Текст книги "A Silver Wolf Christmas"

Автор книги: Spear Terry

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“Is this going to take much longer? Unless you think I killed my brother, I’ve got to get back to the candy shop. I have a new girl there, but she’s rather hopeless.”

“Just a few more questions we need answers to. Why did you come and check on me when I fell in the pit?” Though CJ suspected Charity wouldn’t have killed her brother, she might have murdered Clarinda, as much as she seemed to despise her.

“I was curious if one of Sheridan’s sons would really investigate the disappearance of my brother and reveal the truth. When I left Silver Town, I left for good, figuring my brother and Clarinda were enjoying running a hotel somewhere else, having gotten rid of me, and had found their happily ever after. It angered me to think that, of course. Yet another part of me hoped that’s what had happened and that my brother hadn’t met with foul play.”

Charity let out her breath. “I stayed away for a good decade, mated, and lost my mate, but in all that time, I couldn’t quit wondering what had become of my brother. I kept looking for him, searching for clues. I even did Internet searches, hoping I’d find him somewhere. As you know, we often change our identities over the years because of our longevity.”

“How did you find him in the pit?” Laurel asked.

“I was taking a run out there. Still searching for clues that my brother hadn’t left the area. I kept thinking he wouldn’t abandon the hotel and not me either. I smelled something dead, an elk, and curious, I came to see what had killed it. The smell was coming from a pit. The deadfall had fallen through. It was winter and the sun was shining brightly. But it was still too dark in the pit to see clearly, as deep as it was. You know how things can keep nagging at you? Well, that pit kept nagging at me. Why would someone cover up a pit, then catch an animal for supper, and not come and remove the beast? Why would it be rotting down there?”

“The hunter was long gone?” CJ asked.

“Could have been. Still, I had to know. I left to get a rope and a lantern. I didn’t have any way to climb in there, without being afraid I couldn’t get back out. So I just lowered the lantern into the pit. And what I saw horrified me. A skeleton, and the light reflecting off my brother’s diamond stickpin. So who killed him? Someone in your pack. I couldn’t approach anyone. I didn’t know who had done it.”

CJ looked at Laurel. She had worried about the same thing.

“I heard that Sheridan had died. Thinking he was the one who had been involved with Clarinda, that he killed my brother and she ran away, I decided it didn’t matter.”

“Yet you continued to come here. To visit the area,” CJ said.

Charity brushed away a tear. “Yes. If my brother had been killed, and Sheridan had done it, Clarinda might have run off, fearing for her life. But what if she didn’t? What if I came across her body next? So I kept looking—to find closure.”

CJ thought about how his father had Clarinda’s locket. He felt his stomach knot again. But what if his father had only found the locket? What if he didn’t know who it belonged to and never followed up on it?

The truth was, as sheriff, his father was too methodical to let something like that go. He would have investigated the case until he learned the truth.

“I understand. One other thing. Before I fell into the pit, the deadfall was covering it up.”

“Yes, someone did it every time something fell in the pit.”

“Why?”

She gave him a sly look. “That was another reason I kept going back to the area, watching, waiting for—him.”

“Then it has to be someone still in the area.”

“Or someone covering for someone else. I always wore hunter’s spray so he wouldn’t smell my scent in the area. But so was he.”

“Hell, you should have let the pack know,” CJ said. “We would have looked into this.”

“Like Sheridan did? No, thank you.”

CJ shook his head. “All right. Well, we’ll damn sure look into it now. I want to thank you for all your help, Charity. Will you be staying in the area?”

“Yes. I own a successful candy shop here. I enjoy Green Valley and don’t have any plans to leave. Stop by there anytime, if you like.”

“We will,” Laurel said, and this time she offered a small smile.

“I’m sorry about Clarinda’s disappearance. If I knew what happened that day, I’d share.”

“Thank you,” Laurel said.

“Can we drop you off at your store?” CJ asked.

Charity hesitated, then nodded. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Ryan, we’re going to drop Charity off at her shop,” CJ called out. He knew that even if Ryan hadn’t been purposefully listening in, he would have heard some of the discussion, so he probably heard she had another name.

