by Geonn Cannon
Ari chose breakfast from the Volunteer Park Cafe & Marketplace, getting the veggie quiche for Dale and a bacon and egg panini for herself. She went back home long enough to eat with Dale before heading back out. She had a list of Totems players that she separated into those she’d already looked into and those she hadn’t yet started on. The driver could’ve come from either column. Maybe one of the ex-girlfriends she spoke to mentioned the private investigator to her boyfriend who mentioned it to his new teammates. Nicole Vasquez took a picture of her and might have posted it to Facebook. All it would take is one of the future Totems to put two and two together to know what she was doing.
The problem now was that whoever came after them knew more than she did. He knew they were investigating Totem players so, if she turned up asking questions, he would be prepared. She’d lost the element of surprise. Letting Nicole take her picture had been dumb but there was nothing she could do about it now. She ran her eyes down the list and realized there was one person she hadn’t considered. If there was a deep dark secret on the team, something so awful it would prompt an attempted homicide to keep it quiet, then the coach had to know about it.
Conor Muldoon was a former player, just famous enough for Ari to recognize his name without knowing much else about him. She looked him up and discovered he lived in Medina, a zip code so exclusive Ari felt like she’d have to rent a different car just to drive through it. She made the drive just to scope out what his place looked like and caught a lucky break: an older, grayer version of the man she’d seen on Google was getting into a Cadillac parked at the curb as she drove by.
Ari drove on to the stop sign and weighed her options. She could wait until he was gone and backtrack, transform to the wolf, and see what she could find at his house. Or, alternatively, she could take advantage of her lucky timing and follow him wherever he was going. She chose the latter and continued onward. She guessed that since Medina was mostly residential he had to be going back to Seattle. She kept an eye on her rearview mirror, watching his turn signals carefully to make sure he didn’t take any unexpected turns.
“Following a suspect from the lead position,” she said. “I could get used to this.”
They got onto the freeway with only a few cars between them and Ari continued leading Muldoon back across Lake Washington. When he finally moved over to exit, Ari did the same thing. She pulled into the first parking lot she saw and dialed Dale’s number as she waited for him to pass. The phone buzzed as she attached it to the dashboard mount so she could keep her hands free.
“Everything okay, puppy?”
“Yeah, everything’s peachy.” He drove past and Ari pulled back out onto the road. “I’m following the Totems coach, Conor Muldoon. I’m not sure where he’s leading me, but I wanted to let you know what I was up to.”
“Appreciated. I might as well give you an update. I did a quick scan of everyone’s records to see if any of them had moving violations. That jackass last night pulled an illegal U-turn, drove the wrong way, and hopped the curb without any noticeable hesitation. It’s got me thinking he might have done this kind of thing before. So I went through and found the names who have moving violations on their record.”
“Your brain is the best brain, baby.”
“Well, don’t award me any points until it leads to anything. He may have just been insane enough not to worry about driving on the sidewalk. I’m going to send you the names and you can focus on those guys when you’re done playing follow-the-leader.”
Ari said, “Thanks. Anyone jump out at you?”
“No one in particular. A few people we’ve already looked into, but some we haven’t.”
“I’ll put the new guys at the top of the list.”
“Already done, puppy. Be safe.”
Ari said, “You stay comfortable. Let me know if you need me to bring you anything.”
“Will do. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Ari hung up and watched Muldoon’s car. She put a wide gap between them in case he recognized the car he’d followed all the way from his home was still hanging around. He drove toward Lake Union and Ari smiled as they passed the marina where she was spending one night a week watching the boats.
“Muldoon is the vandal,” she said, “and I’ll tie up both cases in a neat little bow by catching him. That would be convenient.”
Muldoon foiled her theory by continuing around the lower end of the lake and continuing back north. She sighed. If he’d been working a little harder she would think he was trying to shake her. It was more likely he was just taking a dumb route to wherever it was he was going.
