“And she probably wouldn’t even be joking.”
“There’s also that,” I said.
“So what are you going to do about this shifter who’s somewhere in town?”
“I’m going to arrest him,” I replied. “He’s a shifter; he's not going to be that hard to stop. I just wish I knew where he was. Elvira at the Luxe Lodge is sending his picture to all of the other hotels in town. He has to be staying at one of them.”
“Right,” Willow agreed. “So hopefully someone there will recognize him. I wonder why he hasn’t left town yet.”
“My bet is he doesn’t want to be stopped at the portal,” I replied. “He must have figured that we’d be looking for him. He probably spends the whole day in the woods as a wolf. In fact, I wonder if that’s where he’s sleeping.”
“It would be cold, even for a werewolf in his wolf form,” Willow said doubtfully. “Remember, shifters aren’t regular wolves. They can handle some cold, but it’s still winter here.”
“Right,” I said. “So he probably is staying at a hotel.”
“I would expect so. He can’t be living in the cold at night. Even a wolf shifter wouldn’t be able to survive that night after night. You’ll find him.”
“I hope so. The more I read, the more convinced I am that he did it. I bet he blames Rudoldir for having stopped him from getting out of jail sooner.”
“That’s a pretty solid motive to me,” Willow said. “You’d better find him.”
“Maybe I should just spend the day hanging around the bank,” I mused. “If he’s running low on cash, he might try and get back up to his old tricks.”
“Please don’t get involved in a bank robbery,” Willow begged.
“I don’t do these things on purpose, you know,” I replied.
“I do know. But even though it’s never on purpose, it still keeps on happening.”
She had a point, there.
“Fine, I’ll do my best to not get involved. But I am going to find Raoul Lupo.”
“Good.”
I just wish I had a better idea of how. Maybe scoping out the bank wasn’t the worst idea after all.
As soon as Willow left, about an hour later, I pulled out the iPad and started reading some more about Raoul and Adolpho Lupo. I wanted to know exactly how they had robbed a bank, and after a few quick searches, I managed to find an in-depth article detailing how the two brothers had pulled off their crimes.
They actually went back to old human-world tactics which, funnily enough, the paranormal world tended to ignore as being too primitive. Rather than passing through warded doorways that would detect their presence, the two shifters would instead break into the basements of the buildings next door and dig through the ground to end up in the vault area, bypassing the wards entirely, having scoped out its location in the days prior to their hit.
Then, once they were in the vault, they only had to open the main compartment that held the bank’s stash of cash. These were always openable only with the fingerprint of the bank manager. In the days before a robbery, Raoul and Adolpho would take a potion that would change their appearance, and one of them would schedule a meeting with the bank manager. During that meeting, the other would then cause a distraction that would convince the manager to leave the room for a moment, during which the first brother would take a piece of tape and carefully retrieve the manager’s fingerprints from somewhere in the room, usually a coffee mug.
When they got home, the wolves would then use the fingerprints to make a special pair of gloves that imitated the manager’s prints, which they would use to open the vault and help themselves to all of the cash.
I had to admit, it was kind of ingenious to use more human-world techniques. The paranormal world was always so concerned with protecting banks from other paranormals that simple methods that didn’t involve any magic at all were often overlooked.
I also couldn’t help but feel like Willow had a point. If Raoul was here in Mt. Rheanier and was afraid of leaving for fear of being recognized at the portals, he was going to have to support himself somehow. I knew a wolf shifter would be able to hunt, but winter was still the hardest time of year to do that, and he remained a shifter, not a regular wolf.
He could try stealing food from the grocery store or from the hotel he was staying at. And what hotel was he staying at? I hoped Elvira would get me an answer soon. But even if he managed to steal or hunt food, he was still going to have to pay for his hotel somehow. And if he wanted to lay low until this all blew over or he managed to find a chance to get through the portal unnoticed, he was going to have to stay on the good side of the hotel so as to not raise suspicion. That meant he was going to need cash, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he tried to get some the only way he knew how.
“I’m going out tonight,” I said to Vinnie.
“Fine with me. I ate too many spring rolls, so I’m going to sit this one out.”
“I told you, spring rolls aren’t made for goats. I told you it would give you a stomachache, but did you listen? No.”
“It sounded delicious. It was delicious. But now I’m suffering.”
“I know. You’ll feel better in the morning. Go to sleep.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see if I can find a bank robber.”
“Are you sure you don’t need my help? I’m very good at head-butting paranormals.”
“I know, but I should be ok,” I replied. I didn’t have the heart to mention to Vinnie that if Raoul was there, the loud noises would probably scare him enough for him to faint. It must be hard
