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Offed in the Orchids Page 3
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“What’s missing?” he asked quietly.
“The orchid she was talking about.” She nodded toward a spot where there was a label, but the actual place where the plant should be was empty.
He stared at her. “Are you saying that somebody stole it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Miriam moved it for some reason. Or maybe—” And then she stopped and shook her head. “I’m not going there.”
Mack narrowed his gaze at her. “You better not.”
And just then Mugs decided that he’d had more than enough of calm and quiet, and he started barking and barking, pulling at his leash, which Doreen held. “I’d better take the animals outside.”
He nodded. “That’s a good idea.” Goliath took that moment to jump up onto one of the tables full of pots and potting soil, and the whole thing started to teeter, and a few things fell. Mack reached out, stabilized it. “Yeah, I definitely think you better get them out of here. I’ll straighten this up.”
She nodded and hurriedly pulled Goliath off the table, scolding him. “Come on, Goliath. Come on. Let’s go outside. Mugs, stop it, please!” Exasperated, she tried to retrace her steps out of the greenhouse solarium area, but the layout was confusing and this house was huge. By the time she got to a door, she was back in the actual house and not outside where she was supposed to be.
She looked back at Mack, saw that the paramedics had brought in a gurney, and Mack stood with a hand on Edna’s shoulder, trying to give the first responders room to work. Her heart sank for the older woman and for Miriam, who obviously stayed here because of the friendship and the relationship she had with Edna, even though Miriam was obviously deathly allergic to something here. Doreen sincerely hoped that the relationship hadn’t finally killed her.
Miriam herself looked to be in her seventies, and who knows? Maybe the fact that she’d had some adverse reaction to something was just the final straw. All Doreen knew was that Miriam looked to be in very critical condition, and, for that, Doreen was sad. But the animals were not interested in being calm, and Doreen didn’t know what was going on with them. “Mugs, calm down,” she scolded him. But he kept barking and barking.
Finally, pushed to her limit, she managed to find a way back outside and ended up in a small side garden. Mugs immediately raced to the fence and barked. “Are you chasing something?” Doreen was confused, but nothing was out here to tempt Mugs. “It’s just us.”
But then she heard a weird howl and turned to find a cat, looking at them with glittering eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She pulled on Goliath’s leash, who even now was stalking the same cat. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, no cat fights.” This was a scenario she hadn’t come across yet. So far, everybody avoided them when they were out, but this cat had been cornered on his own turf. And her animals were causing the problem.
She looked down at Goliath. “Behave yourself,” she warned him. Then she tugged him backward, trying to get him out of the way, so the other animal didn’t feel so threatened. But Goliath wouldn’t give an inch, and finally the other cat jumped onto the fence and disappeared. Doreen glared at her critters. “That’s no way to behave,” she cried out. “That cat didn’t do anything to you.”
Looking around for a gate, she had no idea how to get out and back to where Mack had parked. Even to the driveway would be preferable, and so she kept wandering, yet not wanting to interfere into the personal life of this woman, who was obviously suffering two blows today. However, it was hard for Doreen to find her way through the maze.
Finally Doreen found a door to a nearby building, and she poked her head inside. It led through to a garage. With relief, she raced into the garage, only all kinds of plants, pots, trees, and gardening supplies were in here. She groaned. It may have been built as a garage, but that didn’t mean it was a functioning garage. Just another space where Edna kept a lot of her gardening surplus. Another door was on the far end, and Doreen raced down with the animals, more than ready to get out of here before she was discovered and before somebody thought she was trespassing.
She opened the door and stepped into what appeared to be yet another side garden. She cried out. “Where am I?”
At that, a man spoke behind her. “What are you doing here is a better question?”
She turned ever-so-slowly, not liking the tone of his voice, and cried out softly when she saw a huge man standing in front of her. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologized, stepping back. “I was in the solarium, but then I was supposed to take the animals out, and I got turned around.” She knew she was babbling, but she didn’t know how to stop.
“Turned around and confused, huh?” he said. “Are you here to steal things?”
Her gaze widened. “No, no. Not at all. That’s not what I’m here for at all.”
“Really?” he sneered. “It seems like everybody is after something. And everybody always wants something from Edna.”
“I don’t,” she said immediately.
“Really?” He obviously didn’t believe her.
And she couldn’t blame him. She was someplace she shouldn’t be, but she didn’t know how to get out of here. “If you could show me how to get out of here,” she said, “I’d be happy to take my animals and go.”
Immediately his gaze dropped to the dog and the cat. “Well, now I know why Mona was howling.”
She winced. “Yes, my cat didn’t want to give way to his dominance. I’m so sorry. It’s clearly Mona’s home and obviously she should be allowed to be in her home.”
The man stared at her, almost in fascination, and she realized that, once again, her tongue was out of control. She took a long slow deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Could you please show me how to get out of the house?”
