Offed in the Orchids Read online

  “Yes, exactly,” the woman said.

  “Is your aunt around?”

  “She is sitting outside.”

  “May I talk to her?” Doreen asked curiously, unable to take her eyes off the orchid.

  “I’ll go see.”

  As she left them to go the backyard, Mack looked at her. “Why do you want to talk to her?”

  “If she has been waiting for this for a long time, she might appreciate hearing that somebody really loves the work she has done.”

  Mack looked at her, a strange glint in his eye. “Yes, you’re too soft,” he murmured, as the woman entered and motioned them to walk outside.

  “No,” Doreen said, “I just think sometimes we forget about the humanness of our lives here.”

  “Maybe, but you’re definitely a softy.”

  And her heart did melt when she walked forward to see a much older woman, struggling to get out of a chair. Doreen immediately raced forward. “Please don’t get up on our account.”

  The woman stopped, hesitated, then looked behind Doreen and her gaze shot up. “Mack?”

  He stepped forward, then leaned over and gave the frail woman a hug. “Hi, Gloria. How you doing?”

  Doreen looked at him and back at Gloria. “You two know each other?”

  “Not a whole lot of choice in this town.” Mack gave her half a smile.

  The older woman looked at him, her face softening. “Mack was instrumental in me keeping my sanity at a point in time when I wasn’t sure I’d make it.”

  Something was very interesting in that comment. Doreen looked to Mack for an explanation, but he wasn’t giving any.

  The older woman said, “My husband was killed in a bad accident a long time ago, and my son, well, he was murdered.”

  At the word murder Doreen stiffened. “I’m so sorry. That’s got to be difficult.”

  “I lost my husband long before Mack here was born. And then, when my only son, Lionel, was murdered, well, I mean, I could really turn to nobody. It’s hard to watch your heart break with strangers.”

  Doreen could understand that.

  “But I loved growing orchids. It helped. Then I had my philanthropy too. I kept busy. I made new friends. And eventually met Mack.” She looked over at him, then smiled at Doreen. “He’s a good guy.”

  Mack looked uncomfortable, shifting uneasily on his feet.

  The other woman walked forward to join them, facing Doreen. “I’m Elle, Gloria’s niece.” Then she turned to Mack. “I didn’t even recognize you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked at her, shaking his head. “Hey, it’s fine, I wouldn’t even bring it up if Gloria didn’t remember me.”

  Gloria chuckled. “Trust Mack to think anybody won’t remember him. Just look at the size of the man.”

  Doreen nodded. “Hard to ignore, isn’t he?”

  “An impossible presence too.” Gloria smiled, as she motioned at the nearby chair. “Come and visit for a little bit, if you want.”

  “I just wanted to congratulate you on that absolutely stunning orchid,” Doreen said.

  “Thank you.” Gloria seemed gratified to hear it. “It’s the hobby my son and I used to do together,” she said, her expression dimming briefly.

  “I’m sorry,” Doreen whispered. “I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”

  “You didn’t, my dear. You didn’t. When you get to my age, at least bad memories are still memories,” she murmured.

  Mack looked at her with the gentlest smile on his face. Doreen really appreciated the fact that he could relate to people so easily. She turned back to the older woman. “Your son would be thrilled to see you here, sharing it with us.”

  “He was pretty private about it, so he’s probably rolling over in his grave, horrified that I would bring it out for the public.” She smiled. “But, at some time in your life, you have to stop hiding everything and start giving a little bit more. At this stage, I’m trying to give so much more.”

  Chapter 6

  Gloria continued. “I don’t have too much longer to live, and I just want to make sure that my conscience is clear and that whatever I have to leave behind is left to the right people.”

  It was an odd topic, but, for anybody looking at passing on possessions as they went to the other world—whatever that world would bring—maybe this was normal talk. Doreen glanced at the niece to find her biting her lower lip and holding back tears. Shifting Goliath’s position, Doreen walked over and gave the woman a gentle hug and whispered, “She’s quite something.”

  The niece smiled through her tears. “She is, indeed.”

  The two of them stepped off to the side, as Mack and Gloria spoke at length on other subjects. Doreen wasn’t terribly interested in overhearing Mack’s discussion, as she listened to the niece expound about the pain that Gloria had been through with her husband’s car accident and then her son’s murder. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured again.

  The woman nodded. “And that’s the trouble. We can all be sorry, but it never helps. It never changes anything.”

  “No, and not much anybody can do about it.”

  The woman looked at her. “You’re the one who gets involved in cold cases, aren’t you?”

  “I do, much to poor Mack’s chagrin,” she said easily. “I’m Doreen.”

  “I’m Elle.” The woman laughed. “I can see that,” she said. “I don’t imagine he likes anybody interfering in his work at all.”

  “No, he sure doesn’t.” Doreen smiled. “But that’s okay. We’ve worked out a way to stay amiable in spite of it all.”

  “It’s obvious that you guys are a great match.”

  Doreen recoiled ever-so-slightly, thinking about other people gossiping about them. Look at her own nan. Doreen didn’t say anything to that.

