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

by Samantha Silver

  As soon as Carson saw the letter, his face went white. I honestly thought he might pass out. To his credit, he didn’t deny anything. “You wrote this,” I said matter-of-factly, and he nodded.

  “Please don’t tell my parents,” he begged, his eyes pleading, and I realized in that moment that Betty had been right to tell me to go easy on him. There was no way this boy had actually killed someone.

  “Why don’t we sit down over here and talk about this?” Betty asked, motioning to an empty space toward the far end of the room. She grabbed some empty milk crates from under a table and we sat down on them, Betty and I both facing Carson, who looked like he was going to cry.

  “Do you want to tell us what happened?” Betty asked him softly, and he nodded.

  “My parents got divorced five years ago,” he said. “My dad had been cheating on my mom with a lady from his work in Portland, and then one day he just left. Never came back. My mom worked really hard to keep everything the same for my sister and me, but last year she said that she couldn’t keep up with the payments on our house by herself and that we had to move.”

  Carson bit his lip and stopped for a moment before continuing.

  “So my mom sold the house that I’d grown up in. It was ok. I knew that we couldn’t stay there, and we moved to one of the small duplexes on Fir Street. But then a few months after my mom sold the place, to this Matt Smith guy, a big sign showed up in the middle of it, with some kind of development application.”

  “Matt Smith wanted to change the house?” Betty asked, and Carson shook his head.

  “No. I asked around to find out what it meant. He wanted to demolish the house completely and put some apartments on the land. I was so mad. I grew up in that house! He couldn’t just destroy it completely. I went and found him one day, when he was in Willow Bay. I asked him to keep the house, to rent it out to someone, or to flip it like they show on all those shows on HGTV. Those make money, right? Anyway, he laughed at me. He told me I was just a little boy who didn’t understand business, and what did I care what happened to a place I didn’t live in anymore anyway? He told me the apartments would be a lot nicer than the ugly house that was there now anyway.”

  Carson stopped to wipe a tear from his eye. Matt Smith had obviously completely humiliated him. I found myself feeling really badly for the poor kid.

  “So I found out where he lived and I wrote him the letters. I was never going to do anything about it, but I wanted him to feel as bad as I did about what he was doing. Plus, a little part of me thought that maybe if he got scared by my letters, he might change his mind about tearing down my old home.”

  Carson looked up at us for the first time during this monologue. “But I swear, I had nothing to do with him dying! Ever since it turned out someone killed him I’ve been scared that someone would find the letter and figure out I sent it and think I did it!”

  “Ok, thanks Carson,” Betty told him. “You can go back to work now. I don’t think either one of us believe you killed Matt Smith,” she said, looking at me and I shook my head to agree.

  “I think you should bring the sign in, and maybe write the daily specials on it yourself, though,” I suggested. “That way Chief Gary or anyone else from around here who might have seen that letter as they investigated the death won’t recognize the writing.”

  Betty nodded. “Good idea.”

  Carson’s eyes widened. “You mean, you’re not going to turn me in to the police?”

  Betty looked at him with the look she would have given her students during the forty or so years that she was a schoolteacher. “No, I’m not going to turn you in. However, I need you to understand that what you did was wrong, and that you cannot simply send people threats when they do something you disagree with.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Carson replied, hanging his head. “Believe me, I’ve realized it. As soon as I found out about his death, I’ve been worried sick that people will think I did it. I understand, I won’t do it again.”

  “Because I believe you, I won’t turn you in. Keep working, you’re not in trouble. But if I do catch you doing that sort of thing again, I will report you to Chief Gary.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. MacMahon,” Carson replied, before scurrying back off to the bowl where he’d been making cream cheese icing. Betty and I looked at each other after he left.

  “I really don’t think he would have hurt anyone,” Betty told me.

  “Me neither. I don’t get that vibe from him at all. He seems like a good kid who made a bad decision. I think the call to change the sign is a good one, and we can simply hope that the threatening letter leads to a dead end.”

  Unfortunately for me, the dead end meant that I was quickly running out of suspects in Matt Smith’s murder. After all, if Tony Fanchini hadn’t done it, and the letter writer hadn’t done it, that really only left someone linked to Matt Smith’s arrest in Washington.

  I sighed. My plan had been to figure out who the murderer was so it could eliminate Jason and I as suspects. Instead, I was eliminating everyone else who could have done it.

  I hoped that Jason was about to find out that the person Matt Smith was arrested for assaulting in Washington had a record that involved a penchant for shooting people and then dumping their bodies in the ocean, but I didn’t have high hopes.

  Making my way back out to the main eating area, I drank my coffee and ate my BLT completely lost in thought, trying to figure out the case, before I grabbed a slice of chocolate pecan cheesecake to go. After all, it was a pretty good price.

  As I got back to the vet clinic and settled in for an afternoon of chaos with the animals I cared for, I wondered if I was ever going to figure out who killed Matt Smith.

  Chapter 16

  As soon as I had a minute, I took care of Hehu, who I had left inside one of the kennels during the day. The painkillers I’d given him were making him sleepy, and he snoozed away through most of the day, until I finally managed to put his wing in a bit of a sling, and bandaged up the wound along with giving him antibiotics to prevent infection.

