by Drew VanDyke
“Miss Macdonald,” my Dad reasoned. “If you could just tell us where they are…”
“Ranger Macdonald,” my brother interjected. “Jeanetta.” His voice softened, slipping past her defenses. “I’d really appreciate it if you could help me make sure that Ashlee is safe. I know she can be a pain in the ass, but…she’s still my sister.”
Adam doesn’t assert himself very often, but when he wants to, he can really command attention and response. Jeanetta looked at him like an aberration, then her brow furrowed as if she seemed confused, which was when she shifted to acquiescence and let out a huge sigh.
My brother has this weird effect on people. It’s almost like he can convince you of anything. One Halloween, when we were ten, and he was like, thirteen, as we were dividing up the stash, he convinced me that I loved tootsie rolls. By the time the night was through, he had all the chocolate, and I had…tootsie rolls. It’s a great story, but I rarely eat tootsie rolls anymore.
“Fine. They’re up at the overlook. But you better just do a drive-by. I was gonna run up there in a couple of hours myself. Make sure the kids aren’t trashing the place. So, why don’t you just give me a call so I don’t have to waste a trip,” she called as my family rushed back to the car.
“Crazy townies,” Jeanetta muttered as she watched us hurry away and then shut the door.
I felt cool hands on the back of my neck and a whisper of night breezes down my naked skin as I vomited up copious amounts of blood. Bits of flesh surrounded me, and a haze of insects sucked the moisture out of the air as it evaporated from my skin.
My poor dear, I heard. My mother’s voice echoed in my head as soft hands petted the pelt of my hair. My throat felt raw from the acid bile, my head in shock, my heart in anguish.
“I think I killed something,” I croaked.
I know dear. My mother’s arms held me and rocked away my horror till I fell asleep.
My family found me naked and sound asleep in a pool of Shane’s blood. And though I know what must have happened, because I’ve turned every full moon since that time, the sheriff’s office, unequipped to deal with the supernatural, named it a tragedy of nature and they even brought back the carcass of a mountain lion to prove it.
Jeanetta Macdonald said she forgave me for “dragging my brother out there.” After all, the investigation showed she had allowed Shane to use the camping trailer parked on public land in violation of policy. She tried to claim it was for her own use and that her brother had brought me up there without telling her, but the remains of the feast made it pretty clear what was going on, and with Amber’s testimony about what Shane had claimed, Jeanetta was forced to accept at least some responsibility. I heard later she got a bad performance report and was denied a promotion she wanted.
You know what was weird? It seemed like she was more upset over the mountain lion than about her brother.
And now you know what really happened.
Chapter 15
Chief Hernandez’s voice brought me back to the present. “It says here in the file that after Shane Macdonald was killed you got threatening letters like this all of the time.”
“Letter, not emails. And not all the time,” I protested. “It was every year on the anniversary of his death, and those were direct threats, like, ‘You’re dead, bitch, for what you did to Shane.’ These are more like warnings. And it stopped when I left Knightsbridge for good.” Or I thought it had.
“Ashlee, I wish you would have told me, told Amber, told someone,” Elle said.
“I was in the file. I wasn’t hiding anything. Besides, I’d hoped never to have to think about it again.”
“Sounds like someone isn’t happy you’re back,” Hernandez said. “Any idea who that might be?”
“Jeanetta Macdonald blamed me for Shane’s death, but you guys didn’t find anything,” I said. By “you guys,” I meant the cops in general, of course. Neither Elle nor Hernandez had been with Knightsbridge PD back then.
“What about other friends of Shane’s? Some ex-girlfriend or something?” Elle asked. “Or other family?”
“As far as I know Jeanetta and Shane’s parents are dead. They have cousins, in Utah or something, but aren’t close.”
“We’re not going to get very far on a cold case like this by questioning the victim,” Hernandez broke in, shooting Elle a look. “We need to review all the files and assign an investigator.”
