Gun in the Gardenias (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 7) Read online

  “They were all told to get out of town or to face the same consequences. For that matter, so were the men. But they didn’t believe it. And they didn’t listen. But then to walk out of town would have made them look like cowards. So, of course, they couldn’t.”

  “And the women were all paid afterward. Why?”

  “Because the Devil Riders’ gang knew they would make trouble otherwise.”

  “But how does that work? You said the women were with the gang and that made them part of it, whether with the Devil Riders or the rival gang, right? So why did your gang care about their livelihood afterward?”

  “That was Steve’s idea. The Devil Riders fought it for a long time. And then decided, what the hell? Particularly when they found out one of the women was pregnant. They figured the woman, once giving birth, would want more money or would want retaliation of her own.” Annette gave a half a snort that ended up closer to a cough. “Steve gave me money too, but it wasn’t enough to rebuild a new life outside of the gang.”

  Doreen winced. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you know where any of the women went?”

  “No,” Annette said, her voice strained. “The agreement was that they were to leave town and to never be seen again.”

  All Doreen could think of was how convenient that was. “And is there anything else you need to make peace with?” she asked Annette.

  “Only that I’m sorry for everything I had to do with it,” she said. “Life wasn’t easy back then. I did anything I could to survive. And it was a far cry from the life I finally had when I was away from the gang. But now all my sins have caught up with me, and my body is making me pay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Doreen said. “It can’t be easy for you.”

  The woman shook her head. “No, it’s not,” she whispered. “But I have come to understand some of it.” Then her voice fell silent.

  Doreen waited for her to say something else, but the woman’s eyes slowly closed, and her breathing deepened. Doreen shut off the recorder and stood, then snuck out of the room. As she left, she whispered, “I’ll call you later.”

  She walked out to the front hall; she smiled at the receptionist and said, “Thank you. Annette is sleeping again.”

  “Good,” the woman said. “She didn’t want her painkillers this morning so she could talk to you.”

  “How long does she really have?”

  “Five days maximum,” the receptionist said. “But her will is strong. Honestly, we all thought she’d be dead a few weeks ago, but something was bothering her. Hopefully whatever she wanted to discuss with you has helped.”

  “I hope so,” Doreen said with a gentle smile. “I can’t think of anything worse than going to the grave carrying secrets that terrify you. Is there any chance I could bring my pets down here if I come back? Annette did ask me to bring them this time…”

  The receptionist shook her head. “Sorry, it’s against our policy. They’d have to be registered therapy animals.”

  She thanked the woman and walked out into the morning sun, feeling almost a dirtiness from the confession. She got in her vehicle and drove home. Something about seeing life from another perspective and realizing how unhappy the woman had been and how ravaged she was by her disease made Doreen grateful for the life she had with Nan and her animals.

  She pulled into her driveway, used her automatic door opener to open the garage, and drove her car in. She smiled as she got out, then closed the big double door, and walked to the kitchen door but realized she had locked the door with a chair. Groaning, she had to let herself out of the big door, closing it again using the keypad, and then walked around to the front door.

  Peering inside the big picture window to the living room, she could see Mugs going nuts because somebody had gone into the garage. Although he probably recognized the sound of her car, he didn’t understand what was happening. The door opener was also a new thing to him. It was a new thing to her as well. The remote had been in the garage the whole time, but it hadn’t worked until Mack had fiddled with it. And she hadn’t even realized he’d done that until he handed her the remote and told her how to use it.

  She walked to the front door, unlocked it to shut it again, disarmed the security system, and sat down on the floor. The critters rushed to her, and she cuddled them.

  “When I die,” she announced, “let it be fast. And let it not make you guys’ life tough.”

  When she finally gave everybody the loving they needed, she rose and headed into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Something was so sad about Annette. There’d been no mention of a child, no mention of a family, no mention of anyone who cared. And even the receptionist said she didn’t get many visitors. And that was even sadder.

  But now Doreen had something major she needed to deal with. While the kettle boiled, she opened her laptop and plugged in the recorder, hoping against hope it had worked. Then she copied it to her laptop and stored it in the cloud.

  After that, she listened to Annette’s raspy voice. Her pain filled the kitchen. With that, Doreen copied it and sent it to her new email for safekeeping. How could she possibly not tell Mack? It wouldn’t hurt anybody at this stage of the game, and it was definitely important as far as these arson cases were concerned.

  Just then Mack, maybe even knowing she was thinking about him, called her. She sighed happily. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said. “You sound different.”

  “Yes. I just listened to a dying woman’s confession,” she said sadly. “It’s painful, and I promised her I wouldn’t let anybody else know until she passes.”

  “Confession of what?” he asked, his voice harsh.

  She winced, took a deep breath, and let the words come out in a rush. “Her part in four murders.”

  Chapter 30

  Thursday Late Morning …

  Doreen waited through Mack’s silence, holding her breath. Her face was already scrunched up, and he didn’t disappoint.

