Dead Letter Day (11 page)

Norah had put the coffee carafe back and was leaning against the counter watching me.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” She straightened and grabbed a sheaf of papers that were on the corner of the counter. “See you tonight?” she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

“Is it Friday already?” I put my head down on the counter, on my pillowed arms.

“Oh, come on. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be.” She poked me in the side.

“No. It’s a totally different kind of bad.” Friday night meant one of two things: sparring class or dinner at my mother’s. Tonight was dinner. Although that reminded me. I should check with T.J. and see if he would be willing to take over the Friday night sparring group. If there was ever a group that might kick me in the stomach, it would be that one. The testosterone level got ratcheted up pretty high there and people forgot themselves on occasion.

Dinner at my mother’s was a totally different kind of combat. It used to be a little slice of agony for me as I tried to dodge my mother’s pointed questions about my life. Now, even if I wasn’t an open book, I certainly did a lot less tap dancing there. It was still hard, though. Mom was the only one who knew about me. Grandma Rosie, my dad and my brother were still clueless and it still made for some awkward moments.

Norah had always been a frequent guest. Now I dragged Ted along with me, too, good sport that he is. Thank goodness my mother’s fascination with my Messenger status had distracted her from how much she disapproved of my boyfriend. I suppose there were small blessings to be counted everywhere.

Speaking of small blessings, the fluttering in my lower abdomen was back. Without thinking, I pressed my hand to it. Could it feel me in there? Did it know my hand was there? I swear it felt like it moved to that spot the moment I put my hand there.

“Are you okay? Is your stomach upset? Is that why you’re drinking tea?” Norah asked.

Uh-oh. I’d forgotten she was still there. I decided it was way better to cop to stomach upset than let her keep guessing. “Yeah. A little.”

“I’m not surprised,” she sniffed. “Your diet is terrible. Did you have pizza again last night?”

“Yes, but with a salad,” I said with a smile.

She shook her head.

Normally I let Norah’s advice about diet and healthy living wash over me like a pleasant waterfall that leaves no residue behind. It occurred to me that it could actually be useful at the moment.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about changing up my diet. Let’s talk tonight at my mom’s. You can give me some advice.”

“Like I haven’t been giving you advice about this for like the past decade?” she demanded, hands on hips.

“Yeah, but this time I’m planning on listening.” I stood up and gave her a hug.

She blinked a few times. “Okay, then. Well, I guess I’ll see you there.”

She was out the door and down the stairs before I realized why she’d looked so stunned. That might have been the first time that I’d actually initiated a hug with her instead of the other way around. This motherhood thing was totally making me soft.

Somehow that didn’t totally suck. Maybe this would be okay. A wave of nausea swept over me and I ran to the bathroom to barf.

“THIS IS KIND OF FUN,” TED SAID AS HE EXITED OFF OF Interstate 80. “It’s like a miniature road trip.”

“Except we have to be back by dinnertime and there is no aerosol cheese in the vehicle. It can’t be a real roadie without aerosol cheese.” I was relatively certain that was actually a law.

“I think your decision to start revamping your diet couldn’t come a moment too soon. That stuff is disgusting. It’s like a petroleum product.” He made a face.

“Disgusting in all the right ways,” I contended.

He shook his head and tossed me a map. “Start navigating.”

“We could have brought my GPS,” I pointed out. “Then the navigating would have been done for us.”

“And we would have become increasingly lazy and our map-reading skills would have become increasingly dulled,” he intoned.

I held up my hand to stop the flow of the how-technology-is-ruining-us rant that Ted was clearly ramping up for. “Got it. Turn left at Clover. It should be two intersections up.”

We pulled up in front of Leanne McMannis’s house five minutes later. “Are you sure she’ll talk to us?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? A police officer following up on a burglary? She’ll probably make us coffee and offer us cookies.” He got out of the car, straightened his shirt and walked toward the front door. I followed. I bet he got offered a lot
of cookies. Almost no one ever offered me baked goods. It wasn’t fair. I love baked goods.

“How’s she going to know you’re a police officer?” I asked. “You’re not in uniform.”

“I told you. I don’t feel right wearing the uniform when I’m not really doing Sacramento police business. Doesn’t mean I can’t have my badge on my belt and let her fill in the blanks.” He rang the bell. “And who’s the boss?”

“You are,” I said, smiling.

“God, that makes me hot,” he said, then straightened as the door opened.

Leanne McMannis was a blonde of indeterminate years. She could have told me she was forty or fifty-five. Neither would have surprised me. Her hair was shoulder length and straight as a board. Her makeup was tasteful and she had on a pair of pressed jeans and a blue button-down shirt with a single string of pearls showing in its open collar. She had that casual but put together look that I never seem to be able to pull off. “How can I help you?” She looked from Ted to me, friendly but still clearly wary.

Ted stuck out his hand. “Hello, Ms. McMannis. I’m Ted Goodnight. I’m with the Sacramento Police Department and I wanted to ask you some follow-up questions about the burglary attempt on your home.”

My baby knew his stuff. Her eyes lit up and she stepped back from the door. “Come in, then. I’m so glad. I figured no one really much cared about that.”

“Our resources are stretched pretty thin these days with budget cuts and all, but we always care, ma’am.” Ted followed her in and I trooped along behind him.