Ryan came out of his office and said, “Okay. Just let us know when you have those gift boxes of chocolates ready to pick up and I’ll drop by. Did you want to go by Charity or Pamela?”

“Pamela.” The woman’s whole outlook seemed to brighten when Ryan mentioned the candy order, and she smiled at him. “I’ll give you a call.”

After they said their good-byes, CJ drove them into the town of Green Valley. Charity’s candy store was simply called the Candy Store. It was housed in an old Victorian house painted purple with white trim, the inside bright and white to emphasize the carousels of displays, colorful suckers hanging from the ceiling, jars and barrels filled with neon-colored candies, and gift boxes of chocolates displayed for every occasion.

“I know where I’m going to start my Christmas shopping,” Laurel said, and Charity’s expression softened a bit.

“I’ll give you a discount,” she offered.

Laurel laughed. “You have a deal.”

“Oh, and take this,” Charity said, pulling a card off her counter. “It has my number on it if you ever want to talk. If…there’s anything else you think of and need to know. And…if you learn what happened to your aunt, I’d love to know too.”

“We’ll let you know,” Laurel said, and then she gave Charity a hug.

Both women’s eyes were filled with tears, and CJ was at a loss as to what to say.

But then Laurel started to shop for candy for gifts, and everything seemed fine.

After spending over a couple hundred dollars on boxes of special candies for everyone who had helped Laurel and her sisters, she and CJ thanked Charity again and headed out.

“I think that was a step in helping Charity to heal,” CJ said as they drove back to his place, the truck filled with the fragrance of sweet treats.

“I was glad to. And I really was delighted to get so much of my Christmas shopping done in one fell swoop.” Though she was wondering what she was going to get for CJ. “So what do you think? About everything Charity said?”

“It’s hard to say. She held a real grudge against your aunt, so some of the things she said were colored by that. It happened quite a number of years ago, so that will make a difference memory-wise. As to whether she had a triplet brother named John—one who fathered Stanton Wernicke and his brothers? I don’t think she had reason to lie. Which means that the brothers just coincidentally had the same name and thought they’d try to take advantage of the situation by claiming kinship. They probably suspected Warren and Charity were dead and couldn’t come back to tell the truth concerning their supposed kinship. Or, the brothers weren’t named Wernicke that far back. It’s just a name they’ve used more recently.”

“But Darien said he found that John did exist and had died where and when the brothers said that he had.”

“Agreed. But if they’ve been wolves for a long time, they might have changed their identities at some point. I need to take you home, and then we’ll see if my grandfather’s chest of drawers had any secret compartments that my dad might have known about and hidden something in.”

Laurel was glad to know Charity was among the living. That she was happily running her own candy store and not the hotel she had loathed. Laurel wished they had found Charity’s brother alive. But she still hoped her aunt might be.

“I’d forgotten all about your grandfather’s chest.” Laurel hoped they wouldn’t find anything to confirm that Sheridan had something to do with her aunt’s disappearance.

Chapter 21

On the way home, CJ called Darien. “We didn’t learn much new, but here’s what we have.” He explained everything and then added, “Can you have Peter arrest the Wernicke brothers on some charge? Have them locked up and watched to see if they shift during the full moon tonight? We just need one in jail to prove whether they’re royals or not.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Another thing, we don’t want the word to get out about Charity running the candy store in case someone killed her brother and wants to get rid of her too. She’s going by Pamela Houser, and I figure we’ll keep her real name under wraps.”

“Understand.”

“Okay, well, we’re looking into another matter and then taking off the rest of the night.”

“Sounds good, CJ. I’ll let you know about the Wernicke brothers later. We’ll be questioning them about what Charity said. We’ll just say we have a source of information that proves it, without identifying her. We’re having the meeting with the elders tomorrow night in the conference room.”

“All right. Let me know how it goes with the brothers.” They ended the call, and when they reached CJ’s home—and now Laurel’s, CJ thought with a thrill—he asked her, “How are you feeling?”

“Exhausted.”

