I smiled to myself just as Cat walked into the door. I hoped she only came to chat; I wasn’t sure how much more crazy I could take today.
Nine
“What’s happening?” Cat asked as she walked in, plopping herself down on one of the chairs and closing her eyes.
“Well, so far today I’ve committed a felony, almost been killed by a boulder of avalanches, had a lady come in and try to sell me some social media marketing stuff, and watched Archibald have a mental breakdown because a lady who was a fan of Byron came in.”
“Ah,” Cat smiled. “Did he threaten to go off and make sure everyone knew Byron was a fraud?”
“Well, he said he wasn’t going to let him get away with this, so I assume that’s probably what he meant.”
“Yeah, Archibald does that. I still don’t know where he goes or what he does, but seeing as Byron is still seen as one of the greatest Romantic poets ever, I don’t think Archie’s been that successful yet.”
“I think that one’s an uphill battle for sure. Hey, do you know Dana Gunter?”
Cat grinned. “Let me guess: she’s the woman who tried to sign you up for social media services.”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, I know her. Actually, I did end up hiring her firm to do the social media stuff for Cat’s Cupcakes. Their professional photographers are fricking amazing! They make my cupcakes look phenomenal.”
“Cat, your cupcakes do look phenomenal.”
“Yeah, but whenever I try and take a picture of them with my phone they just come out looking like random blobs. If you’re wondering if the company is legit, they definitely are. Dana can be a little bit intimidating though.”
“Definitely. She’s the first person I’ve met since I’ve come to Sapphire Village who actually seems like they belong in a city.”
“That’s because she is a city girl, like you. She’s from Chicago, originally, I think. She met her husband Henry while on holiday here, and she moved out here a couple of years ago. She worked for some big ad agency or something in Chicago. She and Henry are both magical, but they don’t really spend any time in Brixton Road. She’s definitely the career-focused type. But she’s really good at what she does. Hell, Sapphire Digital Solutions is spreading now; I know she was on a business trip to LA a few weeks ago, I saw her leaving the airport when I came to pick you up.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “So she’s a good salesperson?”
“Definitely. She’s pushy, for sure, but she knows her stuff, and the company is good. I’m not saying use them, but if you do decide that you want someone to handle the marketing side of things for the bookstore, they’re a good company.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I told Cat. I was so new to running the bookstore that I didn’t know who was out to rip me off and who could actually help me, and I was thankful to have my cousin there to help guide me along the way.
“No problem. So, have you had a chance to look at the files we, uh, borrowed last night?”
“Borrowed?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not like we’re going to be giving the thumb drive back.”
“Fine, stole, if you want to be crude about it.”
“That’s a weird way of pronouncing ‘correct’,” I replied, and Cat stuck her tongue out at me. “I kind of started to look at them, but then got interrupted by Dana, and then I had a customer, so not really.”
“Cool,” Cat said, making her way to the computer. I followed her over there, and we started to look over all of the files together. While it started off being pretty fun, eventually it melded into a whole bunch of math, and it didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere.
We went through all of the income section, but most of the income seemed to match with what Sapphire Adventure Tours was charging for their tours, and there weren’t any super suspicious overseas wire transfers or anything like that. Everything looked like it was on the up and up.
As we made our way through the invoices charged to Sapphire Adventure Tours, however, something began to nag at me.
“Hey, do you notice anything weird about these companies charging SAT?” I asked Cat, who shrugged.
“Not really. Why?”
“I dunno,” I said, frowning. “It’s probably nothing. Just something isn’t sitting right with the names. Like, look at the last few invoices. You have invoices from Oregon Cleaning Company Inc, Oregon Snowmobile Mechanics Inc, Portland Cleaning Jobs Inc, Portland Mechanical Services Inc, that sort of thing.”
“Hmm,” Cat said. “You’re right. Those names are a little bit strange. Plus, I’m pretty sure those aren’t the only cleaning companies that they’ve used.”
Cat closed the file we were looking at and opened up a list of all the companies that Sapphire Adventure Tours had received invoices from over the previous year.
There were three different cleaning companies, four mechanics, two office supply companies, four different part supply companies and more. A lot of them were obviously legitimate, big companies, but Cat and I quickly started writing down the names of the others, and eventually we had a list of companies to look into.
“This is weird, something is off about these companies,” I said.
“Agreed,” Cat nodded. She opened up an internet browser window and typed an address into Google. The Oregon business registry website opened, and Cat typed the name of the first company we’d written down into the search. The registered agent was listed as being a law firm in downtown Portland.
“Damn it,” Cat said. “I was hoping the actual owner would be listed, that would make things a lot easier.”
She went back and typed in the second name. The registered agent was, once again, the same law firm in downtown Portland.
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, we might have a pattern here, if nothing else.”
Cat typed in all the names of the companies we’d thought were a bit strange, and sure enough, all of them except two had the same lawyer being the same registered agent.
“Well that’s certainly interesting,” Cat said, crossing the two other companies from her list. “We now have a list of eight companies that all use the same law firm as a registered agent.”
