Hard To Bear (11 page)

Flint shook his head
, feeling mingled regret and frustration. “I’m not going to attempt to usurp his authority. He’s the officer in charge, and honestly, Melinda, I have to agree with him.  Your heart was in the right place, but you went about it the wrong way, and all the good intentions in the world won’t matter if you blow our operations. The only people who should be on our team are people who can follow orders. When you called me this morning, as it so happens, I was with someone.  That person overheard you yelling about being attacked.  I can only pray that you haven’t completely exposed our mission. If you’d called and reported it to the appropriate person, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Rory’s eyes flashed with anger
and he skewered Melinda with an ice-cold glare. “That does it.  I want you packed and out of here within the hour, and you will drive straight to headquarters. I’m recommending that you be permanently pulled from the field.”

Melinda whirled on Flint, tears filling her eyes and running down her cheeks. 
“It’s your fault, not mine! If you hadn’t spent the night fucking that fat wolf bitch, there wouldn’t have been anyone there to overhear me!”

Rory drew in a furious breath as she stormed off, but Flint held up his hand. “Let it go, Rory.  You did what was needed, by removing
her from the operation.  I kind of blame myself, here.”

“How?” Rory glared after Melinda’s retreating figure. “
It’s not your fault she’s obsessed with you. I’ve never seen you lead her on.”

“I
know, it’s just…I just feel badly. I owe her my life.”

“She’s been playing that card for far too long.  Yes, she saved your life; she’s an Enforcer, and that’s her job.  You’d have done the same for her, or for anyone on your team.  In fact, you have saved people’s lives. Do you follow them around acting like they owe you?”

Flint winced. Rory’s words were true, but harsh. “I guess not,” he admitted. “I better head back to my office and get back to work.”

Coral arrived at work to find phone messages from Adrian’s mother and Megan’s mother, and she immediately felt guilty that she was brooding about her own problems.  Yes, she was infatuated with a bear shifter who was leading some kind of mysterious double life and lying to her, but these two women
had missing family members.   Her problems were petty and puny in comparison.

She returned their calls to let them know she hadn’t come up with anything new yet, but she was still investigating.

Then she turned to shoot Frederick, who had just slunk in from an assignment, the glare of death.

He held up his hands in protest. “Come on, Coral, I took Bettina out to coffee once.  I thought I liked her, but then Melinda – wow.  She’s incredible, isn’t she? Can you believe someone who looks like her actually likes
me
?”

“Are you really that stupid?” Coral snapped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He looked hurt.

“You’ll figure it out.
And don’t talk to me unless its work related. I’m officially pissed off at you.” She swiveled her chair around, deliberately turning her back on him.

Bettina sat at the front desk, occasionally flashing hurt looks back in F
rederick’s direction. Coral sighed.  Frederick was too besotted to realize that Melinda had just used him in an attempt to get to Flint.

She ignored three text messages from Flint
that morning as she typed up notices for the weekly “Around Town” column.

When she was done, she decided to do some more investigating.

Someone had already searched Adrian’s house, according to his mother, but maybe she could find something that they hadn’t. 

Adrian had rented a tiny little bungalow set on the back of the property of a man named
Elmer Kray,  on the outskirts of town, about twenty minutes drive from the newspaper. Kray lived in a dilapidated clapboard A-line house with missing shingles and peeling gray paint.

Coral knocked on his door.  He was an older man, in his seventies, wearing stained dungarees and a faded white tank top.  Feeling mildly guilty for lying, she told him she
was considering renting the property.

Kray
shrugged, not seeming particularly interested. “It ain’t locked. Take a look around,” he said. “If you like it, it’s vacant. Sure is a lot of interest in that place.”

Coral
perked up. “Really? From who?” she said.

“Oh, a tiger shifter came by asking about it, and before that,
some humans. They all wanted to look at it.”

“Oh,” she said brightly.  “Well, I’ll let you know what I think.” Her heart sank, however.  Whoever had been there had likely searched the place thoroughly; what were the odds that she’d find anything? Well, she was already
there; she might as well do some snooping.

“If you want it, three
hunnert a month,” he said, and walked back inside.

She nodded, and walked back to through the yard, past pecking chickens and a rusty hand pump, to the bungalow.

An air conditioning unit sagged from the window, and the steps creaked under her feet as she walked up.  The bungalow had definitely seen better days. The windows were grimed over with dust, and a crack ran jaggedly up one pane.

She opened the door and walked in.  The bungalow smelled musty, and was furnished with old, mismatched furniture.  She opened the cupboards in the kitchen, and shrieked when a mouse scampered out.

It leaped on to the counter, where it glared at it her with beady little eyes.

“Oh, please,” she scowled. “I’m a wolf. I can take you.”

With a squeak of disgust, it scampered behind a toaster.

She pulled out drawers, bracing herself
in case more live animals leaped out, but there were none. The drawers were empty of animals or clues.  She opened the refrigerator.  Nothing.

She went into the bedroom and
looked under the bed and then went through the drawers, quickly. She looked in the closet. In the bathroom medicine cabinet. 

Nothing.

“Well, this was a dead end, and a mouse nearly made me pee myself,” she grumbled. “And I’m talking to myself like a crazy person.” 

And throughout the whole search she couldn’t stop thinking about that bear shifter.  Well, a big part of the reason w
as because she was still aching, in the most delicious way, from last night’s lovemaking. 

