After a moment of silence, Nan chuckled. “My dear, I’ve been playing pool for a very long time.”
“Of course you have.” Doreen sighed, pushing her hair off her forehead. “Silly me,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t even know what to do with the game, but here you are, probably already a pool shark.”
At that, Nan burst into laughter. “Oh, I do like talking to you,” she said. “You have such a fresh innocence on the world.”
Doreen winced. “You mean, I’m naïve,” she stated bluntly.
“No, I don’t mean that,” Nan disagreed firmly. “I called to see if you wanted to come down and to have a cup of tea.”
“Absolutely,” she stated, particularly as she didn’t like how Nan sounded so tired. “When?”
After a moment’s pause, Nan suggested, “I was thinking about right now, unless you’re busy of course.”
“Nope, not busy at all.” Doreen looked back at the pot of coffee and added, “I do still have a little bit of coffee left in the pot though.”
“And that’s fine,” Nan agreed. “Maybe make it in an hour then? Have your coffee and then come on down for a visit.”
“Won’t that be around your dinnertime?”
“I’ll pick up dinner and bring it here,” she offered. Then she laughed. “In which case, I’ll pick up enough to bring for both of us. I’ll see you in an hour for dinner and tea.” And, with that, Nan hung up.
An hour would give Doreen just enough time to have another cup of coffee, sort through her notes, and see if she could come up with a plan of action on this cold case for the captain.
Chapter 5
When it was time to go see Nan, Doreen got up, grabbed the leashes, and immediately both Goliath and Mugs came running.
“Good day, huh, guys? Two outings in one day.”
Mugs just barked. She looked at him and asked, “You want to go to Nan’s?” And he started to go nuts—jumping around, jumping on her, definitely a yes answer.
She looked over at Goliath. “What about you?” she asked him. He’d seemed a little bit off today, but then he’d spent most of the morning in the sun at the beach. Yet he appeared to be equally enthusiastic about going to Nan’s and equally unenthusiastic about a leash. As soon as Doreen approached him with the cat harness, he raced toward the creek and the pathway. “Okay, I guess no leash for you.”
She sighed. Definitely Goliath had an awful lot more say-so than she did. She knew that people would laugh at her for that, but it wasn’t such an easy thing when you loved your animals and when you knew that really the leash was a good idea but not necessary. Then it became more of an option, and, if an option, well, Goliath balked. She could only imagine that’s what kids were like too.
Once something was deemed an option, then they would take no option.
She smiled at that, and, with Thaddeus rising from a nap beside her, where he’d fallen asleep on one of the rose branches, she walked over and asked, “You want to go see Nan?”
He squawked, fluttered his wings, and then gently hopped on and walked up her arm. And, with that, she trooped down to the creek. She stopped to admire the water and the birdlife. Just even the rocks and the way that the light played on them made her smile. It was such a beautiful location. And even though her house was old and probably needed a lot of work, it was still home, and that made it very special for her.
She wandered slowly, enjoying the day, enjoying the view, just finding a certain sense of peace in herself. She was about to embark on another case, but that wasn’t necessarily this moment’s worry. She took several deep breaths, feeling some of the tension unwind.
After her last case, she was a little more cautious. Mack had been badly hurt, and, for her, that would never be okay. And in a previous cold case, Nan had been hurt, and that had been even worse. Doreen didn’t want anybody to get hurt again. She hadn’t realized—until watching how bad it was when the other two were hurt—how awful it was to be the observer and to not be able to do anything to help them.
She wasn’t sure that being more cautious was an answer because she didn’t see that she was being careless. It just seemed that some of the evilness of people around her was directed differently. It wasn’t a cop-out, wasn’t an excuse; it was just something that she needed to be aware of. With the animals moving just as slowly as she was, they meandered down toward Nan.
When she got to the Rosemoor parking lot, she stopped, once again taking a long look where Mack’s shooter had been waiting in his vehicle.
With a headshake, she muttered, “I hope you rot in jail, buddy.” And, with that, she stepped forward toward Nan’s place.
A gardener worked off to the side. He raised his head, stared at her, and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m walking to my grandmother’s apartment,” she replied, pointing at Nan’s patio.
He glared at her. “I’ve heard about you.” He shook his little hand tool at her. “You’re the one who doesn’t stay off the grass.”
She stopped and stared at him. “Do you see these blocks?” she asked.
“The stepping stones?”
“You know, the ones that are for, ah, gee, stepping?”
He straightened up and placed his hands on his hips. “Yeah, but the animals aren’t.”
She looked down to see Goliath wandering through the bushes. “No, Goliath doesn’t really listen to anybody,” she admitted, “but he’s hardly hurting anything.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted, “but, if that dog leaves evidence of his passing someplace on Rosemoor grounds, you make sure you clean it up.”
She immediately pulled out the poop bag she carried with her. “I have his bag right here,” she assured him.
As she got closer to Nan’s, Doreen looked back over at the rude gardener to see him still watching her. She gave him a bright smile, but he only glared at her. Her shoulders sagged. As she neared Nan, her grandmother stood outside on the patio, chuckling. Doreen shook her head at Nan, as she stepped over the last little border wall. “How can they find such cranky people to work here?” she muttered to her grandmother.
“I don’t know, but the gardeners always seem to have a problem with you, don’t they?”
“I wonder if it comes as part of the job description,” she muttered.
At that, Nan burst out laughing, finding that uproariously funny.
Doreen glared at her. “It’s not that funny. I don’t want to stop bringing the animals.”
At that, Nan faced her. “Oh, goodness me, don’t let him get to you.”
“Well, of course I have to,” she argued. “I mean, he’s right. We’re not supposed to be walking on the grass. And I try hard to keep everybody in line, but, you know, they’re animals.”
“I’ll have a talk with him later,” Nan said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We won’t let him ruin our day.”
“No, that wouldn’t be much fun,” Doreen murmured. She looked back but saw no sign of him, relieved that he was gone. Realizing that it was close to dinnertime, he was probably gone for the day. “Have you seen him around here before?” she asked Nan.