Marsha would tell her though. Doreen was sure of that. But why would Marsha care about something like that one decade later? Obviously there were a lot of reasons to care, but how would it possibly have anything to do with the other dead women? After all, the four dead women were killed with the same chemical drug. Doreen was so close to tying this together. Yet she was missing something …
Just then Nan called. “So I heard about a conversation,” she said. “I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything, but the grandson apparently was yelling at Rosie about her husband’s problems.”
“His grandfather?”
“Yes. Apparently Danny is gay, so he believes that his grandfather might have been too. Rosie was denying it completely. She was in tears about the whole thing. But Danny said something about hearing from her friends that his grandfather was gay.”
“Oh,” Doreen said with a thump as she sat down. “What are the chances your Rosie wasn’t anywhere near the same sweet old lady everybody thought she was?”
“I wouldn’t believe it,” Nan said stoutly. “She was always the sweetest.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said, “but maybe not.” She sat here wondering how she was supposed to figure this out without hurting Nan’s feelings or without spoiling her memories of her friend Rosie. “Nan, did Rosie ever have any heart medicine?”
“Of course she did,” she said. “She did not have a bad heart, but it was a little bit of a slow ticker. She was supposed to take the medicine but wouldn’t. Never did take it.”
“What about her husband?”
“Now he had a heart condition,” she said. “But I still don’t know what happened to him.”
“No,” Doreen said, “but I have a really sad feeling I do.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.”
She tried to call Mack right back, but there was no answer. She sat here, considering her phone for a long moment. And then she decided she would call Marsha. She picked up the phone and dialed the woman. When she answered, she said, “This is Doreen, and I was just speaking with you in your garden.”
“How did you get my number?” Marsha asked.
“Well, it’s not that hard. You’ve been mentioned in all kinds of places, and there is still such a thing as a phone book,” Doreen said in exasperation.
Marsha sniffed. “What do you want?” she asked.
“You didn’t have anything to do with those four women’s deaths, did you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Why would I?”
Her tone was authentically surprised. Doreen nodded. “Because there was some suggestion that maybe you might have killed them off in order to keep your kiwi-growing competition to yourself.”
There was shocked silence first, and then Marsha started to laugh. “Oh my,” she said. “I’m really not that much of a killer over my kiwis. My, my, my.”
“Well, it was a thought that came up as everybody’s connected to this contest.”
“They were my friends,” she said fiercely. “I never would have done anything to hurt them. You know how hard it is to have friends in this town?”
“Actually, I do,” Doreen said. “I haven’t had any luck meeting any myself.”
“Well, if you weren’t such a busybody,” Marsha said, “you might have a chance of keeping friends.”
“Ouch,” Doreen said. “And, of course, you would have been pretty upset about the four women dying.”
“Of course I was,” she said. “It’s been a tough-enough place to live after my husband’s lovely little affair because, even though you want it to be kept quiet, it’s pretty hard to do.”
“Those women, of course, knew about the affair, didn’t they?”
“They were the only ones I could talk to it about,” Marsha admitted softly. “Rosie, on the other hand, was a whole different case.”
“Right. She wanted to keep it secret, didn’t she?”
“Yes. She didn’t want anybody to know about it then, and neither did I,” Marsha said. “Why would I? It was embarrassing and humiliating.”
“And I’m sorry,” she said, “because now I do understand a little bit more about how those four women died.”
“Maybe,” Marsha said suspiciously. “What is it to you anyway?”
“My grandmother was terribly worried over Rosie’s death,” Doreen said quietly. “I told her that I’d look into it. I also know that Rosie was asking me to look into a couple things too. She was upset about the other women’s deaths as well.”
“Well, I don’t think she was upset about the women as much as she was upset about her husband,” she snorted. “Personally, I think she killed them.”
“Why would you think that?” Doreen asked. But privately she had wondered.
“Because they all knew about the affair, and they told her horrid grandson about it.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“Yes, absolutely they did. Once Danny got ahold of that information, he would use it to blackmail his grandmother to get money out of her.”
“That would have been tough,” Doreen said sadly. “It’s hard to imagine all the crimes committed over something that happened so long ago.”
“It doesn’t matter how long ago it happened,” Marsha said, “because, the fact of the matter is, some of these things just never die. People won’t let them die.”
“Is that why you and Rosie didn’t get along?”
“If you must know, my husband had an affair with Rosie’s husband,” she said, and the tears started to choke her throat.
“I’m so sorry,” Doreen said. “That would have been particularly harsh. It’s one thing to hear about it, but it’s another thing to know who the person was.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Rosie didn’t believe me for the longest time. I tried to tell her, and I tried to explain to her what had happened. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“And I understand that her husband just up and walked away too.”
“No,” Marsha said in a harsh voice. “Rosie killed him.” With that, she hung up the phone.
Doreen stared at
