Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Twenty minutes later, he turned off the TV.
Dante tossed down the remote. “We were going to contact Jet,” he said, after a moment.
“That’s right. With what happened to Terri this morning, and the explosion, I totally spaced it out. Okay, let me open the app.”
I opened my phone and looked at my messages. Jet had written back to me, after I sent him my What-The-App name, and said he’d talk to me over there. I noticed another man had swiped on my profile, but when I checked his profile, the leer on his face made me cringe. I read his introduction and decided that he was looking for a maid. I swiped left on him, blocking him from contacting me.
At that moment, my WTA notified me that I had a message. I opened it to find not one, but three messages, all from Jet.
i wanted you to wake up to a message this morning that will make you smile. you’re so beautiful, estelle, and i can’t wait till we get to meet.
i haven’t heard from you yet. are you all right, my queen? did you eat a good breakfast? i’m counting the minutes till you answer.
my queen, i hope you’re well. please, message me as soon as you see this. i’m all aflutter waiting to hear from you.
“Wow, he’s really love-bombing you,” Dante said. “What are you going to do if he wants to video-chat with you?”
I couldn’t let Jet see me, but then it occurred to me that Carson might be able to help. “Carson knows how to use AI. I would never do this unless it was to catch a criminal, and scammers are criminals. I’ll ask Carson if he can use the stock photo I bought and make some sort of video out of it. If we make it a few seconds long, I can say my video cut out after just a couple minutes.”
“That’s a good idea. But you’d better answer him back right now,” Dante said.
I tried to decide how to answer.
you make me blush with your compliments, but i appreciate it. sometimes i get so lonely. i can hardly wait until we meet. i’m off to yoga class—it helps keep me young. then i’ll go shopping. retail therapy always helps. i’m waiting to hear from you.
“How does that sound?”
Dante stared at it. “Awkward…at least to me. But I doubt if he’ll notice. He’s focused on reeling you in.” He paused as his phone rang. He glanced at Caller ID. “It’s Tilly. I’ll put her on speaker, but keep quiet, okay?”
“You’ve got it.”
He answered, the put her on speaker-phone. “Hey, Auntie. How are you?”
“Not entirely happy with the weather, but we’ve survived far worse. I wanted to check on you. I have the feeling you were upset the other night with me. And I want to apologize to your friend Kyann for being so short.” She sounded a little shaky.
I grabbed my phone and brought up a fresh note, quickly texting: ask her if she’s okay, she sounds a little winded. After finding Terri flat on her back, I was determined to pay more attention to the people in my life.
“I’m not upset, Auntie. Kyann enjoyed dinner. Are you all right? You sound a little out of breath.” Dante kept his voice light.
“I’m all right, I think,” Tilly said, though she still sounded out of breath. “I had a late night and didn’t sleep well.”
“What did you do last night?” Dante asked.
“I met Jet for dinner.”
I jerked my head up, staring at the phone. Dante paled, his skin as pale as his hair.
“Where did you go?” Dante scrambled for something to say.
“We ate at the Gold Mirror. It’s a new restaurant—fusion cuisine. It blends Scandinavian cuisine with Caribbean. The blend sounds odd, but it’s delicious. Then we went back to my place and talked. I was so tired, though, that I cut the night short. I might be coming down with something.” The more she spoke, the shakier she sounded.
“Maybe you should call the doctor?” Dante asked. “You might be getting a little anemic.”
That was a reach, I thought. Shifters—especially carnivores—seldom got anemia unless they weren’t eating enough meat. But it might spur her to get checked out.
“I’ll take a nap, and if I still feel this way later, I’ll call my doctor.”
Dante hesitated, then said, “Auntie, this morning we found Kyann’s neighbor on her back porch. She slipped, hit her head, and was hypothermic when we found her. I don’t want to have to come over and find you so sick that we might lose you. You know I love you.”
She paused, then said, “Yes, my dear, I do. You’re my boy. You might be my great-nephew, but I love you like a son. I promise, if I don’t feel better by tomorrow, I’ll call the doctor.”
“So, what did you and Jet do after dinner?” Dante asked.
“You know,” Tilly said, sounding confused, “I don’t remember. He left early because I wasn’t feeling well but…for the life of me, I don’t remember what we even talked about. I must have caught a bug. I’m going to take a nap. I’ll call you tomorrow, regardless of how I feel.”
Dante hung up, then glanced at me. “Jet knows where she lives, and I’m not happy about that.”
“Are you sure you can’t talk to the Pack master? This concerns one of their elders. Surely, given her status, the Council of Elders would want to know?”
He worried his lip. “No, they wouldn’t see me. Once you’re exiled from the Pack, you can’t waltz in and ask for an audience.”
I thought for a moment. “What about an anonymous tip? I could call your Pack’s Elda-Care that your aunt volunteers for.”
He thought for a moment. “I’d say the best way to do that is to send a tip that we’re worried about Tilly Franco, and that we think a wellness check might be in order. We could say we’re worried that she might need some help and oversight with her finances.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“We make a throw-away email and email the Elda-Care Coordinator. I can’t remember who it is, but they oversee the Pack’s elders. They monitor their general health and they help find insurance and doctors for elderly members who need the help.”
I set my laptop up and went to Send-A-Mail, a free email service. I brought it up on a proxy server, so that nobody could trace the IP address back to me, and then created a new email—[email protected]. With Dante’s help, I typed out an email asking for Elda-Care to perform a welfare check on Tilly Franco. I added that we were worried she might be mismanaging her funds and that she was vulnerable.
“She’ll be so pissed if she finds out we did this,” Dante said, hitting send. “But it’s worth her being mad at me, if they do check on her. Meanwhile, I can’t shake how worried I am that Jet knows her address.”
