Sleeping with the Fishes (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 6)

by Samantha Silver

  Not wanting to intrude any more–and not really wanting to know exactly who Bee was going to war against, since it was probably me–I slipped past the laundry room and grabbed my purse before heading out to meet Jason downtown.

  Jason was waiting for me outside the restaurant. It was a cute little place, with exposed brick, posters from Italy on the walls and quiet classic Italian music playing through the speakers. I’d known the family that ran this place my whole life, and as soon as we sat down we were greeted by a server who handed us our menus with a smile.

  “Hi, I’m Jessie, I’ll be your waitress tonight. Can I get you anything to drink to start with?” she asked.

  “We’ll have a bottle of red wine, whatever you recommend,” Jason said, flashing her a smile. I couldn’t help but notice the blush creeping up her neck as he did so; Jason tended to have that effect on women. But, to her credit, unlike others who were straight up hostile toward me, Jessie simply smiled at both of us and said she’d be back in a moment with the wine and to take our orders.

  “So, let’s get straight to it,” I told Jason as I opened my menu. “Did you get the address from Chief Gary’s computer?”

  Jason grinned as he leaned back in his chair. “Of course I did! After all, I had no real choice after you failed miserably, didn’t I?”

  I stuck my tongue out at him for his gentle teasing. “I found out information about Matt Smith’s murder, though! So I wasn’t totally useless.”

  “That’s very true,” Jason conceded. “You’re never totally useless anyway. You’re actually surprisingly good at investigation and intrigue, for a vet.”

  I laughed. “How did you manage it?” After all, Jason didn’t have magic at his disposal to cause diversions the way I did.

  Before Jason had a chance to reply, however, Jessie came back with a bottle of red wine from Tuscany, which she poured out for each of us before taking our orders. Jason ordered the house-made lasagne, while I went for the tagliatelle puttanesca.

  “Ok, I need to know,” I said when Jessie finally left. “How did you do it?”

  Jason grinned the widest smile I’d ever seen. “You’re never going to believe this. I asked him!”

  “What?” I replied, my mouth dropping open. “You… asked?”

  “Yeah. He mentioned the giraffe, I told him that you were trying to find out where it came from, he said if there was anything he could do to help to let him know. So I gave him the license plate number, he ran it through his system, and now we have a name. The truck belongs to a guy named Richard Steele, who lives at a property out in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of some place called Sister.

  “Sisters,” I corrected automatically. “Wow. That really is the middle of nowhere. Sisters was a tiny community about three hours inland from Willow Bay. To be totally honest I had no idea what was there; I just knew it from having seen it on so many maps as a kid. I’d possibly driven through it once or twice before, but had no memory of the place.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I looked it up. It has a population of two thousand people, and when I typed in the address Chief Gary gave me the farm looked to be about a ten, maybe fifteen minutes’ drive out of town. Google street view doesn’t even exist out there, that’s how isolated it is.”

  I laughed. “I like how that’s now the benchmark of whether or not something is in the middle of nowhere: whether there’s a street view of it.”

  “Pretty much,” Jason conceded. “I could literally do virtual tours inside of stores in New York using Google street view, and yet here there are areas whose streets aren’t even on there. If that’s not the middle of nowhere, I don’t know what is.”

  “You’re such a city boy,” I teased as the waitress came by with our food. “I’m glad you got the info from Chief Gary, too. Thanks for that. Hopefully this way we can track down Lucy’s smugglers.”

  Jason’s face turned serious. “I know, but please Angela, be careful. These people are smugglers. They’re not going to want you looking into their business. They’re dangerous.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I promise, I’ll be careful.”

  “If you decide to go over there, please make sure not to go alone. And if I can’t come with you, please at least text me and let me know where you are.”

  “I will,” I said, digging into my pasta. “Don’t worry.”

  “I always worry,” Jason said with a small smile as he took a bite of garlic bread. “I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt, but I also know that saving that giraffe is important to you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied with a smile. “Listen, after this is all over I think you should run an exposé on animal smuggling in the paper.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Definitely. I was reading up on it last night, and did you know that the black market for animal smuggling is worth over twenty billion dollars? It’s the second biggest illegal market after drugs. A baby chimpanzee on the black market can cost $50,000. I’d be willing to bet Lucy cost her previous owner nearly one hundred grand.”

  Jason let out a low whistle. “Wow. I had no idea the market was that big.”

  I nodded. “It is. A lot of former drug runners have gotten into the exotic animal trade since it’s also very profitable, but it’s a lot harder to get caught. For example, here in the states, while the DEA has 11,000 employees, the Fish and Wildlife Service only has under 400. And even the people who do get caught face penalties which are far less strict than those for people caught with drugs. If it’s your first offence, you probably won’t even get jail time.”

  Jason shook his head. “Ok, you’ve convinced me. Although, I will add in the caveat that I write for the Willow Bay Whistler. Anything I write isn’t going to get the same kind of eyeballs on it that it would if I wrote it for the Times.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But you’re the best reporter I know. If anyone can write something about the animal trade that will be amazing, it’s you. And even if only a few people get to read it, that’s still a few more people that will know about it than did before.”

