you’re in danger aren’t the same thing.”
“I know,” she said. However, as soon as she hung up, she put on a cup of tea to make herself feel better.
About an hour later—after she’d vacuumed the house, scrubbed both bathrooms, and done laundry—she realized she was filling her mind by keeping her hands busy, trying to stop thinking about everything going on. When a knock came on her door, she checked the window first. There stood Aretha. She opened her door. “Hi,” Doreen said.
“I was thinking about what you were saying,” Aretha said.
“Do you want to come in and talk?”
Aretha stepped in and looked around. “You don’t have much furniture.”
“No,” Doreen said. “I cleaned it all out, and now I’m slowly building up a few pieces.” She motioned to the two pot chairs. Aretha sat down, her legs tucked under in a ladylike way. Doreen sat down and crossed her legs, the opposite of what her husband would have wanted. “Now,” she said. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”
“Well, the thing is, I couldn’t tell you at the time, but Heidi is my niece. She didn’t want anyone to know because of all the mess in my history.”
Doreen stared at her in shock.
Aretha nodded. “She’s the loveliest woman, and obviously I didn’t want to room with somebody who wasn’t family.”
“Of course,” Doreen said. “I wish you would have told me that originally. Then I wouldn’t have spent days trying to track down the name.”
“It was out of respect for Heidi that I didn’t, as she asked me not to. And, of course, she’s done much better than I ever have,” she said sadly. “I did everything I could to make things better, but I could do only so much.”
Chapter 28
Wednesday Late Afternoon …
“Have you ever seen any of the jewels?” Doreen asked Aretha.
“I saw something I thought were jewels in Reginald’s hand once, but, when I asked, he just laughed and said it was nothing. I always wondered if he’d found some while cleaning up after the break-in and didn’t put them back into the store’s inventory. I didn’t want to believe it, but he was bitter, often saying he’d lost everything. Of course he had. But so had I,” Aretha whispered.
“What about your new husband? Didn’t he want those jewels to combat the insurance claims?”
She lifted her hands. “What would I tell him? It was years later, and I didn’t know what had happened to them for sure, and Reginald was dead. It was all such a nightmare, and I just wanted to forget.”
“You said Reginald left you a note, saying more jewels were hidden in the city.”
“Yes, but he never told me where.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of a place he would have chosen?”
“Only that he always made bad decisions, so, no matter where it was, it’s probably long gone.”
“Did Heidi know?”
“We’ve never spoken about it,” she said.
Doreen hesitated, not sure if she should tell her. “She told me that she’d never seen you wearing any.”
“Of course not,” Aretha said. “I hate to say it, but I’ve been forced to sell everything. And even now I barely have enough to pay Heidi.”
“But Heidi’s done very well?”
“She’s done very well,” she said. “She once told me that she got a surprise inheritance from her mother.”
“Interesting,” she said.
Aretha looked at her and frowned. “In what way?”
Doreen smiled and shrugged. “An awful lot of dead people are involved in this scenario.”
“True,” Aretha said. “Sometimes I wish I was one of them. Growing old gracefully is one thing. Growing old and broke and graceful is a whole different problem,” she said with half a smile.
“True enough,” Doreen said, understanding more than Aretha knew. “And you trust Heidi, correct?”
Aretha nodded. “Yes. Of course I do. Why?”
“I just wondered if she thought maybe you would leave her the jewels when you passed on.”
“I don’t have anything to leave her,” Aretha said sadly. “Even my second husband didn’t leave me enough to live on. I knew he was lost and still in love with his first wife, but I was looking for companionship, so I took what was offered. But I think I shortchanged myself both times.”
“So how did you end up moving in with Heidi?” Doreen asked.
“She offered,” Aretha said. “She came to me one day, and we were talking. I told her how upset I was about the way my life had worked out. All of it, starting with never having the burglary solved.”
“Did Heidi’s mother suspect her brother?”
Aretha nodded.