As I walked over to the white house, I pondered the dubious nature of Veronica’s claim that she’d been moving chicken feed when Carson was yelling for help this morning. I didn’t know if Veronica had ever fed the chickens, but it didn’t seem to be the kind of chore that was up her alley.
Unable to locate a doorbell, I rapped on the cherry-red front door. A couple of moments passed, and I was just getting ready to ring again when I heard Dahlia shout, “I’m coming!”
She must have scrambled down the stairs, because she was out of breath when she cracked the door and peered out into the sunlight. “Belinda?”
“Hi, Dahlia, do you mind if I come in?”
“Of course not. Come inside.” She motioned me into the cool interior of the hallway. “What’s going on?”
“First, I wondered how Carson is doing,” I asked, hoping to ease into the real reason for my visit.
“His grandfather just called.” She twisted a tissue in her hands. “He said Carson’s fingers are all intact and nothing was severed. Everything should heal in a few weeks.”
“That was a close call, though. His hand was really messed up.” It seemed that Dahlia could at least acknowledge that her wolves were dangerous.
“Yes,” Dahlia murmured.
Maybe what I said next would force her to acknowledge the wolves’ deadly tendencies. “Something else has happened. Sergeant Hardy found Rich in Njord’s enclosure, and I hate to say it, but Rich is dead.”
I watched her response closely. She clasped her hands to her heart and stared. “What?! No!”
She seemed genuinely upset, so I rushed to smooth things as best I could. “Sergeant Hardy said we needed to be prepared for the press coverage, so you might need to talk with Evie about how to present the story.”
“I can’t possibly talk to the reporters.” Dahlia ran a hand through her unkempt hair.
“Evie’s certainly not in any shape to do it, either,” I said. “But if you two talk it out, maybe you can figure out an angle that will somehow keep your place in business.”
Dahlia sank into an antique chair. “That’s the rub, isn’t it? No one’s going to want to book tours here now. So what will happen to the wolves?”
At least she seemed concerned about the plight of her animals.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Hesitating a moment, I decided to plunge ahead with my real question. “Um…speaking of the wolves, I hate to ask, but do you have anyone else who knows how Rich feeds them? I only did the water, and to be truthful, right now I’d feel really uncomfortable going back into their enclosures.”
Dahlia looked thoughtful. “Well, Veronica has fed them, but she’s so tiny…she couldn’t fight them off.”
She failed to mention that Shaun had been far from small, and he hadn’t been able to fight them off. Besides, what was I, a looming giant? Far from it.
She pulled her cell phone from her shirt pocket and scrolled down the list, thinking out loud. “Evie can’t do it; she’s afraid of the wolves. And Carson has always wanted to feed them, but I haven’t felt he was ready, and now…”
She sniffed and untwisted her tissue to wipe her tears. Suddenly, her finger stopped on a contact name. “Marco! I’ll call him. He’s filled in for Rich before. Maybe you could help him, just with the water?”
There it was, the question I’d been dreading. Would I risk life and limb to enter the enclosures again? This job certainly wasn’t worth it, no matter how well it paid.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
She nodded hopefully. “I’ll call Marco. Then I’ll talk to Evie.” She pushed a button and put her phone to her ear, so I waved and headed out.
Back in the sunshine, I inhaled the sweet smell of hyacinths lining Dahlia’s walkway. I wished I could head home and recuperate from seeing Rich’s lifeless body, but I would probably have to take care of all the smaller animals before I left. It was anyone’s guess if Veronica had actually fed the chickens after she shifted their feed around.
In one final act of kindness, Rich must have fed the wolves before his death, since I’d spotted empty buckets in the wheelbarrow he’d left just outside the gate. As I mulled over the logistics of that setup, I frowned. It wasn’t like Rich to abandon his wheelbarrow only to reenter the enclosure. Had he unlocked the gates just to give the wolves a final petting?
Regardless of how Rich’s last moments had played out, it was agonizing to imagine how his family was going to react to the news of his death. His daughter was just on the brink of getting married. I couldn’t help but imagine myself in her shoes. Although my dad had seen some close calls as a vet, if he had been killed in some kind of wolf attack…well, I knew what my reaction would be.