Elle glared at Hernandez but the chief spread his hands. “It’s a dead coyote and a threatening note. I can’t justify some kind of all-out effort unless something happens. Especially not just because it’s your family.”
Elle relented. “Yeah, I get it. Put someone good on it, though, and start with some decent forensics. I’ll back you up at budget time.”
Hernandez sighed and nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Come on, Ash,” Elle said. “Let’s go home.”
“I need to go back by Will’s. He can bring me home afterward.”
Elle pointed her finger at my nose. “Straight there, straight back, and keep your eyes open, the both of you. If you see anything funny, call me right away.”
“Oh come on, Elle. Nothing’s going to happen in broad daylight.”
“How do you know?” And she was right, I didn’t. Except, bad things happened at night. That’s what I’d always believed, and ever since that night, I am living proof.
As Elle was licensed to carry concealed weapons, and was clearly on my side, at least for Amber’s sake, I wasn’t going to argue with her.
On the other hand, Amber wasn’t happy, because Elle had invited Will to stay with me, but it eventually saved her from feeling like she had to be hospitable all the time. It probably helped our sisterly relationship in the end, especially since Will turned out to be a better domestic than I was, and kept the house spotless. How humiliating!
Elle ordered spotlights on motion detectors to be installed around the property and my sister seemed to settle into a new rhythm. This was just one of the reasons I imagined my twin loved Elle so much - she was a bastion of safety and security. She radiated alpha during these moments and, knowing my own limits, both of us siblings accepted beta female roles. I think this is where I first began to consider just what it meant to be a pack. Though they weren’t lycanthropes, this felt like a home now, as if Amber’s attitude had now changed. It seemed I was back inside something, instead of outside, for the first time in years.
Will accepted his beta male role with equanimity, which was funny as there was no alpha male, unless you counted Spanky the Schnauzer, who was about as un-alpha as dogs came. I guess Elle got to play both roles.
Detective Bromley came by and interviewed us all again, and said it would be a couple of weeks before anything came back from the lab. He was a big, florid man who sweated too much and exercised too little, but Elle said he was competent enough. Not much evidence to go on, though, so I didn’t get my hopes up. He did say he was interviewing everyone, including my chief suspect, Jeanetta Macdonald, but he wasn’t about to disclose any details, not even to Elle apparently.
Chapter 16
“You know, Will, I think you should take Ashlee out of town,” Elle announced at the breakfast table on the morning before the night of the full moon. I’d been wondering how I was going to work that one, and this seemed like a pretty good idea to me, no matter what prompted it.
“Cool!” J.R. said. “Can I come?”
We all laughed, a bit raggedly I’ll admit.
“What?” he asked us, with the most innocent lack of guile on his face.
“Maybe another time, sweetie,” my sister said. “I think your Aunt Ash and Uncle Will want to be alone.”
“Wait. What?” my nephew said. “When did Will become my uncle?”
“Yes, Amber,” Elle teased. “Just when did that happen?”
“Just thinking ahead,” she singsonged. “Don’t blame me for stating the obvious.”
Will grinned and looked at me,
but I pouted, not exactly certain why except to reflexively oppose my twin. “The obvious is rushing things, sis. I only just got back into town and you’re trying to marry me off to my high school sweetheart?”
“Is that what I am?” Will leaned forward intently.
“And what’s wrong with that?” Amber chimed in.
“Maybe you soured me on marriage.”
“Ouch,” Amber said, and I saw my barb had scored. Perhaps too deep.
“Sorry, low blow,” I said. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”
Her look tried to wither me where I sat. “Been there, done that,” she said coldly, and in that moment seemed older than I was, which was actually our usual relationship.
“I love when two beautiful girls fight over me,” Will broke in, “but I agree with Elle. We need to get out of this fortress. The investigation’s going nowhere and unless whoever is sending the notes makes another move, it won’t.”
