Page 6

6

T ess

“I didn’t know him. We don’t all have a club,” Jack said with more than a little sarcasm.

“Actually, you kind of do,” Susan shot back, frowning. “The news of this NACOS is out on all the police wires. There’s been a lot of violence surrounding meetings.”

“NACOS?”

Lizzie looked troubled. “The North American Consortium of Shifters, Mr. Shepherd.”

Susan’s phone buzzed, and she walked out onto the porch to take the call.

“Call me Jack, Lizzie. Does Susan know?” Jack’s voice was low.

Lizzie shook her head, her dark eyes serious. “I haven’t told her about it. I mean, it’s not really true. Yet.”

Lizzie was almost a werewolf, which I hadn’t known was a real thing. Werewolves had bitten her, and she’d briefly died. I knew all about it because she’d made the mistake of grabbing my hand, even though she’d been warned not to touch me, and I’d seen her die.

They’d attacked her at night. In a park. She’d worn a pretty red party dress, but the blood had still showed horribly against it. And she’d been with another woman; a friend. The friend died, too.

With my curse that Jack insisted on calling a gift, there was a glitch. If anyone died and came back to life, like with CPR or as a vampire, if I saw their death, I usually saw that first one. It’s how I saw Lizzie die, and how I saw Jack die at the hands—and fangs and swords—of vampires.

But she was only almost a werewolf, because she’d never shifted. She had some of the nifty supernatural abilities, like the enhanced sense of smell from her wolf half, but she’d never gone all the way, so to speak. Jack said this was terrible for her, and if she couldn’t reconcile her two sides and shift, eventually she was going to get sick or go mad.

It was ridiculously unfair, and all of it made me so sad I just wanted to go take a shower and hide beneath my blankets until next week. At least it was Saturday night, and my shop was closed on Sundays. I needed a day off.

Badly.

Susan came back inside, looking angry. “The crime scene people say they can’t come for at least an hour. I don’t know what to do until then.”

“Call Reynolds in Riverton,” Jack suggested. “And here’s more bad news I didn’t mention yet since you were accusing me of lying. The killer did something to the outside cameras. We don’t have any footage of the murder.”

Susan sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you’re not a liar. I’m in a terrible mood.”

Jack shrugged it off. “Understandable. Us, too.”

I decided to lighten the air. “More coffee?”

Susan declined the coffee but took Jack up on the suggestion and called Reynolds. It was a quick call, and he agreed to come right over.

“You knew he was a wolf shifter?” Susan aimed a steady look at Jack. “I thought it wasn’t a club.”

Jack shrugged. “If there’s a club, I’m not in it. I met him when I was helping Brenda with Sheriff Lawless. The Riverton Sheriff Lawless.”

“And you just knew Reynolds was a shifter? Did he know you were?”

“Yes,” he drawled. “We have a secret handshake. The decoder ring says Drink More Ovaltine. ”

She blew out a sigh of frustration. “Not funny, Jack. I’m dealing with a dead deputy who my deputy tells me is a werewolf, so I … Wait.”

Susan whipped her head to the right to stare at Lizzie. “Mind telling me exactly how you knew he was a werewolf?”

“We prefer wolf shifter,” Lizzie whispered, unable to meet her new boss’s gaze.

“ We ?” Susan’s accusing stare snapped to Jack and then to me. “You two knew?”

“She’s only almost a werewolf,” I said helpfully.

Turned out, nobody found that helpful.

Explanations ensued.

B y the time Sheriff Reynolds showed up, I was only still awake by sheer willpower and the two cups of coffee that roiled around in my stomach like acid. There was still a dead guy in my garage, and searching online for “garage corpse cleanup” was not a good idea, let me warn you.

Reynolds, Susan, and Lizzie went out to the garage. Reynolds and Susan came back, leaving Lizzie to stand guard over the scene, and confirmed that, yes, dead guy.

Yes, dead werewolf.

Yes, dead deputy.

It was even worse, though. Quark was also the beta of the Riverton werewolf pack.

“Will this be a serious problem for your power structure?” Jack asked. “Do you have anybody in line to be the next beta?”

It took me a minute to realize Jack was asking because Reynolds wasn’t just the sheriff, he was the alpha of the Riverton wolves. It made sense, because he was a big guy about the size of a bear and almost as hairy.

Wow!

I wondered if bear shifters existed, but I decided to ask later.

“Not unless you’re volunteering,” Reynolds said, his low rumbling voice wry.

Jack just shook his head.

“Okay,” I said, interrupting all this hearty shifter banter. “Why is he dead? Who killed him? Why did they kill him? How did they kill him? I imagine werewolves?—”

“We prefer wolf shifter,” Reynolds said seriously.

“Are hard to kill. But, most important to me, and I’m sorry if this sounds selfish, is this: What was he doing in my garage? At my house?” I realized my voice had risen in both tone and volume when Lou scrambled out of my lap and ran for the safety of my bedroom.

Reynolds nodded. “That’s a good question.”

“I was hoping for a good answer,” I muttered.

“The only thing I can think is he told me he was going to give Shepherd a call and ask him about NACOS. Maybe he came in person.”

Jack growled. “I keep telling everybody I don’t know a thing about NACOS. Tonight is the first time I ever heard anything about it.”

