“Well, good,” she said. “I don’t really have anything else to offer. I need to contact some people and see about getting some money from somewhere,” she muttered distractedly, as she stared down at the creek. “At least the water is going down, so that’s good.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to take any more crazy unexpected swims.”
“I’d be okay not doing that again,” she said emphatically.
He smiled, stood, and said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Good,” she said. “You might bring some coffee, when you come.” He snorted and she smiled. “Hey, at least I didn’t tell you to bring groceries, although it seems like it is about time for another cooking lesson.”
He stopped and looked at her with interest. “What do you want to make?”
“Well, I’m still eating tons of pasta, which is good, since it’s keeping some weight on my frame,” she muttered. “But there must be other things to eat too.”
“Name them.”
“Granola would be nice.”
“You know you can buy that, right?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Really?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, really. It’s just as simple as picking it up at the grocery store.”
She frowned. “Maybe it was the price then,” she said. “I thought it was expensive.”
“I guess it depends on what you call expensive, but, if you don’t buy tons and if just you eat it, it won’t be very much at all.”
She nodded. “That might make me happy,” she said, with a smile. “Maybe I’ll walk down to the store and buy some then.” She stopped with a quizzical look. “Just like any store or a specialty store?”
“Any grocery store, like, seriously any store,” he replied.
She smiled. “Good to know.”
At that, he headed back toward the guys.
She knew he turned to look at her again, but she didn’t bother glancing back at him. Inside, she was still in this weird fog. The thought of her ex-lawyer being murdered just blew Doreen away. As far as she was concerned, her ex was probably involved, and that just made it something she thought of as an open-and-shut case; yet Mack and the others had come here.
They’d actually come here, asking about her whereabouts, and she didn’t know what to do with that. It just hurt on so many levels. Yet it was something he had to check out, something he had to determine was nothing. And it was nothing, but she was an emotional wreck because of it. She didn’t even watch as they left. They just disappeared, as she sat here, now with Goliath in her lap, trying to push Thaddeus aside. Instead the savvy bird had crawled up on top of Goliath, and Mugs was stretched out beside her on the deck.
“Well, now what do we do?” she muttered.
But then her phone rang. She stared down at it to see it was Mack’s brother, Nick. She groaned. “Ugh. I don’t want to talk to him. Unless … does he defend the innocent? I might need a lawyer.” She picked up the phone, answered it, and said, “Hey, so are you a criminal lawyer?”
“No,” he answered. “Why?”
“Does that mean you can’t do criminal law?”
He was confused, as he said, “No, of course it doesn’t. I can do it. You’re just better off having somebody else who’s better trained and experienced in it. Why?”
“I think I may need a lawyer,” she said abruptly.
There was sudden silence on the other end of the phone. “Maybe that ties into what I was calling about,” he said, speaking carefully. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
She stared down at the phone. “Well, I didn’t kill her,” she said, enunciating clearly. “And Mack just left, after asking me a ton of questions, as if I were a suspect,” she said. “I didn’t appreciate that, and I don’t appreciate your doubt either. I do understand it from you, at least a little, because we’ve only just met,” she said, “but from Mack? No.”
“Well, I’m sure he was just doing his job and trying to make sure he did it thoroughly because otherwise it would be assigned to somebody else, who would have had to do the same thing,” he said, “and that may not have been anywhere near as pleasant.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“Well, maybe you should have,” he said, “because Mack obviously believes in you and knows that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. But, given the fact that it’s your ex-husband’s girlfriend, who was also your unscrupulous attorney who left you nearly penniless, it’s a whole different story.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I mean, I certainly wanted to kill her at times. Both of them actually. In theory of course. Just venting.”
“We always have people we want to theoretically kill,” he said, with a note of humor. “It then becomes a matter of if you did it or not.”
“Well, I didn’t,” she said almost absentmindedly. “And, of course, my vote for a likely suspect is my ex-husband. I’ll bet he’s the one who killed her.”
“And that’s almost too easy,” he said. “You would think he would know a little more about trying to make it less obvious.”
“Good point, which brings to mind the thought that it could be somebody wanting to set him up and to get him in trouble,” she muttered.
“Which comes right back around to you again.”
She winced at that. “Great, so even when I come up with theories on my own, they turn around and bite me in the butt.”
He chuckled. “You need to trust Mack that he’ll do what he can to make sure the suspicion on you is resolved and thrown elsewhere and that you’re free and clear.”
“I suppose,” she said. “Did you have a specific reason for calling?”
“Well, I had heard about the body,” he said. “The fact that I’m involved in all this in a peripheral way just means that it came up on my radar.”
“You didn’t kill her, did you?” she asked suddenly.
His startled gasp was heard clearly on the other end of the phone, and then he chuckled. “No, I didn’t kill her either.”
“Okay, just checking,” she said cheerfully, “because, if you think about it, she is somebody you really didn’t like either.” Suddenly frowning, she continued. “And, by that same token and following that logic,” she said, “Mack is in that same boat.”
“Well, I don’t suggest you start slinging around the theory that Mack is a suspect either,” he said, choking back a chuckle.
“No, Mack wouldn’t like that, would he?” she said and started to snicker. “But then he would get the chance to know how I feel right now.”
“But he was just doing his job, and that would be you just needlessly causing him trouble,” he said, still sounding cheerful.
“Right, and I can’t do that to Mack.” She sighed. “Okay, fine. So how will we find this guy?”
Again came a moment of silence. Finally he said, “What do you mean? Hang on a minute. What are you talking about?”