The Bear's Heart: Clanless Book 2

by Victoria Kane

  She turned and began following the street away from the library. She walked for a good twenty minutes before she found what she was looking for, a payphone set back from the street with no cameras around. No visible ones, anyway.

  She walked into the booth and removed a roll of quarters from her backpack. It was a call she knew she had to make, but she knew there was a fair chance that the police could be monitoring Joyce’s phone calls in their hunt for Laura.

  Though, if she was being honest, Laura had to admit that she really didn’t know if the police could or would get a wiretap for her family, but it was surely a possibility. Rick had suggested making the call some distance from the library where she would spend the day, just in case. It seemed like a prudent precaution.

  Her heart began to beat quicker as she started pumping quarters into the phone. What if Joyce didn’t believe her version of events? What if the only family she had left was lost to her just as surely as her brother was?

  She forced her fingers to punch in Joyce’s number, pretty much the only phone number that she still remembered off the top of her head. Joyce had kept the same number since Laura was a child, a time before smartphones and ubiquitous contact lists.

  The automated voice asked for another dollar twenty five to start the call, which she put in with a grumble. The phone began ringing and it was all Laura could do to stop herself from hanging up. She had to talk to Joyce. She had to tell her it wasn’t true.

  The line was picked up then, and her ear was filled by a reedy voice she knew almost as well as her own. “Hello?”

  Laura paused for a second, then forced herself to start speaking. “Aunt Joyce? It’s me, Laura.”

  “Laura?! Are you okay honey?”

  A small sob escaped her before she could stop it. “I’m alright, but Craig…”

  “I heard honey, I’m so sorry. Those cocksuckers from the state police showed up here looking for you last week. Said you killed him, talked about witnesses and proof and some other nonsense I can’t remember. I told them to stick it straight up their asses. My Laura would never hurt her brother, I told them.”

  She would have laughed at any other time. Her aunt had always had a… colorful… way of speaking, to say the least. But right now, she couldn’t even begin to hold back the sobs. “He got into a gambling debt he couldn’t get out of and they killed him. They killed him, Joyce!” Tears streamed down her face as she gave Joyce a bare bones accounting of what had happened, only leaving out Rick. It was finished more quickly than she would have imagined. In her head it seemed like this had been going on forever, but in reality it had only a few days of substance, with a couple weeks of waiting.

  When she finished there was a pause on the line. “God honey I’m so sorry. But don’t you go sayin’ where you’re staying or anything, ‘cause those jackasses from the police department might be listenin’ in. Are you okay? Do you have a safe place to stay?

  “Yeah, I’m fine Joyce, and I have somewhere to stay.” The relief at Joyce’s easy acceptance of her innocence was palpable. “But there’s something you need to know. You can’t go back to your cabin for a while. I hid out there at first, but the goons from New York came back. It might not be safe for you to be there this year.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry yourself about me hun. I’m too big a mouthful for those dirty murderin’ bastards, believe you me.” Laura was surprised to hear anger in Joyce’s voice. It might be one of the only times in her life she’d heard Joyce angry.

  “Seriously Joyce, you can’t go back there. At least not before next summer.” Laura couldn’t let her put herself in danger too. Joyce was all she had left for family, and while she was a tough cookie, she was no superhero.

  Or a shifter, she thought wryly.

  “Oh alright hunny.” Joyce muttered, clearly displeased at being denied a confrontation with Craig’s killers. “If you insist. And if you need anything at all, find a way to contact me. Not on this line though!”

  “I’ll be alright. You just make sure you stay out of this. This is my mess to clean up.”

  “Oh no it isn’t, Craig was family to both of us! And don’t you go getting yourself killed in some cockamamie scheme. You’re all an old woman has left.” To Laura’s amazement, it sounded like Joyce was tearing up. Joyce never cried.

  “I won’t, I promise,” she said, ashamed at her cluelessness. Of course Joyce would be grieving Craig’s death and terrified for her. “But I won’t let him get away with it. Craig deserves more than this.”

  “I know, hunny, I know. Just be careful.”

  “I will. I love you Joyce.” It sounded too final to Laura’s ears, but that was the only thing that felt right to say at this moment.

  “I love you too, Laura.”

  She hung up then, afraid that Joyce’s tears would sway her from her path. How stupid of her to not consider what her aunt had to be going through. To whatever extent Laura had lost a big piece of her family, so had Joyce. And now Joyce had to deal with the reality that her niece would be in danger and there was nothing she could do about it. Not at all unlike how Laura had felt when she had first left New York to give Craig space to work things out.

  I can be a real idiot sometimes. She shook her head as she exited the phone booth. How could she not have realized what Joyce would be going through? Her only defense was that Craig’s death had been so raw a wound that it hadn’t left room to consider anyone else’s feelings. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

  Wiping the beginnings of a tear from her eye, Laura started back up the street towards the library. She needed some answers, and it was finally time to get them.

