Fox Afield (Madison Wolves)

by Robin Roseau

  Elisabeth offered a droll look.

  "Yeah, yeah, I don't blend, either, but I look harmless."

  I cut the sandwich into pieces, ate part of it myself, and offered the rest to the wolves. "Sorry there's not much here," I said. "I can order more if you're hungry."

  Lara sat up and leaned against me, looking up at me. I looked down at her. I felt tears spring to my eyes. "Thank you for helping," I told them.

  They all chuffed quietly. Then I felt a wolf chin resting on my foot.

  "Guys," I asked a while later. "If someone walked past who had been near Virginia recently, could you tell?"

  Lara and Elisabeth looked at each other. Then Lara huffed, then chuffed.

  "Does that mean maybe?"

  The two looked at each other, then Elisabeth chuffed, but she didn't sound convincing.

  I emailed Gia the photos I had taken from inside with a short note of what they were. I sent the same email to Greg; he would get it and send to his guys for any analysis they could do. Then I sat back and waited, people watching. I heard drinking from under the table and stifled a grin.

  It took another ten minutes and I was bored. Ten minutes after that, and I was really bored. I managed to last another ten minutes before I said, "We have a problem."

  Lara immediately sat up and looked at me.

  "What's my biggest weakness?"

  They all took turns chuffing, one after another, undoubtedly coming up with my various weaknesses.

  "I get bored easily."

  They chuffed loudly.

  "I can keep taking photographs," I said. "But everyone else is inside. Staring through the window is getting obvious. And I haven't noticed anyone looking especially furtive. I keep thinking there should be more for me to do."

  Lara lay back down, edging closer to the doorway into the restaurant. Whenever anyone went in or out, her nose went wild.

  Some folks stopped to ask about the dogs. Others edged their way past cautiously. None of the wolves acted at all aggressively, so we gave no one reason to complain.

  The waitress came back out periodically. I ordered a couple of roast beef sandwiches.

  "You're awfully hungry," she commented.

  "If I keep the dogs well-fed, they don't eat anything they shouldn't," I replied.

  "Um-"

  "You know, like things they find when we're out walking."

  "Oh," she said. "Right."

  She walked back inside, and I said loudly enough for the wolves to hear, "Like squirrels, rabbits, assholes who need to fix their mufflers, people who disrespect their mothers, Pomeranians..."

  Karen chuffed at the last one.

  The waitress brought out the sandwiches and a glass of water. She set the sandwiches on the table then knelt down and poured more water for the dogs. "That's very kind of you," I said.

  "They're pretty dogs," she said. "And so well-behaved. But if my ex-boyfriend comes around, do you think you could get them to bite him?"

  "No," I said. "We would get in trouble for that. But I can get them to growl."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. Want to hear?"

  "Is it a real growl?" she asked.

  "It sounds like one," I said.

  She looked around, making sure no customers were listening. "All right."

  "Elle," I said. "Grrrr."

  Lara offered a growl, deep in her throat. The girl pulled back immediately.

  "Good girl," I said, bending down and patting Lara. She immediately drew silent.

  "Wow," said the waitress. "I bet no one messes with you!"

  "Not when these three are around," I said. "I love them to pieces, too."

  She backed away, and Lara looked at me, growling quietly.

  "Oh come on," I said. "I'm bored. Look, I bought you guys sandwiches."

  There was a knife. I cut the sandwiches in half, feeding the wolves their shares. I picked at mine for a minute, then shared the rest of it out, too.

  A few people came in, and I took their photos as they stepped past. I sent the photos to Gia.

  Twenty minutes later as I was singing to myself, the "bored, bored, bored" song, my phone rang. I snatched it up.

  "Hey."

  "It's Greg. He's accessing the account right now. Right now, Michaela."

  "Call you back," I said.

  I stood up, looking around, then said to the wolves, "Stay," and I went inside, snapping photos on my way to the bathroom, then turned around as if I'd forgotten something. "I'll take my check," I told the waitress on my way back out.

