Page 8 of X-Ray in the Xanth (Lovely Lethal Gardens Rewind #3)

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D oreen watched as the old couple stopped and talked with Mack for several minutes, before he walked back toward her. “And?” she asked him curiously.

“They’ve lived in the area a long time and had no idea a body was found here.”

“When you say, a long time?”

He smiled and noted, “Forty-plus years.”

“So, maybe not long enough.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “We need Elizabeth’s report to help us determine that.

On the other hand, I asked them if they knew of anybody extremely tall who may have gone missing.

They looked at me in complete surprise and shook their heads.

I did give them a card, just in case they remember something. ”

“And that’ll be the trick to this, won’t it?” she asked. “It’s his height that might stick out. Nan even brought that up.”

“At least it gives us something to focus on, short of identifying him,” he pointed out.

“Still, with possible witnesses of their age, memories may be problematic. So we’ll have to do a whole lot more detective work before we have enough facts to trigger something specific, or to get anyone to care about something that happened so long ago. ”

“And how sad is that?” she muttered. “Everybody should care whether it’s today or fifty years ago.”

“We’re still waiting for time of death confirmation too. We have to give Elizabeth time to do her job and to do it fully and completely to the best of her ability.”

Doreen nodded. “I sure would like to have a few more answers than we have right now.”

“I went to the hospital to talk to the X-ray department. They didn’t have anything to say, except pointing me in the direction of somebody down in Vancouver who recycles the film.”

“Interesting,” she replied excitedly. “That could be a trigger for a lead. Could they read the X-ray?”

“Yes and no,” he said, with a shrug.

“Which one is it? Yes or no?”

“The X-ray was quite damaged, but they found a series of blows that our exceptionally tall, very dead friend sustained. It was in the lower portion, hips and whatnot. Both femurs were broken, one kneecap appeared to be damaged, and the rest was a little fuzzy. They could guess at some of it, but no more than that.”

“Both knees?”

“Both legs and one kneecap.”

She grimaced, as she stared at him. “That sounds quite gang related.”

He nodded at her. “Or mafia related, I would say.”

“Right.” She gave him an eye roll. “Same diff.”

He laughed. “I don’t think the mafia would consider themselves to be a gang under any circumstance,” he clarified, with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure they consider themselves to be a cut above all that. The family, the number one family of all .”

“Maybe,” she muttered. “But they’re still just hoodlums to me.”

“They are the spark of the old gangs, but they have slowly moved on. Even we don’t know a lot about the mafia. We could talk to the old couple here and see if they recall any mafia presence in the area. They’ve certainly been around long enough for that.”

She looked over at them, and Mugs stared at them too. “What do you think, Mugs? Do we need to keep talking to them?”

He gave a gentle woof in response.

She nodded. “Maybe I’ll go over and talk to them myself,” she suggested.

When Mack frowned at her, she shrugged. “It just feels as if I should.” She took the two leashed animals and veered off, leaving Thaddeus with Mack.

Only that didn’t last long. As soon as Thaddeus realized they were leaving without him, Doreen heard a flutter of wings and a squawk, as he raced along behind them.

“And here I thought you just might want to stay with Mack a little bit,” she said, waiting for him to catch up, which caught the attention of the old couple.

They stopped and looked at her in amazement.

Doreen smiled and said, “Hello.”

“My goodness, are you that detective woman we’ve heard so much about?” the wife asked.

“I’m an amateur sleuth,” she clarified. “He’s the real detective.” She pointed back to Mack, who had stayed behind and now appeared to be on his phone.

“Oh my,” the wife replied.

“We’ve heard all about you,” the old man grumbled.

Doreen laughed. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” she replied, with a bright smile. “But I appreciate that you’ve had the chance to hear about me.”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” the wife declared, with a bright smile. Her husband didn’t appear to be quite so enamored, which was fair enough. “What are you doing here now?” the wife asked, giving her a curious smile.

“Oh, just looking into this whole mess here,” she replied, with a nod at the park.

“What mess?” the woman asked.

“How long have you lived near here?” Doreen asked. “Maybe you would know something.”

“No, I told the detective I didn’t know anything about it,” the woman replied, with an airy wave of her hand. “I mean, it’s not the kind of thing people like us would know about.”

