Not a Werewolf

by Madeline Kirby

“That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know, but we found the body, so...”

  “Yes, dear. I know.”

  Don ended his call and gave me a thumb’s up.

  “Don says we can leave town. Is it okay if Don comes, too?”

  “Of course it is, you know that.”

  “And can he bring his cat?”

  “His cat?”

  “Remember, I told you we found that kitten?”

  “Poor thing. So he decided to keep it?”

  “Yeah. They’re pretty inseparable. So is it okay? He’s really small and he won’t be any trouble.”

  “Yes, it’s fine. We’ll see you Sunday. Drive safely, dear.”

  “I’ll do my best, Mom.”

  “Maybe let Don drive?”

  “Mo-om!”

  “I’m sorry. You know we worry.”

  “I’ll think about,” I sighed.

  “Love you, dear.”

  “Love you, too, Mom. See you Sunday.” I ended the call and turned to Don. “You and Bridger are good to go. I take it you’re no longer a suspect if Petreski is letting us go.”

  “That’s right. Funny thing, he sounded relieved when I said we were going to Austin.”

  “Yeah. I figured he would. Hey, do cats like riding in cars?”

  “I don’t think so. But he’s little, maybe he’ll be okay.”

  “You’re in charge of finding out. And if he barfs in the car, you’re cleaning it up.”

  Road Trip!

  Tom Wilton was absent again on Friday, but it was the last day before Spring Break, so a lot of people were out. I couldn’t tell if I should be worried or not, and it wasn’t like I could call him and ask.

  Don was still spending most of his time off poking around on the internet, when he wasn’t training Bridger to walk on a leash. Bridger was a good little sport, and I figured they’d be taking walks around the neighborhood in no time. I could see the message boards now: “Suspicious man dragging cat around by neck” or “Urgent Alert: man using injured kitten as child bait” or something equally as paranoid.

  “Just try not to get yourself shot,” I told Don when we were discussing it.

  “Why would I get shot?”

  “Because you’re going to look different. There’s people like that moving into the neighborhood. Some guy pulled a gun on his neighbor when she brought over some of his mail that was left at her house by mistake.”

  “Did that really happen?”

  “I’m just saying, I think these days some of the more dangerous people are inside the houses.”

  That got me thinking... some of the new people who were moving into those gigantic houses like Wilton was building – some of those people put up tall metal fences and pointed guns at their neighbors. And then when we were halfway to Austin I remembered what I had forgotten.

  “The other day at Ground Up, when you were inside, Petreski and Perez were asking Jennifer Katz about how they got mixed up with Dawn Thrasher.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said some guy in the group found her online and contacted her. There was no prior connection, as far as Jennifer knew or said. She said that at first Dawn wasn’t interested – not until she found out they were up against Clarence Wilton.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s the thing that was driving me crazy. The thing I couldn’t remember. We’ve checked out everyone except Wilton.”

  “Crap, yeah. And he’s the one thing – or person – everyone’s got in common. Stupid.”

  “What if Wilton and Thrasher had a past? We were thinking that maybe someone was obsessed with Dawn. What if it was Dawn who was obsessed with Wilton?”

  “And if Dawn and Wilton had an affair, that puts Helena Wilton back at the top of the suspects list.”

  “Yeah,” I said, drawing the word out. “But that doesn’t feel right either.”

  “You just don’t want it to be her because you like Tom and that dog.”

  “He seems like a nice kid. He’s lonely and he got stuck with a jerk for a dad. I’d hate to think he had a killer for a mom on top of that.”

  We rode in silence for a while. Bridger sat up tall in Don’s lap and looked out the window. He seemed to be handling riding in the car okay. We pulled into a giant travel stop with a couple dozen gas pumps and a store.

  “Here,” I handed Don my credit card. “Will you fill it up? I need to get some fudge and jerky for my parents.”

