Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency Year Five:
Case File No. 27-235
AMBER LOVE 15-NOV-2021 Find out how all this began. Catch up on Year One, Year Two, Year Three, and Year Four cases at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency.
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Where We Left Off:
The Winchester-Nabu detectives opened a homicide investigation of one of our local Jersey devil-deer does. The culprit is still at large.
The Three Card Monty Job:
A couple of months ago in Case File No. 18-226, we were able to get some excellent observations of male volkolaks in bear form as they walked through the property. In mid-October, another one came through by itself. Based solely on our eyewitness accounts, this October beast seemed slightly smaller than Silly to the naked eye which has us believing it was Val, his sister. This brings up a couple questions: What was she doing here by herself? Does a closer inspection of the bears in comparison photos mean it’s one volkolak perp and not two?
The bear could be approximately 160-175 pounds by now. They get to be 80 pounds by the time they’re one. This subject looks quite a bit more substantial in size. If I imagine the size of our freelancer, the Weimaraner hound Rocco from South Jersey, he’s 80 pounds with a lean, muscular physique. I don’t have the necessary mathematical data to determine the parallax (and I honestly never thought I would use that knowledge when learning it in high school).
I can picture two Roccos filling up the space of this one bear. Taking that into consideration, Val is capable of being on her own. That doesn’t mean we won’t worry about her.
Gus, Oliver, and I witnessed Val walk calmly through the yard. She even looked over at us to make sure we were not going to interfere with her plan. We were up on the observation platform and no intention of getting in her way. It’s probably a bad idea to interrupt a bear anyway. As for a bear-human shapeshifter? Humans are meaner than animals so if her human side has the personality of an angry woman, we definitely don’t want to get in her way.
Val sniffed along the grass on the trail of something invisible to my human-only vision. The scent led her to the smaller maple tree in the back of the yard – the tree where Oliver and his Butler maintain a bird feeder. It’s near the on ramp for the Bunny Hollow trail and the big rock where Gus and I feed some of the chipmunks. The timing was significant because all of us knew the bird feeder was empty that day. We know because a week prior, Silly came over and stole the brick of bird seed and ran off with it!
They clearly had the same idea. How long had been both of them planning the heist? Why didn’t they work together and split the meal? When they were still with their mother, Ainsley, she had two of her cubs working with her to learn the ropes, but Silly was already testing his independence by then.
Case Findings:
Val the Volkolak quietly yet openly walked through the middle of the estate grounds prepared to steal the bounty of bird seed at the smaller maple tree. Val was out of luck and her heist was foiled because a week earlier, her brother Silly had already stolen it.
Case Status: Closed
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