Page 18 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)
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T he next day Doreen woke feeling slightly out of sorts and chomping at the bit to get some progress on something—on anything at this point.
The trouble was, there wasn’t anything to progress on, and that was frustrating too.
It shouldn’t be this hard to get somewhere, especially when she was dealing with three cases.
But the only lead she had was that older couple, and that wasn’t exactly a lead at all.
Determined to at least get out and take a fresh look, she bundled up the animals and headed back up to the park.
It was a little easier to find this time, and she drove around, trying to see where it started and stopped and the general location of the area it was in.
When she finally parked and got out, Mugs gave her a look as if to say it was about time.
He wandered around the park, happy that the place was empty and that he had it all to himself—except for Goliath, who gave him a swipe as the cat rounded on the dog.
Then again, the weather wasn’t terribly nice, so Doreen wasn’t sure that many people wanted to be out in it just yet.
Maybe after the sun had a few hours to warm things up a little bit.
Doreen watched Mugs wander around, content, just snuffling away.
Thaddeus remained quiet on her shoulder, snuggling in closer to her to stay warm.
Goliath, on the other hand, had taken a perch up on a bench and just stayed there.
She walked over, sat down beside the huge Maine coon cat, and began to pet him. “You okay, big guy?”
He looked back at her, but that phrase alone was enough to send Thaddeus crowing from her shoulder, “Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy.”
“No, we won’t visit Big Guy today.”
But he wouldn’t be stopped. “Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy.” And, with that, he bounced over to where the grave was and just hopped up and down again. “Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy.”
Slowly she got up, walked over to him, not sure what he was up to. “You’re right. The body here was of a big guy.”
Thaddeus continued. “Big Guy, Big Guy, Big Guy.”
She frowned in exasperation. “I’m not sure that’s helping, Thaddeus.”
“You’re talking to that bird,” declared a woman nearby, her astonishment evident, both on her face and in her tone.
Doreen turned to find an older woman. “Sure,” she replied, with a shrug. “Why not? He’s my pet, after all.”
“I didn’t think people kept animals like that. Surely it’s not healthy for them.”
“Not healthy?” Doreen repeated, turning to look at her. “What do you mean? He’s a perfectly happy, normal bird.”
“But he’s still a bird, and it’s not common to keep birds as pets.”
Doreen stared at her. “They certainly are common in my world.”
The other woman flushed. “I didn’t mean any insult by it.”
But Doreen wasn’t so sure, since such disdain had filled her tone.
“I mean, don’t they poop everywhere?” asked the woman. “Imagine cleaning that up all the time.”
Doreen just stared at her, willing her to disappear. This woman obviously had never been around animals at all and surely had never had a pet. The park had been nice, friendly, and generally peaceful—until this woman had showed up.
The woman looked around, saw the crime scene tape, and shivered. “Just imagine, a body’s been hidden here this whole time,” she muttered.
“Kind of scary, isn’t it?” Doreen murmured.
“More than scary. I mean,… I’ve lived here for a very long time, and it never would have occurred to me that anything like this was here. That poor person.”
“It was a man,” Doreen shared helpfully, “and a tall one at that. He’s six-and-a-half-feet-plus-tall or some such thing,” she added, with a wave of her hand.
“Oh my, you’re right. That is tall.”
Doreen didn’t say a whole lot and just watched as the other woman frowned, her gaze going uneasily back to Thaddeus and then over to the bench where Goliath sat.
“Is that your cat too?” she asked. “And the bird? The cat doesn’t attack the bird?”
Doreen shook her head. “No, he doesn’t, and, yes, the bird, the cat, and the dog are mine.”
“What dog?” And then she saw Mugs snuffling his way through some underbrush. “Interesting,” she muttered, and then she sat down abruptly on the bench with Goliath. “Are you that detective person?”
“I don’t know about being a detective person,” Doreen clarified, “but I have certainly been involved in solving a bunch of crimes locally.”
“I heard the detective lady had all kinds of birds and animals. I just never thought to see you in person. Doreen, isn’t it?”
Doreen nodded but could see the confusion on the woman’s face, as if she didn’t know to be disgruntled or thrilled about it. “Yes, I’m Doreen. I also live in town,” Doreen noted. “So it makes sense that we would cross paths at some point.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’m Meghan by the way,” she added, with a wave of her hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be intrusive.” She looked back at the hole in the ground, marked off by police tape, and muttered, “The grave is just upsetting.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured. “It’s hard to imagine how long he was here.”