With a sigh of defeat, she headed for the front do
or, and stopped where she stood as she heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

She suddenly realized how isolated she was back here. If she screamed for help, Mr.
Kray likely wouldn’t hear her.

And if he did, what could the old guy even do?
  He was a human; he’d be no match against a shifter.  By the time he got his shotgun or called for help…

The door swung open, and Blanche
walked in.  Her hair was styled in a big bubble beehive with a purple braid wound around the bottom of it.  She wore a polyester dress with a floral print, and a pair of white tennis shoes.

“Blanche! Good heavens, what are you doing here?
You nearly gave me a heart attack.  How did you even find me?”

“
Haven’t you learned anything about Blue Moon Junction?  Everyone knows what everyone’s up to around here.”

Coral peered out the door.  “Where’s your partner in crime?”

Blanche’s expression turned frosty.  “We’re not speaking. I believe she’s out on a lunch date with her new gentleman friend.”

“Oh, the veterinarian.  He looked kind of boring,  anyway.  You could do better,” Coral assured her.  Blanche nodded in agreement. 

“That’s true.  He looked like a strictly missionary possession kind of guy to me. I like them a little more imaginative, you know?”

Coral stifled a gasp.  This was not the direction she was trying to steer the conversation. 

“Well, I’m done here anyway,” she said quickly, desperate to change the subject. “Let’s go get some coffee. I didn’t find anything.”

“My goodness, first you give up on the bear, and then you give up on searching the house.  I didn’t figure you for such a quitter.”

“I am not a quitter!” Coral stamped her foot indignantly.

“And now you sound like my great-nephew when he doesn’t want to go to bed.” Blanche folded her arms stubbornly across her chest.

“Fine,” Coral said, through gritted teeth. “I’ve looked in every drawer, every cupboard, under the bed, in the closets.  I don’t see anything.  What do you suggest?”

“What about the trap door that leads to the basement?”

“What trap door?”

“
Now you see, that’s why you need me to help you with your snooping. I know the history of all the houses in town.  This house used to be owned by a moonshiner.   He needed a way to make a quick exit when them revenue-ers came around. Follow me.”

Blanche led her in to the bedroom.  She began moving the nightstand, which sat on top of a rug.  Coral helped her, and then they peeled the rug back, and
Blanche fished in her purse and pulled out a screwdriver.

Coral stared at Blanche’s big purse, baffled.  Who carried around a screwdriver in their purse? Crazy old ladies, that’s who.

“What the heck else do you have in- no, I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me,” Coral said, shaking her head.

“You never know when you need to unscrew something. Or stab someone,” Blanche said.

Note to self, Coral thought: do not piss off Blanche.

Blanche quickly pried up the trapdoor which had been cut into the floor, and then lit their way down the steps into a small secret room, using a
small flashlight she had on her keychain. 

They were in a small dirt cellar, which felt cold and damp and made Coral sneeze.  The room was empty, except for a metal box in the corner.

Coral’s hands were shaking with excitement as she pulled it open.  “Blanche, you’re a regular Nancy Drew,” she breathed reverently, pulling out a stack of reporter’s notebooks and a leather-bound journal.

“Well, course I am. Nobody can snoop like Blanche
Briard. So what’s it say?” Blanche demanded eagerly, reading over her shoulder.

Coral quickly flipped through the journal, including the part where he’d briefly dated Bettina but thought she was too clingy.    Towards the middle of the journal, she came to what she was looking for. 

She skimmed through it quickly.  A few weeks before his disappearance,  he’d received a call from an investor corporation in New York, alerting him to strange goings on in the area outside of Blue Moon Junction.  The investors were interested in buying a parcel of property outside of Blue Moon Junction to use as a landfill.  They wanted land that was cheap and undeveloped.  The property that they were trying to buy had already been purchased, and they couldn’t find out who had bought it.

Then they tried to buy up a different parcel,
but that had also been recently purchased.  They found the same for half a dozen more parcels, all in the same area.   All of the property was marshy, landlocked, and undeveloped. Undesirable, remote property.  All recently purchased.

Then they began researching who owned the parcels, and found that they’d all been brought up by corporations who o
nly had p.o. boxes as addresses, and no public information about the corporations could be found.

Adrian began trying to find out who’d been buying up all the land, and kept running into brick walls.

After a couple of weeks of research, he wrote, “I told the police that I’m pretty sure I was followed yesterday, but they don’t seem to take me too seriously.”

Well, that was news.  Why hadn’t the police mentioned that?
And why did they claim that they had no reason to think there was anything suspicious about his disappearance?

In one of the notebooks, he’d listed the parcels of property that had been purchased, and next to the list
he’d written the word “Metamorph?”

“This is very strange,” she said.  “Some secretive corporation is buying up all this
property, and when Adrian starts investigating, he disappears.  But how does this tie in to the Original Shifters disappearing? Or does it?”

“We need to go back to your office so we can get an idea of where that property is, but I think one of those parcels is in the area where the three ley lines cross,” Blanche said.
  “There used to be a settlement out there, which is why all kinds of shifters started appearing, but then when the rail line was built, the town moved to be closer to the railroad.  Nobody has lived out there for a hundred and fifty years or so.”

Coral sneezed for the
dozenth time.  “Let’s go,” she agreed. “I’ll meet you back there.”

She stopped by
Kray’s house to let him know that she had decided the house wasn’t quite what she was looking for,  as Blanche got in her car and headed back in to town.

Her cell phone rang as she climbed into her car.  It was Flint.