Chapter 7

Even though Sarandon had nothing to worry about, he hated having to submit fingerprints to prove he was innocent. He didn’t like having them on file anywhere because wolves lived such long lives. Five years for every human year now. Still, if giving his prints helped clear his name, he had to do it.

“Okay, we’ll take it from here,” Peter said once Sarandon had finished giving them his fingerprints.

“If you need anything, just call me,” CJ told Sarandon, casting Jenna a wary look. CJ pulled a satellite phone out of his desk drawer. “Here, take this to keep in touch.”

“All right,” Sarandon said. “Once I see what I was doing during the last few days, I can let you know. That’s how long this guy was being monitored before he took off.”

Looking serious, Peter nodded. CJ glanced at Jenna, and she knew he planned to tell Sarandon he’d vouch for him if he didn’t have an ironclad alibi.

When they left the office, Sarandon said to Jenna, “We still need to drop by the house.”

“And look at your schedule to see what your alibi happened to be.” She raised a brow.

He only smiled. “I’ll have one. And more.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.”

* * *

Once they were in the house, Jenna kept watching out the window and looking back at Sarandon while he searched through drawers in a bureau in the living room where he threw stuff he meant to organize someday.

“Are you worried the police will show up?” Sarandon finally found where he’d put some of the pictures Jake had taken of the brothers. He needed to get more organized.

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

“Not really. I have you to vouch for me. Here it is. One Jake took of me and my brothers on the ski slopes last winter. We stopped at the lodge to have hot drinks.”

Jenna walked over to look at it. “You have a fairly red beard.” She considered the stubble starting to appear on his chin. “It’s coming in even now.”

“Yeah. There must have been an Irishman or a Scot in the bunch. At least, that’s what everyone always says. One of our grandfathers also had black hair and a red beard.”

“Okay.” She pulled up the mug shot on her phone and compared the photo of Sarandon with it. “His eyes and nose still look similar, but the beard and coloring are not at all the same. Unless you dyed your beard, or it comes in different colors at different times.”

“Nope. And I’ll prove it to you, if you hang around long enough.”

She laughed. “I can imagine hanging around just to watch your beard grow.”

“It would be all right by me. Besides, all you’d have to do is have me shift. If I were dyeing it, the shift would knock the dye right out of it.”

“True, but humans wouldn’t know that.”

“You can come by later to check out my beard’s progress.” He rubbed his whiskery chin.

“I could, but I have to catch this guy. Besides the fact that he’ll steal from others, the business of us having to pay his bond is too important not to.”

“As a wolf, he’s not going to go with you willingly.” Sarandon already didn’t like that she was handling this on her own. What if this guy was a wolf and had a pack to back him up? If he was related to Sarandon, he was a wolf.

“Yeah, if he is one. If he’s the same man Lelandi thought he was. What about your schedule? The one that shows where you’ve been every day for the past several days.”

Sarandon went to his office, Jenna following him, and when he reached his oak desk, he pulled an appointment book out of a drawer.

“Not high tech, eh?” she asked.

“Some things I prefer doing the old-fashioned way. Like reading a book. I still prefer paperbacks. I guess you read only ebooks and use online calendars.” He handed her the book.

“Most of the time, sure.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a young wolf.”

“What? And have never used a typewriter before? Don’t worry, Pops. I’m probably as old as you are. Maybe even older.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t want to be accused of robbing the cradle.”

She was thumbing through his appointment book, pausing to read appointments on dates that weren’t even relevant. She glanced up at him. “You would only be accused of that if I were a young wolf and you were trying to court me. Which you’re not doing.”

“Hell, I thought we’d already accomplished phase one of the courtship ritual.”

“In your dreams.” She kept skimming through the date book. “I wore Victorian gowns when they were the required fashion of the period.”

He smiled. “Me too. I didn’t wear the gowns, but that was a good era for me.”

“Good to know. Back to your alibi.” She kept flipping through the pages, and he thought she would have reached the right time frame way before this.

“We have a grand Victorian Days celebration in the fall. A ball too. You should come. Everyone who lives here dresses up for the occasion. Some visitors to the area dress up in Victorian-style clothes too, just to enjoy the festivities.” He reached for the appointment book, and she frowned at him. “Here, let me have it for a second.” He took it and set it on the desk, then took her hands in his.

