Chapter 13

As Doreen sat here, Mack might say he had everything under control, but she didn't think so, not when she desperately tried to bring Mr. Woo around, but he remained unconscious. There was a slow bleed from the back of his head.

"The bleeding has slowed down," Mack murmured at her side. "That's a good sign."

She shook her head. "I don't think you and I share the same concept of what's a good sign," she murmured.

He smiled at her. "We're getting there."

"No. This just means that whoever is out there is feeling pressured, probably made worse when I came and talked to Mr. Woo today, asking him exactly the same questions somebody was probably afraid I would ask."

"You think this is about you?" Mack asked. He'd pulled a blanket off the couch and covered up Mr. Woo to try and keep him warm.

In her mind, that seemed to be the least of Mr. Woo's worries. She nodded. "I did talk to him."

"Did you see anybody here?"

"No, I didn't see anyone at all." She stopped and asked, "I guess that's a problem, isn't it?"

He shrugged. "It does mean that theoretically you may have passed by whoever killed Mathew and maybe attacked Mr. Woo."

"Can't say I saw anyone." She pondered it. "I did say hi to an older guy walking a dog, but nobody else was necessarily right here though."

"Not that they would have to be. Think about it. Sometimes what we see isn't what we really see. It's just a little bit of what was there."

She pondered that. "I don't know that Mr. Woo would be anybody to be concerned about. He looked to be pretty old."

Mack nodded. "What about anybody else? Or anything out of place?"

She frowned at that and thought back to everything and everyone who she had seen, but still she came up with nothing. She shook her head. "Nothing I can remember."

"Okay. What about when you came here earlier?"

"When I came here today to place the repeat order? I walked out of Mr. Woo's place pretty quickly."

He nodded. "Yes, maybe somebody saw you coming out, maybe you were racing to go talk to Bernard, or maybe somebody heard you would come back. Maybe they came back." He asked her, "Did you come back on time?"

She shook her head. "No, I was a little bit later than I'd told him because of Bernard."

"Right. You didn't see anybody there?"

She shrugged. "Not really, but I wasn't looking," she admitted, with a wince.

"Of course not, and anybody who was here, staking it out, would not want to be seen." He turned and walked to the street-facing window of the apartment.

"Right, that little coffee shop and a health food store are across the street," she noted, "and a pizza place, so they could have been hanging out in this area for a while."

"Maybe not even for a while, maybe they just came back and forth and sat in the vehicle."

"Nobody will notice a vehicle."

At that, he nodded slowly.

"So often people do forget about a vehicle, don't they?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he muttered. Just then they heard the sirens.

"Oh, thank heavens," Doreen muttered.

"Wait here," he ordered, and he raced down to the restaurant. Within minutes, she heard the EMTs coming toward her. She backed away, and they immediately went to work. As she turned around, she saw several cops standing there, talking to Mack, as he gave them a rundown on what happened. When they saw Doreen here, Arnold rolled his eyes.

"You again," he muttered.

"It's got to be connected," she stated boldly.

"In what way and why?" asked the new detective, as she came up the stairs, stopping to look at her. "How come you're always in the midst of the trouble?"

Doreen glared at her. "I'm here to check on Mr. Woo. And lucky that we did."

Insley shrugged. "Sure seems suspicious that, every time I turn around, you're there."

"Get used to it. It's a small town," Doreen declared. "Every time you turn around, we're all here."

At that, Arnold agreed. "I have to admit that Doreen's got a point there." Insley just stared at him. He shrugged and turned away, but he gave Doreen a wink.

She felt better at that. At least not everybody thought she was a murderer.

As she headed down ahead of Mr. Woo, now strapped to a gurney, Insley stopped her. "I need to hear your side of the story."

"Sure, but can we do it downstairs?"

"Why?" she asked, looking around. "This is where you found him."

"Yes, it's where we found him, but we're in his private space, and I would prefer to not invade his privacy any more than necessary." The detective frowned at her. Doreen just shrugged. "I can feel the pain that he's gone through, the same as I have," she muttered. "Surely, it's not a big ask to take it downstairs."

Insley shrugged. "I don't care." With that, she walked downstairs with Doreen.

"Now, if you think this space isn't too personal," Insley stated, with an eye roll, "tell me what happened."

