She glared at him. “That’s hardly funny,” she said.
“What isn’t funny?” Mack asked, as he inched his way between Nan and Richie, neither of whom were willing to give him any room. Mugs however strained forward as if knowing Mack was there to back him up.
Mack came forward to see Darren pointing toward the drawer that had been upended. Mack stared at the envelope, then shook his head and asked, “Why, Doreen?”
“Who knows?” she said eerily. “But obviously she had something she wanted to tell me.”
“Maybe,” he said. He put on gloves, reached over, and carefully untaped the envelope. And then, with the tape off, they could see the flap wasn’t otherwise sealed. They crowded around as he gently pulled the folded page from inside. He opened it up to find an award. “Best Kiwis in the Garden,” he read. “This is dated last year, and it was an award, but it wasn’t for Rosie.”
Doreen looked at it and asked, “Whose name is on there?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. He held it up to the light. “It’s really hard to see.”
“That’ll be Marsha,” Nan said. “She won last year.”
Doreen turned to look at her. “Won what?”
“Best tropical fruit,” she said, as if that completely made sense.
Doreen’s frown was instant. “Best of what?
“The contest,” Richie said impatiently. “The gardening contest. Everybody knows that we have all these contests for the best flowers and the best veggies, et cetera, et cetera.” He punctuated his words with an airy wave of his hand. “Of course, you weren’t here last summer, were you?”
Doreen slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “And I haven’t seen any advertisements for the contest.”
“It’s all at the end of the season,” Nan said. “And Marsha always wins. Every year she wins.”
Everybody turned to stare at the award. “So why does Rosie have this?” Doreen asked.
Nan shrugged. “Who knows?” she said. “But I have to tell you that Rosie’s kiwis were something else.”
“What kiwis?” Doreen asked, puzzled. “Are you allowed to have your own gardens here?”
“No,” Richie said. “However, one designated spot is on the grounds, if you want to plant something, but Rosemoor really doesn’t like individual gardens, particularly not veggies.”
“What’s wrong with veggies?” Doreen asked, frowning. She didn’t understand what was going on here, but that letter kept catching her eye. “What were Rosie’s kiwis like?”
“Award winners,” Richie said. “She had a long history of winning all kinds of awards.”
“And she did ask management if she could plant some kiwis on the grounds,” Nan said.
“What did management say?” Mack asked, caught up in this discussion despite himself.
Nan gave him a fat smile. “They said no, but she talked to the gardeners, and they said yes.”
“So …” Mack encouraged Nan to continue, while he laid the award on the bed.
“Oh, her kiwis weren’t here,” Nan said.
“She might have been a contender for the award this year?” Doreen asked slowly.
“Rosie’s son had established a community garden, years ago, before he died in the crash,” Richie said. “But it’s full up.”
Mack and Doreen exchanged glances. None of this made a whole lot of sense.
Darren even looked at Richie and said, “But then it would be her son’s kiwis?”
“Well, he didn’t have kiwis in there,” Richie said in exasperation. “Keep up, young one.”
Darren groaned. Doreen chuckled and Mack grinned. Doreen looked at the award and said, “I’d like a copy of that too, whenever you get around to it, please.” And she gave him a fat smile. “It does have my name on it.”
Mack glared at her. “It’d be good if you kept out of this,” he said.
“It might be good,” she said, “but it’s not really a workable solution, is it?”
“I’ll see,” he said in a noncommittal voice.
“In that case,” she said, “let me take a picture of it right now.” She pulled out her phone and quickly snapped an image of the award as it lay on the bed. Then she looked at him and said, “Now that you’re here, you’ll stop me from looking around, won’t you?” He glared at her. She shrugged and said, “I just want to finish the job.” She pointed at the address book Darren held. “Did you find anything with that?”
He shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “Could be anything.” And he tossed it back into the pile.
She immediately picked it up and studied it again.
“What’s wrong with it?” Mack asked.
“Two pages have stuck together,” she said.
“But it’s empty everywhere else?”
“Yes,” she said. She put it off to the side and kept going through the rest of the stuff dumped on the bed from the night table. It was amazing, the bits and pieces that were collected from a life. With that done, she went back to the night table and checked behind it. She even removed everything off the top and checked underneath and inside. She found nothing. But, while she was down here, she checked under the bed. She couldn’t really see anything, but Mack and Darren looked at the mattresses and checked between and underneath too.
By the time they were done a good forty minutes later, they had found nothing else of importance here. She nodded and said, “Okay. I’m heading home. Do you mind if I take this little book with me?” She held up the empty one with the stuck pages.
Mack frowned. And then he shrugged and said, “No, that’s fine.”
“No will, is there?” Nan called from the doorway.
Doreen shook her head. “No will and not even a lawyer’s name,” she said. “We need to find that for Rosie’s sake.” And then her gaze landed on the mirror on the opposite wall. She walked over and lifted it off the hook. “Did you guys check behind here?”
“Of course we did,” Mack said.
She nodded as she studied the back. “What about inside the backing?”
He came up behind her, and she lifted off the cardboard backing, finding a single piece of paper inside. She held it toward Mack, who immediately snagged the sheet of
