The Purr-fect Crime: Willow Bay Witches #1

by Silver, Samantha

  “It makes taking care of the little ingrate easier to handle,” I replied, handing her a prescription form to put into the computer. Luckily, Disco being a very energetic Jack Russell Terrier, he’d avoided Bee’s claws fairly easily. But that didn’t make her any less annoying.

  “I hope you realize that if you drive away my customers, you don’t get to eat anymore,” I continued scolding her. She replied with silence.

  “Fine. I’m going to go eat lunch somewhere where you can’t get to it,” I told her, winking at Karen, who laughed.

  “I’ll be back in about an hour,” I told her.

  “Sure thing. You don’t have another appointment until two, and Sophie’s in the back taking care of Skittles and the little ones.”

  “It’s amazing how popular our guests get when they have kittens,” I laughed. Skittles had come in that morning. Her owner, a nice old lady named Judith, had somehow not realized that her cat was pregnant, she thought she was just getting fat. Really, really quickly. When she woke up and found Skittles straining, she panicked and brought her over here. Judith sat in a room with Skittles and watched her cat give birth to five little kittens. She asked if she could leave them here while she went home and prepared an area for the kittens to live, and we happily agreed. After all, it’s not every day you get to hang around with little squirmy hours-old kittens.

  Luckily, Skittles was quite calm for a new mother, especially after I explained to her that we really just wanted to look at her beautiful kittens, and let us watch her and the kittens interact without seeming stressed out, so I knew that was what Sophie was out doing now.

  While I wished I could join in, I had already made plans for my lunch break. I drove the fifteen miles to the county courthouse in Wawnee, one town over and made my way to the records area.

  The lady running the records room was exactly what you would expect: in her 60s, a little bit on the chubby side with greying hair and glasses on a string so she didn’t lose them, she had her face buried in the computer when I got there.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, looking up with a bored expression on her face.

  “Yes please,” I asked. “I’d like to look up the land ownership records for a person in this county.

  “Name?”

  “Anthony Nyman.”

  “No, your name.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, blushing. “Angela Martin.”

  “Just a minute please.” She typed some stuff into her computer, and I heard it make a little bing sound. “Alright. Mr. Nyman owns seven properties in Wawnee County, mostly around Willow Bay. Would you like me to print you out a list?”

  “Yes, please!” I asked, putting away the pen and paper I’d gotten out to scribble them down.

  “That’ll be fifteen cents, please.”

  I reached into my purse to grab the coins. Because of course you couldn’t get a single sheet of paper from the county without paying for it.

  A minute later, the lady came back with the sheet, and I handed her the coins.

  “Isn’t Anthony Nyman the man who got killed up in Willow Bay?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Funny thing, that. You’re not actually the first person to come in asking about his property this week. The computer says there was another request here yesterday from someone else, also looking into his property.

  “Really?” I knew Chief Gary would have his own access to those kinds of records, so it had to be someone else not associated with the case.

  “Yes. And it doesn’t seem to be a lawyer, either, which is normal in these kinds of cases.”

  “Well Mr. Nyman didn’t have a will,” I offered. “At least, if there was one, no one has found it.” I knew that news had already been spreading around Willow Bay like wildfire, so there was no harm in passing it on here. I also knew that women like this one tended to thrive on gossip, and the more info I gave out, the more I was likely to receive in return.

  “That’s so sad. Everyone should have a will, otherwise his family might not get anything.”

  “He had no family either. As far as anyone can tell, he barely knew anyone in Willow Bay, despite having lived here for ten years,” I told her, and she clucked her tongue.

  “That’s even sadder. I wonder who the young man who came in to look at his records is then.”

  Realization dawned upon me.

  “Let me guess… his name is Jason Black?” I asked her, and she looked at me in surprise.

  “How did you know?”

  “Let’s just say Jason and I have had a few run-ins since Mr. Nyman’s death,” I told her cryptically.

  “Oooooooh,” she replied, shocked. “What if he did it? My goodness, he was just in here yesterday. I’ll have to tell Gertrude, she was the one on the desk here then. I’ll have to let her know that she may have served a murderer!”

  “Well, there’s no proof of that,” I told her. “After all, that’s the police’s job.”

  “Yes, and a mighty fine job the boys in blue always do. I know Chief Gary Wells over your way and he’s an excellent man, unlike our local chief. I’m sure he’ll find the evidence he needs to put that Jason Black boy behind bars.”

  I smiled at the lady’s newfound insistence that Jason was the criminal. I was sure that no matter what I said now, an hour from now everyone in the building would know this lady’s opinion on the matter.

  “Chief Wells absolutely does a great job,” I told her. “Although if he does come by, perhaps avoid mentioning my name? I don’t want him worrying about me.”

  “Of course, darling,” she replied. “He won’t hear anything from me. Except about how he should be looking at that Jason Black fellow.”

  “Thanks,” I told her, shooting her a friendly smile. “Have a great day!”

  “You too,” she replied, and I made my way back into the sun, once again feeling like I’d gotten more information, but also a lot more questions. One thing was for sure – Jason Black was up to something. And I was going to find out what.

