Raised by Wolves

by Geonn Cannon

  “This is Monday night, the night after... you know. According to the executor, no one was in the house that day.”

  “Yeah, the kids all did their own thing on Monday and Tuesday.”

  Dale said, “Okay. This is ten o’clock.” She hit play and Ari watched the street. A car went by, but no pedestrians. “Did you see it?”

  “What was I looking for?” Ari asked.

  “I’ll run it back.” Dale reversed the tape to ten o’clock. At six minutes past the hour, she stopped it and pointed at the lawn. Ari almost asked what she was looking for when she saw it: a square of light on the grass. She moved closer to be sure she was actually seeing it.

  “Is that...?”

  “I’m guessing one of the second-floor rooms. Someone turned a light on.”

  Ari said, “The study where the tapestry was hanging doesn’t have a window, so it couldn’t have been that room.” She pressed a hard kiss to Dale’s temple. “Good eyes, baby.”

  “Happy I could help. I just wish I could tell you who was in the house. I went back four hours and ahead to noon. I didn’t see anyone go inside.”

  “You did your job,” Ari said. “Time for me to do mine.”

  Chapter Six

  There were five houses with a clear sightline of the Burroughs property. It stood on a corner, so it had two across-the-street neighbors. One house behind it shared a fence with the Burroughs’ backyard, and an eight-foot wall stood between it and its neighbor. Ari didn’t see cameras on every property but she still visited all five and asked if there was any footage she might be able to examine. Someone at two of the houses said yes and handed over the tapes immediately. One woman couldn’t agree without asking her employer, and one man told her she would have to come back with a warrant.

  The man who lived at the last house, the one which faced the side of the Burroughs home, looked like he should’ve been in high school. Pudgy, curly-haired, and with a smattering of patchy hair on his cheeks and chin, he answered the door wearing jeans and a Seahawks jersey. He was wearing a headset, the microphone of which he pushed away from his mouth as he looked at her empty hands.

  “Where’s the food?”

  “Sorry, I’m not whoever you were expecting. My name is Ariadne Willow. I’m a private investigator. I was hoping I could take a look at your security footage from this past Monday.”

  He blinked at her. “Wait, holy shit, you’re really a private eye?” He moved the microphone back down. “Guys, I’m out.” He took off the headset and held out his other hand. “I’m Fitz Anstartz.”

  Ari couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry?”

  “Had it legally changed. That’s the name of my company. We make video games. Do you, uh, d-do you play? I could give you a tutorial.”

  “I’m just looking for the security footage, if you have any.”

  “Oh! Right, god, of course, come in.”

  She hesitated, but he was already hurrying down the front hallway. She stepped inside.

  The house was nicer than she expected given his age. Polished hardwood floors, beautiful furniture, nice ambiance, and it didn’t reek like ‘young dude living alone.’ She heard the sounds of a video game battle echoing down the hall and moved toward it. She found Fitz in a den with a TV so large she wondered if a football stadium somewhere was missing its Jumbotron. The screen switched to the menu of a game, then to a different menu screen. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was there before he spoke.

  “What time do you need?”

  “Uh, ten o’clock. PM. I only need the angle facing the Burroughs house.”

  He said, “Right... the... Burroughs...”

  “On the east,” she clarified, “across the street.”

  “Oh! Wheelchair lady!” He cringed. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just mean, we never talked or anything and she was in a wheelchair. She seemed nice. Not, like, you know, a mean old witch or anything like that.”

  “I understand,” Ari said.

  He accessed his security cameras and scrolled through looking for the right time stamp. “So what happened? Was there, like, a break-in or something?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ari said. “Miss Burroughs passed away on Sunday and we’re trying to find something from the house that went missing.”

  “Aw, she died? Man, that sucks. Sorry to hear that.”

  Ari said, “Did she have many visitors?”

