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A fter finishing a few notes to herself, Doreen headed over to check Solomon’s physical files. She was pretty sure she hadn’t seen anything regarding this case that she’d summarized digitally, and it wasn’t the type of thing he normally chased, but she wouldn’t walk away and she’d talk to anybody about this case if she hadn’t already checked everything at her disposal. She brought up the summary of his work that she had so painstakingly compiled and typed, then went through each of the physical files, wondering if anything was even close to her case, but she couldn’t find one single thing that appeared to be connected.

Frowning at that, she realized this could end up being the one case she couldn’t crack by pulling magic out of the air, when it seemed as if all hope was lost. She sat back, writing up her notes again, but this time in a little more organized and legible way. Then she called Nan.

“Hey,” Nan answered, sounding a little off. “I had a talk with management.” Nan sniffed. “Apparently Richie’s antics haven’t been looked on as well as he thought.”

“I’m not surprised,” Doreen replied frankly. “It is a lot to expect him to continuously come into the kitchen, taking things.”

“In his defense, he is paying for it. We all are, to be honest, and we are allowed unlimited access.”

“Yes,” Doreen noted, “but I’m sure it tends to mess up their accounts and their planning for Richie to be feeding me.”

“They did try to tell me something about that. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave it this way and would never want you feeling as if you couldn’t come down here at any point in time and visit, especially if it would be awkward if we had to be sticklers over a treat here or there.”

Doreen chuckled, and Nan went on to say, “They did rush to tell me that you were more than welcome to come, and they weren’t worried about that at all. They were more concerned about the amount of food taken away, making sure Richie was eating the food and not just stockpiling it. She brought up another resident’s name, someone we did have issues with, and that’s exactly what she had been doing. She kept extra food in her room until it went bad because she had this thing about not starving to death.”

“Oh my,” Doreen muttered, “that sounds terrible.”

“I know, and, when Rachael mentioned that, I confirmed, Oh, so as long as we’re eating the food, it’s all good , and Rachael nodded,” Nan explained, her tone turning cheerful. “Now, that’s enough about us. Did you hear from Mack?”

“I did, and I have the case file.”

“Ah, then you need to come back down here.”

“First I need to head to the library and see if I can come up with anything,” she shared casually. “No point in coming if I don’t have any information.”

“Was the file that empty?”

“Yes, the file was definitely that empty,” she stated.

“Ooh, ouch, okay. So, we will really have to buckle down and work on this one.”

“Yep, we sure will.” Doreen chuckled. “Let me get out there and see what I can find.”

“Afternoon tea then?” Nan asked. “We’ll expect you here at two.” And, with that, she disconnected without giving Doreen a chance to answer.

She shook her head as she stared down at her critters. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a choice in some of this?” she muttered out loud. Yet her life with Nan had taken off and had become a world of its own.

Doreen wasn’t even sure if she should start at the library. She was thinking about the cemetery too. She had already looked up random obituaries on the internet, plus she did know a couple people down at the cemetery—Dezy the groundskeeper and the woman in the office, whose name escaped Doreen just now.

So, with that in mind, she loaded up the animals in her car and headed to one of her favorite places to walk. Some people might call her macabre for walking the cemeteries, but honestly, it was so peaceful, and there was generally a sense of joy, without the feeling of loss that you might expect. She definitely sensed completeness and calm. Maybe that’s what she was looking for.

As she wandered, she looked over and caught sight of somebody she recognized, doing maintenance. Dezy looked up at her and then waved. With the animals racing forward, she walked over to say hi to him. “Hey, Dezy,” she greeted him, with a big smile.

“Haven’t seen you around here in a bit.” He eyed her intently. “Are you okay?” He reached down and said hello to Mugs and Goliath, who were both vying for attention. He chuckled. “These guys don’t appear to have changed.”

She shook her head. “No, they sure haven’t, and they’re still as competitive for attention as ever.”

Dezy nodded. “I see that, but I won’t complain because it’s so nice to see them here.”

She smiled. “I’m glad to hear you say that because I have to admit that this is one of my favorite places to walk.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “It’s really peaceful here. I know people think I’m strange for wanting to work in a graveyard, but it’s, by far, one of the nicest locations in my opinion.”

“You certainly don’t have to worry about anybody bugging you,” she quipped, with a smile.

“No, I don’t, and honestly, an awful lot can be said for that too.” He looked down at Mugs. “This guy isn’t getting any skinnier.”

She winced. “I was noticing that a little earlier today. With the winter and the cold weather and all, we haven’t been out on as many walks.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he noted, as he studied Mugs’s girth. “You need to watch that he doesn’t get too big.”

“I know,” she grumbled, followed by a sigh. “He just won’t enjoy life much if he loses his treats.”

“No, but I think that goes for everybody in that situation,” Dezy stated, smiling at her. “Now, are you here just for a walk, or are you here because you need something?”

“Both,” she replied cheerfully.

He nodded. “I figured as much. So… what’s going on? You got another case?”

“Kind of,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s a sad one though.”

“Aren’t they all?” he noted. “Any case that comes to you means that nobody else has been able to solve it. So you’ve got yourself a reputation. The problem with that is,” he shared, waving his hands, “the pressure to maintain it.”

She groaned. “And this case may be the downfall of my reputation,” she agreed. “It’s terrible.”

“Okay, shoot,” he said. “Fill me in on just what’s going on and how I can help.”

She frowned and began, “It’s a strange one.”

“Come on now. It seems as if you’re stalling. What do you know so far?”