  I didn't see anyone who looked guilty or like he was trying to hide anything. But would I recognize them? I called Greg back. "I have more photos, but I don't see anyone who looks suspicious."

  A half a block away, I heard a car start up.

  "Watch to see who leaves," he said. "I think he's done. He got his mail. Get photos of anyone who leaves in the next fifteen minutes."

  A dark SUV pull out of a parking place along side the road and drove past the coffee shop before taking the next right.

  I hung up with Greg and watched the patrons of the coffee shop. None seemed to be in a particular hurry. Greg called me fifteen minutes later. "Pay your bill," he said. "Someone is coming to get you."

  "Oh thank god," I said.

  Roaming

  Angel, driving an SUV, picked us up. I held the door for the wolves then climbed up front.

  "There are clothes back there if you want to shift," Angel told them before pulling away. I pulled collars off the wolves, and Angel turned us towards the motel. Lara shifted immediately and pulled on some clothes.

  "Grrr?" she said to me. "Elle can't do any tricks, but she does a good down-stay?"

  I giggled.

  "What's she talking about?" Angel asked.

  "They were supposed to be undercover as dogs," I said. "I was helping with the illusion. Now they're pissed at me. I don't get it."

  "I'll have you know," Lara said. "I do excellent tricks. I am offended I didn't get to show off."

  I turned around to face her, and she was grinning. "Good job," she told me.

  "Are we going to find these guys?"

  "Yes," Lara said. "We'll go through the photos."

  "You can't think of everything," Elisabeth said when she had finished her shift. "But seriously. Play dead?"

  "Come on!" I said. "I had to think fast, and I wanted you to look harmless."

  "The play dead was pretty funny," Lara said. "At least you got to do a trick."

  "You got to growl," Elisabeth said. "I'll let you play dead next time if I get to growl."

  "Are you sure it was growling you wanted to do at her?" Lara asked. "I saw how you were looking at her."

  "She smelled good," Elisabeth said. "Like chicken."

  "God," said Karen. "We have a kidnapped women, and you guys are kidding around."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "You know I make jokes when I'm scared or nervous. I kept thinking I should be doing something, not just sitting there watching people."

  "Stakeouts are boring," Angel said. "You can tell from all the cop shows. If they weren't boring, they would show you the entire stakeout instead of just the two cops sitting in the car, bantering with each other."

  "See?" I said. "I'm supposed to banter on a stakeout."

  We pulled up in front of the motel and climbed out. The door opened, and we all hurried in. As soon as the door was closed, Lara said, "Bring me up to speed."

  "Mr. Callahan has emailed demanding fresh proof of life at every contact," said Greg. "We pushed hard. He told them they'll get what they want but he wants proof he's going to get what he wants. He'll call the FBI if he isn't satisfied. If we don't get proof of life, then we're going to stage an FBI call, and we'll show up in our SUVs twenty minutes later. I have a small crew of guys to play the parts."

  He consulted a list. "He's going over with Brooke everything he can think of that he might have been expected to touch during these two weeks. We're trying to identify what m
ight be important enough to do this. It's a needle in a haystack."

  "It's got to be local," Lara said. "If it was a state issue, they wouldn't operate out of a local coffee shop."

  "How well buried was the communication?"

  "Pretty buried," he said. "The fibbies would have found it though."

  "We're not dealing with professionals," I said. "They are making amateur mistakes."

  "Agreed," Greg said. "That's good and bad. It makes them easy to find but harder to predict."

  "It also means maybe this isn't a big deal. It might be as simple as a zoning ordinance."

  "Hell," said Elisabeth. "She's right."

  "I think it's someone they know." I turned to Lara. "I know it was three days old, but do you think she got in that car willingly?"

  "No idea," she said. "There wasn't any blood, but there were sure a lot of other smells to work through, and Virginia's scent was exceedingly faint."

  Greg said, "Let's dig through the photos. Michaela, tell us what you thought of everyone."

