A Grizzly Discovery (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 5)

by Samantha Silver

  I was walking along the edge of Main Street when suddenly I saw a familiar black cat darting away behind one of the buildings. I shook my head. This time, I was sure of things. It was Bee. I was going to find out once and for all what on earth my cat was up to. How had she gotten out of the house? Had she been out all night? And what was she doing?

  I knew calling out to her would only scare her away more, so instead I simply tried to be as quiet as possible as I made my way behind the Japanese restaurant I’d been standing in front of. If it turned out Bee was stealing sushi from one of the Willow Bay businesses, she was in so much trouble.

  As I got to the back of the building, I peeked carefully around the corner. I couldn’t see anything. No Bee, nothing. I frowned, then slowly walked along the back of the building. Still nothing.

  Suddenly, I heard a cry. It was absolutely tiny, and very high pitched, but I knew that cry.

  “Traitor,” I suddenly heard Bee’s voice say. I moved back about three feet and suddenly noticed a small hole in the ground, just below where the HVAC system from the restaurant blasted out warm air. Peering into it, my mouth dropped open.

  Bee was lying in the hole, with three—no, four—kittens nestled against her, nursing.

  “Bee! Oh my God!” I exclaimed.

  “Well, fancy seeing you here,” Bee said nonchalantly.

  “Why do you have kittens? Where did they come from?”

  “I’m training them in the war against the dogs,” Bee replied. “I’ve decided to get started on them young.”

  Immediately my vet instincts took over. I bent down and picked up one of the kittens, who started squirming. At a guess, I’d say he had to be a week old, at the most. There was no umbilical cord, but the kitten’s eyes hadn’t begun to open and her ears hadn’t begun to unfold yet.

  “Bee, we need to get these kittens to the vet clinic.”

  Bee scowled at me. “Fine. But I get all the credit for keeping them alive.”

  “Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes scooping up the kittens into my hands. They were so small, I could carry them all easily. “But we’re going to talk about this later.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong!” Bee protested.

  “You’ve escaped the house and the vet clinic multiple times, you’re taking care of strange kittens that come from goodness knows where, and most importantly, you didn’t tell me, a veterinarian, that you had some high risk kittens to take care of.”

  “Unlike you, I’ve had kittens before,” Bee told me.

  “Unlike you, I’ve got years of animal medical training to help keep kittens alive.”

  “Oh, well, since you’ve read about it in a book, that must make you an expert,” Bee replied as we made our way back onto Main Street. I glared at her.

  “We’re getting these kittens to the vet clinic, and you’re going to tell me everything you know about them,” I said in my best no-nonsense voice.

  “Fine, but I want to continue feeding them.”

  “How are you even feeding them at all?” I asked Bee as I fumbled to grab my keys out of my purse and hold onto the kittens at the same time. Eventually I gave up, made sure no one on the street was watching, and used a quick spell to open the door instead.

  “Remember that time a couple of years ago when you had an orphaned squirrel, and you completely humiliated me by making me feed it?”

  “Oh yeah!” I said. “I had to cast a special spell on you so you’d produce milk, since you’d already been spayed for a while by then.”

  Bee had been a street cat early in her life before being taken in by a shelter where I volunteered when I was a vet student. She had been so difficult that they were going to transfer her to a high-kill shelter, but I took pity on Bee and adopted her myself.

  “Well you never turned off the spell,” Bee said. “When the squirrel went back into the woods so it could live a life of taunting me in front of the window my milk dried up, but I never lost the ability to produce it.”

  I immediately took the kittens into the exam room and grabbed four blank patient vital information sheets, Bee following close behind me like a protective mother. I quickly grabbed a handful of towels and an old cardboard box, along with a heat lamp, and placed the kittens inside the box, with the lamp.

  “It was good that you found the heat source behind the restaurant,” I told Bee.

  “I told you, I knew what I was doing,” Bee replied, pacing around the box and looking inside.