“What are you doing?”

He placed a hand on her waist and held her free hand with his. Then, to the nonexistent music, he waltzed her around the office.

Following his lead, she danced beautifully, not pulling away, not even when he pulled her closer.

“That is not the way the Victorians dance,” she said.

He smiled down at her. “Victorian wolves did, and in this day and age, it’s perfectly acceptable.”

She pulled her hand free of his and wrapped her arms around his neck while he resettled his hands on her hips. “And like this.”

He glanced down at her softly parted lips. Then he lifted her chin and brushed his mouth against her jaw, moving his lips across her lips. “And like this.” He kissed her mouth, gently. “You are so beautiful.”

She smiled against his lips and licked them. “So are you.”

And she kissed him right back. Parting her lips for him. Taking him in. He was in heaven.

“Wow,” she said and separated from him. “I haven’t danced like that in decades. And never without music.”

“And the kiss?”

She only gave him a dark smile. “No more interruptions, unless you have something to hide.”

He didn’t. If his schedule didn’t show he’d been in Silver Town with verifiable witness accounts, he wasn’t going to sweat it. His family and friends, and the law even, would provide him with witness statements proving he had been here or close by.

“Okay, so when you were arrested”—she frowned at him, and he was frowning at her—“supposedly were arrested, you were on the last two days of your butterfly photo op. You were at the state park with seven people. You can contact them and have them state for a fact you were with them the whole time?”

“I can try to get ahold of them to verify my whereabouts. They’re human and have returned to other cities and their jobs.”

“Okay, well, the police might want to verify this themselves if the fingerprints don’t prove to be enough.”

“That’s fine. I can provide names, phone numbers, and email addresses. I’ll see if they can email statements to me or to the sheriff’s office.”

“Good. You had a luncheon date with Laurel on the second Monday after your arrest. The suspect’s arrest.” Jenna glanced up at him to hear what he had to say for himself on that account.

He swore she thought he was dating a woman. She was way more interested in him than she was trying to let on. “Laurel MacTire. I’m sure she has the lunch date listed on her calendar too. She’s a lot more organized than me. She’s part owner of the Silver Town Inn, and she’s CJ’s mate.”

“Oh.” Jenna’s cheeks flushed a little.

“We were discussing an anniversary gift for CJ. She wanted to ask me if I’d fill in for CJ at the sheriff’s office so she could take my brother to some exotic place for their anniversary. I said I would.”

“And when was this supposed to happen?” Jenna was taking notes.

“December.”

“Okay, so it looks like you had an appointment with…” She looked up at Sarandon. Her confused expression made him look down at the book to see what she had read.

He smiled. “Ghost hunters. The three men are Laurel’s cousins. All-around nuisances. They document haunted places and showcase them on their TV series. If you ask me, I think they’re frauds. Laurel says she thinks one really has some abilities.”

“Why were you meeting with them? Just curious.”

“Darien asked me to speak to them about what they were doing hanging around Silver Town. He wanted them to find haunted places far from the town. We don’t want a lot of outsiders coming here to see the haunted places.”

“Does Silver Town have a lot of haunted places?” Jenna sounded surprised.

“Mostly, no.”

“Colorado Springs is purported to. It always fascinated me. Not that I’ve ever experienced anything. Did the ghost hunters leave?”

“Yeah, for a little while. Now they’re back, and they’re checking out the new ski lodge.”

“Is it haunted?” Jenna asked, skimming through the calendar book further.

“I can’t imagine that it is. It’s brand new.”

“Can you have the ghost hunters verify you met with them then?” She wrote down some more notes.

“I can, but, you see, all this has to be true, because I didn’t have time to create a calendar of alibis for you. So, it has to all have been real.”

“Unless you’re the suspect and already had this set up in case anybody checked what you’ve been doing and where.”

He shook his head.

“Hey, I’m just saying if someone really believed you were the suspect, that’s what he might assume.”

“Have you seen any cases of someone using someone else’s identity during an arrest and getting away with it?” Sarandon asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. Not any I’ve worked. Not like this. My dad had one where the guy had stolen his friend’s expired driver’s license.”

“Hell.”