  I left Don filling up the Subaru and went inside. Mom and Dad worked hard and lived a pretty sweet life in the hills outside Austin. Mom, especially, liked getting dressed up and going to fancy parties, but she had a weakness for gas station fudge.

  When I went back outside, Don had pulled the car into a parking space, but was still sitting in the driver’s seat. Taking the hint, I got in on the passenger side. There was no sense making Don white-knuckle it all the way to my parents’ house.

  I opened the jerky and sucked on a piece as we got back on the highway.

  “I thought that was for your parents.”

  “It’s for all of us. Want a piece?”

  Don shook his head.

  “So, while I was in there I was thinking.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Helena Wilton goes to all those fancy parties and charity balls and gallery openings and stuff, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The same kind of stuff my mom likes. I wonder if their paths ever crossed?”

  “Would that be likely? They’re in different cities.”

  “They are now. But maybe they met before my parents moved. And I’m going to ask my dad about Wilton. I mean, my parents aren’t super rich like the Wiltons, but I could see them knowing people in common, at least. Their circles could have overlapped.”

  “You might as well ask.”

  I pulled another piece of jerky out of the package and bit off a piece.

  “You know if you keep eating that the salt is going to make you all puffy and your mom is going to think you’re sick.”

  I put the uneaten portion back in the package. I didn’t need to spend the next few days with my mom making me drink nasty herbal teas.

  ❧

  Mom didn’t bother to hide the relief on her face when we pulled up and she saw Don was driving. It’s no secret I’m a terrible driver, and my family doesn’t let me forget it.

  Mom looked the same as always – she was probably about the same age as Helena Wilton, but she looked younger. Helena showed up at the scene of her husband’s death in a skirt, sweater set, and pearls, but my mom ran out to greet us in faded jeans and a thermal Henley.

  “Your dad’s gone to get groceries and beer – he’ll be back soon. Oh! Look at this little sweetie!” Don handed Bridger to her and she got all maternal on the fuzzball. She took Don’s cat and headed inside without another glance at us. We looked at each other, shrugged, and started unloading the car.

  “You know you can’t keep him!” I shouted as we dropped our bags in the living room.

  “I don’t want to keep him!” my mom hollered back from the kitchen. “But I’m going to spoil him while he’s here! He’s my honorary grand-kitten!” I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said. It was probably baby talk for Bridger’s benefit, anyway.

  I rolled my eyes and Don laughed. “You and your mom are so alike.”

  “You take that back! I’m nothing like that wacko cat lady!”

  “Your mom is awesome. Just take the compliment.”

  “I’m going to take a shower.” I grabbed my duffle bag from the pile and headed back to the room my parents kept for me. It wasn’t my childhood room – they had only moved to Austin after I started college – but it had a few of my things that my mom hadn’t been able to part with and it felt like home.

  I unpacked and showered, and headed back to the main part of the house and the kitchen, where I knew Mom and Don would be.

  “So, dear, Don tells me you’ve met someone?”

  I t
urned to glare at Don, who just blinked at me and took a bite out of the chocolate chip cookie in his hand.

  “I am never, ever, bringing you here again,” I told him.

  “Now, Jake, don’t be silly. Tell me about this boy you’ve met.”

  “He’s not a boy, Mom. He’s a grown up, sheesh.”

  “Man, then. How did you meet? What does he do?”

  “You mean Don hasn’t spilled all my secrets while I was out of the room?”

  “Is it a secret, then?”

  “I guess in a way it kind of is,” I said as I pulled out a chair and took a cookie off the plate on the table. “He’s a police detective, and he’s working on the Wilton murder, so technically we’re not supposed to – whattayacallit – fraternize.”

  “That sounds like a dangerous job.”

  “I guess so. I hadn’t thought about it like that. I mean, he’s always wearing fancy suits and seems... indestructible. And his partner hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Don,” my mom said.