“What I find disturbing is that she doesn’t remember what happened when he came over. I wonder if he spiked her drink.”
Dante paled even further. “Do you think he?—”
“Oh!” I said, realizing what I’d implied. “I wasn’t even thinking in that direction. I suppose that is a worry, but he seems after money. And I doubt if he’d risk his set-up for a little nookie. The guy’s handsome. He can probably have about any woman he set his eyes on. Especially if he keeps his mouth shut.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Dante said.
“My thought is that, if he spiked her drink, he had the opportunity to case her house. You know, to find out where she keeps her jewelry, maybe look for a safe. If I were him, I’d also search for any hidden entrances. Security cams—too…he could learn how her security system is set up and maybe change the code to one he can use.”
“That’s bad,” Dante said. “I don’t know what my aunt was thinking.”
I had been thinking about that as well. “I wonder if she didn’t know how to get out of it. She’s been brought up to be polite. To be a good hostess. Matriarch or not, she has spent her life following the rules. She was literally a role model for the perfect political wife. It might be hard to get out of that mode of thinking, even though she could probably do what she wanted and get away with it.”
“You’re right, there. I can’t remember a single time when she was anything but polite. Even when she went after someone, she did it with grace. The woman could rip your throat out and you’d thank her, she’d be so gracious about it.” Dante was about to say something else when I received another notification from WTA.
“Damn, it’s Jet again. I disabled the setting on the app that showed whether I had read a message, then opened the app to check his messages.
how is your yoga class going, my darling? i hope you don’t hurt yourself. you aren’t trying to lose weight, are you? you look lovely the way you are. i can hardly wait to see you in your peignoir and caress your beautiful face. tell me, what are you having for dinner? i count the minutes until you answer me.
“Sheesh, he’s pushing it,” Dante said.
I wanted to gag, the creep made me feel so slimy. “I’m not sure how to respond. My natural inclination is to tell him he’s a perv.”
“Don’t do that,” Dante said. “What about…Tell him he’s sweet to think about you. And ask him if you can chat sometime? We can get a voice changer that makes you sound older.”
“I’m not going to sext with him!” I grimaced. “Not even as Estelle?—”
“You’re not only helping my auntie, you’re helping other women. I’m not saying you get graphic, but if he pours it on thick, simper and bat your eyelashes?” Dante grinned. “Think of it as a writing exercise.”
“Romance writers wouldn’t go for that. You can’t sell schlocky sleaze as a good sex scene. But…if it’s to help save others from him…If necessary— absolutely necessary —I’ll deal with it.” The thought made me cringe. “Unless you want to,” I added.
Dante flashed me a horrified look, then broke out laughing. “I have no idea how to sound like a lonely woman. I’m a guy .”
“And a lot of those romance scammers are guys pretending to be women, and they fool their marks every day,” I countered. “Oh well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But do you think Jet might have bugged Tilly’s house? We should take some equipment over there and do a sweep. See if we can find any magical or practical listening devices or cameras.”
“Oof,” Dante said, the smile vanishing from his face. “I hadn’t thought of that, either.” He thought about it for a moment. “I could invite my aunt out to dinner and you could take Carson and search the house.”
“Nope, she has security cameras and she has servants. We’d be caught in an instant. Dante, we’re going to have to talk to her again. I’m serious. We can’t do this without her knowing—we have to sit her down and make her face facts. The fact that Jet is trying to talk me up means that, if he’s really engaged to her, he’s cheating. This is the proof we needed. Call her in an hour and set something up.”
“I will,” Dante said after a while. “I suppose we have no choice, right?”
“I know you’re afraid she’ll be angry at you, but we’re already in for a pound.”
Dante finally agreed and we settled in to watch a movie, while occasionally checking on the reports from the explosion.
Two hours later, things took yet another turn. Dante called Tilly, but there was no answer.
“I wonder if she’s gone out,” he said. “I’ll call her house phone—the maids answer that. She always uses her cell phone.” He punched another number that he had on speed dial and put it on speaker phone. Sure enough, one of Tilly’s housekeepers picked up after two rings.
“The Franco residence. How may I help you?” The woman’s voice was chilly, but beneath it, I sensed a resilience, as though the woman had seen one too many fights.
“Is this Diana?” Dante asked.
“No, this is Helen. I can get her, if you need to talk to her.”
“No, don’t do that, not yet. I’m Dante, Tilly’s great-nephew. Is she available?”
After a brief pause, the maid said, “Mr. Franco, I’m sorry, but Ms. Franco is taking an extended nap.” There was something odd with her voice, that unsettled me.
“We have to go up there,” I said.
Dante nodded. “I’m coming over. I’m begging you, Helen, check on her and make certain she’s breathing. If she’s fine, I’ll be on my way. If she’s hurt, contact me and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll ask Diana to check on your aunt. Do you wish to wait or should I have Diana call you back?” Helen sounded uncertain, but Dante tried to put her at ease.
“Call me back—or have Aunt Tilly call me if she wakes up.”
“Very good, sir. Right away.” Helen hung up.
Dante turned to me. “Something’s off. She never sounds exhausted like she did.”
“Well, grab your things and let’s be ready to go.” I slid my boots back on and shoved my arms into my jacket.
The phone rang. It was Diana. Dante paused in the middle of putting on his jacket to answer.
“Is she okay?” he asked, struggling to answer the phone.
Diana was loud enough for me to hear. “Ms. Franco’s sick and I can’t seem to wake her up. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but she’s out cold.”
“Come on,” Dante said, racing me for the door.
I followed. As we headed toward his aunt’s, Dante called Tilly’s doctor, and I prayed that she would be all right.