  “I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me what you were doing,” I told her. “I could have helped right away. It must have been a big effort for you to keep those kittens alive.”

  “I wasn’t alone,” Bee said. “Buster helped, and there was another cat as well. She would help feed the little ones when I couldn’t get away.”

  “I never took you as the mothering type,” I smiled as I picked up a second kitten and lifted her tail, sexing her as female, then gently placing her on the scale and marking down her weight on the form.

  Bee sniffed at me, raising her nose. “I most certainly do not care for these kittens. It is simply that in the war against the dogs, we must have as many soldiers as possible. Therefore, I ensure their survival for the army.”

  Suddenly, I realized what all this was about and grinned.

  “I know why you didn’t tell me! You didn’t want me to think you have emotions, that you can care for other cats.”

  “Of course I don’t care for other cats!” Bee argued vehemently, but I could see straight through her. I grinned.

  “You care for Buster.” Bee began to nonchalantly lick a paw.

  “Buster is ok, for a cat. I don’t care about him though. He’s just another cat, like all the others.”

  “All right, sure, Bee,” I told her. “Whatever you say.” I picked up the little female kitten and looked at my form. “I have to give her a name. How about ‘Sparkles’?”

  Bee hissed at me. “No. Absolutely not. That’s too close a name to the dog that lives in my house, you’re not calling my daughter that.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about the cats. Wouldn’t that extend to their names as well?”

  Bee hissed at me in reply. “You think you’re so clever. I don’t care about the cats. But I don’t want them humiliated. Call her something else. Like Butters.”

  “Butters it is, then,” I said, writing the name down on the form. Butters was a good name for the little girl; her fur wasn’t exactly yellow, but it was a nice cream color, and the name suited her well.

  Fifteen minutes later, the kittens had all been looked over, and I determined that as far as one week old orphaned kittens went, things weren’t that bad. There were two boys and two girls, now named Boo, Bilbo, Butters and Boop. For kittens that Bee “didn’t care about” she sure had already given them matching names.

  A minute later, Sophie came into the room. “Ooooh, kittens!” she exclaimed, when suddenly Bee hissed at her threateningly.

  “Go away, dog-lover,” Bee said, standing in front of the box of kittens.

  “Bee!” I scolded. “It’s Sophie. She can look at the kittens. Sorry,” I said to Sophie apologetically. “Bee’s been taking care of them, but she doesn’t care about them at all, she swears.”

  “I can see that,” Sophie laughed. “It’s ok, Bee. I just want to have a look. I won’t touch them,” she promised, and Bee tentatively moved aside to let Sophie have a look. After a couple minutes of aww-ing over how cute the kittens were—Bee standing over to the side preening like a proud mother was not lost on me—we decided to bring the kittens and the heat lamp into the back room of the vet clinic, where Bee could nurse them all day without any other animal interruptions, before taking them back home that night.

  “So that explains where Bee’s been sneaking off to,” Sophie said to me when we were in the reception area a few minutes later. I nodded.

  “Yeah. She didn�
��t tell me about them because she didn’t want me to realize that she actually cared about anything other than herself.” Sophie barked out a laugh.

  “That does sound like Bee.”

  “I have to admit; she did take good care of them though. She found a heated vent to keep them under which was not only warm, but pretty protected from any predators out there. And apparently there was another cat or two involved in the care of the kittens.”

  “Where did they come from, anyway?”

  “Bee won’t tell me who the mother is, but according to the cat grapevine, which I’ve only just learned is a thing, a local cat got pregnant, but she overheard her owner saying he didn’t want kittens and was going to drown them all when they were born. So she snuck out and gave birth on Main Street, so he’d never find them, and went back home like nothing had happened, leaving the kittens. Buster went out for a while the morning he came to the clinic and found them, so when he got here he told Bee and they made up a reason to get out of the clinic and started taking care of them.”

  Sophie shook her head. “That’s insane. I’m so glad they managed to keep all four kittens alive.”