“Portland is small, but it’s not that small,” I agreed. “Something fishy’s going on there. Is there any way to know who the law firm’s client is? Because I’d be willing to bet almost anything that the same person owns all those companies.”
Cat shook her head. “I think short of actually suing them there’s no way to know for sure who owns the company.”
“Great,” I muttered. “There’s something weird going on here though, and the more we look into Brian’s business, the more I think it might be the reason he was killed.”
“Agreed,” Cat nodded. “Peaches in still in Portland because of her art exhibit. I’m going to call her and let her know what we’ve found out.”
“Ok,” I replied, doubtful that Peaches could really do anything that could help us. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a great cousin or artist, just that at this point I figured we’d need someone who could get around Oregon’s privacy laws to figure out who owned those companies.
“Either way, something here stinks,” Cat said.
“Agreed. We need to find out who owns those companies. Maybe it was the other business partner, and Brian found out and threatened to expose him.”
“Exactly. I’d be willing to bet it will end up being something like that. Anyway, I have to get back to the coffee shop. I’ll text you if Peaches finds out anything. I think the exhibition ends today, so she should be back in Sapphire Village by tonight.”
“Nice. If you guys want to come by for dinner to discuss this whole thing I’m making spaghetti,” I said.
“Thanks,” Cat said. “We might just do that. At least, if I haven’t completely passed out before then.”
As Cat left the bookshop, I noticed it was just about lunch time. I quickly turned the sign around to read “closed” and decided to head down to the
local café to grab another coffee and a sandwich for lunch.
Coming back armed with a vanilla latte and a Chicken Cesar Wrap, I settled myself in for an afternoon of calmness and relative solitude. After all, today couldn’t really get any crazier, right?
Ten
It only took about an hour before it turned out I was wrong. I had finished my wrap, and the coffee, and was wondering if I could get away with closing the store early and having a little bit of an afternoon nap before Peaches and Cat came by for dinner when Chase Griffin, the chief of police in town, walked through the front door.
“Hey,” I greeted him. “How’s it going?”
He shook his head slowly. If it was possible for a man that gorgeous to look a little bit haggard, then Chase certainly looked it now. His hair was slightly more ruffled than usual, and there were just the beginning signs of bags under his eyes. Of course, when I was that stressed I looked like a character out of a horror movie; Chase just looked like he’d gotten an hour’s less sleep than usual.
“Things aren’t great, to be honest. I’m in the middle of trying to solve a murder, and then I get a phone call from Alexis Juneau telling me someone broke into her office this morning.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, raising my eyebrows in what I hoped was surprise. “How awful! But why are you here?”
“Well, I went around to have a look, and I canvassed the Main Street to see if anyone saw anything.”
My heart sunk into my stomach as Chase continued. I had a feeling I knew exactly where this was going. Chase continued. “I spoke with Felicia Andrews about an hour ago. She lives in one of the apartments that overlooks Main Street. She said she couldn’t sleep this morning, and she was looking out her window and enjoying the view of the mountain with the full moon being out, when she saw you and Cat making your way down the street, going toward the offices. Now, I’m sure you have a reasonable explanation for it, but I’m wondering if you happened to see anything.”
The ice in my veins suddenly warmed. We’d been seen, but Chase didn’t suspect us at all. Thank goodness. I smiled at Chase, hoping it looked inviting and kind rather than creepy and guilty.
“Of course,” I said, my mouth feeling dry. My voice sounded a little bit too high-pitched to be completely normal, but Chase didn’t seem to notice. “Cat and I were just heading to her shop,” I explained, trying to sound casual. “She messed up her schedule or something and ended up with not enough time to make and ice all the cupcakes before she opened, so I offered to help. After all, she’s been doing so much for me. But no, I’m afraid we didn’t see anyone at all,” I replied.
“What time were you out there?” Chase asked.
“Ummm… probably a little bit after three this morning,” I answered.
“And you’re sure you didn’t see anything? That’s right around when Alexis said the thieves arrived,” Chase said, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head with what I hoped was an innocent expression on my face. “There was definitely no one. Maybe they broke in from the back or something?”
“I guess so,” Chase said, closing his notebook.
“So, the murder investigation isn’t going that well?” I asked. “I thought you had some good suspects.”
Chase gave me a small smile. “Suspecting who committed the crime and actually being able to prove it are two different things.”
“Of course. But you have an idea as to who did it?”
The smile on his face curved upwards. “Surely you’ve seen enough TV to know that I can’t talk about an open investigation.”
“No, no, of course, sorry,” I practically yelped in reply, my face going red, and Chase laughed.
“Don’t worry, I get asked way more intrusive questions by a lot more people than you. I can tell you what I’ve told the press: we have some leads, we’re following those leads, and hopefully we’ll find out who did it soon enough. Of course, it doesn’t help that this is Sapphire Village, and everyone now knows that Brian was killed with his own gun that was stolen from his house about three months ago.”
