Uzi in the Urn, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
About Victim in the Violets
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Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
A new cozy mystery series from USA Today best-selling author Dale Mayer. Follow gardener and amateur sleuth Doreen Montgomery—and her amusing and mostly lovable cat, dog, and parrot—as they catch murderers and solve crimes in lovely Kelowna, British Columbia.
Riches to rags. … Hidden guns, … old but not forgotten wounds, … and a buried treasure!
Finding an Uzi in the urn at the shattered mausoleum is exciting and frustrating. Yet Doreen can’t delve into the case, and Mack has been firm about that. She struggles to focus on other cases from her journalist files, in particular the Bob Small file. Only her plan goes off the rails when Nan and her cronies show up at her door, with the Rosemoor bus, intent on heading to the excitement happening at the cemetery.
When a grave is opened to reveal its shocking contents, the city is on high alert, as gang members arrive, circling around, looking for a rumored buried treasure, all connected to a man who died six months ago. Between crooked lawyers, greedy family members, changes of heart, and everyone else out looking for a buried treasure, Corporal Mack Moreau is on his toes. Especially as Doreen and her animal cohorts are in the middle once again.
But no one could possibly envision where this case ends up—right back in the cemetery where it all started …
Chapter 1
Midway into the Third Week of September
Doreen walked along the cemetery in Kelowna, Mack at her side, the animals roaming gently on leashes around them. Annabelle’s funeral had been well attended by many of the locals. It did Doreen’s heart good to see the large crowd, to see the people who loved Annabelle and who would miss her.
Doreen took a deep breath and stretched out her arms. “Life can be pretty good sometimes,” she noted.
“At least you look a bit more relaxed, after taking a few days off from your bizarre hobby.”
“I feel better too,” she murmured, looking up at him with a bright smile. “That last one was a little scary.”
“A little?” he quipped. “Remember how you weren’t supposed to get attacked anymore?”
“Remember how you were supposed to jump in at the right time to save me?”
He sighed. “Yeah, believe me. I’m still not happy about that.”
“What? The fact that you followed my instructions, or the fact that we solved this one?”
“It’s not even a matter of having solved it. We did get the confession, on paper, and that makes it a heck of a lot easier for us,” he noted, with a smile. “But thinking about how crazy it was will give me nightmares for weeks.”
“Right? And then Nathan, he needs some counseling.”
“His dad’s there for him,” Mack noted. “I can’t imagine what that conversation looked like.”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t easy. I have heard from both of them since though, and they’re doing better. They will be fine.”
He smiled, kissed her gently on the forehead, and said, “You’re good people.”
“I know I am. So are you.”
He laughed. “Sometimes I wonder.”
She looked over at the mausoleum full of tiny little locked drawers. “So these are full of those urns? I guess it’s for people who have been cremated and who don’t want to go in the ground.”
He nodded. “People who don’t want to be buried, and family members who want a place where they can come and visit their loved ones.” He pointed to the beautiful plaques on the marble faces of each locked drawer.
She nodded. As they wandered up and down, she read off a bunch of the names. “Some of these are old.”
“Sure,” Mack said, “this practice is fairly common in a lot of places in the world.”
“I haven’t had a whole lot to do with death,” she noted. “Outside of, …”
He nodded. “I know.” He gave her a smile.
She laughed. “Kelowna has been good for me.”
“Yeah, it has been—and for me too. And, yes, I did talk to my brother and my mother,” he shared, with an eye roll.
She chuckled. “At least we know that they have your best interests at heart.”
“Sure, but it’s been a long time since I had to deal with my family checking in on my love life.”
She smiled. “I never really had it at all, so I find it very cute.”
“It’s hardly cute,” Mack argued. “Even my brother was in on this.”
“I know, but think. Maybe my ex will finally divorce me, and we can get free of him.”
“Maybe.” Mack studied her. “You keep telling everybody that, until you’re free and clear, you won’t take the next step.”
“Nope, I won’t. You know that.”
“I do.”
She hesitated, a little bit of uncertainty entering her voice as she asked, “Or are you changing your mind?”
He stopped and glared at her. “Do I look as if I’m changing my mind? How many people do you know who wander cemeteries?”
“We were here for Annabelle, so it’s not all that unusual.”
“Maybe.” He sighed. “But no. I’m not changing my mind. I’m waiting. Patiently.”
“Sometimes patiently.” She chuckled.
“Fine. … Impatiently.”
She nodded. “And it’s appreciated. I don’t feel as if I can move forward until I take care of my past.” He reached out, letting his hand slide down her arm to grasp her fingers in his. She gave a gentle squeeze back. “This is such a beautiful resting place,” she murmured in quiet joy. “So much history.” As she rounded the corner, she gasped. “Look.”
