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“I’ll take care of that for you.Clara Winter was a good friend to your aunt Rain, too.I’ll have to tell her what’s going on and see if she wants to get in on taking care of her.”Dad laughed after a few minutes or so.“His court date is for next week, and that neighbor has been bringing him in dinners since he’s been arrested.She’s his mother.Rain is going to come to town and see to her needing help.She hadn’t realized that her home needed some repairs either.”

He told him how the pack was going to be taking care of it since the daughter and the little boy were part wolves.Dad told him that they should have been taking care of her all along since she was raising that little boy, but he didn’t go into much with that.Melbourne was sore as he was standing there that his dad would pull enough strings that Clara would have meals brought to her and little Caleb as well as help with her bills.Wolves were a good lot, and they helped their own.He could only think that they didn’t know what was going on with Clara and her great-grandson, or they would have been doing it all along.

He didn’t know what he expected when he saw Daniel Crow.He envisioned a tall man with muscles from working out and a nice trimmed haircut.He couldn’t have been more the opposite.Daniel was short, fat, and his hair was in dreadlocks that looked as if they’d grown out a great deal, like past his big butt, and he wasn’t taking care of them.In all, he was a mess, and there was an odor about him that made Melbourne sort of sick to his belly.Like he’d not bathed in the weeks since he’d been in jail.He asked one of the officers about him.

“Won’t bathe at all.We’ve threatened to bring in a hose to hose him down, but since the Captain won’t allow us to do that, something about it being against his rights or some horse poop, we can’t even go back to take him his trays without feeling like we’re going to toss our cookies.Man, but he smells.”He asked about what he was in for.“Damage to federal property, not to mention the mail that was init.He’s going to prison for that.There will be fines, too, that he’ll have on top of jail time.Hopefully, it’s not around here.I don’t know if I could take a few more months of the way he smells or not.”

“Did you ever have an occasion to look into the disappearance of Rachel Crow?Her grandmother asked me to help her look for her.”He said that he’d not, but then he’d only been in the station for the last few weeks.He’d been transferred into the station house from another state.“She’s been missing for about five years.I think her grandmother said she comes in here a few days a month.”

“You mean crazy, Clara?Yes, I’ve heard about her.The boys tried to tell her that she was gone, that Daniel must have killed her.Then he buried her in some shallow grave someplace.Without a body, we got no case against him.”Melbourne said that wasn’t true, not in the state of Ohio.They didn’t need a body to have him arrested.“I didn’t know that.I’m going to have to look into that, of course, now.”

Melbourne had a feeling that no one would go looking for poor Rachel and her supposed grave now, either.If this was the way the police had been running things around here, it was a small wonder that anything ever got done.He wondered how many other murders had been committed, and they sat on their collective asses.He left the station house before he cleaned house with his dragon.

As tempting as it would be, it would be a lot of paperwork as well.Laughing to himself, he decided that next term, he might run for mayor of this city just to clear out the cops.He found himself telling his dad what was going on.

“You’re joking.”He told him he only wished that he had been.“I’m going to make some calls around to some friends of mine.The thing is, they could have found her at any time had they just looked around in their own town.I don’t know what makes me madder.Them calling Clara a crazy old woman or the fact that they don’t know the laws in their own community.Not to mention state rules that they’re supposed to be enforcing.”

His dad used to be a cop and had been on a domestic call where he was supposed to be killed when he was taken away by magic.The queen of the earth, Melbourne’s grandmother at the time, had saved him because he was mated to her granddaughter, Melbourne’s mom.

He had no doubt that by the end of the day, heads would be rolling.His dad wouldn’t be the one to do it, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation would certainly have a few things to say about it.

~*~

“Sammy, there’s a phone call for you.It’s your sister.”She didn’t go into panic mode like she normally did when there was a call for her but made her way to the community phone, just taking her time.“She said to remind you that it’s her birthday and that you should be wanting to do something nice for her.”

“Nice?I don’t suppose she gave you a price range as to what this nice gift is going to cost me, did she?”The cook told her no, she’d not, but like always, it was going to cost a great deal.“You got that right.I’ll tell you what it is if you want to formulate a price range while I’m talking to her.”

