“Welp.” Mama Mac spread her hands in a these-kits-today gesture. “He’s worried about you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Annette snapped. “I’m the one who worries about him. It’s in my job description.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Mama, he has to keep clear of this. Whatever this is.”
“He’s a grown man, m’girl.”
“It doesn’t matter how old he is. Some things you stay away from whether you’re five or fifty. I’m keeping him out.”
Now what the hell was this? From the few interactions David had seen, Annette didn’t much care for the guy. It’s not like it was a secret.
She doesn’t? Then why is she always slipping him food? And why is she worried about him? What could be so bad that a werewolf in his prime couldn’t handle?
Great. Another mystery.
Meanwhile, the older woman had held out a small, wrinkled hand, and Caro tentatively shook it. “My name’s Meredith Macropi, but everyone calls me Mama Mac. Welcome to my home.”
Caro tried a tentative smile.
“Yep, she said you’re a quiet one. Wait, I have…” The older woman opened a kitchen drawer, clucked her tongue at the contents, closed that drawer, opened the one beside it, mused, “So that’s where that is now,” opened the cupboard above the drawer, gasped in horror at whatever the hell was in there, slammed it shut, opened the cupboard beside it, took out a notebook and a pack of felt-tip washable pens, then handed them to the teenager. “Here’s these if you feel like talking. So t’speak. Oh, I s’pose everyone makes that joke, don’t they?”
“She hasn’t been with us long enough for there to be a running joke. And I’m sorry again to drop in with next to no warning.”
“Don’t be a silly sweetie. You only do it when it’s important. Or if you’ve skipped lunch. Or—remember that ridiculous Shift Away Stables movement?”
“Problematic for their idiotic rhetoric if nothing else,” Annette muttered.
“You had to hide some kits here to prep for their testimony. Poor things stepped up, didn’t they? Even though they had to testify against their folks.”
They had. The SAS movement was to Shifters what the KKK was to humanity: ignorant, violent, terrible uniforms, utter hypocrites. While a segment of the Shifter population advocated for coming out, SAS wanted to take over. Violently, if necessary.
The one-percent isn’t about privately held wealth, SAS insisted. It was about biology, evolution, and how Stables didn’t deserve the dominance on the planet they’d enjoyed for multiple millennia. But what they really hated was that Stables classified themselves as apex predators, and their message was as simple as it was devastating: How much more of the planet are we going to let them ruin before we take back what’s ours?
Several of the violent, murderous species-ist dumbasses were in prison, and it was safe to say they were not missed by most.
“All right, that’s settled,” Annette was saying. “Mama Mac, David and I have to go to IPA and do stuff I can’t tell you about.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. And then we have to do some other things I can’t tell you about, so we can help Caro with something I can’t tell you about, and then we can all do something else except I don’t know what that will be just yet. So I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, just another Monday. Nettie, I get it.”
“It’s Wednesday.” Annette pointed to the three-year-old calendar featuring Deadpool’s Blind Al hanging beside the fridge. “If you had a smart phone, you’d know the date. Since you don’t, you have to actually switch these out every twelve months.”
“Never!”
“You’re the only person in the world who thinks Blind Al is the protagonist of the Deadpool franchise.”
“Well, she is! That nice English bird you work with gave that to me, and I’ve treasured it ever since.”
“She did it to mess with me and you’re complicit. And the notebook and pens for Caro were thoughtful…”
Soft pens, David thought. Tough to hurt anyone with them. Or herself. Mama Mac had been around the block.
“…but Caro doesn’t communicate. At all. With…um…”
For a good minute, the only sounds in the kitchen were the scratching of Caro’s pens and the rumble of Annette’s belly.
“We just ate.”
“Shut up, David.”
Finally, Caro stopped writing long enough to rip off a page and hand it to Mama Mac.
Dear Mama Mac,
I’m happy to earn my keep while staying with you, whether that’s for hours or days or weeks, so if you’d be kind enough to provide a list of chores, I’ll get to them ASAP.
I’m fine with indoor work like making beds, doing dishes, washing floors, scrubbing counters, sorting, washing, folding, & ironing laundry, vacuuming, and/or washing windows (both sides). I’m good at cleaning out gutters, raking, mowing, trimming weeds, gardening, weeding, mulching, & shaping hedges, but I can only make rabbits that look like balloons with pointy ears. (I’m working on that skill set.)
If it’s allowed, I’d like access to a laptop or smartphone with Wi-Fi. If not, may I see whatever fiction & nonfiction books you deem appropriate?
Where do I sleep? I’m fine on any floor if you’re short of beds. I don’t mind the cold so the basement is also fine. Will a change of clothes be provided? If not, I can provide my own.
“Uh,” Annette said, which was more than David had been able to come up with.
Caro’s pen was still flying across the page, and then there was another ri-i-i-i-p! and another page handed off.
“Is professional speed-writing a thing?” David asked. “Because I feel like she’d be great at it.”
I believe I’ve covered the basics but if I’ve omitted anything please don’t hesitate to say so. Thank you for allowing me in your home.
Please know that (1) I’m not a pet, (2) I’ll hurt anyone who tries to hurt me or mine.
