by Geonn Cannon
“He could sell it. Use the money to get something more fitting.”
“Houses like this don’t sell in economies like this. Even for Seattle, the price tag would be exorbitant.”
Ari shrugged. “Like you said, this is Seattle. Someone is sitting on a billion dollars and they’re looking for a summer home.”
Timothy said, “You could be right.” His tone suggested he believed otherwise, but wasn’t interested in continuing the argument.
Ari looked at the bed and went to the window seat. She climbed up onto the cushions and stretched so she could see on top of the canopy.
“What on Earth are you doing?”
“Just checking,” she said. “If I really was Sherlock Holmes, that’s probably where it would’ve been hidden and I’d look like a genius.”
Timothy said, “Aha.”
Being near the window revealed to her just how late it was getting. She jumped down and said, “You’ve been a real trooper, Mr. Dodd. I don’t think I’m going to make more progress tonight anyway, so we might as well go. Can I call you if I need to get back in?”
He thought for a moment and then took the keys out of his pocket, holding them out to her. “Miss Burroughs trusted you with a key to the most valuable thing in the house. I believe she would trust you with these as well.”
“Thank you. I won’t give you a reason to regret this.”
“Saying things like that makes me anxious,” he said as he turned his back on her and headed down the stairs.
Ari smiled and looked around the upstairs before following him. She hadn’t picked up on any scents other than Preston’s. But she had some very intriguing puzzle pieces. Gaps in the security footage. A missing key which would allow someone access to the entire house. Those two facts would go a long way to figuring out the whole mystery.
She thanked Timothy again, secured the front door, and headed for her car. The streetlights, veiled by tree branches in this neighborhood, switched on above her. Their light was broken up by spider web branches and dark leaves. Ari had just unlocked the car when her phone rang. A quick glance at the screen revealed her mother’s smiling face. She let it ring until she got into the car and closed the door.
“Hey, mom. Dale and I were just talking about you.”
“Yes, I know,” Gwen said. “She called to ask when Milo and I would be free for dinner. It just so happens that we’re free tonight, and I have a fridge full of food I can turn into a meal with very little effort. Dale told me you’ve been interviewing people all day. Did you bother to stop for food at any point?”
“I had a little lunch,” Ari said, but her stomach betrayed her by growling. Fortunately, Gwen didn’t seem to hear it. “I was about to call Dale and ask what her plans were for dinner. I can swing by, pick her up, and be at your place in about... two hours?”
“That would be plenty of time. I’ve missed you, Ariadne.”
Ari said, “I’ve missed you, too.”
“Is everything... the wolf, Dale phoned to let me know it was back, but how is everything...”
“Everything is fine,” Ari said. “I promise. We’ll see you soon.”
Gwen said, “I look forward to it.”
Ari hung up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was annoyed at and grateful to Dale in equal measure. Going to dinner meant they would, at some point, have to discuss Isaac Hayden. She very much did not want to do that, so she would have kept putting it off. It was better to get it over with as quickly as possible. But accepting it logically didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.
She also wasn’t entirely comfortable with her mother’s relationship with Milo. It was her mother’s first relationship with a woman - that you know of, said an inner voice before Ari could shush it - and Milo was Ari’s age. Gwen was dating a woman who could be her daughter, and that was weird, no matter how many times Dale showed her pictures of Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor.
It was strange, but it was something that would only get better by spending time with them. She started the car and pulled away from the curb, hoping that some of the food Gwen had in the fridge was her famous goulash. After running around Seattle all day, she was definitely craving some meat.
Chapter Twelve
It occasionally crossed Dale’s mind, though the thought rarely lingered, that she and Ari were different species. She didn’t know if Isaac Hayden was to blame for it popping up now, but she was very aware of the fact she was the only human sitting at Gwyneth Willow’s dinner table that night. Gwen and Milo were dressed casually - a blouse and leggings for the former, sweater and jeans for the latter - and both were barefoot. Ari shared details of some recent cases while Gwen finished cooking, and Milo filled them in on how the members of her pack were doing.
“It must be hard being away from them,” Ari said. “Not that I would know, of course.”
Milo snorted. “You’ve got a pack, Ariadne. Me, your mama, that pretty lady sitting next to you. You know exactly what it’s like to be separated from your pack because it happened to you a couple months ago.” She looked at Gwen. “Not that I’m comparing life with you to a prison sentence.”
Gwen smiled. “Nice save, Millicent.” She put her hand on Milo’s leg under the table and her smile changed, becoming more sly. “Tell them where you were today.”
“Oh, they don’t want to hear about that...”
Ari said, “Am I going to need earplugs?”
Milo said, “Get your mind out of the gutter. I was, um... okay, look, I’m used to working two jobs and running around all day delivering shit. I don’t know what to do with myself here. I can’t get a job here. So I’ve been volunteering at the Beacon Women’s Shelter.”
Dale sat up straighter, impressed. “Wow! Is it a homeless shelter, or...”
“That,” Milo said, “but also helps women who are just getting out of prison and don’t have a girlfriend or a mom or a wolf pack to help get back on their feet. I thought about how tough it would’ve been if Ari didn’t have all of us watching out for her.”
