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D eciding that it had warmed up enough outside, Doreen packed up the animals, all quite happy to take a walk. She headed out the backyard toward the river. The animals were all delighted to follow along in her wake at first, then very quickly overtook her as they raced to the river ahead of her. She didn’t have Mugs on a leash since this was his home territory, his backyard, so to speak. And generally he was really good with anybody here. Of course there was always a chance along the river that they would meet somebody who didn’t like dogs, but, so far, it hadn’t been an issue. Doreen was grateful for that. The animals were such an added light in her life that she couldn’t imagine how lonely other people must be without something similar in their lives.

As she wandered alone down the pathway heading toward Nan, Doreen remembered so many of the cases she had dealt with, and it brought her a lot of joy to think that she had helped out at least some of the people and had got justice for some victims.

Obviously she couldn’t help everybody, and some didn’t want to be helped. She couldn’t do much about that, but, as long as she continued to do as much as she could, maybe the authorities would finally get through this backlog of cases. She didn’t know what she would do then, aside from moving to the next town and starting all over again. She burst out laughing at that because she didn’t want to move anywhere. Somehow, in the midst of all this turmoil, she had managed to make Kelowna her home, cementing into her heart and soul where she belonged. She was absolutely ecstatic that Mack had no plans to take her away from Nan’s house either.

Kelowna was his home as well, and, if he was happy to move into Nan’s house with her after they married, then that was a perfect solution. At least she hoped so. And, with Mack’s great building skills, she could tag along and help with his renovations just as much as she could, knowing that would be enough for him. To do things together was a joy.

Her thoughts still meandered as she considered changes they could make to the old house, as she arrived at Nan’s place. She walked through the front door, smiled at the receptionist, then took the first hallway down toward Nan. As soon as she got there, the door opened just in front of her, and Nan went to step out, looked at her in surprise, then stepped back in again.

“Isn’t that quite the timing,” she said in delight.

“Does that mean you’ve had your nap?”

“Of course I’ve had my nap,” she declared, with a wave of her hand. “Come on in, child. You look frozen.”

“We walked this time,” she stated, with a smile at her grandmother, “and it’s definitely a bit chilly.”

“It’s more than a bit chilly, but that’s okay. It put some beautiful color in your cheeks.”

“I don’t know that I needed any color in my cheeks,” she pointed out. “But, if it made you happy, it’s all good.”

Nan burst into laughter. She bent down and spent a few minutes cuddling Mugs, who seemed to be absolutely over the moon to see her. “Oh my, the animals are quite something today.”

“I know. So much so that I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

“If something is going on, you can bet it’ll involve you,” Nan stated, her gaze astute as she glanced over at her granddaughter. “These animals are barometers for our emotions. Are you upset about something?”

“No, not really. Maybe a bit melancholy, that’s all.”

“Oh dear,” Nan muttered. “You’re not having second thoughts about marrying Mack, are you?”

A moment of silence fell all around her, and she realized that Nan still had the door open, and people were making their way into Nan’s apartment to join her. Doreen groaned. “No, Nan, I’m definitely not having second thoughts about marrying Mack.” As soon as she said it, a collective sigh wafted through the room.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Nan stated. “We know you are still working through things from that disastrous first marriage of yours, but it’s good to hear you say it.”

Immediately the grins all around shone bright again.

Doreen shook her head at them. “Mack and I are fine,” she declared, looking from one person to the next, “absolutely fine.”

“That’s good,” Maisie replied. “We would hate for you to muck up things now.”

Doreen glared at her. “Why would my changing my mind be a muck up?”

“Because every woman needs to be married.”

Her jaw dropped at that. Doreen wanted to blast into her, but her grandmother was right here.

Nan interjected, “Enough of that talk. My granddaughter will make a decision on her own and in her own time.”

“The decision is already made,” Doreen declared firmly. “Mack and I are getting married.”

“But when?” cried out Maisie. “I so want to be alive to see it.”

Doreen groaned as she stared at everybody in the room.

“I’m just glad that hottie detective wasn’t here long. She was after your man, and you wouldn’t be wasting time getting married if she were still here.”