  "Someone pull up the pictures," I said. "I'll tell you what I thought."

  Serena pulled out her computer and began going through the photos. "Okay, this guy. He's having a fight with his girlfriend. See his body language? And I overheard parts of the conversation. But he's cheating on her."

  "How can you tell?" Greg asked.

  "He got off the phone with his girlfriend and turned back to the computer. He was typing and smiling. He looked. Um. Aroused."

  "Looking at porn?"

  "No, I think a chat room or something."

  "Next one?"

  "Someone who normally works from home but out of the house. He took a lot of calls, and they were business."

  One by one, I went through each of the patrons. I didn't have distinct impressions of a few of them, but there wasn't a single one I thought was our suspect.

  "Between Bree and Robert, they recognized this guy," Greg said, referring to the businessman, "And the one the fox thinks is having an affair. Bree said he's a jerk. But Robert says he can't think of anything he's working on that would affect any of these people, as best he knows."

  "We need better surveillance," I said. "And I suck at this."

  "No, you don't," he said. "You were great. You got photos of everyone, and you didn't get caught. You made good observations. And now everyone thinks you're harmless."

  "But-"

  "But we do need better surveillance," he added. "I am putting two small teams into place, a block away in both directions. No one is going to notice them. And I have another team trying to determine what sort of surveillance may be going on at the Callahan residence."

  "The range on those bugs can't be very far," I said.

  "It's not. Gia found they were transmitting to a unit hidden in the attic, and that one has a further range. Still, I think they're less than a half mile away, but they could have a receiver in a house across the street that is retransmitting over the internet or a phone line."

  "It's someone who has had access to the house."

  "Yes, and recently. The battery on those bugs isn't very long."

  "That has to narrow it down to almost no one," Lara said.

  "This is Ashland," Greg said. "No one locks their doors. For what it's worth, all the bugs were in the kitchen and family room. They didn't find any in the rest of the house, but we wouldn't have found any that were inert."

  "How hard are the bugs to buy?" Angel asked.

  "Not hard," Elisabeth said. "www dot double-oh-seven-wannabes dot com."

  There were some snickers.

  "I'm serious," she said. "And they have some pretty good stuff there for good prices. That's how I keep the fox bugged."

  "Hey!" I yelled.

  "Her car, her purse, her clothes. I even drop some in her hair on particularly bad hair days."

  "You do not!" I said, glaring at her. "I never have bad hair days."

  She snickered at me. "Now you're going to be wondering for weeks. Play dead my ass."

  Lara joined the snickering then turned to her sister. "I don't know if you're kidding or not, but you can bug her however you want."

  "Oh she bugs me all right," I said. "But I know the address to www dot cayenne-pepper dot com."

  "All right," Greg said. "Children."

  "Please tell me I don't have to stake out the coffee shop anymore," I said.

  "Michaela," Greg said. "You did well. Stakeouts are boring, I know, but you moved into place faster than anyone else could have, you didn't get made, and you collected good intelligence."

  "Not that great," I said. "I didn't figure out who it is."

  "We'll find out who all these people are," Greg said. "We'll track them down and try to see if there is any link. And if any of them are there when you go back this evening, that's a pretty big clue."

  We had our next plans and people working on them. I had nothing I needed to do. I hadn't gotten much sleep, so I asked if there were somewhere I could take a nap.

  "We've sort of invaded here," Greg said. "But Bayfield isn't far. You could run home for a couple of hours."

  I didn't tell him I didn't have a home anymore.

  "Sounds good," Lara said. And so I let them bundle me into a car and rode quietly while Elisabeth drove us to my old house in Bayfield. Lara tried to draw me into conversation, but I wasn't feeling loquacious. I was worried about Virginia and in a mood.

  When we arrived at the house, I stared at it. My heart broke. This had been the only house I'd ever owned, and now it was likely to retain that distinction. Anywhere else I lived would be Lara's house, not mine.

  It hurt even more when Elisabeth pulled keys to my house from her pocket and opened the door. She and Karen searched the house quickly before inviting Lara and me inside.