  “No. I never really saw anyone over there. Not in a creepy way, though. She kept to herself. She didn’t mind when my friends came over and had to park in front of her house.”

  “So no boyfriends?”

  He looked confused. “She was old...” The doorbell rang. “Shit, that’s probably my food. Here.” He handed the control to her. “I’ll be right back.”

  He was gone before she could protest. Ari looked at the control’s jumble of buttons and pressed one, hoping she wasn’t about to erase anything she might need.

  The screen was massive, and the image was so clear that it felt like she was standing on the roof of Fitz’s house looking down at the street. The time stamp said ten o’clock, and the video Dale had showed the light coming on at 10:06. She watched and, as they suspected, the window above the front door suddenly lit up. She continued the recording and watched for signs of anyone approaching from the side of the house. The backyard wasn’t entirely enclosed, so someone could easily access the back door from the sidewalk.

  Fitz came back with a large bag of delivery food. “Hey, you’re not rich are you?”

  “Nope,” Ari said, eyes still locked on the screen.

  “What’s a good tip on a twenty dollar delivery? Like, someone once told me, tips are ten percent, but then that’s twenty-two dollars, and who carries singles? A twenty is the smallest I have, so whatever, I just give them two. They always ask if I want change back, and I mean, how much should I even let them keep? Fifteen?”

  “A fifteen dollar tip on a twenty dollar bill would be very, very generous.” It seemed that even someone with no concept of money should be able to figure that out. “Always tip on the side of caution. There’s no such thing as too much.”

  Fitz sat on the couch and began taking containers out of the bag. “Have you found what you’re looking for?”

  “I confirmed something,” she said. “Now I’m just looking to see who leaves.”

  “Cool. Well... if you wanted to, like, hang out or whatever. I mean, I ordered a lot of food, if you wanted to have dinner.”

  Ari smiled and kept her eyes on the screen. “Sorry, Fitz, I have a girlfriend.”

  “Aw, that sucks. Well, I mean, it doesn’t suck. I’m an ally. It’s all great. My last girlfriend was bi.”

  “Cool,” Ari said flatly.

  The video showed a handful of cars, but it seemed as if the neighborhood wasn’t particularly lively after ten o’clock. The time stamp rolled past eleven. The light on the second floor of the Burroughs house went off, but no one had appeared.

  “Maybe they spent the night,” Fitz suggested.

  “Yeah, maybe. Doesn’t really help me, though...”

  Fitz said, “Well, I mean, I can give you the files. I can put them on a thumb drive or email them to you. Of course I’d need your email for that...”

  “Thumb drive is fine.”

  “Yeah, cool, I was gonna say, just as easy... uh, I’ll go, uh... I’ll be right back.”

  He got up and left the room. Ari continued to scroll through Monday night on the video. Maybe the light didn’t mean anything. Maybe there was a lamp in the room with a timer that automatically turned itself on to deter thieves. She was about to turn it off when someone emerged from the shadows behind Vivian’s house and moved toward the sidewalk.

  Ari punched the pause button and moved closer to the screen. Four o’clock in the morning, six hours after the mystery light. Whoever it was, they were unfortunately empty-handed. She hadn’t really expected them to be carrying the tapestry
when they left but she was still disappointed.

  “Hey, you found someone!” Fitz said, having returned.

  “Let’s hope they show us their face.”

  The intruder jogged across the street, still just a silhouette even with Fitz’s high-definition cameras. The image was slightly distorted but it didn’t look tall enough to be either of the twins, and the body was too broad in the hips and shoulders to be Eleanor. She supposed it could be Preston, but the probability was just as high that it was someone else. Whoever it was vanished off the side of the frame without giving her a hint about who it might be.

  “That’s a bummer,” Fitz said. “Almost as bad as not finding anything at all, huh?”

  “Yeah. Maybe he was less careful when he arrived.” She looked and saw a thumb drive in Fitz’s hand. “Is that the footage?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He held it out to her. “I went ahead and gave you everything from Sunday morning until today. Just to cover all the bases, you know.”

