Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  The door inched open, hinges squeaking as someone very hesitantly put her face into the opening. To Olivia’s surprise, it wasn’t Duke at all. It was Clara from the retail shop. She had a piece of paper in her hand.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you, Ms. Houghton,” Clara said meekly. She was a good kid. A local girl who worked at the show during the summers and on weekends and a few weeknights during the school year since she was a college student. “But you asked for any lost and found reports to be brought straight to you.”

  “Lost and found?” Olivia sat up straighter in her chair and gestured to Clara. “Come in. What do you mean a lost and found report?”

  Two lines appeared between Clara’s eyebrows as though she were wondering what wasn’t obvious about a lost and found report. She came all the way into the office and set the sheet on the desk in front of Olivia. “It was a lady. She said she had her wallet before the show and during the show. She’s sure of it because she had gotten out some cash to pay for an iced lemonade during the intermission. Then when she went to the gift shop after the show was over, her wallet was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  Clara nodded her head. “She says she’s not sure where she could have misplaced it, but that maybe her purse had gotten dumped over inside without her realizing it and the wallet could have fallen between the seats or something.”

  “Did you get her seat number?” Olivia was almost afraid to touch the report. It had the woman’s personal information on it. Name. Phone number. Address. She was from Texas. A tourist in the area.

  “I got her seat number and I already asked the ushers to start a search for the wallet branching out from that spot.” Clara bobbed her head. Then she cleared her throat. “I just thought you needed to know because the wallet thing is kind of a big deal lately.”

  “Yes, yes it is.” Olivia felt awful.

  Her stomach was in knots and her breathing was ragged and she felt as though she might be in danger of passing out. All she could think about was what Duke had said before she’d banished him from her office. She couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Not until she’d done some checking around herself.

  “I’ll be in the shop if you need me,” Clara went on. “We just got a new shipment of sweatshirts in and we need to check them into inventory and put them on the shelf before tonight’s show.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” Olivia knew that she sounded weak and afraid. She stood up and headed for the door right behind Clara. “I—I have to go and find Riley. I want to—well I think he should know what’s happening.”

  “Good idea,” Clara said with a nod. “Maybe he saw something when he was out on the floor after the show. You never know until you ask, right?”

  “Right.”

  Clara headed toward the shop and Olivia moved toward the doors that would take her to the backstage area and Riley’s usual hangout. He tended to stay back there between shows with the animals. He would train them for new tricks during this period of time. Either that, or occasionally she’d catch him watching television with Chili in his lap and Snooker dozing on her feet beside the sofa in the green room.

  But this afternoon, Riley was near the holding stall where Snooker stayed during the day. He had a cat in his arms and was showing the thing to the pony. Riley had a running dialogue going in a low voice for the two creatures as they met each other and made friends. Olivia knew he used that fake dialogue between animals as a way to get them used to his voice and to keep them calm.

  “Uncle Riley?” Olivia called out to him, but he didn’t turn around.

  He finally answered her once she was nearly right on top of him. He did not change his voice from the low tones he used with the animals. “I can’t talk right now, Olivia. I’m introducing our new feline cast member to her friends. They assure me this cat once worked on the Amazing Pets Show down at the music hall.”

  “Then what was she doing at the animal shelter?” Olivia could not resist pointing out. “That seems odd. Don’t you think?”

  Riley gave an exasperated little snort. The cat was a Siamese with the typical tan and brown markings and a set of blue eyes that were so crossed Olivia wasn’t entirely sure the poor thing could see straight at all. But she was a beautiful cat. If she was a she. That was never really sure with Riley.

  “I want another pony,” Riley told her suddenly. “No. A donkey. Yeah. A miniature donkey would be fun. Don’t you think?”

  “Did you talk to Mona about it?” Mona was the one who took care of Snooker for them. In fact, Snooker didn’t technically belong to the show. He was on lease. “Mona would be the one to find the perfect donkey for you, if that’s what you really think you need.”

  “Mona doesn’t like donkeys.” Riley sounded pouty, like a little kid denied a favorite toy. “I already asked her. She says they aren’t as trainable as ponies and the noise they make is annoying.”

  Olivia wasn’t going to argue about that. But that wasn’t why she was back here. “Riley, I need to talk to you about the pickpocket problem.”

  “That again?” Riley finally turned around, but it was only to glare at her. “I’m tired of hearing about this, Olivia. I thought you hired some professional to make it go away.”

  “That’s the thing Uncle Riley.” Olivia cleared her throat. “I—well I guess you were doing your after show routine like usual, right? But then you got really close to this lady and you put your hand in her purse?” Olivia deliberately let her voice go up at the end as though she were asking and not telling. She didn’t want Riley to be offended.

  But instead of being offended, Riley actually laughed. “So, your professional has decided that I’m the pickpocket, eh? Great job on that, Olivia.”

  She was stung by the insinuation. “What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me that you think the investigator was lying about what he saw?”

  “Well, obviously.” Riley snorted and then crooned a few words to the cat as he stroked her soft fur and resettled her in his arms. “The guy evidently doesn’t have a flipping clue and so he figures he’ll just make stuff up. I’m moving through the audience after every single show. Right? So, I’m an obvious target for an incompetent idiot to poke his finger at.”

