“Now, let’s finish this wine and then we’ll get back to thanking me for the extra information,” Jason said.
“Deal,” I agreed with a coy smile.
6
Fifteen minutes later Jason and I had shared a Tiramisu for desert and were just making our way back out into the cool night air. Jason wrapped his arms around my shoulders and I leaned into him as a strong gust of wind made its way toward us. We were about twenty feet from Jason’s car when suddenly I heard someone call out my name.
“Hey, Angela!”
I looked behind me, where the voice came from, and sighed. Matt Smith was one of those hotshot wannabe real estate developers from Portland who came to Willow Bay every few years with ideas on how to make the place more fresh and modern, without understanding that the rustic charm was half of what brought Willow Bay its tourist traffic. He also seemed to enjoy flirting with me, although I didn’t enjoy any encounter with the man. A few months earlier he had tried to buy the building that my vet clinic was in, promising to do a complete renovation and update which I didn’t want. I’d managed to convince my current landlord to hold off on the sale for six months while I tried to find someone who might want to buy the property, but so far, I’d come up empty.
“Hi, Matt,” I said. “Can you make this quick? Jason and I want to get home,” I said.
“You think you can get away with this?” Matt asked. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you. And I’m not exactly hard to find. I’m in my vet clinic from Tuesday to Saturday.” I could feel Jason tensing up next to me at Matt’s tone.
“I know you’re the one who ruined my real estate deal. And to think that I actually thought you were a good person when I first came to town.”
“Well, when you come to a place that you have no idea about and want to ruin it completely, you can’t be surprised when you came across some objectors.”
“I’m going to turn this backwater dump into a waterfront property worth millions,” Smith hissed. “Stop meddling in my business, or else.”
“Or else what?” Jason suddenly asked, stepping forward. He was happy to let me fight my own battle up to a point, and apparently that point was a veiled threat. Matt looked him up and down. I smiled when I saw the slight fear in his eyes. Jason and Matt probably weighed about the same, but whereas Matt had the beginnings of a potbelly, Jason’s was pure muscle.
“Or else you’ll be sorry,” Matt finally spat out. He took a quick step back after saying the words, which made them seem far less threatening than he had probably been hoping for. Jason took a step forward.
“You stay the hell away from Angela from now on. I don’t care what kind of big businessman you think you are. You absolutely do not threaten my girlfriend.” Jason was such a happy guy most of the time; I’d never seen him like this. It was obvious he was angry; his hands were clenched into fists and he had a frown on his face that I was glad I’d never seen before.
“Whatever, man. Stop trying to impress your girl. You’re just lucky you got there first.”
“I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man on earth and the entire continuation of humans as a species depended on us being together,” I told Matt.
“Now get out of here, before I really hurt you. And stay away from my girlfriend.” Jason took another step forward and Matt seemed to get the message.
“Fine, fine,” he said, backing up. “But I’m telling you. Stay out of my real estate deals,” he added as a parting shot to me before turning and running off.
I felt a chill run through me, and this time it had nothing to do with the cold air outside.
“Are you all right?” Jason asked, putting his arm around me protectively.
“Yeah, I am, thanks,” I replied, giving him a small smile. “Don’t worry about that guy. He’s just a creep who thinks I’m out to stop him from making money.”
Jason looked worried. “I don’t know. He actually threatened you.”
“I knew tons of guys like him when I went to college. They think they’re all that because their daddy gave them a trust fund with a million bucks in it, and then the instant someone actually tells them no, they react like the man-child they are. But I don’t think he’ll ever actually do anything, he just likes to talk big.”
“I don’t know. I know one thing: I don’t like that guy. Be careful around him, ok?”
I had to admit, having Jason being so protective of me felt good. It felt like he really wanted to take care of me, and I liked the feeling.
“I will,” I told Jason. “But trust me, somewhere in Willow Bay, there’s someone more dangerous than him right now.”
“Like the bears?” Jason asked, breaking from his serious mood for a moment to shoot a smile at me. I replied by punching him lightly in the arm.
“No, not the bears. We’ve just gone over how they’re not actually dangerous.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to rile you up about them. Now come on, it’s freezing out here, let’s get in the car and go home.”
“I know one way I can warm you up,” I joked as we made our way to the car, and a few minutes later Matt Smith was just a distant memory.
* * *
The next day, after a morning that was relatively peaceful, aside from a grumpy old cat who absolutely refused to be taken out of his carrier for a checkup—“I’m fine. I feel fine. Why won’t you people just believe that I’m fine?”—I made my way to Betty’s Café for lunch. Sophie had a lunch date with her boyfriend Taylor, so I made this trip on my own. Sure, it was in part to enjoy Betty’s BLTs, which she made with a vegetarian ‘facon’ just for me, but also I wanted to know if any of the other people in town had any information about Jeremy Wallace and his murder. Betty’s Café not only served the best baked goods in all of Oregon—and possibly the rest of America as well—but it was also the prime gossiping location in Willow Bay.