  By an hour and a half later at least some of that initial optimism had passed. The library was nicer than she had expected and the staff had been, if not friendly, at least not unpleasant. She had spent a few minutes wandering through the rows of books before finding the small computer section she had been directed to.

  It had been a little bit odd walking through the library, she reflected. Reading had been something she had enjoyed as a child, but as an adult she had never had much time for it. It had been something she had always promised herself she would get back into, though. It had always been something for later, after that next deadline, as soon as the workload lightened up, that kind of thing. Joke had been on her, it seemed, since apparently for career focused people the workload never lightened up. She probably would have been making the same promises to herself twenty years from now if Craig’s murder hadn’t jarred her loose.

  She sat down at one of the few free computers and set to work. First she pulled up news stories about the murder from various different outlets. The stories seemed almost carbon copies of each other, stating that two men had been murdered in an apartment in New York. The suspects, Laura Hamilton and a possible accomplice, remained at large. Police were asking anyone with any information to come forward.

  Yada yada yada.

  She combed through all the stories she could find, yet none mentioned anything about gambling debts or gangsters. She supposed it wasn’t that surprising. The people Craig had owed money to would hardly advertise those things to the media, and short of that it was hard to expect them to figure it out.

  One story had a quote from her boss. She knew what he was doing, and agreed with the reasoning behind it, yet it still hurt a little bit to read. Laura Hamilton was a former employee at our firm. She hasn’t been heard from since the murder of her brother. We urge her in the strongest possible terms to turn herself in to the police.

  It didn’t matter that Laura had worked there for years, the company had to distance itself from her. An advertising agency that looks bad in the press looks like an advertising agency that’s bad at its job. There was no getting around it. Of course, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Still, something about it seemed dirty to her.

  Maybe Rick is starting to rub off on me.

  It appeared there was nothing to be found in the various articles that would help
them. None mentioned anything about where she might be hiding, though if the police had some clue they surely wouldn’t tell anyone in the media. Nothing about any gambling debts. It appeared like any other murder you might hear about on the news, which in turn made her wonder how many of those actually had stories as complicated as hers.

  The next order of business was to try to find out anything she could about Dominic Vascenti. There was a lot to dig through, as he appeared to be a fairly prominent figure in New York.

  She first searched for business listings. He was the registered owner of a number of high profile nightclubs and restaurants in the city, the kinds of places that had waiting lists for the general public. She brought up the site for one of the restaurants and the prices made her eyebrows shoot up. They were absurd, even by New York standards.

  So his businesses catered to upscale clientele. Very upscale. There was no trace of anything like what she had imagined. If he was running illegal gambling rooms it was hard to understand why. A guy who owned these businesses didn’t need the extra money or risk.

  She did an image search for Dominic Vascenti, curious what would come up. The results made her heart sink and a groan slip out of her lips. One of the first pictures was of Vascenti shaking hands with the current mayor of New York. A few over there was one of him having dinner with a famous actor. Yet another of him attending an art exhibition in the company of a US senator she recognized from TV.

  To say he was well connected seemed like an understatement. She was happier than ever that Rick and herself had fled New York after Craig’s death. If they had been arrested and this man had used his influence to exert pressure on the police, they may not have gotten out of prison until they were both old and grey.

  Do shifters age normally? She’d have to ask Rick.

  Any notions of going to the police to give her side of the story had vanished. America wasn’t supposed to be this way, but in a he said she said contest a lot of weight would be given to precisely who he and she were. Without some kind of hard proof there was no way the police would be of help to her. Hell, even with evidence she would have to be very careful about going to the authorities. If he actually did run a gambling ring along with who knew what else, it was entirely likely that he had friends in the police force.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon searching anywhere and everywhere on the internet for anything that might help her, but came up mostly empty. The closest thing to useful information she found was an address on a small poker forum for someplace the author called V’s spot. Someplace you could find action any time of the day. It certainly sounded like it could be the place where Craig had been playing poker, but then again maybe it was run by someone named Victoria.

  She wasn’t sure if it would be useful or not, but jotted down the address anyways. Hours of digging hadn’t revealed anything else.

  Laura suddenly felt foolish. What had she thought she would find here? A yellow page listing for ‘Dominic Vascenti’s Illegal Gambling Hall’? A YouTube clip of him admitting it was his men that had killed Craig? This whole trip was starting to feel pretty pointless.

  She leaned back in her seat and sighed. As weak as it made her feel to admit it, she needed Rick’s simple reassurances right now. He always seemed so unflappable, like he could work his way through any problem by sheer force of will. She needed some of that confidence.

  Packing up her things, Laura headed back to the front desk and enquired about where she could find a cheap motel for the night. The older woman behind the desk shifted her owl rimmed glasses around a bit as she gave her directions to a place she said was ‘cheap, but not hourly cheap’.

  That sounded fine to Laura.

  That evening as she lay awake in bed, Laura started to realize something. The anger that had been living inside her since Craig’s death didn’t seem as vast as it had before. And in some small corner of her soul something else had taken root. It took her a while to figure out what it was.

  Hopelessness.