Sincerely yours,
Caroline Daniels
“Welp, that’s clear enough.” Mama Mac folded Caro’s first communique and tucked it away in the pocket of her jeans like it was NBD. “So. Lunch?”
Chapter 16
They were half a mile away when David succumbed to the giggles. “So there you were…”
Argh. “It was two minutes ago, David. There’s no need to reminisce.”
“…in the midst of explaining about our incommunicado werewolf…annnnnnd then she wrote out a chore manifesto.”
Annette covered her face and groaned through her fingers. “And then just casually handed it off. My teeth almost fell out! The only saving grace is that we were the only ones present for the ritual humiliation.” And our incommunicado werewolf? That warmed her. David often gave the impression that the kids he investigated were just pieces of paper in a file to him. But that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t like she’d ever sat him down and asked him about it. Any of it. Why have I never asked this guy out for a meal? Oh. Right. Because I’m horrible at it.
“I think fleeing the premises was the right thing to do.”
“The only thing,” she agreed.
They were both downplaying their relief at seeing Caro’s capacity for clear communication, not to mention proof of what appeared to be formidable intelligence and fortitude. Should this horrifying debacle ever come to trial, she’d make a compelling witness.
David made a heroic effort to stop giggling. “And that wasn’t the strangest part. I still can’t believe you turned down lunch.”
“Not because I wanted to. But time is not on our side in this… Oh. You’re mocking me.”
“Teasing you.”
“I’m not sure there’s a difference.”
He looked at her dead-on. “If I disliked you, it’d be mockery.”
“Oh.”
<
br /> Silence fell with an almost audible thud, which made no sense but there it was. She cast about for something to say that wasn’t anything along the lines of Do you like me, or do you LIKE-like me? Argh. Death first.
David broke the silence (whew!) with a forced cough. “Not trying to tell you how to do your job or whether your family’s formidable, but are you sure leaving Caro with your foster mom is safe?”
“Problem?”
“I mean…we’re pretty sure Caro only attacked Lund out of self-defense and wouldn’t hurt anyone else without major provocation, but… ‘Pretty sure’ isn’t a hundred percent.”
“David, we can’t expect Caro to trust us if we won’t trust her. And don’t worry. Mama Mac is a lot more formidable than she looks. There’s more than one person walking around with scars because they were dumb enough to mess with her.”
“Fair enough.” He sighed. “That poor kid. Could you believe that list of chores?”
“I memorized that list,” she replied grimly. “And her notes are going right into her file. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t believe chores are proof of abuse or neglect. I mowed plenty of lawns and washed plenty of dishes—that was one of Mama Mac’s rules. ‘Everyone contributes to keeping our home nice.’
“But the fact that Caro instantly assumed she would be put to work, and it would be anything from making beds to mulching a quarter of an acre possibly followed by sleeping in a damp basement… I found that telling.”
“Not gonna lie, now I kind of want to watch her trim a hedge into a rabbit with a balloon belly.”
Annette nearly choked. “Stop it! We’re headed back into the belly of the…balloon beast. We need a plan.”
“The plan is we tell everyone we’ve got Caro safe, then go see who shows up to kill her. And stop them.”
“That is a terrible plan.”
“Yep.”
“Also our only plan.”
“Yep.”
“Which, in itself, is terrible.”
“Yep-yep-yep.”
Television really did make heroically going rogue to champion the underdog look easy. Or at least organized. Because Annette had lived or worked within the same institution for all of her adult life and half of her childhood, standing on the outside was as alien as turning down lunch. It was wrong and dumb and led to irritability. The lack of paperwork alone was disorienting.
But here they were, back where the nightmare might have started for Caro. Here was the glove compartment that held a quart of Skittles and a thousand rubber gloves. Here was the parking ramp where someone tried to kill her, David, and Dev. Or just Dev. (Which was worse.)
Here was the elevator from which she stepped into madness: Nadia, the audaciously awful Oz Adway, her boss—
Boss.
“Start at the top?” she suggested while the elevator went to the bottom. “I’ve got the perfect icebreaker.”
* * *
“Whoa. Whoa.” Oz was in the wrong place at the wrong time again—in this case, in her path to the boss’s office. “I need to talk to you, Annette. Right now.”
“Move or be moved,” she growled.
He stayed planted, because he thought his good looks and her forbearance would protect him from unpleasant scenes and broken fingers. Not that he was that pleasing to the eye. If she ever did something so crass as to rate men on a numbered scale, Oz Adway would get a five. Well. Maybe a six. Some women didn’t mind wealthy, lanky jackasses with swimmers’ shoulders and green eyes and a perma-smirk. “I started going over the account numbers Nadia sent—”
“You what.” He’d given her such a start that Annette couldn’t make it a question: behold, the flat what and all it implied. She remembered David saying something about getting a “numbers guy” to look at some of what they’d found and wanted to groan. Seventeen accountants in the department and Nadia picked Oz Goddamned Adway. In a week of disasters, this could make her top five. “We’ll talk about it later. Will you get out of the way? I’ve got a meeting.” A lie, technically.
“I know what you’re doing, and I’m putting a stop to it right now.”