  “Me too.” I had to admit, I was actually pretty proud of my little cat. The kittens were in great shape considering what their lives had been like for their short time on this earth so far; Bee had taken really good care of them.

  “Did you hear that another tourist was killed?” Sophie asked me, and I forgot that I hadn’t seen her since Jason and I had left the clinic the day before.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I have a whole bunch of stuff to tell you about that.”

  16

  I caught Sophie up on the events of the day and dealt with my three appointments for the morning. It turned out afterwards I had a four-hour break—a local schoolteacher was coming in with her new puppy at four that afternoon for spaying, and because of the school day she couldn’t make it in earlier.

  “I’m going to go see if I can find Claire and get an alibi out of her,” I told Sophie, who nodded. “Good plan. I’ll see if I can do the same with one of the other guys.”

  “Right, you’re probably best at randomly picking up dudes and questioning them.”

  “Hey, I’ve been with Taylor longer than you’ve been with Jason.”

  “Barely,” I pointed out.

  “Still counts,” Sophie said, sticking her tongue out at me. “Anyway, yes, I am better at this because I don’t bluster around like a hippo trying to be sexy when I flirt with men.”

  “I’m not that bad,” I argued.

  “I once saw you try and seductively lick an ice cream cone while looking at Corey Johnson back in high school, and the whole thing fell off the cone and went down the inside of your shirt.”

  “Hey, at least it got him looking at my boobs,” I said, a small blush creeping up my face as I remembered that especially embarrassing incident back in the tenth grade.

  “If he could see them through the tears he was crying from laughing at you so hard,” Sophie grinned, and I glared at her in reply.

  “Fine. I’m going to find Claire. I’ll see you here at four?”

  “For sure. Then we’ll get pizza for dinner after we’ve done the surgery.”

  “Awesome.”

  Five minutes later I was walking down the street toward Betty’s. I wasn’t going to have time for a sandwich, but I figured ordering a coffee could possibly get me the information I needed. Slipping into Betty’s café, I made my way to the counter. Going by the conversation in the corner, everyone seemed to have found out that it wasn’t Elizabeth Armstrong who’d been killed after all.

  “Two tourists in under a week, dead. This isn’t good.”

  “And one of them murdered, no less!”

  “Well, if you ask me, I’m still more afraid of bears than a random freak.”

  I put the random strings of conversations out of my head and made my way up to the counter.

  “Hey, Betty,” I greeted her as she slipped a thick slice of blueberry peach pie onto a plate and added a dollop of whipped cream to it before handing it over to a worker to take to a table.

  “Hi Angela,” she said with a smile. “How are you doing?”

  “Great, thanks to you,” I told her. “Thank you again for everything you did with my office. I heard from Jason that you really galvanized the community to bring them together.”

  “It was nothing. You deserved it.”

  “Well I want you to know what it means to me. You’re amazing. Hey, have you heard anything from that girl from Montana that was in here the other day?”

  Betty looked at me curiously. “She was in here earlier. Said she was going to spend the day in the library. Why?”

  “Oh, just wondering if she eventually got out to do her hikes,” I replied, ordering my coffee.

  “I don’t know; she didn’t mention it this morning. She seemed a bit pre-occupied. Not that I blame her, what with the whole situation at the inn and all,” Betty continued. I frowned.

  “Yeah. That really sucks.”

  “Hopefully Chief Gary will find out who did it as quickly as possible and we can advertise Willow Bay as being a safe place again.”

  “Absolutely, I hope so. I’m sure he will. Chief Gary’s done a lot of good work over the last few months with the other murders we’ve had.”

  “You’re completely correct, Angela. I’m sure he will.” Betty smiled as she handed me the coffee. Thanking her, I made my way down the street toward the library. I had an alibi to find out about!

  Five minutes later I was in the library. I smiled at Rose, the librarian who had worked at the Willow Bay library for longer than I’d been alive, then started making my way through the racks, looking for Claire while at the same time trying to look like I was interested in the books, and not the people that were in here.

