will do at any given time,” he hedged. “Definitely some crazies are out there.”
Doreen frowned and shook her head. “But those crazies are not just out there. Those crazies could be right here, in Rosemoor, living with you. Living where you sleep and where you eat and where you share tea and have dances.” Doreen shared a frightened look with her grandmother. “Maybe, Nan, you should stay with me”—she held up her hand as soon as Nan opened her mouth—“at least until Mack finds out who did this and has them in jail.”
“Oh, I won’t argue with the crazy part,” she replied. “And I appreciate the offer to stay with you, but I will be safe here with Richie, right, dear?” She smiled sweetly and patted Richie’s hand, who just nodded. Then her personality changed, like she had two of them at the ready. “Who else doesn’t like me? And give me some names.” Nan glared at Richie now.
He avoided eye contact with Nan and instead looked at Doreen. “I can give you a few names, but these are people she particularly doesn’t like.”
Doreen nodded, as she looked over at her grandmother, and in a stern voice stated, “But she won’t interfere because this is the next stage of the investigation, and we need to make sure it happens properly.” When her grandmother maintained that stern look, Doreen added, “And we don’t want you conked on the head again.”
Her grandmother stared at her for a bit longer and then slowly nodded. “Fine,” she snapped. “But, if any of those people say anything bad about me, I want to know.”
“Why?” Doreen asked, a wry look on her face. “So you can stop them from partaking in your next betting pool?”
At that, Richie laughed. “Honestly, she’s done that a couple times too.”
“But then,” Doreen added, “Nan wasn’t provoking the anger. She was reacting to it. So that needs to be taken into account when I interview these people.”
Richie nodded. “Most of the time these people think that Nan’s cheating, not that Nan’s retaliating for them cheating. They are projecting.”
At that tidbit, Doreen stared at Richie and then back at Nan. “You know something? That’s not good if people think you’re cheating,” she noted in alarm.
He shrugged. “Anybody who loses tends to look to see why they’re losing. But they’re the ones who are giving her their best guesses. It’s not like Nan’s writing it down wrong.”