“Maybe.”
“It’ll be fine,” Nan said with a chuckle. “Besides, here’s the fresh greens to go home with you, so you’ll be eating a nice healthy salad later in the day.”
As Doreen looked down in the paper bag, she noted there were a lot of greens. As in three full days of salads. That was something she was really grateful to have. “That’ll save on my budget a little bit,” she said with a laugh. She looked at the zucchini, wondering if she should take a second small one, because, after all, it was free food. If she could find a way to cook it, with Mack’s help, then maybe it would be a nice supplement.
On that note, Nan slipped a little one into the paper bag and said, “Here, and I’ll make zucchini bread from the rest.”
“Now that would be lovely,” Doreen said. “Nothing’s like your zucchini bread. Thank you for all this.” She leaned over, kissed Nan gently on the cheek, and then called the animals to her. At the last moment, she picked up the two little silver metal tags and put them in her pocket. “And I’ll see what I can find with some research.”
Nan nodded, while reaching down to say goodbye to the animals. “I’ll ask around too.”
“Just remember,” Doreen said. “No mystery is here.”
“Of course not,” Nan said with a big smile. But it was too big a smile.
“Do you know something I don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” Nan said in confusion. “Do I?”
Doreen groaned. “Is there a mystery surrounding your gardener and his brother?”
“Well, their parents disappeared from one day to the next,” Nan said. “So that’s a mystery.”
“It doesn’t have to be a mystery. When did they ‘disappear’?”
“About fifteenish years ago,” Nan said, as she tapped her chin. “I think it must have been at least fifteen years ago.”
“Interesting. So a few years after these particular metal pieces were made.”
Nan brightened. “Yes. So maybe you should check into that. Maybe the brothers murdered their parents,” she said with relish.
Doreen worried about her grandmother somehow tying one incident to another, when the two might have been five years apart. Granted, each involved the same family. Doreen sighed. Now she knew how Mack felt when she posited some of her theories to him. “Or maybe the parents died naturally in a cancer clinic, and the brothers just didn’t share any of their troubles because they’re not the kind of people who wear their hearts on their sleeves.”
“It’s possible,” Nan said with disappointment. “I don’t remember too much about it. I don’t even know if it was such a mystery back then. I just know the parents were here one day and gone the next. Everyone thought they’d upped and gone back east, as in East Coast, without telling anyone.”
“That’s what happens with old age and death,” Doreen said drily.
“Their sister disappeared too,” Nan said, as she stared off in the distance where the gardener had gone.
Doreen frowned. “All three at the same time?” That didn’t bode well.
Nan nodded, still staring off into the landscape.
Doreen made a mental note to clarify these dates with Mack. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “She had Down syndrome. She was a lovely girl though. Beautifully happy and always smiling, such a great help to have around.”
“You knew the whole family?”
“I did, indeed. Used to see them a fair bit because we belonged to the same gardening club, and sometimes we would go on long nature walks together with the rest of the group. There were always tea times and, you know, various little social activities. They were a lovely couple and devoted to their family.”
“Just the two boys and the sister?”
Nan nodded. “And not one of them had any kids.”
“Oh, too bad,” Doreen said. “It’s sad when the family line is about to run out.”
“It is, indeed,” Nan said, with a meaningful look in Doreen’s direction.
She rolled her eyes as she stepped onto the first of the flagstones. “Don’t even go in that direction with me, Nan.”
“Mack would make lovely little babies with you,” Nan called after her.
That didn’t even deserve an answer. Not in public, for sure.
When she and her animals got to the other side of the lawn, Doreen turned and waved goodbye and walked toward the creek. She didn’t even want to think about Mack and making little babies. That was not a path guaranteed to get her in the right frame of mind. Mack had a brother, that she knew of—an attorney checking into her own divorce attorney for her lack of ethics. Yet Doreen was an only child, raised by her mother. So Doreen wasn’t used to being around many males as she grew up.
She and Mack got along well enough, but they were not even close to having that kind of relationship to be thinking about babies. At least she didn’t think so. In the back of her mind this little voice said, But you could be, down the road. You know he’s interested. At the same time it was so not what she needed to hear from her grandmother. Especially with Nan practically yelling it from Rosemoor, where the residents were deeply engrossed in hearing all the latest rumors.
Doreen shook her head and then thought more about a set of parents and their daughter all going missing at the same time. But the trouble was, even though Nan had said it was at the same time, it could have been over several years. It was possible the sister died of natural causes. It was a sad fact that a lot of people with Down syndrome didn’t have the same life expectancy as their parents did. She could have had other health issues too. Maybe she passed first. Doreen would have to look it up when she got home.
Her fingers played with the little metal plates as she headed home. She had no way to get across the creek to the same spot where she’d found the second one—or rather, where Thaddeus had found the second label. She reached up and gently stroked Thaddeus under the chin. “We’re not going back there to take another look.”
He gave a loud squawk in her ear. It was loud enough that she had to twist her head to the side as she listened to him. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Let’s go take a quick glance.”
Moving carefully, with Mugs racing ahead and Goliath right on his tail, Doreen and Thaddeus made their way across the creek at the narrowest and safest point from this end, wondering if she could do that again anytime soon. The water flowed with serious force. On the far side of the creek she carefully headed to where the second little piece had been. It took some backtracking and, after a while, she finally found the spot. Thaddeus’s footprints were all around the area. She used her sandal to kick away some of the sand and a few of the smaller rocks. The ivy served as ground cover and was tangled all around the area. She pulled several long strands out of the way. “If these came off tools,” she said, “what would they be doing here?”
She kicked away a few more rocks, and, sure enough, she found some wood sticking up. She bent down for a closer look. “Aha!”
She popped her head up, finding her bearings. They were almost at the mouth of the river. This whole side of the river could be turned into a walkway to the lake, only maybe twenty-five feet ahead of her. It was possible the river was wider back then too, sometime after these particular plates had been crafted some twenty years ago. Yet tossing the nameplates here could have happened one day after the labels had been created, or yesterday.