She pointed to the beautiful display of the small white kiwi flowers all along the back, growing along this big trellis.
“And?”
“I don’t know how far down you have to dig,” she said. “I doubt it’ll be too far but just far enough …”
“What will I find?”
She took a deep breath. “Rosie’s husband.”
He stared at her in shock.
She nodded quietly. “And I think I know what happened.”
“You damn well better be wrong,” he muttered. He looked at the raised bed, full of flowers and other plants. “Wouldn’t we be disturbing all this?”
She nodded. “You could probably dig from this end,” she muttered.
He quickly started digging down to the normal ground level and then below that. Over four and a half feet down, he stopped, wiped his brow, and said, “You better be right. I didn’t need this today.”
“None of us did,” she snapped. She could feel the tension coiling deeper and deeper inside her as Mack dug farther.
Finally he stopped, shoveled out one round of dirt, and said, “You know what? We could dig this entire thing up and not find anything.”
“But we won’t have to,” she said, as she leaned over and brushed off a bit of dirt.
And, sure enough, there was a white rounded bone. Looked like a toe.
He looked at it and swore a blue streak. He pulled out his phone, glared at her, and said, “Don’t you move,” as he called in a team.
Waiting for the team, Doreen was well past cold and tired. The animals were edgy and fussy, and she kept glaring at Mack, but he was ignoring her. Finally he walked over to her, and his glare had dimmed somewhat.
“I didn’t mean to, you know,” she snapped.
“Of course not,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You never do.”
“Now what?”
“Well, we’ll exhume the body obviously. And you really think it’s her husband?”
She nodded. “And I think she was blackmailing Marsha.”
“Yes,” he said. “I found the deposits in her bank account yesterday. We’re still trying to track where it was coming from.”
“That’ll be easy,” she said. “Check Marsha’s account.”
“So, why was Rosie getting money from Marsha?”
Doreen took a deep breath. “Well, if you want to go to Marsha’s house, I’ll show you.”
He glared at her, then looked at the body and said, “Oh, hell no.”
Doreen shrugged and said, “Okay. I won’t tell you then.”
He swore several more times.
She glared at him. “Do you realize what you’re teaching Thaddeus?”
And out of Thaddeus’s mouth came a blue streak that shocked her. Mack’s jaw dropped. He looked at the bird, then looked at her, and a flush of red washed over his face. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. And Thaddeus repeated the blue streak of cursing again.
She reached up and tapped Thaddeus lightly at the beak. “No,” she said.
He gave her a gimlet eye and said, “Thaddeus loves Nan.”
“Oh, great. So you love Nan but not me?” she protested. He went and did his weird little cackling ha-ha-ha sound and tucked up against her neck. She walked toward Mack’s truck and said, “Are you coming?”
“No, I’m not coming,” he said. “I’ve had enough today.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll talk later then.”
She went to let herself out of the garden when he came racing behind her.
“Of course I’m coming,” he roared. “Get into the damn truck.”
“Get into the damn truck,” Thaddeus immediately snapped.
Mack looked at Thaddeus, glared, and said, “Dammit.”
“Dammit. Dammit,” Thaddeus repeated.
“Stop,” Doreen snapped at the top of her voice.
Both of them stared at her. She walked to the truck, shaking her head. “Don’t bother apologizing anymore.”
He got into the truck silently, while she helped Mugs up and then Goliath jumped up, not to be left alone. She hopped up with Thaddeus on her shoulder. In a quiet stew, Doreen was afraid that all she would hear from Thaddeus now would be swear words. And she knew who to blame for that.
Mack turned on the truck, reversed, and said, “Where am I going?”
She quickly gave him Marsha’s address, then remained quiet for the rest of the drive. “You might as well go into the back here.” She pointed at the alleyway. As they drove back there, he stopped at Marsha’s gate. Doreen opened the truck door and walked into the backyard. Marsha was there, tending to her kiwis, removing her fancy little greenhouse apparatus. Caught in the act, she stopped, stared, and red washed over her face. “What are you doing here?” she cried out. “You can’t trespass like that.”
“No, maybe not,” Doreen said. “That’s a neat contraption, by the way, and a great way to make sure your kiwis grow really well.”
The woman looked guiltily at the apparatus and then back at her kiwis. She moved it over and said, “Nobody said I’m not allowed to.”
“Except for the fact that greenhouses aren’t allowed,” she said gently.
“It’s hardly a greenhouse,” she said, with an airy wave over to the greenhouse beside her. “That’s a greenhouse.” As if any idiot should know the difference.
Doreen nodded. “I get it,” she said. She walked over to the kiwis, smiled, and nodded. “It’s amazing. Rosie’s looked quite similar though.”
“You’ve seen her kiwis?” she asked eagerly. “How do they look?”
“I have. And they looked great,” she said. “She copied you in more ways than you realize.”
“What do you mean?” Marsha asked, but a note of fear was in her voice.
Doreen looked at Mack and said, “I’d suggest you start digging right here.” She turned to look at Marsha and said, “And, of course, you don’t object to us doing this, do you?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I don’t want you digging anywhere near my roots. It’ll totally destroy the kiwis.”
“It will,” she said. “But the fact of the matter is, there’s something here we need to see.”
Marsha immediately started to protest.
“Unless, of course, you want me to bring in the rest of the police team and the media,” Doreen said in a firm tone.
Immediately Marsha closed her trap.
“And I can
