Page 11 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)

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D oreen opened the door for Mack with a smile on her face, which fell away almost immediately. “So, apparently my phone call to Elizabeth triggered something.”

He nodded. “That it did, and not necessarily in a good way.”

“I’m sorry. Did I do something wrong?” she asked, staring at him. “I just went to Solomon’s files and thought that maybe something in there was about a tall man going missing. Instead a missing woman had been found, also in Rutland.”

He smiled and nodded. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Yet… you have triggered a case that has stumped people for a long time.”

“Why isn’t it already in your case files then?”

“It didn’t pop up because she’s already been found.”

“And identified?”

“We thought she was, until the family did a DNA test recently, and it wasn’t a match.”

She stared at him. “You need to fill me in on that.”

“We have a retired US senator, a dual national, both American and Canadian, who has spent a fair bit of time up here in Canada. His daughter came up to get away from the politics at the time. Anyway, she disappeared, and that was a long time ago. When we thought her body had been found, everything was wrapped up and closed out. Only, for whatever reason, the family decided to run a DNA test.”

“So, run DNA on what?”

“The coroner kept samples from the autopsy, and the family apparently kept the ashes.”

“But you can’t run DNA off ashes. I’ve been told that, just because you’ve got ashes, it doesn’t mean you’ve got the right ashes.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “You are right about that. In this case, we had some samples from the autopsy of the dead female and compared it to a hair sample from the senator’s daughter, which the mother kept in a locket.

We found out recently that the bones they had claimed as their daughter wasn’t their daughter. ”

Doreen blinked at him several times. “So, they had them cremated and had a ceremony to say goodbye to their daughter, only to find out it wasn’t her? So, now we have ashes belonging to somebody, who we don’t even know who they are, and the family again has a missing daughter?”

He nodded slowly. “That about sums it up, yes.”

“Good God,” she muttered. “Are the parents holding you guys liable?”

“They are the ones who claimed it was their daughter. We sent off dental records and a few other things, and they confirmed it was her.”

She frowned at him. “So, you know what the answer here is.”

“I know what people are saying is the answer, but the parents are denying it.”

“Of course they are. It sounds to me as if maybe the mother tried to pass off another man’s child as her husband’s. Depending, of course, if the DNA matched the mother or father.”

“And that is, of course, one of the suppositions we are working on.”

“Good God.” Doreen snorted. “There is no end to this confusion, is there?”

“No, there sure isn’t,” he murmured, as he walked toward her little office space, to the side of her kitchen. “Where are you keeping Solomon’s files these days?”

“Over here.” And she brought him to where the boxes of the original files were.

He brushed his hair back as he stared at the various boxes. “Do you have any idea where that file is?”

“Yep, I sure do.” She pulled up the index on her phone and explained, “Remember how I went to all that work and indexed everything?”

He shrugged. “I remember you doing something, but I guess I didn’t quite understand what.”

“Yeah, well that something ,” she explained, with an eye roll, “was to sort these files into something that was usable, something that we could search using keywords. I think…” After checking her notes, she walked over, removed a couple boxes, and brought up the one box that she was interested in.

“I think it’s in here.” They took the lid off, and she went through the files and pulled up the one they wanted.

She handed it to him, and he sat down on her living room floor and went through it carefully. He frowned. “You’re right. It is this file. Interesting that it was open, per Solomon.”

“Yes, because you had all just been informed that it’s not his daughter.”

Mack nodded. “That is, of course, one of the issues. They have since done DNA on both parents, but we’re waiting on results. So now the parents are trying to figure out just what’s going on. In the meantime, they’re actively looking for their daughter.”

Doreen shook her head. “So, we found a tall man. We found someone’s daughter, and now we’re looking for another family’s daughter.”

He stared at her and nodded.

“ Great . That’s just the thing we need right now. Not to mention up here in this part of the world,” she noted, “it’s pretty remote, so a dead body could be anywhere.”

“It is pretty remote, and any dead bodies could be anywhere,” he admitted. “Keep in mind that burying the dead when they’ve been murdered is almost always in a space that’s remote and not exactly used by many people.”

“So how could it be connected to this poor man’s body?” she asked, staring at him.

“It might not be. All I can tell you is that we don’t know enough yet.”

