Chapter 29

Late Afternoon …

D oreen was still typing up her notes within Word, so she could hopefully search and find what she needed later, when Mack phoned her back.

“She’s not home,” he said in disgust.

“ Great ,” Doreen muttered. “She’s probably on the run.”

“Do you really think so?”

“No, not really. She was too cocky. She might be worried, but I don’t think she’s really panicked yet. So, no, on the running part.”

“I hope not. It’s a little hard to capture any of our suspects if you keep sending them running.”

“Hey, that wasn’t me.”

“No? So, who was it then who was talking to Alison about the neighborhood complaints?” he asked, with a bit of an edge to his tone.

She sighed. “Okay, so that was me. And putting Tammy on a bus, that was me,… partly me and Nan of course.”

“Don’t even get me started on Nan right now,” he growled, clearly not impressed that she had posted bail for her armed abductor, Jethro.

“But back to this gal, Alison, if that’s really her name,” Doreen began. “I didn’t mean to make her panic, and I don’t think she really has either. She was really very confident. Almost too confident, you know?”

“Which has nothing to do with the situation, as you well know.”

“Fine, whatever,” she muttered. “Are you coming over here?”

“No, I’ve just been called back into the office.”

“Okay, good enough then. I’ll talk to you later.” She disconnected, then went back to her notes.

As soon as she figured it was time for her stake-out, she looked at Mugs. “We should probably tell Mack what we’re doing, but he won’t be very happy, so I don’t want to.”

Mugs barked at her.

Collecting a backpack full of items that she thought she might need, she wondered about the level of common sense involved in doing this. But still, she lived here, so any traffic up and down that river concerned her too. She would just watch to see if there was any traffic tonight. Maybe Jethro was just imagining things. She also knew, if Nan had her way, she would have Jethro moved into Rosemoor very quickly. Whether kidnapping charges and carrying a fake gun would be filed against him or not, Doreen didn’t know, and neither would Nan at this point in time. So Doreen needed to find out.

Pulling on a black jacket, she quickly dressed for the outdoors on a cooler evening. Since it was midway into fall, once that sun went down, it could get pretty chilly. She slipped out the door with both Mugs and Goliath on foot beside her, not bothering with leashes because they were so close to home. With Thaddeus curled up against her neck, she headed to the creek.

They were more than interested in any kind of adventure right now. She continued down the creek until she was just on the other side of Richard’s place. Here she could stay in the shadows and keep an eye out to see for herself if anything was happening or not on the other side of the creek and a few houses farther down. As far as she was concerned, this was just research, this was all just confirming whether Jethro’s complaints were on the up-and-up or not. At least that’s what she told herself. She knew perfectly well that Mack would have something completely different to say about it. He may have a black-and-white on duty, but what could they really see from the street view? Still, she didn’t have a whole lot of options right now, and this was the avenue that had presented itself.

She sent Mack a message, asking if he had found any further connections between the characters, and he replied moments later with a no. When the phone rang, she quickly lowered the volume and answered in a quiet voice, “Hello.” Then she changed the ring to Vibrate.

“Where are you?” he asked, his tone sharp.

“Why would you even ask that?” she muttered. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Instincts,” he barked, “and my instincts are telling me that you’re up to no good.”

She snorted at that. “Well, sir, your instincts seem to have led you astray this time. You may apologize later.”

“Where are you?” he repeated in a worried tone.

“I’m at the river,” she replied.

“Oh, okay.” Then he stopped and asked, “Hang on, at your place?”

“Close to my place,” she said. “The river corridor is all public property anyway.”

“It is, indeed,” he agreed slowly, as if thinking his way through this. “Please tell me that you’re not sitting in the dark, watching to see what happens at that house.”

“If I don’t watch, how will I know if Jethro is telling the truth?” she asked in what she hoped was a reasonable tone of voice. But obviously it wasn’t reasonable enough because, when Mack blasted her a moment later, she winced and sighed. “So, not a good idea in your opinion, huh ?”

“If the intent is looking for trouble, it’s a great idea,” he snapped, with a sigh. After a moment a wry chuckle escaped. “You can’t even help yourself, can you? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Sit tight. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Okay. So far nothing’s happening anyway.”

“Good. That would be a nice change for once.” And, with that, he disconnected.

She smiled and hunkered down into the darkness. It was such a strange feeling to be out here at this time of night. Normally she was at her own place and tucked into bed. However, out here everything was so alive, yet in a way she hadn’t recognized before.

