Chapter 15

Wednesday Early Afternoon …

W hen Chester left with the fingerprint from the window ledge, just Doreen and Mack remained. She sat outside on the deck, with a calming cup of tea, while Mack drank coffee.

“Do you really think the intruder was after me?” she asked. “And does that also mean the shooter was after me too?”

Mack sighed. “I’m not sure. I’m still trying to come up with a reason for that.”

She nodded. “I guess it’s almost to be expected at this point, isn’t it?”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t be,” he stated. “The fact that you live alone doesn’t help either.”

She looked over at him, and her lips twitched. “Does that mean you want to move in?”

He eyed her in surprise, then smiled. “No, that’s not what I was saying at all. Not that I would say no, if the invitation was there. That would definitely be something to consider. However, if I thought the danger was any worse than this, I would move in, and you wouldn’t get a choice.”

She laughed out loud at that. “At that point, I wouldn’t fight you or argue about it either. If somebody is determined to come after me, I’ll hardly turn down the assistance. Although, I will say, the animals have held me in good stead so far. They may be ready to fight even you off of me.”

“You wish, but we can’t count on that, particularly when Thaddeus appears to be in a snit over something.”

“Yeah, if only I knew for sure what he was mad at me about,” she muttered, with a headshake.

“Could you find out?” he asked her curiously. “It seems Thaddeus has his own agenda to whatever it is he’s working on.”

“I don’t even know if it’s so much his own agenda. Sometimes, when I don’t take him down to visit Big Guy, or if I don’t do something that he thinks I should, he gets miffed at me.”

“ Miffed is par for the course with animals and people,” he noted. “So, is it more than that?” he asked gently.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Has he seen something or did I not do something? It could be anything or all of those things.… I thought I was doing well learning his language, but he’s the one learning mine,” she admitted.

Thaddeus flew from his perch in the living room to join them on the deck, perhaps hearing his name mentioned. He landed on Doreen’s arm and soon settled on her shoulder.

“I think that’s probably pretty common,” Mack noted, as he gently stroked the African Grey’s feathers. Thaddeus ruffled up, then looked at him and walked from Doreen’s shoulder, down her arm, and over to Mack.

“He definitely likes you,” she pointed out.

After a moment of silence, Mack gently spoke. “Does that bother you?”

She shook her head. “No. I see our role as loving custodians of the animals, and, if we’re lucky, they love us back. Plus I think it’s good for Thaddeus to have a more rounded repertoire of people in his world, and you’ve been a mainstay for many months now. No wonder he loves you.”

“He’s become part of my family too.”

At that, Thaddeus rubbed his beak against Mack’s cheek.

Doreen smiled. “Did he just whisper to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Mack noted, looking at the bird with a frown.

“I think he’s imitating us and doing the best he can to enunciate words. However, maybe he can’t hear or understand all the nuances of a whisper.”

“Thaddeus is fascinating, no matter what.” Thaddeus settled onto his shoulder, making Mack smile. “Honest to goodness, the acceptance by your animals is lovely.”

She looked at him, and her heart melted at that. “Acceptance is lovely, and that’s something I’m slowly adjusting to.”

“You’ll have an awful lot to adjust to and fast, between Scott—Did you ever get a hold of him?”

She shook her head at that. “I’ve left a couple messages, and he’s left a couple messages with me. So far we’re just playing phone tag.”

“You didn’t have your phone with you?”

“I was gardening, I think, and another time I had the ringer turned off.” She shrugged. “Even if Scott’s sold everything, it’ll still be a while before I see any of the money from the sales.”

“Maybe so, but you’ve come a long way, and maybe some of it was sold sooner.”

She smiled. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. Of course I’m very curious. However, I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

At that comment, Mack chuckled. “That’s also what you said about the divorce and look how that turned out? I don’t know anybody who’s had as much financial good luck coming to them as you’ve had of late. It’s not just selling the antiques—and you really needed that money—but now you’ll also have money and assets coming from possibly Robin’s estate and definitely from your ex’s. Some of his stuff you should get pretty quickly because your name was already on a lot of his properties.”

“Which may mean a lot of taxes are owed and probably immediately due,” she muttered, her tone turning dark. “For all I know, that’s why he left it all to me, knowing that I would struggle to pay for it.”

