Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “And what about the innocent man who suffered a horrible death even though he was already suffering from a horrible physical condition while he was alive?”

  “That’s not my problem. I don’t even believe it happened!” Hilary was shouting now. “You’re just making this all up!”

  “Am I?” Kylie could not believe she was managing to hold it together. “Are you sure? Because you’re the one spreading the rumor that Titus is a murderous werewolf. I’m just trying to tell you where that idea came from.”

  Hilary’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then she clamped it closed. A second later she opened her mouth again and pointed to the door. “Get out. Get. Out. Now. Just leave. Please? I don’t want to see you anymore or talk to you. I don’t want to talk about this. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t.”

  Kylie took a deep breath. “Hilary, please. We need to talk this through. You’re trying to hurt the wrong man. He’s just a guy. An innocent guy who was as much of a victim in that situation as you and your sister.”

  “No!” All of a sudden, Hilary grabbed the phone off her desk and tried to throw it at Kylie. “You’re a liar! My sister died! She was murdered by Titus Holbrook and I’m going to prove it!”

  Of course, the phone missile didn’t go far since it was attached to an actual cord, which tethered it to the landline in the building. The phone bounced first off of the cord and then hit the floor where it bounced on the industrial grade carpet and fell off the hook. The beeping noise seemed loud in the stillness after Hilary’s outburst.

  Kylie didn’t wait a second longer. She left Hilary alone in her office and felt the fear of hoping that she hadn’t accidentally made things that much worse. But Hilary needed to know. She needed to understand that going after Titus wasn’t right.

  “Uh, you okay?” Jeffrey looked spooked. Then he cleared his throat and his expression slid into discomfort. “I couldn’t help but overhear some of that.”

  “I would imagine you heard a lot of it,” Kylie agreed. Then she looked hard at the kid. “And I really hope you’ll just pretend you didn’t.”

  “Sure.” Jeffrey shrugged. “I’m not actually in the paper business anyway. IT. That’s where the real careers are.”

  Kylie knew he was probably right, but there was no way she would be pursuing a career in front of a computer. “If you say so.”

  “Just a thought,” Jeffrey said as he cleared his throat and feigned indifference. “I’ve been noticing some friction between Hilary and her minion, Caroline. Maybe you should capitalize on that.”

  “Right.” Kylie hated to admit it, but it probably would have been better to start with Caroline first. At least she had some loyalty to Titus. She knew him. She had made the statement yesterday in the library that she didn’t believe Titus was capable of murder. That was a whole lot more than Hilary had going for her. “Maybe I’ll go ahead and take that advice.”

  “Just a thought,” Jeffrey corrected. “I don’t do advice. Too many people come back at you and blame you for the results.”

  “That’s a good policy to have,” Kylie muttered. Then she smiled and nodded at Jeffrey and stepped out of the building.

  It didn’t matter that the afternoon was sweltering hot or that she felt drenched the second she stepped outside. She was very glad to have that over with. Perhaps it would do some good. Maybe Hilary would make some phone calls. As her sister’s next of kin, she was the one who could. Although, if the office in Bitter Spring wasn’t willing to fess up to the lynching all those years ago, why would anyone want to talk about it now?

  Feeling defeated and maybe a little panicky, Kylie got back into her car and turned on the engine. As the car cooled off, she worried about the possibility of Titus just up and leaving town. She wasn’t stupid. It was nearly impossible to live off the grid completely. There were plenty of people who tried, but they were people. Humans who had needs that required other humans. They weren’t wild animals. Wolves could probably live quite easily in the wild without ever popping up on anything more than a fish and game report. If they stayed away from humans, the human world forgot they ever existed. And maybe, the wolves forgot the humans existed too.