She didn’t spend much time out in the darkness of night. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable necessarily. It was just something she didn’t have any experience with. As she sat here marveling at the birds that would occasionally softly coo around her, Thaddeus would lift his head and look around, then hunker back down again. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m not all that comfortable out here either.”

Goliath, on the other hand, appeared to be happy as could be, keeping himself busy, hunting in the shrubs and the bushes around her. As long as he didn’t catch anything, she would be totally okay. She smiled at that because catching something was a whole different story than killing his prey right in front of her. She had to give him some credit for being a hunter because it was part of his nature, but she also gave him lots of food, so he didn’t need to hunt to eat. It was just the personality of a cat that she was up against. Still, she didn’t really want him to kill anything, especially while she was sitting here.

Thaddeus hopped off her shoulder and walked over to a stone and fluffed out his wings in the night air. She wasn’t at all sure what he would hunt in his natural environment or whether he would be predator or prey, but this circumstance was one he wasn’t accustomed to.

As she sat here, the shadows seemed to grow longer and longer, and the silence grew thicker and heavier. Feeling an instinctive unease, she looked around at the animals to see that their ears were all sharpening in tune with something. She just didn’t know what.

“I know,” she whispered to them. “Something’s going on out there. I just don’t know who is moving around.” When her phone vibrated, she looked down to see a text from Mack. He was coming through the creek and heading toward her. She smiled with relief, hating to admit that just being out here in the darkness was having an effect on her nerves. She hadn’t thought that she would be the nervous type. Still, she’d been through an awful lot lately, and maybe this was normal.

As she waited for Mack to arrive, she heard other sounds. So did Thaddeus, as he returned to the safety of her shoulder. She shifted deeper into the shadows when she heard another male voice, talking to someone, but he was several houses down from her.

“Yeah, I’m just coming up now,” he told someone.

He was walking toward her, would have to pass her to reach Alison’s house. Doreen stiffened.

“Who cares what some old batty neighborhood watch person says to you,” he replied. “I mean, this is working, so let’s just keep it up, at least for a while. We need a few months where we can move stuff easily, before we can get into a better situation. If it wasn’t for that little mishap, we would have been fine downtown.”

Then came silence.

“Yeah, yeah…” he added. “It’s okay. I’m coming in.”

And with that, he must have ended a phone conversation and kept on walking.

Mugs was alert, but he was quiet. She placed a hand on his back, as a word of warning, and he calmed down ever-so-slightly, backing up until he sat close to her. There was no sign of Goliath, but Doreen and Thaddeus sat silently in the dark, staring at the man approaching. Doreen should have been just enough in the shadows that he couldn’t see her, but, as he got closer, he stopped, looked around, and asked, “Who’s there?”

There was no answer, although she knew Mack should be getting closer too. But where and how far away was he? She didn’t know. She waited, and then the stranger snorted.

“Bloody shadows,” he muttered, with a half laugh. A sense of relief filled his tone, as if he’d been worried. He kept on walking, going right past her when his phone rang again.

“Yeah, Jed.… What?… Oh, you’re out of jail? Good.” He stopped and looked around. “No, I don’t know. She’s getting cold feet over this whole thing. You do know we’ll have to do something about her soon, right?”

The silence deepened around them, as he listened to his caller.

“I know, man. I don’t like working for a woman either, but right now she’s the one with the connections to sell all this stuff.”

Doreen listened, presumably as Jed spoke on the other end.

“And that is bullshit too. We have so much little stuff here, when we should be dealing with the big stuff with bigger payouts. Big cons, you know? Not all this nickel-and-dime stuff. I blame you for that, by the way.”

He snorted, a sound louder than it should have been in the creepy darkness.

“Yeah, yeah, anyway I’m almost there,” he replied. “I’ll pick up payment and maybe grab us a pizza and bring it back to the house.…I know. I’ve got your payment too, or at least I hope I will. It depends on if she wants any of this new stuff and thinks she can sell it.” At that, he ended the call and headed the last little bit up toward Alison’s place.

Doreen waited and watched, when suddenly Mack came down the pathway toward her in the opposite direction. She wondered if Mack and this other guy would meet face-to-face or if he would get to Alison’s gate just before Mack arrived. Silently she watched, waiting for the scene to be revealed right before her eyes, as if she had front row seats at the theater. She just didn’t know which side would win. She quickly texted Mack that one of the men involved in this mess was walking toward him. She didn’t get a response, but suddenly there they both were.