  “You got it,” Jason said. “But it will have to wait a few weeks, at least if you want prime positioning in the paper. No matter how amazing animals are, a dead body washing up on the shores of the bay is going to get the front page any week of the year.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else,” I replied. We ate in silence for a few minutes, enjoying our food, then Jason spoke again.

  “Listen, I was thinking about something the other day.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I was wondering the other day what your thoughts might be about eventually moving in together?” My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. “No pressure, obviously. I wasn’t thinking straight away, either. But I wanted to plant the seeds of thinking about it for the future, maybe.”

  “Yes,” I spat out almost immediately. “I think… I think we should definitely think about it.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d replied so quickly, and without thinking. Because the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Jason. No, it definitely wasn’t that. It was just that I wasn’t sure what living with someone would be like, when I’d have to hide such an essential part of myself almost all the time. After all, living with someone wasn’t good enough to be able to tell them about your magical powers; you had to be married.

  The Witches’ Council evidently wasn’t run by people who were knowledgeable about 21st century customs.

  And at the same time, I didn’t want to marry Jason without having lived with him first. Heck, marriage definitely wasn’t even on the table yet. Would I be able to hide my magic from him all the time? I had a tendency to use it to clean my clothes when I’d forgotten to do a load of laundry, or if I just wanted to save the environment a little bit. I had a tendency to use it to save my cooking when I’d forgotten about something that I left in the oven for too long. Would I
be able to hide all of that from him for potentially years if we lived together? I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to. And I knew I didn’t want to.

  Besides, what about Bee? I had conversations with her all the time. I’d have to be a lot more subtle about it, and I wouldn’t like that. I knew Bee wouldn’t, either.

  “I’m glad you’re up for it,” Jason smiled at me. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. After all, my dad’s house is a pretty decent size for just one person, but I also understand how you might not want to leave the rancher.”

  The house Charlotte, Sophie and I lived in had belonged to Charlotte and my parents; after their deaths Sophie’s mom had kept it rather than sold it so we could live in it as adults.

  “Thanks,” I told him. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lived away from the rancher though. I spent years living away when I went to vet school, and I think the three of us always knew that it wouldn’t be a permanent thing. And of course, you never know, Charlotte might decide to move to Portland, and Sophie might decide to move out to live with Taylor.”

  “That’s true, in which case I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to moving into your place, if that’s what you prefer. I just figured the girls probably don’t want me around as a permanent addition.”

  I laughed. “It probably is a little bit too small for four people,” I conceded.

  “There’s no rush though. Just felt like planting the first seeds. After all, in case you hadn’t noticed, I kinda like you,” Jason said with a grin as he reached across the table and put his hand over mine.

  “I kinda like you too,” I replied as a blush crept up my face. And I knew I was absolutely, one hundred percent in love with Jason. I just wished I could tell him everything about me.

  Chapter 10

  I spent the night at Jason’s apartment–practicing for the future, maybe?–and in the morning made my way back to the house I shared with Charlotte and Sophie, since Jason had to do a bunch of follow-up work on his stories about Matt’s death. Being the only reporter in town didn’t usually take up a lot of his time, but whenever there was a big news story, he did have to work a decent amount.

  Sophie had made pancakes, and as soon as I walked back into the house I grabbed a couple of them off the stack and popped them onto a plate, covering them in maple syrup before sitting down across from her at the dining table.

  “So Jason found out who the owner of the truck was,” I told her, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “He’s better at this stuff than you are,” she replied.

  “No, he just asked Chief Gary for the info, and he gave it to him.”

  Sophie barked out a laugh. “If only you’d thought of the simplest idea ever, instead of using your magic to cause property damage.”

  “Speaking of property damage, watch out for Bee. I heard her yesterday herding her kittens to battle. I’m not sure who the battle is against, though.”

  “Noted,” Sophie said. “So, where does the receiver of smuggled animals live?”

  “Outside of Sisters,” I replied, and Sophie groaned.

  “Great, I was hoping I’d be able to go the rest of my life without going back out there. I had an ex from Sisters.”

  “Really? When?”

  “When you were in vet school and weren’t paying any attention to your best friend’s life. It wasn’t one of my finest moments in life, he turned out to be less than ideal.”

  “Ohhhh,” I grinned. “He’s the guy who ended up being arrested for running a meth lab in a shed behind his mom’s house, right?”

  “Yes,” Sophie admitted. “As I said, not my finest hour.”

  I laughed. “Well, unless his name is Richard Steele, you probably won’t run into him today. I vote we get going though, Sisters is like a three hour drive from here.”

  “It’s a two hour drive if you give me the keys,” Sophie said. Despite the fact that my parents had died in a car accident, Sophie had always been an adventurous driver. I did have to admit, she was really good at it, though.

