When she reached it, she peered out. Rowdy was standing there. She frowned, worried he had bad news about the case. He couldn’t be thinking of joining her on her date with Allan tonight. Maybe he had bad news about Allan.
Trying not to overreact, she opened the door and Rowdy smiled appreciably at her. “Now I really wish you had gone out with me on a date.”
“What are you doing here?” She hadn’t meant to sound so annoyed, but she really didn’t want Allan to see Rowdy here when he arrived.
“Allan said he might be late coming to pick you up. There’s a massive pileup on the road he has to take after he leaves the mountain. Since I live in Whitefish, he called in a favor and asked if I’d pick you up and take you to the restaurant. He knew your car was in the shop, and he didn’t want you out driving in this weather anyway.”
She wanted to groan out loud, but instead, she showed Rowdy in.
“I don’t intend to join you for dinner, so you can’t twist my arm or anything.” He smiled at her.
“Thanks, Rowdy. I…well, I—” She felt terrible that he continued to ask her out and she kept saying no, but then he would rescue her tonight. She felt she owed him a dinner.
“Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be good. I came early because I wanted to make sure I got you to the restaurant on time. I’ll hang around until Allan makes it.”
“Thanks, Rowdy. I really appreciate it.” She started a pot of coffee, then turned to face him. “Why didn’t Allan call me or text or something?”
“He did. Or he said he did. You weren’t answering.”
She patted her pocket, realizing at once that her phone was on vibrate and in the jeans she wore earlier today. “Oh, damn. Sorry.” She headed for her bedroom, pulled out the cell, and found she had ten missed calls and five text messages, all from Allan. She shook her head at herself, felt bad that she’d probably worried him, and called him right back.
“Hey,” he said. “I worried about you. Rowdy will be there to pick you up and take you to the restaurant. I’m on my way now, but I might be about five to ten minutes late.”
“He’s here now. My phone was in another pair of pants. I’m so sorry, Allan.”
“No problem. He was happy to check on you and take you over there.”
“Should we invite him to join us for dinner?”
Allan didn’t answer right away.
“It’s up to you,” she added.
“Yeah, hell, sure.” But Allan sounded disappointed to have to make the offer. “It would be the right thing to do.”
“Okay. I’ll tell him. See you in a bit.” Feeling horribly disappointed the way things were working out, Debbie ended the call and tucked the phone into her pocket, then returned to the kitchen where Rowdy was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“Cream?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah.” She went to get the cream. “Allan is on his way. He said he might be five to ten minutes late, and he wanted me to ask if you’d like to join us for dinner for all the trouble you’ve gone through to come and get me.” She handed Rowdy the creamer.
He poured the cream into his coffee. “Think nothing of it. I hope he’d do the same for me if the situation was reversed, and I definitely wouldn’t barge in on a date. Besides, when you didn’t answer your phone, he worried about you. Why didn’t you tell me someone driving a black sedan had been following you? I’d have every one of them pulled over and the driver investigated.”
“It hasn’t happened again. I think he must have left the area. And it might not have been anything. Thanks for coming by to check on me.”
“Any time. About the case, we’ll get whoever was involved in both murders. I really thought we’d have more leads and have them wrapped up by now, but we’ll learn the truth before we know it.”
“Do you still think the murderer of the woman was a werewolf hunter?”
“Yeah. And the other guy in the stolen car. Why else would they have guns loaded with silver rounds?”
“They were both crazy.”
Rowdy glanced at his watch. “It’ll take me ten minutes to get you to the restaurant, and we’ll make sure you get your table. Captain O’Keefe’s is always busy on Saturday nights. I was surprised Allan could get a reservation at that late a date.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’m a homicide detective. I saw the surprised, then relieved look on your face when he said he was taking you out. He hadn’t planned it, just winged it, hoping you’d agree.”
“I…”
“When I say ‘relieved,’ I mean that you were glad he finally asked you out. Hell, why do you think I keep asking you? Not that I don’t want to take you out, but I’ve been attempting to give him an incentive to quit delaying the inevitable.”
“Even if he’s a wolf with a wolf pack.”
“As many cases as Paul and Allan have solved, and people and animals they’ve rescued, they’re some of the good guys. So if he’s intent on making you his mate and you’re intent on wanting the same thing, who am I to say what is right or wrong?”
She smiled and shook her head at Rowdy. “You’re a good detective. And not bad at making up stories either.”
“The best when it comes to murder investigations,” he admitted freely. “But I don’t mind saying I had hoped you’d dump him and start seeing reason and date me. Still, if you ever change your mind…”
“Thanks, Rowdy.” If she hadn’t been so hung up on Allan, she might have been interested in dating Rowdy.
When they arrived at the restaurant, Rowdy was the perfect gentleman and waited with her at the table until Allan got there. He was fifteen minutes late, and she’d already ordered stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer and glasses of water to appease the waiter.
Rowdy didn’t eat any of the mushrooms, though she’d offered. She felt uncomfortable eating in front of him when he wasn’t even her dinner date. Allan called twice to let her know his progress. Two more accidents had caused massive slowdowns on the highway.
