Chapter 7

It wasn't until 2:00 p.m. when Mr. Rhinert showed up and by that time the two detectives and Richard had, had a nice meal in the small village in Tarikide close to Highway 11.

            As they were about to order desert, Francis got paged and they started heading back. But as they drove down Berrine Road and entered Orchard Park, they found out that Mr. Rhinert hadn't arrived and it was the Mabels that wanted to talk to the two detectives.

            Richard followed Mark and Francis as they approached the Mabels who were now standing on their lawn in front of the dirt road. It was 1:00 p.m. and Carl had left and had been replaced with Fred Stanz who looked like the stereotypical overweight police officer and Mark wasn't sure if he ate donuts and drank coffee.

            Fred had paged Francis, and once the Mabels saw them, they led the two detectives and Richard to their dock, where they pointed to a blood stained buttoned down long sleeved white shirt that was floating in the bay covered in a few reeds.

            Who ever had put it there, had been trying to hide it under the dock but it had floated out into the open.

            "We didn't find it until now," replied Patricia. "Must've been under the dock."

            Mark and Francis nodded.

            "By now all DNA has washed away, but that was what the criminal was intending in the first place," said Mark.

            "See what I told you Richard?" asked Francis looking at Richard, who was staring at the shirt. "Here we are with a new surprise."

            Richard nodded.

            The white shirt really stood out in the brownish reeds and greenish swampy water and every time a boat passed by, waves would hit against the shirt throwing it against the small rocks in front of the dock and then dragging it back into the water.

            "Perfect washing system going on," said Francis, pointing to the waves that were pushing the shirt onto the rocks. "Scrapes on the rocks and then hits the water again, and the cycle continues. Whoever's shirt this is, might as well have thrown it where it is now, instead of hiding it under the dock."

            "I don't think he wanted people to find it," suggested Mark.

            "Well if he didn't, then why didn't he just bury the damn thing or something. Who in their right mind throws a blood stained shirt under a dock? It's going to reveal itself sometime."

            "Maybe he planned for it to sink or maybe he began trying to wash off the evidence and something caught his attention to leave. Patricia, did you hear anyone last night or the night of the murder?"

            Patricia shook her head.

            "All I've heard is crickets and someone screaming on the night of the murder," she said.

            "I'm going to grab some gloves from the car and bag this thing so it doesn't sit in that water any longer. Mark would you care to join me?" asked Francis as he walked off the dock.

            Mark nodded.

            "John and Patricia, will you watch over Richard for me?" Mark asked.

            The Mabels nodded as they and Richard sat on the grass beside the dock staring at the shirt.

            Before Mark left, Richard cried,

            "Dad, I'm not four you know."

            "But you're not eighteen either," said Mark, as he followed Francis to the Mercedes.

            Richard sighed as he watched his father leave.

* * *

"What's on your mind?" Mark asked Francis, knowing that you didn't need two people to get latex gloves.

            "Do you think the Mabels placed the shirts there?"

            "Again with the Mabels," sighed Mark.

            For an older man, Mark felt he was more in charge.

            "It makes perfect sense. One minute there's no shirt and the next thing you know, there is one and on the day Mr. Rhinert arrives too."

            "How does that help them? To me, it would help Mr. Rhinert because isn't that proof that he couldn't have done it because the shirt ended up under the Mabels dock? My guess to how he would have been involved would be that he killed Sandra far away from Orchard Park and then dumped her into the ditch to make it look like it happened here then somewhere else, leaving him out of the equation since he's supposedly in Toronto."

            "Exactly, why the Mabels did it," said Francis as he opened up his car. "They put the shirt under the dock to make it look like Mr. Rhinert killed Sandra before he left."

            "That would all depend on when he left Orchard Park, but once he's here we'll find that out."

            Francis nodded as he reached into a box between the seats and pulled out two sets of latex gloves. He handed two to Mark.

            "I'm sorry Mark," said Francis as Mark took the gloves while he locked the door. "But this case makes no sense. Off screams and then a random shirt appearing in the lake, you would think the Mabels are screwing with us."

            "Seems that way, doesn't it? But if anyone killed Sandra, I'd say it was Mr. Rhinert because the Mabels don't look like the type of people who would kill Sandra and besides, Sandra's so much younger than they are. When I saw her body, she looked like she could be just over thirty-five or forty. You think the two of them could tackle a forty-year-old woman?"

            "Mr. Mabel looks pretty strong."

            "I doubt it Francis."

            "Just a hunch."

            "You have a lot of hunches don't you?" asked Mark, as the two detectives put on the latex gloves.

            "Don't you?"

            "I wait until I have all the evidence laid out in front of me."

            "You expect more?"

            "It's only the second day, these cases usually don't get wrapped up that fast, but maybe this'll be different. I would at least like to hear what Mr. Rhinert would like to say before I make any accusations," said Mark, as they began heading back to the dock.

            Then Francis realised he had forgot something.

            "S**t, I forgot the bag!" he cried as he dashed up the small hill that his car was on.