Chapter 24

Saturday Early Morning …

T he next morning Doreen woke with several texts from Tammy. Doreen smiled as the woman kept her updated with her progress. It was an interesting thing to decide to take a bus instead of flying. Yes, it was cheaper for Doreen to manage, yet Tammy’s reasoning was also very enlightening. When the subject of travel options had been brought up, Tammy had said that she would prefer the time to undergo some mental changes, taking that time to adjust to and to become the person her family expected her to be, and to leave all this behind. She couldn’t do that on a flight, but she was hoping that, over so many days of traveling, she could slowly evolve into the person she used to be.

Doreen had been fine with whatever mode Tammy had chosen and found it interesting because she could relate to Tammy’s reasoning behind it.

As Doreen was poring through Tammy’s messages, Doreen realized that she’d slept in again. She shook her head at that. She never used to be allowed to sleep in, and the few times it had happened always came as a bit of a shock. Now it was kind of nice, and she enjoyed the freedom to just stay in bed for a while. She smiled and yawned. She didn’t have any particular reason to get up. She didn’t have any reason to do anything really.

Apparently her good fortune would bring enough money to her that she would be just fine in the future. All she had to do was figure out what she wanted to do as she grew old.

She burst out laughing at that. Talk about blessings. Nan had given Doreen a gift that she could never repay. Not that Nan wanted repayment, but it was just amazing to think of Nan having done such a thing, having planned this out decades ago. Of course Nan hadn’t known that life would leave Doreen this way, but to have put some thought into what would happen if it did, and so many years ago, had been just amazing.

She got up, dressed, and headed downstairs, wanting that first cup of coffee. As she took a look around the kitchen, she realized she could bring in more food and stock up on pet food as well. That would make the animals happy, she was sure.

She opened the back door for them and proceeded to fill up all their food bowls, giving them the choice of eating first or going out first. Mugs immediately chose food. As soon as he was done, he bolted outside and headed to the garden. She smiled at that. “It’s a beautiful house and yard, isn’t it, Mugs?”

Once the coffee was on, she rustled up a simple breakfast for herself and took it outside to eat. With the animals now interested in her food, she groaned. “I just fed you guys.”

Mugs gave her that typical woebegone look of his. After all, his dry meal was just one of many that she was willing to provide. She did know he would get overweight fast if she gave him unlimited food. She’d had a run-in with a strange situation a while back, when he started gaining weight abnormally. Luckily she discovered pretty quickly that Thaddeus had been handing out treats behind her back. With some extra laps, Mugs was doing better. He even often stopped eating when he was full, but maybe the issue was the type of food the animals preferred. She would look into more options for them.

She sat in the fresh air, shutting her eyelids, as she felt the breeze lift her hair and gently blow it back. It was truly a beautiful day. She knew it was just the calm before the storm, literally before everything broke loose. At least that had been her experience. She smiled at that, but almost immediately her phone rang. Stifling a groan, she looked down to see it was Nan. She quickly answered it. “Good morning. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Nan replied in a brisk tone. “Jethro’s not though.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re thinking about charging him,” she wailed, her tone quite upset.

At that, Doreen sighed. “He pulled a gun on you, Nan. He held you against your will and even took you away at gunpoint.”

“It wasn’t real though,” she snapped.

Doreen stared at the phone. “What? The gun wasn’t real?”

“No, it wasn’t. He just wanted to make his point, to ensure that somebody would look into all the comings and goings in the area and figured you would be the best person for the job.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. So he marches you at gunpoint down to his house instead of just asking for my help?”

“I had turned him down for tea several times recently,” Nan added. “I guess he got tired of hearing no for an answer.”

Doreen didn’t even know what to say to that. Her jaw opened, then slowly closed again. “I’m not sure what they would be charging him with, but I don’t imagine he’ll get off completely.”

“But he should,” Nan argued.

“Nan, he created quite the stir when you and the animals all went missing, and the police don’t take kindly to people wasting resources. I don’t think you can do much of anything about it.”

“I’m heading down there now,” she declared. “I want to talk to him.”

“Did they keep him overnight?” Doreen asked.

“Yes, they did. I guess somebody,… somebody was quite upset at my disappearance.”

