“Sure,” she said. “I’d appreciate that.”
“Doreen,” Mack called.
She looked over to see him waving at her, and she headed that way. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“A bunch of guys are leaving,” he said. “Can’t do anything more with the wood now as the first stain coat is done. You’ve only got about a quarter of this can left. That might be enough for a second coat because the first coat sucked up into the wood pretty good, but it’s hard to tell.”
“So we might have to get more?”
He nodded. “And we’ll keep all these rollers and stuff for Monday,” he said. “And, like I said, we’ll still sand everything before we do a second coat.”
“Is the second coat enough?”
He nodded. “It should be. You could have left it without that because these are treated decking boards, but this will extend their life.”
She smiled. “I’m totally okay to do whatever’s needed,” she said.
“That’s what I figured,” he said.
She walked over to the men who were leaving, shook their hands, and said, “Thank you so very much.”
“Not a problem,” one said. And about six of them took off.
“Wow,” she said to Mack. “I don’t even know who all of them were.”
He leaned over and whispered, “Not sure I do either.” She laughed, then turned to face her newly redone backyard. Tony worked down at the far end by the creek, and she walked down with Mack to see him.
“This is lovely,” Mack said, raising a hand to his forehead. “That pathway along the garden edge really sets off the whole yard.”
“I’m really happy,” she beamed.
Tony nodded. “It looks great. We’ve done a ton today.”
“Yeah, we did,” Mack said. “I can’t believe it’s all happened.”
“Exactly.”
As Mack and Doreen headed toward the house, people still milled around.
“What are we doing next?” one of the guys asked.
“Not a whole lot,” Mack said. “It’s just clean up now. Also, if you think about it, it’s quite late.”
She looked at him and asked, “Is it?”
“Yeah. It’s 7:30 already.”
“Wow,” she said. “I can’t believe it.” And, indeed, the day had gone so fast. “Did you learn anything about Rosie yet?”
“No,” he said. “The guys have been covering for me, so I could be here for a lot of this, but I will go back now.”
“Did you get any pizza?”
“I did,” he said. “But I’ll have more before I leave.” And very quickly, there was just her and Tony and the two guys working with him. She brought down a couple more beers for them and asked if they wanted some pizza. They all agreed to have more of both.
Chapter 13
Sunday Early Evening …
Doreen grabbed another box of pizza, walked through the front door and gingerly made her way to the backyard, and said, “This is all leftover, so eat up.” The men grinned and kept digging. She left it on a nearby chair for them and watched as more concrete was mixed, and then she looked at Tony. “Do we have enough concrete?”
“Actually,” he said, “we’re coming to the end of it. So, what I’m hoping for is that the last bag finishes off the rest of it for you.”
“Now that would be very nice,” she said.
And, indeed, as she watched, one of the men said, “Those were the last bags right there. And they’re empty as it’s all in the mixer right now.”
They had just finished pouring the last of the concrete pathway to the edge of her property. She smiled. “I never thought,” she said, “not in a million years, that we’d get all this done. I couldn’t have even hoped for all the concrete work. It looks stunning.”
“Especially the way it started, huh?”
“Well, it was a pretty rough beginning,” she said. One of the men who had been working with the concrete was a cop named Bruce, she thought. She asked him, “Were you involved in that last body found near the creek, the fourth old woman to die?”
Bruce nodded. “It makes me want to go check on my grandma.”
“Right?” she said with a nod. “I feel the same way about my nan.”
“I don’t think it’s contagious,” Mack said, “but it’s definitely suspicious.”
“Well, a couple drugs can mimic heart attacks,” one guy said. She looked at him in surprise. He shrugged and said, “My dad is a doctor.”
She beamed at him. “Perfect,” she said. “But watch it. I might have some questions for you some time.”
He laughed and laughed. “Hey, I’ve been following your antics with great interest,” he said. “My wife is a huge fan.”
She smiled and asked, “So, which drugs cause heart attacks?”
He smiled back and said, “Well, it depends.” And he reamed off several drugs that could cause accidental deaths, like drug overdoses can do too, and other drugs that could induce what looked like a heart attack event. Then he added, “Honestly, if they’re on IVs at all during the night, it’s pretty easy to add to that setup. You know that digitalis and blood thinners could do it too.” He gave a couple other chemical names that she didn’t know.
She pulled out her phone, hit Record, and said, “Would you say those again?” He quickly repeated them so she could do some research on that later. She looked at Mack. “I guess the coroner will test for these, won’t they?”
He nodded. “Absolutely, he will.”
“Good,” she said, “but we also need to look into that lovely grandson.”
“Need a motive,” he said.
“There’ll be a motive,” she said. “But it’s hard to place the other deaths on him though.”
“Unless they were test runs,” the doc’s son said. “A couple cases not too long ago involved people trying out different methods to see what worked the best in order to kill the one person they wanted to kill.”
She stared at him and shook her head. “Wow, that sounds so typical of some people, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “Some of them are not the easiest people in the world to understand.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” she said.
He grinned at her and
