Just Horsing Around (Willow Bay Witches 3)

by Silver, Samantha

  Chapter 7

  After stopping at home to grab a quick bite to eat, I made my way to the vet clinic around noon; I wanted a bit of time to personally call the patients I’d had to reschedule to apologize. People in Willow Bay tended to be understanding, especially with people like me who had lived here their whole lives, but I still felt bad that I had to reschedule so many appointments.

  “Finally, I was wondering if you’d forgotten you work here,” Bee announced when I came in through the front door. I was the only person in the clinic, it seemed Sophie and Karen, the receptionist, had each gone out to get lunch before one.

  “Oh can it,” I told my cat. “It’s not like I had any choice in the matter. Besides, what do you care? You just sit in that same spot and sleep every day.”

  “I like to lord it over the pets that come in here that this is my territory, in a regal manner,” Bee replied. “How am I supposed to display my superiority when there isn’t a constant parade of peons coming past to be poked and prodded by you while I sit on my throne in peace, my sensitive bits unmolested?”

  I rolled my eyes at my cat as I sat down and grabbed my appointment book.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that missing a half day of business was affecting you so negatively.”

  “Apology accepted. Now when do I get to lord my presence over other animals again?” Bee asked as I dialled the first number on the list.

  “In about forty minutes,” I replied, glancing at the clock, holding my hand over the mouthpiece as the phone began to ring.

  “Good,” Bee replied, and five seconds later as Grace Montreuil answered the phone, I noticed my cat was already fast asleep.

  Twenty minutes later Sophie came back into the office, with Karen only about two minutes behind her. I went into the back with Sophie to get some vaccines prepared for our afternoon patients, as well as the anaesthetic for a dog who was going to get surgery done that afternoon to remove a benign lump from his leg that had grown in an awkward place and was making it tough for him to walk.

  As we went through the process I told Sophie exactly what had happened that morning, including the conversation I’d overheard between Corey and Ellie.

  Sophie let out a low whistle. “Man, this case just gets weirder and weirder. Do you think the daughter could be in on it with Corey?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, I don’t think so. She doesn’t really seem to be the type. I think he could have done it on his own, but you didn’t see how dependent she was on her mom. I don’t think she would have done it.”

  “Still, you said she owns the whole farm along with the horse with million dollar swimmers,” Sophie argued.

  I giggled at her description, but I couldn’t ignore the truth in what Sophie was saying. Still, I shook my head.

  “I know. She does inherit; she’s pretty much loaded now. But I still don’t think she did it. She’s just not the type.”

  “Ok, fair enough. But this Corey guy might have?”

  I shrugged. “I know he got called out of the stable when I was in there, and he was gone about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. So he definitely had the opportunity. I didn’t notice anything weird or different about him when he got back, but then I also didn’t know I was potentially looking for a murderer at the time. If he was out of breath or whatever I might have just thought he jogged back to the stable or something and put it completely out of my head.”

  “Plus you say he wanted to be in a relationship with Ellie but couldn’t because of her mom.”

  “That’s what I heard from Polly, and it certainly sounded true given what I overheard between the two of them later.”

  “So he had every reason to get her out of the way. What about the maid, Susan?”

  I shrugged. “She doesn’t seem to have any reason to hate Caroline Gibson – not more than anyone else who worked for her, at first glance, but she seemed really upset this morning. I don’t know, maybe she’s just a sensitive person who puts on a stern face for her job, or something.”

  “Why can’t we just get an easy-to-solve murder mystery for once?” Sophie complained as Karen came in and told us our next client was here.

  “I know, right?” I told her as we made our way into the exam room.

  We were met by a plump, short woman in her late fifties with a happy, round face and a very unhappy looking cat.

  “Hi, I’m Angela, the vet here in town, and this is Sophie, my vet tech,” I introduced, holding out a hand.