  “I feel so castrated,” he complained as he tried–and failed–to flap his injured wing.

  “Well, at least it’s not permanent, so long as you don’t keep trying to do that,” I replied. “It will heal, it’s just going to take some time.”

  “I know, but complaining makes me feel slightly better,” Hehu said sadly.

  “Well in that case, complain away,” I told him. I knew what he meant, I wanted to complain about my wrist hurting constantly. Although, I had to admit, my wrist was definitely healing faster than I’d expected it to. If this kept up, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I could start using magic again in just a couple of days.

  A few hours later it was time to go home; I gave Hehu some more food and decided to let him sleep in the vet clinic overnight; it would be safer for him than even inside the stables at the property.

  Before heading home, however, I stopped by the police station to see if Chief Gary was in. I was in luck; the receptionist had gone home but he was in his office, and as soon as he saw me in the reception area he waved me over.

  “Angela, come on in,” he told me. “I’ve been meaning to come and see you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, trying to act casually. After all, I was well aware that I still had to be a suspect in a murder investigation he was conducting.

  “Yes. See, this morning I was going through the daily bulletins that we get from other police stations across the state. It appears that yesterday in Sisters there was a car chase between a local resident named Richard Steele and a blue Mazda 3.”

  He peered at me above his reading glasses. “I think it would be quite a coincidence for Richard Steele to be involved in an incident involving a car similar to yours, less than twenty-four hours after I gave your boyfriend the man’s information.”

  I fidgeted in the chair. I hated lying to Chief Gary, so I opted for something different. “How about, um, you give me a few days and th
en ask me again,” I answered. “I’m really close to getting all of the answers I need.”

  “You’re not going to get the answers you need if you’re maimed–or worse–in a car crash,” Chief Gary replied.

  “I know. Things, uh, didn’t go exactly according to plan in Sisters,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to see Richard Steele at all; we were just supposed to see if he had any other exotic animals on the property, and then we were going to leave and figure out what to do from there.”

  “And I assume that’s not exactly what happened.”

  “Not exactly. But I got more information than I could have possibly hoped for. In fact, that was the reason I came to see you, I was wondering if you could help me with it.”

  Chief Gary sighed. “I feel like you’re getting in too deep here. You could always call the right department and have them raid Steele’s home. They’d take any animals that are there and ship them back off to wherever they belong.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said hurriedly. “But please, not yet. The amphibians will be fine, the cockatoos and the kea will be fine–although the latter is injured and currently in the vet clinic–but the giraffe is too young. I need to find out exactly where she was taken from to find her mother.”

  “Wait, what’s a kea?” Chief Gary asked.

  “An alpine parrot from New Zealand.”

  “Wow, ok. Look, I’ll help you, but you have to promise you’re not going to go out to Sisters again.”

  “I promise,” I said. “I’m finished there. If this new information I have pans out, the next time I see Richard Steele he’ll hopefully be in a jail cell.”

  Chief Gary leaned back in his chair and nodded. “All right, what do you need to know?”

  “I need to look up some people, but I’m not sure if you can do it. I only have first names, a vague description and a home state.”

  “Well, I can access the national crime database,” Chief Gary said. “If there’s an active warrant out for them, or if they’ve been arrested for a crime in the past they’ll be on it. What do you know?”

  “There are three of them, but I only have two first names. They all live in Nevada. The woman is between thirty and forty years old probably, and the first name I have is Kelsey. The man is likely fifty to sixty and named Tim. The third man, well, I only have an age and description for him.”

  “Anything else? Identifying marks?”

  “Oh, yeah, the woman has a tramp stamp of a heart with an arrow through it.”

  Chief Gary typed away at his computer for a few minutes and I did my best not to fidget. After all, I really needed this information. Finally, he looked at me and shook his head. “Sorry, nothing. Let me try again, though.”

  “Ok,” I replied, my heart racing in my chest. A minute later, a small smile crept up on his face. “Do you have a physical description of the woman?” he asked, and I thought back to what the cockatoos had told me.

  “Um, yeah. Brunette, wavy hair, bored-looking eyes.”

  Chief Gary’s smile grew as he turned the screen toward me. I was looking into the face of a woman who looked, well, surprisingly normal. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected an animal smuggler to look like, but her mug shot looked like any old passport photo. Hell, her haircut looked like it cost more than mine did.

  “This is Kerry Palmer,” Chief Gary told me. “Luckily the national database allows us to search wildcards and identifying marks, so by searching for anyone with brown hair and a heart tattoo who lives in Nevada and has a first name starting with the letters ‘Ke’, I was able to find this one. Now, let me look at any known associates.”

  Clacking away at the keyboard for a few more minutes, and with me giving him the physical description of the other two men, I was eventually able to put a face and an identity to the three people involved in the smuggling ring. Kerry Palmer was a thirty-four year old woman who had previously been convicted of check fraud and fraud over five thousand dollars. The older man, Thomas Schiff, had so many little misdemeanour charges against him that it would have taken at least two pages to print them all out. The younger man was Trevor Palmer, Kerry’s brother. He had a similar conviction record to her, and I nodded when I saw the photo and it matched the birds’ descriptions.