After what seemed like an endless commute, he pulled into the parking lot of a glass-fronted building on the fringes of East Queen Anne. A sign over the door identified it as Newton Ice Rink.
Ari’s spirits lifted as she continued past the rink and found a place to leave her car. She walked back to give Muldoon time to get out of his car and get into the building before she showed up. The building seemed to be open to the public given the number of minivans occupying the parking lot. No one seemed to pay her any attention as she crossed to the entrance, opened the door for a party that was on their way out, and stepped inside.
The glass front of the building meant she didn’t have to wait for her eyes to adjust to interior lighting. A pro shop stood to the right, along with a skate rental counter. To the left was a seating area along with four rows of small orange-fronted lockers where mothers were helping kids change from street shoes to skates. She could see the rink deeper in the building and started toward it, but a young man in a maroon polo shirt intercepted her. A tag on his chest said his name was Patrick.
“Afternoon, ma’am. Can we help you today?”
“Yeah, I’m just looking for a place to hold my niece’s birthday party this weekend. I was going to do a bounce house, but apparently that’s lame.”
Patrick smiled. “It was cool when I was a kid.”
“Me too. But I thought ice skating… might be a good fit. Is there a chance I could just take a look around? See what it’s like?”
He glanced toward the counter and leaned in. “I’m not supposed to let people just wander around. And I’m really not supposed to let people in without paying the fee…”
“Five minutes?”
“Just five minutes?”
“I promise I won’t go on the ice.”
She was prepared to touch his arm and bat her eyelashes to get his cooperation, but he smiled and nodded his head toward the rink before she had to resort to that.
“Five minutes.”
“Thanks.”
She stepped around him. The entrance opened onto a wide concrete area with bleachers set up for parents to watch their kids. Ari went up into the bleachers where she could get a good look at the ice. There were mostly kids, of course, and chaperones that ranged in age from sixteen to sixty, but Ari focused on the cluster of men standing at the far end of the rink. She recognized Muldoon right away since she’d just seen him in the same clothes outside his house, but it took her a second to connect the other men with the photos she’d seen in Dale’s files: Steve Aulie, Anton Oesterle, Phillipe Lindholm, and Kristof Oborin. The Totems coach and four of his players, all doing what looked like routine drills amid a gaggle of pre-teen birthday parties.
Ari couldn’t imagine what they were doing at a local ice rink amid preschoolers and stay-at-home mothers. A professional hockey team must have had better places to practice. At the moment she didn’t care why they were there. She only cared about the fact that she now had the chance to see a large sampling of her suspects all together and observe how they reacted. It wasn’t much, but currently she was willing to take whatever she could get.
One of the players, Anton Oesterle, turned and scanned the crowd. His eyes seemed to linger on her for an unusually long time before he turned away again. Recognition? Or was he just noticing an attractive woman in the crowd? She couldn’t discount either possibility. She had to
operate on the possibility that any member of the team was targeting her.
As promised, Patrick came searching for her after a handful of minutes. He escorted her back toward the front of the rink.
“I hope you’ll consider us for your event.”
“It looks really great, Patrick. Looks like a nice place.” She stopped him at the entryway. “Do you see those five guys standing at the far side of the rink? Near the bathrooms?”
Patrick looked over. “Yeah, that’s Conor Muldoon and his friends. He used to be a big-time hockey player back in the day. He’s in here all the time.”
“With the same people?”
“Sometimes. Not always all of them together.”
“What do they do?”
Patrick frowned. “What is everyone doing? They skate. They hang out. Sometimes they go to the bar. We have a bar attached, just through there. Adults only, of course.”
“Right. So they’ve been coming here… what, for a few weeks?”
Patrick shrugged. “Something like that. I asked Mr. Muldoon for his autograph first time I saw him. Did you ever see him play? He was on the Hurricanes when I was a kid, and—”
“That’s great, Patrick. Listen, I’ll let my aunt know about this place.”