  “What?” he roared. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he asked, still irate. “Sorry for what?”

  “Because I can’t tell you anything yet.”

  There was more stunned silence, and Mack said, “Please tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with the current cases?”

  She winced and whispered, “I cannot tell a lie.”

  He groaned a loud and drawn-out angry groan. “You will be the death of me,” he snapped. Then he hung up.

  “Well, that went well,” she said to the animals gathered around her. They all had worried looks on their faces. And how was it she even knew that? Except that, by now, she understood some of their expressions. Mugs’s face hung even lower, while Goliath stared at her like she’d done something terrible. Even Thaddeus gave her the gimlet-eyed look.

  She groaned. “Well, what am I supposed to do? Somehow I’m supposed to keep a promise, and it never even occurred to me what a promise I was keeping until I heard the confession. But I can understand Annette’s point of view too.”

  She got up, grabbed a cup of tea, and sat on the deck. As much as she hated to say it, it would be a good thing if Helmsman passed away in the night. And how awful to wish for. It was terrible. But, unable to help herself, she called the hospice center and asked about Annette.

  “She’s not doing well,” the woman said. “She’s not taking visitors, and we’re not patching through phone calls.”

  “Okay,” Doreen said softly. “I gather the end is not far away.”

  “There’s no way to know for sure,” the woman said. “We all work on the assumption that every day is a new day.” On that, she hung up and left Doreen staring at the phone.

  “I know it’s not nice to think about,” she said, “but, Annette, if you’re suffering and in pain and are ready to go, I do hope you get to go earlier than later.” But she felt terrible because Annette’s death really did have a lot to do with Mack and did
have to do with these cases. And somehow Doreen was supposed to work her way through this moral conflict because she had promised. But did a promise matter when you didn’t understand the full extent of your promise before you heard all the details?

  Before, rights and wrongs had always been easy for her. She’d understand what to do and when to do it. But now, she knew that morally it was wrong to tell Mack, but ethically it was the right thing to do. And that just made her conflicted. When she heard a car door slam out front, Thaddeus whispered in a very low voice, “Mack is here. Mack is here.”

  She gave him a startled look, bounced to her feet, and raced to the end of the backyard to stand at the creek. She could hope it wasn’t Mack, but, in her heart of hearts, she knew it was, and it would be the towering and angry Mack.

  She couldn’t really blame him. She was withholding vital information on a current case—Steve’s case—and four old cases. And that was just too unbelievable that Annette wanted to confess. To Doreen. Was it timing? Was it Doreen’s demeanor? Or was it now Doreen’s reputation as the bone lady that had let this woman decide to confess all? Or was it the fact that Annette was facing death in an uncertain future and wanted to clear her conscious? Any and all of those answers weren’t good enough for Mack.

  Behind her, she heard a roar. “Doreen?”

  She hunched her shoulders. She knew there was no way to get out of this. She would have to face the music. “I just hope he understands,” she murmured.

  “Not happening. Not happening.” Thaddeus went off in a cackling chuckle. He’d gone from rock to rock, as if caught up in an uncertain energy.

  She glared at him. “Well, it could.”

  She turned and watched Mack stride toward her from her back deck, the kitchen door banging hard behind him. His fists were clenched, his shoulders stiff, his expression irate, and his skin almost cherry red. As soon as he approached, she frowned at him. “You need some stress relief. You’ll have a heart attack.”

  He opened his mouth, but what came out was nothing. He snapped his mouth closed, inhaled, then said, “You will be the death of me.”

  She nodded. “And I’m so sorry. I’ve been thinking my way through this thing, but I had no clue what was being dumped on my plate. I’ve decided it’s morally wrong to tell you, but it’s ethically right to tell you.”

  He stared at her. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Well, I’m hoping, if I give you a little hint, you can guess.”

  He showed her what he had in his hand. Her recorder. “Does it have something to do with this?”

  She looked at him in surprise and nodded. “Yes, it does. How did you know?”

  “Because I know how you operate, and this was a new item I saw on the table as I came through,” he said.

  While she stared at him in stunned surprise, he hit Play.

  “No!”

  But it was too late. Helmsman’s voice rolled through. Doreen’s shoulders sagged, and she shrugged. “You see? That’s the thing about devils like you. It takes away my decision-making.”

  “Shouldn’t have been a decision at all,” he said.

  She gave him a haunted look. “She made me promise.”

  His face softened ever-so-slightly until he heard the confession.

  She nodded. “That’s why I was thinking that ethically I needed to tell you.”

  “You think?” he asked sarcastically. Then he held up a hand as he listened to Annette’s version of the fires and her part in it. He shook his head. “Good Lord.” He let it continue to play, but he rubbed his face with his free hand, as if tired beyond belief.

  And she could well imagine he was. Since she’d arrived, there had been no peace. She couldn’t believe how much chaos had overtaken her world.