“I’ll fix us some hot cocoa if you’d like, and then we’ll see if we can find anything in my grandfather’s chest.” He motioned to an old oak chest, tall with thirty drawers.

“CJ, I hate to bring this up, but why would your father have a locket with a picture of both my mom and my aunt in it? He told my mother when she came looking for her sister that Clarinda had never worked at the hotel. So that proves he lied about it.”

“Maybe.”

She frowned at him, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “We can’t know for sure. We have to consider every possibility. What if he found it and kept it, hoping to find the owner? She could have shifted, left, and then was never seen again. Anything could have happened. We just don’t know.”

Laurel let out her breath in exasperation, hating to admit CJ was right.

“You’ve never talked about your mother.” Not that she’d mentioned her own either. But maybe Sheridan’s relationship with his wife would give Laurel a clue.

“She died when we were six. A hunter killed her when she was taking us out to the woods to run as wolves.”

CJ had to have been traumatized to see his own mother shot and killed like that, and Laurel felt terrible about it. “As wolves?”

“No. None of us had shifted yet. He said he thought she was a deer.”

“God, I’m so sorry, CJ. Was he human?”

“Yeah. Darien’s dad was the leader at the time. Dad wanted the man dead for killing his mate. But Darien’s dad had to find the man not guilty of murder. It wasn’t a case of premeditated murder. Just an accident.”

She stirred the chocolate around in the milk in the saucepan. “Was your dad angry about it?”

“Yeah. Not only did he love our mom, but he had four six-year-old boys to raise on his own. Though everyone in the pack helped to raise us, including Darien’s mom.”

“Did Sheridan ever take another mate?”

“No. He didn’t let that stop him from having affairs, but he never took a mate again.”

“I hate to ask this…” Laurel hesitated.

“Ask. Any question that can lead us to solving this case is worth asking.”

“Did your father take a token after he committed the murder?”

“No.”

Laurel sighed with relief. “Then why would he have my aunt’s locket?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid.”

“What if—and I know this is really far-out—but what if your father was romantically involved with my aunt? What if she was referring to your father in the postcard?”

“Why would he have her locket? And deny she had been here?”

“I don’t know. What if she went for a run in the woods and vanished? And Sheridan discovered her clothes and necklace?”

“But he would have reported it. He wouldn’t have ignored it. Not if he felt something for her.”

“And if he didn’t?”

“Then you’re back to the notion that my father had something to do with her disappearance.”

She hated to admit he was right. She poured the heated cocoa into mugs.

He added marshmallows, then took her in his arms and hugged her tight. “No matter what we find—”

“It doesn’t reflect on you or your brothers, CJ. I just want to know the truth.”

He kissed her mouth. “I know. I do too.”

She loved him and was grateful he was taking all of this in stride.

They each grabbed a mug of cocoa and walked into the living room to start searching the old chest.

“I guess we’ll just begin pulling out drawers and see what we can find,” he said.

They drank their mugs of cocoa, then set them on the coffee table and began to pull one drawer out at a time to examine.

“Wait,” she said, feeling something move as she slid her fingers over the bottom of the drawer. “Maybe the joints are no longer as secure, but…if it has a secret bottom, wouldn’t there be a trigger to release the cover?”

“Can you use one of your fingernails to lift the panel, if that’s what it is?” CJ asked, drawing closer, his breath warm against her hair as he peered down at the drawer.

“No. Do you have a fingernail file?”

“Turn it upside down.”

She did and it rattled a bit, which she figured was the loose panel or the bottom of the drawer no longer fitting snuggly against the sides.

“Okay, let me see what I can find.”

She kept trying to slip her fingernail between the panel and the front of the drawer without success.

“This is a long shot,” CJ said, returning with a thin screwdriver and a magnet.

He used the magnet first and it immediately grabbed hold of the panel and lifted it. “Well, I’ll be damned.” A piece of metal glued to the underside of the panel had attracted the magnet.

But they didn’t find any secret items or documents. Just lots of big, green bills—ten-thousand-dollar bills. Ten of them.

“Ohmigod, CJ.” She turned to pull another drawer out. “Why would he have all this money hidden in here? And such big bills?”

