Her Detective Wolf Read online

  HER DETECTIVE WOLF

  Lone Dragons (Book 5)

  By ALICE SUMMERFIELD

  Her Detective Wolf

  Copyright © 2019 by Alice Summerfield

  Her Detective Wolf

  Copyright 2019, Alice Summerfield

  First electronic publication: July 2019

  Published in the United States of America.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  License Statement

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Note from the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by violaestrella

  (SelfPubBookCovers.com/ violaestrella)

  Sign up for Alice Summerfield’s Newsletter

  If you’d like to receive sneak peeks at future releases, freebies, and more, please sign up for my mailing list at https://madmimi.com/signups/195721/join

  Chapter 01 – Tessa

  Tessa loved junk shops. Something about rummaging through other people’s abandoned treasures satisfied some deep, dragonish part of her. Or maybe she was just nosy. She definitely loved a deal. And at seventy-five dollars for a pair, these stools – tall and chrome with a giant, cherry red bottlecap for each of their seats and not a single scratch on them – were a steal. They would look great at her breakfast counter.

  They were not, however, easily portable. Fortunately, the secondhand store’s clerks were more than willing to hold the stools behind the counter for her until she was ready to checkout.

  Her stools safely put aside for later, Tessa continued to roam the junk shop. To her stools, she eventually added someone’s treasured china tea set, only one cup and one plate showing any real wear, a Gilligan’s Island lunchbox in near mint condition, a couple of old books with a touching inscription penned in each of their front covers, and a blobby modern painting that definitely made her feel things, although she couldn’t say exactly what for sure.

  “Oh, that’s a very good choice,” said the clerk behind the cash register enthusiastically, when she brought it to the front. “We just got it in this morning too.”

  “I like it,” said Tessa, although that felt like a bold statement. Mostly, she just wanted the time to figure out what it was that she felt when she looked at that piece.

  When she checked out, Tessa arranged for delivery of the stools but took everything else with her. On her way home, she swung by Michael’s to get her new painting framed.

  “It’ll be ready in about a week to ten days,” said the nice woman behind the framing counter. She passed Tessa a slip of paper with her order number on it. “We’ll call you when you can pick it up.”

  “Thanks,” said Tessa, as she tucked the slip into her wallet. She wishing that it was the done thing to tip framing associates.

  This particular framing associate had very patiently outlined all of Tessa’s potential framing options for her, and then sat through Tessa’s waffling regarding a gold frame versus a weathered grey one. She hadn’t even batted an eyelid when Tessa had eventually settled on a sleek, modern frame for her new painting. She was a real professional, and Tessa appreciated that.

  Her business conducted, Tessa took her china, lunchbox, and books home. It took a few trips to ferry the china from the trunk of her car into the apartment, but Tessa eventually managed it. The china went into the dishwasher for a quick wash and rinse, the books under the edge of her bed, and she wiped out the lunchbox with Clorox wipes.

  After a childhood without much, Tessa hadn’t really gotten into the habit of owning things. She would never have parted with her car – her Sweetie was too important to her for that, and had gotten her through some rough times, besides – or her childhood bear, Tagger, or her mother’s necklace, but everything else seemed to come and go like the tide. The Gilligan’s Island lunchbox, for example, probably wouldn’t be her lunchbox for long. When she had gotten tired of her last one, Tessa had slapped it up on Amazon for a quick rehoming.

  Leaving her new lunchbox in the center of the breakfast counter, Tessa went to get ready for band practice.

  Her band, Electric Pear, got together a couple of times a week to practice – and drink and party and hang out – as well as on the occasional weekend for a gig. It was a lot of fun, and that afternoon was no exception.

  When Tessa got home that evening, tired and slightly drunk, she reeled into the apartment, leaving her guitar case next to the door. It was okay. Her roommate was out of town.

  Grinning to herself, Tessa stumbled into the kitchen for a late-night snack. It took a few tries to get into the peanut butter and apricot jelly jars, but Tessa eventually managed. A few peanut butter and jelly crackers and a bottle of water later, Tessa staggered in to bed. She didn’t even bother getting undressed. She just collapsed across her bed and, still fully clothed, was out like a light.

  In the morning, Tessa woke with a niggling headache at the back of her skull.

  Should’ve had aspirin with it, thought Tessa, remembering her late-night snack. Carefully, she hauled herself out of bed and went in search of said aspirin on the grounds that it was better late than never.

  It was with some dismay that Tessa discovered that jelly and drunkenness were not to be mixed. In the center of the breakfast counter, there were blobs of apricot jelly as well as the jelly and peanut butter jars, their lids set carefully askew atop of them, and a handful of crackers.

  Tessa ate the crackers plain, took her aspirin, and then ate a few more crackers, this time with peanut butter and warm apricot jelly on top of them. Then she started cleaning up her mess.