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t plan on leaving it in your hands. Pretty sure that he fully intended to take it away from you,” Mack pointed out, his tone serious. “But, if you do run into that kind of trouble, you can get help in order to make those payments.”

“I would imagine that property taxes aren’t due for another year. So, if Mathew had paid everything up to date, maybe I’m good to go for now. I can ask Nick to look into it.”

Mack smiled. “We do need our lawyers and Nick too, even if they seem to be taking their sweet time.”

At that, her phone rang. “Look at that. Speak of the devil. Hey, Nick. I’m sitting outside on my deck with your brother, and we were just talking about you.”

“Good,” he replied briskly. “I need to confirm your bank account and safe deposit box numbers and everything else, so we can get all your paperwork and legal matters handled.”

“What do you need the bank accounts for?”

“I presume you want all the money from Mathew transferred to your account and taken away from any accounts that have his name on them. Technically nobody should have access to those accounts of his, but just to be safe…”

“Oh, I definitely want to move it all,” she stated.

“Okay, as soon as we get everything into your name, we have a bunch of paperwork to handle. Plus we need to set up a proper will.”

She winced at that. “Right. Just in case somebody succeeds in knocking me off.” Her tone went dark again as she mentioned that.

Nick’s tone was sharp, as he snapped back, “Did somebody attack you again?”

Mack reached for her phone and put it on Speaker and answered his brother. He let him know of the latest shooting incident downtown and the break-in at Doreen’s house as well.

“Good Lord, that’s just a little too depressing to hear.”

“Yeah, lots of things in life are depressing, Nick,” Doreen interjected. “According to your mother, the fact that you don’t have a partner is also depressing.”

Silence came from Nick’s end, but Mack burst out laughing.

“Unfortunately Doreen is quite right about that,” Nick admitted, “but I am not sure you two are in a position to throw stones.”

“Mom appears to be somewhat okay with Doreen and I having some kind of a future,” Mack shared, sending an odd look at Doreen. “So, that means you’ve become Mom’s next project.”

“Good Lord,” Nick muttered, his tone a bit jittery. Then he laughed too. “I guess that’s part and parcel of living closer to home, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Doreen agreed. “Yet it might make it easier because she’ll see you on a regular basis, and that might push away some of her concerns.”

“Or bring them right into focus,” Mack countered, with a smile. “But, hey, as long as the focus is on you and not me, I am very okay with that.”

“ Right . Thanks for that, bro. Doreen, I’ll call you in the morning. Or maybe let’s just set up a meeting… around ten or so?”

“Sure,” she replied.

“Okay, so I can come down to you. We’ll collect all the information I need, and then we’ll start sending some documents through.”

“Is this to do with Mathew’s estate?”

“Both Mathew’s and Robin’s estates are involved here, and I’m the one dealing with the lawyer. Therefore, as long as you sign the documents authorizing me to do all this for you, we can get it sorted and the cash wired into your accounts. After that, we can then start the transfer process for the rest of the properties and other non-cash assets.”

“Right, and then what about the stuff that my name isn’t on?”

“Everything was left to you, so that part is pretty clear. We haven’t had any claims as of yet or any disputes about property ownership, but we will consider that, if it happens.”

“ That’s lovely ,” Doreen muttered, a bit sarcastically. “I very much want to be free and clear of all this stuff relating to Mathew’s estate and would prefer that it happen sooner rather than later.”

“You’ll be a very wealthy woman after this, and remember that being free and clear comes with another set of responsibilities.”

“I know, such as property taxes that may be due,” she muttered. “I need to talk to you about something else, once we get all this done too.”

“What something else?” Nick asked curiously.

“Just what my options are for spending it. Optimal investments and all.”

“Are you worried about the groceries again?” Nick asked, a note of humor in his tone.

“No.… I was wondering, and then talked to Nan about it, how I can best help Tammy and other women get off the streets.”

“Who is Tammy?” he asked cautiously.

At that, Mack stepped up and explained, staring at her with an expression of amazement and wonder, as if seeing her for the very first time.

“Ah,” Nick replied. “Once we get this paperwork straightened away and assets distributed, we can talk about what to do with the money and how to help other people. In the meantime my current advice is to not do anything at the moment. I’ve already got a lot of paperwork that needs to be completed, without adding more. We can discuss it once it’s all safely moved into your accounts.” And, with that, he wished them a good day and rang off.