  “Yeah, Don. Don’t talk with your mouth full.” I stuck my tongue out at my best friend. My mom didn’t have time to scold me, though, because the kitchen door opened and my dad came in carrying a bag of groceries.

  “Hey, boys!” he greeted us. “Hi, Sweetheart,” he said to my mom as she took the bag from him.

  “Are there more bags, Dad?”

  “Yep. Why don’t you boys go get them out of the car while I start the grill?”

  “I can’t believe you told my mom about Petreski!” I fussed as Don and I got the groceries out of the back of my dad’s station wagon.

  “What was I supposed to tell her about? Your psychic visions? Your lunches with murder suspects? Your weird squirrel?”

  “Raymond is not weird! You could talk about Bridger, or your job, or something.”

  “And when she asked for details about how we found him? And she doesn’t want to hear about my job. She straight up asked me whether you were seeing anyone! I think she wants grandkids.”

  “Ugh. She has an honorary grand-kitten. That’ll have to do her for now.”

  “Suck it up and deal with it.”

  “At least Dad got good beer.”

  ❧

  Monday morning Don and I were sprawled on lounge chairs next to my parents’ pool. I had turned the heater on when I got up that morning, but the water wouldn’t be warm enough for me to get in for another few hours. Don was keeping a close eye on Bridger, who was exploring my mom’s herb garden. I was trying to figure out whether I could get away with drinking a beer at – I checked my phone – ten o’clock in the morning. Probably not with my mom in the house.

  “Hang on – I just thought of something else,” I said, putting my phone back on the table between us.

  “What?”

  “Last week at lunch, Tom said his parents had been arguing. About him. He said his dad had threatened to kick him out of the house when he found out he was gay, but that his mom stopped him.”

  “So you think maybe Tom would kill his dad to keep from getting kicked out?”

  “I wasn’t thinking that so much as his mom.” I turned to look towards the kitchen where I could hear my mom rattling around. “My mom may seem kind of spacey and gentle if you don’t really know her, but if she thought I was in danger... any kind of danger... I could see her killing someone to protect me.”

  “Not your dad, though.”

  “No, of course not my dad. But my dad’s not an a-hole like Clarence Wilton was.”

  Things were really not looking good for Helena Wilton.

  ❧

  “Hey, Mom?” I asked over dinner that evening. “Did you ever meet a Helena Wilton at any of those fancy parties you go to? Maybe back when you and Dad lived in Houston?”

  “Hmm...” She put her fork down and picked up her wine glass. “Maybe. The name rings a bell.”

  “What about you, Dad? Or maybe her husband, Clarence Wilton?”

  “Clarence Wilton? Isn’t that the name of the man whose body you boys found?” my dad asked.

  “Yeah. No one seems too broken up over him, though. Especially not his wife or son. So, I was wondering whether y’all ever met either of them. Your circles might overlap, especially when y’all were still living in Houston.”

  “Well, shoot,” Mom said. “Now I don’t know for sure whether I met her or the name sounds familiar because of this murder business. Sorry, Sweetie.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Maybe something will come to you later.”

  Dad nodded. “I’ll think on it, son. I can’t remember ever having any dealings with him. Maybe if I saw a picture of him it would jog my memory.”

  “Oh, that’s an excellent idea! Do you have a picture of Helena, Jake?”

  “She’s all over the society pages, Mom. I’ll find some pictures for you after dinner.”

  ❧

  As it turned out, neither of my parents recognized either of the Wiltons. It was a longshot, but I felt dissatisfied as we drove back to Houston.

  “Even if they’d recognized them, what would that have told us?” Don asked as he merged onto the highway. I’m pretty sure Mom distracted me as we were leaving so Don could get to the car first and claim the driver’s seat.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a new perspective from someone of the same generation? Mom’s a good judge of character. If she’d said she’d met Helena and thought she seemed perfectly delightful or like a cold, brittle bitch, it would have given me a point of reference. As it is, all I know is what I see in pictures and hear from her son.”

