by Lynn Red
He shrugged. “What else can I do? They’ll never accept you as my mate. And before you get irritated again, it’s nothing personal, it’s—”
“You know what you said about stealing the money? How it was Atlas’s mate who did it and ran?” I bent over, and pulled up my khakis. Kicking around a few of the scattered papers, I found the one I wanted.
“What about it? I mean, yeah? But what’s the... oh my goodness.”
I couldn’t help giggling. “You just said oh my goodness. What are you, my grandma?”
Erik screwed up his lips and pinched me on the stomach. “Good one, boo-boo bear,” he said. “What is this?”
“It’s a ledger from when Atlas was Alpha. See?” I pointed to a date on the bank statement, it was from almost exactly ten years earlier, right in the midst of the theft.
“Okay,” he said. Erik went to button his shirt, and cursed softly when he remembered he tore all the buttons off.
I handed him a clean one from my desk drawer. Sometimes you have to be prepared.
“Okay, but... wait a minute. These withdrawals were made by the council. Why didn’t I know this before?”
“Obviously because someone was trying to hide their bad behavior. But here’s the other thing. Look who was on the council back then.”
I ran my finger under a name – Jenga Cranston.
“You have to be kidding,” he said. “That old witchdoctor was on the town council? How did I not remember that?”
“You don’t pay much attention to things you aren’t interested in.” My answer was accompanied by a self-satisfied grin. “Looks like it wasn’t a human after all.”
“Son of a bitch.” Erik growled. “Call Duggan. And Jamie and the rest of them. Actually no,” he paused. “Not the rest of them. Just Duggan, Jamie and Clay. That’s enough senior members for a caucus. If any of them know this happened, I’ll kill them. Okay, I won’t actually kill them. But I’ll be really, really pissed.”
“So I guess this means you’re not resigning?”
Erik clenched his fists so tightly that his shoulders began to shake. “I think no, probably not. This might get rough, all right? If you’re uncomfortable with all this, you can leave town until—”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “And miss all the fun? Go get cleaned up. Even if everyone knows about us, lipstick all over your neck might send the wrong message about how serious this meeting is. I’ll get on the phone.”
“Izzy?” Erik asked after he’d already turned and open the door. “One more thing.”
“What’s up?” I had the phone in my hand, and had pushed three of Duggan’s digits, but then put it back down and waited for him to finish.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything. For your patience, and for doing all this investigation. You didn’t have to do this. It’s my responsibility to be the alpha, and you’re making my job too easy. I might lose my edge if you keep it up.”
“Get outta here,” I said with a grin. “I’m sure you’ll pay me back.”
He laughed and ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll sure try,” he said.
“Hello? Duggan?” I said into the phone as Erik’s office door shut behind him. “Hi, it’s Isabel. I think you might need to come in a little early for that meeting. We’ve found some... interesting things.”
-8-
“This is just too much, Erik.” Duggan, poor Duggan, walked back and forth, rubbing at the bald crown of his head with one hand, and pulling on his chin-beard with the other. “I’m happy for you – congratulations and all that, Isabel, but this is... you’re the alpha! How could you spring this on us?”
His fretting had a certain kind of cuteness to it, but he was right on at least one count – there was a lot just laid on the table.
“Izzy,” Erik said, “can you help us out here? Duggan’s caught up in all the wrong things. We need to figure out a plan, not hum and haw over my mate. Not right now anyway, we can deal with the mate stuff later. Give us a dose of reason.”
Being called on during a council meeting was something entirely different for me. My normal thing was to sit here typing away on my keyboard, but for once, there was no keyboard. This was a strictly off-the-record meeting.
“I don’t really know, Eri... Sir,” I said. “All I can do is say what I found, and those ledger receipts are it.”
Clay Tomkins, the hyena, perked up, his eyes darting from left to right at whoever was talking. “Ledgers are boring,” he said with a little bit of an up-turn in his voice. “I’d rather talk about mates. Didn’t someone mention mates? Is someone mating with the witchdoctor? I thought witchdoctors didn’t need mates, they just kind of made their own young from... er... parts?”
“It’s not a junkyard, Clay,” Erik said, standing up. “We can just let him resurrect whoever he wants to try and steal another round of money from the town treasury.”
“Th – that’s another thing,” Duggan said, adjusting his suspenders and then loosening them right back to where they were before he started fidgeting. “How do we know this is accurate? It goes against everything we knew about the case. How did this all come out right now? It just makes no sense how we could all have been fooled for so long. And anyway, what would be the benefit to the town council keeping this quiet?”
“Unless the council was all getting a cut,” Jamie said.
That was the first time since he showed up that Duggan got quiet and stopped pacing.
General silence hung for a second. Clay fidgeted, Duggan tugged his beard, but nothing else broke the quiet. Erik looked at me, then at Jamie, who shrugged. “Just a thought,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “looking at these records, only a couple of people from back then are still on the council. There’s—”
“I don’t want to be accused of anything!” Duggan had started sweating. “Just because I’ve been serving this town for thirty years doesn’t mean—”
“Cool down, hedgehog,” Erik said. He swung his boots off the table and onto the floor. “No one’s accusing you of anything. If anyone in this town was incapable of sneakiness, I think most everyone would agree that it’d be you.”