  “Lovely to meet you young ladies. I’m Gloria Patton, I just moved to Willow Bay from Seattle. I’m retired, see, I used to be a schoolteacher. But now in my old age I decided I just want to live in a small town, away from the city, but still close enough to see my grandchildren. This is Buster. He showed up on my doorstep one day weighing next to nothing. Poor thing. I’ve taken care of him ever since that day, about four years ago.”

  “Hi Buster,” I said to the cat, and just got a snarl in return.

  “So you don’t know exactly how old he is?” I asked, dreading the answer somewhat. Gloria Patton seemed like a talker, I was hoping by asking questions I wouldn’t end up with a ten minute long story.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. I asked the girls that I used to hang around when I first got him, see. They thought he looked about 2-3 at the time. The old vet up in Seattle thought the same, so that would make him around six or seven now, if they were correct.”

  I did a regular physical exam on Buster. Going by the state of his teeth, I thought that was accurate. I nodded. “Yes, that seems about right,” I said.

  “Who cares how old I am anyway? All that happens is the woman chooses a made-up date as my “birthday” and makes me wear a dumb hat while she feeds me a sub-par cupcake made for cats. She tells me it’s a human cupcake but I’m not a moron, I know she’s lying to me. You’d think on my fake birthday of all days I’d be allowed a human cupcake,” Buster complained, and I was forced to hide a smile.

  I gave Buster his yearly booster shots after the checkup, gave him a clean bill of health, and sent Gloria and Buster on their way. As they left, though, I thought I heard Bee talking, so I popped my head out to see what was happening: Bee never spoke to the pets in the hospital. She thought they were beneath her. At best, she ignored them. At worst, well, let’s just say a couple of times early on I had to threaten to leave her at home if she didn’t behave herself.

  What I saw was the most surprising thing I’d ever seen in all my time working at the vet clinic.

  Bee and Buster were sitting together on top of the cupboard at the back of the clinic, looking down on Karen and Gloria, seemingly both incredibly content.

  “I can’t believe I had to go through this today,” Buster complained.

  “Well, it could be worse, you could have to live with her,” Bee told him. “You know she let a dog live with us? It belongs to the other one, but it’s still in my home.”

  “The one with that absolutely garish streak of purple hair? Does she think she’s a fifteen year old emo chick or something?” Buster replied.

  “Thank you, I’m so glad someone else thinks it looks ridiculous,” Bee said. “Everyone’s always complimenting her on her individuality, and how good it looks. But it’s ridiculous. Anyway, Angela, the one who’s standing at the door glaring at us, she can understand us speaking. She’s a witch. But see, she’s not allowed to tell any of the humans she’s a witch, so she has to hide her powers. So as long as there’s normal humans around, we can say what we want and she can’t do anything about it.”

  I seethed with rage as Bee said all of this while looking right at me. I knew exactly what she was doing, and the worst part was, she was right! I couldn’t do anything about it. Not right now, anyway.

  Shaking my head I turned on my heel and headed back into the exam rooms.

  “I think Bee’s made herself a friend,” I told Sophie, who was just finishing cleaning up the room for the next patient.

  “Really? Bee?” So
phie asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah, I know, I wasn’t expecting it either. But she and Buster are sitting on top of a cabinet, judging people.

  Sophie howled with laughter. “Oh, finally, another cat that’s exactly like Bee.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Bee having a friend wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’d just never seen it before. And honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could handle there being two Bees in the same town. For another thing, I wasn’t sure Bee would be able to handle it either.

  “Ah well,” I said. “It’s not like Bee’s going to see Buster again until next year, when he needs another booster shot, in all likelihood.”

  “True,” Sophie said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about the murder. It feels like right now we’re only getting bits and pieces of information. We need more. A lot more.”

  I nodded. “I agree, completely.”

  “I think Corey can be strongly considered our main suspect, especially after what you overheard. But how are we going to prove that he did it? We need some more info,” Sophie continued.

  “Definitely.”

