Murder in the Marigolds by Dale Mayer (good books to read for 12 year olds txt) 📗

stared at her, as if in question, but she just shrugged and moved on. “The bottom line is, I am suspicious.”

“I guess it must have been really tough for you these last few months,” he said sympathetically. “I should have considered that.”

“Considered what?” she asked. He just looked at her quietly. “So something is going on. I’m not sure what it is.”

At that, his phone rang. Something else that she remembered about him was how he was always on that phone. Not that she blamed him because it was such a digital age, but it seemed like, when they were together, he was always on his phone. He answered it while they were walking, and his voice rose sharply. She tried to block it out, but he sounded more and more like the Mathew she used to know.

“Well, find out,” he said. “It has to be somewhere.”

At that, her ears perked up. “What’s going on?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, just lawyers missing documents,” he said in disgust. “You’d think it would be simple to find stuff. We have digital storage, and we have paper storage, but no, no, no. Things still go missing all the time.” He got off his phone with a huff.

“I can imagine,” she said. She glanced around town, as they headed down to the corner of Lower Mission. “A Starbucks is up ahead,” she said. “We can always grab a coffee there.”

He nodded, but he was more absentminded now. “Did you talk to Robin at all when she was here?”

“She railed and ranted at me, but it wasn’t exactly a conversation.”

“No, when she gets off on her little moods,” he said, “it’s amazingly difficult to communicate.”

She wondered about the phone call. “I didn’t have anything to do with her, outside of her ranting and raving.”

“So you didn’t meet her for coffee? You didn’t have lunch with her?”

“Why would I?” she asked in surprise, quite shocked that he would even suggest that. “She screwed me over pretty badly.”

“Well, she was looking after my interests,” he said. “In all honesty, you should have expected that.”

“Why should I have expected it?” she said. “I hired her to represent me, not you.”

“Well, because we were already together.”

“But I didn’t know that,” she said in surprise.

He looked at her in shock, and then he started to laugh. “She had to disclose that.”

“Well, she didn’t,” she said bitterly. “I guess that I’m naive. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Well, that’s why she’s was so irate when she contacted me then,” he said. “She said something about you making trouble for her.”

“What trouble was I supposed to make?” she said, shaking her head. “She’d already taken everything I had to give.”

“Interesting,” he muttered. But his voice was distant, as if he were thinking of something completely different. He started to chuckle. “No wonder she was so adamant about getting everything locked, signed, and sealed early.”

“But was it early?” Doreen asked.

“Well, it seemed rather fast to me.”

“Meaning, you thought I would put up a bigger fight.”

“Well, our agreement was pretty simple,” he admitted. “And, at the time, I was congratulating myself on Robin’s ability. But obviously she had another plan going.”

“What are you even talking about?” Doreen asked him in surprise. “What other plan?”

He looked at her and said, “Didn’t you know?”

“Know what?” she said. “I haven’t understood anything since that woman arrived at my doorstep. I get that you think that I don’t understand business and think I’m pretty stupid, but it’s hard to understand something if you don’t actually get any explanations. Or even enough information to make a proper decision about something.”

“No, no, no, of course,” he said, “that makes perfect sense.” But he started to chuckle.

“Will you explain?”

“No,” he said. “If you didn’t talk to her much …” Then his phone rang again. He looked at it, groaned, and said, “Just a minute.” He took a few moments to step farther aside. She eased her way toward him, as he walked away. She heard the urgency in this voice. “You’ve got to find it. … No, no, I’m busy. … Yeah, I know. … I’ll catch the plane. Don’t worry. Make sure you do too.”

And, with that, it carried on, but she didn’t catch most of the rest, and he finally pocketed the phone, stared up at the sky, and then turned to look at her. “Something has come up,” he said. He pulled out his wallet, handed her his business card, and said, “That’s my new cell phone. If you think of anything that she might have said or done that made you suspicious, let me know, will you?”

“I will,” she said, staring at the card in surprise, but inside she was thinking, The heck I will.

He smirked and said, “It’s been really good to see you.”

She studied him, and, this time, she wasn’t even sure what she heard in his tone of voice, but it sure wasn’t sincerity. It was more like the joke was on her. But then, that was the way he always treated her.

“Why did you really come?” she asked, looking at him. “It has nothing to do with me. Or getting me back.”

“You never know,” he said. He reached up a hand, patted her cheek, and said, “Something’s very endearing about all that freshness.”

“No, you used to call it gauche and embarrassing, when speaking of other women,” she said. “You really came about the lawyer. It was all about Robin, right?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Of course not.”

“Well, if you’re looking for her laptop, the police have it.”

He froze suddenly, and out came the husband that she recognized.

He snarled. “What are you talking about?”

“She was murdered, and they took everything. And that included the blue bag she had with her, including her laptop.”

He just stared at her, his eyes narrowing to angry pinpoints.

She shrugged. “You could have just asked me at the beginning. It’s not like I would fall for your BS now anyway.”

He chuckled and said, “I think I like this spirit. You didn’t ever talk to me like