“Humph,” Duggan grunted. “Fine, thank you. I guess.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Because there’s no other answer. It was easy to convince everyone that Atlas’s mate drove him crazy and then stole a bunch of money, right?”
“What do you mean?” Jamie said. She had a glint in her eye that told me she knew what I was about to say.
“Well, think about it. Everyone knows that shifters can get a little... wonky, I guess, when they are with pure blood humans who then deny them, right? Well, what better excuse? Jenga was on the council then, and he’s apparently causing problems now. Doesn’t it make sense that he cooked up a plot to steal a bunch of money using his particular... talents?”
Thinking for a second, thoughts started connecting in my head like cards on a detective’s white-board with pins holding them up and strings connecting them.
“What is it, Izzy?” Erik leaned over, his chair squeaking.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Something just... popped into my head.”
I fell silent for a second until Erik jabbed me in the shin with his boot. “And?”
“Well look, it says here that a member of the council was withdrawing money before Atlas died, which happened what day?”
“That’s a Duggan question,” Erik said. “Wow us with your brain, historian.”
“Er, I’ll have to think.” Duggan ran a finger down the bald side of his head. “It was a Thursday, I remember that much, when he fell. Thursday the eighth? Yes, that’s right. My grandson’s birthday.”
“Right, so there’s a withdrawal from the town accounts for a hundred grand on the sixth, the seventh the eighth and the ninth. See?” I said, and pointed out the lines in the ledger. It helped that everyone had got up real close. “I’m thinking that there wasn’t a conspiracy at all, it was just Jenga running a
perfect scheme.”
“This is... a hell of a plot,” Erik said.
Clay chewed on his lip, and Jamie leaned in. “I’m impressed,” she said. “With you and with Jenga. This is quite a feat even for that old witchdoctor. So, what are you saying, exactly?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, nothing for sure. But the timing all lines up. Atlas’s mate left him for whatever reason – unrelated to the money – earlier in the week. He goes crazier and crazier until Jenga finally figures out he can control him with some kind of spell or tincture or whatever witchdoctors use.”
Clay snorted a laugh. “Tincture,” he said. “She said tincture. Did you hear that?”
Erik shot him a nasty glance.
“She... tincture... anyway.”
“Right, anyway,” I said, stifling a laugh, “he somehow controls Atlas while he’s still alive, and then...”
“That son of a bitch,” Erik said. “It wasn’t the old alpha’s fault at all. It never was! That wily old jackass used him. Then when he threw himself off that building, Jenga dug him up and kept right on using him. That would also be why the last withdrawal,” he turned the page and ran his finger down the column. “Here, on the sixteenth, this was for the biggest amount – a quarter million.”
Everyone looked up from the book, exchanging glances of utter disbelief.
“That’s... he must’ve stopped because Atlas was getting a little, er, worse for wear,” Jamie said, speaking the things we all were thinking. “Even magicked, a zombie isn’t going to last forever. Well, not looking very fresh anyway.”
Erik slammed his hand on the table.
Duggan quickly balled up, terrified by the noise, and momentarily grew a number of spikes on his back. As soon as Erik calmed down, he resumed his human for and dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief.
“I always did like Atlas. It bothered me what people said, but... I don’t know. This is all a little crazy. I mean, how could he have gotten to the bank? Can zombies drive?”
“Crazy?” I said. “Crazy? Erik, you live in a town full of shape shifters and a witchdoctor who stole money from a bank using the zombie of the former alpha and you’re saying the only part of this that’s crazy isn’t the zombie. It’s not even that the zombie helped a Goddamn witchdoctor steal money, it’s that the zombie needed to drive a car.”
“Well...” Erik trailed off with a shrug. “I don’t know how else he’d withdraw the money. Unless you think a zombie could just walk into a bank and take out a quarter million dollars.”
“Around here?” I asked, smirking despite myself. “I’m pretty sure no one would bat an eye. Send him in with a signed withdrawal slip.”
“No,” Duggan cut in. “She’s right. It wouldn’t be the first time someone used a golem to go about town doing their business. And remember, as much as Atlas was our alpha, he was also a werebear, so he mostly kept to himself. I doubt many townspeople would recognize him outside of when he was all made up for television appearances.”
“Sure,” Erik said, as understanding dawned on him. “And it’s not like anyone watches those public access meeting broadcasts.”
“It’s a shame what’s happened to public television,” Duggan said, frowning for a moment. “First everyone stops reading, and now public broadcasting is going down the tubes.”
He didn’t stop until he realized everyone was staring at him. To say he was embarrassed doesn’t do it justice. One minute there was a pot-bellied, bald-headed professor type standing in front of me, and the next there was a five foot hedgehog balled up and puffing.
Erik pursed his lips into a frown. “Well,” he said. “I wonder if they make toilet paper tubes big enough for that size of a hedgehog? You do like doing that, right? Head in the tube, rubbing it on things?”
“Enough!” Duggan squeaked. “Why do you insist on embarrassing me as much as possible? You all know what will happen!”
