“So no one has reported a large black wolf roaming around?”
“Why?” asked Peter, alarmed. “Have you seen one?”
I looked at him and realized he didn’t know about his brother and cousin. Neither did the mayor, and now that I thought about it, Lonna didn’t, either. I hadn’t had the chance to tell her yet. Gabriel and I were the only ones who knew there were real, honest-to-God werewolves running around.
I decided to evade the question. “It was something that someone told me.”
“There are a lot of, shall we say, eccentric people in these parts, Doctor Fisher.” The mayor dismissed them with a wave of his hand. ”I would take what they say with a large grain of salt.”
“I see.”
“If you don’t have any more questions for the mayor,” Peter said, but his cell phone rang. He frowned at the screen, then answered it. “Marguerite, I told you not to call me this morning. I’m in a meeting with the mayor.”
He walked into the hallway, but even from there, we could hear hysterical crying on the other end. “What? That’s impossible! From his room? Okay, I’ll be right there.”
Peter came back in, his face pale. “Lance is missing.”
“Your son?” asked Lonna.
“Taken from his room. Last night. Marguerite thought he woke up early and might have wandered off, but she can’t find him anywhere, and the front door was unlocked.”
“Go,” said the mayor. “I can handle things from here.”
“We’ll come with you,” Lonna said. I looked at her, speechless. “If they have to search the woods, they need as many feet as they can find.”
“Fine. We can follow you,” I told Peter.
“Thank you.” He clasped Lonna’s hand. “That means the world to me.”
I bit my tongue over my sharp retort and followed them out.
Peter and his family lived in a large Tudor-style brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Their front yard was small, as with most modern subdivisions, and their back lawn sloped gently to the woods. Right now both front lawn and back teemed with uniformed men who inspected every blade of grass and every inch of driveway.
Peter drove in immediately before us, and he was greeted by a petite woman with blonde curls and a cute snub nose. He took her into his arms and held her stiffly as she sobbed into his tailored suit jacket.
“That must be Marguerite.”
Lonna just watched the scene with guarded eyes. I knew how she felt. I’d met Robert’s wife the first time at a company party, and it had been extremely awkward. I remembered doing the point-by-point comparison—my hair was not as stylish, but I was thinner; her breasts were bigger, but mine didn’t sag; she’d obviously had some work done, and I was in the bloom of youth. But in the end, it didn’t matter. He’d gone back to her. Not that I blamed him, at least not in my rational moments. He’d built a life with her. I was just a pleasant diversion to make work more interesting.
And Lonna was just a pleasant diversion for a man who had a weakness for beautiful women.
“It’s not easy to realize you’re an attractive distraction,” I said softly as I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go.” Her voice broke, but she smiled slightly.
We turned to go, but we heard him call after us, “Lonna, Joanie, this is my wife, Marguerite.”
We turned to meet the woman’s suspicious gaze. I couldn’t blame her. She must know what kind of man her husband was. She immediately turned her brown eyes on Lonna, and I could see the point-by-point occurring in both their heads. I couldn’t tell who won. Well, Marguerite, obviously—she was married to the cad, after all.
“What time did you notice Lance was missing?” Lonna straightened her spine. I could see by the angle of her chin that she wouldn’t back out of the situation.
Marguerite looked at Peter, who said, “The police don’t know it, but Lonna is a private investigator who’s also working on the missing-children case. She may be able to help.”
Marguerite’s shoulders slumped. “At seven.” She spoke with a French accent. “I went to wake him for his breakfast, and he was gone.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought he was playing a joke on his Mama.” She accented the second syllable of Mama. “So I looked for him everywhere in the house. Then I saw the front door open.”
“What time was that?” I admired Lonna for her gentle tone. She did very well hiding the emotions that must have been roiling beneath her professional demeanor.
“About eight. We have a big house with many places for a little boy to hide.”
I counted the windows. They did have a mansion. Lance would never have gotten lost in the small houses that had originally stood on the land.
“Then what did you do?”
Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I have already told the police this. Why do I have to live it again?”
“Marguerite, honey, it’s okay. Just tell Lonna what you did then.”
“I went outside and yelled for Lance. I looked in the pool. In the woods, but the brush is too thick. Then I called the police and Peter.”
“Where are Ron and Leo?” I asked. “They live with you, right?”
“They were out all night. I haven’t seen them.”
Peter’s jaw tightened. “They never came in?”
“No. For all I know, they went to the city to party.”
I remembered Leo talking about his nephew and knew he couldn’t have had anything to do with the boy’s disappearance. I hoped.
A police car drove up, lights flashing and siren blaring. For the third time that day, I saw Sheriff Bud Knowles.
“Well, Doctor, you’ve just got your finger in all sorts of pies today, don’t ya?”
“Sheriff Knowles, how good to see you again,” Lonna said as she held out her hand. “We were meeting with Counselor Bowman and the mayor when he got the telephone call about his son.”
“It’s amazing how y’all always end up in just the right place at the right time.”
“Amazing or unlucky,” I muttered. I didn’t care to stand there breathing in Knowles’s bacon breath or hearing the poor woman have to talk about her missing son in front of her husband’s newest girlfriend, so I wandered around to the side of the house. The ground was slightly damp, the grass struggling to grow in the shade of an oak tree. Something in the mud caught my eye: a large animal footprint.
I looked over my shoulder, and sure that all the others were either engrossed in the conversation with Knowles or searching other parts of the yard, I knelt down. It was a wolf print. I hadn’t ever seen one, but I could tell. It must have come through the side yard before snatching the child.
I shivered. Did I think the black wolf had something to do with it? Louise had warned me about it, but I didn’t know what it all meant—just that now one of the “aristocrats” had disappeared, and my newfound research subjects were in that much more danger. Or were they the danger? Either way, I needed to know where they were.
“Can you believe this? That poor woman.” Lonna’s voice startled me out of my mental calculations as to where Ron and Leo were and how far they could have gone. I hastily straightened up and stepped on the paw print with my left foot, which obliterated it. The last thing the guys needed was a mob of wolf hunters to descend on the woods.
“I thought she was the enemy?”
“C’mon, Joanie, she’s just misplaced her son. We must take care of her bruised ego and coddle her.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you. Neither does jealousy,” I said. “But she probably could use some tea. Or something a little stronger.”
“If Peter actually invites us in, I’ll offer.”
“How big of you.”
“Now who’s sarcastic?”
As we walked toward the door, Marguerite looked up, and her eyes met mine. I felt guilty even though I hadn’t done anything. This time. Still, the whole situation had a sense of deja vu. I could feel Lonna squirm under