“ Everybody was upset, naturally,” Doreen declared. “Nan, this isn’t something to fool around with. We have an awful lot of serious cases right now that are possibly coming together, causing even more trouble. Whether Jethro was part of any of that or not, I don’t know, but it’s up to the police to figure that out.”

Nan gasped. “Since when do you leave stuff like that to the police?”

She winced. “When I find my grandmother has been kidnapped by a crazy gunman,” she snapped. “Worse yet, kidnapped over tea.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and he certainly didn’t hurt me.”

Doreen sort of understood where Nan was coming from. She shook her head, not at all sure how to make any of this easy on her grandmother.

“It doesn’t matter what he did, since I’m okay and back home now. So I’m going down there to talk to the cops now.” Nan ended the call abruptly.

Doreen sat here, staring at her phone, then decided to call Mack about it.

When he answered the phone, he was clearly distracted. “Doreen, is it important? I’m really busy.”

“Nan’s on her way down to the station. She doesn’t want Jethro charged.”

A moment of shocked silence came. “What?”

Doreen quickly explained the little bit that Nan had told her.

“Yeah, we found out the gun wasn’t real last night, when we arrested him,” Mack confirmed. “However, all that time before we found her, we didn’t know that. He’s lucky that he wasn’t shot. Pulling a stunt like that can get a guy hurt.”

“Exactly, and whether Nan knew it at any point in time before this all came to an end, I don’t know.”

“This is getting out of hand,” Mack grumbled. “We can’t have people kidnapping each other in order to bring our attention to a neighborhood problem.”

“Particularly when I didn’t even know Jethro existed, and nobody had ever talked to me about the problem at the creek at night,” she pointed out.

Mack groaned. “Look. I’ll talk to Nan when she gets here, but I’m not sure we can do anything. It sends a bad signal to the community if we let some man waving a gun around be accepted as the norm in Kelowna.”

“I know. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“Thanks for that,” he muttered. “How’s your bus traveler?”

“She’s doing much better,” she shared. “I woke up to a series of texts from her. In one of them she told me that she had picked up a journal and is working on some of her issues.”

“Good.… Sorry. I’ve got to go.” And, with that, he was gone.

Doreen wasn’t sure whether that meant Nan was already at his desk, about to berate him for what he’d done, or if something else had happened. Still, Doreen couldn’t imagine that this would be an easy time for Mack. Maybe this Jethro guy would get off with a warning. If he’d had a clean record all his life, maybe they would chalk it up to poor judgment under difficult circumstances and a lack of sleep.

Doreen didn’t know his history, and he might have had forty-seven zillion parking tickets and may have refused to deal with any authority issues. Who knew? She had no clue what Nan’s involvement in all this would mean for Doreen or if it should mean anything at all. But it would, of course, because the minute Nan got involved, everybody was involved.

Doreen scrubbed her face, then picked up her coffee and tossed back the rest of the cup. She definitely would need a second one at this point. She headed back inside, got herself some more coffee, and returned outside, all the while wondering who would phone her first, Mack or Nan.

When her phone rang, it was somebody she wasn’t expecting at all. She stared down at the phone in pleasant surprise. “Hey, Bernard. What’s up?”

“I hear you’re back in trouble again already.”

She snorted. “Wow, good news travels fast, doesn’t it?” His laughter peeled out, putting a smile on her face. “Besides, I’m not really in trouble. It’s just life, you know?”

“If you’re out rescuing prostitutes and going up against the local madam, that’s a whole different story.” At his use of the term local madam , her eyebrows shot up.

“How do you know about the local madam?” she asked hesitantly.

He chuckled. “Not in that way,” he clarified. “I’ve never needed to pay for sex in my life.”

“No offense was intended, and I’m certainly glad to hear that. It’s wonderful to know you don’t suffer in that department,” she replied, her tone filled with mirth. “So, what do you know about her otherwise?”

“I did hear that she had moved recently, something about the increased rental prices.”

At that, Doreen closed her eyes and whispered, “Oh, that would explain it.”

“Explain what?” he asked.

Doreen ignored his question and instead asked one of her own. “Do you have any idea where she moved to?”

