Tuesday Morning …
When Doreen woke the next morning, it was with an odd sense of disquiet. She studied her room around her. It was morning. It was light out. The sun was shining, and she’d obviously slept late. With that, the memories rushed through her. She’d had horrible nightmares about a mass grave full of bodies, and serial killers. She shook her head, looked at Mugs, and said, “Maybe we should change our hobby,” she muttered. He barked and woofed several times. She looked over at him, smiled, and said, “Please don’t tell me that you have to go to the bathroom.” He barked again and jumped up on the bed and licked her face, then jumped off and barked again.
“That’s a guaranteed ‘I need to go outside’ cry,” she said. Slowly she sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and pushed her hair off her face, then scrambled out of bed and went to the bathroom. As she looked into the mirror, she winced. “You know what? Only a mother could love this face.” She stared at huge dark circles under her eyes and a fatigue in her gaze that she hadn’t seen in a while.
As she dressed, she gave herself a pep talk. “Maybe find something fun to do. Maybe go find something interesting to do, like a sport or a craft or something.” She realized that, in the last few days, she hadn’t done much in the way of long walks. That always used to cheer her up. The day she’d met Nick over at the eco center was the last walk they’d gone on.
“You know something, guys? After breakfast, I think we’ll go out for a few hours,” she said. The animals ignored her, as she opened up the back door, and they all scurried outside, as if they’d been penned up for days and days and days. “You could say, Thank you,” she called out. She turned back, put on her coffeepot, made some toast, and took all of it outside to sit on her pretty little deck. Every time she saw the deck, it made her smile. And to think so many people out there didn’t get the same kind of assistance and help that had materialized for her, and it made her feel sad.
“Maybe I should volunteer somewhere. If I can’t get a job, at least I could volunteer.” Then she winced. She still needed more money coming in. The auction of the antiques would be a good source. She needed to ask Scott about it again, but she hated to be a pest. She might have a shot, a legal shot, at money from Mathew, but who knew how long that would take or how much she might get in the end?
And what was happening with Robin’s inheritance? Was it even that much? Mack had listed off a whole pile of stuff, but it didn’t feel real because Robin hadn’t given it to Doreen directly. For all Doreen knew, it would end up in Mathew’s hands. He would probably produce yet another will, one that nullified the one that Robin had written. And even though they had the witnesses to this will, did that make a difference? She didn’t know.
As she sat outside, she checked her laptop and realized that, in the wee hours of the morning, Denise had sent through the email with the information they had discussed on the phone. Before Doreen had barely gotten started, a name near the top of the page jumped out at her and just blew her away. Bob Small was a friend of this man who had been kidnapped. She shook her head. That’s just way too big of a coincidence. She sent back a reply email.
What do you know about Bob Small?
And she left it at that. She pondered through the rest of the information she’d been given by Denise. And there was a lot of it. A surprising number of details.
Dicky had basically been single, had never married, but had several relationships, to the point of possibly marrying somebody who had been enthralled with his incarceration. That was something else that made Doreen sit here and wonder about a world where women would go after convicted criminals in the justice system. Maybe they thought they could change them? Doreen didn’t know, but it all seemed way too bizarre. But she had read somewhere that an awful lot of women liked that concept.
As Doreen kept reading, she looked at the company where Dicky had been working as an accountant, before he went to prison. It was an import/export business, which was in textiles, global textiles.
She laughed. “Oh dear, that could mean anything from stolen property to fine antiques.”
And she wondered about that. Maybe somebody in her circle would know about the company. She quickly dashed off an email to Scott, both with the intention of checking up on her antiques and wondering if he knew anything about this company. And nobody was more surprised than her when she got a response back almost immediately, saying that company had gone out of business after it was found to be a front for money laundering.
Stay away from anybody connected. And he continued. Good news coming your way soon, I hope.
She stared at that last line. “Everybody is always talking about someday,” she muttered to herself. “Just what does someday mean, and when the heck is it?”
She had just let out a big sigh when she got another email, this one from Wendy at the consignment store.
It’s a little early, but I know that you need it, so I’ve cut you the first check for over $600. Anytime you want to come down and get it, you’re welcome.
Doreen stared at the message in delight. “Now I know exactly where we’re going for our first walk today,” she said, calling out to the animals. Mugs, sensing her excitement, danced around her in joy, not caring what the reason was, as long as he was a part of it.
Thaddeus hopped up onto the table. “Thaddeus loves Nan. Thaddeus loves Nan.”
“You better say, Thaddeus loves Doreen,” she corrected. “Particularly if you’re looking for more birdseed.”
And, with the uncanny sense of when to shift tracks, he said, “Thaddeus loves Doreen. Thaddeus loves Doreen.”
She burst out laughing. “Well, that’s good,” she said, “because Doreen loves Thaddeus too.”
Goliath, never to be outdone, leaped from the ground into her lap, placed his front paws on her shoulders, and gently butted his head into hers.
She reached up and gently stroked his big thick mane. “Aren’t you something,” she muttered. “You want to go for a walk too?”
Mugs started barking and barking, like a crazy dog. She got up, put her coffee into a travel mug, then checked her watch and realized that, by the time they got there, Wendy would probably have the store open. At least enough to hand over a check, and then Doreen could walk up to the bank and put the money in. And maybe get enough cash to buy groceries. She also had a few bills stacking up that she had been afraid to open. She knew she was supposed to pay them monthly, but, without a monthly income, she didn’t know how they could expect her to do that.
“Oh, yeah,” she muttered to herself, “everybody else has, you know, a job.”
She shook her head because there were no job prospects that she saw. She had been steadily applying to ten jobs a day, even though some of them were in crazy places with no hope of getting them, but still, it made her feel like she was doing something.
“Of course there’s a flip side to that,” she muttered, as she hooked up Goliath and Mugs to leashes, watching as Goliath immediately threw himself onto the floor and stared up at her in disdain. The flip side was that, by applying every day, it felt like she was seriously searching for a paying job. Yet she got no responses, which made her more depressed.
“First, I need to find out what’s happening with Robin’s estate. Second, I need to find out what’s happening with Scott.” Besides Nan’s antiques to be sold at a Christie’s auction, Doreen still had Nan’s antique books and paintings, which, as Doreen remembered, would be sold somewhere else. Just so much was out there to be sold and could be—eventually—converted into cash for her.
If everything ever came to fruition—adding her divorce settlement and Robin’s estate to the previous list—Doreen would end up as a millionaire. She stopped and marveled at the thought, wondering if that were even possible. And it’s not like she would head back to the same kind of a lifestyle she used to live either. Her days of toting a $1,700 Gucci purse were over. And she had to admit those were on sale at the time she got that one. With her furry and feathered entourage up close, she locked the back door, headed out the front door and on to the front step. Richard was out there at the same time, a cup of coffee in his hand, studying the area. She looked around but couldn’t see anything. “Everything okay, Richard?”
He looked at her, then at the animals, and asked, “You’re leaving?”
She shrugged. “Just for a few hours.”
He nodded. “Good,” he said. “Now today is even better.”
She glared at him. “You’re saying it’s better now because I’m leaving?”
He gave her a fat smile and said, “Absolutely.” He lifted a hand, then turned and went back inside.
With a note of disdain, she turned and walked away.