  Olivia bristled. “You know, I might have agreed with you. But then we got a report today of a woman who had her wallet stolen out of her purse sometime between the end of the show and when she tried to pay for her merchandise in the gift shop. That seems awfully suspicious. Don’t you think?”

  “No. I think it says that your professional investigator is even more of a useless musclebound moron that I thought before. He’s up there watching me and someone else pinches a wallet from a purse right there under his nose and he didn’t see a thing? What good is he?” Riley’s scorn was so harsh that Olivia felt it acutely, as though he was throwing her under the bus, too. “You need to fire that guy and get the police to work on this case,” Riley decided. “Or you can just do what everyone said to do in the first place and leave it alone because it’s apparently inevitable in a place full of people from somewhere else.”

  Olivia was hoping she’d misunderstood her uncle. “Are you telling me just to forget about the pickpocket problem and what? Just pretend it doesn’t happen?”

  “I damn sure am,” Riley snarled. “Before you make such a fuss that the bastard Harvey Lightman decides to use it as an excuse to shut down the theater.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Wait. So, the uncle is the guy who stars in the show and you think you saw this guy sticking his hand inside some woman’s purse?” Titus sounded about as skeptical as Olivia.

  Titus entered the Moonrise Theater right behind Duke. The two of them were lugging shoulder bags of surveillance equipment because Duke had a plan for the night. He wasn’t entirely sure it was going to work, but he had to do something because he only had one suspicious person that he was looking at as a possible suspect.

  “Mr. Dunbar!”

  Duke turned to find a young woman wa
ving at him from the direction of the gift shop. She had an excited look on her face. Duke had seen her a few times before, but he couldn’t remember her name and was pretty sure they’d never been introduced.

  “Did you hear?” She sounded breathless and her nametag read CLARA.

  Duke raised an eyebrow. “Did I hear what?”

  “We had another theft!” Clara at least kept her voice down. There were only a few customers wandering around the foyer, but there was no need to spread the word about a potential theft in the theater. “It was this afternoon, after the noon show. A lady said she had her wallet in her purse before and during the show, but when she went to pay for her stuff in the gift shop, it was gone!”

  Titus made a low noise behind Duke. Duke tried not to outwardly react. He simply nodded to Clara as though he was taking this all very seriously. “Thank you very much for the information, Clara. I really appreciate it. We’re going to be up on the catwalk this evening doing some crowd surveillance so please don’t be alarmed if you see us up there.”

  “Oh, sure!” Clara’s wide eyes suggested she was enthralled with this exciting change in routine. It probably did get a little tiresome dealing with nothing but tourists on any given day. “If you need anything, Mr. Dunbar, I’m your girl!”

  “Uh. Okay. Thanks.” Duke wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

  By the time they got back to the spiral staircase, Titus was laughing. Duke shot him a baleful glare, but it only seemed to make his boss more amused than ever. No doubt Titus figured Duke was somehow intentionally getting the attention of these young women. That wasn’t the case though. It was the last thing on Duke’s mind. Except perhaps for Olivia, but that didn’t count. After he had suggested her uncle might be the pickpocket, Olivia was probably never going to speak to him again.

  “Well then, aren’t you the popular one?” Titus teased as they set their bags down and started to unload and set up their equipment. “I might as well call you the ladies’ man of our outfit.”

  “Oh really?” Duke carefully avoided looking directly at Titus. “Is that why Hilary Allenwood was here earlier this afternoon trying to get me to tell her when you would be around?”

  “What?” Titus looked confused. “Are you talking about that Branson Register reporter who makes everyone look bad?”

  “Yes. The very one,” Duke said with a nod. “She was going off on you earlier today. Something about I don’t know anything even though I think I do. And that you’re basically an evil overlord or something of the like. I don’t know. I lost track of her ranting.”

  Duke had honestly expected the two of them to have a laugh over this information, but Titus didn’t seem to find it funny at all. In fact, he looked rather irritated by what he was hearing. He set up the camera on the tripod and looked as though he was trying to find the right words to say.

  “And you don’t remember what she said?” Titus finally probed.

  Duke sighed. “It was a whole lot of crap about how men are assholes and how we’re all just jackasses totally at the mercy of our inner dog. It was crap. Man-hating bullshit actually.” Duke recalled some of what he’d thought at the time. “If you ask me, she had some kind of mix up with a man at some point and has decided that all men suck.”

  “Then why blame me for the fact that all men suck?” Titus asked wryly.

  Duke frowned. The boss made a good point. What had started in on the Titus hating stuff? “She was kind of obsessed with you in general. Telling me she knew things about you that I didn’t, that sort of thing. She’s pretty eager to tell me that I’m stupid, too. I always enjoy that.”

  “There had to be more.” Titus was looking irritated.

  Duke scrunched up his face. Titus was right. There was something else… dogs. “Oh! Right. She was talking about the bullshit headlines she’s going to write about this place because of the thefts. And then I made the comment that I couldn’t believe you were so concerned about the neighbor’s dog peeing on your paper if that was what was in it.”

