“And it’s her handwriting?”

“Yes. Mom never doubted it.”

“But she never came to see your mother for Christmas?”

“No. After Christmas, Mom came to see her at the hotel, to learn if anything was wrong. She had a sixth sense about her sister sometimes. She’d thought something was really wrong before this, and then she got this much brighter card and believed things were turning around for her sister. She could have thought Aunt Clarinda was just busy with a romance and hadn’t had time to visit, but Mom worried that something had happened to her.”

“So she came here, but no one your mother spoke to knew Clarinda worked at the hotel. And my dad, as sheriff, said the same thing. On the card, she doesn’t say she actually worked here.”

“Her furniture was in with the hotel furniture that was sold off at auction.”

“How do you know that it was hers and not just part of the furniture that belonged to the estate?”

“She had sent Mom pictures of it. She was so proud of the highboy and blanket chest. It was the first time she’d bought any new furniture. She had to have been working at the hotel to earn both room and board and to afford to buy the furniture. She had no other income.”

“Were the hotel and the home’s furniture sold off at the same time?”

“Yes.”

CJ didn’t say anything more, and she wondered what he was thinking. “You think the furniture wasn’t in the maids’ quarters downstairs?”

“Here’s a far-out thought. What if Clarinda was romantically involved with Warren Wernicke? What if she came here to rent a room as a guest while she was looking for work, and he became interested in her? She needed a job, but maybe he didn’t want her to work for him because he didn’t have romantic liaisons with his staff. Particularly because they most likely were wolves. Or maybe he already had all the maid staff he needed.”

“Okay, so you’re saying she moved in with him? Was living with him?” That put a whole new wrinkle on the situation.

“It’s possible. And then she didn’t want to tell your mother that she was living with a man she hadn’t mated.”

“Huh, okay. That makes sense.” Laurel didn’t know what to think now.

“So then Warren Wernicke hadn’t lied when he said Clarinda hadn’t worked for him.”

“Nor would your father have lied. Maybe he was even protecting her memory. No sense in telling my mother she was living with a wolf and not mated when she had already disappeared. Wouldn’t Aunt Clarinda have at least run across folks? Someone else in the pack would surely have seen her at some point and wondered what had happened to her.”

“Let’s say she’s been traveling, searching for a place to stay. She’s rather a nomad. No job. Maybe just enough money to get her to Silver Town. Or maybe someone gives her a lift, and he drops her off at the hotel. It’s late. Maybe the hotel is full and Warren is interested in her. They hit it off, and he offers her one of the rooms in this house. Plenty of room. He’s living alone.”

“What about his sister?” Laurel asked.

“Right. She was living with him and taking care of the household duties while he ran the hotel. When Warren vanished, Charity stepped in to run the place.”

“Then she vanished. Who was living here at the time who would have known the Wernickes?”

“Peter will be putting out the query to ask all pack members if any of them knew the brother and sister or anything about a Clarinda O’Brien.”

“And no one has responded yet?”

“We’ve only known about your missing aunt since last night, and with the grand opening of the hotel this morning, folks might be a little slow to get back to us on it.”

“You’ll let me know if anyone comes forth, won’t you?”

“Absolutely, Laurel.”

She was glad she’d finally told them about her aunt. She just hoped her sisters wouldn’t be upset with her for not asking them first. But the situation had been awkward last night when she was speaking with Lelandi, and it would have been a lot more awkward if she hadn’t told her about their missing aunt before the Wernicke brothers mentioned it to Darien.

“Wait. Last night at the meeting Darien held, the Wernicke brothers knew our aunt had disappeared. How did they know if we hadn’t told anyone about her and none of you knew about it?”

Chapter 12

Somehow, CJ knew this situation was going to get a lot more complicated before they resolved anything. “I’ll check with Peter and see if he can question the Wernicke brothers. If not, Darien will call them in again and learn how they knew when none of the rest of us did.”

Laurel nodded. “Okay. What if the brothers do prove that the property belongs to them through no misdeed of their own?”

“The pack runs the town. They took over the hotel and paid the taxes for it all these years. When you bought it, you essentially paid for the taxes on the property.” CJ leaned back against the couch and pulled her tight against his body in a comforting manner, wanting her to know in the worst way how much he wanted her here with him. He wanted her sisters here as part of the pack. He didn’t want them leaving, no matter what they learned.

“What if they try to ruin business for us?”

“We’ll do whatever we can to fight them legally. But if something unforeseen happens and the hotel doesn’t bring in the profits necessary to keep you in the black, what about building a new place? As you can see by how fast your hotel was booked, we do have a need for rooms. You wouldn’t have all the hassle of refurbishing an old place. You could make it any style you want—just as Victorian, except with some modern touches. You’d have the whole pack behind you and all the help you’d need to build it. I promise I’d tell Eric not to be so bossy if he helped with the new project.”

She smiled.

“Just give it some thought if things don’t work out the way we hope.”

“I have to thank you and all the pack for everything you have done for us to date. I guess you know we hadn’t intended to stay.”

“I suspected as much when we learned that you were investigating your aunt’s disappearance. I also want to say I don’t want you to leave. Not you or your sisters. And neither does the pack.”

She frowned at him then, and he was afraid he’d said the wrong thing.

“That’s…that’s not why you stayed here with me last night, is it? To try and convince me to stay?”

He laughed. “No, I’m really not that devious. You wore me out last night. I want you to know though, I never fall asleep on dates. Even if it wasn’t a date per se.”

She smiled. “Okay. I’m going to do some last-minute things before I need to start greeting guests.”

“Sounds good. I’ll ask Peter about the other business.” When Laurel disappeared into another part of the house, CJ quickly called Peter and got to work on cleaning the remaining frying pan. “Hey, we have another issue with the Wernicke brothers. No one knew about the MacTires’ Aunt Clarinda living here at one time. How did the brothers know anything about it?”

“Hell, I’ll call Darien and let him get hold of them. We’re kind of busy with the hotel opening.”

“Thanks. Be out soon.”

When CJ was done in the kitchen, Laurel joined him. “Are you ready to go?”

Before he could take her hand, she reached up and kissed him on the mouth. She might not be signaling that this was more than just a thank-you for the time they’d spent together, but he had every intention of showing her that it already meant more to him.

He cupped her face and leaned down to give her a sweet kiss…at first. But when she pulled him tight against her body, he deepened the kiss.

* * *

Laurel felt his growing arousal and welcomed it. She loved that she could turn him on so quickly. Already, her pheromones were raging every time she started to kiss him, prompting her to go further. Wouldn’t that be a shock to the whole pack? If she missed opening day to frolic with Deputy Sheriff CJ Silver, cousin of the pack leader?