Doreen snorted. “Who is she talking about?” She looked at everybody, then frowned at Maisie. “I have no idea who you are talking about.”

Nan sighed. “Insley.”

“Oh,” Doreen muttered.

“Yes,” exclaimed Maisie. “Insley was a harlot and was after your man.”

Doreen turned to Nan, frowning.

“No matter, child. She was transferred to Vernon, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

“But,” Doreen replied, “ was she after Mack?”

Nan patted her granddaughter’s cheek. “Now don’t you worry, child. Mack is crazy about you. Any woman would want what you have,” Then Nan turned to glare at Maisie. “And Maisie knows that.” Nan tipped her head to silence Maisie.

Doreen shook her head. “Regardless of whatever all that was, I get that you’re all in a rush, but I am not. I still have fallout from my divorce to deal with. I still have to take care of Mathew’s estate, which is very complicated. I still have all kinds of issues to work through, and frankly I haven’t been legally single for very long.”

“Yes, but it’s been a few months, and that’s long enough,” said another woman testily, who’d walked inside to join them. “In our day, if you were single past five minutes, something was wrong with you.”

“It’s a good thing that it’s not your day anymore then,” Nan quipped. “Come on now, everybody. Give Doreen some space. We talked about this, and she doesn’t need any of us butting into her private life.”

“Of course not,” Maisie agreed, “but we don’t want her to change her mind either.”

“For heaven’s sake, I won’t change my mind,” Doreen exclaimed in exasperation. “What brought that on?”

They just shrugged, and Maisie stated, “But you’re not necessarily setting a date right now, are you?”

“How many of you have had family recently get married?” Several of the women nodded with bright beams of joy across their faces. “Right, and did it happen immediately, or did they need time to make arrangements, to book venues, and things like that?”

“Oh my, yes,” one of the women agreed, one who Doreen didn’t think she’d ever seen before. “My granddaughter took well over a year before finally walking down the aisle.”

“Exactly. So why is it that I can’t have the same time frame?” Doreen asked.

They all stopped and considered it, and the woman grudgingly admitted, “I didn’t like waiting then either, but my granddaughter wouldn’t let me change her mind.”

“Of course not,” Nan stated. “She wants to have the wedding of her dreams, not your dreams.”

The other woman looked at her, blinked several times, and her shoulders slumped. “You know, if somebody had given me that reminder before the wedding, I would probably still be closer to my granddaughter.” When Doreen frowned at her, she shrugged. “I guess I was a little pushy, and she didn’t appreciate it.”

“Of course not,” Doreen noted. “I think a lot of mothers-in-law tend to have that problem too.”

“Not to mention mothers,” the woman added. “My daughter-in-law got herself more or less kicked off the wedding planning too.”

Doreen smiled. “And that probably didn’t bother you in the least, did it?”

“Nope, it sure didn’t,” she admitted, with a chuckle. “Even though both of us had been banned from the preparations, we both did attend the wedding, and everybody made up. However, it did leave a bit of a pall over the celebration.”

“Of course,” Doreen agreed. “It’s another reason why I don’t want to get pushed into a date. I’ll do me. And, when me is ready, and not one day before, will I share the date with anyone.”

Richie had just walked in, heard that, and agreed. “You do that, sister,” he crowed. “You tell these ladies how to handle that. They’re all up into everybody’s business every day, and it’s about time someone told these two to back off.” Richie pointed to the two ladies whom Doreen had not yet met.

“And you love it,” Nan said mockingly to him.

Doreen wasn’t sure what was going on with the inmates today, but everybody was feisty and cranky. She walked over to Nan and asked, “So, what exactly do we have going on here?”

“Right, down to business, that’s my granddaughter,” Nan declared, with a beaming smile.

“We have things to do, remember?” Doreen asked pointedly.

“We do, indeed, and I have a couple people here to introduce,” Nan began, looking around to the feisty elderly woman. “So this is Lynda.”

That woman even now looked as if she wanted to say something about her granddaughter’s wedding.

“And Lynda knew Iris.”

