“Anyway, she finally returned and I gave her hell for leaving me all alone for so long, well, in a sleepy way. She looked worn out but really happy and climbed back into her sleeping bag. I asked her where the hell she’d gone. For a run, she told me. I knew she was just teasing me. I figured she had to go to the bathroom. But sheesh, I’m not a camper. It scared the tar out of me to be alone in the woods with all the wolves howling, bugs making their racket, and owls hooting.”
“Wolves howling?” Allan asked.
“Well, maybe just one. All it takes is one to send shivers up your spine.”
“Did she have a passion for anything in particular?” Allan asked.
“She ate barely cooked steaks. We’d go out and she’d say she wanted them rare. Not medium rare. But just seared for a couple of seconds on the outside. Yuck. I’m vegan, so it was really hard for me to watch her eat something that was bleeding all over the plate.”
“Did she have family?” Allan asked.
“No. She said she was an only child and her parents had died. So she was footloose and fancy free. Me? I’ve got four sisters and tons of cousins, but I’m not close to any of them. Not like I was with Sarah. We just, I don’t know, had fun together. Kind of an odd pairing, I know. But we still had fun. She used to play her wolf role to the hilt. With me. She couldn’t with the others.
“She’d mention how she’d behave if she were a werewolf. Like she was trying to convince me they could be good, and if it wasn’t for the villagers trying to kill her, she wouldn’t have to kill them. She really wanted to change the villagers’ minds, convince them werewolves were really good guys, not creatures to fear.” Zeta sniffled. “I just laughed it off and told her that wasn’t what everyone signed up to play. No one would believe it. It wouldn’t be any fun. Someone had to be the villain. She said the hunters were.”
Allan disagreed. Some lupus garous were just as evil as humans could be.
Then Zeta sobered. “I can’t believe she’s dead. And Lloyd too. What happened? A home invasion? His home? I checked at hers, but she was never there, so I figured she was at his place. But I didn’t know where it was. The address he gave to play the game was false. It didn’t exist at all. I checked when she just disappeared. That had me worried he was a criminal. And Sarah was no longer answering her phone.
“When I told the police, they said they needed more to go on than what I had. Which was nothing. She had gone off with her lover. They thought the game we were playing wasn’t important enough to keep her here if the two of them wanted to go off somewhere else. I checked to see about Otis’s house, but it was the same way. Bad address. So I told the police. Since it was just for a game, no evidence of any crime, they couldn’t do anything about it. She wasn’t working at the time, so she hadn’t left a job behind.” Zeta took a deep breath. “How did they die?”
“Lloyd was found dead in a stolen vehicle, and Sarah was shot in the forest, both up north,” Debbie said.
Zeta frowned. “Did Otis do it?”
“Why would you think he had anything to do with it?” Allan asked, interested.
“Because he hated Sarah and he was furious that Lloyd had started seeing her. I overheard them in back of the park restrooms where we used to meet to begin our game. We would sit at one of the tables under a pavilion and discuss where we were in the game, trying to figure out who the wolves were. Then armed with whatever evidence we thought we had—or the players had, since I was just the observer—they would go off and hunt werewolves. Anyway, the restrooms were a few hundred feet away, but I heard this argument between the two men.
“Lloyd and Otis were trying to talk softly, but it got really heated and their voices began to rise. Otis said that if Sarah was a wolf, she was dead meat. And if Lloyd got bitten, he was too. I thought they were playing the game a little too seriously again, but they sounded too angry to be playing. The police assumed they were just actors who really got into their roles. But I checked their applications and the places they said they’d acted in theater and couldn’t find that they’d been in the plays either.”
She motioned to the walls. “You can see my name on all the playbills. So false addresses and they lied about the plays they were in? And then they all vanish at one time? Something had to be wrong with the two men. Then here comes this private investigator out of the blue.”
“Could we have a look at their applications?” Allan asked.
“Sure. The local police weren’t interested.” She pointed to the table. “I got them ready for you just in case.”
“Thanks,” Allan said and took a look at Otis’s, while Debbie looked over Lloyd’s and then Sarah’s. “Can we have the photos? We’ll turn them over to the homicide detective in charge of the case.”
“So he’s making you do all his legwork and he gets all the credit?” Zeta asked. “Sure, take them. They’re duplicates.”