  “So I was thinking about that invisibility spell. I think we should use it again, and sneak onto the grounds. That way we can have a look around and see if we can find any documents or overhear anything else that might give us a hint.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I like the idea, but the invisibility spell won’t work. It only makes us invisible, and the way Susan told me there’s sensors on the grounds, and a huge fence, we won’t be able to scale it at all. We need a way to get onto the property without being noticed, but also without actually touching the ground.”

  Cogs whirred in my brain as I went over all the magic I knew. When I finally arrived at a solution, I knew we were going to need some help.

  “I know what we can do, but we’re going to have to get Charlotte to do the magic.”

  “Oh no, she’s never going to want to help!”

  “We’re going to have to convince her that we need to do this. After all, she seems more into helping us now that I’m an actual murder suspect.”

  “What’s your plan, anyway?”

  “Charlotte has to turn us into birds. We can fly over the fence, and just hang out around everyone. Since it’s a farm, most of the people work outside anyway.”

  “Turn us into birds?” Sophie replied, her eyes widening. “Is that a thing you can do?”

  “Well, I can’t do it,” I replied. “I’m almost certain Charlotte can though. She spent so much more time than me studying magic, she knows a ton of spells that are way more advanced than what I can do.”

  “Ok, fine, we’ll tell her when we go home. That’s our new plan. We turn into birds and go spying. Because that’s a totally normal thing.”

  I laughed as Karen knocked on the door to announce the arrival of our next patient.

  Chapter 8

  “Are you kidding me? That’s your plan?” Charlotte was evidently going to take a bit of convincing to get on board.

  “What?” I asked innocently, shrugging my shoulders. As soon as Charlotte had come home from her classes that afternoon I asked her if she was willing to turn us all into birds for a couple of hours so we could go spy on the people at Gibson Farms.

  “Well for one thing, you seem to think that high-level magic has no consequences. Do you know how hard it is to turn someone into a bird from human form?”

  “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking you to do it for me,” I replied, and I heard Sophie snicker behind me.

  “It’s so dangerous! Things can go wrong. Very, very wrong. What if I mess it up and you end up half-bird, half human? Or what if I can’t turn you back?”

  “Charlotte, we all know that if anyone can pull off a high-level spell, it’s you.”

  “But there’s still risks involved!”

  “A bigger risk than the idea that I’m a suspect in a murder investigation?” I asked. That stopped Charlotte, she looked like she was definitely going to give in.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “We’ll do it. But if this goes badly, I want it on the record that this was so not my idea, and that I am not enthusiastic about it.”

  “That’s fine, we know you hate all the good ideas anyway,” Sophie replied, and Charlotte glared at her.

  “When are you guys thinking of doing this, anyway?” Charlotte asked.

  “How about tomorrow afternoon?” I offered. “You have no classes on Saturdays, and I looked at the appointment book before we left, and we should be done by two thirty.” It seemed most people didn’t want to spend their nice summer weekend days at the vet’s office.

  “Fine,” Charlotte said, resigned to the idea. “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, remembering something. She went back to the front hall and came back with this week’s copy of The Willow Bay Whistler, the local paper Jason Black worked for. “I almost forgot! I grabbed this when I was going through town on the way home. I imagine neither one of you thought to get a copy yourselves.”

  To be totally honest, in all the excitement of the day, I’d completely forgotten that the Whistler came out on Fridays, and that Jason’s article about the murder might have just made the deadline. Sure enough, this week’s headline screamed: “Gibson Farms Owner Found Strangled.”

  Sophie and I pored over the article. I smiled to myself as I read the headline; I imagined Chief Hawthorne hadn’t released the manner of death late last night, and was going to be pissed that the information had been leaked so quickly. Good, he deserved it.

