Chapter 161

Sarah POV

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Zane asked, leaning back in the large chair behind his desk.

Travis nodded, taking a file from Alicia Wetmore with a just slightly lingering gesture that rang a clear bell in my head. Well, she was an alpha and he was a beta, but he was just about the most alpha-ish beta I’d ever met. No wonder they were attracted to each other.

“Your ex-housekeeper Liesel Chartres made a deposit of $50,000 the day after Sarah arrived here with Chloe, and before that it’s clear she was living above her means, going by the report you made about her salary.”

“She couldn’t have had time for a second job,” Zane said. “She was an extremely efficient housekeeper, but her duties were extensive.”

Travis looked at me, his brown eyes thoughtful. “You said before you had a difficult interaction with her your first night here?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” I said, struck by a new thought.

“What is it?” Zane asked, reading my face.

“At the time, I didn’t really think about it too much. I was used to dislike and condescension from wolves, but now that I’ve lived here at the villa for months, I realize how unusual she was. I mean, Hans, Mavis, Chef Rachel, Dr. Hayes, they all treat me with respect and even gratitude because I returned Chloe to your life, but Ms. Liesel, she was hostile, even hateful.”

“Can you go into detail?” Wetmore asked, grabbing a pen to take notes.

“The girls were sleeping with me, and she woke me early in the morning, told me to get dressed or she’d wake the girls, and then led me down the hallway to the garage where she had a mop and bucket waiting.”

“She wanted you to mop the garage floor?” Wetmore asked.

“Yes.” I remembered her words then. “She said she was a beta and I was lower than gammas, being human, and then she got physical.”

“How?”

“She grabbed my hair and put me on my knees. I think she would have done more, but Zane came in then and stopped her.”

She looked at Zane. “Were you surprised by her behavior? Had you witnessed her treating humans like that before?”

“I was shocked, actually,” Zane said, frowning slightly. “I was so angry at the time I didn’t think about her attitude too much, and after I had demoted her back to housemaid, I got reports that she wasn’t getting along well with the others. I wasn’t surprised when I heard she quit.

“But before I saw her being violent with Sarah, no, I wouldn’t say I ever saw her be openly hostile toward humans, though I do have to admit she would have gotten few chances to do so here at the villa. I do keep a mostly wolf household.”

“As do most Pack Alphas,” Wetmore muttered.

“What are you thinking?” Travis asked her, and I saw him refrain from touching her hand as it lay on the desk, though he clearly wanted to.

“Sarah arrives at the villa and is put in charge of both your daughters, and someone doesn’t like it. Ms. Liesel treats her like she does perhaps to change Sarah’s mind about wanting to stay.”

She looked at me. “Was she hostile toward you when you first got here? I mean, that evening?”

I thought back. “She was snotty toward me and told me to watch myself, human, but no. She wasn’t violent or even threatening.”

“So, someone perhaps knew how she felt about humans and gave her $50,000 to step up her game,” Wetmore suggested.

“Why would someone want to pay that much to get rid of me?” I asked.

“Why did someone kidnap Chloe and put her on your doorstep?” she asked back.

I shook my head. “I have no idea. I never have.”

We all thought it over for a moment while Wetmore wrote something down.

“You said on the phone there have been no new ads on Cavendish.com,” Zane said to Travis.

“Yes, perhaps whoever was doing it found out we know about it, or perhaps they just haven’t had the need to alert their ‘gentlewolves.’ We’ll keep watching the site.

Perhaps Scott was behind it after all, I couldn’t help thinking.

“OK, so, your housekeeper gets paid to try to scare off Sarah,” Travis said. “But it doesn’t work, and she’s demoted, and that means she’s no longer of use. She gets paid, and maybe she gets more money reporting on your household.

“But then she quits, and she’s completely useless. And then she’s killed in a hit-and-run, which, by the way, has absolutely no new leads.”

“It had no real old leads,” Wetmore said. “It happened at night on a residential road with no security or doorbell cameras. She was hit by a large vehicle, but there was no damage to the truck or whatever it was, not even a paint scraping.

“There were no witnesses, and she hadn’t reported anything out of the ordinary to a friend or family member.”

“You know,” Travis said, “it sounds like whoever this is, they actually knew Ms. Liesel better than they did Alpha Zane or Sarah.”

“How do you mean?” Zane asked even as Wetmore nodded.

“They knew your housekeeper well enough to bribe her to do what they wanted, but they didn’t seem to anticipate you would demote her. And more than that. Sure, she was a loose end, but it was dangerous to go after her if they thought you’d still be paying attention to her.”

“Well, they didn’t know anything about me,” I muttered, “not if they thought I’d walk out of Chloe’s life over some mop.”

Zane sent me an approving look as Travis and Wetmore exchanged an amused look. I wondered if the Pack Alpha had noticed the new alliance in his own study.

“Marshal Kim, Liesel Chartres, the shooter, Rob, the rogue wolf,” Zane said. “I’m getting very tired of dead bodies instead of witnesses.”

“Speaking of the rogue,” Travis said, looking through the files on the desk in front of him and Wetmore. “We’ve finally gotten a DNA match, though we don’t have a profile for the name yet.”

He found the file, opened it, and turned it so Zane and I could see the drivers license photo. “Fernando Martinez. Used to live about ten miles from here, and I’ve got people going through his place.”

“Any $50,000 deposit into his bank account?” I asked without much hope.

“No, but he has a website that’s a rather thinly disguised gambling operation,” Travis said as Wetmore turned her open laptop around to show the site. It looked very boilerplate, but then, I didn’t know much about online gambling.

“Gambling often means financial problems, even when you’re the house,” Zane said.

Travis nodded. “We’re looking into it.”

A notice popped up on Wetmore’s laptop screen as I was looking at it. My name was in the text bubble. I looked at her, she looked at the notification and then turned the computer back around to type.

“Ah, Ms. Wilson has sent me a message,” Wetmore said. “Seems there’s a theory growing online that you and Scott Cavendish are continuing to meet in secret.”

She looked up at me. “Significant, in your opinion, or not?”

“Not,” I said wearily. “People just make things up when there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Sensibly said,” Wetmore told me with a nod.