“Grandfather Silver didn’t trust the banks. We found around five hundred thousand stuffed in his mattress. I’m surprised Dad didn’t come across the false drawers. Then again, each of the drawers was stuffed with stationary supplies—pens, ink, envelopes, notepads, paper clips, scissors, and the like. Dad never emptied them.

“Before I brought it home, I dumped all the stuff in the drawers into one of the boxes we searched through. And everything was rattling around so much in the drawers, I never considered they might have false bottoms.” He smiled again. “Man, are my brothers going to be surprised. None of them wanted this old chest. But I’d always loved it. Grandfather built it himself. Now I know why.”

“Where did he get the money?”

“He worked hard all his very long life. Made some wise investments in land and ended up having property with a gravel pit. Gravel made a mint for him.”

“Wow. Are you going to share? Or turn the bills over to a museum?”

“I’ll ask my brothers what they want to do with the money, though since you’re my mate…”

“It’s your family’s. You and your brothers need to decide.”

She rattled the second drawer. “He can’t have had false drawers in all of these.”

CJ was grinning his head off as he watched her use the magnet on the second drawer. Up came the panel. And more greenbacks. Ten more.

“I’ve got to call Mason, the owner of the bank. We need to put these in the safety deposit box tonight,” CJ said.

“They’ll open the bank for you?”

“Hell, yeah. It’s pack run and we do things for each other like that. Banker’s hours don’t count if we’ve got a real issue to deal with.”

“I love it.” As if the money didn’t mean anything, she grabbed for another drawer. This time so did CJ.

Thirty drawers. A mix of money—from one-hundred-dollar bills to piles of the granddaddy of them all, the ten-thousand-dollar green note. CJ stared at one of the big notes. “I wonder who Samuel P. Chase was.”

Laurel was busy counting the money, stacking the bills in like denominations, then counting the stacks.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

CJ shook his head. “Let me make this call and get this money to the bank, and then I’m taking you to bed.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“We’ve been mated how long and money is the priority?”

He smiled and took her in his arms. “You’d rather we made love first?”

“No. Really, just teasing. It would kill me if someone broke into the house and stole all that money. Go call and make the arrangements. I’m going to take a nice, warm bath and see you when you return.”

“If you go to sleep on me, I’m waking you.”

“Promises.” She kissed him, then hurried off to the bedroom.

He got on the phone, wishing he didn’t have to take care of this right now. “Hey, Mason? I need to make a nighttime deposit.”

“What’s going on?”

“Remember when my brothers and I found all that money Granddad hid in his old mattress? I just found more. But let’s keep this just between you and me—and my mate, of course.”

* * *

Before Laurel took a bath, she wondered if anything as simple as a magnet could locate false bottoms to the drawers in her aunt’s furniture. She called Ellie. “Ellie, I don’t think we have any, but we just found a secret hideaway in CJ’s grandfather’s old chest, using a magnet to lift the false drawer bottom.”

“Oh, cool. Um, I don’t think we have any magnets in the house. And I’m on a date right now.”

Shocked that her sister would start dating as soon as Laurel mated a wolf, she realized just how much her sisters had put their lives on hold because of her. “Who?”

“Brett. We’re at the tavern. I’ll see if he has a magnet, but we’re going for a moonlit run tonight first.”

“I’ll call Meghan.”

“Can you call her a little later?”

Suspicious, Laurel asked, “Why?”

“She’s got company.”

Laurel smiled. When the pack leader was away… “Who?”

“Peter.”

Laurel chuckled. “All right. I’ll check with her later.”

After that, she climbed into the warm water in the tub and had nearly dozed off when she heard her phone ringing in the bedroom. She groaned and climbed out of the tub. Seizing a towel, she wrapped it around herself, then hurried into the other room. When she grabbed the phone, she saw it was Meghan. “What’s wrong?”

“We just had a break-in.”

Laurel heard CJ in the living room and wondered when he’d gotten home from the bank.

“I just had to call and let you know that we were broken into. Peter had already left and said CJ was at the bank and was closer. CJ’s here now and wanted me to let you know we’re all right, and he’d be home soon.”