  Ari said, “That’s a huge help. Thank you.”

  “Always happy to help. And, uh, I don’t have to worry about... like, you know, security? This isn’t about a crime ring or anything like that, right?”

  “No, nothing like that. Thank you for all your help, Mister... uh... sorry, but your last name is ridiculous.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, but the app got me this house and made sure I never have to work again, so I figure I might as well wear it with pride, you know?”

  “App?” Ari said, and then realized what he meant. “Fits and Starts. That was you?”

  “That’s me,” he said. “I cooked up a way to help my friends increase their productivity, and the next thing I know, Apple is backing a dump truck full of money up to my dorm room. Is there a chance they’re using it to turn their workforce into mindless drones? Sure. Do I feel bad about that...? I mean... well, they were being treated like worker bees anyway. At least with my app they get bathroom breaks, you know?”

  “Right,” Ari said. “Well, it just goes to show you, no one becomes a millionaire by worrying about what happens to the other guy.”

  “Exactly!” Fitz said, missing her point.

  She held up the thumb drive. “Thank you for this. You’ve been a big help.”

  “Let me know if you need anything else! It was great to meet you. Let me walk you to the door.”

  “That’s okay. Your food is getting cold.”

  He looked at the table. “Right. Okay. Well, hope to see you again, Miss Willow.”

  She smiled and said nothing as she walked past him.

  Dealing with all these rich people was getting to her, and it was keeping Isaac Hayden’s comment about her mother’s wealth percolating at the back of her mind. Vivian Burroughs was old money. Fitz Anstartz was new money. But the Willows...? There had never really been much discussion about her extended family. She didn’t know her grandparents, didn’t have aunts or uncles, which meant there were no cousins to speak of. It was just her and her mother.

  So how the hell had Gwyneth Willow end up the sole beneficiary of an inheritance so large there was still plenty of it left thirty-some years later? The more she thought about it, the less sense it made, and the more likely their relationship was going to change when she finally summoned the courage to ask.

  ###

  Ari stopped by the office to save Fitz’s security footage and get stills of the mystery man leaving the house. She and Dale scanned backwards from ten o’clock to see if they could get a better image of the man on his way into the house, but he never showed up. Either he’d spent a full day inside or he’d managed to slip by cameras he hadn’t even known to avoid. Dumb luck was a detective’s worst enemy. Dale was also looking into art and antique dealers who might be contacted about the tapestry. There was no point in stealing something priceless if there was no market for it.

  It was close to dinnertime when she called Eleanor to set up a meeting. She’d chosen Eleanor because she seemed like the most likely to give a solid, unbiased account of the family history. Both twins seemed to have a chip on their shoulders and Preston... well, she would talk to him when there was no other option. Eleanor was still on Philly time and had already eaten dinner, so she told Ari she could go ahead and come by the hotel if it was convenient for her.

  Eleanor had a suite at the Hotel Monaco, a place so fancy that Ari went home to change into something nicer before she went to the meeting. The outfit she’d been wearing was fine, but it wasn’t Monaco-fine. The elevator was only accessible via keycard, but Eleanor had called down to the front desk and a helpful young man sent her up to the correct floor. Despite changing into her nicest clothes, she still felt a bit conspicuous as she waited to be let in.

  “Miss Willow, hello,” Eleanor said, opening the door and then immediately going back into the room. She had changed as well since that morning at her mother’s house, now dressed in billowing white silk slacks and a blue blouse. Her hair was also down, and Ari thought the look suited her better.

  Eleanor stood next to the coffee table and flipped her hands up. “Sorry.”

  “For...?”

  “For... this.” She gestured at the suite.

