“Pamela Houser isn’t your real name, is it?” Laurel asked, her words gentle as if she was trying to coax the truth out of the woman.
CJ hadn’t thought that. More that the older woman knew the man in the pit and had been close to him.
The woman didn’t say anything, but her jaw tightened.
“You’re…you’re Warren Wernicke’s sister, Charity, aren’t you?”
A couple of tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks. Her lips were pinched, and she nodded.
“We found his skeleton in the pit where I fell, didn’t we?” CJ asked, needing verification that the remains were those of Warren Wernicke.
“Yes,” she said so softly that if he hadn’t had wolf hearing, he might not have heard her response. “I’m…Charity. Though Warren called me Chair for short. But he was the only one who called me by that term of endearment.”
“Your brother, Warren,” Laurel said, getting clarification.
The older woman nodded and looked down at the floor.
“How did he end up in the pit?” CJ asked.
She shook her head.
“You don’t know?” Laurel asked.
“No.” Again, the word was spoken so softly that it was hard to hear. He thought she was telling the truth.
Laurel took the discussion in a different direction. “My aunt Clarinda was living with you in the house behind the Silver Town Inn, wasn’t she?”
CJ understood Laurel’s need to learn about her aunt, though he still wanted to know if Charity knew anything more about her brother’s death.
The woman’s face was already tight with emotion and grew even more so at the mention of Clarinda’s name. “She was living off my brother’s generosity and seeing another wolf. That’s what she was doing.”
Laurel clenched her teeth a little but didn’t say a word.
“Who was the other wolf?” CJ took hold of Laurel’s hand. He wanted to give her support, but not treat her like she couldn’t deal with this on her own. Yet, anything the woman said could be untrue. After all, she’d been living under a false identity. Then again, some wolves changed their identities because of the trouble with their longevity and humans growing suspicious of someone who didn’t age as quickly as they did.
“How do I know?” Charity sounded annoyed.
Laurel stiffened a little beside him. “You knew she was seeing another wolf, you said,” she reminded her.
“My brother was so angry with her. He knew she was seeing someone else. But he wouldn’t say who.”
CJ narrowed his eyes. “Because he didn’t know, or he just imagined she was and she wasn’t really?” CJ realized that they had a hostile witness on their hands where Laurel’s aunt was concerned. He hadn’t expected this.
“The woman didn’t do anything. She didn’t work for him. He didn’t want her to. He wanted to care for her. He loved her. Treasured her. Doted on her. He wanted to mate her, but she kept putting him off. And what did she do in return? Used him. Free room and board, smiled sweetly when it was convenient for her, and that was it. He kept broaching the subject of mating her. He adored her, no matter how she treated him. I tried to get him to see what she really was. I did all the household chores—cooked, cleaned, and kept the books. I adored my brother. The two of us had always been close. Until the night that she arrived.”
Thinking back on what Stanton Wernicke had said, CJ prompted, “So Warren took her in because he had no room at the hotel for her and—”
“Who said that? Of course, there was room for her. Only she didn’t have money to pay for a room. And my brother, who didn’t want to give up a good room to a nonpaying guest, decided to make other arrangements. I objected, but my brother just ignored me. She was a perfect stranger. What did we know about her? Nothing. And we needed another maid. Not that she would have been a good choice. She was spoiled rotten. Never lifted a finger around the place. Didn’t know how to cook. Didn’t want to learn. I doubted she would have done a good job as a maid.”
“What did she do while she was staying with you?” Laurel asked, her tone cool.
“Nothing!”
“She sat on the couch and stared out the window? Read books? Left the house each day? She had to have done something.” Laurel sounded totally exasperated.
CJ knew that the woman held a major grudge against Clarinda and everything she said was tainted by that hate. Was she jealous? He wished they could hear Clarinda’s version of the story. “So your brother disappears—”
“Right. And I had to take over the hotel.”
“And my aunt?” Laurel asked.
“Oh, she disappeared the night before that. I figured my brother had gone after her. And then he never came back. At first, I thought he had caught up with her, decided not to return, and they went off together. But he loved the hotel. And she just wasn’t mating him.”
Laurel took a deep breath and let it out. “Why wouldn’t she mate him? Did she say?”
“No. And my brother kept asking her. They started having arguments. I wasn’t supposed to be privy, but you know how it is with our wolf hearing. I was in the kitchen making supper so I wasn’t all that far away. They were loud. She started crying, and then she left. I heard my brother pacing across the floor in the living room. I came in to check on him.
“He growled at me to stay the hell out of his business. He knew I didn’t like her, so I guess he felt I’d say something bad about her to him, and he didn’t want to hear it. But I hadn’t planned to. He was angry and distraught, and I had no intention of making it worse. I was trying to lend him a sympathetic ear.”
CJ didn’t believe it. “When did he leave?”
“He was up most of the night, pacing or cursing. He managed the hotel through the next day, but when she hadn’t returned by nightfall, he went out looking for her.” Even though Charity’s words were spoken with annoyance, her eyes clouded with tears again, and he assumed she still grieved for the loss of her brother.
“Wearing a suit and his diamond stickpin?” Laurel asked.
“I guess. He was dressed that way for work, and he hadn’t changed when he went out.”
“You came to the pit when I had fallen down there. You visited him, didn’t you?” CJ asked, his tone reconciliatory. He knew she had to have realized her brother had died there, and she was drawn to the place, mourning him. No matter how much she hadn’t liked Clarinda, she must have still loved her brother.
“It was the anniversary of his disappearance. I always visit him at his grave and wish him well. I always wished I had gotten through to Clarinda. Done something differently so I wouldn’t have lost my brother.”
The thing CJ couldn’t understand was why Charity had also vanished. “Why didn’t you report this to the sheriff? To the pack?”
“I reported it to Sheriff Sheridan Silver.” She gave CJ an annoyed look. “And your father said he’d look into it. He said he never knew that some woman named Clarinda O’Brien was living with us since she never was involved in the pack, and she never showed her face in town. He acted like I had made the whole thing up! Like I was crazy. Even like I had something to do with my brother’s disappearance.
“Once Warren was gone, I could run the hotel the way I wanted to. But the truth was I hated the hotel. It brought in money, sure, but I was happy running the household. Some of the drifters that came through the hotel were not…respectable types. And it was way too much for me to manage on my own. Then I hired someone to do the books, and he ran off with the money.”
The pack would have gone after the thief. “Did you report this?”
“No. My brother was gone. The money was gone. We had debts to pay. I would have lost everything. It just seemed…futile at that point. I’d begun to hate the hotel. I packed my bags and left. It was like once Clarinda arrived, we were cursed.”
“Why didn’t you stay and ask the pack for help?” CJ couldn’t understand why she hadn’t gone to Darien’s father, the pack leader at the time.