said.
“Next time I come, you’re cooking. Somehow this went from me teaching you to cook, to me cooking and you eating.”
“That works too,” she said with a cheerful grin.
He rolled his eyes at her, and the two dug in.
By the time Doreen’s plate was empty, her stomach thought it had died and gone to heaven. “This is absolutely wonderful,” she said for the umpteenth time, as she scooped up the last of the sauce on her plate.
“There is more, if you want it,” Mack said.
She settled against her chairback. “I don’t think I can eat another bite. I’m pretty full.”
“Good,” he said. “Then you have leftovers for at least tomorrow night, if not more.”
As she thought back to the amount of sauce in the pan, she nodded. “At least two nights,” she said, “and probably more noodles than that.”
“But you can eat the noodles plain.”
“Or fried with eggs,” she said enthusiastically.
“Or just with cheese,” he said.
She nodded. “Leftover noodles are never wrong here,” she said with a laugh.
Just then a banging at the front door reverberated throughout the house. Mugs barked. Mack looked at her, surprised. Doreen shrugged. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
“Ah,” he said, “but I am. It could be the guy from work.” Together they walked to the front door, and Doreen opened it. Standing there was a man she vaguely remembered seeing at crime scenes. The two men greeted each other.
Mack’s coworker looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“I’ve been working in the garden all afternoon,” Mack said with a groan. “Canton, Doreen. Doreen, Canton.”
The guy laughed. “Well, give me a hand unloading this, will you?”
The three headed to his truck full of a pile of boards and what looked like steel posts. Doreen wasn’t sure what those would be used for, but Mack was pretty happy to see it all. She helped carry the other stuff, which were weird little shapes with big screws on them, as well as other kinds of hardware, including boxes of screws. This was the deck hardware Mack had been talking about. She carried as much of it back as she could. Not wanting to leave the boxes of hardware outside, she put them in the kitchen on the table. By the time the guy left, she had her list of supplies out, trying to figure out what they had just been given.
Together, standing at the kitchen table with the back door wide open, the two marked off everything they had collected today and reassessed the list. Mack looked at it, nodded, and said, “You’re down to only needing about four or five hundred dollars now.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “There’s a good chance, yes. Next week’s a long weekend for me with my schedule. You may want to consider getting a start on it then.”
Doreen looked at the grass and sod she had moved. “And here I thought we already had started.”
Mack chuckled. “It’s too big of a job to start leveling off the foundation blocks now. Considering it’s late Sunday evening and all. But maybe Friday we can start getting those in.”
“You’ll need some help though, won’t you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “If there isn’t any help, there isn’t any help. That just means it’ll take a bit longer.”
She nodded. “It would be nice to have help. I don’t know if I can help carry much of this heavier stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I might see if anybody is available.”
“I doubt if too many people will want to come help me,” she said in a dry tone. “I’m pretty sure I’ve used up all my goodwill at the police force.”
“Nope, not at all,” he said. “They might not like all the extra work, but they like closing cases and bringing whatever closure we can to the families. So that’s not an issue.”
Doreen smiled. “That would be great,” she said. “And who knows? Maybe this week I’ll solve another case.”
Mack rolled his eyes at her and groaned. “How about this week you just stay out of trouble?”
“I’m never in trouble,” she protested.
“And don’t contact this Zachary guy,” he said. “I want to see who he is first.”
“As soon as you leave tonight,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll research him myself.”
“Send me whatever you find. Obviously the jewels are worth a lot of money, maybe even more than you expected.”
“Maybe. But a part of me feels like the mystery surrounding them is the bigger part of this.”
“I don’t think any deaths were associated with the crimes back then,” he said. “And white-collar