  I wondered what had been going on back in Houston while we were away. Don hadn’t gotten any calls, and we hadn’t called Petreski – we didn’t think my rambling theorizing about Helena Wilton warranted calling. Also, we hadn’t had a chance to find out more about Wilton and a possible connection with Dawn Thrasher.

  Tom Eavesdrops

  I had a few more days before I needed to worry about classes again, and Don needed to make up some hours at work, so we agreed that I’d get to work on researching the Wilton/Thrasher connection.

  The problem was, though, how far back did we need to go? It could have been five, ten, even twenty years ago. He could have pushed her out of his treehouse when they were kids. Should I start with the present and work my way back? Or go back as far as I could and work forwards? I knew of one person who had known Dawn when she was young, but even if he were willing to talk about her, Petreski would have a conniption fit if I tried to get information from Harry directly.

  I’d start with Wilton, then. I’d make a timeline, trying to place where he was and when, then see if there was any overlap with Dawn’s well-documented career.

  Wilton’s career was well-documented, too. And there were plenty of biographies and profiles of him online. He was a self-made man, a modern success story. Born and raised in a small town in central Texas, he had started out working construction and doing home repairs. He saved his money, moved to the city, and started flipping houses. He was smart, and ambitious, and it wasn’t long before he graduated from flipping to developing.

  A guy like Wilton didn’t get that successful that fast without making enemies, and this wasn’t telling me anything useful. I needed to look at this from a different angle – a personal angle.

  I started working my way back through Dawn’s career, as we knew it, to see if they were ever in the same place at the same time, or if she had ever protested any of his previous projects. I was still coming up with nothing. Wilton had never generated this much controversy before.

  This was the first time Wilton had met so much resistance from a neighborhood – the first time he had tried to change the landscape of an established, largely affluent area. The Heights had been gentrifying slowly for a long time, but it had been happening organically as old residents died or moved on, and new people moved in who wanted to fix up the old houses, not tear down the Craftsman gems that
gave the neighborhood its character and appeal.

  Whatever had Dawn Thrasher ready to do battle against Wilton, it didn’t look professional. This was looking like a personal grudge. This made things complicated, though. If Dawn had killed Wilton, then who killed Dawn? Not my problem – I’d see what I could figure out, pass it on to Petreski, and let him sort it out. Maybe give poor Hastings something to do.

  I groaned and got up to move around and get something to drink. I put water on to boil and put some seeds out for Raymond. Maybe that tea Miss Nancy had blended for me would help. I should have thought of that earlier.

  ❧

  “Let's go over what we know about Clarence Wilton.”

  Don groaned and sat Bridger down on the floor. “Can I at least have some coffee first?”

  “Yeah, fine. There’s a fresh pot in the kitchen.”

  Don shuffled off in that direction while I reorganized my notes for what was probably the tenth time.

  “Please don’t tell me you stayed up all night working on this.”

  “No, but I got up early. Boo came over and made me go to bed. Oh... poor Boo! What do you suppose he did while we were gone? It’s not like I could leave a note on the door for him.”

  “He probably went to freeload at someone else’s house.”

  “Boo’s not a freeloader! And he’s not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “I just can’t see Boo going from house to house. He’s more... deliberate... than that.”

  “If you say so. So what were you saying about Wilton?”

  “What do we know about him?”

  “You were the one doing research yesterday – you go first.”

  “Okay, here’s the thing. He started out in a small town, built himself up from pretty much nothing. But it looks like he did it clean. Nothing anywhere that I could find indicates he ever cheated anyone or cut corners. I didn’t find a whiff of workplace violations or safety issues or anything like that.”

  “Which means...”

  “Which means, the more I look at Wilton, the more I think whoever killed him did it for personal reasons. In fact, if Dawn Thrasher hadn’t wound up getting killed as well, I might be inclined to think this was a mugging gone bad or Wilton was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”