“Well, the traitor paid for it in the end,” Claire muttered. “Although I’m not sure I like the idea of being in the room with a murderer.”
“We don’t have any other choice,” Kevin said. “Whoever killed Jeremy isn’t going to own up to it. Besides, it’s not like any of us disagree that he didn’t have it coming.”
“Exactly. Now, we move on. We have to find that diamond.”
“It’s one thing to keep saying it, how do we figure it out?” Andrew asked.
“Well I’ve been subtly asking around,” Claire offered. “Haven’t really gotten any good information from anyone here. Nothing that would help us. And it’s not exactly like I can go around asking anyone if they know a good spot to hide a giant diamond.”
“Look on the bright side; he could have decided to hide it in Seattle. Then we’d be completely out of luck,” Andrew said with a wry smile.
“That was probably where he was headed; it was a good thing Jack managed to follow him here and mess with his rental car at the gas station,” Jack said.
“Still, none of this gets us any closer to the diamond.”
“I might have an idea,” Jack said slowly, “but it will take a few days to sort out for sure. I vote we reconvene here on Wednesday, same time. I’ll know by then if my plan to find the diamond will work or not. In the meantime, in case it doesn’t, I want everyone to come up with a plan themselves. We discuss on Wednesday. By this time next week, we will have our diamond back. We’re not going to leave it in this random hick town for someone who thinks California is exotic to find.”
I was more than just a little bit insulted at the insult toward Willow Bay and its residents, but obviously didn’t say anything. I briefly considered “haunting” Jack for the comment, but since I’d get in major trouble for doing it, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Are you sure you’re up for this, Jack?” Claire asked. “I mean, we’re already on tenterhooks around each other. I don’t think anyone in this room trusts anyone else anymore. Should we really be getting together again to do this?”
“If you want out, say it now.”
“I’m not saying I want out. I’m saying maybe this is a bad idea to begin with.”
“If you think it’s a bad idea, leave.”
“If I had any idea where that diamond was, I would.”
Jack glared at Claire. “I could kick you out of the group just for those comments. After all, you’re the one with the diamond connection. You could run off with it and have the diamond be in 50 different pieces for resale in less than a day.”
“Yeah, I could. So doesn’t it say something that I’m actually here?” she replied, folding her arms.
“Just that you can’t figure out where the diamond is on your own and you need our help,” Jack replied. Suddenly, Kevin broke in.
“Stop it. Both of you. Claire’s right, there’s not a lot of trust in this room right now. It’s not going to get helped with arguments like this. Claire, are you in?”
Claire nodded. “Fine. Then act like it.” She scowled, but stayed silent, shooting daggers at Jack. As the meeting broke up, I could tell this was definitely not a group of people who were comfortable with one another.
I slipped out of the library behind the others and thought about what I’d learned. It seemed that none of them actually had any idea where the diamond was. If they did, they would have left and gone off with it, or shared the information with the others. I was certain now: Jeremy Wallace had died with his secret.
It was obvious from the infighting within the group that there wasn’t very much trust there, and that they were getting pretty frustrated with not having the diamond. I wondered what Jack’s plan was to find it. I supposed on Wednesday I would know. I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of me being at that meeting again.
12
As I continued to walk through the main part of town, thinking about everything I’d learned, I realized that by leaving my invisibility spell on I didn’t have to stop and talk to anyone about what had happened at my vet clinic earlier that day. I made my way toward the building, which was still cordoned off with yellow police tape. Someone had put a large piece of plywood up to cover the hole in the front window, and with a bit of debris still lying on the sidewalk around it, the whole place looked, frankly, pretty depressing.
I sighed to myself as I made my way toward the police station; I was going to have to ask Chief Gary about when I could re-open the clinic—hopefully tomorrow!—and that sort of thing.
But before that, I sat down on one of the benches lining Main Street, and looked around. If I was a jewel thief, someone who was new to the town, and I had to find somewhere to hide a diamond at three in the morning, where would I do it?
I started thinking about the skills of everyone involved. Andrew was the tech guy, by the sounds of things. Jack was good with cars, probably the getaway driver. Jeremy was the makeup and prosthetics guy. That fact didn’t really help me very much. What was he going to do, make the diamond look like some random rock and hide it in the forest? And even if he did do that, which I highly doubted, that just meant that the diamond could be literally anywhere on the ground within probably a five mile or so radius from the hotel.
I looked around. There was one thing I could rule out: businesses. Everywhere in Willow Bay was closed by three in the morning. Last call was at two thirty. So that left the outdoors.
I sighed. Suddenly, I thought of something: what if he had decided to hide the diamond indoors? He would have had to break into somewhere, though. I got up from my spot on the bench, then hid in the corner of a doorway and reversed my spell, making myself visible again. I now had two things to ask Chief Gary.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in his office, in one of the chairs across from the man himself. He was on the phone, and motioned for me to sit down while he finished up his call.