“Did you now?” Doreen asked, turning to face Lynda.

Lynda nodded. “We were friends for quite a while, but she was a tormented soul.”

“Tormented?”

“Tormented,” she repeated. “She lost a child and never really recovered.”

“A little girl by any chance?” Doreen asked her.

The woman frowned at her and then nodded. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t know,” she muttered. “It’s just something I was expecting.”

“I don’t know how you could possibly be expecting that answer, but, yes, that’s right. Iris lost a little girl, and it really broke her up.”

“Of course it would,” Doreen muttered. “Nobody wants to lose a child.”

“She already had four children, but this little girl was the light of her eyes.”

Doreen asked, “What happened? Do you know the details?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her back then, at least not closely. Yet I knew that she had lost a child, so it was just one of those things we didn’t talk about. Honestly, several of us lost children and pregnancies back then. Most of us went back fifty-plus years—sixty to seventy years for some. I will say that the medical care the younger people have access to today seems to be a whole lot better.”

“And yet, still there are problem pregnancies and deliveries in some cases,” Doreen noted. “There are no guarantees, even now.”

“No, of course not,” Lynda admitted.

“Did Iris ever get over it?”

“Oh, sure, in the sense that she functioned on a daily basis, but there was always this melancholy look to her.”

“Of course. I get it. And did she ever say what happened or why her child died?”

“No, she didn’t.” Lynda stared at Doreen and shook her head. “I’m not sure what purpose it serves to bring that up now anyway.”

“Who was her husband?” she asked, sidestepping the comment.

“Oh.” Lynda frowned for a moment. “I think his name was Bob. No, but it started with a B , I think.”

Doreen nodded. “I do have it written in my notes somewhere.… Buck. It was Buck.”

“Winters, it was Iris Winters,” one of the women cried out. “I knew her too.”

“Yes, but, Corrine, you didn’t know her as much as I knew her,” Lynda stated.

“She never mentioned losing a child to you?” Doreen asked Corrine, the other newcomer.

“No, she didn’t. Every once in a while, at a certain time of the year, she would get very quiet. Sometimes she even wanted to go to church.”

“And was she…” Doreen frowned, not knowing quite how to say it, but the question needed to be asked. “Was she a church-going woman? A good woman ? I know that’s a judgment call to even know what that means.”

“I know what you mean, but, yes, she was a good woman. She certainly was faithful to her husband.”

“Was she?” Doreen asked.

“Yes, Buck Winters was not somebody you could fool around on and then live to tell the tale,” Corrine declared.

“Right. Did they ever separate, do you know?”

“I think so, at one point in time, and then she came to her senses. He provided for her in a big way,” she declared.

“Was she happy?” Doreen asked.

She frowned and then looked over at Doreen. “Even with all that money, I would have to say I don’t think she was, but I’m not sure anybody would have made her happy. She was just very… I guess I would call it depressed all the time.”

“As if something had happened in her life and she hadn’t quite adjusted?” Doreen asked.

Corrine nodded, grimacing now.

“Yeah,” Lynda added carefully, “and I think a lot of that went back to Buck. He might have provided for her, but I don’t know that he loved her as much as he wanted to possess her. As in what was his was his.”

“I won’t argue with that,” Corrine replied. “You’re probably right.”

“What about the two daughters? Claudia and Meredith?” Doreen asked.

“Both of them were interesting women,” Lynda noted. “They both married, both had what? One or two children each? Both had heart attacks about… a good ten years apart, I guess. They were very close to their mother, and I’m not sure that they were necessarily close to Buck.”

“Could anybody get close to old Buck?” Doreen asked. “That would be my next question because, if he was a difficult person, getting close to him may not have been something anybody could do—not even his own wife or his daughters.”

“I think you’re quite right. He was, he still is,” Lynda corrected herself, while rolling her eyes, “quite a force. He’s also cranky to boot.”

“Understood. I’ve heard rumors about domestic violence. Is that true?” Doreen asked everyone.

“Yeah, old Buck,” Richie chimed in, “he was convicted of it, but I think he only served house arrest.”