If CJ was with Meghan… Her heart racing to the moon and back, Laurel hurried to the bedroom door, shut it, and locked it. “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered. “I’m shifting.”

“Ohmigod,” was all Meghan said before Laurel dropped the phone on the bed, leaving the line open in the event something happened to her. Then her sister shouted, “CJ, someone’s broken into your house!”

Laurel had already shifted into her wolf form and had been staring at the door for a second when she heard footfalls headed toward the bedroom door. Her heart in her throat, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if CJ had another gun in the house, but she’d never used one anyway, so she figured her teeth were a better bet. Still, if someone in the house had a gun, she wouldn’t be any match for him.

She shifted back into her human form, ran to the window, unlocked it, and then slid it open, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t realize she was trying to escape that way.

The doorknob twisted. She shifted and leaped through the window as a wolf. She suspected many of CJ’s neighbors were wolves, but she didn’t know for sure.

Then she wondered why anyone would have broken into her sisters’ home and now CJ’s. What was the man—as she was certain it was a man—looking for?

But she figured running outside in the snow would be a safer bet, and she headed for the hotel, hoping she’d encounter CJ, who would be driving back here at once.

If the Wernicke brothers had been taken in for questioning, they’d be in jail, not out breaking into homes. Unless Darien had incarcerated only one of them. Yet, she wondered how the person had broken into the hotel’s guest house. They had an alarm set. Maybe it had gone off and that’s why they knew someone was breaking in.

She raced along the wide front yards of the homes in CJ’s development, the houses all looking cheerfully Christmas-like in their holiday finery, many of them having icicle lights that dripped off the eaves, simulating real icicles, though they all had some of those too.

She headed south through the treed area that had been set aside as a park with fountains and walking trails that were dark at night, perfect for the wolves living closer to town. The full moon was shining off the white snow collected on the fir branches and the path when she heard movement in the trees to her left.

Then she saw the green glow of eyes—wolf eyes. The wolf’s coat was white. A smaller female wolf, about Laurel’s size. And she instantly thought of Charity. What was she doing here? Still trying to catch the wolf who killed her brother? Or had Charity had something to do with it?

Laurel hesitated, not sure what to think, when she heard a van parking at the lot used for visitors to the park. She turned and listened. A door slid open. It sounded like a panel van, like the one the Wernicke brothers owned. If she’d been near when they had opened the door or had driven by her in that van, she would have recognized the sound of the vehicle.

Whoever it was, he was coming this way as a human, his boots crunching on the crusted snow.

Laurel glanced back at the wolf. She was gone. Laurel was just as glad because if the person following her was bad news, she didn’t want the older woman to be hurt. The problem was that if the man was a wolf, he could follow Laurel’s scent, shift if he wanted, and come after her.

“Laurel?” Jacob called out.

Their electrician? She frowned. Then she melted into the woods, wanting to go to him, but unsure about exposing herself.

“CJ said your house was broken into. I was over at your sisters’ place, trying to determine why the alarm hadn’t gone off, when we learned someone was at CJ’s house. CJ and I immediately headed for his place in separate vehicles. But then I saw you running as a wolf in the direction of the park. CJ was going to try to catch up to the men who had broken into his house. We figure it’s the same ones who broke into the other house. I headed in the direction you took off in since he has a gun and I don’t. I’ll take you home before anyone sees you running out here as a wolf.”

CJ wouldn’t have gone home to apprehend the house breaker. His priority would have to search for her and protect her.

“Shit!” Jacob cried out at the same time that a wolf’s vicious growls rent the air.

Laurel raced to the scene and saw Charity’s wolf teeth clamped on Jacob’s arm, clinging for dear life as Jacob tried to beat her off with his bare hands.

Laurel lunged at him, slamming her front paws into his chest and bringing him down hard against the crusted snow. She clamped her teeth on his left arm and bit hard enough to force him to hold still, praying that she hadn’t just injured an innocent man. But he had to have lied to her about CJ.

Then she let go and lifted her chin and howled.