  She was still trying to figure out if this was how everybody lived and how her life before had been so simple and empty because her husband had never let her do anything. Would she have gotten into the same amount of trouble if he had lessened his control over her? She couldn’t imagine it. He would have frowned on her being involved in anything so nasty as a murder.

  It wasn’t ladylike, even though she had certainly seen enough of his business dealings to know they were criminal in nature or at least slimy. And he had peculiar ideas about women and enough power to enforce them. What made the difference between one criminal act and another?

  Finally, the voice drifted off, and nothing more was heard on the recorder.

  In a low voice, Doreen said, “That’s when she drifted off to sleep again. And I checked in just recently, and she’s not doing well.”

  He nodded. “As in, she can’t be a questioned?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “As in, I think she probably won’t be of this world today or tomorrow.”

  Mack stared out at the creek. “This changes things.”

  “It changes a lot of things,” Doreen said, “but, in many ways, it changes nothing.”

  “And that’s the problem with cold cases. I have to look in the files and run names to see if anybody’s still alive.” He raised the recorder in his hand and said, “This is the clearest and most concise account of anything we have from back then.”

  “Even Steve’s dead,” she said, “but I don’t know who set his house fire.”

  “It’s possible that he did,” Mack said.

  “Oh,” she said with a frown. “I never considered that.”

  “If he thought the end was coming, and he didn’t want to face the music and have his reputation ruined, not to mention those who were closest to him would know exactly what he had been involved in, he could have done it. You know what? You have to consider it as that’s an easy way out.”

  “Maybe,” she said softly. “But not so easy.”

  “Maybe not, but, if he poured the accelerant all around his property and set it afire, it’s pretty hard to have second thoughts.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. Her mind was filled with images of Steve and his house burning around him and knowing he was on his own. She groaned. “It’s not what I would have thought of him, but who knows? He always operated in the shadows, so it’s hard to say just how bad and how far gone he was mentally.”

  “Are you thinking he had dementia or something?” Mack asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I meant morally.”

  “You seem to be having moral and ethical issues today.”

  “I did get a little slap in my face about it,” Doreen said. “I was concerned when Helmsman fell asleep like she did. That’s why I was checking up on her just a few minutes ago. Now, honestly, I’m not sure if she’ll even wake up. It’s almost as if she took one heavy sigh with the burden off her chest and found peace.”

  “It does happen that way,” Mack said. He walked a few steps away, pulled out his phone, and made a call. His gaze was gentle as he turned to her afterward. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what she has done. She passed about twenty minutes ago.”

  “But I just called.”

  “The receptionist probably hadn’t gotten word yet. And you’re not the police.”

  Doreen glared at him but appreciated the differences.

  “Well, it’s a good thing I went this morning, isn’t it?” She pointed at the recorder. “And just in case you’re wondering, there’s an email on my laptop with that attached to go to you sitting in my Drafts folder.”

  “Damn good thing,” he said. “And how did you happen to connect with her?”

  Doreen shrugged and gave him the story.

  He groaned. “Of course, and the fact that she knew you were the bone lady meant you were the perfect person to talk to.”

  “I would think most people with her lifestyle back then are hesitant to talk to the police. Even now.”

  “You’re right. Some aversions just never go away, even when you’re dying. But it’s sad because she could have relieved herself of this burden a long time ago.”

  “Maybe, but I think people have to do what they have
to do when it feels right.”

  Mack stood there and asked, “Is that a personal observation on your own life?”

  She thought about it. “You know what? It’s hard to even think about that. But maybe?”

  He nodded. Then he asked, “What about a chance of coffee?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Does that mean we’re friends again?”

  He snorted. “Until the next time.”

  She laughed. And then she told him about what Thaddeus had done. He looked at her in astonishment, then looked over at Thaddeus, who waddled behind them, happy and carefree.

  “He knew it was me?” he asked.

  “He might have recognized that particular slam to your car door,” she said with an airy movement of her hand. “It’s not like we haven’t heard it a time or two.”

  He laughed. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to do it again?”

  “Wouldn’t it?” she agreed. “But chances are, you will.”

  Chapter 31

  Thursday Noon …

  In the kitchen, Mack put on the coffee, while Doreen sat down and sent off the email to him that she had already drafted. “Okay,” she said. “You have a digital copy.”

  “Good,” he said as he opened her fridge.

  She watched him in surprise. “Are you hungry?”

  He snorted. “Always. But we’d planned spaghetti for Friday. Unless you want it tonight, and we can have leftovers tomorrow?”

  She stared at him. “Spaghetti twice is always a good idea.”

  “So let’s check to see if you have the ingredients we need.” He checked it all out, nodded, and said, “Perfect.”

  “Good,” she said. “But we don’t need to start yet, right?”

  “No. Not until later this afternoon. I’m still recovering from almost no sleep last night. That’s why the coffee. After this, I’ll go back and start dealing with this case. Obviously, we need to take a new look at all the evidence.”

  “Yes, but honestly, that’s four more cold cases,” she said in a singsong voice, “plus Steve’s current case.”

  He slowly turned and glared at her.