Page 30 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)

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R ather than continuing to walk in the frigid winter air, Doreen headed back to the car and loaded up the animals, plugged the address into the GPS on her phone, found Meghan’s home was very close by and headed there.

Almost as soon as she got there, the door opened, and Megan stared at her in shock, as if she were just leaving again.

Doreen held up Meghan’s purse. “You left this behind.” Meghan snatched it away and clutched it to her chest in relief. “I’m sorry,” Doreen added, “that I didn’t notice fast enough to stop you.”

“No, that’s okay.” She tried to shut the door in Doreen’s face and muttered, “Thank you, thank you.”

Doreen nodded. “Remember what I said.”

But the door was shut firmly in her face, and with that and the name of this woman, Doreen headed back home again.

She’d barely pulled into her driveway, when Mack pulled up behind her.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to talk to him.

Yet he would definitely be brimming over with curiosity.

As he unloaded groceries, she realized it was his turn to cook. Immediately her stomach rumbled.

He laughed. “That’s a good sign.”

“Except that it sees you and starts to rumble,” she noted. “It’s almost as if my stomach has this vision in its head that Mack means food .”

“Maybe it does,” he agreed, with a smile as he looked at her. Then he frowned and asked, “Not a good day at all?”

“Not a perfect day.”

He asked, “More puzzle pieces?”

“More puzzle pieces.” She nodded. “That’s for sure.”

“And you’re still not ready to share?”

She winced. “No, not really.”

“Okay,” he replied. “I’m ready when you are. I haven’t told the captain because, as soon as I do, he’ll want you in the station.”

“I know.”

“You could give me a hint though,” he suggested, turning to look at her.

“I could. Did you get me the answers from the senator?”

“Haven’t heard back yet,” he replied. “I did email him the questions though.”

“He’s probably wondering what your problem is, and, after all this time, why you’re asking these questions now.”

“It makes sense to ask the questions now,” he declared, turning to unload the groceries. “Obviously we have to start fresh again, well,… depending on what we found today. I also need to know why that body wasn’t found in the first place.”

“You never brought the K9s, did you?”

“Not initially, no. But when we did and they signaled. So we dug, found the body, and that was it,” Mack explained.

“So, even if there had been a second body buried with the first one,” she said, “it wouldn’t have made any difference to the dogs because it wouldn’t have been picked up?”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “We would hope that maybe we could have found the second one at the same time.”

“And maybe you did, but maybe nobody interpreted the K9 signals correctly.”

He smiled at her. “Of course, you don’t want the dogs to be blamed.”

“Of course not,” she stated. “They did their jobs, but that doesn’t mean that their handlers picked up on it correctly. That’s a whole different story.”

He laughed. “And anything that gives the dogs some leeway to be free and clear, you’re good with.”

“Of course, they did their stuff,” she said, with a shrug. “It’s up to you guys to deal with the rest of it.”

He just shook his head and smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re so loyal to the animals.”

“Somebody has to be.” As she sat down at her kitchen table, she asked, “What are we having to eat?”

“I’ve got chicken breasts here,” he replied, “and a dish I want to try.”

“Oh, good.”

“What about you?” he asked, smiling at her. “Do you want to help? Do you want to learn, or do you want to just relax?”

She frowned at him. “Would you mind if I just… tag along? I need to let my brain shift some things around.”

“Not a problem,” he said, “as long as you pop up with some answers, at least some of the time, I’m good.”

She smiled. “I really do appreciate you. You know that, right?”

He turned to her and smiled right back. “That’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me.”

“Oh, I think lots of people say nice things to you,” she countered. “You may not listen though.”

He burst out laughing. “You could be right. I mean, you absolutely could be right, but I would like to think I have a little more awareness than that.”

She just smiled and nodded. With that, she walked into the living room. With Mugs and Goliath and Thaddeus at her side, she stretched out a blanket on the floor in the living room, lying down on top of it, and just let herself relax.

There was just something about this case.

She kept trying to make everything fit the facts, and yet what she really needed to do was have the facts fit the case.

She wasn’t sure when she’d drifted in and drifted out, but suddenly Mack was staring down at her, looking puzzled, asking if she was okay.

“They are connected,” she stated. He just nodded and waited. “I need those answers,” she repeated, as she slowly sat up.

“And I’ll get those answers,” he replied, “as soon as I can.”

“ Right ,” she muttered, as she looked over at the animals. “What I don’t know is what the trigger was.”

“But you think you know who and why?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I actually have the correct who .” When he blinked several times, she shrugged. “I know. It’s confusing.”

“Darling, your life is confusing,” he declared, with a laugh, “but we usually get there eventually.”

“We do get there eventually,” she stated, “and, in this case, it’s a little more confusing but not in a bad way.”

“Right, and that’s just as confusing,” he pointed out, with a laugh.