“Wow,” Ari said. “I took that for granted.”
“Excellent. Because I was only working there to make you feel like shit. Mission accomplished!”
Ari laughed. “And you gave up the moral high ground, just like that.”
“Damn. Well, back to the salt mines tomorrow, I guess. But if you really want to even the scales, they always need more help over the holidays.”
“We’ll be there,” Ari said, glancing at Dale to get a quick nod to confirm she was onboard as well.
Dale kept quiet and watched the three other women, the three wolves, the family she had become part of through Ariadne. It was amazing to see them joke with each other like this considering how they’d all come together. Gwen, malevolent and cruel, had grown into a gentle and loving woman who genuinely regretted her past actions. But even the worst things she had done - exposing Ari to a dangerous medical procedure to make her a full-blooded wolf, and engaging Milo’s services in an attempt to destroy their relationship - had led to happiness for everyone involved.
When they finished eating, Dale pushed back her seat and reached for Gwen’s plate. “Ari and I will take care of--”
“No,” Ari said, “Mom and I can do that.”
Dale looked at her and caught the meaning behind her tone. She raised an eyebrow, asking if Ari was sure, and Ari dipped her chin once: yep.
“Okay,” Dale said, “then Milo and I can have drinks in the living room and she can tell me more about the shelter.”
Milo said, “Or I can take her out to the garage and show her my new bike. I’d also really love to hear about this tapestry thing you and Ari are working on. I love a locked room mystery.”
“Me too!” Dale said. “Maybe you can pick up on something we missed.” She watched as Ari and her mother gathered the dishes and disappeared into the kitchen. Hopefully Gwen would have a simple answer, and the conversation would be nothing but a long-overdue chat. She couldn’t h
elp worrying, but for now there was nothing she could do to help. She picked up her drink and followed Milo to the garage entrance. “Okay, the tapestry is called Crossing-Over Place...”
###
“You need to work on your subtlety, Ariadne.” Gwen joined Ari at the sink and turned on the tap. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe nothing. It’s just something that’s come up during a case. Not even really a case, just something that’s going on...”
“You’re also bad at stalling.”
Ari sighed. “Does the name Isaac Hayden mean anything to you?”
Gwen thought for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Should it?”
“Maybe not. How about Karl Magnusson?”
“That one sounds familiar. Karl Magnusson...” She searched her memory. “Is it someone famous?”
“In certain circles,” Ari said. “Magnusson wrote a book of essays about canidae back in the thirties...”
Gwen nodded. “Right, right, yes. I remember now. He was a cryptozoologist who hunted all kinds of mythical creatures. Canidae was just one species of many. I think he was most focused on us, though. The essays got a lot of chatter back in the day, but as far as I know, it’s never been published. The only copy is essentially under lock and key in... ah...”
“Germany.”
“Right. What brought that up?’
Ari said, “Dale has a copy.”
Gwen looked at her. “That’s not possible.”
“That’s where Isaac Hayden comes in. Apparently he’s also a crypto... zoo... keeper, and he’s trying to pick up where Karl left off. He was following the hunters, which led him to wolf manoth, which led him to Seattle. And we ran into each other in a deli.”
“He just happened to run into you?”
Ari shrugged. “It would seem so, yeah. I’ve been having a lot of weird luck lately. Anyway, he had the book and gave Dale a copy of the essays.”
“That isn’t...” Gwen looked at the sink and turned off the tap. “If he has the book, then he stole it. And its owners aren’t the type who would just give it over to the first person who threatened them. I need to talk to some people... I think I know someone in Paris.”
“I appreciate the help. But that isn’t really why I wanted to talk with you.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Dale and Milo had returned from the garage and were loitering in the living room. This really was her pack, the family she’d finally found after years of being on her own. She was terrified she was about to blow it up, but she had to know. “The new guy. Hayden. When we spoke, he mentioned you. He... mentioned your money.”
Gwen tilted her head to the side, not understanding. “What about my money?”
“Where does it come from?”
“It was an inheritance.”
Something about the way she said it struck Ari wrong. She knew it was a lie, and Gwen wasn’t even trying to sell it. Ari stared at her until Gwen looked away and resumed washing dishes.
“That might have worked on me when I was a kid,” Ari said, “but I need more now. Inheritance from where? Your parents? I don’t know anything about your family. The money is just... there. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful you had it when I was in prison. You kept me from losing everything. But the fact this guy brought it up... I have to know.”
Gwen looked into the soapy water. “You deserve to know. But not now.”
“Milo deserves to know, too. And Dale will know as soon as I do.”
“It’s not about keeping it from them. It’s about how I tell you. Do you remember the Arboretum, the spot I used to wait for you when you first started transforming?”
A wave of memories washed over her. A young girl just going through puberty, crashing through the underbrush and falling at her mother’s feet. Exhausted, gasping for air, hauled back onto her feet. A firm hand gripping her jaw and forcing her eyes up. Again, Gwen demanded. Ari remembered whimpering and wanting to refuse, but she couldn’t. She could still feel the hot irons of pain pressing into her joints as she became the wolf for another agonizing run.
