The Long-Eared Easter Enigma

by Kian Rhodes

  “Yep. Discharge papers are signed and everything,” he confirmed with a distasteful look at the wheelchair by the door. “They had a pair of crutches sent from the medical supply place but they won’t let me walk out. We have to pick them up in the lobby.”

  I’d already figured as much. Besides, it wasn’t like it was going to be helpful for him to try and make it down six floors and out to the parking lot on a broken leg, no matter how good his pain meds were. And, since his condo just happened to be on the second floor of a walk-up building, I had a hunch we weren’t out of the woods yet.

  I got him loaded into the truck, but when I turned down the highway, Pete’s head spun toward me.

  “My house is the other way.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “It’s also up two flights of stairs. You’re staying with me until the doc clears you to climb stairs.”

  Pete huffed. “That’s not necessary. If you just help me up today, I’ll be fine.”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope?” He glared at me. “Am I a prisoner?”

  “If you want,” I agreed. “Basically, you can stay with me or I can take you back to the hospital.” I glanced over at him. “You honestly think I don’t know that you were only released because you told them you had someone to take care of you?”

  “Um.”

  “Right.” I rolled my eyes and turned back to the road. “So, which is it?”

  “Fine,” Pete snapped. “I’ll fucking stay with you. Are you happy?”

  Used to my brother’s lack of social grace, I smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Antoine

  Clint sat across from me in his office with Trevor at his side, listening somberly as I detailed my misadventure. When I got to the part about using the fake ID and pheromone spray, there was a brief moment when I would have sworn he was trying not to smile.

  I stopped at the point where the sheriff had rescued me and waited, my eyes on the floor.

  Clint cleared his throat. “Well, Antoine,” he said firmly. “Car theft. Criminal Impersonation. Identity theft. You’re obviously aware that what you did was wrong.”

  I nodded, heat flooding my cheeks.

  “Luckily, the pack insurance policy will cover the damage to the rental car,” he continued. “But there will be the matter of the five-hundred-dollar deductible.”

  When Clint stopped talking, I looked up. “I’ll find a way to pay it, Alpha,” I said quickly. “I’m so sorry. I really didn’t think it through.” I had to force back a wave of tears at the thought that I’d injured the werewolves who had been kind enough to take me in. “I really didn’t think about it being illegal. I just wanted to meet the guy I’d seen on the train.”

  To my surprise, Clint laughed. “Son, if there is one thing I know all too well, it’s that men are definitely slaves to our hormones.” He gave Trevor a fond look. “I’ll see if Drey can get the rental agency to drop the charges. I wasn’t even aware you’d used my name, surprisingly.” He shook his head. “You would think that they would have shown up here first.”

  “I, ah, used the address for the motel in town,” I mumbled. “They may not have known to look here.”

  That brought out a belly laugh. “Well, anyhow, I’ll get Drey on the case. You better get started looking for a job.”

  “Yes, Alpha,” I agreed promptly, rising from my chair. “I really am sorry.”

  “We know,” Trevor said with his usual soft smile. “You’re trying to fix it. That’s all that matters, love.”

  ~*~

  I’d hit all of the local businesses in Wolfsrudel by dawn with no luck. No one was hiring. At least, no one was hiring for a job that didn’t require any skills or training and I was well past worried. I mean, I didn’t really think Clint would throw me out if I couldn’t repay him immediately, but, still, it wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

  Maybe that’s why when I saw the rack of disposable mobile phones hanging in the window of Wardorf’s Discount Store, I flashed back to the phone number that Pete had slipped me on my way out of Sharon Hill.

  The more I stared at the cell phones, the less of a bad idea it seemed like. I mean, I wasn’t buying into the criminal empire. I was just making a few deliveries and, really, it was eggs and candy and toys; all nice and legal, right?

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I was walking back to the bank where the Beta had parked after dropping me off, a brand-new smartphone tucked into my pocket.

  Back in my dorm room, I dropped the phone on the neatly made twin bed, staring at the colorful screen as if it might bite me. When it vibrated suddenly, I jumped and then laughed at my own ridiculous behavior when Welcome to our Network flashed in the message bar.

  The number had been activated.

  Sucking in a grounding breath, I reached for the scrap of paper lying beside the phone and slowly entered it into a new message.

  Hi, Pete. This is Antoine.

  I hit send and waited, but nothing happened. I frowned as I typed another.

  I pulled you out from under the cauldron?

  Still nothing.

  I double checked the number. I’d entered it correctly.

  Well, great. Staring out the window at the rising sun, I stuffed it under my pillow and crawled under the covers, more than ready to catch up on my sleep.

  I was running from something in my dream when I woke with a start, still gasping for breath. I wasn't sure what had disturbed me until my pillow vibrated again.

  The phone!

  Yanking it out from its hiding place, I swiped my finger across the screen and waited anxiously as the message seemed to take forever to load.

  Hey pup. Sry. Meds knck me out so I dnt see ur msg. Hows th arm?

  I struggled for a minute until I realized Pete was using a type of shorthand.

  Good, I typed back. Do you still need someone to make your deliveries? I think I’m interested after all.