  Two minutes later I was sitting in my car with the air conditioning on low, reading over the list of addresses the lady had given me. And to be honest, it was pretty disappointing. I knew Chief Gary had told me that Nyman’s property was pretty rural, but I had kind of expected something that would jump out at me, or like, some huge parcel of land, or something.

  Instead, it seemed what Chief Gary had told me was right: most of the land Tony Nyman owned were plots randomly spaced on the outskirts of town. The only reason I even recognized the street names was because I’d lived in Willow Bay nearly my whole life.

  I hit the steering wheel in frustration. When were the questions going to stop and start actually being replaced by answers? It seemed the more I looked into Tony Nyman’s death, the more confused I got. Looking at the time, I had to get back to the vet clinic, so I put the sheet of paper aside, put the car back into drive and started heading back to work.

  * * *

  “Aw man, I was sure it was going to turn out that Tony Nyman owned like, half the state or something,” Sophie complained when we finally got a moment alone, taking care to prep a six month old puppy named Tinsel for spaying. She had already been put under and I was getting ready to start the operation.

  “I know,” I replied. “I feel like every turn we make we’re getting stonewalled.”

  Chapter 16

  I met up with Charlotte and Sophie that afternoon at Silver Beach, a small but gorgeous beach a couple of minutes outside of town. We decided to have a picnic and settled down on the sand, our backs against one of the big logs that had a tendency to wash up on west coast beaches. Despite the sunshine and unseasonably warm weather for early May, the beach was almost abandoned – there was only us, and a couple of kids on the other side of the beach, playing in the shallow water while their parents watched over them.

  I pulled out containers of take-away Indian food that I’d ordered from Pashma’s Palace on the way here,
and passed everyone’s orders around.

  “I could pretty much live off samosas if I had to,” Charlotte announced as she pulled out one of the crispy pastries. “Hell, I could do it even if I didn’t have to,” she continued, and I laughed.

  “I’m so glad we have good Indian food in Willow Bay,” I said. “It would suck if we had to drive up to Portland to get it.”

  “Amen to that,” Sophie continued, dipping her naan bread into her container of chicken tikka masala. Although they usually tried to stick to a vegetarian diet when they were around me, Sophie told me once that our friendship wasn’t as strong as her love for chicken tikka, and so she still ordered it whenever we ate out.

  “So Angela, you said you went to the courthouse on your lunch break and got all the info about the property Nyman owned?” Charlotte asked, turning to me. I nodded while I swallowed the delicious mouthful of my vegetable biryani.

  “Yeah,” I finally replied, reaching into my purse and handing her the piece of paper the lady had given me. “It’s pretty much as useless as Chief Gary told me it would be, but I had to know for sure. Nyman owned a whole bunch of random plots of land in the area, but they’re all just random empty lots that are so far out of town they’d be kind of useless for most things.”

  Charlotte looked at the list.

  “Wait though,” she said. “This plot here. 184 Rural Road 92. That’s right by where that stupid resort is being built, right?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s weird that a guy gets killed right when the project gets approval?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No, that makes no difference. The Ocean Mist people have owned the land they want for their resort for like, five years or something now. If they wanted Nyman’s land, they would have bought it off him already.”

  “I know, Sophie. What you’re saying makes sense. But I think that this just can’t be a coincidence. Like, seriously, what are the odds of a guy who owns land adjacent to the new resort being murdered just after they get approval?”

  I put my head in my hand thoughtfully as I looked out over the water.

  “I mean, to me it doesn’t make sense, because what kind of company murders someone over a plot of land? Like, you don’t see Mr. Toyota going around hiring someone to kill Elon Musk because Tesla cars have become popular.”

  “I don’t think there actually is a Mr. Toyota,” Charlotte piped up unhelpfully, and I glared at her.

  “Yes, thank you, I really thought Toyota was headed up by a guy called Mr. Toyota, and didn’t just use the name as a stand-in because I don’t know the name of the CEO,” I shot back. Charlotte just shrugged.

  “Just in case. You never know what you believe.”

  I glared at her while Sophie acted as the voice of reason for once.

  “Ladies, ladies,” she said, holding up her hands. “We’re not here to fight each other, we’re here to fight a criminal.”

  “Well for what it’s worth, I think my point was a good one.”

  “I actually agree with Angie for once,” Sophie replied. “Big companies don’t hire hit men. They just don’t.”

  “But do you dismiss out of hand my theory that they have to be linked?” Charlotte asked, crossing her arms.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t think that should be ignored. Not at all. But I think maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong angle in thinking Ocean Mist is behind everything. I think maybe if Nyman was killed because of something to do with the resort it must have been someone else who did it, for some reason.”

  “Oh my God,” Sophie said, putting her head in her hands. “This is just getting way too confusing. We have so many different ways to go with this.”

  “We really do,” Charlotte said, listing them off on her fingers. “There’s the property near Ocean Mist that may have something to do with it, but we’re not sure what. Then there are those sketchy looking men from the funeral that we asked Chief Gary to look into. We still don’t know what’s up with them.”