  Kylie didn’t want to believe Titus could forget her like that. But at the end of the day, maybe that was the reason Titus Holbrook was still single after all these years. He had just forgotten to be something else.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Titus Holbrook didn’t have much real world experience with managing people. The truth of the matter was he didn’t actually have much real world experience running a business or even participating in the investigations and security business. He had relied on his wits and his natural instincts as a wolf to do both and he’d managed to make a go of it. But of course, most of his success in Branson had come from his ability to read people. And at the end of the day he was cheating when he did that as well. After all, when you could actually smell a lie it was pretty difficult for a potential employee to pull one over on you.

  Which was why Titus Holbrook had always known Caroline Fry was bad news. Hiring her had been a gamble, one Titus had lost. Sort of. As he knocked on Caroline’s front door, he had the feeling his gamble was either going pay off or cost him dearly in the next ten minutes.

  The Springfield house was stately. With a full brick façade, the boxy two-story home with the hipped roof was in a posh new neighborhood in one of Springfield’s nicest suburbs. All of the houses were enormous five-thousand-foot monstrosities with pools, elegant landscaping, and luxury cars sitting in the driveway. But as Caroline had always been quick to remind the rest of the staff at Rock Wolf Investigations, she had been born to privilege.

  Titus wasn’t sure what he’d expected when the front door cracked open, but it wasn’t Caroline. A maid or a housekeeper or even a butler perhaps, but not the lady of the house herself. It took an extremely long time for anyone to come to the door until Titus finally heard the locks clicking and the shuffling sound of someone pulling the door open just a bit. Caroline looked hung over and bleary-eyed.

  “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?” She didn’t offer to open the door any farther and she certainly didn’t invite him inside.

  Not that Titus particularly needed an invitation. He used his boot to push the painted maroon door the rest of the way open. Caroline stumbled back with a muffled curse and Titus walked right on in. “I need to speak to you on a rather important topic, Caroline.”

  “Bastard,” Caroline muttered as she caught her balance. “I didn’t even ask you in.”

  Titus ignored the pointed comment; she was doing a poor job of making him feel unwanted and he strode straight inside. The entryway of the house had a sweeping staircase that curved up from the right side of the first floor entry up to the left side of the second floor gallery. The floors were pristine dark wood polished to a high shine, or at least they had been polished to a high shine. At the moment, they were dull and covered in what looked like dog hair and dust. There was a pile of mail on the round table in the center of the foyer that was beginning to outshine the elegant bowl of decorative carved balls that had been placed in the center of the table. To the right, Titus could see a sitting room or parlor of some kind. To the left there was a den with a big flat screen television. The rooms sort of opened one into the other and if he had craned his neck around, he could have seen all the way into the kitchen that appeared to span the entire rear of the house.

  Everything Titus could see looked dusty and cluttered, as though the cleaning lady had quit coming and the occupants hadn’t a clue how to pick up after themselves. Dirty laundry had been shoved into a corner of the den area. There were plates caked with food and utensils stacked on the coffee table. A pizza box had been hastily shoved beneath the entertainment center and cartons of old Chinese food sat on a side table. Obviously, Caroline was having some family or money troubles. Interesting. Which was it—or was it both?

  Caroline pointed to the sitting roo
m. “You might as well sit down for a second. Then you can go. What do you want? I have better things to do today than to listen to one of your lectures.”

  Titus let that jab go. It was obvious enough Caroline was feeling off balance. She didn’t look nearly as put together as she usually did. She was in a pair of satin lounging pants and a T-shirt and she had slippers on her feet. The air conditioning was going, but the house had a stale feel to it.

  “It looks like your parents have been on an extended vacation, Caroline,” Titus mused as he entered the sitting room. “It must be nice to have the place all to yourself. I know you used to complain a lot about having to share with your mother and father.”

  “Oh, cut the crap, Titus.” Caroline didn’t sit and neither did Titus. She folded her arms hard across her chest and glared at him. “Don’t act like this is a welfare check. I know why you’re here.”

  “You do?” Titus turned and stared at her. “Why is it that you think I’m here? I’m dead curious.”

