“She’ll know which one because she mixed the rat poison in the sugar constantly.” He nodded. “Did you ever think that she might do that to you too?”
He stared at her. “No way, I’m her son.”
“Yeah, you are. If she ever got a life insurance policy on you,” she noted, “I’d run.”
“She just did,” he admitted, staring at Doreen in shock.
She shrugged. “Your mom wants to move into Rosemoor and to retire, but she doesn’t have the money. Although her house should be worth a fair bit.”
“She’ll never have the money for that place,” he replied.
“It depends on how much the life insurance is.”
He swallowed hard. And suddenly the kitchen door opened, and there was Peggy.
“What is going on here?” Peggy snapped.
Doreen smiled at her and nodded. “Oh, just Old Home Week,” she noted quietly. “Just letting your son know what the odds are of him surviving this right now.”
Watching Mugs sniffing around at the base of his legs, she asked, “And how is it Mugs knows you?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes when he’s outside, this last week I’ve come in, and I’ve given him some treats. And some pats.”
“I haven’t even seen you.”
“Besides, it’s easy to keep some of your hair on my pant leg. A trick that my mom told me to use.” He looked over at Doreen. “From your hairbrush. You almost caught me that time.”
“Did you just tell her everything?” Peggy asked in shock.
“I didn’t have to, Ma,” he stated. “She already knew.”
At that Peggy looked at her, stunned.
Doreen nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty easy to figure out. So you might want to consider what your choices of action are right now. Because the sugar bowl is not here. The cops have it.”
She shook her head slowly, as if in denial. “No way,” she declared. “No way a cop would even look at that sugar bowl.” Peggy turned to argue with her son.
“Except for a cop who trusts me,” she replied quietly. She looked down at her phone, noting Mack had been the last one called, and she quickly hit record then Redial and put the phone down on the table. The buzzer was off, but maybe, with any luck, Mack would realize that she needed him.
But Peggy was still berating her son. “What did you do?” she asked. “You realize you’ll go to jail for life for this.”
“You both will,” Doreen cut in before her son could reply. “Although I understand that you think you’re going to get away with this but you’re not. I mean, you two each killed somebody. And the way it’s going, like I said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your mother here wasn’t thinking about killing you next.”
“He’s nothing but a lazy layabout failure,” his mom snapped, followed by a heavy snort. “The money he’s cost me all these years, while he sat at home, doing nothing, didn’t pay any rent.” She glared at him. “I’d be in Rosemoor myself right now. Instead I’m still working, still trying to pay the bills. Once I sell that house, I’m out of there.”
At that, her son looked at her. “You’re not serious, are you?” he asked, his tone faint. “Mooomm?”
“Why not? It’s not like you’ll give me grandkids anyway. At least not while I’m still alive. You couldn’t even dispose of that rat poison like I asked you to,” she said in disgust.
“There are always rats at the lake and they come to our house too,” he protested. “so I dumped it one of the garden beds figuring that would take out a lot of them. How was I to know old Gorman would find it and bring it back home again.”
“How could he not. That crap is dangerous. You don’t just leave it out where anyone can find it. What if a child found it?” She glared at him then twisted that glare in Doreen’s direction. “And you. You’re nothing but a pain in the butt. Do you really think I haven’t heard all the stories about all the stunts you’ve pulled?”
“Yeah, there have been a few of them, I’m sure.” Doreen grabbed her phone. Mack wasn’t answering her call, so she quickly texted him—typing out 911. She hit Send, right as Peggy grabbed the phone out of her hand.
“You just sent it,” she snapped, glaring at Doreen’s phone. Only to quickly add a second text message. Just kidding. She laughed. “Now he won’t come.”
“Yeah, he will,” Doreen confirmed. “I mean, when there’s a day that I kid, it won’t be about something like that.” She glanced at Mugs, who stared up at Peggy. Maybe Peggy’s son had befriended Mugs with treats, but Mugs wasn’t having anything to do with Peggy. He growled at her. Peggy looked down and kicked out at him. He just growled again, skittering away from her.
“Leave the dog alone,” her son cried out. “He didn’t do anything to you.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You need to shoot her. And we need to get out of here.”
He glanced at the gun in his hand, looked over at his mother, and said, “Not me. I didn’t do nothing.”
“Except for killing your friend and stealing the old man’s rat poison,” Doreen noted.
He glared at her. “You need to shut your mouth about that.”
Of course his mother had no idea about that. Something Doreen planned to fix. “Peggy, you didn’t know that your son killed his friend Alan, because the guy was sweet on you, huh?”
She stared at her then spun to look at her son and roared, “You what?”
“Like mother, like son apparently,” Doreen replied. “Or did you not realize that your son was using the same poison. And of course now we’re all suspicious because there’s been more than one death.”
The color faded from Peggy’s skin, and she turned and looked at her son. “Please tell me that you did not do that,” she cried out.
“He was trying to get in your pants,” he yelled. “It was disgusting. You were just simpering around him, like you were a sixteen-year-old.”
She stared at him in shock, and then she smacked him hard on the side of the head. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. He was just being nice.”
“He was trying to see if he could move in and could take the house from you,” he said, with a sneer. “But you were too hooked on him to even understand. And he was too hooked on the idea of getting easy money and an easy life, living with you. You didn’t even see it coming.”
“Of course I didn’t,” she said, “because he wasn’t for real.”
“Oh, he was for real all right,” he snapped. “At least he would have been, if I’d let it happen.”
“You should have let it happen then,” she yelled. “It would have been nice to have somebody out there who gave a hoot about me.” She looked at him in horror. “How could you do that, knowing that I was so alone?”
“Hang on a minute,” he said. “Aren’t you the one who just took out a life insurance policy on my head?”
“Sure.” Then she stopped and added slowly, “But that was also Alan’s idea.”