  “Then there’s Jason Black. He keeps saying he has nothing to do with the murder, but I definitely do not trust him at all. He’s involved in this somehow,” I said, tearing off a chunk of garlic naan and shoving it into my mouth inelegantly.

  “Exactly,” Charlotte finished. We have three different ways to go here. It would be so much easier if there was only one thing in Tony Nyman’s life which was weird enough to be worth pursuing. I can’t believe a guy who at first glance seemed to be so boring that we wouldn’t find anything worth looking at him over ended up having a life which involved so many motives for murder.”

  Sophie swallowed a bite of her chicken, took a sip of iced tea – her favourite drink – and then spoke.

  “I personally think it’s something to do with the guys from the funeral. They were just so damn… weird. They were sketchy. Like, they didn’t belong here, but they obviously knew who Nyman was. Like who shows up randomly to a funeral in a place they don’t belong to a guy they have no link with? They had to have something to do with this.”

  Sophie had a point. “How long do you think we should give Chief Gary to look them up before we go over there and ask him about them?” I asked.

  “I think we should go tomorrow,” she replied, and I shook my head.

  “That’s way too fast. He already thinks we’re looking into this case when we shouldn’t be, so if we start having to ask him multiple times about the guys whose photos we gave him, it’s going to look pretty suspicious.”

  “I agree with Angela. Besides, I don’t think it has anything to do with those men at all. We hadn’t seen them before the funeral, and we haven’t seen them since. Who knows, maybe he had some weird friends from somewhere else that he didn’t tell us about. After all, it’s not like he was especially popular in Willow Bay.”

  “So what do you think, Charlotte?” I asked her. “Which of the three theories do you think we should be following?”

  “I think the property records and the resort has the most promise. I just think it’s way too much of a coincidence. I think Jason Black would have gotten out of town if he’d done it.”

  I chewed on my biryani as I thought about what Charlotte and Sophie just said.

  “How about you Angie?” Sophie asked. “You’re the tiebreaker right now. And we both know you think the same way I do,” she added. I smiled at my best friend.

  “Normally that’s true,” I told her. “But honestly, I have absolutely no idea about this. What I do know is that Jason Black does have something to do with this. He just has to. Even if he didn’t commit the murder, I bet he’s involved somehow. I don’t know more than that. But I’m pretty certain about it.”

  “Great. So we’re three people, and we all have three different opinions about where to go from here,” Sophie said as she finished off her food, put down the container and stretched out her legs.

  “The three of us can’t agree on anything. I’m shocked,” I added, rolling my eyes. It was a total miracle that we got along as well as we did sometimes. We never agreed on anything more complicated than what to order for dinner. And even then, when Indian food is an option, it’s not hard to come to an agreement on things!

  I finished off the rest of my rice, leaning back as I let my mouth feel the heat from the slightly spicy food. Everything about the day had been overwhelming. Driving out to Wawnee, getting the disappointing information, having to say goodbye to Skittles as she went back home with her five healthy kittens, then going through with Charlotte and Sophie and finding out that the three of us all disagreed about the motive most likely to have been the reason for Tony Nyman’s death.

  I knew I complained about it a lot, but damn, why did this murder have to be so hard to solve?

  “I’m going to walk home, I think, you guys,” I told Charlotte and Sophie after a few minutes. “I think I need some more fresh air to clear my head. Plus, you know, I don’t like being seen in public with you guys,” I t
eased.

  “Likewise,” Sophie replied, sticking her tongue out at me. “Do you want me to pick up Bee from the clinic when we head back?”

  I nodded. We’d left Bee at the vet clinic while we grabbed dinner. A couple of years ago, just after I got Bee, I’d taken her to the beach to enjoy the sand. It was a hot day, and she did in fact love lying down in it, especially when it was hot. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that Bee didn’t understand the concept of tides, and when her warm, relaxing nap in the sun was interrupted by a giant ocean wave overtaking her, well, that was the end of Bee’s visits to the beach, even though I insisted that we could always go when the water wasn’t going to rise, or “try and kill me”, as Bee always put it.

  Despite my insistence that the beach is fine, Bee has never stepped on it since. So when I told her Sophie and I were going there this afternoon, she opted to continue her nap in her bed at the vet office instead.

  “Ok. Will do. Text us if you get into any trouble.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Trouble central,” I replied, laughing as I got up and stretched my legs. The bungalow was about a thirty minute walk from where we were, at a leisurely pace. I could definitely use the time to clear my head just a little bit.

  Chapter 17

  It was just after six, and the sun was starting to make its way towards the horizon. I liked this part of the day, but it was starting to get a little bit cool as I walked back home. There was a shortcut, where you could cut through parts of the forest and go along a pretty rural dirt road to make it back to our place about five minutes faster than going through town, but I liked the look of Willow Bay at night, and went the long way.

  The lights in the few shops that were still open flowed onto the street, giving the main road a nice, homey look to it. I couldn’t help but wonder if this feeling was going to stay once Ocean Mist made their resort. A couple walked down the street, hand in hand, the warm glow of the streetlights turning them into silhouettes. I could see Betty closing up shop, and I waved at her from the other side of the street. She waved back happily then walked towards her house, which was only a couple blocks away from the shop.