It would be about the same as Sergeant Hardy’s—I’d want those monsters put down.
* * * *
Once my small-animal chores were finished, I checked in with Evie. After a lot of back-and-forth, she had managed to talk Dahlia into giving a statement this evening to the reporters who were still lined up outside the gate. The intrepid journalists had certainly enjoyed front row seats for the parade of ambulances and police cars today, and it was a given that the White Pine Wolf Preserve was going to dominate the local front-page news this week. I wondered if the bulky man who had scrambled into the woods would be present at the press briefing.
Evie said Dahlia wasn’t going to answer specific questions—she would just say the police were working on things and the preserve would be closed for a few weeks. Overall, she would attempt to give the impression that things were well under control, which, of course, they weren’t.
I doubted that Dahlia’s statement would stave off the ravening media hordes for long, but it was worth a shot.
“Marco will be here tomorrow to help you with the wolves,” Evie said. “Should we still plan on lunch?”
I figured she was asking me, in a roundabout way, if I was ever going to show up again.
Since Marco was coming in tomorrow, I figured I’d be safe enough to stick with the job for now. Besides, I could always call if I made some kind of last-minute decision to quit. “Let’s do that. There’s a taco place I’ve been dying to try and it seems reasonably priced.”
Evie gave a relieved nod. “See you tomorrow.”
Once I stepped outside, I allowed myself a brief dip in a mental pool of despondency. It was surreal that I would never again chat with Rich at the end of a workday at White Pine.
As I slid into Bluebell’s driver’s seat, my sadness morphed into an unwillingness to face the news reporters who were gathered on the driveway. I delayed my exit, calling Katrina instead.
My sister picked up on the first ring, a sure sign she was bored out of her mind. “Tell me you’re not in trouble, because I don’t have the energy to rescue you.”
I laughed. “Is that how you think of me? Your little sis who’s always in trouble?”
“Pretty much,” she said.
I had to admit, her view wasn’t actually that far off. “How’s little Jasper?”
“Kicking like he wants to get out. I wish he’d just get on with it.”
“You’re not due for a few weeks. Give him time to incubate in there.”
“Easy to say, hard to do. Anyway, Mom’s planning to come as soon as I start having serious contractions.” Katrina sighed. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. I hope she doesn’t try to give me herbal vitamins or oils that’ll help with labor. Tyler won’t hear of anything that’s not on our birth plan.”
Katrina’s husband, Tyler, happened to be an obstetrician, and he had probably run into more than his share of my mom’s naturalistic remedies during this pregnancy.
“I’ll bet.” I sounded morose, even to myself.
Katrina’s voice sharpened. “What’s up? Are you at work?”
“I’m about to head home.” I took a deep breath. “Kat, there’s been another death in that same wolf enclosure. But this one wasn’t a mauling, like the other. In fact, he didn’t seem to have a scratch on him.”
“Then how did it happen?”
That was the question that was tormenting me. If the wolves hadn’t killed Rich—which seemed impossible without leaving marks on his body—then what had killed him? Natural causes didn’t seem to fit at his age.
“I don’t know.”
A protective edge crept into her voice. “It’s not safe there anymore. You don’t have to stay.”
I knew that, but the more I pictured Njord in that enclosure, standing over Rich’s body, the more I was convinced that something was very off about the whole scenario. Rich had said he’d been there at Njord’s birth. It seemed extremely dubious that a wolf would turn on someone who’d been in his life from day one. More than that, it was the way Njord had been standing next to Rich’s body. He’d never entertained the slightest notion about laying a tooth on the man, I was certain.
My grip tightened on the phone. “You remember with those murders last year, how I knew something wasn’t right? How I suspected it was a frame job?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“This feels the same.”
Katrina groaned. “But it’s the wolves that have been killing people. They’re the murderers, BB.”
I turned the key in the ignition. “That’s the thing. It feels like—I know this sounds impossible—but I think someone’s framing the wolves.”