  Failing to find her on the ground floor, I really hoped that I hadn’t missed her. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, however, and saw her almost immediately. Claire was seated at one of the tables, poring over maps of Willow Bay. I supposed she must have been looking for something that might tell her where someone might hide a multi-million-dollar diamond.

  “Oh, hi!” I said to Claire, feigning surprise, and she looked up with a start.

  “Hi… you’re the woman I met at the coffee shop that day, right?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “Yeah. I own the vet clinic in town. My great-aunt just died though, and I’m trying to find some stuff for the estate, trying to take some of the pressure off my mom,” I lied.

  “I’m sorry about your great-aunt.”

  “Thanks. She had a good life, at least. How are you liking Willow Bay? Did you get a chance to do those hikes I showed you the other day?”

  “I love it here,” Claire gushed. “And I did! I loved it! Actually, that’s why I’m here, I’m trying to see if I can find some others. I’ve done the ones you suggested, and a few others from the tourist office.”

  “Nice! I’m glad you’re enjoying it, despite the tragedy yesterday,” I said, making my face sombre. “I hope you’re not scared of being here.”

  “No, of course not! I heard about what happened to that poor man, of course. My bet is it was probably an ex-wife or something; nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m glad you’re being practical about it. Still, you must be staying at the Willow Bay Inn, since it’s the only local hotel open in September. Were you in the hotel when it happened?”

  Claire nodded. “Yes, but I didn’t see anything. I was in my room, having a nap when it all happened. I woke up an hour later and there were cops everywhere.”

  “I guess you didn’t know the guy, either.”

  “No. I mean, I passed him the lobby once or twice, I think, but that was about it.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re taking such a good stance about it. I know people in town are panicking about all the tourism drying up because of this, it’s good to see someone taking a logical approach.”


  Claire smiled at me. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Not for a little bit, at least. I’m thinking I might stay another week or so. But the murder hasn’t changed anything for me. Not at all.”

  “Cool. Well hey, I’ll leave you to your maps,” I told her, pulling my phone from my pocket then getting up. “I just got a text, there’s an emergency at the vet clinic.”

  “Good luck!” Claire told me, flashing me a smile as I left.

  I made my way back to the street. So Claire admitted she was in the hotel, but said she was having a nap. That wasn’t much of an alibi. I wasn’t surprised she denied knowing Jack; she wasn’t exactly going to admit to me that she knew him as a master thief. But her saying that the murder hadn’t changed anything for her was telling. I bet it meant that she was looking for the diamond herself, and that if she found it, she was going to keep it. Jack had said he had a plan to find it. The group was going to meet up later on the day he was killed and Jack was going to give them more details. Claire had gotten into an argument with him, and she didn’t have an alibi for his time of death. As far as I was concerned, Claire was now suspect number one.

  17

  When Sophie and I met back at the vet clinic just before four o’clock, I learned that Andrew had actually been in town during the murder, although Sophie had thought it would be too suspicious if she asked him to name someone who had seen him. Instead, she asked her cop boyfriend. Taylor confirmed for her that he had let Andrew back into the hotel after the body had been discovered and the place sealed off. That was another suspect out. Sophie hadn’t been able to find Kevin anywhere. Still, that cemented Claire as the main suspect in my mind.

  “It’s all good and fine to know who did it, but how are we going to prove it?” Sophie asked. I shrugged.

  “I don’t know yet. I kind of figured I’d try and see who did it first, and then figure out the whole evidence thing later.”

  “Fair enough,” Sophie said, as the bell above the front door jingled. Sophie went out to greet Chew-Barka—his owner was a big Star Wars fan—and I got the final preparations ready for his spaying. Chew-Barka was a four-month-old collie mix, with shaggy brown fur that matched his namesake completely. I knew him from when he got his puppy shots here, but when he came through with Sophie, he wasn’t his usual, energetic self.