And there, one of the tiles had been cracked open.
Mack frowned, as he dropped her hand and stepped forward. “Vandalism is another problem but not usually like this.” He sighed.
“Yeah, but …” She stopped and looked into the opened-up area. “The urn’s still here, or something is.”
He opened up his phone and hit Flashlight and said, “Yeah, you can still see it there. That’s something.”
Peering closer, she pointed. “Something else is beside it. I can’t really see it clearly.”
He put on a pair of gloves, and, moving some of the marble out of the way, he managed to open up enough that his flashlight shone into the dark space, and they could see what it was.
“It’s black,” she noted. “What is that?”
He muttered a curse word.
“We really should work on your swearing.”
He sighed. “Says you.”
“What is it?” she queried.
He drew his phone closer and made a call.
She frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”
He placed a finger against his lips, and he quickly answered the questions at the other end.
After he’d disconnected, she asked, “Uzi? Did you say an Uzi is in there?”
He glared at her. “No. No, I did not.”
Her lips twitched. She’d heard him, and, once she’d heard him, there was no end to it. “In an urn,” she cried out. “So there is … Wait for it, wait for it.”
And he shook his head. “No, no, I’m not listening.” And he clapped his hands over his ears.
She burst out laughing. “Doesn’t matter,” she declared. “You can run, but you can’t hide. My next case is the Uzi in the Urn.”
And she burst out laughing because she had another case, and it rolled off her tongue. Uzi in the Urn.
Chapter 2
Doreen sat outside on her patio, a notepad beside her, her laptop open, a cup of coffee at her side, but all she could do was stare out aimlessly at the world around her. She was focused on a gun—an Uzi at that. The gun had been dismantled, so a piece would fit in the cremation urn itself in the broken vault that she and Mack had found.
She understood men and their toys, but wasn’t that carrying a favorite weapon a little over-the-top that he be buried with it? And not tossed into a grave and buried in the ground but hidden in a vault with an urn full of ashes? If they were ashes? She shook her head.
Mack had done an incredibly fast job of getting her out of there, against all her protests. She’d been pretty upset at the time, as this was something that she could really get into, but he didn’t want her involved. Of course not. She kept inserting herself in his cases. She sighed at that, and, when her phone rang, she snatched it up. “Hello?”
Mathew, her soon-to-be ex-husband, and not who she had expected. She groaned, pinched the b ridge of her nose. “What do you want? You realize now I’m in trouble for even answering.”
Mathew sighed. “I don’t understand you.”
“What’s to understand?” she cried out. “I want this divorce mess over with.”
“That’s all I want too,” he roared.
“Then sign the dratted paperwork,” she muttered.
“I would have done so already,” he snapped, “if you weren’t such a greedy B. If you weren’t, none of this would be a problem.”
She stopped at that and glared at her phone. “Okay, so now that this conversation is degenerating, I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t,” he yelled.
She hesitated but knew perfectly well what Nick would say. “I’m not allowed to talk to you,” she stated and then winced because, of course, that’s exactly what she was doing. She remembered Mack giving her a warning about still being under the influence of her ex, and she wondered if this was yet another symptom of that. “What do you want?” she asked calmly.
“I want you to be reasonable.”
“And I don’t even know what reasonable is in this matter,” she declared. “So I trust my lawyer.”
“Yeah, well, you trusted the last one too,” he growled.
“Yeah, and look how far that got me.”
“She made my life miserable too. And what’s this I understand that you’ll inherit from her?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” she lied smoothly, wincing at her ability to do that. Not exactly the personal growth she was hoping for. “The will’s supposed to be in probate.”
“Yeah, I already called her lawyer and talked to him.”
“Why? Were you expecting something from Robin?” she asked, with a giggle.
At first, silence came from the other end. “No reason for her not to.” But his tone was defensive, angry even.
“You weren’t together long enough,” Doreen noted. “If you hadn’t been so pissed off at her, she might have had time to change her will. But she didn’t, and the lawyers already got the official will, so you’re out of luck.”
“And, if you’re getting money from her, you don’t need money from me,” he replied craftily.
“I don’t know anything about Robin’s will,” she stated. “I don’t know what I might be getting.”
“That’s a lie,” Mathew snapped. “The will has already been read.”
“Sure it’s been read, but an awful lot of parts and pieces of her estate must be sold,” she snapped right back, “and that’s nothing that I know anything about. Remember? I don’t know anything about business, according to you.”
“Because you don’t,” he said, with that sneering tone again.
She shook her head. “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out. Otherwise I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait,” he cried out.