  “Could you print out a picture of their faces for me please?” I asked Chief Gary. “I just want to be able to confirm that it’s them.”

  “Sure,” Chief Gary nodded, tapping a button on his computer, and the printer behind his desk whirred to life. “However, I know they live in Nevada, but I do have to ask you not to leave the state, ok?” he told me. “After all, as much as I hate to admit it, you still are a suspect in Matt Smith’s murder since you have no alibi.”

  “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it,” I told him, and my heart sank at the realization that I couldn’t go and speak to the three smugglers myself, and also with the confirmation that I was definitely still a suspect. I mean, I knew that I was, but it was different to have Chief Gary actually tell me that I was a suspect.

  Still, I had the names of the people who had smuggled Lucy and the other animals into the country. I was definitely getting somewhere!

  Chapter 17

  As soon as I got home I went out into the stable to check on the birds and to show them the photo. They were doing well; Charlotte had come by earlier that afternoon and let them out for a few hours. They’d flown around the area and marvelled at its beauty, and expressed surprise when I told them that their homeland was at the other end of the ocean which they’d flown over.

  “My word, the climate here is so different!” Coolidge said.

  “Yes, it’s the same ocean, but it’s the largest ocean in the world. It would take you weeks to fly back home from here; it’s thousands of miles away.”

  “What is this ‘mile’ you speak of?” Cherie asked, tilting her head.

  “Umm, one mile is one and a half kilometers, or so,” I replied, remembering that they use the metric system in Australia.

  “Ah,” Coolidge said, nodding. “That certainly is quite the distance.”

  “I’m glad you got to fly around though,” I told them, pulling the pictures Chief Gary had printed out for me from my pocket.

  “Oh as are we,” Cherie said. “It was so empowering, to get to spread my wings once more.”

  “I’m going to be calling the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife soon, and someone will come to take you back to Australia,” I told them. “You should be home in a few weeks. But first, I’m wondering, if I show you a picture of the smugglers, could you tell me for sure if it’s them?”

  “Of course,” Coolidge replied. “We remember their faces.”

  “It will be nice to get home,” Cherie said wistfully. “I don’t mean to insult your home, dear, but it is rather cold in this part of the world.”

  “No offense taken,” I smiled. Despite Oregon having pretty mild winters compared to large parts of America, I could definitely understand how a bird from Australia would find it practically frigid.

  “Yes, those are your smugglers,” Coolidge told me with confidence.

  “I agree with Coolidge,” Cherie replied. “You must truly be intelligent to have surmised their identities based only on the little bit of information provided to you,” she told me, obviously impressed.

  “Thanks, but with the technology we humans have today it wasn’t that hard,” I replied with a smile. “If it wasn’t for the two of you, I never would have managed to find them.”

  I made my way back into the house, where Sophie was busy putting the toppings on a home-made vegetarian pizza. My mouth watered just looking at it, but I had some information to look up. Grabbing my iPad, I started searching different social media accounts for the three names I had. While Thomas Schiff didn’t seem to be the social media type, both Palmer siblings had accounts, and they used them frequently.

  Scrolling through Kerry Palmer’s feed, I was amazed at how much traveling she did. There were pictures of her in fron
t of the Eiffel Tower, pictures of her standing under cherry blossoms in Japan, pictures of her with African children. It made me sick to realize just how many trips overseas this woman made, and how many animals she must have smuggled back. I looked through her pictures, trying to get any evidence that there were smuggled animals in her pictures, but unfortunately I had no such luck.

  One picture in the feed, however, stood out to me more than the others. It featured Kerry and her brother standing in front of a dark green sign with yellow lettering that read ‘Karibu Tena “Welcome Again”’ and below had the information for contacting the warden of Tarangire National Park. My heart skipped a beat. This had to be it! This had to be the trip where they had taken Lucy! We had the right smugglers!

  I looked through Kerry’s feed for a little while longer, then moved to her brother’s. He used Facebook a lot more than Instagram, and I checked out his most recent posts. His most recent post was two hours earlier. He posted a picture of pure desert behind a sign for US Highway 95, and the caption “Heading North. Canada, here we come!”

  My heart skipped a beat as I opened Google maps. I was pretty sure… yes! I confirmed with Google maps that taking Highway 95 north from Nevada led straight into Oregon. I looked at the map–they were most likely planning on taking Highway 95 into Idaho, where it linked up with I84, then linked up with I5 in Portland.

  I did some quick calculating. They were probably going to drive through the night if they had any smuggled animals with them. After all, it was much too risky to spend the night at a hotel if they had illegally smuggled animals. Animals tended to be unpredictable, and presumably there were at least two of them; Tom’s photo of the highway sign had been taken from the passenger seat of a car.

  I immediately called Jason.

  “Uh oh, a phone call and not a text? What’s wrong?” he answered jokingly.

  “I think the smugglers are going to be in Oregon tonight, and I’m pretty sure I know along which route.”