“Yeah, I knew this was too good to be true,” I said. Why was I always getting kicked out of places? If I wasn’t being asked to leave by boutique hotels that didn’t like my reviews or cruises because I had a bad habit of sneaking into the crew’s mess in my search for the human part of the story, then I was being passed around from family member to family member like the perpetual problem child. Damn, and just when I thought the crisis had brought us closer.
Then again, I guess I was a handful sometimes. “Fine. I’ll take Will back to the city with me.”
“Great! I finally get to see how the other half lives,” he said. There were hisses and boos all around, except for J.R., who laughed uproariously like the kid he was. I doubt he knew what he was laughing at, except his elders’ antics.
Elle said, “Actually, I think you and Will should go stay in a hotel. Someone might be watching your place. I’ll be guarding Amber and the house back here, and I called in a favor with a bail bondsman I know who has a couple of security guys.”
“Why?” I pointed an accusing finger at Elle. “Are you trying to dangle some bait for the, the, what do you call it…”
“Perp. Perpetrator. So what if I am?”
A smile spread across my face. “So what if you are. Anything to get away from here.”
“Love you!” Amber said.
“Love you too,” I replied, “but I don’t see you objecting.” In fact, it had been frustrating as all hell, sleeping in the guest room with Will but not, you know, sleeping with him. At least, not the full Monty, if you know what I mean and no, I will not give details. You can fill in the blanks. But anyway, fun and frustrating, because I hadn’t fully convinced myself getting back with him was the right thing to do and going all the way was just going to make the inevitable breakup that much harder, pardon the pun.
That was our usual pattern, anyway, back in high school. Things would go along good for a while, closer and closer and even, yes, that close, and it was wonderful, but then the explosion would come. My explosion. I knew it was me, always me. Will hardly ever got mad, just irritated, when I would sabotage things when I felt like we were getting too close.
That’s what it felt like now, getting too close, so going away would either finish the pattern with fireworks, or maybe we could derail the speeding train and do something different. Maybe if we got away from my family and this pressure and I was on my own home ground, I could get past my fear of flying and think about being with Will the way he wanted to be with me.
Then I thought about what I was, and all the fear came back again. There was just no way I could tell him…if he would even believe me. Until I proved it, that is, perhaps by ripping him to shreds the way I’d done to goofy dorky hunky innocent Shane.
I felt sick.
“Ash,” Will jogged my elbow. “I think we lost you.”
“Just thinking,” I said with a forced smile. I turned to the alpha female. “Okay, boss, what do we do?”
Elle laid down the plan. Will and I were okay with it, and surprisingly, so was Amber. I guess I didn’t expect her to be willing to play me in hopes of drawing the threat into the open. Never thought of her as brave, but there are different types of courage.
Will took me to the Claremont Hotel in Oakland, not my apartment after all. The place was a marvel, towering like an ostentatious grande dame on the hills overlooking the Oakland-Berkeley line. Like a California version of the hotel Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour haunted in Somewhere in Time, it nestled among the pines and towering fragrant Eucalyptus trees across the slope. Hard to believe that the old Highway 13 was just over the rise, it gave such an illusion of remoteness.
Since I’d written the hotel a stellar review, the management offered to comp our stay, as I normally couldn’t afford a couple hundred a night just for grins. I must admit I did imply that I was going to do a follow-up article, sometime in the future.
I might.
You never know.
Will laughed and said he could handle it. I reminded myself that he had taken over the family business and was actually reasonably well off, if not super-rich. That got me thinking about the fact that none of the local hotties had snapped him up yet, and that I was pretty lucky that he wanted me after all these years.
That led me to wondering about the house he’d bought – my house! Which was so weird, but so romantic. You know, a lot of girls think they would kill for a guy like Will, but like most fantasies, when they actually start happening they aren’t quite the same as you think they will be. One girl’s romantic beau is another’s creepy stalker, and what was I supposed to think about him sleeping in my room – I mean, in my old house – every night? Was that love, or infatuation, or obsession?
