Page 25 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)

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T he next day Doreen woke up and headed downstairs, her animals at her heels. Her phone started ringing before the coffee had even finished dripping. She groaned at the thought, until she looked down at the screen and read her Caller ID. “Hi, Elizabeth.”

“You were right,” she stated, without preamble.

“Right about what?”

“The DNA is a match.”

It took her a minute to figure out which DNA they were talking about. “Sandy Wayne? Now that is absolutely wonderful news,” she cried out in joy. “That’s one family who’s getting an answer, as much as it’s not what they wanted to hear, but at least now they know.”

“Exactly, and sometimes that’s all we have to give,” the coroner noted. “They’ve been notified of the results, so that is huge for them. Now,” Elizabeth added, with a sigh, “what have you found out for the second body?”

Doreen laughed at that. “Am I supposed to have found out something on the second one?”

“I was pretty sure you were working on it.”

“I am working on it,” she confirmed, “but I don’t necessarily have anything very clear-cut yet.

However, I am pretty sure that we’re looking at the potential remains of one Eli, no last name yet, who was in a bad accident, broke his legs that didn’t heal properly, and, during the investigations into that, they ended up finding a brain tumor. ”

A moment of silence followed on the other end, then a snort. “Oh my,” Elizabeth muttered.

“Yes, and I’m still trying to track down his last name. He was a resident at”—she rustled her papers—“at Sky Manor.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Elizabeth replied. “I forgot about that place.”

Doreen continued. “During a period when apparently the government funding was cut off or reduced, some of these homes were scrambling and suggesting to some families that maybe they needed to take their family members elsewhere because they couldn’t afford to look after them anymore.

The father supposedly took Eli out, and that’s all anybody heard from him.

Per the one woman I talked to, she was under the impression that Eli and his father had left for the coast, which would make sense, particularly if Sky Manor didn’t have any funding here. ”

“Yet it’s doubtful there would have been funding down there either.

The government would have made cuts across the board,” Elizabeth pointed out.

“Apparently things were pretty rough during that time period, and a lot of patients were literally just put out on the streets. Thankfully that has all turned around now, at least to my knowledge.”

“And, if that happened, it would be a little more understandable as to why we’re struggling to get any information on Eli.”

“It sounds as if you’ve already got quite a bit of information,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“In this particular cold case I’m sure it’s luck,” she conceded, with a laugh. “I was literally just talking to people about somebody who was extremely tall and who went missing around thirty years ago. You don’t happen to have a possible date of death or a final height on him, do you?”

“So far, the date of death could have been thirty years ago. I’m still working on that, trying to refine it further.

However, I would put him at least at six-six, and possibly even more, like six-seven.

However, I don’t have a proper leg length to go by.

His torso was also extremely long, so he could have been even taller than that, but his leg bones never grew properly. ”

Doreen agreed. “That was apparently one of his issues, and they found an endocrine disorder, involving the pituitary gland or something. Don’t quote me on that.

Anyway, the accident caused the trouble with his legs, but they didn’t heal correctly, so they started finding all these other issues, and he spent most of his time in a wheelchair. ”

“Poor Eli, and this all started when he was young,” Elizabeth added, compassion filling her tone. “That is definitely not an easy life.”

“And that aligns with the story from another woman, talking about someone who I presume is the same Eli.”

“So, it seems several people did know about Eli.”

“I think the fact that he was extremely tall and that he may have had some mental disability is helping to trigger memories.”

“That would do it,” Elizabeth said, with a groan. “Even if we don’t want to remember that stuff, it is what often identifies a person. Often people like Eli can’t get rid of that identity either. It winds up being how people label you.”

“In this case, it appears that something did trigger somebody who used to work at the home, who vaguely remembers Eli leaving because his father apparently pulled him out. However, she didn’t have any more information than that.”

“And if there were all these massive budget cuts and if many of the mental hospitals were closing across the provinces, no way to know where Eli could have gone from there.”

“Exactly,” Doreen muttered. “So, it’s not that the trail has gone cold, but it’s definitely cooling.”

“Yes, I would say so. On the other hand, if it’s Eli, he may not have gotten very far at all.”

“So, in that case, we would need DNA to test him against.”

“True.”

Doreen sighed. “So far, I haven’t found any family. There might be a mother and a grandmother, for which I have just first names, Mary, who passed from cancer, and Glenda.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes, and I know it’s the bare minimum,” Doreen conceded. “I don’t have a surname yet.”

Elizabeth groaned. “People always just seem to remember parts and pieces, and it’s very frustrating.”

“Yes, it is. However, I’ve got all of Rosemoor on it, and some people there have very long memories. I’ll go over to Sky Manor and see if I can pull any archival records. I think I’ll start at the library though.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea. We do need a name, at least more of a name than this in order to search our database records.”

“I guess you can’t search by first name, can you?”