“That’s adorable.”
“Is letting me help you that fucking unthinkable?” He spread his hands, which made him look charming and disarming. He used to look like that at 2:00 a.m. when he’d beat her to the leftovers.
And yes. Letting him help was that fucking unthinkable.
“This has nothing to do with you, Oz!”
“You keep saying that, and it’s—”
“Jesus, Oz.” Tired of the drama, David was shouldering his way past the werewolf with ease. “Read the room.”
“I am!” He pointed at Annette. “She’s the only one in the room who doesn’t like me.”
“Of course I like you,” she snapped. “I just don’t want you anywhere near my work and demand you stay away at all times.” And then they were in Bob’s office, closing the door on Oz’s indignant face.
Now where were they? Ah. “The iron fist of your Secret Santa apartheid will unclench now!”
Her boss, Bob Links, actually reeled backward in his office chair. The flailing would have been spectacular in nearly every other instance. “What the hell, Annette? You said everybody loved it!”
“I have never once said that, Bob. Nor anything close to that. Not once in three years.”
As a rebuttal, the agency director began indulging his repellent habit of fiddling with the hair sticking out of his ears. “Don’t you get it? This is another example of The War On Christmas!”
“It’s remarkable that I can actually hear the capital letters when you say it like that. And I know we go over this every year during Christmas and Easter and sometimes on the Fourth of July for some reason, but there is no war. No one is gunning for Christmas. No one is after Christmas. There’s no sinister cabal holding secret meetings for the express purpose of spoiling your holiday. And I can’t emphasize how deeply, deeply stupid it is that I have to explain this every. Single. Year.”
Bob took a break from braiding his ear hair to steeple his fingers and nod in what he probably thought was a sage manner. “What’s your take on this, Auberon?”
“That the whole thing is fucking dumb. If you’ve got this much spare time to worry about it, could you go do my laundry instead? And we found Caro Daniels.”
“Dumb? I knew you investigator types were chilly, but that’s borderline sociopathic.”
David shook his head. “It really isn’t, Bob.”
“Also,” Annette prompted, “Caro Daniels? The girl who is missing no longer? Who has beautiful penmanship and can help us blitz an abuse syndicate?”
“The Secret Santa program brings us together! C’mon, we’re all overpaid and underworked—wait, that’s not right… Anyway, team building! Right?”
“No.” It’s not polite to disembowel your boss. It’s not polite to disembowel your boss. Think of the smell. Wait. Was that why the break room stank? Were her colleagues randomly disemboweling tiresome supervisors? She couldn’t condone the behavior, though she sympathized with the motivation.
She bent at the waist until her mouth was quite close, then shouted into his tufted ear, “Caro Daniels! Has! Been found! Please! Try to! Focus! Good God!”
He flinched back, making it well worth the loss of dignity and damage to her vocal cords.
“God damn,” David said, rubbing his own ear. “You’ve got lungs when you want ’em.”
Her boss, meanwhile, was glaring up at her. “Your annual review’s gonna be more awkward than usual.”
“I’ll incinerate that bridge when I come to it. Listen, David and I had to drop off the grid—”
“But you’re here. I mean, right here. In the middle of the grid.”
“We’re working through a learning curve. Anyway, in addition to Caro—although we didn’t find he
r so much as she allowed herself to be found, which is a smidge embarrassing when you think about it—we also found incriminating photos at Lund’s loft, which I know you’ll—”
At last, Bob looked alarmed about something besides his compulsory Secret Santa initiative. “You weren’t authorized to go there.”
She looked at him. Said, “Ah.” Pulled up a chair. Sat. Looked at him some more. “Can we talk about that? Because David and I would like to talk about that.”
“You’re a team now?”
“Of course.”
“Aw, thanks.”
“Shut up, David.” To Bob: “Why did you rescind permission? IPA caseworkers and investigators visit crime scenes all the time. If it’s going to be hairy, pardon the overused pun, we’ll bring a Shifter police officer, or two, or however many we need. That’s in our purview.”
“I know. Stop narrating.”
“Rude. In this case, we had a horrifying assault followed by a horrifying murder followed by the disappearance of our suspect-turned-victim by fair means or foul. We needed more information. Lund’s loft was the logical choice. And yet…”
She waited, but Bob had no comment. After a few seconds, he started in his chair. “I thought you were gonna say more after that.”
“Uh, no. I artfully paused to give you a chance to fill in the data.” Nothing. “Bob.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied with a shrug. “Actually, I don’t know why I’m explaining anything. You work for me.”
“I work for the State of Minnesota and wards of said state as parens familia. You’re the man who handles the paperwork and keeps clear of the mess.”
“And who signs your paycheck.”
“No, HR has a stamp for that. And it’s not even of your name.” Easy. He’s still your boss. He lets you get away with loads of lip because your work makes him look good, but there’s a line.
There’s always a line.
“Look, what can I say?”
She sighed. “Something? Anything?”
“I got a call from a higher-up that the scene was to stay sealed and no one from IPA could go in without authorization. Which also happens all the time. So I passed it down the line.”
Bears Behaving Badly Page 10