  Tessa was halfway through scrubbing up all the stickiness, when she remembered that she had left her new lunchbox in the center of the counter. It should have been her lunchbox there, not the jelly. Or maybe there should have been jelly all over the front of her new lunchbox. Either way, things weren’t where they were supposed to be.

  I probably just moved it while I was drunk and forgot about it, decided Tessa, while glancing around for her lunchbox.

  Sure enough, it wasn’t very far away. It had been set upright and the pushed down the counter until it was flush with the wall.

  Mystery solved, Tessa finished cleaning up then went to take a nice, hot shower.

  She stayed in most of Saturday, alternately sleeping and trying to recover from her Friday night. It had been even more fun than usual, which in turn meant that Tessa had more to recover from than usual. She did, however, call in an order for pick up for pizza.

  When she got back, her apartment door was ever so slightly ajar, as if it had rebounded open after she had slammed it shut. The apartment’s door latch had always been a bit sticky, difficult to open and close, and it had certainly happened before, but to
her roommate, not to her. Mostly, because Tessa usually locked up after herself. With Madison, it was more of a crapshoot.

  That afternoon, though, Tessa couldn’t remember if she had locked up after herself when she had left to get the pizza, and trying only made her head hut worse.

  Stupid, thought Tessa, furious at herself for being so careless. Guess I’ll have to stop giving Madison such a hard time about leaving the door open sometimes, she thought, as she went inside to make sure that all of their stuff was still there and nothing had taken up residence in their apartment while she was gone, like, say, a raccoon or a snake.

  Everything looked fine, though, so Tessa tried not to be took upset about her own carelessness, failed, and generally tried not to think about it. She did, however, put in another call to the super requesting that their door be fixed.

  Sunday morning, Tessa went to mass. She herself wasn’t super religious, but her mother had been, and church always made Tessa feel closer to her. After church, Tessa swung by the grocery store to pick up a few things. It had been a few days since Tessa had last had a homecooked meal and, while she certainly wasn’t in contention for the apartment complex’s best home cook, never mind any loftier cooking title, when it came to grilling, Tessa was hard to beat.

  In short order, the raw meat went in a marinade, Tessa’s hair went up under a swimming cap, and she slathered on a layer of sunblock. It was October, but she lived in a small town in Florida, so it was still pleasantly warm outside. It was definitely warm enough to swim a few laps… and maybe take advantage of the slide if there weren’t too many kids on it.

  There weren’t any kids on the water slide or in line for slide down its glorious lengths.

  Wherever they were, it wasn’t the pool.

  Hastily, Tessa scrapped any idea that she may have had of joining the sensible lap swimmers in favor of going down the slide as many times as possible. It wasn’t often that she found herself with a clear shot at the twisty glory that was their apartment complex’s water slide.

  That morning, Tessa went down the slide so many times that she lost count, laughing so hard that she became dizzy with it. And still, she found it in herself to go just one more time.

  It was a long time later when Tessa finally staggered out of the pool and, instead of heading directly for the slide again, went for her towel. Blotting first at her face, she briskly dried her limbs before winding the towel around her body. Tucking in the towel’s corner held it firmly in place while Tessa slipped on her flip-flops. Then, her pool bag slung over her shoulder, she headed back upstairs. By then, she was both thirsty and ravenously hungry.

  In her apartment, Tessa got a drink of water, turned her meat in its marinade, and then got dressed, her dry hair falling smoothly around her damp shoulders. Then, she raided the fridge.

  When she opened her box of leftover pizza, Tessa froze.

  Where there should have been five pieces of pizza, there were only three. Tessa was nearly positive that she’d only eaten three pieces yesterday – one for lunch, two for dinner, when she was feeling slightly better – and her roommate was out of town. Madison couldn’t have helped herself. And yet, there were only three pieces of pizza in that box.

  Weird, thought Tessa, feeling uneasy.

  Either she had eaten a couple of slices and forgotten about it or someone had broken into her apartment to eat her pizza. And as laughable as the second option sounded, just thinking about it was enough to prickle the fine hairs on the back of her neck. Tessa shuddered.

  Leaving the remnants of her pizza where it was on the counter, she went to inspect the rest of the apartment. Nothing else seemed out of place, though, and her mother’s pendant was still where she had left it in her wooden puzzle box. Tessa even glanced into Madison’s room, feeling bad for invading her roommate’s privacy but at the same time reassuring herself that her roommate would thank her for it, if she found either Madison’s computer missing or a pizza-stealing gamer hiding out in her bedroom.

  Fortunately for both herself and Madison, neither of those frankly pretty alarming possibilities proved true. Madison’s room looked more or less like Tessa supposed that it ought – nothing was visibly out of place, at any rate, and Madison’s desktop computer was exactly where it ought to be – and there were no obvious signs of anyone squatting in there.

  There were no signs of anyone else anywhere in the apartment.