“I thought you were the aunt…”
She was outside before he could question her further. She didn’t know if Muldoon and his quintet of players were up to anything shady, but she wasn’t ready to let any of them off the hook until she knew more.
Chapter Six
Dale quickly discovered with a single Google search that Tyler Dubov, one of the team’s defensemen, had an impressive online following. He had bounced around a couple of teams since joining the league ten years earlier, moving from Philly to Montreal to Edmonton to the other Washington, the Capitals. His role on every team seemed to be enforcer. She found a video on YouTube that compiled some of his best fights set to “Tubthumping.” After the first few seconds she was cringing at every crushing impact, every blow of glove against helmet, at the spray of blood on the glass when the two brawlers finally went down.
Part of Dubov’s appeal might have been the fact he was a gorgeous man under the helmet. Bright blue eyes, strong jaw, wry smile with thin sexy lips. She scrolled through a few blogs dedicated to “Dubov de Bod” that included shirtless pictures of him as well as links to sites like Gawker and Deadspin showing him out on the town. It looked like he was quite the playboy, frequently photographed outside clubs with at least two women hanging off his arms.
Her cell phone rang and she checked the screen before she answered. “Hey, Diana.”
“Hi, Dale. Ari wanted me to get in touch when I found out anything on the truck, but there was no answer at the office.”
“Really?” She checked the phone. “Calls should be getting forwarded here. We’re working from home today, because of my ankle.”
“About that. Are you okay? I know Ariadne would be more likely to exaggerate the injury instead of underselling, but I wanted to hear it from you.”
Dale said, “I’m fine. Just a little sore, but nothing aspirin won’t fix. Let me get a pen ready.”
“There’s not much to tell. The truck was stolen about an hour before you guys encountered it. Owner reported it missing from a parking lot three blocks away from Fourth. It’s likely that whoever stole it was following the two of you and made a spur of the moment decision. Went out, found a truck, then came back and waited for you to come out. Maybe he was planning to follow you, staked out the place, and when you started walking the wrong way he had to make a quick decision.”
Dale looked at the computer screen. She’d muted the video but it was still playing, and she watched Dubov swing around his opponent using the stick as ballast. He grabbed the other player’s jersey, pulled him off his skates, and began pounding him.
“Do you know much about hockey enforcers?”
“What? No. They’re the bullies, right?”
“Not really,” Dale said, remembering something her father once said. “Enforcers get into a lot of fights, yes, but they’re doing it as a sacrifice. They’re protecting their teammates by taking the hit. They redirect aggression. They take the penalties so the more talented players can stay on the ice.”
Diana said, “Uh-huh. So what’s your point?”
Dale clicked back and looked at the picture of Dubov. “I’m saying if someone on a hockey team felt threatened, they wouldn’t risk their own careers. They would send an enforcer.”
#
Ari decided to call the players meeting with Muldoon at the ice rink “the Newton Five.” There had to be a reason for them to meet at such an unusual location. She texted Wiseman and confirmed the team had a training facility in Tukwila. She thought maybe it was for the coach’s benefit that they met here, to save him a longer drive, but she Googled the driving directions and saw it was basically the same distance. She also had a message from Dale pointing her toward Dubov and why she thought he would be worth a look.
“Beauty and brains,” she said. “I really need to pay her more.”
They’d received a list of every player’s current address from Wiseman, and Ari saw that Dubov was conveniently staying at the Inn at Queen Anne, just over a mile away from her current location. She drove there and parked across from the ivy-coated brick building. Dubov had obviously chosen the extended-stay hotel because he’d only arrived in Seattle three weeks earlier, according to the information packet they’d gotten from GG&M. He’d been a busy boy in that time, showing up in enough paparazzi shots that most websites were ready to confirm he would be announced as a member of the Totems roster.