  “You’re here because of that crap with Hilary Allenwood. You know I was helping her. She was supposed to be paying me, but she double-crossed me! Turns out she wasn’t going to pay me until she got a judgment against you in some bullshit wrongful death suit.”

  Titus snorted. He couldn’t help it. The idea that Hilary actually thought it might be possible to take him to court for the murder of her sister was laughable. “I’m not the one who killed Heidi.”

  “Who is Heidi?” Caroline actually looked confused enough that Titus had to stand there a minute and sniff her for the lie. “Don’t play innocent. Heidi is Hilary’s sister. She was the one who lived in Bozeman, Montana. I don’t remember how it was that she met my brother Jason, but she did. Probably at a club. That was more his thing than mine.”

  “You have a brother?” Caroline’s shock was dead honest this time. She sank down into a chair. “Hilary doesn’t know that!”

  Titus shrugged like it was somehow his problem that Hilary couldn’t do her research properly. The girl had probably not spent much time trying to get the facts in Bitter Spring before launching her own vigilante campaign and apparently following Titus all over the country. “Well, Hilary should know that. It wasn’t a secret. We were nearly five years apart, but Jason was older. I believe Heidi was Hilary’s older sister as well.”

  “And they were dating?” Caroline was filing all of this away for future use. Titus could see that plain enough.

  Titus grunted. “This isn’t about me offering you information to take to Hilary for money, Caroline. What’s going on? Where are your parents? This place is a dump. It looks like the cleaning lady might be dead under that stack of laundry in your den.”

  Caroline’s face twisted into an ugly smile. “My father left.”

  “He left.” Titus wasn’t entirely sure what this meant. “He went on vacation? On business? When did he go and when is he coming back?”

  The venom in Caroline’s voice was enough to make Titus cringe. “He left a few weeks ago and I would assume he’s never coming back. At least not until that nasty little bitch he picked up in a bar drains him dry and dumps him for a new sugar daddy!”

  Sugar daddy. This was a strange development for sure. And yet there was one piece missing. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Upstairs, in bed.” Caroline slumped onto the couch and buried her face in her hands. It was difficult to tell, but Titus was pretty sure Caroline was crying. “She won’t get up.”

  Titus took a seat on a chair with a clear exit route to the front door and waited a moment. He wasn’t really sure what to say. It was pretty obvious how this had gone down. Caroline’s father had apparently been tired of supporting his wife and daughter and probably not having much fun for himself. He’d taken off with a younger, hotter, and probably sillier lover and was likely enjoying himself somewhere for a while without actually letting his wife and daughter know when he was coming back.

  “Did you know,” Caroline began in a high-pitched voice strung tight with tension, “he had the nerve to tell us he was firing the housekeeper so we had to cook and clean for ourselves? He’s not paying our credit card bills. He just cut us off! We get a grocery delivery once a week and that’s supposed to last us! And it’s not like—food! It’s ingredients! Like we’re supposed to cook or something!”

  Caroline was in a full rant now. Daddy wouldn’t buy her a new car. He was paying her insurance, but he wasn’t paying for repairs. She had a new dent in her fender and nobody would fix it. Mother didn’t have any money to get her nails done. They were destitute according to Caroline. The list continued on and on and on until Titus was pretty sure his head was throbbing.

  He let her rant. She obviously needed to vent. This had likely been going on for months and months and Titus couldn’t actually blame Caroline’s father. The man had spoiled his women unbearably and they’d liked being spoiled. So much so that now when they were asked to chip in, get jobs, and take care of themselves, at least a little, they were both too spoiled to even consider it. Titus could only imagine what the guy was going through. Titus had made his own mistake with Caroline early on by not setting the appropriate boundaries with her in the office. There were other mistakes too. But those were years in the past and dealt with. At least in Titus’s opinion.

  “Is he filing for divorce?” Titus asked loudly in order to stem the list of ever increasing transgressions. “Did he serve your mother with papers?”

  Caroline made a face. “No! I wish he would. Then Mother could sue him for every penny of his money and get a fat spousal support payment.”

