The Very Killer Caterpillar

by Samantha Silver

  I made my way past the living room and into the kitchen, where the granite countertop and stainless steel appliances glistened in the light. Beer, coolers and bottles of hard liquor abounded, covering every surface, along with dozens of half-empty cup sleeves. Cat was at the breakfast bar, a red cup in her hand, obviously flirting with a tall-ish man with brown hair and eyes, the kind who doesn’t stand out in a crowd at all. Adam York looked exactly like his profile picture.

  Ducking around the two of them, I made a show of grabbing a cup off the breakfast bar while casually looking at Adam. His iPhone was sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans; there was no way to get it and escape him noticing without using magic.

  I quickly decided what I was going to do; I focused on the phone becoming weightless and sliding out of the pocket, and as I felt the energy building inside of me I pointed to the phone. It slipped upwards, and straight into my hands. I smiled to myself and walked away quickly.

  Got it, I thought to Cat.

  Thank God, this guy is so boring I think I might spike my own drink just to get away from him.

  Meet me in the backyard I told Cat as I slipped out the back door and into the night. Despite the lateness of the hour, the warmth in the air made it obvious that summer was well and truly on its way. I went to open the phone, but it was locked with a number code.

  I’d seen Cat do this spell before. There were people around, but none of them were paying me any attention. Still, I turned away, facing a corner of the house where no one could see me before doing my best to will the phone in front of me to give me its secrets. As the energy passed out of my outstretched finger and into the phone, a series of numbers appeared above the phone. When Cat had done it, the letters were bubbly and a pretty blue color, but when I cast the spell they came up in what looked like Times New Roman, black. Was I really that much more boring and plain compared to my cousin?

  This wasn’t the time to think about that, I decided as I memorized the four numbers: 3, 2, 7, 8. I released the spell with my mind and the numbers disappeared, and I decided to test my magical skills. Sure enough, the phone unlocked as soon as I typed the numbers in, just as Cat made her way over to me.

  “Is it the right phone?” she asked.

  “We’re about to find out,” I replied, pressing the Instagram app icon. The app opened and Cat and I looked at each other. This was definitely the right account; Adam York was our guy.

  Just then, he came out into the backyard and called to Cat. “Hey! You left your drink in the kitchen!”

  Cat and I went over to him. I wasn’t entirely sure how we were going to play this, but Cat immediately grabbed the phone and took control.

  “Hey, that’s my phone!” he whined.

  “Yeah, it is. And we know you’re behind the Black Magic account. If you don’t answer our questions honestly, we’ll go to the school administration and tell them all about it.”

  I’d never seen a man’s face go so white so quickly in all my life. Any bravado Adam York might have had immediately disappeared.

  “What do you want? A cut?”

  Cat shook her head. “No. We just want information, then you can have your phone back.” She motioned toward a nice-looking picnic table in the backyard, and the three of us sat, Cat and I on one side with Adam York on the other.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you know Professor Gordon was onto you?” Cat asked.

  “I knew he had found out about the account, yes. But he definitely didn’t know I was the one behind it. And he wasn’t going to. I had too many safeguards.”

  “We got in,” I pointed out.

  “Well, Professor Gordon didn’t.”

  “How do we know?” Cat asked. “After all, what if he did find out, and you killed him?”

  I hadn’t thought it was possible for Adam York’s face to lose even more color, but I was wrong.

  “No way, you can’t think I had anything to do with that.”

  “Have you read the papers? A male was seen entering Gordon’s apartment the morning he died, and he was killed by being poisoned by a caterpillar left in his place. That could very well have been you.”

  Adam shook his head emphatically. “No, it couldn’t have been me. Not a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was in the hospital that morning. I crashed my motorcycle on the highway on the way up here from Portland, so the ambulance took me back. If you look through the pictures on my phone, you’ll see some selfies I took,” he said, nodding toward the phone Cat was holding in her hand.

  I peered over her shoulder as she scrolled through the pictures. Sure enough, there was Adam York doing a ‘hang ten’ sign while in the ambulance, time-stamped for 7:57am the morning of the murder. There were a few other pictures taken from inside the hospital, including of the X-ray machine. He had obviously taken all the pictures with snapchat, and the last picture had the clock filter over the top as it showed Adam being led out of the hospital in a wheelchair: 2:55pm.

  He couldn’t have left the caterpillar for Professor Gordon.

  “Do you seriously think someone linked to this Instagram could have killed Gordon? He seemed like a cool dude the few times I saw him.”

  “It’s possible,” I nodded. York looked troubled.

  “Look, you’re not telling anyone about this, right?”

  “We don’t have to, no,” Cat replied.

  “I work with someone,” York said. “He’s the one who gets me the answers to some of the tests. A lot of the teachers, I can access their files myself, since they’re based here. But others are based in Portland and just come up for a few classes a week.”

  “Like Annette Little.”

  “Yeah, like her. This guy gets me the answers to her tests. I don’t know how, I don’t really care, but I give him a bit of a cut in exchange for his help.”