As the small bell above the door jingled when I entered, I looked around. It seemed most of Willow Bay decided the perfect cure for the less-than-ideal weather was a cup of coffee from Betty’s. I saw a group of new moms huddled around a table, likely celebrating all the time they had on their hands now that their kids were back in school. Leanne Chu, the local real estate agent, was evidently schmoozing a potential buyer at a table in the corner, and Antonia deLucca, the local gossip, was making the rounds, going from table to table with her coffee in a takeaway cup. I supposed it made for more convenient chatting.
Making my way up to the counter, I sat down on one of the stools at the bar and eyed the cakes greedily. I began to wonder if maybe I should add a slice of warm apple pie to my order when Betty made her way over.
“Is it an apple pie kind of day?” she asked me, and I nodded.
“Definitely. And a BLT. With fries, please,” I ordered.
“Coming right up! I heard you got a front row seat to the scene when they found that poor man’s body the other day,” she told me, heading back to the coffee machine.
“Yeah,” I answered. “They wanted to know if the attack was consistent with a bear or not. Honestly, I don’t think that’s what it was.”
“Well, everyone in town certainly thinks that was it. Tom, the owner of the gun shop down in Wawnee, says he’s never had so many orders for shotguns before. This morning I’ve had about four people tell me they’re worried about bear attacks.”
I sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“There’s too many people moving here from the city these days. Lived here my whole life, never even heard of a bear attack. One year, old Benjie Harmon, God rest his soul, let the apples on the tree in his backyard go sour; a bear found them and got completely drunk. He started stumbling through main street, while everyone came out of the shops and laughed. He eventually made it past the elementary school, I had twenty-seven kids all crowded past the window. I guess the bear made it into the woods and slept it off, but even then, no one was ever in any danger.
”
“That’s the thing. But everyone thinks of bears as killers. I don’t think that’s what it was though. I think the man was murdered.”
“Are you talking about the man who was found in the woods the other day?” a woman who’d just walked up to the counter asked suddenly. She was tall, probably about five foot eleven, and obviously a tourist, with sunglasses on her head and a beach bag on her shoulder. She had one of those faces that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite place it. With her long, brown hair braided behind her, she was quite pretty.
“We are,” Betty said. “Sorry to be so macabre, the town here really is safe,” she added.
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” the girl replied. “I’m from Montana; my dad runs a cattle farm about an hour from Yellowstone, so I know how to handle myself around bears.”
“Well, welcome to Willow Bay,” I told her with a smile. “We might not be Big Sky country, but we try to be Big Heart country.” Great. That sounded lame, even to me. I was tempted to roll my eyes at myself. At least Sophie wasn’t here to hear me say that. Luckily, the girl just laughed.
“Thanks! I like it here. I’ve just been here for a couple days, but I love it. I was just thinking about that poor man. I heard he was a tourist as well?”
“From England, apparently,” Betty replied. Oh good, now that was public knowledge I didn’t have to keep that a secret anymore.
“Yikes. His poor family. I wonder what he was doing in those woods.”
“Hiking is really popular here,” I offered. “Especially for people who come from places, like England, where there aren’t really any mountains. Everything is just so different here.”
“Oh, of course. I mean, we have a few mountains in Montana, but I’m from the flat part in the far north of the state. I saw Mount Hood on the drive over and it almost blew me away. I don’t know how anyone hikes around here, I think it would be way too exhausting!”
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “Most of the trails around here are actually pretty low elevation. We’re close enough to the ocean that you won’t climb more than maybe a hundred feet on a good hike here.”
“Could you show me?” the girl asked, pulling out a map of Willow Bay and surrounds that I knew the local tourist information center gave away.
“Sure,” I replied, pulling a pen out of my purse and looking at the map. I pointed out the trailheads for a few popular trails.
“Just make sure you don’t take the Bay View Trail,” Betty offered. “That rain storm we got last night washed away parts of it, so it’s closed for now.” I smiled at Betty. She was always the first to find out about everything that happened in this town.
“And which one was the one where the man was killed?” the girl asked. “I just want to avoid that one, since I assume the cops will have sealed it off for a few days.”
I showed her, and the girl thanked me.
“Are you talking about the dead Englishman?” I suddenly heard Antonia deLucca say from behind us. She had obviously been eavesdropping on our conversation.
“We were,” I said, wanting to know what Antonia had heard. “Why?”
“Apparently he was staying at the Willow Bay Inn,” Antonia told us in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’d only stayed one night. A bit of a strange character; the owner, Willis, saw the man leaving at three in the morning. He came back about an hour later.”
“Weird,” I said, and the girl next to me nodded.
“I wonder what he was doing in the middle of the night,” she asked.
“Well that, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter now. He wasn’t killed in the middle of the night; he was killed by a bear.”
“That’s true, I guess that settles it. He probably wasn’t doing anything too weird, and if he was, well, it’s all over now.”
“Yeah,” I said absent-mindedly. I knew Jeremy Wallace wasn’t killed by a bear. I wondered what on earth he was doing going out at three in the morning on his first night in Willow Bay, and whether it had anything to do with his death.