“You gonna tell her no, aren’t you?”She just stared at him.“Yeah, I hope so.She sounds really excited, so I’m going to assume that it’s a really nice gift you got for her.”

“She works, so I don’t understand why…it doesn’t matter.I’m not going to pay for anything that she’s gotten for herself from me.”She picked up the phone and had to wait while her sister talked to someone else.Wanting to hang up, she knew that she’d only call back and she’d not be happy with her.Suddenly she was talking to her.

“I got me the most amazing gift from you.”All she said was no.“Don’t be like that.You don’t even know what it is.”

“I’ve told you this before, Justine.I’m not going to be buying you gifts for your birthday anymore that I didn’t pick out on my own.”She said that she doesn’t get her what she wants.“I can’t afford what you want.And you’re nearly forty years old.You’re a little old to be hoping for a gift from your little sister.”

“Why do you have to be like that?Bringing up my age two days before my birthday.”She said that her birthday was in two weeks.“So.I should have a month to celebrate my birthday.It’s not every day that someone turns forty, as you might know.”

“I don’t care.I’m not going to foot the price of whatever you think that I’m going to be payingfor.”She said that she’d already put down a deposit.“Get it back.I’m not going to be footing the bill for anything.I thought you would have learned your lesson last year and the years before.I’m not going to be paying for whatever you got yourself.That’s final.”

“You’re so mean to me all the time, Sammy.I just don’t understand you.I’ll get my deposit back, but I’m not going to be happy with you for a year.You can bet you’re not going to be getting anything from me either when your birthday comes around.”She explained to her that she’d never gotten her anything for her birthday.“And this is why.You’ve managed to ruin my day with this.This trip would have been the trip of a lifetime.”

“No.”Justine simply hung up on her.Putting the handle back in the cradle, she was glad once again that she didn’t have a cell phone that her sister knew about.If she had, she’d be calling her back in an hour and telling her something else that she’d gotten for her gift from her, and they’d have to start all over again with her telling her no.

She used to have a great deal of trouble telling her sister no.There was a time when she’d go into debt just to pay for whatever she got for herself that she expected her to pay for.Then she’d smartened up.Or nearly became homeless.That was a feeling that she never was having again, to not just be out of work but out of money for even crackers and cheese to eat.

“Did she hit you up?”She told Donald that she’d not been able to tell her what it was, but she was mad.“Good for you.I knew you were smarter than you looked, and you know that I think you’re about as ugly as they come.”

“Thanks.You date much with that sort of charm?”Donald had been saying the same thing to her since she’d hired him to work in her little restaurant.It had been about the time she’d learned to tell her sister no and to have won one of the largest lotteries that had ever been established.Those three things changed her life for the better, and she had never looked back.

Going back to her office, she finished up with the order she put in and finished up the schedule that was for the next month.She could do that now that she had established a good working place for people to come to work.Sammy made a habit of hiring people who had only just gotten out of prison for various crimes, mostly white collar.And having a good working environment.

She wouldn’t hire abusers, nor would she hire anyone who harmed children.She would run very extensive background checks on everyone, and when it came back with just a hint of abuse on it, she wouldn’t hire them.She’d grown up in that kind of setting, and she wasn’t going to let anyone in that had hit people.

That’s why she didn’t understand her sister.Justine had suffered as much as she had at the hands of their parents.More so since she was older.But on a daily basis, they would either be beaten, starved, or both.It was as if their lives were so unimportant to their parents that they could and would forget about them for days on end.Then, when they remembered them, it would be days of daily abuse and starvation, along with mental abuse that nearly destroyed her older sister.

It had taken Justine several years before she’d go out of the house.She was terrified that their parents were going to find them and hurt them.She didn’t know what she’d done, but after going to visit her once, she’d not only come out of her home, but she began socializing with others too.It was such a transformation that she still, to this day, was waiting for her to have a breakdown and do something dangerous to herself.

Once she finished up for the day, she sat in her office and enjoyed her drink.It wasn’t often that she’d have ten minutes to herself, and she was going to take advantage of it.As she was leaning back in her chair, her office phone rang.It couldn’t be her sister, she didn’t have this number as it was private and no one had it.