At his tone of voice, Doreen winced slightly. “I hope so too, for her sake. Thank you very much for talking with me.”
At that, he hung up without even saying goodbye. She tried to dial one of the family members of the other woman, Delilah, but there was no answer. Doreen would have to try them later.
Now for the fourth woman. Rosie’s family and that’ll be Danny. That wasn’t so good. She quickly sent Mack a text regarding Delilah’s family. He sent back a question. Why?
Wanted to contact him or her about the club they had formed to usurp Marsha as the kiwi-growing queen, she replied.
When her phone rang again, she laughed into it.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she said and quickly told Mack what Bella’s daughter had shared.
“You weren’t thinking Marsha killed them, are you?”
“Oh, that’s an interesting thought,” she said. “I don’t know that that would be too extreme, considering what we know about murderers.”
“But still, you don’t just win a competition like that by killing the competition.”
“That’s exactly what you do,” Doreen said, laughing. “Because then nobody has a viable chance against you.”
“I can’t imagine it,” he said.
“Well, if you find the two missing husbands, you could ask them. Maybe they had something to do with it too.”
“Well, I’m still working on that,” he said.
“You know what? Come to think of it, I’m not sure either of the other two had husbands,” she said quietly. “Do you know?”
“Both are deceased,” he said grudgingly.
“So, we have four single old ladies, widowed, interested in gardening, and interested in the kiwi competition, all dropped dead, leaving only one queen in the kiwi competition, and her husband is missing.”
“And you’re thinking it’s all connected?” A note of humor and curiosity melded together in his voice.
“How can it not be?” she said. “They know each other, and they’re in the same competition every year. They used to be friends but are no longer friends.”
“What about the grandson?” he asked. “You thought he might be responsible.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it past him,” she said. “Maybe he was trying to curry favor by killing off the other people in the contest.” Mack snorted at that. “Just look at him,” she said. “He’s kind of sleazy.”
“Well, that sleaze has been cleared too, by the way.”
“That’s too bad,” she said with heartfelt frustration. “He’s not exactly the upstanding citizen we want to have around.”
“It doesn’t matter if you want it or not,” he said. “We didn’t have a reason to consider him any longer.”
“He attacked Richie and me,” she said.
“Maybe, but you didn’t want to press charges either.”
“What about the letter to me? Did you find any fingerprints?”
“Only hers.”
“The will? Any luck with that yet?”
“It appears to be the most recent and legal, yes,” he said.
“What about the people who witnessed it?” she asked. “Did you prove without any shred of doubt that the manor had something to do with this, had coerced Rosie into signing that version of the will?”
“I don’t believe so,” he said. “One of them signed it on her last day. Apparently she was really good friends with Rosie and had been happy to do that. And she’d hated the grandson too. Nobody at the place liked him, as he constantly came in and left Rosie in tears.”
“And that’s not very nice,” Doreen said. “I couldn’t imagine going to Nan’s place and leaving her upset.”
“No,” he said, “but you’re a very different kind of fish.”
“Did you figure out why the grandson needed money so badly?”
“He’s about to lose his house,” Mack said comfortably. “He’s a big spender and likes to impress the girlfriends. Taken four weekends down to the coast and off to the island, even Seattle up to Banff, and charging it all on his credit card. Now he’s unable to pay it back, so he took out a second mortgage on his house to pay off his creditors, but now he can’t pay his double payments on the house.”
“Wow,” she said. “He must really have no idea how money works to do something like that.”
“I think it was more of how he didn’t understand how women work,” Mack said in a dry tone.
“Good point,” she said with a chuckle. “Fine. If he didn’t have anything to do with her death then, whatever, but I’m still a little worried about that. Has he been told what’s in the will?”
“Don’t know yet,” Mack said. “I haven’t talked to the lawyer today.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Rosie didn’t have much, but I’m sure the grandson will be devastated if he doesn’t get anything.”
“According to the witness who signed her will, I spoke with her this morning,” he said, “the grandson knew that his grandmother was planning on doing this. She’d threatened it many times.”
“But I wonder, when you threaten something like that, when push comes to shove,” Doreen said, “if you actually go through with it. He is her only flesh and blood. Unless, of course, her husband is still alive.”
“True enough,” Mack said. “And we still haven’t located the missing husbands—Rosie’s or Marsha’s.”
“Right,” she said. “I feel like that’s connected too.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I did get Marsha’s husband’s name, it is Curtis Langford, but I haven’t done any research on him yet.”
In the background, she could hear Mack typing away. “We don’t have any report here of a missing person named Curtis Langford.”
“So that would mean that she never went to the cops about it, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Nan suggested that he ran away with a younger woman,” she said, “so we could check her marital status and see if she got divorced.”
“Their last names are the same. Plus he might not have divorced her,” Mack warned. “Why would he just because he found somebody younger to go play with for a while? It doesn’t mean he wanted to go through a legal divorce.”
“No,” she said. “There is the house, and it’s quite lovely, so he must have money of his own for him to live off of and