“Listen, if you get hungry, just go ahead and eat. Or if they’re getting antsy about needing the table, go ahead and order me a salmon and—”
“I ordered stuffed mushrooms. We’re good. I don’t want to order your dinner and then have it get cold before you arrive. The waiter’s been fine,” she assured him.
“All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Then five minutes later, Allan arrived looking like a SEAL on a mission, his expression dark until he spied her. Instantly he smiled, casting a glance at Rowdy. But he also took in the table arrangement—the glasses of water, hers half-empty, the other filled to the top. The one uneaten stuffed mushroom, her plate showing she’d used hers, the other completely clean.
Rowdy got up from the booth and shook Allan’s hand. “Hey, you owe me.”
Allan shook his hand. “Thanks, Rowdy. I’m in your debt.”
“Thanks, Rowdy,” Debbie said. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat with us?”
“Are you kidding?” Rowdy motioned to Allan. “He’s a SEAL and knows more killer moves than I do, I’m certain. See you around.”
When he left, Allan took Rowdy’s seat. “I’m so sorry. The weather has been so bad, there was a third pileup on the way here and cars sliding on ice everywhere. I was fortunate I made it.”
“We should have rescheduled once you had the first trouble near your house.”
“Are you kidding? Not when I’d gotten all dressed up to take you out. Do you know how hard it was for me to figure out what to wear?” He was wearing a pretty blue sweater and his usual blue jeans.
“I thought only women had that problem.” She figured he was teasing her as usual. She couldn’t imagine he really had been indecisive about what to wear. “Rowdy was great about keeping me company. I’m just g
lad you got here safe and sound. I left you a mushroom, just in case you’d like one.”
Allan laughed. “One, eh? No one can eat just one.”
They both had roasted salmon and oysters, and Allan was glad he’d made the effort to get there, despite the road conditions. He kept looking at Debbie and thinking how truly beautiful she was, wearing the softest jade sweater, her dark hair curling about her shoulders. He planned to enjoy having dinner with her. He really was starving, and it had nothing to do with the oysters.
He was glad Rowdy had kept her company, and gladder still that he had left when Allan arrived. And yet Allan told himself this was really all wrong. He should have insisted that Rowdy stay and dine with them. He shouldn’t have a first real date alone with Debbie. They were discussing the usual pleasantries, so the problem wasn’t exactly the date, but what came next.
“Is your car still in the shop?” he asked.
“Yeah, bad alternator. I can pick it up Monday.”
It was probably good that she lived so far away. The thirty-minute drive meant he wasn’t going to drop everything and run by her place because he was in the area, as much as he had wanted to on numerous occasions.
But now he had a new dilemma. He was probably going to stay the night with her, but he had made arrangements for late tomorrow afternoon to see Zeta about her LARP group. She had confirmed that Sarah Engle had been part of the group but was missing. Not only that, but when he showed a picture of the Van Lake murder victim to Rose, she acknowledged he’d been one of the players in the same LARP group. She didn’t remember his name though. Was the one who had murdered the woman in the group too? They didn’t have a photo of him that they could share with Zeta for confirmation.
After a great dinner, Allan drove Debbie home. On the way there, Debbie was watching out the window as the snowflakes hit the glass and the windshield wipers wiped them away. Out of nowhere she said, “I don’t understand about the silver rounds. I mean, I do.”
He was surprised she was mentioning that now when they hadn’t talked about the bullets in over a week.
“The nutcase is a werewolf hunter—has to be, because he killed a woman he thought was one, and he killed two wolves, all three riddled with silver rounds,” she continued. “And the bullets were all from the same gun. As for the dead guy in the lake—if the unregistered gun was his, what does that mean? He can’t be the woman’s killer because we found him before the woman was murdered. And the ballistics for the murdered woman and the dead wolves didn’t match the gun in the lake. But it was also filled with silver rounds.”
Allan took a deep breath and let it out. “Right. What if there are two werewolf hunters?” He figured there wasn’t any sense in trying to treat this like a normal case because it was anything but—even for lupus garous. So he might as well play along for a bit, fill her story full of holes, and hope they still could find the murderer soon. But initially, he hadn’t considered the possibility of two hunters and the Van Lake murder being connected to the leghold trap murder.
“Okay. So a werewolf killed the hunter before he could kill any more werewolves. But the werewolf didn’t want to take him down as a wolf, because that would prove they exist,” Debbie said.
“That’s assuming that werewolves exist and the wolf that killed him wasn’t a genuine wolf.”
She gave him a small smile as if she thought he was teasing her. “Right. But a wolf couldn’t stage a car accident. Or”—Debbie paused dramatically—“he wasn’t his mad-wolf self when he went to kill the werewolf hunter.”
“A werewolf has a mad-wolf self?” Now Allan was amused.
“Sure. In some of the old horror movies I watched, the werewolf would go on a rampage. He no longer could have any thoughts as a human and was a total beast of prey. And then he wanted to die because he didn’t want to hurt the ones he loved.”
