"Charles?"
"The landlord. Here, I'll take you to his office."
I said that wasn't necessary--we'd find it--but she insisted, toddling down the hall in huge polar-bear-paw slippers. As we took the elevator, she asked me questions--where we were from, what we did for a living, did we have any children? I answered honestly. That's one rule of werewolf life--tell the truth when you can and it'll make the lies easier to track.
Clay kept quiet as we walked, but he held the door for her and checked his pace to hers. Th
at's the wolf again--indulge the young and respect the old. Not a bad philosophy in general. Now if I could just adjust his attitude toward the other 90 percent of the population.
The landlord wasn't in his office. We found him in the front foyer, changing one of the tenant names on the list. The old lady--Lila--introduced us, then got her mail and scuttled off to read her new copy of People.
Charles the landlord was younger than I would have guessed. He looked about midtwenties, Native, burly and a few inches shorter than me.
"Yep, been almost a week, like Lila said." He pasted the new tenant's name in place. "Place like this, we get mostly good folk. Dennis is one of the best. Pays his rent in advance, never calls me in the middle of the night for a plugged toilet, does his own repairs, even helped me paint last fall when the student I hired didn't show."
He ushered us back inside. "I don't see Dennis every day, like Lila, but we usually bump into each other a few times a week. We stop and chat, then he'll come over to my place, and the wife makes him coffee." Charles chuckled. "The wife hardly ever makes me coffee, so that's a sure sign she likes him."
"It's been quite a while since we've seen Dennis," I said as he peeled a SpongeBob sticker off the wall, "so we don't know him that well. He was a friend of my husband's dad when Dennis lived back east."
Charles picked at the glue left on the wall. "Whereabouts back east?"
"At the time, it was New York State," I said carefully, thinking I was being tested--and not knowing whether Dennis had told the truth.
Charles laughed, making me jump. "I knew it. I knew it. The wife and I have ten bucks riding on this, trying to guess by the accent. I said New York; she said New Jersey. I wanted to ask, but she thought that was prying." He glanced at Clay. "You friends with Joseph?"
It took a moment for Clay to connect Joseph to Joey. "When we were kids. We lost touch after they moved."
"So we don't have his address," I said. "Or we'd stop there and ask."
"Damn. I hoped you did."
"Does he come by often?"
Charles snorted and started picking at another sticker. "I've been here three years and I've seen him only a few times. It's not right. His dad's a great guy. He's always talking about his son, and the guy can't bother coming to visit? Not right."
So Dennis and Joey were still introducing themselves as father and son. I hadn't been sure. With slow aging, that's one relationship werewolves often fudge.
"Do you have any idea where Dennis might be?" I asked. "Lila said he takes off a lot."
"He's got a cabin about thirty miles south. Usually he goes there for a few days a month. Sometimes longer, but when it's that long, he tells me, so I can collect his mail. He could be there, though. That's what I figure. Got himself snowed in."
I must have looked alarmed, because Charles laughed. "That's not cause to call 911 out here. If you have a backwoods place like Dennis's, you're prepared. Weather turns bad, you just hole up and ride it out, enjoy the peace and quiet. There aren't any phones out there, but Dennis has a sled. He could get out if he needed to."
"Sled?" I pictured a dog team, which really wouldn't work for a werewolf.
"Snowmobile. But while I'm sure he's fine, I am getting a little worried. I wanted to run out there and check, but the wife said I should leave him be." He grinned at Clay. "The last time I went, I spent the day ice fishing with Dennis, had a few beers, stayed the night, couldn't call and tell her... Wives get a little funny about stuff like that."
"We could drive up and check on him, if you have an address," I said.
I expected him to refuse. After all, we were strangers. But he said, "I wouldn't quite call it an address. There's no mail delivery out there. The road stops about a half mile from the cabin. What I have are directions and coordinates. It's rough country, though. What are you driving?"
"An SUV with a GPS unit."
"Perfect. Let me give you--" He reached into his back pocket, swore and shook his head. "The wife convinces me I need a PDA for work and where is it? With her, for her grocery list. Can I call you with it when she gets back?"
"Sure." I gave him my cell number.
*