“Yeah. You need to destroy those. Anyway, it turned out the man whose ID he used was a lawyer who had proof he’d been in court during the time of the crime—DUI charges—and subsequent booking of this man. I would think that would be one hell of an irrefutable alibi! Nope. The attorney had to fly to the location a thousand miles away to appear at a hearing. He was fingerprinted but not booked. If he hadn’t appeared, they were going to try to have him disbarred. If that wasn’t bad enough, they never went after the real criminal.”

“Hell.”

“Yeah. Life isn’t fair sometimes. It looks like you have an alibi for several of the days you were supposed to be wearing the GPS monitor in Colorado Springs. We need to drop by the sheriff’s office and have him verify this information so you’ll be covered in case you have to go to the CSPD. I’m ready to go. Are you?”

Sarandon really thought she was concerned for him now. He was a little surprised she wanted to stick with him, but he was glad she seemed to be changing her mind about him.

They dropped by the sheriff’s office, and CJ made copies of Sarandon’s calendar. “You still go by this old thing?” his brother asked.

“Yeah. Look how it can help clear me as a suspect in this case. If I had one online, I could just go in and change everything. And since I’ve been in Jenna’s custody all along, she knows I didn’t make this stuff up to cover my whereabouts. At least, you can verify with everyone I met with who’s listed on my calendar.”

CJ flipped through Sarandon’s appointment book, looking at the relevant dates. “Okay, you’ll need witness statements that you’ve met with all these people. The bad news is that the CSPD won’t accept you’re not the suspect unless you appear at a hearing there. They’ll fingerprint you… Yeah, I know, like we’re not able to properly fingerprint you here. You can provide witness statements that we’ll take here at the office so they’ll be more credible, witnessed by Peter and me. I’ll start calling everyone to come in and do this. You’ll have to give your statement under oath in Colorado Springs. The issuing jurisdiction is the only one that can clear you of the charges, they said.”

“Hell.”

“Sorry, Brother. On second thought, I might have Trevor take my place as a witness so it doesn’t look like collusion between family members.”

“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll call the folks on the tour, if you can call our local people,” Sarandon said, irritated to the extreme over this. He swore he’d make this guy pay for all the trouble he had to go through to clear his name.

“Can I help in any way?” Jenna asked, looking like she’d do anything to help him clear this matter up.

“Just call your mom, I guess, and let her know the problem. Tell her we’re still all going to help with trying to track down the suspect,” Sarandon said.

“Okay. I don’t usually have this much trouble tracking down a fugitive. I thought I had it made, once I found you, and would be all set to go after the next bail jumper.”

“You know what they say—if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, don’t remind me.” She got on her phone. “Okay, Mom, Sarandon has airtight alibis for the time he supposedly was arrested and for every day that the real suspect was in Colorado Springs being monitored. We’re returning to Colorado Springs right after Sarandon gets witness statements to that effect. We’re not sure how long that will take, but we probably won’t arrive until tomorrow evening.”

CJ was calling Lelandi to tell her about getting witness statements and that Sarandon would have to go to Colorado Springs to clear his name. Sarandon wasn’t able to reach five of the seven people on his tour. But he did have gas receipts from Silver Town before he took the group out in the wilderness and a grocery receipt for the food he had provided for the lunches and snacks on the trip.

Two of the people on the tour said they’d email statements to the sheriff’s office and gave their phone numbers and addresses so the police could verify their statements with them. Sarandon hated to tell clients he was wanted by the police, but one of the women was so angry about the injustice that she said she’d go to Colorado Springs herself and testify.

“Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate it. I think I’ll have enough statements, but if I need you to, I’ll be sure to contact you.”

“Well, my husband’s a lawyer. So if you need one, just let me know.”

“Thanks. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I’ll sure keep it in mind.” The woman had taken three excursions with Sarandon, and her husband had come on the white-water rafting one last summer. Sarandon was thankful they were eager to help him. When they ended the call, he emailed the other people on the tour to ask them for written statements, just in case he needed them.

What he really hadn’t expected was for pack members to start pouring into the sheriff’s office—Mason, the bank president; Mervin, the barber; Silva, with a box of pastries for him and Jenna; Lelandi; Darien; Laurel; and even her ghost-hunter cousins. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t had a scheduled lunch or dinner or other date with them. They were here to say they’d talked to him at the grocery store, or the bank, or the tavern, or any place where they’d seen him during that time.

Jenna looked in awe, and he smiled. He’d told her he’d have an alibi.