“Hi, Angela,” he told me when he finally hung up. “Sorry, I was just about to call you.”
“No problem, I was just in the area and I saw the front of the clinic and thought I’d come in and ask you when I can re-open again.”
“Of course. Tomorrow is fine, if you don’t want to miss a day. I’ll have an officer come by and take the yellow tape off early in the morning. You’ll have to organize the glass repair, of course. There’s no one here in Willow Bay who does glass, but I can recommend someone in Portland if you’d like.”
“Thanks, that would be great,” I replied. Chief Gary rustled through his desk drawer and finally pulled out a business card for a glassworks shop on the outskirts of Portland. It was a miracle he could find anything inside his desk if the top was any indication of his organizational skills. I tucked it away in my pocket for safekeeping.
“Did you manage to get any information out of Matt Smith?” I asked, and Chief Gary shook his head.
“No confession, no. Honestly though, I am quite certain he did it. He almost seemed like he wanted to flaunt it to me, and he obviously hates you. I want you to be careful around him, ok?”
“Yeah, I will. I promise,” I said.
“Unfortunately I had no choice but to let him go, this time.”
I nodded. “I get that. Listen, if you’ve got a minute, I also had another question I wanted to ask.”
“Sure, shoot.”
“A few nights ago, the night before Jeremy Wallace was killed, were there any break-ins reported anywhere in Willow Bay?”
Chief Gary raised his eyebrows, but then leaned back in his chair. “No, I can’t say there were.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll remind you this is Willow Bay. I can count on one hand the number of break-ins that have happened here in the last three months.”
I smiled ruefully. Of course he would know off the top of his head. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I just wanted to be sure.”
“Why did you want to know?” Chief Gary asked me.
“Just a hunch, about the diamond th
eft.”
“If it even is in Willow Bay. Which it might be. I have people working on it. But so far we’ve found nothing to corroborate the information your boyfriend got; I’m starting to wonder if perhaps his source wasn’t playing a joke on him or something.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s legitimate,” I replied.
“Well, I’m not dismissing it out of hand, of course. I do have people on that case. I’m just not sure it’s ever going to pan out to anything.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” I replied almost absent-mindedly. “Thanks, Chief,” I told him, standing up. I’d gotten all the information I came for.
“No problem, Angela. Anytime. And remember, stay safe out there. I’d like to think I scared some sense into Matthew Smith, but there are no guarantees.”
“Thanks Chief, I will,” I said, flashing Chief Gary a smile to assuage the concerned expression on his face. I was going to be careful. I knew Matt Smith was out to get me. I would be on the lookout, but I also wasn’t going to live life as a hermit because some spoiled rich kid was mad at me.
As I left the police station, though, I was more agitated than ever. I was hoping that there was a break-in reported the night before the murder; that would have indicated that perhaps Jeremy Wallace had hidden the diamond there. As it stood, I had zero leads. I had no idea who killed him. I had no idea where the diamond was. And worse than all of that, I had no idea what to do next. I was completely and totally stuck.
* * *
The next morning, I was still feeling depressed about everything: the vet clinic being broken into, the lack of any sort of leads when it came to the Jeremy Wallace murder, and to top everything off I’d heard there was a petition going around asking the government to allow the hunting of bears in the National Park that surrounded Willow Bay. All in all, right from the word go, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good morning. I left early to clean up, Sophie promising to be ten minutes behind me.
When I arrived at the vet clinic, however, my mouth dropped open.
Not only was the yellow police tape gone, but so was the plywood covering the broken glass. All of that was gone as well. In its place was a brand new shiny glass window. A man was adding stencil lettering reading Healthy Paws Vet Clinic. My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t had a chance to call Chief Gary’s glass guy yet.
Outside was a group of people huddled around the man, watching. Bee darted off at the sight, but I wasn’t too worried; I knew she’d come back.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I reached the group. Betty was at the front of it, and I wondered what brought her over here; normally she would be in her café by now. Jason stepped out from behind her.
“We wanted to make sure your clinic wasn’t out of commission for even one day,” Betty said, motioning to the people around her. “So we all pitched in and called the repairman yesterday. He came in early this morning to fix your window. We also got a crew to clean up the inside of the shop.”
“You work so hard for the animals in town, we thought it was so unfair this happened to you,” said Patricia Wilson from her spot in the crowd.
“This is Willow Bay, we locals have to stick together,” said Antonia deLucca, who was normally the town’s gossip, and rarely said anything nice about anyone since that didn’t create as much drama. The crowd around her murmured their agreement.
I suddenly felt tears welling up in my eyes, and I wasn’t the type to cry very often.
“You guys,” I suddenly said, my voice cracking. Jason came over and wrapped an arm around me. I swallowed hard and started again.
“You guys, all of you, everyone who did this. I want to thank you. The last twenty-four hours have been some of the most difficult of my life, and that I could come here this morning and see that everyone has done this for me…” My voice trailed off as the tears threatened to flow once more. I’d never been so touched by a gesture in my life.