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Kevin Lanscombe. He’s a student here.”

  “We know him,” I nodded. “Where can we find him?”

  “He lives in a studio on the bottom floor of that cheap building, the Fir Woods Apartment complex. You know it?”

  Cat nodded. “Yeah. What apartment number?”

  “Six,” Adam York replied. “But honestly, I don’t think he’s the killer. He doesn’t seem like the type.”

  “You’d be surprised at what type of people kill,” I replied wryly.

  Adam York shrugged. “Maybe. I did tell him about Gordon the other day.”

  “And how did he react?” Cat asked.

  “He started to panic. Said it was all coming down, and he was going to be expelled. I told him to calm down, that nothing was going to happen.” He shrugged. “I thought I got through to him. But, uh, maybe not.”

  Cat tossed him back his phone.

  “Well, looks like that gravy train is over,” York muttered as I saw him delete the Instagram app. He looked at the two of us. “I’m not a total idiot. I know when to cut my losses. I made a lot of money this way, but it’s not worth getting kicked out of college for.”

  I nodded and Cat and I moved past Adam and went back through the house. We had everything we needed, we were leaving.

  “Shall we go pay Kevin Lanscombe a visit now?” Cat asked.

  “Absolutely,” came my reply.

  Chapter 16

  The Fir Woods apartment complex was a few minutes outside of downtown Sapphire Village. It was a run-down building that I had to guess was built in the eighties. A few empty beer cans and some discarded bike parts littered the gravel parking area, and ratty old flags–two American, one Canadian, and one Australian that I could see–hung off a few balconies.

  I figured the complex was cheap accommodation for ski bums and students. Cat seemed to know her way around, and she made her way past several the small apartments–all the apartments led directly outside, the building was built like a motel–and knocked on the door with a number six painted crookedly in black paint.


  Cat knocked firmly on the door, and we waited about a minute, but there was no reply. No sound or anything. She knocked again, but again, nothing.

  I turned, ready to leave, but Cat grabbed my arm. “Hold on,” she said. “Let’s have a quick look. Maybe we can find out for sure if he’s the murderer or not.”

  “Are you kidding?” I hissed. “What if he comes back? Even if he doesn’t come back, can we please go more than like, two weeks without committing a felony?”

  “Just for a minute,” Cat said, pointing at the lock. I heard the click of the lock as it opened and put my head in my hands.

  “We’re so going to get caught one day.”

  “Not tonight, everyone that lives here is at that party, and in case you hadn’t noticed, security here isn’t exactly, well, existent. Now, are you coming, or are you going to hang out here looking super suspicious?”

  I sighed and followed Cat into the small apartment. “Don’t touch anything with your fingers,” I hissed at her, as she moved toward the light. Nodding, Cat pointed at the switch instead, which moved by itself and the lights flickered on.

  I gasped as I stared at what was obviously Kevin Lanscombe’s dead body.

  He had been watching TV and eating dinner from a bowl on the table, it looked like homemade macaroni and cheese. He was lying back against the couch he was sitting on, his eyes staring lifelessly toward the ceiling. The discarded fork was on the ground, bits of macaroni splayed on the floor around it.

  “Uh, I guess that explains why he didn’t answer the door,” Cat said, her eyes wide.

  “We need to call Chase,” I said, pulling out my phone. I dialed his number and he picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Alice.”

  “Oh hi Alice! What can I do for you?”

  “Um, well, we’re at the Fir Woods apartment complex. We came here to talk to someone, but he’s, uh, definitely dead.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line for an almost imperceptible split second. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, what number?”

  “Six.”

  “Thanks. Stay where you are, and don’t touch anything.”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up the phone and looked at Cat. “We’re not supposed to touch anything.”

  “Well duh,” Cat said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s have a look around until he gets here.”

  “I guess this means he couldn’t have killed Professor Gordon, though,” I said. “I mean, unless he was killed for some completely different reason, but that one be one big coincidence if it was the case.”

  Cat looked at me. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But you’re right. Assuming that Kevin Lanscombe was killed by the same person who killed Alexander Gordon, that means he can’t have been the murderer.”

  “Which means we’re straight-up out of suspects,” I sighed.

  “Great.”

  I ended up going out to the front of the building to get some fresh air while waiting for Chase. He showed up in his personal vehicle, a Jeep, a couple minutes later and jumped out.

  “I’ve called the coroner, she’ll be up from Portland in about an hour,” he told me. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s murder. It’s not like I looked closely, but he didn’t look like he was shot or bashed in the head or anything.”

  “Ok. I’m going to go in and have a look, you can stay out here; there’s no need for you to see the body again.”

  “It’s ok, I’m curious as to whether or not it was a murder,” I said, following Chase into the room. I stood near the door, trying not to look at the body, Cat standing next to me. Chase put on a pair of gloves and looked around for quite a while, both at the body, and around it. When he crouched down to look under the couch, he pulled out an empty plastic tube with a yellow cap.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “An empty epi-pen holder,” Chase replied.