This had been a very productive visit to Betty’s Café after all, I thought as Betty put my BLT in front of me and I dug into my lunch.
7
“Well obviously we have to get into his hotel room and look for clues,” Sophie told me in a hushed voice as we got ready for the afternoon—preparing a vaccine for a dog coming in for his yearly booster, and then getting ready to look at the sample we took from a lump in the cat from this morning. I was fairly certain the lump was just going to end up being fat-filled, rather than anything dangerous, but it was always a good idea to know for sure. Karen was in the reception area, and probably couldn’t hear us, but I agreed with Sophie that it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Good, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“We should go after work. Right at five is when hotels are at their busiest, since that’s when people check in. Since it’s slow season, any other time will probably result in at least somebody in there noticing us.”
“I like your thinking. Plus, Charlotte won’t be home by then, so we don’t have to tell her what we’re doing until after it’s done.”
“That’s an even better reason. Awesome. We leave from here and we go straight to the inn.”
The afternoon seemed to fly by, and at exactly a quarter to five I sent Karen home for the day as Sophie and I took turns changing in the bathroom in the back of the store. When we came out, no longer wearing our scrubs, we put them in the car and walked the two blocks down to the Willow Bay Inn.
The Inn, as it was known locally, was a three-story high building toward the end of Main Street. One of three hotels in town, it was easily the most recognizable. Built entirely of red brick, with white wooden balconies leading out of the half-moon windows that faced the street, it had that rustic, old-world charm that Willow Bay was so known for.
Sophie and I quickly made our way inside and found ourselves in a warm lobby with hardwood floors covered in a number of rugs, and an old oak reception desk against the far wall. Luckily for us, the one person at the desk was busy with a client, and Sophie and I quickly made our way to the door that led to the stairs on the left side of the room.
“How are we going to figure out which room was his?” Sophie hissed at me as we reached the second floor.
“The cops will have sealed it off, right?” I said confidently. I hoped that was right, at least.
We walked down the hallway on the second floor, but there were no indications anywhere that the police had sealed off any rooms. Hoping I wasn’t wrong—if I had to turn myself invisible to get a look at the room register downstairs, who knew how long that was going to take—Sophie and I continued up to the third floor using the stairs at the other end of the hall. Luckily, when we got there, we struck gold.
“Bingo,” Sophie said, pointing to the first door on our right. Across the front of it was a police seal and a strip of police tape warning people not to enter. “How are we going to get in without breaking the seal?” she asked, looking around. Luckily, the whole hallway was empty. It was slow season, after all.
“Nonvideroa,” I said, pointing at Sophie, and instantly she disappeared. I repeated the spell, this time pointing at myself, and I quickly disappeared from view as well.
“You know, it’s not that I don’t trust your critical thinking skills, but this just means no one can see us, not that we can get past a police seal.”
“Gee, really?” I asked sarcastically. “I hadn’t thought of that. Give me a second, at least.”
“Pondoroa,” I said, pointing at Sophie, feeling another burst of energy exuding from the tip of my finger. “There. Now you should be weightless, you can travel through the wall. Just walk straight into it, and I’ll meet you in the room,” I said.
“Ok, here I go,” Sophie said. I couldn’t see her, but a moment later I heard a loud thud, followed by a string of swear words. That wasn’t good.
“I’m going to kill you when I can
see you again,” Sophie finally said when she felt like stringing a sentence together, her voice sounding incredibly stuffed up, like she had a cold.
“Shhh, keep your voice down,” I admonished. Just because nobody could see us didn’t mean nobody could hear us. I looked over at the door to the room and saw a dark red blotch that wasn’t there a minute before. “Are you bleeding?”
“How on earth should I know? I can’t see anything. But I do know I went straight into that door and I definitely didn’t go through it. You can’t tell me to keep my voice down when your stupid magic is the reason my face feels like it just got bashed by a baseball bat.”
Suddenly, it came to me. “Oh my God, I did the wrong spell!”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that.”
“I’m so sorry, Sophie,” I told her. “I honestly didn’t mean to. Ponderoa,” I tried again. “Ok, that one should work.”
“Nuh-uh. There’s absolutely no way I’m walking back into that door first. I’m pretty sure my nose is broken, by the way. If you’ve permanently scarred me for life I know who the next person to show up murdered in Willow Bay is going to be.”
“Ok, I guess that’s fair,” I said, pointing to myself and repeating the spell. I didn’t feel any different. “I’m going in now. If it works, then follow me in.”
“I hope you bash your nose straight into the door,” Sophie replied. Just in case, I put my arms out in front of me, but it wasn’t necessary. I slipped straight through the wood like it wasn’t even there.
“The spell worked, you can come through,” I told Sophie as I pointed at myself and said “Videroa.” I suddenly re-appeared, then felt a worrying sensation in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t see Sophie anymore, but she could definitely see me. “Please don’t kill me,” I begged, putting my arms up in front of my face. I’d seen Sophie punch someone in the face before; she had a good arm on her. But a minute passed, and there was still no sign of her.
A Grizzly Discovery (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 5) Page 4