Doreen sighed, wishing she had a more finite time frame for when these tags had been discarded back here.
She used her fingers to dig out the handle. This wooden handle was bigger than the one, say, on her gardening spade. Which gave her a clue that this could be a much longer and sturdier tool. Mugs realized she was on the hunt and came to her side, his big sniffer moving up and down, sending sand flying everywhere with each snort. Then he started to dig, his big square paws churning out the dirt. But also a lot of rock was here.
She helped him out by moving a bunch of rocks as he dug a decent-size hole. Still she saw no end to the tool. To be buried by so much soil and rocks and sand—courtesy of the flowing river activity—not to mention the well-established ivy growth here, all must mean this tool’s been here for years and years. Maybe a decade? Unless, of course, somebody purposely buried it here like this.
When she could finally grab the handle with both hands, she tugged it hard, and more dirt and rock shifted. But it was still stuck. She eventually coaxed it from its deep hole and lifted it up, as she studied the odd-looking thing in her hand. “Wow,” she said, “what is this?”
She noted a place on the handle where the plate should have been. It was ever-so-slightly indented and had little pinholes, as if the metal had been nailed right into that place. She laid it off to the side and said, “You’d think there would be two of them, since I have two tags.”
She kept searching but found no sign of a second handle, at least not with her small and limited ability to move the ground and dig by hand. She’d have to return with a shovel to make better headway, as this area had become very overgrown with time.
She spied the partial lake view from where she stood. On the opposite side of the river were private properties. Million-dollar homes went from there all the way around the lakeshore. She walked forward, leaving the tool on the ground. Another twenty-five feet and, of course, the lake just opened out in front of her. “I wonder how popular this area was way back when, twenty years ago?” she muttered. “Or if these tools and tags were tossed when the parents disappeared, possibly fifteen years ago?”
She turned to look at her animals, but they weren’t leaving the tool alone. She smiled, walked back over, and picked it up, surprised at the hefty weight, and turned toward her home and her little bridge.
When she crossed the bridge, smiling at Mack’s handiwork to make the bridge safe and sturdy again, and came back into her yard, she felt a certain relief. She placed the tool on her little café table on the back veranda and walked inside her house. She still was amazed at the empty rattling sound as she made her way through the residence. She had minimal furniture, most of it now gone to Christie’s for the inevitable auction. And something was just so joyous about this emptiness. She walked around and opened up all the windows to let the breeze fly through the house. Curtains lifted, but so did a layer of dust, and she loved that. She wished the wind could go right from one side of the house to the other and take all the dust with it. Too bad that couldn’t happen.
Chapter 6
Thursday Midafternoon …
When Doreen’s phone rang again, she looked at it and sighed. “Hi, Mack.”
“Please tell me that you’re not in any trouble,” he said by way of a hello.
“What kind of trouble could I be in?”
“Somebody saw the gardener running away from you and Nan at the patio. Shouldn’t you be at home resting your ankle?”
“Darren again?” she asked, rolling her eyes. Another cop who worked with Mack and whose grandfather lived at Rosemoor. “And I am home. I just walked to Nan’s and back. A short walk to ease my ankle into the movements.”
“Well, Darren didn’t see it, but his grandfather did. Just make sure you don’t overdo it.”
“I didn’t see him anywhere.” She chose to ignore the rest of his comment.
“It’s quite possible he was inside Nan’s apartment,” Mack said delicately.
Doreen froze and then a sigh escaped. “Jeez, that meant he heard everything we talked about. Why didn’t Nan tell me he was there?” she asked. “I nibbled on a cookie outside on the patio for at least an hour. I hate to think he was sitting inside waiting for her.”
“I think he was trying to visit with her but didn’t want to disturb you two.”
“That’s just sad,” she said. “He’d have been more than welcome to join us.”
“Maybe he just wanted to get away from the nurses. According to Darren, they’re on his case about his diet.”
“Ha. He was probably stealing a cookie then from Nan,” she said. “They were huge and totally stuffed with chocolate chips.”
“It sounds wonderful. You didn’t bring a spare one home, did you?” Mack asked hopefully.
“I meant to bring half of that one home,” Doreen said regretfully, “but I ate the entire thing while I sat there talking with Nan.”
“So the gardener …”
“Well, he left us, but it had nothing to do with me or the animals this time,” she said. “Well, not directly. Thaddeus found these two little metal plates with dates and names on them, but the names and dates are hard to read. I took them with me when I went to have tea. I asked Nan, and she remembered something about the gardener’s brother, Frank, having a tool repair shop or some such thing and put these little tags on his creations.”
“Interesting.”
But she could tell Mack had already tuned out of their conversation. She smiled. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing okay,” he said. “I was just checking in to make sure you were good. Have you recovered?”
“Almost,” she said. “Last week I was begging for three days of peace and quiet, but today I found myself bored out of my mind.”
“You could try living with boredom,” he said. “It’s good for the soul.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, laughing. “I got out and started digging in my backyard, when Thaddeus brought me the first one of those little plate things.”
“They could be nothing,” he said.
“Well,” she said, her voice turning suddenly cheerful as she walked out of her kitchen, “I did find a tool. On the way back from Nan’s, we returned to where we’d found one plate. Out of the weeds and ivy that had taken over the area, I dug up something with a long handle, down near the mouth of the river.”
“Interesting. What kind of tool?”
“I’m not exactly sure. A sharp point at one end and more of a shovel blade at the other.”
“Huh.”
She could almost hear the frown in his voice. “It’s not like Nan’s old hoe, but yet it is somehow similar. But way heavier.”
“Somebody probably just left it behind.”
“That’s what I thought. Now I’m about to put on a pot of coffee and get back outside and start some more digging.”
“Any more thoughts on the deck?”
“Yes, but I don’t think I can do anything about it anytime soon,” she said regretfully. “Scott said they’re having to do some repairs on some of the furniture, plus the overall cleaning, and then the paintings needed a bit more in-depth cleaning as well, so it’ll delay them going into the pre-auction catalog. That’ll delay sales, which will delay me getting any money.”