Millicent just stared at her again, blinking.
Embarrassed, Doreen shrugged. “But I don’t really know that, of course. It’s like I said earlier. I’m just out of sorts today.” She looked at the garden, grabbed her tools, and said, “Where would you like me to start?”
“Oh dear, those marigolds are looking awfully sad. Could you trim back the old buds for me? And the tulips. They were supposed to be trimmed ages ago. But I would leave the stalks, in case I want to pull them up instead to move to a new bed. It’s so much easier to pull tulips when you have a stalk to tell you where they are. Once you trim them, it’s almost impossible to know where they are, until you start digging them up.”
Understanding what she meant, Doreen nodded and said, “Well, let’s deal with the marigolds first then. You can just sit there and tell me what it is you want me to do.”
For the next hour, Doreen worked and talked, cheerfully changing the subject whenever the topic at hand got too difficult or too depressing, and, by the time she was done, the two women were laughing merrily.
“I still can’t believe Penny hired him to take you down,” Millicent said, chuckling.
“Right, and from jail of all things.” Doreen shook her head. “I know I wasn’t exactly the friend she thought I would be, but really, was I that bad? Besides she didn’t turn out to be that great in that department either.” Then they started to laugh again.
“Well, you do seem to have a penchant for sending these people to jail,” Millicent said.
“And that’s where they belong too,” Doreen said, with a frown. “Imagine all these killings going on around here. That’s terrible.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Millicent said, “and I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of this one too.”
Doreen looked at her in surprise. “Mack has made it pretty clear I’m not welcome to get involved.”
“Of course he has,” Millicent said, a smile blooming. “But since when do you ever listen to him?”
At that, Doreen gave a burst of laughter. “Well, I guess that’s true,” she said. “I hadn’t really considered it that way.”
“Well, you should,” Millicent said. “This involves you, after all. The victim was your lawyer and was involved with your ex-husband, so she was obviously without morals. You can’t have this going down in the annals of local lore as a crime you committed. Even if you don’t get charged, it’s just way too possible that they’ll look at you that way.”
“Which is the last thing I want,” she said.
“Of course not! That would be terrible,” Millicent said.
“I came here to make a fresh start.”
“In the meantime,” Millicent said, “we’ll put our heads together and see what we can do to clear your name.”
“Thank you,” Doreen said, with a brilliant smile. “That does make me feel much better.”
And, when she got home, she found it strange that she had blanked out that conversation, but then it came rushing back. Just what could she do at home with all this mess? She could track the lawyer. And, of course, that is something she should have looked at right from the beginning. Absolutely no reason for Doreen not to have done it already. How irritating that she’d left that undone.
But now that she felt a little bit better, while sitting with a hot cup of tea out on the deck, she created a timeline of yesterday, when she had seen her lawyer here in Kelowna. It was a little hard to think back as to what time Robin appeared here, but Doreen did her best. She wrote down as much as she could about the conversation, including the day and the weather, and anything else she could think to jot down. The thought that this woman was gone and how soon this all went down was terrifying.
It seemed Doreen had had more experience with death since moving to Kelowna than she had with life. Which is why the case involving little Isaac had touched her soul. Because it wasn’t history, it wasn’t a past-tense type of a thing. It wasn’t a cold case to bring to closure, and it wasn’t a current murderer to put behind bars; solving that case was actually freeing in a sense.
It made life so much better for both Isaac and his mother, and, for that, Doreen was overwhelmed with joy. It didn’t make it any easier in some ways though, as she missed Isaac. Shaking her head, Doreen still needed to find out what was going on that got her ex-lawyer killed. But Doreen didn’t have even the most basic information.
She frowned and then picked up her phone and sent Mack a text. Did you find the vehicle my lawyer was driving?
When she got no answer, she sent another message. The green Jaguar.
He sent her a response, but it was a short and cryptic question mark. ?
She shrugged and sent a short missive of her own. Well?
Not for you to worry about.
That was his poor excuse for a response. She snorted at that and sent him another message. Maybe not, but I won’t sit by and do nothing.
Immediately her phone rang.
“Doing nothing related to this case is exactly what you should do,” he warned. “Remember? You’re already on the suspect list.”
“I might be on a suspect list,” she said, “but nobody in their right mind would think that I did it. I have no motive.”
“Are you kidding? You are the scorned woman for one thing,” he said, “and Robin also wronged you professionally and cost you a boatload of money in the divorce.”
“Yes,” she said, “but she’d already gotten a dose of her own medicine, since my ex had apparently kicked her out already. Besides, he’s the one who should be on the hook for this. Not me.”
“Is he the kind to kill?”
“We already decided that he was, just not with his own hands,” she reminded him.
“But a woman?” he asked. “A lot of people will kill someone, but it won’t be a female. Some guys draw a line there and won’t cross it.”
“I doubt he has drawn such a line, and, if he did, I suspect he’s crossed it already,” she said. “Remember? My ex has no morals, no healthy conscious to stop him.”
“Got it,” he muttered. “I’ll check and see if we’ve spotted the Jag.”
“Well, if she was found stabbed at the Welcome sign, and her car wasn’t there, then surely she was moved. She was probably either in a hotel or someplace where the vehicle was close by.” She heard papers shuffled on Mack’s end.
“Well, her rented vehicle was found near a coffee shop not too far away,” he said. “Just off the main highway.”
She winced. “Well, that’s not very good,” she muttered. “That’s not good at all.”
“Nope, it isn’t,” he said, “but that’s what we must deal with.”
“I got it,” she said. “So, will you check out the vehicle? For hers, for any rentals? If she rented the Jaguar, surely she rented it at the airport, so she must have flown in,” she muttered, her mind now starting finally to think. “But I don’t know what hotel she was staying at.”
“If she was staying at a hotel. It’s not that far of a drive from West Vancouver to Kelowna,” he reminded her.