“You’re very welcome,” Betty told me, coming over with her arms open. I let myself be taken into the hug, holding Betty close. “Now, everyone,” she announced. “We’re going to have to let Angela go. After all, she has a vet clinic to open today,” she said, to the sound of cheers.
I thanked the dispersing crowd once more and made my way into the shop, my cheeks flushed with pride and happiness, Jason following after me. The smile on my face was permanent; even if I tried I knew I couldn’t get rid of it. And I didn’t want to. My whole community had just shown me an act of love that meant more to me than words could explain.
“You look like a kid on Christmas,” Jason told me, taking a seat in one of the chairs, as I looked around at the spotless floor. All the shards of glass were gone. All the files had been picked up and put carefully on the reception desk. There was even a brand new computer and monitor sitting in a box on the desk as well. I made my way toward it and stroked the cardboard box.
“This is amazing,” I told Jason. “How did this happen?”
He grinned. “I was interviewing a few people outside the shop for a story on the vandalism. Everyone was so upset about what had happened to you. One person said they wished there was something they could do, someone else mentioned that she had a friend who knew someone who worked with glass, and the next thing I knew my interview was over and there was a whole group of people banding together to make sure you would come to work today and find everything fixed. Some of the older ladies asked me to look over the specs of the computer and make sure it was good enough.”
“It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing.”
“Yeah, it’s great to see what everyone can do when they put their minds to things. I guess this is that small town loyalty everyone always talks about.”
“For sure. Willow Bay is amazing.”
“I don’t disagree,” Jason told me with a smile. “I’ll let you get started here. I’m sure you’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”
“Yeah. Thankfully we kept everything important on Dropbox, I didn’t like the idea of having only one copy of everyone’s information. So after I get the computer set up I’ll have to get Karen to log in and re-download all the information, but at least it’s not lost forever.”
“That’s my girl, I didn’t think you would be the type not to have any backups.”
“What are your plans for the day?” I asked, and Jason shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t really have that much to do. I was mostly going to hang around Betty’s and see if I could find anything remotely interesting happening around town. I have about three articles to fill for the rest of the next issue. Then I figured when I was done that I might try and get some more information from the people running that petition to get the bear hunt going in the national park.”
My face darkened into a scowl. “I hope you tell them how bad an idea it is,” I replied.
“Well, seeing as my job is to report the news, and not to try and influence it, I won’t be doing that. But I can put two differing viewpoints into my article. But honestly, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Online petitions rarely develop into anything.”
“I know, but the fact that it’s there at all makes people think it’s acceptable to hate on bears,” I muttered. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, as soon as you figure out who killed Jeremy Wallace and hand them to Chief Gary on a silver platter, it will all be settled; the bears will be cleared and there won’t be any threat to them in Willow Bay anymore.”
“Yeah,” I replied, my heart sinking slightly. I didn’t want to admit to Jason that I had absolutely no idea which of the four other robbers had killed Jeremy Wallace, and even less of a clue as to how to figure it out.
“I’ll call you this afternoon, maybe we can do something after you’re done for the day?” Jason asked.
“That sounds great,” I replied with a smile. Jason came over and gave me a quick kiss, then headed out the door and down toward Betty’s Café.
As I got started on unpacking the brand new computer that this community had com
e together to get me, I smiled to myself. This day was definitely starting to look up.
13
Six hours later my work day was over. There weren’t any real dramas. Bee had appeared, meowing loudly at the front door, about two hours earlier, then pranced inside and went to sleep on her bed as if she hadn’t been out for four hours. I mentally reminded myself to ask her—again—what it was she was doing. My cat was up to something; I just knew it.
I sent Jason a text, and he came by the clinic. After asking Sophie to take Bee home with her—“I don’t want to, people will think I’m friends with her dog,” came Bee’s protest—I texted Jason and he said he’d be there ten minutes later.
“How was your day?” he asked when he arrived, carrying a vanilla latte for me that I eagerly took from his hands.
“Not nearly as bad I was expecting, thanks to you and everyone else in town,” I said with a smile, taking a sip of the warm, soothing beverage. Jason grinned.
“Good. What do you say we walk down to the beach and hang out there for a while?”
“That sounds great,” I replied. Jason held out his hand and I took it, saying a quick goodbye to Karen and heading out into the afternoon. The sun was poking out of the clouds today for the first time in a week, and I basked in its glow as we walked slowly down Main Street. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn a gorgeous shade of yellow; fall was well and truly on its way.
As we casually strolled along, I couldn’t help but notice a larger-than-normal number of people hanging out in front of the Willow Bay Inn.
“What’s going on there?” I asked Jason, pointing toward the Inn. He frowned.
“I don’t know. Let’s go check it out.”
We joined the small clumps of people that made their way toward the front of the inn, but when we arrived at the front door, Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend, was standing in front of the door and refusing access to anyone.
A Grizzly Discovery (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 5) Page 8