“Okay,” Doreen said. “How is Richie doing?”
“Now that you’re on the case of Rosie’s will,” Nan said with a happy tone, “he’s much better.”
“Rosie was well-liked, wasn’t she?”
“Absolutely,” Nan said. “The others were too. Although I didn’t know two of them very well.”
“Rosie was on her way up to my house,” Doreen said, knowing that she was walking a minefield here if she put it the wrong way. “Any idea if the other three women would have gone shopping or walking alone?” She could almost hear Nan bristling over the phone. “I’m just asking if that was their customary habit,” Doreen said quietly. “Not that they weren’t capable or needed to be chauffeured around or had to be escorted. I’m looking at what their daily habits were.”
“No clue. Rosie didn’t go out alone very often,” Nan said grudgingly. “She often took somebody with her for a walk. But, of course, we know why she didn’t this time.”
“Maybe, but she could have come with you,” Doreen said.
“Maybe,” she said, “but she didn’t even tell me that she was going to see you.” And, for that, Nan grumped a little louder as she added, “Don’t know why.”
“Maybe because she wanted to keep it a secret about what she was doing.”
“Well, I can keep secrets,” Nan said.
“You’re very good at keeping secrets,” Doreen agreed. “I was just checking.”
“You’d have to ask some of the family members.”
“Yeah, that’s part of my list today,” Doreen said with a nod.
After she hung up, she realized that’s exactly what she needed to do—find out more about these older women’s daily habits. With their names written down, she wondered if she could intrude a little bit upon the family members or if it would be too much, too soon. She frowned as she thought about it and then called the first one and got an elderly daughter of Bella Beauty. When Doreen explained who she was, the woman appeared thrilled. “Oh my,” she said. “I’ve seen you walking around town. I do love that bird on your shoulder.”
Almost as if knowing he was being charmed, Thaddeus walked to the phone and said, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
The other woman laughed and laughed. “Oh my,” she said. “I needed that today. We buried Mom a few days ago and it’s been a little hard.”
“And I’m so sorry about that,” Doreen said sadly. “It’s hard when we lose those we love.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And it was such a strange thing.”
“What was strange?” Doreen asked.
“Well, she wanted to go for a walk alone,” she said. “She was acting secretive about it.”
“She didn’t go with anybody?”
“Not that I know of. I was at work. I’m almost done,” she said. “Another few months and I would retire and spend the last few years with Mom. And now I feel like I should keep working so I have something to do.”
“Don’t make a decision too quickly,” Doreen said, as she stared into the phone. “You’ll have enough tough days early on that you’ll go from one answer to another. Give yourself a little bit of time to see a future without your mother first.”
“Yes, those are very good words of wisdom,” the daughter said. “But, no, I don’t think she was going with anybody. But I don’t know. Maybe she was meeting somebody.”
“Was she active in the gardening fair at all?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, several of us are doing a newsletter about a couple friends who passed away within weeks of each other. We’re pretty sure they were just so heartsick about losing their friends. Mom was the first, of course, and, although I half expected her to go anytime, I didn’t really expect it. … You never do until it actually happens.”
“True enough,” Doreen said. “I think that goes for any major change in life.”
“Quite true,” the woman said. “Anyway, we’ll do a celebration of her life and talk about her gardening and her friends and how close they were all these years.”
“So the three of them who had passed away here recently were all good friends?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “They were the best of friends.”
“Oh my,” Doreen said. “That’s both sad and lovely.”
“Right?”
“And they were all involved in gardening, weren’t they?”
“They were,” she said. “But I think my mom was much more interested in the kiwi part of it. The others were more than happy to go along with it though.”
“Why kiwis?”
“Oh, that answer is easy. It was Marsha,” she said. “All they wanted to do was upset Marsha so she wasn’t the champion any longer.”
“That’s an odd reason for growing kiwis though,” Doreen said with a laugh.
“Well, Marsha used to be part of the same gang,” she said. “And then everybody kept putting in for various contests. And some of them got blue ribbons, and some of them got top mentions and things like that, but nobody ever really locked into a niche area that they won over and over again. Except for Marsha.”
“And did that grate on the others?”
“Over time it did, yes,” Bella’s daughter said. “I wish, if I could have given my mother one thing, it was a chance to win that contest.”
“So they grew kiwis so they had something valuable or something that was viable as a contest entry?”
“They were trying to do anything that would make them a winner,” she said. “It was just friendly rivalry, but, after Marsha found her niche, it was hard for the others to not find something for themselves. So they started to compete against her. And again, it all started in good fun, but, over the last few years, it hasn’t been much fun.”
“Understandable,” Doreen said. “My own grandmother can get fairly fanatical about certain things.”
“Right? Anyway,” the daughter said, “she’s at rest now.”
“I understand,” she said. “I was looking into all the different deaths, and I heard about