Doreen snapped at her, "You need some empathy when dealing with your investigations. Remember how we are all deemed innocent, until you find some credible evidence?" Not allowing Insley time to reply, Doreen explained about coming back and apologizing for the order that had gone awry, when she'd found Mathew's body and hadn't been allowed back due to the proximity to where the body was found. So when she'd returned to talk to Mr. Woo, she'd reordered with a promise to come and pick it up in an hour and a half.

"Why an hour and a half?" Insley asked.

"Because I was going to see Bernard, then would pick up the Chinese food afterward."

"Who's Bernard?"

It was much harder to talk to people who didn't know who you were talking about. Doreen frowned, then explained who Bernard was.

"Why would he have an extra phone?"

"I don't know why he has phones," she declared, frowning at her. "You'll have to ask him that. But since I had already spoken to Mack and knew that my phone wouldn't be returned right away, I was quite willing to pick up a phone I could use in the meantime." She pulled it out of her pocket and waved it in the woman's face.

"So, you went to Bernard's and what took you so long before you came back?"

"Because we had lunch."

"What time was this?" she barked.

Doreen gave her the information, wondering why she was as cranky as she was. Maybe just a case of being thorough. While Doreen gave Insley the benefit of the doubt, Doreen described her visit at Bernard's house.

"Fine, so you were having lunch with your boyfriend."

"Bernard is a friend." Doreen stared at her. "I didn't say he was my boyfriend, and you would do well to stick to the facts," Doreen declared. "Unless you want to upset a coworker of yours as well as your interviewees."

Insley's lips twitched, but she kept her gaze flat.

"I suggest you should always record your interviews, since you have a hearing problem or just a really short memory." Getting the evil eye from the new detective made Doreen smile. With a curt nod, she continued. "What I did say was I went to see Bernard, a friend, and he'd had a lunch prepared for us, so I joined him. I had planned on bringing the Chinese food home to have later in the evening anyway. I knew Mack would be over, and I figured that I could give our plans to have a Chinese dinner a second try."

At that, Insley asked Doreen, "Where's the Chinese food now?"

"At home in my kitchen."

"Yet you didn't open it in the meantime?"

"I'd already eaten and intended it for dinner, after Mack got off work, so why would I open it?" she asked, glaring at the woman. "Obviously you would leave it packaged in the bag, until you need it."

Insley contemplated that and then shrugged. "Then what?"

"What do you mean, then what?"

"You brought the takeout home and then what?"

"I went over to Millicent's, Mack's mom, to do some gardening. I saw Nick there as well. I came back home again. When Mack arrived, we opened up the Chinese food, and that's when we found the SOS."

"Sure, but you could have put that there anytime during the day."

Doreen stared at her. "Right. So now I'm making SOS signals in the Chinese food so that we go check on Mr. Woo and not find him in the restaurant?" Doreen asked, shaking her head and frowning at Insley. "What possible reason would I have for doing that?"

Insley just stared at her.

"Of course a reason doesn't really matter to you, does it?" Doreen asked, just starting to warm up. "I don't know why you have such trouble believing me," she began. "I think your concern should be more about what happened to Mr. Woo."

"It is," Insley replied. "We only have your word for it that you picked up this food today, and I don't even know that you did. For all I know, you knocked him over the head upstairs, snagged somebody else's lunch, then came home and stuck the letters in there to appear that somebody else had."

"Why would I do that?" Doreen asked in bewilderment.

Insley shrugged yet again. "I don't know. I still haven't figured out how your brain works."

"If you ever figure that out," Mack called out with a snort, "you can tell the rest of us."

After hearing chuckles all around, Doreen glared at him and pointed at Insley. "Do you hear what she's suggesting?"

"She's just hypothesizing," he suggested in a soothing tone.

She glared at him. "You and I are about to have a problem. I won't take any verbal or physical abuse anymore, not after Mathew. Just so you know upfront, that applies to you and to her. And what she just said doesn't sound like much of a hypothesis at the moment," Doreen declared. "It sounds a lot more like an accusation. I would suggest that she save her unsubstantiated theories for back at the station. Let her share those with the captain too. I would love to hear how that goes."

"Is there anything I should be accusing you of?" Insley asked.

"You already have accused me of anything you wanted," Doreen replied, her voice soft, yet her gaze hard. "It still won't make me your killer."