Murder in the Marigolds by Dale Mayer (best young adult book series .txt) 📕

“That’s exactly what it did,” she crowed. “I think it backfired on him because I don’t think that’s how he thought it would go at all. I’m sure he thinks that I’m now wondering when he will call me again and invite me back into my old house.”

“Good, and I know Mack would agree.”

“Well, I don’t know where Mack and I are at exactly,” she said, “but I do know that we’re really good friends. I don’t want to ruin that.”

Nick’s voice was gentle, as he replied, “Just because you are good friends doesn’t mean you can’t be more.”

“I don’t have any references to draw from on that,” she muttered. “Nan is always bugging me to push the issue, but I wonder about the judgment of somebody, like me, who I thought was intelligent, yet I was capable of falling for Mathew’s ploys and becoming the person I was at the end of the marriage,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to that. I feel like I’m not ready or strong enough or aware enough to not let something like that happen again.”

“Well, it’s interesting that you’re talking like that,” Nick said, “because it sounds like you want a different future for yourself and that you’re trying to work on the things you need to do to get that. That’s really good to hear.”

“Is it?” she asked in a dry tone. “It just makes me very confused.”

“And, for that reason alone, I would suggest you talk to somebody.”

“You mean, like a shrink?” she said. “My husband would have a heyday.”

“And you’re right. He probably would, and it would be ammo that he would likely use, but it’s also ammo I could use as well. That there was so much mental abuse and physical abuse in your marriage that you needed help.”

She laughed at that. “Mental, yes. Physical, no. At least not much.”

“You know something, Doreen? I’m not sure about that,” he said quietly. “In this day and age, a lot of people would look at what happened to you in a very different light.”

“I lived in a gilded cage. Nobody has sympathy for that,” she said, “so that won’t wash. And I’m not trying to take from him anything that I’m not allowed to have. But I do feel like he owes me something.”

“He does, indeed, and now maybe the government is more interested in what he’s doing and why he is here too. I confess that it did cross my mind to wonder if he had killed the lawyer.”

“Me too, but I really don’t think so now,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I think she had something he wanted, and she was here, so he thinks I might have gotten it from her, since she hated him at that point. I think it was a toss-up as to which of us she hated the most, me or him. I don’t know,” she said, confusing herself.

“Are you certain she didn’t leave anything at your house?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, spinning around and looking. “I haven’t found anything new, but so far I haven’t found anything missing either, after Mathew had my house searched. I’m not sure Robin even came inside the front door, to be honest.”

“Well, see what comes up, when you have time to really think about it,” he said. “Because, in a way, it would make sense that he should come to you to get that. And he surprised all of us by showing up.”

“Right,” she muttered. “But, if he didn’t kill her, who did?”

“Maybe he hired somebody to do it.”

“Or maybe it has nothing to do with any of this,” she muttered.

“Do you know if she has ever been through here before?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t even know where she is from.”

“Well, I can tell you that she was married before.”

“She was?” Doreen stopped and said, “She was quite young.”

“She was twenty-nine, turning thirty this year. She was married at eighteen.”

“Oh,” she said, in surprise, “that’s young too.”

“Exactly. She was married for three years.”

“I wonder what happened.”

“Like most things in life, it broke up.”

“She didn’t kill him, did she?” she asked, wondering at the potential irony.

“I highly doubt it,” he said, “but, in the world you walk in, who knows?” And then he laughed. “Maybe I’ll just take a quick look and find out.”

“Oh, please do, to get my mind off this mess here,” she said, with sudden fascination. “What’s his name?”

“I’ll text it to you,” he said. “And I’ll do a bit of digging on my own.”

When he hung up, she was a whole lot happier. As a matter of fact, Doreen actually felt like she had a whole new lease on life. How exciting.

Chapter 12

Monday Noon …

Doreen put on a pot of coffee, got out her laptop and a notepad, and jotted down notes. First, she put down everything she could remember of the conversation with the lawyer. Ex-lawyer. Doreen didn’t even want to use her first name. She was just the lawyer. It allowed a little bit of distance in Doreen’s mind from the hurt and the sense of betrayal. Not just professionally but also as a friend. At which point, Doreen realized there was no friendship. That’s not what friends did to each other.

Then she wrote down everything she remembered of her husband’s visit. Ex-husband, maybe not in deed yet but mentally… And the details of her suspicion that someone had gone through her place while they were out. That completed, she opened up the laptop and started researching the lawyer’s past. Indeed, she had been married, and, as the text from Nick confirmed, it had lasted three years, and then her husband had gone back to school. So had Robin, and apparently that had been the end of it. She went through law school, followed by all kinds of suspicious rapid rising success in the law firm.

As Doreen read about it, she