“Um, Jack?” I waved my hand. “Remember all that mail you brought over here to sort a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah?”

“When I moved the bowl to dust, some envelopes fell out. There was more than one from NACOS.” Jack knew I cleaned when I was happy, when I was stressed, and when the house was even a little dirty. So, piling a foot-high pile of mail in a too-small bowl hadn’t been my favorite thing he’d done that week.

Living together took compromise .

“Oh.” He looked far more upset by this than I thought made sense.

“Hey, no problem. It was just a little mail.”

He didn’t answer me, just jammed his hand in his pocket and stared off into space for a second or two, then he headed down the hall. “Easy enough to figure this out, then. Tess, is the mail still there?”

“As far as I know.”

When he came back out, he carried a thick stack of envelopes. They were all heavy, embossed paper with a snarling wolf logo.

“That’s a problem right there,” Reynolds said. “Using a wolf as a logo rubbed a lot of the other shifters’ fur the wrong way right out of the gate.”

Heh.

Rubbed their fur the wrong way.

Jack handed a few to each of us. “If we read one or two each, maybe we can figure out what caused Quark to want to see me so badly he drove out here without bothering to call.”

Susan looked impatient, but the crime scene people weren’t on the way, and it’s not like we had anything else to do. I went and piled cookies on a tray, made another pot of coffee, and brought it out for anyone so inclined. When Reynolds thanked me but looked at the cookies and sighed, I thought about Jack and the legendary shifter appetite.

“Sheriff Reynolds, can I make you a sandwich?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be any trouble,” he protested, but I stood.

“Sheriff—”

“Please. Call me Paul, Miss Callahan.”

“Paul, then, and call me Tess. I live with a shifter. Cookies won’t cut it.”

“If you’re sure, I’d definitely appreciate it. I missed dinner tonight.”

Susan waved a hand. “I could eat something if you have extra, Tess. Lizzie and I missed a dinner break, too.”

Hungry shifters can become short-tempered, and probably hungry sheriffs, too. I didn’t want that. While everybody else, all of whom were law enforcement, shifters, or both, read the letters, I went to the kitchen and fed Lou some chicken. Then I built a dozen enormous sandwiches, since it had been hours since Jack ate his three steaks at the barbecue. I put the sandwiches and pitchers of lemonade and iced tea on the kitchen table.

“Come and get it.”

I took two sandwiches and a bottle of water out to Lizzie, who thanked me but wouldn’t let me near the garage.

“It’s not good, Tess. You don’t want to see this.”

When I got back inside, my kitchen looked like a swarm of locusts had attacked. There was nothing left of the sandwiches but crumbs. Everyone was still reading, too, but they looked more energetic about it.

“Okay,” Susan said finally, putting another letter down on the table. “If we put these all in chronological order, we’ll have a better idea of precise timing, but I think we know enough to start.”

“I can do that,” I said. Everybody handed me their letters. I went and got my stapler and fastened envelopes to letters, in case the postmarks became important later.

Yes, I read a lot of mysteries.

Here’s what we learned:

About two months ago, NACOS reached out to Jack to ask him to consider taking the job of president of the board for a stipend of $100,000 per year. Or at least become a board member for a little less. (That number wasn’t specified.)

A couple of weeks after that, they wrote to say they were increasing the stipend to a cool quarter of a million dollars per year for president.

One month ago, NACOS sent a packet of sucking-up letters from various important people in the shifter community. They all wanted Jack to take the job. Now there was talk of expense accounts, introductions to important people, and other unnamed “perks.”

At this point in creating the list, I looked up at Jack. “If you don’t take the job, can I have it? I bet the president of NACOS doesn’t have to deal with magic disco balls or rude magic mirrors.”

Then I had to explain that to Susan and Reynolds.

More letters with higher, better, and more ridiculous offers followed.

“Why didn’t they just call you?”

Jack gave me a sheepish look. “I’ve been getting a lot of spam calls. I just send them to voicemail and then delete them.”

I looked down at the letter in front of me and read off the number. “Sound familiar?”

He pulled out his phone and grimaced. “Exactly that.”

I held out my hand for his phone. “Why don’t we settle this right now?”

When I started dialing, Sheriff Reynolds gave me a surprised look. “You’re calling important people at one in the morning on a Saturday night?”

“Watch me,” I said dryly.

When a man answered, I put the phone on speaker, turned up the volume, and set it down in the middle of the table. “Tess Callahan, calling for Jack Shepherd.”

Jack rolled his eyes but waited for the man to say something.

“Shepherd? Yes! Yes, we’ve been trying—put him on the phone right now.”

“Watch how you talk to Tess,” Jack growled.

“Jack? Jack! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Tess—Miss Callahan. Jack, I am so glad to hear your voice. The man I sent to talk to you fell off the grid hours ago, and things are at a critical juncture, and?—”

Reynolds, his face like a thundercloud, leaned over the table to speak into the phone. “This man. Is his name Quark?”

Silence. Then the voice said tentatively. “Who is this?”

“This is Sheriff Paul Reynolds from Riverton. More to the point, I’m Quark’s boss.”

Silence.

Reynolds growled and continued. “And his alpha. Or at least I was. Whatever you sent him into got him killed.”