“Hey, who are you?” the stranger asked sharply, and she heard Mack reply.

“I’m the guy who’ll take you down to the station to answer a few questions,” he replied calmly.

“No way, you ain’t got nothing on me at all.”

“That depends if you actually own the contents of that duffel bag you’re carrying.”

“You ain’t gonna touch me,” he snapped, and, sure enough, a tussle ensued.

She bolted out of the shadows and watched Mack fighting the other guy, as the duffel bag sat on the ground. She snatched it up and backed away with it, but the guy turned and saw her.

“Who are you?” he cried out. When he looked at the bag now at her feet, his face turned ugly.

Just then Mack stepped forward and said, “No, you don’t.”

“Oh, yeah, I do. I don’t know who she is, but she just stole my bag.”

“I didn’t touch anything in it,” Doreen stated. “I’m sure the police will help sort out whose stuff is in this bag.”

He looked at the both of them and put his hands out in front of him. “Hey now, I don’t know how we got off on the wrong foot here, but things are definitely out of hand.… We can work this out.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Doreen stated, with a smile.

Then from the other side of the gate, a woman asked, “What’s going on here?” Then the gate opened in front of them.

She stared from one man to the other and saw the duffel bag. Her gaze slowly raised to look at Doreen, and her face twisted. “You again,” she sneered. “What now? Are you out here watching me? Are you a voyeur or something?”

“No, that’s not exactly in my wheelhouse,” Doreen replied. “But fencing stolen goods is apparently among your many… talents , shall we say?”

At that, Alison’s face paled and then flushed bright red with anger. She turned and looked at the man standing in front of her. “Steven, did you have anything to do with this?”

“No, of course not,” he snapped, as he looked at Alison in anger. “Did you set me up?”

She glared at him. “Choose your words wisely, Steven.”

Doreen watched the two of them, her head going back and forth, as if watching a tennis match. Steven and Alison started arguing and yelling at each other. Doreen looked over at Mack and shrugged.

He sighed. “Now that you’ve both incriminated yourselves, I’ll haul the two of you down to the station.”

Steven turned to him. “I ain’t done nothing wrong. She’s the guilty party.”

Alison sneered at him. “You’re the one bringing me a full duffel bag.”

“How did you know it was coming to you?” Doreen asked, with a mocking tone.

At that, Alison turned and took several threatening steps toward her. “You’re nothing but an old busybody, always ruining things for everybody else.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Doreen agreed, with a sigh. “I ruin everything for everybody.”

“Exactly,” Alison sneered.

“What I really want to know is,” Doreen asked, “what you did to that poor guy down at the community gardens?”

Alison turned to face Steven.

Doreen asked him, “That was your buddy, right? I suppose you popped him one, didn’t you? Or was it Jed?”

Steven stared at Doreen in shock, then turned to Alison. “You told her that?”

“No, of course I didn’t, and shut your mouth.” But the cat was out of the bag.

“I didn’t pop him one,” Steven declared. “That had nothing to do with me.”

Doreen replied, “Yet you’re the one spouting off to Jed about not wanting to work for a woman and how it was time to take care of her pretty soon too.”

At that, Alison turned and stared at Steven in disbelief.

Steven turned to Doreen and growled. “Now would be a good time for you to shut your mouth,” he said, with an ugly glare.

“Maybe,” she noted cheerfully, “but I figured, by the time you guys are done talking, Mack here should have everything he needs to prove that you’re the one who murdered the guy with a Taser because he was trying to double-cross you on some of the stolen goods.”

“ He wasn’t double-crossing us. She was double-crossing him, and he didn’t like it. When he put up a fight, she ordered him to be taken down. Jed did the job, not me,” Steven declared, with a headshake. “I ain’t into murder.”

“You may not be into murder,” Mack noted, with an exaggerated heavy sigh, “but if you’re involved in any way, you may still find yourself going down for it.”

“And Steven was right in the middle of it,” Alison added, with a snort in his direction. “He’s the one who dumped the body—and in a community garden of all places,” she complained, raising her hands in frustration. “Who does that? As far as taking me out, you’re the one who will get popped next.”

“I figured as much. Which is why we would take care of you first.”

“ We ?” she asked in a dangerous tone.