Mack smiled at her. “You didn’t tell me about Tammy.”

She shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure what to do yet. I literally just talked to Nan about this right before I came home to this intruder mess. If all Tammy needs is just a bus ticket, it seems too simple. It’s not fully addressing her problem.”

His smile spread across his face and blossomed into a huge grin. “Says the woman who didn’t have two pennies to herself for all these many months.”

“I know, and maybe that’s partly why I want to help. The value of just a simple helping hand has already been proven out by Nan. If she hadn’t given me this home, I could have ended up where Tammy is.” Mack stared at her in shock. She shrugged and didn’t shirk away but spoke the truth, as simple as it was. “I had no visible means of support, Mack. No skills,” she added slowly. “It’s not at all out of the realm of possibility to realize that I could have ended up in a very bad state. Nan is the reason I’m not in that distressing scenario. So, if I can help somebody else get out of the scenario she’s in, and, with a small sum involved, such as a bus ticket to Ontario, that’s fine. The problem is trying to figure out if these people are serious and whether Tammy will stick to the plan, and that’s my job to determine.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, do I just help and then walk away? What if I did offer the help, but they take that money to buy drugs or something? Do they not get any more help? Do you see what I mean?”

“I do,” he said, with a gentle smile. “I think charities the world over have that problem.”

“Right,” she muttered. “It’s so sad to think that we can’t quite make a decision on the future because we don’t know how people will react.”

“I think when it comes to cash money, you have to give it and let it go. That’s all you can do. Now for a bus ticket, you just buy it for her.”

“That’s one of the concepts Nan and I were discussing,” Doreen noted, now with a smile. “Nan is quite willing to fork over any money I can’t quite manage. If it’s only a few hundred dollars—”

“A few hundred dollars times how many women? That could add up quickly,” Mack reminded her.

“I know, and at the moment it’s only about helping Tammy, but I can see that it could become an avalanche very quickly.”

“When you get all this other paperwork done, maybe talk to my brother about setting something up. I don’t know if a charity is quite the right word, but a trust or a foundation or maybe an endowment is what you need. You could set aside a portion of the money you are getting and use it to provide that support to people in a way that’s safe. However, you should also consider doing it in a way that could offset your tax liability a bit.”

She winced at that. “Seems I have an awful lot to learn.”

“You’re smart, and you’re quick on your feet,” he declared. “Plus you have the benefit of time, and you have my brother there to help you out.”

She beamed at him. “Yeah, turns out you were a very good find for me.” She gently stroked his cheek. “Not only did you teach me how to cook—and regularly come to my rescue—but your brother is keeping me afloat in all these other areas. What would I do without you two?”

Mack chuckled. “I don’t think that’s quite what Nick intended. He was mostly trying to help you divorce that ex of yours.”

“Yeah, and somebody else took care of that in a much faster way.”

He nodded. “But we won’t dwell on that part.”

“No, we won’t,” she agreed, as she patted his hand. “With everything else lining up to provide a comfortable living for me and my animals—way more than I could have imagined—plus with the long-awaited antiques money coming along, it’ll all be a fair bit to deal with. I appear to be entering a whole new stage in life.”

At that, he couldn’t say a whole lot more, except to remind her that she was up for the challenge. He looked back to the house. “How satisfied are you with your alarm?”

“Not as much as I thought,” she murmured, “but then I’m not sure any sensor was on that kitchen window anyway.”

“No, there wasn’t,” he confirmed. “I already called the security company, and we definitely need to boost up your system.”

“It’ll take a day or two, I presume.”

He nodded. “Most likely. Since the shops are closed for the day now, I’ll talk to them in the morning and see if we can get a rush on it.”

She smiled. “And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, you’ll take care of yourself, and you’ll be very cautious.”

“Sure, I always am.”

His tone grim, he looked at her with a serious expression. “You get into situations that require a high level of caution, so you’ll have to up your game on that.”

She didn’t say anything, but he was right. Chances were, at some point in time, she would get into a scenario that wasn’t good. It had happened too many times to count now, and she couldn’t always trust in her animals being there to rescue her—although they’d done a heck of a job up until now. She reached over to Thaddeus, still seated on Mack’s shoulder, and gently stroked his beautiful feathers. “Doreen loves Thaddeus.”

He looked over at her and immediately responded, “Thaddeus loves Doreen.”