“Oh, well I didn’t know that,” I laughed, and Chase grinned at me. God, I liked his smile.
“Well, you’re still new in town, so don’t take it personally. I’m sure when you next see your cousins they’ll both tell you. Cat especially will know. That particular piece of information has just been going around today.”
“Look at it this way, at least you know I’m not complicit in the town’s rumor mill,” I told Chase, and he laughed.
“Thanks for the help. I like what you’ve done with the place, as well. I’ll have to stop by for longer one day and have a look. At least this time I had reasons other than customers blaming you for setting them on fire,” he laughed.
“Maybe the third time there won’t be any sort of crime related to your visit,” I replied, my face betraying me by going beet red at the memory. Technically it had been Peaches who had set her hair on fire; I had been the one kind enough to put the fire out. Chase gave me a wave and headed out into the street and I collapsed into one of the chairs. Of course someone had seen Cat and I walking through town at three in the morning. I’d told her we were going to get caught, and now it was surely only a matter of time before Chase figured out that Cat and I were the burglars.
This was definitely not good. Also, no matter how much I tried to shove that feeling deep down as far as it would go, I had to admit I felt bad lying to Chase. I tried to justify it to myself: after all, he was a nice guy, and the local cop. I felt bad because he didn’t deserve all this stress, and Cat and I had made it worse by throwing a burglary at him on top of the murder. Yes, that was definitely the only reason why. But he was just doing his job, and his job involved people lying to him all the time, I justified to myself. After all, there was no way I was going to admit to him that Cat and I were the robbers. Absolutely not a chance.
* * *
As soon as I closed the bookstore for the day I made my way upstairs to start making spaghetti for three. Archibald hadn’t returned. Apparently, his plan to make the world aware of Byron being a fraud took longer than eight hours. Muffin, on the other hand, happily decided to join and “help” me out by pouncing on the vegetables as I moved them from the fridge to the counter.
After putting him on the floor multiple times and warning him he wasn’t getting anything if he kept this up, I chopped some onions, peppers, celery and garlic and threw them into the pan sizzling with olive oil just as my phone buzzed. Cat said she and Peaches would be up in a few minutes. They walked through the door just as I added a can of tomatoes to the sautéed mixture of meat and vegetables.
“So guess what I found out today?” Cat asked as soon as she passed the threshold, practically salivating with excitement.
“Brian Armistead was killed with his own gun!” I replied, and Cat’s face fell.
“That’s not fair, how do you know that?”
“How do you know is the bigger question. Chase told me, he said the news is going around town today.”
“Ah,” Cat grinned. “I’m willing to bet that one is Andi’s fault.” Andi was the receptionist at the local police station. “I think someone had a little look at the ballistics report when it came back before handing it over.”
I put a hand to my mouth. “Won’t she get fired?”
Peaches laughed. “Not a chance. The last receptionist before Andi was going through the police files and stealing from people she thought were thieves. A kind of weird Robin Hood type thing, I guess. Andi just looking at the odd report is nothing, especially since everyone in town knew Brian’s gun had been stolen anyway. It was a few months ago, and he complained about it to everyone.”
“I don’t know enough about guns to have recognized the one when he was killed as being his. Besides, that was pretty much the last thing I was thinking of,” Cat said, and I nodded.
“Yeah, I couldn’t tell you what calibre it was or anything either,” I said.
“Anyway,” Peaches said as I made my way to the stove and added some spaghetti to the boiling pot of water, “While you guys rehash information that everyone in town knows, I actually have some interesting information to share.”
I’d completely forgotten about the fact that Peaches was going to try and get information about the owner of the businesses that had been charging Sapphire Adventure Tours.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. Peaches nodded with a smile on her face that closely resembled that of Muffin whenever he managed to get at some food he wasn’t supposed to eat.
“Indeed. The owner of those companies is none other than… wait for it… Brian Armitage.”
I looked at Cat as both our mouths dropped open.
“Wait, really?” Cat asked, and Peaches nodded.
“I’m one hundred percent sure. I actually saw the information on the computer and I didn’t use magic, so I know it was correct.”
“So that means he was embezzling from his own company,” I said slowly, putting the pieces together. “If that’s not a reason for his business partner to kill him, I don’t know what is.”
“We have to tell Chase,” Cat said.
“No, we can’t,” I replied. “If we tell him, we’ll have to admit that we saw Alexis Juneau’s files, and we definitely cannot do that.”
I told the two of them about my visit from Chase that afternoon, and how Felicia Andrews saw the two of us walking through town at three in the morning.
“That old cow has nothing better to do than to spy on people,” Cat muttered crossly when I finished telling the story. “She just sits in her apartment all day watching people.”
“Well, regardless, she saw us. I told Chase that I went to help you out at the store, but I think we need to avoid telling him anything that could possibly lead back to us having broken into the accountant’s office.”
“Fine, you’re right,” Cat admitted. “We can’t tell him.”
Murder on the Oregon Express Page 6