“I don’t have very much information,” she admitted, “and that’s a problem and makes it even sadder.”

“Okay, so just what do you have?”

She groaned. “I have the remains of an eighteen-month-old toddler. I don’t have when she died, but they figure the bones are at least thirty-some years old, up to ten years older.” When Dezy frowned at her, she nodded. “I know, so sad,… isn’t it?”

“Tragic, but why do I find myself wondering if they are using this difficult case to keep you busy and out of people’s hair?”

She winced. “I’m really hoping that wasn’t the point, but I can see how maybe it serves both purposes.… If I can solve it, it’s another one they don’t have to worry about. However, I don’t have much to go on. Not even a name. I don’t have anything, except…” She paused. When Dezy gazed at her expectantly, she sighed and continued. “She was beaten pretty badly.”

He winced, then shook his head. “Wow, that’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t,” she stated. “So, although this is possibly a no-win situation for me, I can’t not have a look and will do my best.”

“No, of course not,” he agreed, shaking his head. “And back then,… we didn’t have a ton of law enforcement around here, yet it wasn’t that bad. Most of the people were good, strong, hardworking families.”

She nodded. “And you’ve been here that long, haven’t you?”

“I have,” he replied, as he rubbed his chin, leaving a streak of dirt across it. “Yet I don’t know anything about this one.”

“No, but,” she added, trying to collect her thoughts, “I guess the question I’ll have to turn upside down is, does anybody know of a baby who went missing here locally? I could ask about a baby who people heard had passed away, and maybe nobody ever questioned how or why.”

He shrugged. “That won’t be an easy one for you.”

“No, it won’t,” she acknowledged, trying not to get too dismayed about it. “Normally I have a little bit more to go on,” she admitted. “But that’s why the bones are sitting in a box in the coroner’s office, so that people don’t forget and that someday,… somehow,… we might have a light to shed on it.”

“It sure doesn’t do my heart any good to think of a little baby like that in a box on some shelf,” he muttered in a doleful way. “Of course she’ll end up in a box anyway,” he pointed out, “but we want her properly buried, with a proper marker.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“I’m not sure I can help you though.” He looked around at the graves and noted, “Everybody here’s got a marker.”

“I know. I guess I was just wondering if you knew of anybody who may have lost a child way back when.”

“You’re thinking that it would be somebody who lost a child, but that nobody would necessarily know about it?”

She nodded. “Otherwise then I would think there would be a burial,” she pointed out.

“Right, unless they were really poor, and they just wanted to bury the child on their property. Do you know where it was buried?”

“Yep, southeast Kelowna.” Then she stopped and whispered, “The bones were found when they were digging up a patch to grow yams.”

“Yams?” he repeated, looking at her.

She nodded. “Yeah, yams.”

“Good God.” He frowned. “They’re not that hard to grow, so you could certainly grow them up here.”

“I think they were turning over a bed or creating a new one, and… the bones came up with the soil.”

“Wow,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You sure do live an exciting life,” he said, with almost admiration in his tone.

“Ha.” She tried to hide her shivers from the cold weather. “Not sure exciting is quite the right word for this.”

“There’ll be the expectation that you need to solve it,” he pointed out.

She nodded. “And that is precisely why I need help on this one.”

“Right,” he agreed, “but I don’t know anybody who might have had a baby back then and lost it. I didn’t ever see one.… If the child died that young, and the family lived out in the middle of nowhere, that doesn’t mean that nobody ever even knew about her. It’s just that her life was limited to her family maybe.”

He wasn’t telling Doreen anything she hadn’t already figured out. She was just hoping that, somewhere along the line, somebody would know something. Doreen already knew she would have to go a little further afield on this one. Plus, this was just her first day, so she wouldn’t let herself get upset about it.

Dezy shook his head. “All I can do is…”

“Is what?”

“I know it sounds foolish,” he began, “but I do know a lot of people in town. I don’t know the new people so much, but… I know an awful lot of the old-timers. The only thing I can think to do is maybe take a look through our records that we have of who is buried here and see if those names trigger anything. I can do that for sure, but no guarantees.”

“No, no guarantees at all,” she replied, “but, even that much, if it doesn’t trigger anything, that is still information. Now, if it does trigger something, it could potentially lead me to the next thing.”

“And that’s what you do, isn’t it?” Dezy asked, with a nod and a bright smile. “You get one little thing and then carry it on to the next.”

“I do, and, if I’m lucky, somebody at the end of the long road of questions knows something, and even better is when we get to somebody at the end of the long road who did something.”

He frowned and then nodded. “You’re not likely to get any justice for her,” he pointed out. “It’s been too long. Thirty-five years is a long time.”

“Sure,” she agreed, “but thirty-five years, if you’re hiding from a crime that you committed, isn’t a long time. What if they were twenty or twenty-five back then?”

“Sure, they could be in their fifties or maybe sixties,… but they also could have been thirty or so at the time.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s a long shot, but the captain did say I could look into it, and I feel obligated for this little girl’s sake to find out what her name is and what happened to her. To call her… Baby Jane just hurts.”

He winced at that. “I hear you there. That will never do. When I go in for my break, I’ll pull out the records and start going through the names and see if anything comes to mind.”

“That’s all I can ask of you,” she said, truly grateful. “Thank you for that. At the very least, it’s something we can do, and all we can do is try.” She handed him a card with her phone number on it.

And, with that, she gave him a bright smile and tugged at the animals. While she was here, she might as well get a walk in. If nothing else they would all get some exercise, and she could use this chance to clear her mind.