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“Ooh, that would be good.”

“What kind of toppings do you want? These are mini cheese pizzas, but I add extras. Mushrooms, black olives, green olives, onions, pepperoni, ham, bell peppers, extra cheese?” Robert brought out the pizzas.

“Um, everything but green olives, onions, and ham.”

“You got it.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Do you want to cut up the mushrooms?” he asked, bringing out all the ingredients and then turning on the oven.

“Yeah. Do you want them too?”

“I sure do. All the same ingredients as you.”

“You’re okay about staying with us for a little bit, right?” She really wanted to make sure he was alright with it when he might need to be home doing other stuff. She cut up the mushrooms.

“Hell yeah. I’m just so lucky that I won the lottery without having to put my name into the pot.” Robert brought out a pizza pan and covered it in aluminum foil.

She laughed.

“Believe me, every bachelor male will want to put in for the job.”

She realized that was a real perk to being in a wolf pack—lots more bachelor males to choose from. She began to cut up the bell peppers while he added extra shredded cheese to the pizzas.

Then he sighed. “Do you want to learn about the autopsy?”

“I do.”

“Okay. Gus was manually strangled. The U-shaped bone of the neck, called the hyoid, was fractured. The murderer had to have been a male, his hands large enough and strong enough to do the job. Gus had to have been murdered before he was dropped into the ocean. There was no water in his lungs.”

“Och, no. Strangled where? At the inn?” God, how awful. Every time she went into the garden, she would be reminded of the horrible deed that had been done.

“It’s hard to say. We would need to go over the room he stayed in and look for any evidence. Since the garden stone was taken from your place, I would say it’s a distinct possibility that he was murdered on your property. Unless he was murdered elsewhere and the murderer returned to grab his bags from the room and took the garden stone and the rope at that time.”

“So Gus was in the murderer’s vehicle at the time.”

“Or his own vehicle. We’ll have to see if there was a vehicle there other than Gus’s. Or your other guests’ vehicles. Because he was in the water, I couldn’t find any carpet fibers on his clothes or body.”

“They were the same clothes that he had on when hewent out with me that night. So it had to have happened after our date, before he went to bed.” Chills raced down her skin, and she involuntarily shivered.

“Do you know if he was with a wolf pack or had family other than Ike?”

“No. We really were just talking about places we’d eaten at when we both lived in Glasgow. I didn’t even realize he had a twin brother until later. Likewise, I didn’t mention my twin sister.”

“We’ll need to look up his guest registration and see if we can locate any other family or friends who knew him and might know what he was doing in this area. We might be able to learn who might have wanted him dead. Stuart and Bruce didn’t seem to know what he was doing here.” Robert helped cut up the rest of the vegetables. He added the rest of the toppings on the pizzas and slid the pizza pan into the oven.

Maisie saw Mittens sleeping on her pillow, and she took some pictures of her. She looked so angelic. “I’ll call Anne and see if she can get us the registration details for Gus’s vehicle so we can look into this further. Do you have anyone in the pack who does investigative work?”

“Yes. Three wolves have worked in law enforcement—Colleen’s cousins, William and Edward Playfair, who are from Texas and moved here when Colleen mated Grant and joined the pack. Iverson was a homicide detective and has a degree in criminology and forensics. But they all just work for the pack now, so they’re free to do whatever needs to be done. Iverson has contacts at his old jobs too.”

“Oh, good. We’ll do everything we can to help them withthe investigation since our inn was part of the crime scene,” Maisie said, feeling awful that anything like that could have happened there. “Oh, another thing. We need to learn where Gus’s vehicle went to.”

“Once we have the registration information that he filled out at the inn, we should be able to do a search for his vehicle.” A few minutes later, the oven beeped and Robert pulled out the pizzas.

“Hmm, those look and smell great.” Her stomach growled, and Robert smiled at her. “So tonight, when you stay with us, you can sleep with the other wolf in the guest room or on the foldout couch, or you can join me in my bedroom.” She hoped she wasn’t being way too forward and putting him off.

Robert smiled even bigger as he poured glasses of zinfandel. “I would be lying if I said I wanted to stay with some other wolf in the guest room. As long as you’re fine with it, I’ll join you in your bed.”