  I stepped inside. It smelled the same, although there was the scent of wolf in the air now, too, so not quite the same.

  "Where may I nap?" I asked Elisabeth.

  She looked at me like it was the oddest question.

  "I'd sleep on the sofa, but I suspect I'd be in the way," I added.

  "Head up to your room," Lara said. "I'll be up in a little while."

  I didn't say anything but climbed the stairs. I stepped into my old bedroom and look around, my heart breaking a little more. Then I turned around and stepped into Angel's room, the guest room. It still smelled like Angel, and that was better than smelling like a house that wasn't mine anymore. I closed the door and lay down on the bed, trying to sleep.

  Instead, I lay there, fretting, and trying not to cry. I don't know how long I spent trying to will myself to stop thinking about it, but then I heard gentle steps on the stairs. Lara crept quietly into my old bedroom then stopped and stared. I heard her check outside to see if I were on my rooftop deck, and then she came out of the bedroom and turned to the stairs. She stopped for a moment, then the bedroom door opened.

  She looked in cautiously and saw me watching her.

  "I'm sorry I woke you," she said.

  "I wasn't asleep."

  She slipped into the room and crossed to the bed. "What are you doing in here?"

  "Trying to sleep."

  "Why aren't you in your own bed?"

  "I don't have a bed," I said. "The one you're referring to is Elisabeth's now."

  I rolled over onto my side, facing away from her. I loved her, and I wouldn't give her up. I was paying a price to be with her, and I was paying the price willingly. But that didn't mean I was happy there was a price.

  She misinterpreted my mood. "Hey," she said. "We have good leads. We'll find Virginia."

  "I know," I said. I wasn't going to correct her.

  Lara lay down behind me, wrapping me in her arms. That felt good. I tried not to let her know how close I was to tears. We lay together for a while, not talking, my heart a lump in my chest.

  "I can't sleep," I said. "I'm sorry. You feel nice, but I need to go for a walk and clear my head."

  "I'll go with you." />
  "I need to go for a walk alone," I said, stressing that last word.

  "Take Karen or Elisabeth."

  "What part of 'alone' means 'take someone with me'?"

  Lara didn't say anything further, but she followed me downstairs. I exited the house via the kitchen door, palming the jar of cayenne pepper on the way. I ducked into the woods behind the house, jogged for a hundred yards, then opened the cayenne pepper and spread it around on the ground and over the leaves of the bushes I was passing through.

  Beware the wolf who tried to follow me.

  Lara just couldn't resist. I was listening for it. I heard the back door open and then I heard steps, faintly, as someone began following my trail. And I knew instantly when Karen found the cayenne pepper. She began to holler in pain. I ducked off the path I was on and headed to the waterfront.

  * * * *

  Lara found me ninety minutes later. I was sitting on the dock, watching the waves out beyond the harbor breakwater. She sat down next to me and said, "That was a shitty trick to pull on Karen."

  "Let me know where it ranks as compared to stalking me."

  Neither of us said anything for a minute until Lara asked, "This isn't about Virginia, is it?"

  "No."

  I wiped another tear away. I'd been doing that.

  "Oh honey," she said. She tried to wrap an arm around me.

  "Please don't touch me," I told her. "I don't want your comfort right now."

  She recoiled, and I felt guilty. I thought she was going to leave, and I didn't want that, either. I really didn't know what I wanted.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean that." I thought about it. "I'm tired of needing you to comfort me."

  She touched me, hesitantly, and I leaned against her a little. Her arm went around me, and she pulled me into her.

  "Tell me," she said. "Maybe it's something I can fix."

  "You aren't going to understand," I said. "And if you do, you're going to be hurt."

  "Is it something I did?"

  "No."

  "Help me to understand."

  "I'm just feeling sorry for myself and sulking."

  There was a brief hesitation before she said, "It has been my experience that when you're sulking, there's usually a reason. That reason is usually because you are feeling vulnerable about something. Please tell me."