Page 34 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)
“What about a retirement home for you?” Doreen asked, looking at her carefully, not knowing quite what to think.
It was just a silly-enough excuse to be the truth.
However, that was an awful lot of cloak-and-dagger stuff for them to be involved in and to have nothing to show for it.
“And you’re telling me that, in all the years you lived by this park, you never found the pot of gold? ”
“No,” she replied, shrugging. “In a way we just gave up. But we can’t stop walking here, partly because we know there’s a body.”
Doreen let her breath out in a hard gush. “So much for that theory. The crazy stuff that people do.”
“I know. I know,” Mrs. Woodstock whispered.
“And you’re honestly telling me that you’re not criminally involved in any of this? If there is some crime to confess, now would be the time to tell.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Then she frowned at Doreen. “Isn’t it enough that we let that poor man remain here all these years?”
“More than that,” Doreen spelled out, “the chance to make somebody pay for this and to bring closure to a family was also denied. That’s something that you will have to answer to the police about.”
She paled but nodded. “That we can do,” she muttered.
“Even if you just tell them that you didn’t know for sure what the dog was signaling,” Meghan suggested. When she got a glare from Doreen, Meghan grimaced. “I’m sorry. I thought they might have had something else to do with this.”
Doreen nodded, still not exactly sure how much of this was truth versus fiction. “Have you ever heard anything about a pot of gold being stashed here?”
“No, not at all,” Meghan said. Then she turned and eyed the old woman suspiciously. “If it was here, I suspect it would have been found by now.”
The older woman shrugged. “We never heard anybody say anything about finding it.”
“Whose was it?”
The wife paled, pinched her lips, then she sighed.
“Are you telling me it was Eli’s?” Doreen asked.
She shrugged.
“Did you know Eli was lying here?” Doreen pressed on.
She didn’t say anything more.
“Good God,” Doreen cried out. “So, not only did nobody have the proper respect to bury this poor man, you didn’t have the respect to see that the crime against him was taken care of by the police so the guilty party would pay a price for having done this to him. Plus, Eli would get a proper burial.”
The wife just stared at her.
Doreen snorted. “I’m not sure I believe any of this at the moment,” she muttered. “I will be taking this all up with the captain.”
The wife nodded. “We might not be sterling people,” she snapped, “but we were just trying to stay out of trouble.”
“Stay out of trouble? You knew that somebody was buried here all these years,” Doreen pointed out, “and all you can say is you wanted to stay out of trouble?”
It was the first time in a long time that Doreen had felt that level of disgust. Even Mugs seemed to feel pretty strongly about it.
He barked several times at Doreen, who looked down at him and nodded.
“I know, buddy. It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?
” She turned to face Mrs. Woodstock. “Does your husband even have a catheter bag, or is that just his way of running away from his responsibility and his guilt?”
“It was his way of running,” she admitted, “but I also knew that it would cause the dog to react the way he did.”
“In other words you’re smart enough to say something to get him off, so he can walk away and not get blamed for anything. So, is he at home right now, packing up your stuff?”
“No,” she stated, showing her palms. “We’re way too old to run.”
“So, you say. I just have to wonder if anything else was going on in all this time.”
Mrs. Woodstock pinched her lips together. “We told you what we know. You’ll do what you will with that information.” And, with that, she turned and moved semirapidly in the direction her husband had gone.
Doreen turned to Meghan.
The other woman shrugged and muttered, “I don’t know what to say to that one.”
“And yet you didn’t want to tell me either,” Doreen noted.
“Not for that reason,” she clarified, shaking her head. “I just didn’t want to turn in two old people to the police if there wasn’t any just cause. How could I do that?” she muttered.
“Are you related to them, what with your last name also being Woodstock?” Doreen asked.
“No,” she said. “We often thought that we might be related because we have the surname in common, or thought we did, but it just didn’t happen to be that way.
For a while, we tried to follow the family trees, thinking that it was just fun.
Eventually we gave it up. Now we probably could do one of those DNA ancestry things and see if there is a connection somewhere,” she muttered.
“I don’t think anybody cares at this point.
They’re too old and are just trying to make themselves comfortable in their final years. ”
“Maybe so, but there are also homes for them to retire in,” Doreen noted, “as they well know. They won’t be on the street, not here, not in Canada.”
Meghan nodded. “I don’t have a clue what else they would be up to, but I don’t think in my heart of hearts they had anything to do with this.
As much as I might like to see them pay the price for having not pitched in and helped out on a crime that somebody could have some closure on, maybe they figured it didn’t matter.
I mean, if you think about it. I don’t know if anybody in Eli’s family is even left alive to care about him. ”
“Maybe,” Doreen muttered, staring in the direction the older couple had gone. “I think the whole thing is shaky, including their explanations.”
As she drove back to the police station, she realized she had absolutely nothing to share, and what she did have was beyond silly. As she walked into the police station, they all looked at her and asked, “You got it solved?”
“I thought I was getting somewhere,” she muttered, “but apparently I’m nowhere.”
“Ha, welcome to our world,” the captain replied, as she wandered in. “Glad you finally made it.”
“I went to talk to somebody who I thought had something to do with it, and you still need to look into this, just see if you want to pursue it or not.” Then she told them the sad tale.
“Good God.” The captain frowned.
“Yep, Welford had a dog that supposedly was a police dog, and it signaled to a body there, and they said nothing about it to anyone. That’s the story according to them because they were looking to find whatever treasure supposedly was buried in the park.
” As they all just frowned at each other, she nodded. “Dodgy, I know.”
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” the captain muttered. He got their contact information from Doreen and announced, “I guess somebody needs to go talk to them.”
Mack offered, “I will.”
“Good,” Doreen agreed. “They’re definitely a unique couple.”
“And we will take that into account,” the captain muttered.
Doreen added, “They’re also likely to say they didn’t have any idea what the dog could do, so they didn’t really understand until the grave was opened.”
“Of course they will,” the captain grumbled, with a headshake. “Anything to keep their butts out of trouble.” He looked at her and asked, “So, what will you do now?”
“It’s all so dodgy,” she repeated. “It makes no sense with these answers, and that’s all I can say. We’re still waiting for the DNA. I may know more then.”
“That’s right. We are,” the captain noted, “and hopefully that will come up with something.”
“Plus,” Doreen added, “did Elizabeth come up with a better idea of how Eli died?”
Just then the door to the office opened, and Elizabeth walked in. She looked at Doreen and asked, “Did they finally give you a desk here?”
“No, not at all,” she said, with a smile.
“Maybe they should.” She dropped the file into the captain’s hands. “She was right. It’s familial DNA.”
“Mother or sister?” Doreen turned to look at her.
The coroner turned to Doreen and shook her head. “That was an interesting twist too. You are just full of victims, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid I am,” Doreen muttered, slowly straightening. “So, you want to give me the answer to that story?”
Elizabeth smiled. “Sister.”
Doreen looked around the room at all the faces, confusion and shock filling their expressions, but all she could say was, “Gotcha.”