  Ari looked around. She wondered if Eleanor was indicating an invisible mess. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “The extravagance. It’s unnecessary. But Mom insisted on paying, and if I chose a cut-rate hotel it would look patronizing, and I would be making myself uncomfortable for no reason other than my own self-importance--”

  She was rambling more than Fitz Anstartz, so Ari stopped her. “It’s fine. You can afford to be comfortable, so there’s no reason for you not to be.”

  Eleanor sighed. “Thank you for understanding. Please, have a seat.”

  They sat next to each other on the plush white couch. “I doubt you’ve found anything since this morning.”

  “Not a lot,” Ari admitted, “but I did want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Of course, whatever I can do to help.”

  “Mr. Dodd said that no one had been in your mother’s house since she left Sunday night.” Eleanor nodded. “We found evidence that someone was there Monday night, just after ten o’clock.”

  Eleanor furrowed her brow, head tilted to the side. “That’s not possible.”

  Ari showed her the screen grab on her phone. “This is the second floor window, where the light went on. It was only on for a couple of minutes before it went out again. Then, about six hours later, this person appeared.” She swiped to the next picture. Eleanor leaned in to get a better look. “Whoever it is seemed to be coming from the backyard.”

  “Whoever it is, at least he doesn’t seem to be carrying anything.” She squinted again. “Is that a he? It looks like a man.”

  “It’s hard to say. We went all the way back to Monday morning, but we never saw him go inside. There’s a chance he had been there since Sunday night.”

  “The night Mom... passed. But then she would most likely have known he was there. Or... no, that’s ridiculous.”

  Ari said, “Nothing is ridiculous on the first day of an investigation.”

  “This probably is. In neighborhoods like Mom’s, there’s a certain justifiable paranoia about opportunistic thieves. They’re afraid people are stalking them on social media, waiting for a post that says they’ll be out of town or at the theater. The house will be empty, and the thieves can strike. I thought perhaps whoever it is knew Mom was gone, but... no, not that quickly. She didn’t die at home, so there wouldn’t have been an ambulance at the house. The death notice didn’t run until Tuesday morning.” She smiled. “Mom sent it to the paper herself. She wanted to be sure it was worded perfectly.”

  Ari smiled, then thought of something herself. “The notice wasn’t out yet, but someone had to have known she was gone. The funeral home...”

  Eleanor was already reaching for her phone. “She was cremated... but yes, someone from the funeral home... here it is. Ibrahim & Hoffman.” She read the
number and Ari entered it into her phone. “Someone from there may have recognized her. My god, how ghoulish do you have to be...?”

  “Pretty damn ghoulish,” Ari said. “But I’ve seen all kinds of inhuman stuff in my job.”

  “Yes, I suppose you have. But whoever that is in the picture didn’t take the tapestry. It’s much too big.”

  “He might have come back with a friend. We’re still going through the tape, so maybe we’ll find out he came back on Tuesday. Of course, this is all assuming the tapestry was stolen after your mother passed away. We only know for sure that the tapestry was there six weeks ago, when Vivian showed it to me. That’s a lot of tape to go through.”

  Eleanor said, “I suppose so... but I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m...” She looked away, focusing on her fingers curled in her lap. “My sisters and I have only been in town for the past week. Preston was here, but he would never dare to do something like that when Mom was still alive. You’re most likely on the right track, focusing on us in the investigation. We’re the only ones with real motive.”

  “There was still a chance one of you could have gotten the tapestry legitimately. Unless someone knew what was in the will.”

  “Well, nobody knew she was going to do that, except for the lawyer. He probably got a hefty bonus for keeping his mouth shut. Mom hated us asking about who was getting what when she was gone.”

  “You talked about it a lot?”

  Eleanor shrugged and tilted her head. “Mom told us what she planned to do. Once we got over the shock and the sadness, we had legitimate questions about what would happen after. We all assumed Preston would want the house, since he was still living in town, but everything else was up for grabs. I wanted the books. Evelyn needed furniture. Elizabeth basically wanted the entire kitchen gutted and transferred to her place.”