He pointed to another door she hadn’t seen. “Take that to a long hallway and, when you come out the other side, you’ll see the main garage just around the corner, with the driveway.”
She hastened to the doorway. “Thank you,” she called out, then disappeared through the door, hurrying as fast as she could with her animals. When she got down to the other end of the hallway, she turned to look back, and, sure enough, the man stood there, staring at her. She didn’t even bother saying anything and just bolted out the next door. As soon as she got outside, she felt the sunshine and the fresh air on her face. She took several deep, calming breaths.
“Wow.” She looked down at her animals. “Talk about bad behavior.”
Mugs gave her a disdainful look, and she realized that he wasn’t any more to blame than Goliath was—or Doreen—but, at the same time, they were to blame. They’d been caught in somebody else’s house, where they shouldn’t have been, and she was just as much to blame.
With a groan, she walked forward a few steps, looking for Mack, but, of course, he was still busy helping, at least she presumed so. She would really like to go home now. She’d had more than enough of the orchid tour. The terrible accident here, at the same time as the possible theft of a prized orchid, just made it that much harder. But she kept walking and soon found the huge driveway, and thankfully there was Mack’s truck.
With relief she raced over, opened up the passenger side, thrilled to find it unlocked. Piling all the animals inside, she jumped up herself, then slammed the door shut and just sat here, quivering in place. What started out as a fun and adventurous day with a good friend had ended up being a crazy unsettling moment, where she and her animals had definitely not shown their best sides. She could only hope Mack was having better luck.
With a heavy sigh, she looked down at Mugs. “What on earth got into you anyway?”
Goliath too, although telling off Goliath was akin to helping him completely ignore her, like he always did. Even Thaddeus hadn’t been terribly happy with the whole scenario. She slumped back into the truck seat, quite content to wait for Mack to return.
Chapter 4
When Mack opened the driver’s side door, Doreen bolted upright. “Easy, easy, it’s okay.”
She sighed and sagged back into the big front seat. “Sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. “I must have zoned out while I was waiting for you.”
“I did phone you a couple times.” He motioned at her pocket.
She fished out her phone, then checked it and winced. “So many people were around at the market,” she said, “so I just turned it off.”
“That’s fine.” He nodded understandingly. “I was worried when I couldn’t find you. But, at least, you found your way back to the truck.”
“I did eventually, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been.” She told him about getting lost and then caught wandering around by the man who had pointed her way outside.
“I’m sorry,” Mack said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to take them outside, when you didn’t know how to get there.”
“But who knew it would be that hard to get outside of a house?” she muttered. She looked at him. “What about Edna?”
“Well, she’s called someone to be with her at the hospital, and she’ll head out with Miriam in the ambulance,” he said. “They’ve had several close calls with Miriam before, but this was completely unexpected.”
“It must be tough to have a relationship with somebody whose hobby is something that will always give you health problems.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but they’ve been together for a long time, and we’re not exactly sure what’s happening.”
Doreen looked at him in surprise. “It wasn’t an allergic reaction, exacerbated by the asthma?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Obviously she looked pretty swollen, and that seemed to be what Edna thought too, but hopefully they’ll sort it out at the hospital. I did find something interesting though. Well, Goliath did actually.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember when he jumped on that table and all that stuff started falling?”
“How could I forget. I was mortified.”
“As I was picking things up, I found this on the floor underneath.” Mack pulled something from his shirt pocket.
“What is it?”
“An EpiPen, what someone with serious allergies and airway problems would carry to save their lives in the midst of a negative reaction. I’m wondering if she was trying to use it and dropped it, then couldn’t find it or something.”
“What if someone stole the orchid, and Miriam had an attack, and the thief knocked the EpiPen out of her hand? Can stress cause a reaction like that? Or maybe stress can set up the whole allergy scenario to hide a more sinister plot? Or maybe—”
“Hold it. We don’t know any of that and don’t need to speculate. The main thing is, we found her and got her headed to help. She’s in pretty rough shape and not out of the woods by any means.”
Doreen nodded. “No, you’re right,” she said. “It’s just very sad. I feel heartbroken for Edna. It’s obvious that they care for each other very much.”
“Yes, they’ve been best friends and partners for a long time,” he said, “long before it was accepted as a norm.”
She nodded. “And, for that, I’m sorry because we should be allowed to have the relationship that makes us happy, as long as we’re not hurting anybody else.”
“That is a nice liberal attitude,” he said, “but you and I both know the world doesn’t operate so easily.”
“No,” she whispered.
He looked at her. “It’s not the end of the outing I had hoped for.”
“No, but it was good until then,” she said.
“We didn’t get to all the other orchids either.”
“I know.” She winced at that. “What about the missing orchid? Did you find out anything more?”
Mack shook his head. “We’ll have to wait to ask Miriam.”
Doreen nodded. “I feel bad for everybody who doesn’t make it here on the tour.”
“They can visit the homes on the tour in any random sequence. If they end up here, the police will send them away.”