“I don’t mean it to be.”

“Of course you don’t,” he muttered, with a smile. “And that just makes it even more so.”

She groaned. “I know, sorry about that.”

“You want to give me a hint?”

“Just that… I think the same person killed both.”

He looked at her and nodded. “It would make sense.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Right.… I mean, how else would he have known where the one body was?”

“You don’t think it was accidental?”

“Nope, I don’t think so. What I don’t understand is why the killer felt it was necessary to take out the second victim.”

“Except you do know why,” he stated carefully, “because it’s the same issue we run into all the time.”

She looked at him and nodded. “Because he was afraid of being exposed.”

“Exactly,” he said. “The only reason for taking out another person is if your secret is about to be exposed.”

“So, what possible reason would connect Eli to the senator’s daughter?”

“Which we don’t know if the second body is the senator’s daughter yet. For that matter, we’re not sure the first body is Eli.”

“Or another woman,” she corrected, “to have found out about Eli.”

“Maybe she was digging there,” Mack guessed, with a shrug. “Maybe it’s as harmless as that.”

“Maybe,” she muttered, giving him a gentle smile. “I highly suspect it was much more emotional than that.” He frowned at her. She noted, “Eli had a brain tumor, but nobody ever said that he was actually”—she floundered for words—“mentally disabled? Is that the word?”

“Something along that line, yes.”

“And just because he had a brain tumor, and he obviously had some issues, that doesn’t mean that somebody else might not have either really liked him or had some feelings for him.”

“And that’s possible. We’re still talking about a big difference of many years though, if you’re thinking the senator’s daughter had a thing for Eli.”

“And I wondered about that. So, if she was that much younger, the only way she would have known about Eli would be through somebody who connected the two of them.”

He sat down in the living room with her. “So you think that somebody who either worked with or otherwise knew Eli had a connection to the senator’s daughter—or some other woman.”

Doreen nodded. “I’m thinking so.”

“Sure, but that could be anybody. Could be a nurse, could be a doctor, could be a caregiver, could be anybody along that line.… What is this then? Some caregiver’s daughter was buried near Eli?

” After a moment, he added, “But if the second body is potentially the senator’s daughter, I don’t think she was a caregiver at any time in her short life. ”

“Right,” Doreen agreed, staring at him. “So, where did the senator’s daughter stay when she was here visiting?”

“I’m not sure.” He frowned. “That’s another good question. It goes to show how incomplete the files are. All I have is that she went missing from the Kelowna area.”

“Sure, but the Kelowna area is massive.”

“Which includes Rutland, where her body may have just been found. So why would she have gone up to Rutland?”

“Yet, if her friends were there, or if she was caught up in a mystery up there, she could have gone to Rutland. It is possible.”

“Maybe she came to see some friends,” he suggested, trying to steer her around, “because she went to school here.”

“Okay, so somebody her age somehow connected her with somebody who knew about Eli because it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Doreen cried out.

“The only reason for the senator’s daughter to be in basically the same grave as Eli is if somebody was trying to keep the two of them…

apart—or maybe keep the two of them together. ”

“What are you thinking?” Mack asked, frowning.

“Burying them together was to keep it secret,” she theorized. “And, in the killer’s mind, they might as well be together.”

“Why would he say that?”

“The only reason he would say that,” she replied, “is because she was either poking her nose into Eli’s disappearance or in some way making the killer feel threatened. And to feel threatened meant that he knew her, knew about her, or in some way found out about her.”

“And again, speculation,… and possible theories won’t get us far,” he pointed out.

“I can see that the same person killed them both, and the two bodies could have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except for the fact that, if one were found, the second would be too. Yet, with the first body not found in all these years, maybe he just thought that reopening the grave to bury the second body was a great hiding place.”

“Why though?” she asked. When Mack didn’t respond immediately, she asked, “The grave for the female… wasn’t as deep, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” he confirmed, with a smile.

“I wondered if you would recognize that. His was much deeper, which just means that the other body was buried afterward, which we already know. Even if it isn’t the senator’s daughter,” he noted, “we do know it was buried afterward. It’s also not as decomposed.

So each body could fit the broad age parameters for when Eli and then later the senator’s daughter went missing. ”

“Right,” she muttered. “But what do they have in common, and how would their paths have crossed?”

“You realize that their paths didn’t have to cross, right? It could just have easily been that she crossed paths with the killer. So, not knowing what else to do but having drawn on the success of his first murder, he took out the second one.”

She nodded. “I don’t like that theory, but it does work.”

He made a mock bow from his sitting position. “Thank you,” he said, dipping his head. “I do appreciate the confidence.”

She rolled her eyes. “I mean, you are a cop.”

“Thank you,” he quipped, “thank you for recognizing that.”

She burst out laughing, gave him a big hug, and then announced, “I’m hungry.”