  The giant thumbs up picture that came back took up the entire screen and the phone promptly buzzed again.

  Sonny is off tdy. Come tmrw?

  Perfect, I sent back. Time?

  Aftr 3pm.

  Better than perfect. That would let me catch the train after I’d slept and I could curl up for a nap before I started to work. I started to ask where to meet him, but another message buzzed through.

  Styng @Sonny’s 4 a few days. Pick my car up on your way.

  That was even better than perfect. I sent back a thumbs up – much smaller than his – and slid the phone back under my pillow. Things were finally starting to look up.

  Chapter Twenty

  Keeson

  Pete was up to something. I’d known him all my life and there was just no possible way for me to miss the signs.

  His first day out of the hospital was Sunday and Pete had bitched nearly non-stop. The house was too cold. The fire was too hot. The couch was lumpy. The bed was too soft. When I helped him sponge off before bed, I was surprised he didn’t tell me that the water was too wet.

  So when Monday morning rolled around and he was all smiles and sunshine, I was suspicious as hell.

  “Okay, what’s gotten into you?” I finally asked after his fourth nonsensical it’s a beautiful day type comment.

  “What do you mean?” His expression of shocked innocence was very nearly Oscar-worthy, but, again, not my first rodeo.

  “Knock it off, Pete,” I huffed. “I know you. You’re never this happy when you can’t do your own thing.”

  Pete seemed to think about that for a minute and then he shrugged. “I guess you’re right,” he agreed with a smirk. “But these are really good pain pills.”

  Huh. Okay. I shrugged it off. I guess that was actually a pretty good theory.

  “You feel okay, though?” I asked cautiously. “Not dizzy or anything? I can take a vacation day and stay home.”

  For a second I thought I saw panic in my brother�
�s eyes, but then it passed and he gave me an easy smile. “Naw. I’m just going to settle in on the couch and binge-watch Lucifer on Netflix.”

  That sounded more like Pete.

  “A week before Easter and you’re going to watch a show about the devil? That’s a little dark.”

  Pete shrugged and settled back against the couch cushions. “You asked.”

  He had me there.

  I made a few more trips through the house, gathering the various items he might need while I was gone and piling them on the coffee table in easy reach of the couch. “Okay. The phone is right here. If you need anything, call.”

  “I will, Sonny,” Pete snickered. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever been bedridden, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I shoved my wallet and phone into my pocket and headed out to start the truck.

  When it was time to take my dinner break halfway through my shift, I still hadn’t completely shaken the feeling that Pete wasn’t being straight with me. I swung through Best Burger Haven’s drive-thru to grab a couple of veggie burgers and headed on home for a bit.

  When I got to the front door, I stopped short at the sound of voices on the other side. Turning my key in the lock, I pushed it open and stopped again, listening.

  “Pete? You have company?”

  “Huh?” Pete muttered, blinking sleepily at me from the couch when I walked in.

  A burst of laughter from the television set made me roll my eyes. I was so suspicious of Pete that I’d let my brain trick me into confusing a sitcom track for a real conversation.

  “Sorry, I must have heard the tv.” I opened the bag and set his burger and fries on the table. “You want some water?”

  “Yeah,” my brother said through his yawn as he scratched his earlobe. “Those pain pills really dry me out.” He laughed. “Not to mention knocking me out.” He glanced up at the clock with bleary eyes. “Wow, it's only been an hour since I took the last one.”

  We ate in silence, watching the characters on the screen work their way through some strange scenario that I must have needed to have seen the beginning of the show to understand. Once the wrappers had been crumpled and shoved back into the bag, I stood.

  “You need anything before I get back to work?”

  Pete shook his head and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Thanks for the food.”

  “Sure.” I tossed the bag into the trash can in the kitchen. “Call if you need anything.”

  Pete mumbled something that could have been an agreement, his eyes already drifting closed.

  The truck was crunching through snow that was still over a foot high when a flash of color from a logging road off the side of the highway caught my eye. I did a double take, surprised to see a sky blue Rav4 puttering through the field of white.

  It was the spitting image of my brother’s car, but, of course, it couldn’t be his. God knew he was in no condition to drive.

  When I got to town, I took the first right and pulled into the parking lot of the Starlight Condominiums. Counting my way down the row of miniature garage buildings that flanked the parking lot, I stopped behind 72F and climbed down from the truck. Rubbing the dirt off the tiny window with my shirt sleeve, I peered into the murky darkness.

  Nothing.

  The SUV that my brother adored was absolutely not tucked into its warm little stall and that raised a couple of questions.

  Had it been stolen and Pete didn’t know? That seemed unlikely, given that I’d personally chosen the alarm system and supervised its installation.

  If it wasn’t stolen, who was driving it and why?

  Turning the truck around, I headed back in the direction I’d come from, calling in on duty from my radio as I went.

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Antoine

  Picking up Pete’s SUV ended up being a breeze. There was a keypad to unlock the entry door and, as he’d promised, the keys were nearly in plain sight. I was a little amazed that it hadn’t been stolen, to be honest.

  “Who would steal it?” Pete laughed when I said as much. “It’s the only one like it in the area and everyone knows it belongs to the sheriff’s brother. Only a real idiot would do that.”