Lynda nodded. “His wife was dead and gone by then.”

“So did Buck have a girlfriend at that time?” Doreen asked everyone.

“I think so,” Lynda replied, “but I am not sure. Believe me that Buck always had somebody to look after him—or always had a woman about for whatever reason.”

“So, he had a roving eye, yet he kept a very faithful wife at home?” Doreen asked.

“Yes, but again I’m not sure how much of Iris’s faithfulness was because of love versus duty versus fear,” noted another newcomer, peeling her gaze away and avoiding eye contact with anyone.

Doreen looked over at her. “What is your name?”

“I’m Madelyn,” she said. “And I may not have known Iris as well as a lot of people, but I worked in the hospital, and I do know that she came in a couple times with bruises and flimsy excuses for them.”

Doreen winced and Madelyn nodded. “I told her that she didn’t have to stay, and she gave me the saddest look, just the absolute saddest look, and told me that, yes, she did have to stay. One time I told her that people could help her, and she panicked. She said that there was no forgiveness for some people.”

“And how did you take that?”

“It sounded as if her guilty conscience was speaking in some way,” she replied, “but she was such a gentle soul that I don’t know what she could have possibly done that would make her feel guilty.”

Doreen nodded and didn’t say a whole lot. Everybody was curious but being respectful.

“I presume you’re onto another case now,” Lynda said.

“I am, indeed.”

“And it involves that Winters family?”

She nodded. “It involves that Winters family.”

“There’s no easy way to say it,” Lynda stated, “except that the Winters family is messed up.”

“All of them?” Doreen asked, with an eyebrow raised.

“Yes,” confirmed Madelyn, “all of them.”

“And have you seen that violence in all of them before?”

“No, but we saw a couple women come through the hospital back then. Now I haven’t been active in nursing for quite a while now, but my daughter is a nurse, and I’ve heard her talk about some of the local families, and that’s one name that she brings up regularly. It bothers her that the women will never press charges.”

“They’re a political family,” Madelyn pointed out, then snorted.

“The one son is, Clarence, but he’s no longer married,” Lynda shared. And you won’t see any charges show up against him, as he would just buy them all off.”

“Does he have that much money?” Doreen asked.

“Enough to buy off people here. Nobody is after millions. They just want enough money to go away and to live their lives.”

“Right,” Doreen muttered. “Okay, so does anybody know anything about the death of Iris’s fifth child and what may have happened?”

Immediately everyone shook their heads.

Madelyn asked, “Is that the case you’re working on? That child was dead and buried decades ago.”

“Right,” Doreen confirmed, “but sometimes things that get buried are uncovered.”

That drew gasps from various people, and they looked at her intently.

“I can’t say much, but I can tell you that we are looking into various people around here.… Do you know if anybody else lost a child back then? Anybody else even in the Winters family?”

There was quiet pondering about that question.

“I seem to remember an infant death,” Madelyn offered, “but who was that? I think that was… Claudia’s firstborn. I know she was absolutely devastated by it, but there wasn’t anything suspicious about it.”

Doreen nodded but wrote it down anyway. “Any idea how long ago that would have been?”

“Oh, years and years and years, maybe decades ago. Claudia’s been gone over ten years now. So, how can you go after any of these cases when nobody is alive to even deal with?”

“That’s part of the problem,” Doreen admitted. “If nothing else I still want to at least get some closure for the family.”

“There’s no family left to get closure for,” Corrine piped up.

“Maybe, but I have a toddler’s body who I want to bury with her legal name,” Doreen shared.

That raised eyebrows, as everybody turned and looked at each other.

A bit smugly Nan asked, “Anybody else have other information that would help? Anything about other children?”

“How old of a child?” the nurse asked, turning to look at Doreen. “That might help.”

“Eighteen months,” Doreen replied.

“Ooh, ouch, that’s so hard. That’s past that first flush when anybody would expect an issue or would potentially have an issue. So you would think you’re well and truly past that stage.”

“Exactly,” Doreen agreed. “Yet this child didn’t die of natural causes.” All around her, the silence was so loud, she could practically hear her heart beating.