  “I guess he must have lost it under the couch at some point,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Chase replied. “I don’t want to rule anything out yet.”

  A few minutes later, he stood up and came back over to us. “Ok, let’s go out and I’ll take your statements. I’ve found no evidence that he was murdered, but of course, that’s why we have a coroner.”

  I looked at Cat as the three of us made our way outside and Chase took out his notebook. Maybe Kevin Lanscombe was our murderer after all, and his death was just an accident. After all, murderers could have undetected heart defects too, right?

  Cat and I gave our statements, and from the pointed look Chase gave me when I said we were here to talk to Kevin Lanscombe about an app he was a part of, I knew he didn’t believe us. And for once, we were actually telling the truth! Mostly, anyway.

  We ended up going home, and I told Cat I’d check in with Chase the next day to see if they were sure it was natural causes. If so, we could tell Chase everything we knew, and he could look for evidence that Kevin Lanscombe was the murderer.

  Life, as it turned out, was definitely not going to be that simple.

  I called Chase around noon the next day, just after going upstairs and grabbing some leftover slices of pizza from the fridge to have for lunch.

  “I’m guessing you want any information I can tell you about Kevin Lanscombe’s death?” he said, unable to hide the slight amusement from his voice.

  “Yes I do, please,” I replied. “Just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s undetermined as of yet.”

  “Oh?”

  “We know the cause of death was anaphylaxis, but we don’t know whether it was simply an accident, or if he was poisoned. For what it’s worth, I can’t really think of many ingredients in macaroni and cheese that can cause such a severe allergic reaction. Samples of what he was eating were sent away for testing, but it might take a couple of weeks before the results come back. If you ask me though, there’s something fishy about this whole thing.”

  Something fishy. Something in my brain was trying to click. I closed my eyes and let my brain make the connection by itself. Then, I had it. My eyes widened.

  “Oh my God,” I practically whispered into the phone.

  “What?” Chase asked.

  “I know who killed Professor Gordon, and who killed Kevin Lanscombe.”

  Chapter 17

  As soon as I uttered those words Chase told me to stay there, and he would be there in two minutes. Sure enough, he walked through the door of the bookstore, where I was still holding the phone, staring into space.

  It all made sense.

  “Who killed them?” he asked.

  “Kevin Lanscombe killed Professor Gordon, but Annette Little convinced him to do it. Then, she killed him.”

  “How?”

  “Fish oil, most likely. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I’d be willing to bet Kevin Lanscombe was allergic to seafood.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The waitress at the restaurant he ate at with Annette Little the night Professor Gordon was murdered said that Annette Little was definitely the dominant one in the relationship, but when she tried ordering a marinara pizza he absolutely insisted that she order something else. The waitress found it weird since he was such a doormat in everything else, I bet she didn’t know he was allergic to seafood.”

  Chase tilted his head. “They were dating?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t mean Professor Little convinced Kevin to kill Professor Gordon. Maybe he did it on his own.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But what reason would he have had to do it? Professor Little wanted the job that Professor Gordon wanted. It was Little, Gordon and Gilmore all up for that job and Professor Gilmore couldn’t have cared less about it.”

  Chase thought for a minute, then nodded slowly. “I think you’re right. Did you meet Professor Little?”

  “Y
es, a few days ago.”

  “Did you see the colorful ribbons on her wrist?”

  “Sure, yeah,” I said, thinking back. I wondered what they had to do with anything.

  “She had an airtight alibi for the murder, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but those are Fita do Bonfim ribbons, Brazilian wish ribbons.”

  “So, she’s been to Brazil recently,” I nodded.

  “And could have brought back the caterpillar then. It would have been a relatively easy animal to sneak back into the country without anyone noticing.”

  “Then she convinced her boyfriend to leave it in Professor Gordon’s apartment, maybe in a slipper or something where he’d put his foot in without noticing, and get bitten when the caterpillar freaked out.”

  “Exactly. Because she had a solid alibi for the time, she wouldn’t be a suspect, and because Kevin had no motive, neither would he.”

  “And then she kills Kevin to cover up any loose ends, making it look like an accident.”

  “I’d be willing to bet she took the vial of epinephrine from his epi-pen, too,” Chase said. “And the empty package rolled under the couch as Kevin tried to stop his throat from closing up.”

  I shook my head. “Wow. That’s some psychopathic stuff right there.”

  “I think I’m going to go pay Professor Little a visit.”

  “I’m coming too,” I said.

  Chase looked at me, and for a minute I was sure he was going to say no, so I chimed in before he had a chance. “I’m the reason you figured this out, the least I should be able to do is be there while you arrest her.”

  “Fine,” Chase said. “After all, it shouldn’t exactly be a high-risk arrest. It’s not like we’re going after a dangerous gang member or anything. But you have to stay behind me, no matter what happens. And don’t say anything.”

  “Can’t I at least say the ‘you have the right to remain silent’ part of the speech? It sounds so cool when people say it on TV,” I said.