A Fraudulent Death, Draft 02, CH 34 (Patreon)

The old marmot slowly typed on his pad, and Marlot looked at the door to the office. He’d told himself he’d expense this to Vlein, but if it took any longer, he’d eat the cost.

His pad binged with the receipt, and he was running for the door. Inside, the elephant and red wolf were seated side by side, laughing at something Jareth showed her on her pad. Marlot looked from one to the other. He’d rushed because Hela’han had sounded like the wolf didn’t want to stay.

“Mister Blackclaw,” the elephant greeted him, standing and motioning to the wolf, also standing. “This is Jareth Mixcoat.”

“We’ve met,” the wolf said, taking a wrapped package out of the satchel at her side.

“Yes, of course.” The elephant’s ears gained their usual pink hue when she was embarrassed, and she took hold of her trunk.

The package the russet wolf handed to Marlot was wrapped in butcher paper stained with blood, and for a moment, he thought this was about meat, but as he took it, he realized it was too heavy, and the edges too blocky.

“I think this is what you were looking for,” she said.

“You found it,” Marlot said, then rolled his eyes at his stating the obvious.

“No,” Jareth said. “Whatever my mom got, it’s not at the house. This was waiting for me when I got home. I was going to head back to her place to look after the cubs, but I didn’t want this with me.”

“A second package?” Marlot mused. Had Hardir known the people using him would try to keep whatever this was from reaching him? Had he suspected they’d be willing to kill? He had to. Money couldn’t be a problem for an organization like that, so eating problems would be standard procedures. “What’s in it?”

“I have no idea,” the wolf answered. “That’s the wrapping it came in. I don’t know what any of this is about, and I don’t want to know,” she added as Marlot opened his muzzle. “With Mom gone, I’m the only one left to look after them. I can work out that package you were looking for is what got her eaten, so I don’t want to have anything to do with this. I’d appreciate it if you made sure my name or my family wasn’t attached to this anymore. Brath’s well intentioned, but he might as well be the cubs’ age for all the responsibility he has. They need me, this can’t be something that takes me from them.”

Marlot nodded, thinking of how he could help ensure her and her family’s safety. He’d tell Bahamel and she could assign people to keep an eye on them. Vlein might be able to do something on the side of the RB. He studied her, smelled her nervousness. Maybe the best thing he could do was not draw any attention to her at all.

“Who knows you have this?” he asked.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” She answered. “It was on my doorstep, so the postal service has to know.”

“They wouldn’t have a reason to care what it is.” And Marlot could make sure they forgot they’d delivered this. Legality be damned, this was about keeping a family safe, Trem would understand.

Were there other ways the people behind this would know about Jareth? His pad. They knew about him, about his interest in what was going on. But it had only been a few days. Would they already have malware on it? He’d been in a crowd all day, and his pad had securities. He hadn’t poked too deeply yet.

He let out a breath. He was overthinking it. There had been a direct line between Mirden and Hardir. They had intercepted that package. As far as they were concerned, they had covered their scents. What reasons did they have to suspect there was a second one?

“I can’t see any reasons they’d know about you, and I won’t mention you or anyone in your family anymore,” he told Jareth. “But keep your nose to the wind, just in case. Make sure it’s in a way that won’t draw attention to you. You should stick to crowds as much as possible.”

“You want me to act like prey?” She demanded, her hackles raising.

“Just a suggestion.” Marlot raised a hand to forestall her. “I’m sorry if it came across as an order, bad habit of mine. But you do have a family to think about. I think your pride can afford to stand upwind for a few days, don’t you agree?”

Instead of calming down, as he’d hoped she’d do, she narrowed her eyes, anger wafting off her. Hela’han took her hand and smiled at the wolf.

“Why don’t we talk about less extreme things you can do to be safe?” she said, her voice steady. “I have some experience in being prey, so I’m sure we come up with something.” This caused Jareth to calm. “I think I have this,” she told Marlot, and with a smile in response he headed to his office.

Trembor would have handled this better.

He sat and carefully cut the butcher paper off, exposing papers. He spread them on the desk and sighed.

What was it with paper? Vlein was forcing him to fill out forms, the building manager has a paper ledger, the organization behind all this recorded everything on paper, and now Hardir had sent him papers. Which, considering how this organization did things, made sense. Still, he’d seen more papers in the last few days than his entire life.

Skimming through them told him there were long lists of names with numbers attached matching the structures of IDs. He’d have to run them in the system to be sure. Other pages had names of businesses with more numbers attached to them. Those were too long for IDs, or finance institutions. It left an internal accounting system.

Among the papers he found pictures, clearly furtively taken by someone without training or experience. In some, he couldn’t tell who the intended target of the image was. Crowds where everyone ended up fuzzy, or where the camera focused on the blank back wall. No names were written on the pictures, or forms circled to show who Hardir to draw attention to.

Spreading the pictures, all he could tell was that this wouldn’t be easy. There were a lot of people there. And more puzzling was why Hardir had wanted this in his mate and daughter’s hands. It couldn’t be as insurance, since there had been no signs he’d fought back against his killer. He looked at the tracking information on the sticker. At least finding out where this one had been shipped from would be simpler.

He called Trembor, looking for some order in the papers. “Trem, are you okay if I don’t come over tonight?” he set two of the pages, with names that seemed to follow the alphabetical sequence, aside. “I just got handed a stack of information I need to untangle.”

“Were you supposed to come over?” the lion answered, sounding tired.

Marlot frowned, losing track of which page he’d been looking at. “Wasn’t I?” He tried to remember when he’d last spoken with his lion. “I forgot to call you this morning, didn’t I?” There had been Stalker 3.0, then the drive, then watching Grift. “Sorry, it’s been busy.”

“It’s okay,” Trembor replied with a chuckle. “It’s been a busy day for me too.”

“Are you okay?” there wasn’t a lot of good busy with the situation his lion was in recently.

“I’m alive, and it’s looking like the lawsuit is going to be dropped.”

Marlot waited for more. “You don’t sound particularly happy about it. I know you wanted to pay for the crime, but this is a good thing, right?”

Trembor took too long to answer. “Just exhaustion, I guess.”

“I’m coming over.” Marlot was at the door.

“No, don’t.” Trembor sighed and Marlot paused. “I am good. I swear. All I need is sleep and for everything to go back to normal. Work on your case. Hopefully, in a few days, I’m going to be back in the office.”

Marlot looked at the empty desk. “I can’t wait.”

“Me neither.”

There was more. Marlot could hear it in the stifled sigh. Or was he just imagining it? Looking for an excuse to ignore what his lion asked him to do, again. He let go of the handle. “Okay, I’ll let you go. But if you need anything, I better be the first person you call, alright? My case isn’t more important than you. Nothing is.”

“You will be. Now, go back to work. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He leaned against the door and let his emotions settle. He’d have his lion back soon. All he needed was patience.

And to work.

He called Bahamel as he returned to his desk and left her a message asking for a meeting. He didn’t add any detail. Maybe they weren’t listening to his pad, but Bahamel was investigating how it was the cases Vlein had sent never reached her. They had to know about it, and they would keep their muzzle to her scent.

She’d be able to work out why he wanted the meeting, and if not, she’d still agree to it, because it was him that asked.

Posted using PostyBirb