  Then Elle said impulsively, “Well, if you’re ever bored …”

  At that, Doreen chuckled. “I don’t know about bored,” she said, “but what do you mean?”

  “You could always look into my cousin’s death.”

  She stared at her for a long moment. “You mean, it hasn’t been solved?”

  Elle shook her head. “No, they never found out who killed him.”

  “Oh, dear.” Doreen slid a sideways glance at Mack, who didn’t appear to hear this conversation at all. “Was it local?”

  “No, he went out of town to a flower show,” she said for clarification. “He was in Vancouver and was murdered there.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I don’t know if I can get any information on it or not.”

  “We suspected somebody from here did it at the time,” she said.

  “Why would you say that?” Doreen asked.

  “Because he’d had several fights with somebody local, about orchids of all things.” Elle groaned. “I’ve come to actually hate the damn things.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “They’re truly beautiful.”

  “They are, but, in our family, I don’t think they’ve been good luck at all. Sometimes I think they’ve been the cause of everything.” With that cryptic remark, Elle turned and walked away.

  Knowing she wouldn’t get any information from Mack, at least not willingly, Doreen followed the woman. “Do you have any details on the case?”

  Elle looked at her in surprise. “Mack won’t give them to you?”

  “Only what he can, but what he can’t give me is the insider information.”

  “I don’t really have much,” the niece said apologetically. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t even have asked you.”

  “If it’s something that we can solve before your aunt dies, maybe it would give her some closure and make her passing a little more peaceful.”

  “I know she would love to have answers.”

  “But you said Lionel died down on the coast?”

  She looked confused for a moment and then shrugged. “I know my uncle was killed down there. No, that was my cousin.” She stopped, sighed. “I
’m sorry. Everything is confusing me these days. It was my uncle who was killed driving on the way to Vernon. Of course that was even longer ago.”

  “That’s fine,” Doreen assured Elle. “It’s very easy for these mixed memories to trip us up.” And not so unusual in somebody of Elle’s age—around seventy, Doreen guessed.

  “So easy that you’re so sure you know what had happened. Then, the next thing you know, you don’t know anything,” she murmured.

  “And it can happen that way. Indeed, it can.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind looking,” she said, “we would appreciate it. But—we don’t have any money to pay you.”

  “Oh, dear me, no,” Doreen said. “I can’t guarantee you any results, but, at the same time, the price is right. I do this for free.” She stopped and shrugged, trying to formulate an answer that would make this woman with the huge eyes more likely to give her the details Doreen needed. “I guess I do this because I feel compelled to help out the families,” she said. “I know that the dead are already gone, but, for the families who don’t get any answers, it’s torture.”

  “It really is,” Elle said. “At the time there was just so much gossip going around, so many questions, so much misinformation.”

  And, once again, Elle appeared to have drifted off into another world, maybe thinking more along the lines of her uncle, not her cousin. In an effort to clarify what the problem was, Doreen said, “Your uncle’s accident must have been terrible.”

  “It was terrible, just losing him like that …” She shook her head. “I was so young. I don’t know that I’ve ever really recovered. Aunt Gloria would probably say that I haven’t.”

  Doreen frowned. “Do you have any family of your own?”

  “You mean, kids? No,” she said. “I never went in that direction. I was married for a short time, but that was all.” She paused. “I was just happy to be here, and, with cousin Lionel and Aunt Gloria in my life, everything was fine, until he died.”

  “How did he die?”

  “An accident,” she said, her tone bitter. “No. That was my uncle. Lionel was mugged, stabbed to death.” She shook her head. “Honestly I’ve been confused a lot lately. I’ve been getting my uncle and my cousin confused as well, much less their tragic deaths. I think my aunt is in better shape mentally than I ever have been, at least since all the deaths.”

  “I’m sorry. That makes it even tougher.”

  “When you can see the signs coming at you, and you don’t know how to avoid them or what to do, it makes it really scary,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I could go at the same time Aunt Gloria does because I just don’t understand what’ll happen to me afterward.”

  Doreen looked at her closely. “If you don’t mind me asking, how old is Gloria?”

  “My aunt is ninety-eight,” Elle said.

  She stared at Gloria, then back at her niece. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, ninety-eight and she doesn’t look it. Me, I’m sixty-five, and I look like I’m her age.” She shook her head. “Sometimes life isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Doreen said, “but sometimes we do what we can to make it a little bit better.”

  The woman smiled. “You’re very nice. I’m happy for Mack. He’s done without anybody for a very long time.”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “Well enough,” she said cheerfully. “He’s so much younger than I am, but I’ve been in town the same number of years, so our paths have crossed many times.”

  “He seems like a good man,” Doreen said, “and he’s always been fair in his dealings with me, when honestly he probably had good reason to yell at me more than a few times.”

  The woman laughed out loud. “Yes, but he has a lot of patience.”

  “Very good to know.” Doreen chuckled. “I know I’ve exasperated him a lot.”

  “It’s good for him,” she said. “You can’t afford to get into a rut.”

  Doreen looked at her. “Do you have anything to do with the orchids?”

  “No, I hate them honestly,” she said boldly. “Ever since my cousin died, I’ve absolutely detested them and would cheerfully have nothing to do with them.”