  “Sure,” I said. “Give me ten minutes to finish eating, and we can head off. But first I want to go up to Portland and see the guy that was suing Matt Smith.”

  “Tony… what was it, Fanchini?”

  “Yeah, that’s him,” I nodded. “I looked him up the other day, he runs a bunch of different companies, and has an office on the south side of town. One of his companies is suing Matt. Or Matt’s company. Something like that.”

  “Cool, let’s go.”

  “Wait, aren’t you going to ask me if I even have a plan?” I asked.

  Sophie grinned. “You never have a plan. Besides, winging it is much more fun. First Portland, then we visit Sisters. That’s as much of a plan as we need. We’re going to interview a murderer, then see if there are a whole bunch of smuggled animals being kept as pets in the middle of nowhere. This is my kind of Sunday!”

  I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm as I finished off my pancakes and got ready to go. Charlotte had already gone into Portland, I assumed, since she was always up earlier than the rest of us and I hadn’t seen any sign of her yet.

  Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any sign of Bee this morning, either. Whenever my cat didn’t immediately make her presence known, that was usually a good sign to worry. And after the battle cry that I’d overheard her saying to her kittens the other day, my eyes narrowed. What fresh plot had Bee come up with to do… whatever it was she was trying to do?

  I got the answer–or at least part of it–when I got up and went to the bathroom before leaving.

  “Bee,” I said in my warning voice when I saw the entire roll of toilet paper had been taken off the holder, spread out across the whole bathroom–and some of the hallway–and then shredded.

  “Ah, have my little rascals been up to something naughty again?” I heard my cat say from inside the shower. I pulled the curtain open to find Bee sitting on the middle shelf of the rack I used to keep soap and shampoo. Her tail was flicking slowly from side to side, and I knew she was trying to put on an air of nonchalance.

  “Yes, Bee, they have. And you obviously know about it, since you were sitting here waiting for me to find it.”

  “Ah, well, I suppose when they’re so badly behaved like that, it will be difficult to find them a new home.”

  So this was the plan. Bee was going to get the kittens to terrorize me into keeping all of them. I crossed my arms in front of me.

  “This isn’t going to work, Bee. Everyone knows kittens are mischievous. I’ll be sending them all to homes that have experience with cats. And I’m doing it soon. You have a few more weeks with your kittens, I recommend you spend time bonding with them, rather than attempting to wage war with me.”

  “Who’s to say those aren’t mutually exclusive?” Bee asked, and I replied by turning on the water in the shower. Of course, Bee managed to easily jump out of the way before even a drop of water hit her, but she still let out a squeal of annoyance. Even the threat of water was an unimaginable horror to Bee.

  “This isn’t war, Bee,” I shouted after her. “Tell your kittens to stop tormenting me.”

  “Too laaaaaaate,” Bee called out in a sing-song voice, and despite the fact that I rolled my eyes at how ridiculous my cat was being, I had to admit, I was a little bit apprehensive. Toilet paper all over the floor wasn’t too bad, but I had a feeling Bee had other tricks up her sleeve.

  I found the next “trick” five minutes later when I went to put one of my shoes on and found that one of the kittens had left me a lovely gift inside of it. “Ugh, gross,” I said, pulling my sock back, which was now lightly covered in cat vomit. One of the kittens–I was pretty sure it was Bilbo–was hiding behind a shoebox on top of the closet, his little ears and eyes poking out over the top of the box. I glared at him and he let out a small meow before scampering off as fast as possible. I supposed he must have thought he was better hidden than that.

  Of course, being a vet, while I was sure the
kittens had the worst intentions at heart, this was very, very far from the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even rank in the top 5 for the past week. I simply took off the sock, threw it (and the shoe) in the washing machine and went to get a new sock from the bedroom.

  “You’re not going to win this fight, Bee,” I called throughout the house, not knowing exactly where my crazy cat was right now. She didn’t reply until I had opened the front door.

  “Yes, I will!” came the cry, and I sighed as I closed the door behind me. Sophie was already in my car, the engine started, waiting for me. We were going to do some investigating!

  Tony Fanchini’s office was a lot more impressive than I’d been expecting. To be honest, I had kind of expected him to be running a hundred businesses out of some cramped little office with unfiled stacks of paper everywhere. But no, Fanchini Enterprises Inc., which was the parent company of Peacock Hills Investments, the company suing Matt Smith, was actually run out of the 7th floor of a building with a great view over the Portland skyline.

  To be totally honest, I was a little bit intimidated as Sophie and I made our way up to the smart looking receptionist, with straight black hair and perfect make-up, her manicured nails clacking across the keyboard at a speed that made my eyes water. She looked up at us with that professional expression that screamed ‘I’m only looking at you because I’m being paid to, you’re far less important than anything that happens here.’

  “Yes?” she asked in an even tone.

  “Hi, we’d like to speak with Tony Fanchini,” I told her, trying to sound equally professional myself.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Don’t tell me we were going to have driven all this way just to be held off by a gatekeeper.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you then.”