While she waited, she got online to check Dubov’s movements over the past few weeks. Social media was a private detective’s best friend. When she was training, the internet was just getting on its feet. Now with just the click of a button she could find information it would have taken ages to dig up on her own. Dubov was extremely active on Twitter, Instagram, and all the other usual suspects. Someone just going by what he posted would never guess he was a professional athlete. She scrolled through pictures of Dubov dancing at nightclubs, dancing at concerts, paddle boarding on Lake Washington. He was always surrounded by good-looking women, though Ari was pretty sure she never saw the same woman twice. It seemed he was a player in every sense of the word.
He tweeted again while she was looking at his feed. “Up & reddy 2 do it again tonite #EmeraldCity! Where u at, where shuld I go?”
Ari grimaced. “I know there are character limits, but damn, man. Learn to spell.”
The replies were already coming in. People were suggesting Trinity, Re-bar, Q Nightclub, Last Supper Club, Rock Box, Alibi Room. Dubov responded to some of them to ask for more details - “Live music? Wat’s the ladies like lol!” - trying to narrow down the list. When someone mentioned a karaoke bar in Capitol Hill, he jumped on it immediately.
“Can’t sing, but I can KARY-OKE! I’m there! U better be their to!”
Ari grimaced. So apparently she was going to hear a barely-literate hockey enforcer sing the hits of yesteryear. She could think of worse ways to spend a night, but at the moment they all seemed preferable. She sighed and went back to checking his activity the night before. He hadn’t posted anything between noon and eleven PM, plenty of time to do a little light stalking and attempt vehicular manslaughter. Or he might have just been sleeping off a buzz.
It was still an easy case, she told herself. Surveillance was always easier than most anything else. But at the moment she was really craving something more challenging.
She turned off the tablet and put it in the passenger seat in anticipation of leaving when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Dubov had just walked out of the hotel, hair mussed and chin sporting a thin layer of stubble. If she hadn’t seen his tweets she would’ve assumed that he woke up seconds before appearing on the street.
Dubov crossed directly in front of where she was parked and turned to lo
ok through the windshield at her. Ari froze. He continued around to the driver’s side and hunched forward so he could still see her as he continued down the sidewalk. Ari kept her eyes locked with his. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her, if he had seen her waiting, and she was suddenly very glad the doors were locked.
After holding eye contact far longer than necessary, Dubov’s expression flattened into a goofy grin and he said, “Hey!”
Ari nodded, as neutral a response as she could manage.
“You’d look a lot prettier if you smiled.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” She looked away from him and started the engine.
“Don’t be stuck-up! I’m just complimenting you.”
Ari shook her head. In the side mirror she watched him continue down the street. So the guy was sexist on top of all his other charms. The karaoke bar was going to be an absolute blast.
#
In another lifetime, Ari had lived in the fancypants Leschi neighborhood in the same house her mother still owned. It was close enough to Lake Washington that Ari could smell the water as she parked at the curb. Coming home still felt strange so she took a moment after parking to gather her thoughts.
She and her mother were friendly now after years of estrangement. She was a grownup now, and she understood things aren’t always black and white. She and her mother had fought a war together. They spent holidays together, they emailed, they were even Facebook friends. They’d taken down the man who sired her, the rapist who dedicated his life to hunting canidae. Their reunion was eased on its way by Dale, who frequently acted as a buffer between the two stubborn Willow women. It wasn’t the perfect mother-daughter relationship, but who really had one of those?
Ari finally got out and went up to the door. Her mother had obviously been watching from a window and answered almost before Ari could lower her hand after knocking. Gwyneth Willow shared her daughter’s height and piercing blue eyes. Her thick black hair was bundled into a knot that fell over her shoulder. She was wearing a robe and seemingly nothing else, but Ari wasn’t alarmed. Nudity had always been a minor thing when she was growing up. “Canidae have to be more comfortable with nudity than other people,” Gwyneth explained. “Your pack is going to be full of friends, coworkers, family members. It’s natural for us to see each other in all of our natural forms.” Ari still believed that, but she also knew it wasn’t practical to run around Seattle as a nudist.