She looked at her and asked, “Do you know anything about it?”
“No, not a whole lot,” Doreen replied. “The police haven’t been able to find out very much yet.”
“I figured you would be all over it.”
“Only so much I can be all over . I mean, we’re looking for people who have been missing possibly thirty-plus years, without a whole lot of information on them. So not much I can go on, and, of course, there’s another missing person too.”
“Oh, who’s that?” asked Meghan, settling back ever-so-slightly on the bench, keeping a wary gaze on Goliath.
“One body was misidentified,” Doreen noted, “but we’re close to finding out who that one is.”
“Oh goodness,” Meghan muttered. “I knew somebody who went missing, but that was a very long time ago. I think they moved on to Alberta.”
“Of course, that’s always the problem, isn’t it?” Doreen said, looking at her. “You think somebody’s moved to Alberta, but, in reality, for all you know, they went six feet under.” Then she pointed to the grave.
Meghan shuddered. “I really don’t think I could handle that.
He was a very gentle person, and he might have had…
He might have had some issues mentally. I’m pretty sure he did.
An accident broke both his legs, and he never did recover.
Not sure if he wasn’t a bit… slow mentally too.
I think that was from the accident as well. ”
Doreen stared at her. “And who was this?” she asked, holding her breath.
The woman frowned, stared off in the distance. “I think his name was something like Eli,… but it’s hard to remember. It was so long ago.”
“And how did you know him?” she asked.
“I went to school with him a long time ago, but he was held behind many years because of his disability,” she explained. “He spent a lot of years at school. He never did finish, or at least I don’t think he finished.”
Doreen nodded. “So his broken legs were not his only disability?”
She frowned, shook her head, and sighed.
“I’m ashamed to say it, but we thought he was definitely, you know, not quite all there.
… A lot of us weren’t the kindest to him.
Only after I left high school did I realize just how cruel the real world is, and I could see that maybe he hadn’t had an easy time of it. ”
“If the schoolkids were mean to him, I’m sure he didn’t have an easy time of it,” Doreen noted. “And how did he break both legs?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t talk a whole lot, and we didn’t volunteer to be very friendly.”
Doreen read between the lines. “Meaning that you and your childhood friends were quite the bullies.”
The other woman glared at her, and then her shoulders slumped. “In hindsight, yes, we probably were. We were young and thought we owned the place. We didn’t understand what was waiting for us when we grew up.”
“You’re still alive, so obviously it wasn’t too bad for you.”
“I married an abusive man,” she shared, her gaze darting around. “And I never did have any children. So now I’m facing a lot of old lady years in front of me, all alone. I’m not sure that would suggest I did okay .”
Doreen considered herself okay , and she had had an abusive marriage too. Still, she didn’t feel like sharing that with Meghan.
Meghan shrugged. “I know nobody cares. I think that’s one of the hardest lessons.
When you get old, nobody cares. When you’re young, and you have family, maybe somebody cares.
Then suddenly you’re too old for anybody to think about.
You’re supposed to be an adult and capable of taking care of yourself.
When you divorce, people expect you to live your life the way you want to, doing all the things you think you’ll enjoy,” she muttered, staring around.
“Only to find out the things that you thought you enjoyed weren’t necessarily anything you enjoyed at all, and you were just doing them because everybody else was.
Like getting married. I would have been much better off if I hadn’t. ”
“Are you still married?”
She shook her head. “No, no.… He took off a long time ago,” she muttered. “As much as I was better off, he also didn’t leave the paperwork all nice and tidy, so it was quite a few years before I could get that all straightened away.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“No, I sure didn’t,” she said, followed by a heavy sigh.
“I figured he took off with somebody’s underage daughter.
Of course I hadn’t seen a bunch of people from back in that era either.
” She gave a wave of her hand. “Once I got married, my husband more or less worked at isolating me from everyone,” she noted in an odd tone.
“It took until he left for things to really ease up for me.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Doreen replied. “That makes it pretty tough.”
“It does make it very tough,” Meghan confirmed, looking at her. “And you do what you can, but you don’t always get the option of getting away.”