  Jason had actually managed to write a pretty decent amount for how little info he must have actually gotten yesterday. He wrote up a small history of the Gibson family on the Oregon Coast, a little bit about their most popular horses – including Touch of Frost, of course – and mainly just the information that Caroline Gibson had been found strangled on her estate. There was a picture of police cars driving into the estate yesterday afternoon to accompany the photo. He had even managed to get an interview with Tony, the jockey, who described Caroline Gibson as a terrible boss who was impossible to work for – the same sorts of things I’d heard him say over the body the day before. I begrudgingly admitted that Jason Black actually seemed to be a pretty decent reporter. It was also a reminder that I had to re-schedule our date. I quickly put that thought out of my head.

  “Well, it doesn’t exactly have any new information,” Sophie said.

  “You can’t honestly expect to solve a crime based on information from a local weekly paper,” Charlotte told Sophie, who shrugged.

  “You never know, it was worth a shot.”

  “That’s true, it was. What do you think about the comments Tony Clegg made about Gibson?”

  This time it was my turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I mean, he said those same things over the body right after we’d discovered she was murdered. You’d think an actual murderer wouldn’t be so obvious about their hatred, but then what if that’s what he wants us to think? I don’t know. I still think Corey’s a much better candidate. Besides, Tony might have been with that trainer Philippe the whole time anyway. I’m not sure. Obviously, I can’t just ask him.”

  Sophie threw up her hands. “I really hope tomorrow reveals a lot more to us than what we know now. I’m taking Sprinkles for a walk, and then going to bed.”

  Sprinkles jumped up enthusiastically at the mention of a walk, while Bee looked at him scornfully from her spot on the windowsill.

  “Why does he always get taken for a walk?” she asked me from her perch.

  “Because he enjoys walks. I tried putting you on a leash once, and you made me literally drag you down to the mailbox and back because you refused to walk,” I replied.

  “I did not.”

  “I took video of it with my phone, if you’re pretending to forget that ever happened. It got over 10,000 views on YouTube.”

  “YOU POSTED MY HUMILIATION ON THE INTERNET???” Bee screeched, and I had to work hard to stop myself from laughing.

  “Of co
urse I did, it was hilarious.”

  “TAKE IT DOWN! TAKE IT DOWN NOW! WHAT IF PEOPLE SEE?”

  “Lots of people have seen, Bee. Ten thousand views, remember?”

  “Ohhhhhh my life is over,” Bee cried dramatically, throwing her paws over her eyes and crawling behind some books, knocking them off the shelf and onto the ground.

  Charlotte was obviously trying to hide a smile at my cat’s tantrum. I went over to the shelf and put the books back in place, then asked Bee calmly, “Would you like to go for a walk now then?”

  “Not with the leash on!” Bee cried.

  “Well then you’re not going at all.”

  “Why can’t I go out for a walk without my leash?”

  “Because I don’t trust you one bit.”

  “You hear that? The lady doesn’t trust me! I’ve been her faithful cat for years, and she doesn’t trust me!”

  To be honest, it wasn’t just the idea of letting Bee off-leash outside before. I’d made her promise not to chase birds outside before and she’d obeyed, mainly just choosing to sun herself on the back deck, but there was something about wanting to go for a walk outside off her leash that made me suspicious. My cat was up to something, and Bee being up to something never meant anything good.

  I bribed Bee into submission with a small piece of sushi, her new favourite treat, and headed off to bed myself. After all, tomorrow was going to be a big day.

  * * *

  At a quarter to three the next day, Charlotte, Sophie and I were all sitting in the living room.

  “Alright, you guys are sure you want to do this?” Charlotte asked, and Sophie and I nodded.

  “Ok. Well, the spell will turn you into the bird that most resembles your personality. I’ve left the living room window open, so when we’re all in bird form, we’ll fly out of there and to the Gibson Farm. Because I won’t be able to reverse the spell as a bird, I’m going to have to set it on a time. We’ll have two hours from start to finish before we turn back into humans. If nothing else, make sure you’re on the ground when those two hours are up, or you’re going to have a nasty return to earth. Got it?”