“Yeah, do you really think Jed would sit around while you order a hit on me?” Steven asked. “Jed and I go way back.”

Doreen muttered, “I thought I was a mess, but you guys are next level.” At that, both of them turned on her. She held up her hands. “Sorry, just an observation.”

“Did you ever find out where Tammy went?” Alison asked, staring at Steven. “You couldn’t even figure out that much. You are so lazy and stupid.”

“I don’t know what happened to her. She just disappeared.”

Mack looked over at Doreen, as she smiled and nodded at him, adding, “Answers do come. Just not always in the way we expect them to. Have you got anybody coming?” Doreen asked Mack.

Just then she heard a shout behind her and turned to see Arnold and Chester. At that moment Steven bolted away from the group in a bid for freedom.

And made it about four feet before Mugs suddenly appeared sideways in the path, his girth solid and stable, sending Steven flying over him to nose plow into the dirt. Immediately Thaddeus flew from Doreen’s shoulder to land on Steven’s head and crowed loudly, as if he were the winner of some nonexistent fight. Goliath strolled over then in a move only a cat could do, sat down, shot his back leg to the dark sky, and started to clean his butt, right in front of Steven’s nose.

Mack sighed. He walked the few steps to hook Steven under his arms and lift him to his feet, Thaddeus still champion-danced on Steven’s head. “Not a smart move,” Mack noted to his prisoner, as he brought Steven back to Arnold and Chester.

Doreen finally dragged her gaze away from the comedy going on in front of her and turned to watch the newcomers approach. “Hey, Arnold. Back on duty, huh ?”

He gave her a beaming smile. “Absolutely. When Frankie came clean about what he’d done and what had happened back then, I was cleared.”

“It certainly would have been nice if somebody had told me that,” Doreen noted, with an eye roll. “Yet I’m pretty sure these two here will help clear up the rest of it,” she added, with a smile.

Arnold looked over at them and snorted. “Well, well, well, look at that, if that isn’t our resident madam?”

At that, Alison or Julie or whoever she was glared at him. “Wow, you’re still a cop? I thought you would have retired by now.”

“I want to be retired now. Looks as if you’re headed for jail tonight. How many times have I hauled you in anyway?”

She sneered. “I’ll still get out again.”

“You might, unless you had anything to do with killing that man.”

“You mean the one who was killed with your Taser?” she asked and started to laugh. “I didn’t even know it at the time, but that just added to the joy.” She turned and looked at Doreen. “This arrogant cop arrested me more times than I can count, just for trying to make a living.”

Arnold corrected her. “We call it solicitation for prostitution. What happened? Did you get tired of our jail? So, you went to Vancouver instead? But you came back.” He shook his head. “Just like a bad penny.”

“And just like a bad penny,” she repeated, glaring at him, “you keep showing up.”

And, with that, Arnold snapped his handcuffs on her, looked over at Doreen, and grinned. “See, Doreen? You got this. Doesn’t matter what it is, every time I turn around, you’ve got this.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Mack would agree,” she noted, with a sigh. “Pretty sure he’s not too happy with my nighttime activities.”

At that, Arnold laughed. “That’s because he’s looking for other nighttime activities.”

She flushed, grateful that nobody else was listening at the moment.

Meanwhile, once Chester had taken Steven in cuffs, he looked over at Doreen, Thaddeus now safely back on her shoulder. “There we go, one more case, done and dusted. If you could get good at paperwork, maybe they could hire you to take care of the stuff you are drowning the rest of us in.”

“Maybe, but paperwork? I’m not so sure that’s my thing.”

He laughed at that. “Hey, I’ll let you in on an inside secret.… It’s not my thing for any cop either.”

And, with that, the entire group moved toward Doreen’s home. They hadn’t gone very far when a shout came from behind.

She turned to see Callaghan rushing up to them.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Not-so-good news for you, I’m afraid,” she replied gently. “However, it will save you a heap of trouble with your parents.” As they walked on back, he kept trying to talk to Alison, but she sneered at him.

“God, would you just take this crybaby away from here?” she asked Doreen. “I can’t stand all that whining.”

“But, Alison, wait. I thought we had something going.”

“I just needed a place to live,” she declared, with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll get out of jail soon enough. They can’t keep me in.”

“We couldn’t keep you in before,” Arnold admitted, “but times are changing. Your rap sheet has gotten long enough that you won’t be getting out quite so fast this time.”