“So a werewolf couldn’t have a conscience when he’s a wolf,” Allan said. That kind of thinking was one reason why lupus garous never wanted to expose what they were to the human population. Even if some humans accepted them for what they were, lots more would be afraid of them—afraid because of the fictional myths and legends perpetuating the evil wolf and werewolf scenarios—and want them dead.
“Well, not according to legend. Or at least one of the legends,” Debbie replied. “I guess for the sake of argument, one could say they still had their human awareness when they were a wolf.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts on where she was going with this. “Oh, and there was no full moon when the man in the submerged car died, so the werewolf probably couldn’t even turn into a wolf. So he had to take down the hunter before the full moon was out because he wouldn’t have any control over his wolf half after that. And the werewolves have to hide their wolf half or people would think real wolves were on the attack and kill every wolf they saw.”
“So you’re saying the man in the car was a werewolf hunter—that the gun with the silver bullets were his—only the werewolf killed him first.”
“Right. A werewolf wouldn’t have a gun with silver bullets. The werewolf’s concern would be to protect his werewolf pack. All of them would be running as wolves during the full moon, so the pack leader would want to ensure they remained safe. The werewolf discovers this guy is hunting his pack and kills him, then stages an accident.”
Which sounded damn plausible, Allan was thinking. Except that no one in his pack had killed the man in the lake. “We have a problem with that scenario. If the woman was supposed to be a werewolf that the other man killed, there was no full moon then either.” At least that could be a problem in Debbie’s werewolf world.
“Right. She wasn’t a real werewolf, Allan. Just work with me here. But he suspected she was. Maybe she was into werewolves, like she was part of a pretend pack online. I checked to see if anyone was professing to be a werewolf hunter. What I found was a website run by a blogger who claims to have spotted a werewolf. A lot of people chimed in to claim they were part of werewolf packs—all in good fun. Some responded that they would join the packs; others that they’d shoot a werewolf on sight.
“Maybe our guy was following a thread like that. A real nutcase, he believes one of the ‘werewolves’ is truly a werewolf, gets to talking to her off the loop, and he tells her he’s a wolf too. She is so into playing the game that she convinces him she really is a wolf. He wants to meet her. Of course, he might not be a werewolf hunter, per se, but just some predator that lures women online to his lair and he’s acting out this werewolf hunter fantasy.
“So our werewolf hunter chases her into the trap and waits for her to turn into a wolf. But then he realizes his mistake. She can’t shift because the full moon isn’t out yet. So he shoots her with silver rounds and that’s the end of her—which would be the end of anyone—but he’s convinced that the rounds have to be silver to kill a werewolf. Then when real wolves visit the crime scene, he’s confident they are part of her pack. He shoots them with silver rounds, but they turn out to be bona fide wolves. No human genetics at all.”
“So you’re saying he really believes werewolves exist?” Allan asked, trying to sound incredulous. Two werewolf hunters, and one werewolf hunting them. So was the man in the black sedan a werewolf who killed the hunter and then the other hunter found his friend dead?
“Of course werewolves aren’t real. Sure, he believes this, but the ‘werewolf’ who came after him wasn’t really a werewolf. He probably was a relative or friend of someone else who was murdered by one of these men and was trying to take them down. So he got one of the purported werewolf hunters, but before he could locate and kill the other, the hunter murdered another supposed werewolf. The woman. Then the hunter killed two regular wolves by accident, thinking they were werewolves. But why would the killer of the werewolf hunter in Van Lake—if that’s what he turns out to be—not hide the evidence of killing him better?” she asked.
“Because
he wants the other hunter to know that he’s onto him? If he’s an alpha, he wouldn’t be sneaky about it. Yes, to cover it up a bit for the police. But for the hunter? No.”
“Okay, wait. So you’re saying the murderer was alpha-like, not that he really was a werewolf. But just a take-charge kind of guy.”
“Yeah.”
“That makes sense. But then the werewolf hunter killer could get tripped up and sent up for murder.”
“Often criminals make mistakes. We see that all the time. The foolproof murder turns out not to be so foolproof after all.” But if the killer of the man in the submerged car was a lupus garou, Allan hoped he didn’t get caught. Their kind couldn’t go to prison.
“True.” Debbie leaned back comfortably against the seat, as if she felt they’d solved some of the mystery.
He was beginning to wonder if they had. “Paul and I were wondering if it was a role-play group and some of the members began to take the game seriously.”
“You mean like some were playing the roles of werewolves and others the hunters? In one of those live-action games?”
“Yeah, only it got out of hand.”
“Have you checked into it?”
“We have, but we couldn’t find anything for this area online. But if they began to do this for real, they probably would have taken the site down, if they had one.”
He was still pondering if he should take her with him to see the woman in charge of the LARP in Helena. He was trying to come up with a plausible reason for believing the murdered woman might be Sarah Engle and a member of the LARP there. He couldn’t tell Debbie the truth.
Debbie glanced out the side window. “Okay, so then we have the man driving the black sedan.”
“That we haven’t seen any sign of lately.”
“Right and no more murders or wolf killings. So that could mean the driver was the murderer of the woman and he found his hunter friend in the lake.”