  And yet, there were two slices of pizza missing from the box, the door had been open yesterday, when she thought that she might have locked it, and her lunchbox had been moved.

  But there was a rational explanation for all of it. She had been pretty hung over yesterday, and outright drunk the night before that. She’d had to get a ride home. Maybe she had eaten those slices of pizza yesterday and then forgotten about it. Maybe she had done a crappy job of closing the front door. And maybe she had gotten drunker than she thought, moved her own lunchbox while making her late-night snack, and then forgotten about that too. Maybe she was just Keyser Söze-ing herself.

  And maybe she wasn’t.

  Returning to her bedroom, Tessa grabbed her biggest wrench from her toolbox. She was a dragon, but the feel of cool metal in her hands was still a comfort to her. And in a confined space with likely unreinforced floors, the wrench was probably more useful than being able to turn into a dragon.

  Feeling better, Tessa returned to the kitchen where she heated up the last two slices of pizza then checked on her meat, turning the Ziplock with meat and marinade in it. That done, she went to eat pizza and enjoy her favorite program, Benny’s. Episodes dropped once a week, and she liked to savor them.

  But that afternoon, Tessa found that she wasn’t enjoying her show as much as she usually did. Rightly or wrongly, she was still feeling too unsettled about the little weird things that had been happening in her apartment to really focus on her show.

  Turning off the television, Tessa ate her lunch in silence.

  After lunch, she did a few chores around the apartment as well as a load of laundry, before she got down to the serious business of grilling.

  Tessa and her roommate had a teeny tiny balcony off of the living room and, despite how tiny and pathetic their grill was, it still managed to fill up most of that space. There was just barely room out there for a tiny card table at the opposite end of the balcony and Tessa herself in addition to that grill.

  Nevertheless, despite the unimpressiveness of her current equipment, grilling was another activity that Tessa genuinely enjoyed, one in which she could lose herself. But that day, she didn’t. The meat still turned out perfectly cooked and juicy, but somehow, it seemed a hollow victory.

  She was too worried about her apartment – and the fact that she might be losing her mind – to truly enjoy it as she should.

  After dinner, Tessa cleaned up, putting her Tupperware of delicious grilled pork in the refrigerator next to her roommate’s two regimented rows of Slim Fast. Tessa never touched the stuff herself, but Madison swore by the stuff. Just before she had left on her mini-vacation with her newest boyfriend, Madison had bought a couple of cases of the stuff, cheerfully declaring that she would probably need it when she got back.

  “You know,” Madison had said, “to get back into fighting form.”

  And then she had winked, ruining whatever slyness the gesture may have had with her broad smirk.

  Having tasted the stuff once, Tessa had found that she preferred to look curvy. Still, she had managed to find a weak grin and a nod for her roommate.

  Now, Tessa wished that Madison was there. If she was, all the little things that were out of place and driving her crazy wouldn’t have mattered. Tessa probably wouldn’t have even noticed them, not really, not the way that she had, because she would have had Madison to blame for them.

  Now, she had no one to blame for them but herself, and that didn’t seem quite right to her.

  Stop being ridiculous, Tessa ordered herself. There’s nothing wrong. You’re just tired.<
br />
  And, suiting action to thought, she went to bed. And if she took her favorite wrench with her, well, who was going to know? Besides her, that was.

  Tomorrow, she decided, as she settled beneath the blankets, wrench in hand, will be better.

  Everything would look better in the morning. It always did.

  The very first thing that Tessa always did in the morning, even before hitting snooze on her alarm clock, was to turn on her coffee maker. Then she hit snooze.

  In the end, it was usually the delicious scent of freshly brewed Kona coffee, more than anything else, that got Tessa out of bed in the morning. And after her first cup of coffee, she was ready to face the day, which usually started with a short but exquisitely hot shower. Then, she usually got dressed and had breakfast.

  That morning, it was raining, and rain made everything different. The soft, steady patter of raindrops against her bedroom window, an occasional low grumble of thunder in the distance, lulled Tessa into a lazy complacency.

  To her, there was nothing like snuggling down beneath her duvet and sleeping through a rainstorm. Tessa loved it. But then, she wasn’t a rain or storm or even a lightning dragon. Storms didn’t call to her, although her pillow certainly called to her during them.

  That morning, nothing short of the threat of over roasted Kona coffee could have gotten her out of her bed, and even then, it was a narrow thing. In the end, she got up nine minutes later than usual and consequently had to drink her coffee while she showered – without getting any shower water or soap in it, thank you very much.

  Fortunately, as an auto mechanic, Tessa’s work uniform wasn’t super involved. It was basically a blue-grey coverall over a white t-shirt and bike shorts, but it was comfortable, and it had her name embroidered on it. To keep her hair out of the way, she scraped it up into a ponytail, braided it, and then coiled it into a bun. With her hair up like that, she nearly looked respectable – if one didn’t count her piercings against her.