Chapter 4
Friday Early Evening …
As soon as Mack left, she headed back to her laptop, took one look at the kitchen, and groaned. “I guess I better do that first.”
She quickly cleaned up the kitchen, putting away the rest of the food that he’d used, realizing how generous he was because he didn’t buy just enough for a meal but he bought enough to leave her a little bit as well. She didn’t want him to think of her as a charity case, but she really did appreciate everything he did. At the same time, it was a little frustrating that she couldn’t do the same thing for him.
As soon as she had washed the dishes, she sat down with a cup of tea and brought up her laptop. What she wanted to know was what would cause heart attacks in little old ladies. And what relevance did the kiwis have? It’s odd how all three were eating kiwis at their time of death. Unless it was murder, and each had one stuffed into their mouth by the killer, like one of them had, per Chester.
What she found led her down a rabbit hole. All kinds of drugs could cause heart attacks, as she knew from the death of Ed Burns. Of course, in that case, the drugs built on those with preexisting heart conditions. What she needed to know now was whether all three of these ladies had heart conditions as well, but how would she find that out? Mack hadn’t given her any names, and neither had the news. She sent Nan a text, asking if she knew anything about the little ladies who had recently died. She came back with a response of yes immediately. Doreen picked up the phone and phoned her. “What do you know?”
“What do you know?” Nan said immediately, and then she gasped. “Is this another case?” she asked, absolutely thrilled.
“Probably not,” Doreen said. “They all died from heart attacks, or at least that’s what they’re assuming until the coroner’s report comes back.”
“Well, Kimmy definitely had a heart condition,” Nan said, “so that would make sense.”
“Kimmy who?”
“Kimmy Schwartz,” she said.
“Did she live there at Rosemoor with you?”
“None of them did,” Nan said. “But there’s a great fun group of us, all us oldies, so I know about them.”
“What about the other two?”
“Well, Delilah … What’s Delilah’s last name?” Nan’s voice drifted off as she thought about it. “Norstrom. Delilah Norstrom. I don’t know if she had a heart condition or not,” she said, “but Bella might have. Bella Beauty,” she said with a sneer. “She was overweight and unhealthy, so I’m not at all surprised that she dropped dead like she did.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said. “I guess I’m a little surprised that three of them would have happened so fast. And they were all eating kiwis.”
“Well, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go,” Nan said dismissively. “And a whole group of them eat kiwis all the time. It’s part of their ‘groupie’ thing they had going on. You could see them with kiwis almost every day.”
“Okay, that’s weird. The time-to-go thing? Well, I get that,” Doreen said. “I really do.”
“Have you got anything else that you’re working on right now?”
“No,” Doreen said. “I did catalog the newspaper articles on the Bob Small stuff.”
“Right,” Nan said, her voice picking up. “That’s a big one, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” Doreen said. Privately she didn’t think she could do anything on that case which the police hadn’t already done. And, with so many victims across the country—at one time Mack had told her that he knew of thirty-two murders attributed to Bob Small—so it would be almost impossible to connect them. But obviously this friend of Nan’s had done what she could. “And that reminds me,” she said. “If it wasn’t for that friend of yours who pulled all these together …”
“That was Hinja,” she said. “Hinja Rampony.”
“And is she living here in Kelowna?”
“She’s down in the Lower Mainland, I think. Haven’t spoken to her in quite a while. She’s part of the Rampony family though.”
“And that is?”
“One of the old Kelowna families,” Nan said. “You know how they feel about being the first here.”
“But you were good friends, weren’t you?”
“Yes. She used to stay with me when she’d come to visit the rest of her family.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Oh my,” she said. “Probably a dozen years ago now.”
“Huh. I wondered if she’s gotten any more information on these articles,” Doreen said.
“Well, I’m probably due to give her a call,” she said. “Why don’t I ask her when I do, but no clue when I’ll connect. It may take a few calls to actually reach her.”
“Sure,” Doreen said. “For all I know, this guy’s been caught and spending time behind bars for the last ten years.”
“I doubt it,” Nan said. “But maybe he dropped dead from a heart attack.” On that note, she hung up.
Closing her laptop, Doreen got up and picked up her cup of tea, then walked down to the creek. The water was definitely a bit higher today. And it was now nighttime, so it would get a little bit higher right up until about three in the morning, when the last of the melt was happening from the snowpack as it came down and hit this part of the creek.
With the animals beside her, she sat on the grass and enjoyed the settling evening light. “It’s been a good day, guys.”
Mugs walked over and half crawled into her lap. Goliath was happy to just sit beside her, and Thaddeus walked up and down the water’s edge, clucking, like something bothered him.
“It’s okay, Thaddeus,” she said. “I know the water’s higher than you were expecting. It’s higher than I expected too.”
She still had a pathway, but her little creek had grown and had started to eat up to the edge of the dirt and the gravel walkway. “I can’t imagine,” she said, “how much