  He had a point.

  Once I got to the Sheriff’s cabin, Pete was all business.

  He sent me out to the shed – or the Bunny Hutch, as he told me he’d named it – to fetch a folder that he had hidden behind a box on a high shelf. When I brought it inside, he pulled out a stack of order forms, each one neatly color-coded and separated into stacks.

  “This is the delivery schedule I had set for this week before I got hurt,” Pete explained. “With only six days to go before Easter, this is our busiest time of year.” He frowned as he tapped the first two stacks. “All of this inventory was supposed to have already been delivered,” he said with a sigh. “I guess it makes more sense to skip these orders and start filling the ones we are still on time with.”

  “Why?” I asked, looking at the list. “Do you have everything?”

  Pete nodded. “It’s all in the Hutch,” he said with a sigh. “But there just isn’t enough time to get it done while Sonny is at work.”

  “Is that the only hitch?” I asked. “Can these be made after dark?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Pete agreed. “This close to Easter, they’ll take delivery any time they can get it, and most have a delivery spot where you just put it inside and then lock the door on your way out.”

  “Then tell them that they will get those deliveries,” I said firmly. “I’m not letting the Easter Bunnies down!”

  Pete looked skeptical but he nodded. “If you can complete all of these deliveries by Sunday night, I’ll add a one-thousand-dollar bonus onto the delivery fee.”

  “In that case,” I laughed, rolling my eyes, “You can tell them that all of the orders will be filled by midnight Saturday, Hell or high water.”

  Pete laughed and shook his head. “You are one determined doggo.”

  “Still not a dog,” I reminded him, holding out my hand for the first two stacks of order forms.

  Pete opened his mouth to respond and then froze. “Did you hear that?”

  I nodded, my teeth clenched. Keeson’s truck had just turned up the road. “What’s he doing home?”

  Pete shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know!”

  “I parked out behind the shed,” I said calmly. “He’s not going to see the car unless he goes out there.” I hopped to my feet as boots thudded up the wooden porch steps. “I’m going to go pull these orders and get them ready to go. When he leaves, let the ambassadors know that their orders will be delivered by tomorrow morning, so they should leave their delivery rooms open.”

  Pete nodded and then threw a fearful look at the door when we heard the clink of metal on metal. “You better go.”

  But I was already pulling the back door closed behind me when he spoke.

  I sped through the backyard, careful to step in the track left by the toboggan I’d used for Pete and ducked inside the tiny cottage. It wasn’t until the door swung shut behind me that I realized I was holding my breath and I let it out with a whoosh.

  I positioned myself next to the tiny window facing the house and peered through the cheerful bunny-print curtains, waiting nervously to see if Keeson would walk out to the shed and find me.

  Arrest me.

  I saw a shadow move across the inside of the kitchen window and then move away, back toward the living room and relief overwhelmed me.

  Moving as quickly as possible, I assembled the boxes Pete had told me I’d find in the storage closet and began to fill the orders off the papers I’d been given. The inventory was neatly organized and, as I moved from shelf to shelf, the shorthand I’d seen in the text messages on Pete’s phone began to make sense.

  102 dz d, 45 dz ch., 23 cs JB meant one hundred and two dozen decorated eggs, forty-five dozen chocolate eggs, twenty-
three cases of jelly beans.

  Easy-peasy.

  I was taping the last box up – using Easter-themed packing tape, of course – when I looked up at the clock and was amazed to realize I had filled all of the orders that Pete was afraid we’d have to cancel in just over an hour. The hard part was figuring out how to fit so much into the Rav4. With the back seats folded down and the passenger seat stacked high, I finally had all of the boxes jimmied in.

  All my misspent time playing the vintage Tetris game hadn’t been wasted, after all.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, making me jump and I laughed at my own nervous energy.

  Sonny stl hre. Take the road thrgh trees. Trn lft @ frk.

  I wasn’t sure how Pete knew I was done, but it didn’t matter. I walked out to the SUV and stopped short. I’m sure there was a road there somewhere, but under nearly two feet of snow, I wasn’t feeling good about my chances of finding it.

  My phone buzzed again.

  Btw th 2 bg trees

  Okay, the road was between the two trees. Except, the entire clearing was surrounded by trees. Looking again, I saw two that were larger than the rest, spaced about fifteen feet apart – the perfect distance to be spanning a road. Mentally crossing my fingers, I put the SUV in drive and began to creep toward them. When I reached an obvious fork where the snow had drifted away from the road, I laughed.

  “Pete is one smart bunny,” I commented out loud, even though there was no one to hear me. I turned left and then stopped to enter the first address into the vehicle’s navigation system. I was just entering the last of the information when I saw a familiar truck pass on the road a hundred yards or so ahead of me.

  Keeson was heading back to work.

  I saw the truck’s brake lights flash at the top of the hill and swore under my breath, positive that he had seen me. Dropping my foot on the gas pedal, I urged the Rav4 over the unplowed road to the highway and turned the opposite direction that the sheriff had gone, watching anxiously in my rearview mirror as I sped along. When the computerized voice announced my first turn, I took a deep breath and focused on the job at hand.