  “Ah, that makes it even harder, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure does,” she said, her voice rising. “I just think that they get so fanatical, and everybody goes so over-the-top in terms of their cultivation and the compost that they used and the special techniques, the hours of sun and exposure and whatnot. I mean, you don’t understand how nuts these people are.”

  At that, her aunt rebuked her with a sharp voice. “I am not nuts, thank you,” she said. “It’s a passion, and I’m sorry you’ve never understood it.”

  Elle sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just thinking about all the years that you guys have spent doing this.”

  “But years that were happy,” she said as a reminder.

  “Maybe, but for somebody who doesn’t have much to deal with any of it, it’s hard to sit back and to watch you all go so nuts.”

  “And there you go using that term again,” her aunt said in exasperation.

  “And I don’t mean it that way,” Elle said. “You know that.”

  “Maybe, but these people don’t. For all you know, they’ll think you’re crazy.”

  “Maybe I am,” Elle said quietly. “Maybe I am.” And, with that, she turned and left them.

  Gloria winced. “I shouldn’t have said that. She’s definitely having an awful lot of issues lately.”

  “What issues?” Mack asked.

  “Everything affects her—and in the wrong way,” she murmured, “like, literally everything. It’s so frustrating. And it seems like she’s declining faster mentally than I am.”

  Doreen walked closer. “She definitely seems to be struggling.”

  “Very much so, and I just don’t know what’ll happen to her when I’m gone,” she whispered. And this time there was a sheen of tears in her eyes.

  “Seems you’ve had a long and glorious life,” Doreen said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  The older woman looked at her sadly. “I’m not so sure,” she murmured. “She hasn’t been the same since, well, all the tragedy.”

  “Losing her uncle and her cousin must have been terrible shocks.”

  The older woman nodded. “And Elle and Lionel were so close. It was heartbreaking to see her afterward. I mean, it was tough on me to be sure, but it was devastating for her.” Gloria sighed. “We’re all such simple folk, and to think of things like this going on around us is just devastating.”

  “You never had any idea who killed your son?” Doreen asked.

  “No. If I could have pointed Mack here in any direction, I would have.”

  “You did, many times,” Mack said gently. “But we could never find any evidence to support it.”

  “No, and that’s the problem,” she said. “The onus of proof always ends up on the victim or the victim’s family, and it seems like these guys just get to go scot-free.”

  “Maybe,” he said gently, “but we do pride ourselves on trying to find the truth.”

  The older woman looked sharply at Doreen. “It’s connected to orchids, you know.”

  Doreen stared. “Are you sure about that?” Turning toward Mack, her mind immediately went to poor Miriam and Edna—and their apparently missing orchid.

  “Oh, yes, I’m very sure. It’s one of the reasons I put the orchid out for the competition today,” she murmured. She looked at Mack. “I know you won’t approve, but I guess I was hoping to flush him out.”

  “And what would having the orchid on display do to flush him out?” Doreen asked curiously.

  “Because my son was killed for it. And this orchid is very close to the one stolen from him at the time. It’s a little bit different but not by much. Only in that it’s generations older. But anybody who sees the two would know they’re same plant.”

  Doreen frowned. “And so, by bringing it out, what does that do?”


  “I’m hoping that somebody will see it and will realize they don’t have the only one.”

  Doreen was trying to piece this together. “And the orchid that Lionel was killed for, it was taken at the time, but was it the only one of its kind?”

  “Oh yes, it was stolen. It was our rare gem,” she said. “And instead I had to start all over again.”

  “Yet you did?”

  “I did. I did for my son’s sake because it was so important to him.”

  “Was that smart?” Mack asked quietly.

  “Of course not.” She gave a half-broken laugh. “But, when nothing else is left in your life but facing death and knowing that your family is in shambles behind you,” she said, “we do the darndest things.” And, with that, she slowly stood and grabbed the cane at her side. “I’m sorry, but I must lie down now.”

  “Of course,” Mack said immediately. “Please take care of yourself.”

  She nodded. “I will. I just hope somebody takes care of my niece, when this is all over with.” And she slowly walked back into the house.

  Doreen sat here, the animals quietly at her side, as if understanding something odd was going on. “Mack?”

  “I’m not sure.” He stared where Gloria had gone.

  “It doesn’t sound terribly healthy.”

  “No,” he said, “but, when you think about it, knowing the destruction that happens to a family when there’s a murder, it’s not as unexpected as it may seem.”

  She nodded slowly. “I get it, but this one feels …” Then she didn’t know what to say, so she just shrugged.

  “Come on,” he said, draping his arm on her shoulders. “Let’s go look at the last two on the tour.”

  She sighed. “I guess so, but it just feels very odd, after hearing about this family.”

  “Maybe, but let’s hope we end on a better note, if we continue the tour.”

  And, with that, they headed out to the vehicle and on to the next greenhouse.

  Chapter 7

  Mack pulled up to a huge waterfront house and a massive greenhouse along Abbott Street. Doreen studied the area, as she got out of the vehicle with her animals. “This is the wealthy area, isn’t it?”