“I know where I’m going to start my Christmas shopping,” Laurel said, and Charity’s expression softened a bit.
“I’ll give you a discount,” she offered.
Laurel laughed. “You have a deal.”
“Oh, and take this,” Charity said, pulling a card off her counter. “It has my number on it if you ever want to talk. If…there’s anything else you think of and need to know. And…if you learn what happened to your aunt, I’d love to know too.”
“We’ll let you know,” Laurel said, and then she gave Charity a hug.
Both women’s eyes were filled with tears, and CJ was at a loss as to what to say.
But then Laurel started to shop for candy for gifts, and everything seemed fine.
After spending over a couple hundred dollars on boxes of special candies for everyone who had helped Laurel and her sisters, she and CJ thanked Charity again and headed out.
“I think that was a step in helping Charity to heal,” CJ said as they drove back to his place, the truck filled with the fragrance of sweet treats.
“I was glad to. And I really was delighted to get so much of my Christmas shopping done in one fell swoop.” Though she was wondering what she was going to get for CJ. “So what do you think? About everything Charity said?”
“It’s hard to say. She held a real grudge against your aunt, so some of the things she said were colored by that. It happened quite a number of years ago, so that will make a difference memory-wise. As to whether she had a triplet brother named John—one who fathered Stanton Wernicke and his brothers? I don’t think she had reason to lie. Which means that the brothers just coincidentally had the same name and thought they’d try to take advantage of the situation by claiming kinship. They probably suspected Warren and Charity were dead and couldn’t come back to tell the truth concerning their supposed kinship. Or, the brothers weren’t named Wernicke that far back. It’s just a name they’ve used more recently.”
“But Darien said he found that John did exist and had died where and when the brothers said that he had.”
“Agreed. But if they’ve been wolves for a long time, they might have changed their identities at some point. I need to take you home, and then we’ll see if my grandfather’s chest of drawers had any secret compartments that my dad might have known about and hidden something in.”
Laurel was glad to know Charity was among the living. That she was happily running her own candy store and not the hotel she had loathed. Laurel wished they had found Charity’s brother alive. But she still hoped her aunt might be.
“I’d forgotten all about your grandfather’s chest.” Laurel hoped they wouldn’t find anything to confirm that Sheridan had something to do with her aunt’s disappearance.
Chapter 21
On the way home, CJ called Darien. “We didn’t learn much new, but here’s what we have.” He explained everything and then added, “Can you have Peter arrest the Wernicke brothers on some charge? Have them locked up and watched to see if they shift during the full moon tonight? We just need one in jail to prove whether they’re royals or not.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Another thing, we don’t want the word to get out about Charity running the candy store in case someone killed her brother and wants to get rid of her too. She’s going by Pamela Houser, and I figure we’ll keep her real name under wraps.”
“Understand.”
“Okay, well, we’re looking into another matter and then taking off the rest of the night.”
“Sounds good, CJ. I’ll let you know about the Wernicke brothers later. We’ll be questioning them about what Charity said. We’ll just say we have a source of information that proves it, without identifying her. We’re having the meeting with the elders tomorrow night in the conference room.”
“All right. Let me know how it goes with the brothers.” They ended the call, and when they reached CJ’s home—and now Laurel’s, CJ thought with a thrill—he asked her, “How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted.”
“I’ll fix us some hot cocoa if you’d like, and then we’ll see if we can find anything in my grandfather’s chest.” He motioned to an old oak chest, tall with thirty drawers.
“CJ, I hate to bring this up, but why would your father have a locket with a picture of both my mom and my aunt in it? He told my mother when she came looking for her sister that Clarinda had never worked at the hotel. So that proves he lied about it.”
“Maybe.”
She frowned at him, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “We can’t know for sure. We have to consider every possibility. What if he found it and kept it, hoping to find the owner? She could have shifted, left, and then was never seen again. Anything could have happened. We just don’t know.”
Laurel let out her breath in exasperation, hating to admit CJ was right.
“You’ve never talked about your mother.” Not that she’d mentioned her own either. But maybe Sheridan’s relationship with his wife would give Laurel a clue.
“She died when we were six. A hunter killed her when she was taking us out to the woods to run as wolves.”
CJ had to have been traumatized to see his own mother shot and killed like that, and Laurel felt terrible about it. “As wolves?”
“No. None of us had shifted yet. He said he thought she was a deer.”
“God, I’m so sorry, CJ. Was he human?”
“Yeah. Darien’s dad was the leader at the time. Dad wanted the man dead for killing his mate. But Darien’s dad had to find the man not guilty of murder. It wasn’t a case of premeditated murder. Just an accident.”
She stirred the chocolate around in the milk in the saucepan. “Was your dad angry about it?”
“Yeah. Not only did he love our mom, but he had four six-year-old boys to raise on his own. Though everyone in the pack helped to raise us, including Darien’s mom.”
“Did Sheridan ever take another mate?”
“No. He didn’t let that stop him from having affairs, but he never took a mate again.”
“I hate to ask this…” Laurel hesitated.
“Ask. Any question that can lead us to solving this case is worth asking.”
“Did your father take a token after he committed the murder?”
“No.”
Laurel sighed with relief. “Then why would he have my aunt’s locket?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid.”
“What if—and I know this is really far-out—but what if your father was romantically involved with my aunt? What if she was referring to your father in the postcard?”
“Why would he have her locket? And deny she had been here?”
“I don’t know. What if she went for a run in the woods and vanished? And Sheridan discovered her clothes and necklace?”
“But he would have reported it. He wouldn’t have ignored it. Not if he felt something for her.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then you’re back to the notion that my father had something to do with her disappearance.”
She hated to admit he was right. She poured the heated cocoa into mugs.
He added marshmallows, then took her in his arms and hugged her tight. “No matter what we find—”
“It doesn’t reflect on you or your brothers, CJ. I just want to know the truth.”
He kissed her mouth. “I know. I do too.”
She loved him and was grateful he was taking all of this in stride.
They each grabbed a mug of cocoa and walked into the living room to start searching the old chest.
“I guess we’ll just begin pulling out drawers and see what we can find,” he said.
They drank their mugs of cocoa, then set them on the coffee table and began to pull one drawer out at a time to examine.
“Wait,” she said, feeling something move as she slid her fingers over the bottom of the drawer. “Maybe the joints are no longer as secure, but…if it has a secret bottom, wouldn’t there be a trigger to release the cover?”