  “So, she was interested to know that I read her paper, is that it?” Titus looked thoughtful.

  Duke was officially confused. It made absolutely no sense for Hilary to care a single whit about Titus. “Do you know that chick and I just don’t realize it?”

  “No more than you do,” Titus said distractedly. “But I’m starting to get the feeling that she knows me.”

  “Oh, like from before.” Duke realized he didn’t actually know all that much about before. He was a guy. Men did not think about asking questions to dig into a coworker’s past. It just didn’t matter unless it had a sudden bearing on the present or the future. “Did you know her sister or something?”

  “Does she have a sister?” Titus swung around to stare expectantly at Duke.

  Duke shrugged. “I don’t know. Isn’t that how it usually works with those man hater chicks? If you didn’t hurt her first hand, then she is either related to someone or knows someone you dated and since that ended badly, it means you and the rest of the male population should die in order to pay the consequences.”

  Titus shook his head and laughed. “That sounds about right. I’m sure that Hilary will eventually tell me what’s bugging her. Until then, I’ll just watch myself.”

  “Watch yourself do what?” Duke murmured as he looked through the viewfinder of the camera. The customers with tickets were starting to enter the foyer. The outside ticket windows would be hopping and soon enough there would be a line at the Will Call desk for those who hadn’t had a printer available to print their online tickets. “Watch yourself stay out of her way? Because I’m telling you that Hilary woman is crazy.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Dunbar.”

  Duke spun around to look to his right. Hilary Allenwood was only a few feet away from their position wearing a smirk on her face and carrying her own camera in hand. The only thing down there was the opposite end of the catwalk that had a staircase exit somewhere near Olivia’s office. It wasn’t like there was anything other than one of those braided ropes and a sign to keep people off the stairs. And Hilary wasn’t the sort of woman to let a sign stop her from going where she wanted to go.

  Turning to look at Titus, Duke was surprised to note that his boss didn’t seem all that surprised. Duke grunted at Titus. “Were you expecting her or something?”

  “It’s like one of those old urban legend horror stories,” Titus drawled in a voice filled with casual derision. “You say her name or talk about her enough, and she will appear.”

  If this condemnation bothered Hilary, she did an admirable job of refusing to let it show. She curled her lip at them instead and pointed right at Titus. “Well hello there, Mr. Holbrook. How nice to see you out and about and actually doing your job.”

  “I fail to see whether or not I do my job as being any concern of yours,” Titus mused almost to himself. He turned his back on Hilary and went back to watching the crowd gathering below them.

  Duke took that as a message to do the same, so he did. It was damned difficult to have that woman observing him with her stabbing gaze when he could do nothing more than try to pretend she didn’t get to him. She didn’t. Not really. But it was still unnerving to be observed by someone who was so obviously hostile.

  “You’re not even going to ask me what I want?” Hilary snarled at Titus. “That’s the mark of a really good investigator for sure.”

  “Oh, what?” Titus said slowly without taking his gaze off the scene below them. “Because I choose to pay attention to my work instead of engaging in pointless verbal sparring with you?”

  Something below caught Duke’s attention. He aimed his camera and took a few shots. The focus did him good. He stopped thinking about Hilary and started thinking about the case. It was rather disturbing that Uncle Riley had put his hand in some woman’s purse on the very afternoon that a wallet had gone missing.

  Duke had gotten a good look at that whole incident. He wondered if they had taken
a proper report. If they had the woman’s information, then Duke could use it to set up an interview. He would know if it was the same woman. Duke would remember her. He could ask her too. It was probably a pretty safe bet that none of the theater employees who had taken the report had asked the woman if she’d had an interaction with Riley Saunders in the foyer.

  In the back of his mind, Duke caught a bit of the angry conversation going on between Titus and Hilary Allenwood. They were hissing about some incident that had happened apparently a very good number of years ago. Something about a murdered woman from and a ridiculous claim that Titus had been involved in the woman’s death.

  The theater doors opened and the crowd began filing into the Moonrise to find their seats. They all seemed eager enough. But then, they were on vacation. Most of the time when people went to see shows in a city like Branson, Missouri, they were predisposed to be happy and eager to be entertained. Most of the shows had to be really bad for them to get a bad review. There was enough tourist traffic in the city looking for good down-home fun for the entire family that you didn’t have much in the way of negativity.

  The people bounced their way into the theater. Five minutes passed. Then ten. And finally, the staff closed the doors and the show was set to begin. Even from the catwalk, it was possible to see the house lights go dim inside the theater as the show began. Now there was nothing left to do but wait for the show to be over and everyone to file back out. Then they would be keeping a careful eye on Riley.

  “…don’t know what you’re talking about, you muckraking twit!” Titus growled. “You’re looking for a story and there isn’t one. So, why don’t you just move along and go do a special interest story on people in Branson who don’t mind having their evenings interrupted by the search for sensationalism.”

  Duke rolled his eyes. This was going to take forever if he had to listen to Titus and Hilary argue the whole time. Closing his eyes, he settled down to take a little nap. It felt like about five minutes later when Titus kicked his boot to get him to wake up.