Doreen frowned at her in surprise. “There is no such thing as people like us in a case like this,” Doreen declared. “It’s simply a case where somebody lost his life and was buried here.”

The woman winced. “Again, still not something that would apply to us,” she repeated. “We’ve always kept to ourselves and avoided the trouble that comes from this area.”

“And what trouble would that be?” Doreen asked curiously. “I didn’t realize trouble was here.”

“Oh my, yes,” she stated. “I mean, I don’t know what trouble it was, but you could always count on something going on.”

“Oh, so it would make sense to you that somebody would have been buried here?”

“I don’t know about that. Nothing makes sense to me when it comes to that,” she replied, with a self-conscious laugh. “I don’t even begin to think those kinds of thoughts.”

“What did you do for work?” Doreen asked her curiously.

“I was a teacher.”

“Oh, how interesting. Did you ever have a student who was super tall?”

“Had a couple of them over the years,” she noted, “but I wouldn’t know what became of any of them. It’s not as if I stayed in touch or anything.”

“How long were you teaching?”

“Thirty years,” she stated proudly.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Doreen noted, with a beaming smile in her direction. “That’s beyond lovely. Gosh, you must have an awful lot of insider knowledge about what the kids were like and how Kelowna has changed over the years.”

“Oh.” The woman flushed. “I don’t know anything about all that. I mean, I get that everybody wants to have information about what happens in this corner of the world, but it’s just the same as anybody else’s corner. I don’t have any answers.”

“No, of course not,” Doreen said, with a nod. “And there isn’t really any answer in a case like this, after all.”

“Isn’t there?” she asked, studying Doreen. “I thought that’s what you do.”

“It’s what I try to do, but we’re very early on in this case. So, I don’t know that we’ll get too many answers. It was a very long time ago.”

“Was it?” the wife asked, looking back at the park, and then she gave a slight shiver. “I don’t know how many times I’ve walked over that area.”

“Right, that’ll be something everybody thinks about now,” Doreen pointed out. “How many times did you walk that area, and yet you didn’t know?”

“None of us could have known,” the wife declared. “The only one who would have known would be the killer.”

“Exactly,” Doreen agreed. “So, if that killer is still around or even still alive, we’ll will find him eventually,” she declared, with a note of authority in her tone.

“That’s a big job,” the old man finally spoke up again, “especially if it happened long ago.”

“It probably was a long time ago, and you’re right. It is a big job, but it bothers me to think of people getting away with this.”

“Do you even know that it was murder?” the wife asked, adjusting the collar of her coat tighter to her neck. “Isn’t it a little early for that?”

“Maybe,” Doreen admitted, “but wouldn’t you bury somebody properly, unless it was underhanded and criminal?”

“Maybe they didn’t have the money,” the wife suggested. “We’ve certainly known lots of very poor families in this town who didn’t have money for things like that.”

“Isn’t there help for cases like that?” Doreen asked.

“Now, maybe—but back then? I doubt if there was. Back then there didn’t appear to be help for anybody,” the wife shared. “It’s one of the hardships of teaching. You see so many people who could use help, and there just isn’t anything available for them.”

“You’re right there,” Doreen muttered. “That would break my heart.”

“Aren’t you a very wealthy woman now?” the old man growled. “It sounds as if you should be helping a lot of people financially.”

Doreen raised her eyebrows. “I might end up as a very wealthy woman eventually, but I certainly don’t have any of it now.

With all the legal business pending, I don’t have the slightest idea of when it will all be completed or even how much it entails,” she shared, with half a laugh.

“However, helping others is definitely something I’ll consider at that time. ”

The man just grumbled something under his breath, which didn’t sound the least bit complimentary, so she let it slide.

Doreen nodded at the wife, who was eyeing her husband in concern. Doreen asked, “Presumably there are charities that handle that sort of thing these days?”

“I don’t know if there are or not,” the old woman replied, as she nudged her husband forward. “Good talking to you,” she said, with a bright smile, as the woman quickly moved her husband away from Doreen.

Doreen watched them go, wondering at the man’s attitude.

When the wife turned to look back at her, she frowned when she saw Doreen still staring at them and urged her husband away faster.

As Doreen slowly walked back to Mack, he pointed at the retreated couple and noted, “That didn’t seem to go all that well.”