“There’s no way it’s a coincidence that the flower bed was vandalized. Someone’s trying to interfere with the wedding. We’re going to need to post security here until the wedding takes place,” Loch said, looking frustrated. “There’s a caretaker who lives on the grounds, but he can’t keep an eye on everything.”
Tate nodded in agreement. “Good plan. You might want to see if you can keep it quiet that you’ve added the extra security, though. You could put some of your deputies on my landscaping crew, in plainclothes, and then when everybody else leaves at the end of the day, they could stay inside the house and keep watch.”
“I’ll do that,” Loch said. “I just hate to see Ginger getting stressed out about this. Me, I don’t care about all the fancy-ass wedding decorations or the tiara or anything like that. If it weren’t for the fact that tradition calls for the Alpha to have a huge, over-the-top wedding and invite everyone in the damned state, I’d be happy to elope to Vegas.”
“I hear you,” Tate said. Not for the first time, he envied Loch and the obvious passion he had for his feisty, smart-mouthed bride.
Loch’s radio crackled. The dispatcher’s voice said, “Any available units, reports of a Signal Five located at Silver Creek. Please respond.”
A Signal Five was a dead body. Loch grabbed his cell phone and made a quick call.
“Where is the body? Any indication that it’s an unnatural death? I see. Thanks.”
Tate raised a brow in question.
“It’s almost certainly a natural death,” Loch said. “Meyer Schofeld. Some hunters were out in the woods, found him lying face down in the creek. I still need to check out the scene, though. It’s about twenty minutes from here. Want to come with?”
“Sure thing.” Tate knew he’d become legendary for his excellent sense of smell, even among shifters; he could out-scent a bloodhound. He was frequently called in to crime scenes to help track perpetrators. “I’ll come with you, and then we’ll come back and work out the details of sneaking in some extra security. Are you bringing Ginger?”
“Of course. What better way to take her mind of all of this, then a nice, exciting death scene?”
Ginger’s mother was a witch, which made Ginger half wolf, half witch. Ginger could shift, but she also had inherited powers. In her case, they manifested in the ability to see a dead person’s final moments if Ginger touched their body or something that they’d touched, or visited their home or some area they’d spent a lot of time in. If there was a death anywhere in Loch’s jurisdiction and the cause was in question, she’d help Loch out.
They walked back to the foyer, and Tate quickly scanned the room for Kat, but she was nowhere in sight. Damn, that woman could disappear faster than he could say “boo.” Was it him she wanted to get away from? Was it because of his brothers and sisters? She’d seemed to like them…although it was probably too much to hope that the woman who made his heart pound and other parts of his anatomy stand up and pay attention would also be the woman who’d actually want to take on a huge ready-made family. Since when had he been that lucky?
Well, nothing to do about it, he thought with a sigh. He had a murder scene to sniff around, a flower bed to dig up and replant, seven siblings to wrassle…
Half an hour later, after Loch had calmed down Ginger’s mother, who’d been in a state of mild hysterics ever since the tiara theft, and after Ginger had rustled up some clothing that was better suited to tramping through the woods than her strappy sandals and sun dress, they all headed out, with Loch and Ginger in Loch’s patrol car, and Tate following in his pickup truck.
When they arrived, however, they were greeted by an unhappy-looking deputy standing by his patrol car. There were two hunters with him, leaning on their pickup truck.
“We haven’t been able to find the body,” Deputy Ackerman told Loch. “We went to the area where the hunters say they saw it, and there’s nothing. A few of us shifted, ran up and down the stream a mile in either direction, nothing.”
“Were you at least able to find the spot where the body was found?” Tate asked.
“No, all we know is that it’s a couple of miles from the road. The hunters didn’t leave any mark by the spot; they weren’t expecting the body to be moved.”
“Maybe he was just passed out, not dead,” Loch suggested.
One of the hunters, a human, shook his head. “I know dead when I see it,” he said. “We saw him lying face down in the creek, half underwater, weighed down by his backpack. I ran over, pulled him out, turned him over…water gushed out of his mouth. He’d been dead for at least a few hours. He had a big dent on his forehead, and a gash.”