Chapter 21

Chapter 21
“This is just too much, Erik.” Duggan, poor Duggan, walked back and forth, rubbing at the bald crown of his head with one hand, and pulling on his chin-beard with the other. “I’m happy for you – congratulations and all that, Isabel, but this is... you’re the alpha! How could you spring this on us?”

His fretting had a certain kind of cuteness to it, but he was right on at least one count – there was a lot just laid on the table.

“Izzy,” Erik said, “can you help us out here? Duggan’s caught up in all the wrong things. We need to figure out a plan, not hum and haw over my mate. Not right now anyway, we can deal with the mate stuff later. Give us a dose of reason.”

Being called on during a council meeting was something entirely different for me. My normal thing was to sit here typing away on my keyboard, but for once, there was no keyboard. This was a strictly off-therecord meeting.

“I don’t really know, Eri... Sir,” I said. “All I can do is say what I found, and those ledger receipts are it.”

Clay Tomkins, the hyena, perked up, his eyes darting from left to right at whoever was talking. “Ledgers are boring,” he said with a little bit of an up-turn in his voice. “I’d rather talk about mates. Didn’t someone mention mates? Is someone mating with the witchdoctor? I thought witchdoctors didn’t need mates, they just kind of made their own young from... er...

parts?”

“It’s not a junkyard, Clay,” Erik said, standing up. “We can just let him resurrect whoever he wants to try and steal another round of money from the town treasury.”

“Th – that’s another thing,” Duggan said, adjusting his suspenders and then loosening them right back to where they were before he started fidgeting. “How do we know this is accurate? It goes against everything we knew about the case. How did this all come out right now? It just makes no sense how we could all have been fooled for so long. And anyway, what would be the benefit to the town council keeping this quiet?” “Unless the council was all getting a cut,” Jamie said.

That was the first time since he showed up that Duggan got quiet and stopped pacing.

General silence hung for a second. Clay fidgeted, Duggan tugged his beard, but nothing else broke the quiet. Erik looked at me, then at Jamie, who shrugged. “Just a thought,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “looking at these records, only a couple of people from back then are still on the council. There’s—”

“I don’t want to be accused of anything!” Duggan had started sweating.

“Just because I’ve been serving this town for thirty years doesn’t mean—”

“Cool down, hedgehog,” Erik said. He swung his boots off the table and onto the floor. “No one’s accusing you of anything. If anyone in this town was incapable of sneakiness, I think most everyone would agree that it’d be you.”

“Humph,” Duggan grunted. “Fine, thank you. I guess.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Because there’s no other answer. It was easy to convince everyone that Atlas’s mate drove him crazy and then stole a bunch of money, right?”

“What do you mean?” Jamie said. She had a glint in her eye that told me she knew what I was about to say.

“Well, think about it. Everyone knows that shifters can get a little... wonky, I guess, when they are with pure blood humans who then deny them, right? Well, what better excuse? Jenga was on the council then, and he’s apparently causing problems now. Doesn’t it make sense that he cooked up a plot to steal a bunch of money using his particular... talents?”

Thinking for a second, thoughts started connecting in my head like cards on a detective’s white-board with pins holding them up and strings connecting them.

“What is it, Izzy?” Erik leaned over, his chair squeaking.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Something just... popped into my head.”

I fell silent for a second until Erik jabbed me in the shin with his boot.

“And?”

“Well look, it says here that a member of the council was withdrawing money before Atlas died, which happened what day?”

“That’s a Duggan question,” Erik said. “Wow us with your brain, historian.”

“Er, I’ll have to think.” Duggan ran a finger down the bald side of his head. “It was a Thursday, I remember that much, when he fell. Thursday the eighth? Yes, that’s right. My grandson’s birthday.”

“Right, so there’s a withdrawal from the town accounts for a hundred grand on the sixth, the seventh the eighth and the ninth. See?” I said, and pointed out the lines in the ledger. It helped that everyone had got up real close. “I’m thinking that there wasn’t a conspiracy at all, it was just Jenga running a perfect scheme.”

“This is... a hell of a plot,” Erik said.

Clay chewed on his lip, and Jamie leaned in. “I’m impressed,” she said.

“With you and with Jenga. This is quite a feat even for that old witchdoctor.

So, what are you saying, exactly?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, nothing for sure. But the timing all lines up. Atlas’s mate left him for whatever reason – unrelated to the money – earlier in the week. He goes crazier and crazier until Jenga finally figures out he can control him with some kind of spell or tincture or whatever witchdoctors use.”

Clay snorted a laugh. “Tincture,” he said. “She said tincture. Did you hear that?”

Erik shot him a nasty glance.

“She... tincture... anyway.”

“Right, anyway,” I said, stifling a laugh, “he somehow controls Atlas while he’s still alive, and then...”

“That son of a bitch,” Erik said. “It wasn’t the old alpha’s fault at all. It never was! That wily old jackass used him. Then when he threw himself off that building, Jenga dug him up and kept right on using him. That would also be why the last withdrawal,” he turned the page and ran his finger down the column. “Here, on the sixteenth, this was for the biggest amount – a quarter million.”

Everyone looked up from the book, exchanging glances of utter disbelief.

“That’s... he must’ve stopped because Atlas was getting a little, er, worse for wear,” Jamie said, speaking the things we all were thinking. “Even magicked, a zombie isn’t going to last forever. Well, not looking very fresh anyway.”

Erik slammed his hand on the table.

Duggan quickly balled up, terrified by the noise, and momentarily grew a number of spikes on his back. As soon as Erik calmed down, he resumed his human for and dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief.

“I always did like Atlas. It bothered me what people said, but... I don’t know. This is all a little crazy. I mean, how could he have gotten to the bank? Can zombies drive?”

“Crazy?” I said. “Crazy? Erik, you live in a town full of shape shifters and a witchdoctor who stole money from a bank using the zombie of the former alpha and you’re saying the only part of this that’s crazy isn’t the zombie. It’s not even that the zombie helped a Goddamn witchdoctor steal money, it’s that the zombie needed to drive a car.”

“Well...” Erik trailed off with a shrug. “I don’t know how else he’d withdraw the money. Unless you think a zombie could just walk into a bank and take out a quarter million dollars.”

“Around here?” I asked, smirking despite myself. “I’m pretty sure no one would bat an eye. Send him in with a signed withdrawal slip.”

“No,” Duggan cut in. “She’s right. It wouldn’t be the first time someone used a golem to go about town doing their business. And remember, as much as Atlas was our alpha, he was also a werebear, so he mostly kept to himself. I doubt many townspeople would recognize him outside of when he was all made up for television appearances.”

“Sure,” Erik said, as understanding dawned on him. “And it’s not like anyone watches those public access meeting broadcasts.”

“It’s a shame what’s happened to public television,” Duggan said, frowning for a moment. “First everyone stops reading, and now public broadcasting is going down the tubes.”

He didn’t stop until he realized everyone was staring at him. To say he was embarrassed doesn’t do it justice. One minute there was a pot-bellied, bald-headed professor type standing in front of me, and the next there was a five foot hedgehog balled up and puffing.

Erik pursed his lips into a frown. “Well,” he said. “I wonder if they make toilet paper tubes big enough for that size of a hedgehog? You do like doing that, right? Head in the tube, rubbing it on things?”