Page 75 of Bears Behaving Badly
She’d called the landline in Pat’s studio to check on her charges and had been informed that Caro had apparently gone through three of Pat’s sketch pads and Dev had found Annette’s old Kindle. He was plowing his way through her online bookshelf, which was 75 percent cookbooks, 5 percent literature-themed cookbooks (current favorites wereThe Little House CookbookandRoald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes…ironically, given the topic under discussion, she foundA Feast of Ice and Fireto be only so-so), and 20 percent work-related (Stir It Up;The Lost Art of Listening).
Oh, and sometime in the last three hours, someone had come to the main house and spirited away three dead warwolves.
“Do I even want to know how you know this?”
“You do not.”
“Good God. Tell me.”
“Dev, um, might have wanted to stretch his legs a bit.”
She held her tongue. She had no moral high ground here. It wasn’t Pat’s job to keep Dev Devoss out of harm’s way. It was hers.
“He wanted some room to shift and stretch, and then he could hear cars pulling out. So he scampered up the hill—”
Faintly: “Werefoxes don’t scamper! I ran. Like a predatory badass!”
“—and saw guys with sinister black cars right out of central casting clichés loading the last corpse and pulling out, because we’re living in a caper movie now I guess?”
“Do you feel safe?” she asked simply. “Should we move you? I can be there in forty minutes.”
“No way. To the second part, I mean. They never came near the studio. And you know it would’ve taken them hours to break in, assuming they even could. We’re only in danger of acute boredom brought on by acute boredom because we’re so acutely bored.”
“Okay. We’re following some new leads and won’t be back tonight, which is why I called.”
“Please tell me you’re at least getting some nookie from Auberon out of all this.”
“Um…”
“Awesome!”
“Shut up.” Did kissing = nookie? She’d have to do some research. “Keep this number. David and I both shut off our cells so we’ll be checking in.”
“Thanks for the update, stay safe, and I might wring Dev’s neck but not a jury in the world, right?”
“Try it, jackal boy!”
She cut Pat off before he could shout a rebuttal. “Pat. I’m in your debt.”
“Bullshit. It’s been the other way around for years. You just pretend otherwise to save my pride.”
Proof (if any were needed at this point) it had been a long day/week: Pat’s kind words made her want to sob. “I appreciate this more than I can say.”
“You’d be a horrible person if you didn’t,” he replied cheerfully, and hung up.
“Sounds like business as usual.”
“Except for the disappearing corpses, yes.” She put the phone away and turned to David. “Why are we here?”
“Here” was the lobby of the Genesee apartment complex in Bloomington, home of the Mall of America, the Minnesota Zoo, and at least one of David’s friends. It was a standard housing setup, with neutral cream-colored walls and inoffensive gray carpet. They were buzzed up in short order, and not long after, David was introducing her to a charming couple who seemed as delighted to see David as they were surprised.
“Where have youbeen?”
“Work junk. Jenn, Jim, this is my colleague, Annette.”
“Hi!” Jenn exclaimed, shaking Annette’s hand in an impressively strong grip.Ow. It’s like shaking hands with one of those old-fashioned laundry wringers.“Sorry about the alliteration. I’ve been trying to get Jim to change his name for ten years. It’s just too cute, right?”
How am I supposed to answer that?