She frowned, then nodded. “In that case, we need to keep looking for a whole lot of things.”

“We do,” he agreed, with a smile. He asked her, “May I take this to get a copy? I’ll give it right back.”

She shook her head. “We’ll just copy it right now.”

“You really don’t trust me?”

“No, I don’t want to lose them, even if only for archival purposes.”

“Archival purposes,” he repeated, looking at her sideways as she got up, took the file over to her printer, turned on the copier and started scanning the pages.

“I went through the digital version of this,” she shared, “but I think I would like to sit down with the original and reread it again.”

He nodded. “You’re really into preserving his work, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m into preserving Solomon’s work as much as understanding it. All these cases are still not solved.”

He stared at the boxes and shook his head. “I don’t even know how many of these cases are in our files,” he noted. “I keep forgetting you’ve got all these. And it’s absolutely astronomical to consider that they are all unsolved cases.”

“That’s true. At least they were unsolved according to Solomon. What that meant to him though, I don’t know.”

Mack nodded. “That’s another good point. Just because he had them in his unsolved files, that doesn’t mean we have them as cold cases. Or, if they are, we could have solved them, and he might not have known to update his records.”

“And,” she added, “it doesn’t mean that they were ever official police cases. Maybe people didn’t come forward to you at the time, but chose to talk to Solomon instead.”

He frowned as he stared at the boxes. “This collection of Solomon’s cold cases alone could be a full-time job.”

“I know,” she murmured. “And any time I think I’ll run out of cases to solve, I keep looking at the boxes and think,… no, I won’t.”

He smiled. “It was quite a responsibility he gave you.”

“I don’t think he gave me the responsibility.

I think he was hoping that I would be interested in pursuing the responsibility,” she clarified, with a glum look at the boxes around her.

“It would obviously be nice if I could do something with all this and make all these unsolved files join that box over there.” And she pointed off to the side to a large one.

“What’s that box?”

She beamed. “Those are the ones that I have dealt with. Those are closed, solved, and don’t belong in his mess of unsolved ones anymore.”

He stared at the single box and then back at the other pile of boxes and shook his head.

“I know,” she muttered. “It doesn’t look as if I’ve done anything.”

“Honest to God, what you’ve done is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Yes, what we have to do now is… focus on what’s at hand before we go running off into other directions.”

“I understand that, from your point of view, all of this is going off in other directions, but from my point of view…” He focused on her as she continued. “From my point of view, it could very well be connected. That’s why I brought up the case to Elizabeth Harley.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, with a wry look. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt because you did make the connection. Elizabeth’s now all over it, and I’m sure she’ll be singing your praises.”

“I don’t want singing praises. I just want to help solve the case.” Just then her phone rang. She smiled at the Caller ID. “Hey, Elizabeth,” she answered.

“Hey, I wanted to tell you something before I got too carried away. Regarding that tidbit you called me about, the missing woman? It twigged something in my mind, and I had to go check it out. Then I had to contact the captain about it.”

“Of course,” she noted, looking over at Mack. “I presume it was helpful?”

“It was very helpful. It’s all a bit discombobulated, and I don’t even know if I’m allowed to talk to you about it.

So maybe have Mack fill you in on the details, but it’s pretty fascinating stuff.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you that you did great again, so thanks.

Oops, there’s my other phone. I’ve got to go. ” And, with that, she ended the call.

Mack smiled at her. “See? You did good.”

“She did seem to be pretty excited about it too.”

“Oh, I’m sure she is, and, if you think about it, your one cold case is three cold cases now, and one is fairly predominant in the news.”

“Is it?” she asked, turning to him.

He nodded. “Yes, whether we like it or not, whenever somebody is of a prominent position, even if in the past, it becomes something that everybody wants to get a piece of.” He smiled and gave her a big kiss.

“And, now that you’ve given me a full copy, I’m heading back to work.

” He stopped at the front door and looked back at her. “What will you do?” he asked.

“I’ll sit down and read Solomon’s file from front to back,” she shared.

“Good, so, when I get off duty tonight, I thought I’d grab some steaks and maybe we could barbecue.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” she said, with a bright smile.

“Then we can compare notes,” he suggested, and, with that, he was gone.