We settled in for an afternoon at the pool and a cozy evening on the veranda. Shrouded in secrecy that I claimed was necessary to avoid my legions of rabid fans – ha, ha – the hotel had even let us come and go through the employee entrance.
We stayed up late and got up late the next morning. I dragged Will out to Mill Valley, where I ran him ragged hiking from the shadows of Muir Woods on up and over the Dipsea Trail to the bluff above Stinson Beach and back. MoonFall was coming that evening and I had so much energy, I thought it would just be easier to tucker Will out so I could sneak away and make the change without interference.
We had dinner back on the terrace of the hotel’s restaurant. He ate enough for two and me for three. “Damn, girl,” he joked, “I’m gonna have to get a side job just to feed you.”
“Oh, it’s your responsibility to feed me now, is it?” I teased.
“If you want it to be.” He took my hand and caressed it, and I let him. “I think Uncle Will sounded pretty good.”
“Will…”
“I know, you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Just not yet, okay? Not until this thing with the threats is resolved, and…”
“And what?”
“Nothing.”
“Look,” he said, “we can leave Knightsbridge. If it’s Jeanetta, she’s so attached to the Park and the Canyon she won’t follow you, and you’ll be gone and once you’re out of her field of view she’ll stop. She and her animal rights wacko buddies can kiss my ass as we leave them in the dust. I can get a manager for the landscaping business and travel with you, or sell out entirely and start over somewhere far away.”
I sighed. “That sounds lovely. Like paradise.”
“Then why not?”
I just couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Besides, there was Elle’s plan, which Will almost seemed like he’d forgotten about. He was such a sweet, live-in-the-now kind of guy, which I guess fit with my personality too, except I tended to be the worry-about-tomorrow kind of girl. You can tell by my bitten fingernails, so different from Amber’s long perfect ones.
“It’s complicated, Will. Look, I really like you.”
“You used to say you love me.”
“I…I do love you,” I admitted to him. “But that may not mean exactly what you think it does, or it may not be enough, or the timing m
ight just not be right. So can we just leave it at that for a while?”
“That we love each other.”
“Pushy bastard, aren’t you?” I smiled to soften my words.
“I know what I want, and what I want is you, Ash. Always have.”
“You’ve been waiting around all this time for me? Never went out with anyone else in all these years?”
“Not so many years. I’ve kept busy.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
Will sighed. “I never asked anyone out. I took Denise Paulos out a couple of times on pity dates, because Carl begged me. We didn’t even hold hands. That’s all.”
“You really did wait for me?” I guess the disbelief came through in my voice, because he showed a touch of anger.
“Yes, I did. You say that as though it was a bad thing.” He stood up. “It wasn’t. It was a noble thing, a good thing. I wanted to wait, because you’re worth waiting for, Ashlee Scott, and I’m really sorry you can’t see it. But don’t try to diss me for it. I gotta pee,” he ended, and stomped off toward the restaurant’s facilities.
“Will –” Grrr. I signaled the waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne. That had not gone well. Maybe I could smooth it over. When he came back, face and hands damp from the sink, I had two glasses poured. “A toast,” I said.
“To what?” he asked, intrigued.
“To my stupidity.”
“Did you order a magnum?” he quipped.
“Watch it, buddy,” I winked. “I’m trying to apologize here, okay? Now drink your toast.”
“I’d rather drink my champagne.” Will raised the glass. “To your stupidity.” He drained it.
So did I. “Look…it was really romantic, or noble or whatever for you to have waited for me these past five or six years, but it’s a lot of pressure. I’ve been footloose and fancy-free for all that time and now I come back to my hometown and you want me to just pick back up like nothing has changed.”
“Some things have changed, but not others,” he said a bit cryptically. “That’s life. Okay,” he held up a hand, “I’ll back off. I’ve waited this long. I’ll wait some more.”