A round of snickers and stifled laughs went through the room, but after everyone assured Duggan they didn’t mean anything by it, he resumed his normal anxious handwringing. “If this is all true,” he said, “and I don’t doubt it is – Isabel here has a superb mind for a human – then we’ve still got to deal with Jenga somehow. If he’s done this before, and is trying now, he’ll certainly not stop until he’s drained the coffers.”
Jamie put her stiletto-clad claws on the desk, rocking backward in her chair. “And as the town treasurer, it’s probably my duty to inform you all, since you never listen when I give the monthly budget reports; we’ve been running on empty for a few months.”
“Empty?” Erik said, turning to her. “I thought you said there was plenty of money for the rest of the year.”
She nodded. “There is, but there’s no surplus. When the last round of theft happened, we were in the middle of a boom time. Remember – back then, Clay’s boy Sedge, along with those two werebears, they were in the NFL.”
“Oh, right,” Erik said. “How much did that bring in?”
Somehow stopping himself from licking his lips for a second, Clay spoke up. “My boy, you know, he was just, you know, the kicker for the Giants. But he still made a couple million a year, you know, and even though we have a very reasonable local tax rate, it was still a great deal – couple hundred thousand, just from him or so.”
“Right,” Jamie said before anyone could continue talking about football or the local taxation rates. “And now, we’ve got no NFL players, so we’re running on a much tighter budget. If we get drained, it’ll be a long, long time before we can recover.”
Another silence fell on the room, and everyone spent a few moments looking back and forth at each other.
“What’s this about a mate, again?” Clay asked. “Can we talk about that again? Mating is much more interesting than budgets.”
I was almost relieved to have the tension break.
Except that the next second, everyone’s attention turned to me.
Suddenly, I wished I could turn into a hedgehog or a millipede or a squirrel or something and get the hell away, but try as I might, no hair or extra legs came out when I closed my eyes and concentrated.
“Is this really the time?” Erik said. He stood up, getting irritated, and took a short walk around the conference table. “Do we need to deal with this right now?”
He took a deep breath.
No one said a word. The only sound in the room was Jamie sliding a pencil out of her hair, and re-twisting the bun. At least, that was the only sound until Erik let out a sigh. “What do you want me to say? You want all the details?”
Clay was the first one to speak. “Yes, that would—”
“No!” Jamie and Duggan both cut in. After a quick look at each other, Jamie nodded and Duggan continued.
“No, Erik, we don’t need all the details. But considering what we’ve just listened to about Jenga conspiring to drain the town coffers, it’s only fair to consider that the person making the assertions also be scrutinized.”
“English?” Erik said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Meaning, if you’ve really taken a pureblood as your mate we should probably know why we should trust her.” Duggan rubbed his nose. “After all, this is the first any of us have heard about the money being taken by anyone except Atlas’s last mate, isn’t it? Kind of an uncomfortable coincidence.”
“That’s enough!” Erik slammed his fists on the table. “This is... she’s... I love this woman, and you’re questioning my judgment?”
His voice roared off the walls. Everyone stiffened, not wanting to draw any extra attention from Erik.
“No,” I said. “No, no, it is fair.” I said, standing up, as seemed to be proper.
Duggan exhaled audibly.
“I know that you all have been incredibly nice to me, and I know that I feel more at home here, among all of you, than I ever did back in Ohio. But—”
“What does that have to do with the money, though?” Clay said. “I’ve heard one, you know
, thing for the past decade years, and then you show up and say, you know, something different. We all like you, Isabel, you know, I think we agree on that. But it doesn’t much matter how at home you feel if you’re out to get our money. You two fooling around is your own business, but once there’s an official mating involved, then that’s different.”
“Okay,” I said, putting my hands up defensively. “Look, I know all this. Jamie explained it to me the other day. Erik’s been holding off on marking me as his mate because he didn’t want this exact thing to happen. He loves this town so much, and takes his duty so seriously that he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness – and mine too – to keep the peace.”
“That’s noble and all, but it still doesn’t answer the question about the money. Isabel, why should we trust you?” Duggan’s eyes told me that he didn’t like what he was asking. Kind old Duggan didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I swallowed hard. In all of the craziness of the last few days, the one thing I never considered was how to prove that I wasn’t making it all up. Leave it to me to forget the most important part – why should they trust me?
My eyes fell on the pile of papers, and for a moment, I was lost in thought.
“You’re a historian,” I said, as an idea suddenly occurred to me.
“I am, yes,” Duggan replied. “I’m sure you knew that before you asked, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Context,” I said. “History is all about context, right? Motivations, feasibility, those sorts of things?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose so. I wish my students caught on as quickly as you, but how does that affect anything going on here today?”
My brain was cranking in overtime. There was one book I had to read, something about the American Revolution, for college, a couple of years ago. I remembered the professor going off on this incredibly long tangent about motivations, complications and feasibility. Things, he said, you always had to have if you were going to make a plan.
There had to be motivation to do it in the first place, something to gain that you couldn’t get otherwise. Then there had to be sufficient complication that made other, similarly minded plans more difficult and finally, the plan had to be doable.