  Chapter 4

  Laura arrived back in Blackendale the next day around noon. Stepping off the bus, she let out a small sigh of relief. Just being here again seemed to push back against that sense of despair that had been slowly creeping up on her. Blackendale was a place where good people lived quiet lives, and everything happened like it was supposed to. Not a place where power and influence could be wielded like a weapon.

  Laura chuckled just thinking about it. Maybe Mr. Baker could use his monopoly on homemade baked goods to buy votes to push Janice, the town’s hairdresser, out of her perennial spot as head of the PTA. This of course would be followed by a war of terror (or at least terrible haircuts) upon all of Mr. Baker’s friends. He wouldn’t be swayed however, as he was a man of stalwart character. Also, he was very bald.

  She would have loved to stop at the bakery to grab some coffee and catch up with Mr. Baker, but he knew her too well from her summers here as a kid. There was too much chance he would recognize her, and she knew through Rick that the state police had asked around about her on their original trip to check out Joyce’s cabin. She honestly didn’t think she would have to worry even if he did recognize her, but that would be a hell of a position to put him in. So no, she’d stay away.

  She did stop at the small general store though. It was under new owners, so there was little concern about anyone spotting her, and coffee at Rick’s place was running dangerously low. She paid for it with cash of course. Rick’s cash, which she felt a little guilty about, but he had insisted she take some extra money with her. She hadn’t dared use any of her cards since their return from New York for obvious reasons.

  Part of her felt like a burden to him, which was a feeling she was unused to. Laura had been accustomed to being the person that other people could lean on if they needed to, so this foray into the other side was strange for her. She just hoped she could return the favor at some point.

  After paying up she left and started towards Rick’s cabin. It would take about thirty minutes to get there, and it was already almost lunch time. Her stomach grumbled as she set off.

  A few minutes of walking passed before she became aware of a vehicle following behind her. Now that she was paying attention she could tell that it was just behind her and was keeping pace, rolling slowly so as not to overtake her.

  Her mind spun and she fought to keep from speeding up. If it was the police, what were her options? Turn herself in or hightail it into the trees next to the road. It became forest at some point, so maybe she could lose them. And if it was Vascenti’s thugs? Running into the forest would be the exact wrong thing to do. The last thing she wanted was to be somewhere without witnesses if they had somehow found her.

  She settled for swinging her backpack off her shoulders as she walked. She pulled out a compact mirror then shrugged back into the backpack. She could pretend to be checking her makeup to get a look at whoever it was behind her.

  She brought up the mirror to eye level and instantly all of the tension flowed out of her. It was Rick, slowly following in his old red truck, eyes meeting hers in the mirror. His face wore that obnoxiously cute expression he put on when teasing her.

  Spinning on her heel, she walked back to the truck and leaned in the window. “You big idiot! I thought you were the police! Or a car full of gangsters here to whack me!”

  “Nope, just a simple day laborer admiring a pretty lady. Don’t mind me ma’am.”

  “Don’t you ma’am me,” she started, but it came out through a grin. She opened the door and hopped in the truck.

  “Yes ma’am,” Rick said, speeding up a little as she closed the door. He was sporting a bit of stubble today, something that wasn’t uncharacteristic for him. “Sorry I’m late, I meant to be there to pick you up when you got off the bus.”

  “So when you couldn’t find me your response was to drive along slowly like some sexual predator searching for victims?” Even after a day away Laura had missed this lighthearted verbal sparring she and Ri
ck always fell into so easily.

  Rick chuckled. “Predator? Me? I’m pretty sure predators drive vans. Anyways I was just parked over there waiting for you to walk by.” He motioned to the parking lot in front of the town bar.

  “Had to stop for coffee first,” she said while patting her bag.

  Rick nodded approvingly. He was almost as much of a coffee junkie as she was.

  They arrived back at the cabin a few minutes later. During the drive Laura gave a rundown of what she had found out in Chicago. It was a depressingly short list. Vascenti seemed to be very rich and well connected. She had an address that may or may not be for one of Vascenti’s illegal gambling spots. Joyce didn’t think she had killed Craig.

  “You really thought Joyce would believe it was you who did it?” Rick asked, stepping out of the truck. “She always struck me as a pretty no nonsense kinda woman, and thinking that you just up and killed your brother? Sounds like nonsense to me.”

  “It’s not like I thought she would, but some part of me couldn’t help but wonder if I’d lost everyone at once. If that makes any sense.”

  “Not really, but people don’t always make sense, especially when something bad has happened.” She noticed his use of the more general ‘people’, rather than humans. Rick always seemed pretty deliberate with his words.

  As they entered the cabin Laura couldn’t help but feel a wave of disappointment wash over her. She had thought that by the time she returned she would have some kind of plan of action mapped out, or at least a hint of what to do next. She flopped down on the couch.

  “What am I going to do, Rick?” she asked. “I don’t have a clue where to go from here.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” he said walking back into the living room after having dropped her bag in the bedroom. “We’re going to get drunk.”