  So, the guy was teaching them a lesson. He was smart. Divorce would be costly. Why do that when he could put them on an allowance in order to get his point across? Very tactically brilliant. At least in Titus’s opinion. Not that he figured it would do him any good to express that opinion to Caroline.

  “So, how long ago did you start trying to sell information to Hilary?” Titus did his best to surprise Caroline with the question.

  He succeeded. At least he figured he did since she rattled off an answer without thinking it through first. “Six weeks ago, when Daddy first met his floozy. That’s when he stopped paying my credit card bill every month.”

  Floozy? Who in the world used that word these days? But that wasn’t the point. “So, you figured you would make a little cash on the side to tide you over until your father came to his senses?”

  “Yes.” She sounded absolutely petulant and looked worse. Her hair was a messy tangle around her face and her arms were folded with her chin on her chest like a recalcitrant child. “I went to use my card at the gas pump and it wouldn’t work! Can you imagine? So, I had to live on cash. And then when my paycheck was gone I didn’t know what to do. I knew Hilary was gathering information on you. All of you kept talking about it. So,” Caroline said with a careless shrug, “I went to her office with a personnel file to show that I could. And she paid me cash.”

  Titus stared at her for a moment and tried to figure out how an intelligent and resourceful young woman could fall so far down the path of reckless selfishness that she would think this was okay because it was convenient. “And the fact you had signed your name to a nondisclosure agreement meant nothing to you?”

  “It was an emergency.”

  Right. In Caroline’s world, her emergency need outranked any other obligation, verbal, written, or implied, including her word of honor. Great. She was like a walking risk factor for someone like him.

  “What?” Caroline shot back defensively. “You wanted me to starve?”

  “You never gave me a chance to want or not want that,” Titus growled. “Did you ever come to me and explain your situation? Did you ask for a raise? Did you ask for help? Did you ask me to go have a chat with your father? No! You just assumed I wouldn’t and you stole from me. Caroline, you behaved like a middle school brat and that’s pretty much the long and short of it!”

  “Hilary is crazy,” Caroline said suddenly. It
was actually like she was trying to give him tidbits of information. “If you give me five hundred dollars, I’ll tell you just how crazy she is.”

  “Five hundred bucks? When I already know what the two of you were up to because you were overheard in the library that day?”

  Hilary froze. “Who heard us? Who was there?”

  “That’s not important.” Titus gave an impatient shake of his head. “The important thing is that I’m not paying you a penny. I’m not the one who murdered Heidi Allenwood. That was my brother Jason. And he’s dead. So, Hilary Allenwood can try to sue me all she wants, but she won’t get very far. They already hanged a man in Bitter Spring for the murder of her sister. It wasn’t the right man, but the right man got punished in the end anyway. What happened all those years ago is done. And the more Hilary keeps beating this dead horse, the more it’s just going to blow up in her face. You want to tell her something? Tell her that.”

  “Wait.” Caroline went on point. “They hung someone in Bitter Spring for the murder? Who? When? Why can’t Hilary find that information?”

  “You tell me,” Titus shot back irritably. He stood up and got ready to go. “You and I both know Hilary couldn’t investigate her way out of a paper bag. But you’ve seen how it’s done. So? Go to it. Find the information for yourself and then sell her that. At least you’ll be selling her the truth and that will be a bit of a first for the both of you.”

  “You could tell me!” Caroline sounded desperate. Then she started whining. “Please, Titus! I’m broke. I’ve got nothing to eat. I need to buy gas for my car and I think my phone is shut off.”

  “Then wait for your father’s next food delivery,” Titus suggested. “And somewhere in that vast closet of yours there has to be a good pair of walking shoes. Use them.”

  Titus turned and left the house. He let the door slam closed on Caroline’s cry of outrage and indignation and felt as though her father was probably doing the Fry women a favor by trying to make them more responsible. Not that it was necessarily going to work. But it was a favor all the same.