“We could, but it’ll come up with hundreds if not thousands of matches.”

“And what about if you add a filter for some mental issues or for a wheelchair or for broken legs?”

“I’ll take a look,” Elizabeth replied, but she didn’t sound very positive. “I just know that, as a general rule, we need a whole lot more. Sometimes even the last name isn’t enough. It can give us a starting point, but that’s about it.”

“Of course,” Doreen said.

After hanging up, Doreen quickly checked on the coffee, as her mind ran through the issues.

She needed to go to the library, maybe later to Sky Manor.

As she looked down at the animals, she apologized.

“Sorry, guys. I can’t take you to the library with me, but I won’t be very long, I think.

” Then she checked the time, deciding to take the coffee in a travel mug and hoping her drink would be allowed inside the library.

She quickly found out that was a hard no, so she groaned as she returned the cup to her car and headed back inside again.

The librarian glared at her. “For somebody who’s been here as often as you have, you should really know that rule by now.”

“I just forgot,” Doreen said. “I missed my coffee at home, and it never occurred to me not to bring it. I just thought I would have it while I was here doing research.”

The other woman sniffed, as if she didn’t believe her and then proceeded to ignore her.

That suited Doreen. The last thing she wanted was anybody else looking over her shoulder while she tried to sort out some of this information.

She started searching for any name with Eli in it and then with variations of spellings that she had to search Google in order to find in the first place.

Forty minutes later, she gave that up and searched into Sky Manor and the history of it.

There was a little bit of information on the specialized home but not a whole lot.

And then she went into articles about cutting the funding for mental hospitals.

That led to a deluge of other articles as well, but nothing mentioned Eli personally, and why would they?

As she kept digging and digging, she looked over to see a lavender-haired lady sitting off to the side, mumbling to herself.

Doreen glanced at her several more times, and the woman looked up and smiled back, but they each just went back to whatever they were doing. The lady looked to be researching some pattern. At least the book was on medieval patterns.

When Doreen finally sat back, frustrated, and groaned, the other lady smiled and finally spoke. “Now that doesn’t sound very positive.”

“You know how it is. You try hard to find the information, but it’ll be locked up in somebody’s head. Since that person isn’t somebody I know, I can’t just turn around and unlock it.”

Her eyes widened. “Now that sounds very mysterious.”

“No, not at all,” Doreen noted, with a laugh. “I’m just trying to find some information about a patient who had been at Sky Manor many, many years ago.”

Her eyes widened. “Now that’s even more interesting,” she replied, “because my mother used to work there.”

Doreen asked her, “Is your mother still alive?”

The other lady shook her head. “No, sorry. She’s been gone quite a few years.”

“Ah, that’s the problem with trying to find out anything back from those days, since most of the people are gone already.”

“Depending on how far gone you’re talking,” she added, rolling her eyes, “I might be able to help.”

“I’m trying to locate a young man, a young man at the time, back maybe thirty to forty years ago, I mean,” she clarified, with a wave of her hand.

“He would be, I don’t know, maybe sixtyish now.

He was in a wheelchair because he’d had badly broken legs that hadn’t healed properly.

As they investigated that, among other things, they discovered he had a brain tumor. ”

“Oh, you’re talking about Eli,” she exclaimed in astonishment.

Doreen frowned at her and slowly nodded. “I am talking about Eli.”

“That’s interesting,” she said, with a smile. “My mother spent a lot of time with him.”

“And Eli’s mother was a regular visitor too, as I understand?”

“Yes,” she replied, “and the grandmother, I think.”

“What about the father?”

“I don’t know anything about the father,” she stated, looking at her quizzically. “Surely that’s on the birth records.”

“It might be, if anybody could tell me what Eli’s last name was.”

The other woman stared at her, her face scrunching up as she thought about it. “And that’s not coming to me either.”

“Which is precisely my problem,” Doreen confirmed, with a gentle smile. “It seems as if Eli was memorable enough but not his last name.”

“And all too often,” the other woman added, looking at her pointedly, “it’s because the last name either isn’t used or they didn’t associate the person by their last name.”

“Meaning they were divorced or didn’t have much contact with him?”

“Certainly those are possibilities, but there could also be a lot of other reasons as well.”

Doreen frowned. “Still, I’m more or less stuck until I can get a last name.” She looked at her and asked, “I don’t suppose you know Mary, his mother? Or Glenda, his grandmother?”

She grimaced, while considering that. “We used to know a Glenda Brikins,” she mentioned, “but I can’t tell you if that was the same Glenda or not.”

Doreen wrote down the name. “I can at least pursue that and see if it gives me what I need. There can’t be that many Glendas.”

“I really wish I could help you more,” the other woman said almost anxiously, as if it were the best thing that had happened to her all day. “However, I don’t seem to know anything more.”

Doreen provided her name and phone number and suggested, “If it comes to you or if you happen to think of a way that I could find it, just give me a call.”