“No, I just know that she’s not downtown, not since the last little bit.”

“Any idea how long ago?” she asked.

“ Hmm. ” He pondered that. “I want to say in the last month or two.”

“Okay,” she muttered, exasperated, yet understanding. “That would potentially explain one of the problems we have going on right now.”

“You always have so much action going on in your life,” he said, almost with a note of envy in his tone.

She burst out laughing. “That’s true, but it’s not necessarily a good thing.”

At that, he chuckled. “No, I guess that’s a fair point. It’s just easy to look at your life and to realize how much more exciting it is than mine.”

“Bernard, your world is very exciting,” she stated in astonishment. “I can’t imagine you missing out on anything, the way you live your life.”

“Maybe, but it is an odd thing to realize that I’m out of the loop a bit. Maybe that’s why I’m calling, just trying to figure out if I can do anything to help.”

“You could confirm the location of the madam for me.”

He burst out laughing. “That’s just a matter of a phone call.”

“Make it then. I definitely don’t want my number on any madam’s phone list,” she added, with a chuckle.

“Okay, give me a few minutes,” he said. Then he quickly rang off.

She stared down at the phone. “Is it really that easy?” Then Doreen realized that Tammy was probably the best resource that Doreen had on this particular industry. So, she quickly sent off a series of texts, knowing that Tammy would reply when and if there was an internet connection she could utilize. Traveling by bus had to be iffy at the best of times, depending on the mountain passes. Doreen didn’t know how much usage Tammy’s cell phone had available either.

Doreen didn’t really want Tammy to disappear into the other side of this, but Doreen couldn’t really blame Tammy if she did. Doreen would represent a part of Tammy’s old life, and she may well want to cut all ties. Doreen was still worried that, at some level, Tammy might have had something more to offer in this case. Doreen just didn’t want it to be something terrible, like commission of crimes kind of terrible. Particularly since Doreen had gone to bat for Tammy.

By the time Doreen finished working out all the questions she wanted answered, she then apologized for not having thought of going through all this while they could talk in person. Doreen chastised herself for not having more of an idea where this was going, but how could she have? Everything had been so up in the air, and it had seemed more important to just get Tammy out of Jed’s grasp and on her way, before it became a bigger problem.

Plus even Mack didn’t think all these disjointed incidents—dead man in a community garden, prostitution ring in downtown Kelowna, Jethro’s complaint of noisy nighttime activity on the creek—were all connected. Yet Doreen’s gut kept telling her that. And so she reminded Mack of that often.

Still, the local authorities were working on it, and, as long as someone was willing to go to bat for people, just as Doreen and Nan had done, life would stay interesting. At the thought of Nan, Doreen pictured her down at the police station, giving them trouble over Jethro. Doreen should probably get Bernard invested in some of these problems, since he was bored, had time and money, and could certainly become a force for good, if anybody wanted him involved.

Maybe that was the problem. Nobody wanted him involved because, once involved, he would quite likely take over. She chuckled at that thought because he was who he was, and definitely somebody she could use on her cold cases.

Just as she was finishing off her coffee, Bernard called back.

“She’s out near you,” he greeted her.

“Did she just tell you that?”

“No, obviously I have a few other avenues at my disposal,” he replied. “I definitely didn’t phone her and ask, nor did I make an appointment, getting her address in the midst of said hypothetical transaction. However, I do have a friend who utilizes some of her exclusive services.”

“Does he utilize other services, other women?”

“No, he was very particular about her, just her.”

“So, he pays a higher price, I assume?”

“Exactly, but she did move recently and is renting a house not all that far from you.”

“Do you know if she’s involved in anything else?”

“Like what?” he asked curiously.

“Fencing of stolen goods has been a thought.”

He hesitated. “Kelowna doesn’t have great numbers of high clientele, and she’s aging, so it is quite possible that she’s been looking at other business avenues.”

“Right. So, there have been complaints about increased activities at a house not very far from me, noises at nighttime,” she murmured, “and we wondered if it was her.”

“Seems it’s quite possible,” he noted. “I know my friend would be pretty upset if she went out of business.”

“If he cares that much for her, maybe he should convince her to get out of the business and to do something else,” she suggested, with a note of amusement.