However, this time she didn’t wait. She ended the call for good. She sat, staring at her phone, as if it were a viper, and knew that she would be in trouble because now she had to phone Nick and confess. Groaning at that, she quickly picked up her phone, and, when she got no response on the other end, she smiled, thinking she had a lucky escape. She quickly left him a short message to tell him what happened and hung up. When her phone rang only a few minutes later, she groaned because, of course, it was Nick. “What?”
“So, are you angry at me?” Nick asked.
“No,” Doreen corrected, “but I do feel like a kid who has done something wrong.”
Nick laughed. “Well, you did. So why did you answer the phone in the first place?”
“Because I didn’t look at who it was first. I was expecting your brother to call. So I picked up the phone and answered it.”
“Ah, so back to my brother again.”
She groaned. “Don’t tell him that. It’ll just go to his head,” she muttered, “and I’m not talking to him.”
“If you’re not talking to him,” Nick stated, half chuckling, “how is it that you were answering the phone to talk to him?”
She glared at her phone again. “Stop with the mind games,” she mumbled.
At that, he burst out in a big guffaw. “Oh, I do like hearing all this. You two are meant to be together. You’ll be good for him.”
“I don’t think he thinks so. Right now he’s more than a little frustrated at me.”
“Why?” he asked curiously. “What happened?” She told him about the walk in the cemetery and what they found.
“Good Lord. In one of those mausoleum boxes?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m sure there’s a proper name for them. I don’t know what it is. But, yes, in one wall with plaques and urns behind them. One had been broken open, yet nobody seemed to take away what was inside it.”
“So maybe it wasn’t so much vandalism as an accident—think of a child and a baseball bat.”
“I guess it’s possible. It was the only one damaged.” And then she thought about it for a second. “However, I don’t know that for a fact—that this was the only one broken into. We didn’t get through them all. Hmm, maybe I should go back and take another look.”
“Or maybe you should stay out of it, so that my brother doesn’t get angry at you,” Nick suggested.
“He already is,” she stated. “I didn’t want to leave the cemetery, and he was not very happy about that either.”
Nick chuckled. “Mack does have a job to do, and he is trying to make these cases stick in a court of law,” he explained. “So the least outside interference, the better it would be for making a successful case in court.”
“I know. I know. I know,” she muttered. “But he made me come home, after we found something awesome like that, and then he wouldn’t let me talk about it. He wouldn’t even let me see anything more. He went ahead and called in for backup of all things, as if an active shooter were at the cemetery at that time. … And when there was some excitement, he sent me home. On top of that, he didn’t even drive me home himself. He sent me home with Arnold. And you can bet Arnold was busy chattering the whole time about what they found.”
“I’m sure Arnold won’t get a good reception, not when Mack finds out that he did that either,” Nick noted, still chuckling.
“Maybe not,” she agreed, “but then Arnold shouldn’t have done quite so much talking.”
“I think that’s part of Arnold’s charm, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Sure, but he’s not very good at sharing straightforward information though,” she muttered. “He does go around in circles.”
Nick laughed again. “So what did your husband want?”
“He told me to be reasonable, and, now that I’m getting money from Robin, I shouldn’t need his money.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that I didn’t know anything about the money from Robin. Her estate was all in probate. Yes, I know that I’ve been left something, but I didn’t share that with Mathew. Plus, a lot is still left to be done with Robin’s property, like selling stuff. And it had nothing to do with Mathew.”
“Good,” Nick replied, “and that’s quite true. A lot is still left to be done, and it has nothing to do with your husband. Regardless of whether you end up inheriting millions from Robin, it still doesn’t change the fact that Mathew owes you millions too.”
“What it does mean is that he’s getting desperate, and desperate means dangerous,” she muttered.
“Any animal’s dangerous when cornered, but this guy? … I keep warning you that something ugly can come from this,” Nick reminded her. “I keep asking you if you have any serious problems with him, but you keep telling me that you don’t think so.”
“Yet, at the same time, I’m terrified that he does have serious problems with me,” she admitted.
“It would be nice if my brother were there a little more often to keep an eye on things,” Nick muttered. “However, if he’s got a hot new case …”
“He does. It’s a very hot new case, and he won’t let me anywhere close to it,” she wailed.
Nick burst out laughing, then got serious. “Don’t answer the phone if it’s your husband. Look at who’s calling you, for heaven’s sake. That’s what Caller ID is for after all. And don’t answer if he ever calls you again.”
“How close do you think he is to signing?”
“I thought we had an agreement, but we have a couple sticky points yet to resolve, and I want you to get paid right away. Now he knows that you’re not sitting there starving, and he wants to hold off and pay when the divorce deal is done and dusted.”
