“Yes. Can I help you?”
“I came here to deliver some wood for you. Mack sent me.” He turned to look at her, and he had a hard look to his features.
She smiled and said, “Is that for my deck?”
He shrugged. “Well, they’re decking boards that I’m not using,” he said. “And I picked up a couple from other friends. A bunch of us did our decks around the same time and helped each other. And we still had some wood that we couldn’t use, so I brought it here.” He pointed to the back of his truck, and she exclaimed in delight.
“That’s marvelous.” She moved down the steps, letting Mugs sniff the new arrival.
The stranger reached down and let him smell his hand, then gave him a good scratch. Mugs, instead of being the watchdog he was supposed to be, rolled over onto his back and showed the new arrival his belly. The man laughed. “Not much of a watchdog, is he?”
Doreen smiled. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “He might not look like much, but he’s got hidden depths.”
The man nodded absently and said, “Whereabouts do you want the wood then?”
She smiled and said, “Around the corner here.”
And he looked where she pointed, then nodded. “I’ll start unloading it.”
As she watched, he made several trips and had brought over at least twenty boards. “Wow,” she said. “I might have enough to get that deck done.”
“When will you do it?”
“Hopefully I’ll get started this weekend,” she said. “I don’t know how much we can get done in two days though.”
“A lot,” he said. “Me and my buddies did all our decks in a weekend. Show me where you are planning to put the deck.”
She walked him around to the back, where he could see the spot that she had cleared out.
“If you’re not going too high, and if you don’t have big steps and supports to do,” he said, “that’s an easy job.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll talk to Mack about it.” And he lifted his hand in a wave and took off.
She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, and, of course, she’d forgotten to ask his name. Why would he need to talk to Mack about it? Still, she wouldn’t worry too much because Mack seemed to be one with a big network of friends that she didn’t have. She appreciated the fact that people were pitching in the stuff that they couldn’t use anymore.
As she walked back into the house, she sent Mack a text. More boards were just delivered.
Chapter 2
Forty-Eight Hours Plus Five Minutes Later …
Doreen had been excitedly counting down the time. Mack’s forty-eight hours had ended at 4:20 p.m. by her calculation. She snickered as she looked at her phone. “I should call Mack now,” she muttered. She’d sent him a text five minutes earlier, letting him know she was still here, that his deadline was up—and mostly to poke fun at him. But she figured that he’d left her alone on purpose for her to rest and relax—and to avoid answering her texts. She wasn’t so sure that it did any good yet, but she had at least spent a fair bit of time chilling.
And pretty soon, she had hopes of getting some work done on the deck. But they still had to prepare the yard, right? As in, they had barely started by clearing out the sod. She had rested all Thursday, and today was Friday, and she was looking forward to getting something done on the deck construction tonight, maybe, and this weekend for sure. She probably shouldn’t hassle Mack now, as he had been such a big part in her getting a new deck. Plus he planned to cook dinner for her tonight.
She opened her laptop and searched for anything on Mack’s current weird case with the kiwis. Mack wouldn’t appreciate her poking her nose in. It wasn’t a cold case, and that would make more trouble for her. But she still had the Bob Small stuff. She looked over at that basket and smiled. She also had all of Soloman’s files. So she had lots to work on. Surely something in there could be of interest. Yet her mind kept going to the little old ladies who were dying. … She remembered Mack saying that nothing appeared suspicious, but they were waiting on the autopsy on the last one.
How did one make a decision about who got an autopsy and who didn’t? She sat here, her fingers thrumming on the kitchen table, as she went through the news of the day online by a local channel, but nothing related to the kiwi murders was listed. She was getting frustrated. A day of rest was one thing, but two days of rest was one day too many. Still, she had worked on Millicent’s garden. That had helped to shift her mood and to otherwise occupy her.
Even though Doreen’s house was clean, it could do with a sweep, and the bathrooms needed to be wiped down. She quickly finished both of those chores, and, by that time, she felt justified in sitting back and sorting through all the newspaper articles on Bob Small. She had so many articles that it was almost too much. She put them in chronological order and opened her laptop, then started a file with the dates and a list of victims. When done, she had what appeared to be forty-odd newspaper clippings, and yet a lot of them were reporting on the same victims. She found eight victims over a period of three years, and she frowned at that.
“That’s like almost one every quarter,” she muttered. She didn’t understand the mind-set of a serial killer. Drug addicts needed a fix daily, but how could you be okay for three months or so and then find a need to go kill somebody again? It just didn’t make any sense to her.
When her phone rang, it