“Let’s hope everybody else had a good showing then,” she said. “I can’t imagine how the last person would feel if nobody showed up.”
He stopped, looked at her. “You want to keep going?”
“I don’t think the tour’s still on, is it?”
He nodded. “Oh, sure, still another four hours, I think, where you’re allowed to go and view the orchids.” She hesitated, and he said, “I think you may be on to something. Let’s go take a look at the rest of the orchid tour. That’ll get our minds off of Edna and Miriam for a while.”
She smiled. “That would be a good idea to have something different to think about.”
He turned on the truck and looked at the animals. “If they’ll behave?”
“I’m still not sure why they weren’t behaving anyway in the greenhouse,” she said quietly. “It’s not like them to be difficult.”
“But they were on a leash for a long time, and it was hot in there,” he reminded her. “We have to keep that in perspective too.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of that,” she said, “but you’re right. It was hot. Greenhouses may be ideal for orchids but not for animals.”
“Exactly, but why don’t we try another one and see how that works?” And, with that, he headed off.
“Did you know it was Edna’s place before we got there?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “The same as I know the next one is Smudge’s.”
“Smudge?”
He laughed. “Yes. He used to run a business here with compost. He’d collect all kinds of green and brown matter and then build these huge compost piles that he would keep turning, adding to, churning out absolutely beautiful black gold. All the gardeners used it all the time.”
“When you say used to, does that mean he doesn’t do it anymore?” she asked. “Compost is always welcome.”
“Not only welcome, it’s wanted,” he said. “But then the city took over the big operation of most of it, and he dealt in some specialized compost, but he ended up ill with diabetes. He struggled controlling it and, when his son moved to the coast, Smudge decided his place would be too much work for him to keep up all on his own.”
“I think that one of the hardest things is when the kids end up leaving town, even though you’ve done all you could to get them to stay.”
“I think so too.” He nodded. “When you think about it, I mean, in a lot of cases, these are some of the founding families, who expect their traditions to carry on. But this time, there just wasn’t any industry for his son to carry on with. Sure, they could make compost, but it was hard to make enough money on something like that to support the additional family.”
“I guess,” she said, “though it’s still sad.”
He looked over, smiled. “That’s because you’re a romantic at heart.”
She didn’t know how to take that, but Thaddeus lifted his head. “Romantic, she’s romantic.”
“No, that’s not what he meant,” she argued, as Thaddeus started cackling.
But Mack laughed and laughed. “He does pick up a selective set of words, doesn’t he?”
“And not all the time,” she said in exasperation. “He picks up certain things, and you think he won’t remember something bad, yet he does. Then he picks up something completely unrelated that has nothing to do with anything, and he just won’t let it go.”
At that, Thaddeus stretched, crowed, and then started his little laugh again, which always made her wonder if he knew what it did to her.
“See that laugh he has? That’s just creepy.”
Mack laughed. “It is a little creepy. But then he’s a little creepy.”
She nodded. “He’s also very, very beautiful, and he knows it.”
“Thaddeus is beautiful,” he said in a soft preening voice.
She groaned. “See what I mean? He’s never silent when it comes to getting attention.”
“Can you blame him?” Mack had a huge grin on his face. He turned the corner. “Now
we’re heading up here to Smudge’s place.”
She leaned forward to see a large area, maybe a couple acres. “Everybody has land here,” she said enviously.
“That’s one of the requirements to grow things, isn’t it? You need to have enough room to put in a garden.”
“And I never thought about having a big garden,” she said, “but I’ve only recently realized just how hard it is to get land of your own, to keep it up, and to hang on to it.”
“Well, having it is one thing. Keeping it is entirely different,” he said. “Then, when you do have it and do keep it,” he murmured, “who do you pass it on to? And that’s where the trouble lies for some.”
“I hadn’t even considered that,” she said. “It sounds so sad to think that nobody inherits some of the grand places.” He pulled up and parked off to the side, while she looked around. “At least it’s not as crowded here.”
“No, and half these vehicles are probably Smudge’s anyway.” He chuckled.
She hopped out, and this time Mugs immediately bounded around the truck wheels. He lifted a leg, while Goliath looked at him in disdain.
“That cat only has only one look on his face,” Mack announced. “Complete disdain for the world around him.”
“I think it’s more a case of thinking he’s just above it all.”
“That’s the same thing,” he said, “and then he does something that completely surprises you.”
“He’s very humanlike,” she murmured. “And he never really lets me forget it. But, every once in a while, I start to think that he’s straight animal or straight cat, and then he does something so very relatable.”
At that, Goliath walked closer and stood up on his back legs and put his front paws on her thigh.
“What does he want?” Mack asked.
“This.” She bent down, lifted him into her arms. Goliath’s paws immediately hit her shoulder and stayed there.
“Wow, nice trick. A cat that asks to be lifted and carried.”
“He likes it when he gets tired,” she murmured. She buried her face in his soft fur for a long moment.