“He’s tried, several times, in fact, but I think she’s one of the few who actually likes it.”

“Which can only mean that she’s not getting beaten up and abused.”

“Exactly, but she’s been controlling things on her own for quite a while.”

“Do you know anything about Jed?” She then took a moment and explained who he was.

“No. I don’t really know too much more about it than the odd snippets here and there that I’ve heard from my friend. Frankly it’s not exactly the circle of people I’m used to dealing with.”

She laughed at that. “Except for a certain friend of yours, who likes to use an escort service.”

“They’re not cheap either,” he added.

“Yeah, just out of curiosity, how much is a night with her?”

“When she was commanding her top prices in Vancouver a few years back, I understand she was easily getting five grand a night.”

Doreen’s jaw dropped at that. “Seriously?” She squeaked out the word, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, some of the top girls get incredible money. She moved up here—though I’m not exactly sure how many years ago, ten perhaps—because she was getting older, facing a lot of competition, and wasn’t able to command the same prices. Out here, the choices for escorts are limited, shall we say, and she found her niche. She stayed pretty private, using only referrals for the longest time.”

“I’m just trying to figure out if she has anything to do with Jed Barry’s prostitution operation,” she shared.

“My understanding was that they were trying to expand the industry and get more girls, but I don’t think she particularly likes working with Jed.”

“He’s abusive and quite the bully, so I don’t know why she would. I really don’t even know why she would need him.”

“Because he had girls. I think that’s probably how she would put it.”

“I guess she’s probably not open to talking to me, is she?”

“No, particularly not if you’re interested in pinning something on her.”

“Which we might be, I don’t know,” she admitted, with a groan.

“What’s this got to do with anything anyway?”

She explained about the missing police Taser used in a recent murder.

“That Taser went missing about ten years ago?” Bernard asked.

“Yes,” she said, then gasped. “Oh no, that’s an interesting coincidence.”

“What?”

“She moved up here about that same time and is potentially involved in moving stolen goods.”

“I don’t know that she was doing that back then—or if she is at all, for that matter.”

“She may have just gotten into that sideline by way of Jed,” Doreen murmured. “After all, Jed was already into B&Es back then, it seems.”

“Maybe, I don’t know.” Just then his phone buzzed. “Hey, I’ve got another call coming in. I’ve got to run.” With that, he quickly disconnected.

Doreen wondered if any of this information was helpful or if, once again, it was just a lot of speculation with no proof of anything. And without Nan or Mack getting back to her, Doreen had no idea how any part of this whole scenario was going. Though it wasn’t long before Nan called her back.

“Jethro’s out,” she announced, almost a crow of triumph in her tone.

Doreen stared at the phone. “Oh?”

“Yes, I paid his bail.”

At that, Doreen winced. “Oh my, do you think that was a wise thing to do?”

Nan hesitated. “I don’t know whether it was smart or not, but I really did feel a little bit guilty for what he was doing in the first place.”

Doreen groaned. “Why? All this because you turned him down for tea?”

“Yes. He’s really a nice man. He’s just lonely.”

“ Right ,” Doreen muttered, followed by a sigh. “So, where are you now, Nan?”

“Home, and he’s coming over for tea. I don’t think it’s good for him to be all alone up there. He really should be in a place like this, with the rest of us. If he were here, he wouldn’t be quite so lonely.”

“Maybe not, but I can’t imagine how much trouble the two of you could get into if he was there with you.”

At that, Nan burst out into delighted laughter. “Why don’t you come down?” she asked. “It would be good for you to meet him under better circumstances.”

“Really? I’m not so sure about that. And what will Richie think?”

“Come on,” Nan repeated, but her invitation sounded more like an order.

Doreen wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to go, but finally she relented. “Fine, I’ll come down just for a quick visit. It’ll probably do my nightmares good to see him in a totally different light.”

“Exactly,” Nan agreed. “He’s a very nice man.”

“ Nan .”

“Oh, stop. I know exactly what happened, and I know why. Whether you choose to believe it or not, he never intended to hurt me.”

She sighed at that. “Fine, but I’m still not convinced.”

And, with that, she ended the call.