She turned to me, her brows drawn together. “And you are?”

“This is my associate, Melina Markowitz,” Ted said.

I stuck out my hand like he had. Her grip was cool and firm with just the right amount of pressure. I recognized that handshake. It was like my aunt Kitty’s handshake. I bet this woman sold real estate.

“Nice to meet you. Would you like some coffee?” She walked through her dining room toward her kitchen.

Behind her back, Ted gave me a thumbs-up. “Coffee would be lovely.”

Once we were settled around her kitchen island with coffee and cookies (yes, cookies!), Ted asked, “So can you walk me through what happened that night again? I know you went over it with the other officers, but I’d like to hear it again from you firsthand.”

“Of course. It’s not like there’s much to tell, though.” She turned her coffee around in front of her. “It was a Friday night. I’d been out at the movies with friends and was getting home at about eleven o’clock.”

Ted scribbled something down on his notepad. “I see.”

“I pulled up to the garage, hit the button to open the door and there were these…people inside.” She looked down at the plate of cookies on her left.

“Was there something strange about them?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?” She looked up at me and smiled.

“You seemed a little hesitant when you called them people.” And she’d looked down and to her left, a classic sign of lying.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” She shook her head and nibbled off a minuscule bite of a cookie. No wonder she was still so trim.

Ted smiled. “I sincerely doubt that.”

She looked at that smile and obviously melted a little. I didn’t blame her. It had the same effect on me. “They didn’t
seem completely human to me. Something was wrong about them.”

I leaned forward. “Something how?”

“First of all, their eyes. They glowed red. The other officer said that it was probably the way my headlights reflected in their eyes. You know, like when you take a flash photo, but this seemed so much more intense than that.” She shook her head and folded her hands in front of herself. “Then there was something about their shoulders and their arms. Their shoulders seemed rounded over and their arms hung down farther than they should and their legs…” She trailed off.

“Yes,” Ted prompted.

“I wasn’t sure if their legs were bending in the right way.”

“Interesting,” Ted said, scribbling furiously on the notepad. I wished I’d brought a notepad. I could have written him a note right then. It would have said “werewolf in transition?”

But that made no sense. Werewolves change from human to wolf and back again. Sure there are a million steps along the way, but they don’t pause in the middle of it, at least not that I knew. I’d seen one start to change from human to wolf and then choose to change back into human, but I’d never seen one walking around halfway in between.

“So I got out of my car…”

Ted set his pencil down and looked at her. “That was very brave, but possibly quite foolish. You could have been hurt.”

“I know that now. I was just so surprised to see them in my garage, rummaging in my freezer.”
She leaned back in her chair and fanned herself as if she was going to get the vapors.

That was a new detail. “They were in your freezer?”

She nodded again. “My son’s a bow hunter. He’d killed a deer and asked to keep the venison in my freezer. They had ripped all the packages open and were eating it.” She shuddered. “Raw.”

I couldn’t help it. I looked over at Ted, my brows up.

“See. I told you you’d think I was crazy,” she said, looking back and forth between us.

“I don’t,” I assured her. “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.” Interrupting werewolves, or half werewolves, while they were feeding would be a dicey prospect indeed.

“Well, I can tell you, as soon as they growled at me and started toward me, I hopped back in my car damn fast and hightailed it out of here.” She sat up straight and raised her hands as if she was surrendering.

“Smart,” I said and was rewarded by a smile and her pushing the plate of cookies closer to me.

“Was anything stolen besides the venison?” Ted asked.

She shook her head. “My signs for my real estate business had been tossed around, but nothing else was missing.”

Bingo on the real-estate-lady thing, but everything else about this situation surprised me. There was no need for a werewolf to break into someone’s garage to eat frozen deer meat raw. It could hunt one down in no time and enjoy it warm. Why did I think that? My stomach rolled at the idea and now I couldn’t get the picture of a werewolf with blood and tendons dripping from its jaws out of my head.

I swallowed hard and covered my mouth.

“Are you all right, dear?” Ms. McMannis asked.

I nodded, not trusting myself to open my mouth. Ted looked over at me, clearly concerned. I smiled and gave my head a little shake. He turned his attention back to Ms. McMannis, but with a sidelong glance at me.

“They haven’t been back then?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them again.”

That seemed a little too appropriate, considering.

“Can you show me where they broke in?” Ted stood.

Ms. McMannis nodded, stood and led us out to the attached garage. “That side door was ripped completely off its hinges,” she said, pointing at a door that led to the side yard of the house.

Ted ran his hand down the jamb. “Did you replace it with a heavier door?”

“No.” She walked over to him. “I had a security door on it already. I couldn’t believe anything could rip it down like that.” She shivered. “It didn’t even look like they’d used tools. It looked like they’d clawed the thing down.”

“IT WASN’T PAUL,” TED SAID, REACHING ACROSS TO FASTEN his seat belt.

Of course it wasn’t Paul. I shook my head. Paul eating frozen deer meet from some lady’s freezer? Not in this lifetime. I wondered if anyone else was missing from the Pack. That didn’t sit right either, though. They certainly weren’t behaving like werewolves. “Yeah, but I’m not sure what or who they were.”