She pushed the memories away. “Yeah. I remember it.”
“Meet me there tonight at one-thirty. Come as the wolf. I’ll have clothes for you there.”
“What’s going on?” Ari asked.
“I’ll tell you everything tonight, I promise. Just meet me there.”
Ari sighed and accepted she wasn’t going to get a straight answer, so she nodded. She and her mother finished the dishes in silence, the unanswered question hanging between them. Ari couldn’t tell if Gwen was angry at her or just trying to get her story straight. Either way, the mood of the evening had been effectively ruined.
When everything had been rinsed and put away, Ari went into the living room and touched Dale’s shoulder. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Everything...?”
“I’ll tell you in the car.” She smiled at Milo. “Thanks for dinner... Millicent.”
Milo flipped her off, but with a genuinely affectionate smile. She jerked her chin toward the kitchen. “Is she gonna be pissed at you tonight?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad you’ll be here for her, either way.”
“Okay. Have a good night.”
Ari took Dale’s hand, leading her outside. Dale pressed tight against her, bumping her hip against Ari’s. “She wants me to meet her tonight at a place where we used to run. She promised she’ll tell me everything then.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No,” Ari admitted, “it really doesn’t.”
###
The Arboretum was three miles from home, but it was even farther for Gwen. Still, when Ari arrived a few minutes before one, she was already there and waiting. She was still in wolf form, but transformed once she saw Ari approaching. Moments after her arrival, they were standing naked in front of a large boulder, both panting and covered in sweat. Wolves didn’t much care about nudity around each other, especially when it came to family or pack members, but she still accepted the V-neck and sweatpants her mother handed her and pulled them on quickly.
“I stayed up wondering what possible reason you could have for insisting on this,” Ari said. “Were you afraid I was wearing a wire at dinner?”
Gwen chuckled. “Such a detective. No, Ariadne. Nothing like that. I simply wanted you to be in the right frame of mind. I wanted to be certain the wolf was right under your skin when you heard what I’m going to say.” She sat down on the boulder and patted the stone next to her. “Sit.”
Ari complied.
“I think a lot about when you were younger. I made a lot of decisions without much thinking. I didn’t have the luxury of planning. I was assaulted by men who saw me as less than human, and they left me with a daughter. A blessing and a miracle, but one which I was in no way prepared for. Sometimes I would look down at you in your crib and I would think about how... I didn’t want you... but now that you were here, I would do anything for you. I knew you would do great things, Ariadne, but I had no idea how many people you would save or how many people would owe their peace of mind to you.”
Ari shifted uncomfortably. “You’re freaking me out.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I was thinking about the nights we ran out here. The nights when I made you hurt. I know you must have hated me for it, but I couldn’t see another way. It killed me when I saw your face after a transformation. Knowing it was because of me. The things I’d done to you. I only wanted to give you a good life.”
“The money, Mom,” Ari said.
Gwen sighed. “I was in college when I was attacked. I was learning computers. It was in the very young days of the internet, when it was modems in garages screeching at each other. It seemed like sorcery back then, even though by today’s standards it looks like monkeys chattering in trees. But I was good at it. I could see things no one else thought of. I found ways of moving through this new virtual world. If I’d stayed on that track, I could have been Bill Gates. But things chang
ed. I dropped out of school because you were my future. You were all that mattered. But how could I give you what you needed flipping burgers? I was a college dropout who couldn’t afford diapers, let alone a babysitter. So I came up with an idea. It was a joke. But then I kept thinking about it.
“Have you ever noticed that hunters tend to be rich? CEOs, captains of industry, tycoons. Whereas canidae are still poor. We’re working class. We live paycheck to paycheck. Part of that is our nature. We want to stay close to the ground with one foot always in the woods. We could rise, but there’s always a hunter in the way. Their bloodlines go back as far as ours, and the roots of their family tree are full of kings and gentry.”
Ari said, “Mom...”
Gwen held up a hand, asking for patience. “I made a program. I tracked down several hunters and got access to their bank accounts through a back door. I added a virus which took a fraction of their deposits and routed it to my own. I spent the first few months waiting to be arrested or the accounts to be locked down, but they never were. I never took enough that they would notice.” She laughed. “You would be astonished at how much you can take without a rich person noticing.”
Ari muttered, “This is the plot of Office Space.”
“Superman III, actually,” Gwen said. “I actually got the idea from an episode of MASH where Radar tried to mail a Jeep home by doing it one piece at a time. I figured if I took a few hundred dollars from this hunter, and maybe a thousand from this one, I could take care of my girl and give her the life she deserved.”
“You stole... everything.”
“I stole from people who would only have used the money to fund a genocide against us. I stole from the people who made me into their enemy by changing my life completely.”
Ari stood up, arms wrapped around herself. “I really wish you would stop talking about me like I was some virus you contracted.”
“Try to put yourself in my position, Ari. Picture yourself suddenly pregnant, with a child who desperately needs you, a child you have no plan for. I was terrified. I did the only thing that made sense.”
“Stealing from rich people and putting me through a medical procedure that could have killed me.”
