Lipstick on a Pig (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 4)

by Samantha Silver

  “Sorry about that,” I said when we finally stopped running, having reached the street Jason lived on a few blocks away from the beach. He lived in his father’s old house, a quaint little thing perfect for a single guy, or a couple. Not that I was thinking about moving in with Jason. Not yet, at least.

  Jason grinned at me. “You’re so not cut out to be a spy,” he replied.

  “Please, I’ve helped solve three murders so far.”

  “Yeah, how on earth you actually managed to do it without getting caught is beyond me.” Ok, well maybe I had a little bit of help from the supernatural. But Jason didn’t need to know that.

  “Maybe I’m just a lot better at investigating than you think I am,” I retorted.

  “Maybe, but if it wasn’t for me, we would have totally gotten caught back there,” he replied, coming closer to me. My breathing was heavy, I could practically feel Jason’s body only inches from mine. The tension between us was palpable, when suddenly Jason leaned in and kissed me again. I surrendered to the kiss as Jason suddenly grabbed my legs and picked me up. My legs wrapped instinctively around his waist as he carried me into his house, where we went straight to the bedroom.

  Chapter 12

  An hour later Jason and I were lying in the bed together, with me nestled into the crook of his arm. He pulled out his phone and opened up the web browser, typing in Jonathan Cork’s name.

  “There’s nothing quite as sexy as a man opening up his phone browser after a nice romp in the sack,” I teased, putting a hand on his rock hard chest.

  “Hey, the first forty-eight hours of a murder investigation are the most important,” Jason replied with a wink. The first few results were what you’d normally expect from a high powered lawyer—the website for Forrester, Forrester and Cork, a LinkedIn account, links to a number of law organizations and a few charities that Smith was on the board of.

  Jason frowned. “There’s nothing here about Cork even having worked in Chicago.”

  “Why don’t you search for his name, then add ‘murder’ to the end of the results?” I suggested.

  “Good plan,” Jason replied, doing just that. The first few results were once again his LinkedIn profile, and a few other charity sites. “Something about this seems weird,” Jason said as he continued to scroll down. “It’s like someone has put a lot of effort into making sure all the search results for Jonathan Cork are completely sanitized. I bet it was that Gary Forrester guy, Lester’s brother.”

  “Yeah, I bet he’s done a lot of work to make sure nothing scandalous comes up,” I replied. “There!” I said suddenly, pointing to an article in the Chicago Tribune from nine years earlier.

  Promising Young Lawyer Murdered in Her Lake View Home

  Jason clicked on the link, which opened up a new page. Under the headline was a headshot of a blonde woman, probably in her early thirties. Her blue eyes sparkled with life, even in the context of the boring corporate headshot, and her smile looked completely genuine and unforced. She was really quite pretty.

  Jason scrolled down as the two of us began reading.

  “The body of a young woman was found in her Lake View apartment early Tuesday morning. Police have identified Laura Kasic, a twenty-nine year old lawyer, as the victim. Police were called after the victim didn’t show up to work for two days in a row. At this time, the police are treating this death as a homicide.

  “Kasic was an up and coming lawyer at the local personal injury firm of Forrester, Forrester and Cork, who, according to her coworkers, had a great future in the profession ahead of her.

  “Laura was a wonderful human being,” according to paralegal Maisie Long. “She was so smart. She graduated from Harvard Law Summa Cum Laude, and everyone knew she was going to go places. And she was the nicest person you’d ever meet. She was always taking on pro-bono cases, always working. She really wanted to make the world a better place.”

  “Well, it seems Jonathan Cork certainly has a type,” I said wryly, looking at the picture of Laura Kasic and her long, bleached-blonde hair.

  “I wonder what Cork’s alibi was,” Jason said slowly, as he Googled Laura Kasic’s name, clicking on more links from various news sites.

  “You’re thinking he killed her and Jessica Oliver?” I asked, suddenly sitting up.

  “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? These two women were sleeping with the guy and they both turn up dead? That’s a pattern.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, still somewhat unconvinced. “It could just be a coincidence.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least try to find out?” Jason asked, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, for sure. After all, no matter what, I think Jonathan Smith is definitely our prime suspect now.”

  “You’re definitely right there.”

  On a whim, I grabbed my phone and searched the name of the firm—Forrester, Forrester and Cork—myself. After all, I wondered if there were any more literal skeletons in the firm’s closet, and my instincts were telling me there was more to find out.

  The first ten pages or so of search results yielded nothing interesting whatsoever. My eyes began to glaze over as I read webpage title after title listing the firm in a directory after directory of personal injury lawyers. Maybe my hunch was wrong, but I had a feeling. And as a witch, when I had a feeling, it usually meant something. So I forced myself to continue wading through the pages of tedium, thinking to myself that maybe the internet was finally getting too big.

  Suddenly, I stopped. There was an article, sticking out among all the others. It wasn’t immediately obvious that there was any connection to the firm, but I clicked on the link all the same. It was a link to a Facebook profile, belonging to someone called Tina Port. She looked to be a lady in her early senior years, who enjoyed cooking and sharing videos about animal rights, as well as cat gifs. I scrolled through her post history, laughing at the cat gifs—I knew this was important, but so are cats doing funny things—until finally I got back to the post that Google would have flagged.

  Please help me find my daughter.

  It was a photo post, and I clicked on the photo to read the accompanying text. The picture showed a happy, smiling blonde woman eating a slice of pie from, where else, Betty’s Café right here in Willow Bay. I scrolled down to read the text.

  Please help me find my daughter. Ella Port has been missing for two weeks now. She went out with friends on Saturday, March fifteenth and never came home. Her friends say she wanted to walk home, and one of them insisted on going with her. She left her one block from her apartment, but Ella never made it that one block.

  Ella is five foot six inches tall and has a slim figure. It’s not like her to disappear like this. She has a good job, a ton of friends and family who love her, and we’re all incredibly worried. We just want Ella to come back home safely. Please, if you have any information, please get in touch with either myself or the Portland Police department. I just want my baby back home.

  I frowned slightly as I got to the bottom of the text, then saw the post had over five hundred likes, and a couple hundred shares. It seemed a lot of people wanted Ella Port to come home. I frowned as it suddenly came back to me. I’d just come back to Willow Bay at the time, and I was just getting started on my vet business so I had exactly zero time to focus on the news, but the name was starting to sound familiar to me. I checked the time stamp on the post and sure enough, March of 2014 fit. I actually remembered when Ella Port’s disappearance happened.

  I scrolled back down to the bottom of the post and clicked on the comments. Most were simply people expressing their love for Tina and Ella and hoping that the woman would find her daughter, but a few offered advice and suggestions. And then, the twenty-seventh comment there made the fifteen minutes I’d spent scrolling through all of this worth it.

  “I know Ella will forgive me for telling you this, but she was actually suing her old boss. He was sexually harassing her and he fired her when she went to HR. She didn’t want you to know. Her attorney
is Annie Pelchuk at Forrester, Forrester and Cork.”

  I tapped Jason on the arm hurriedly.

  “Ow! What?” he asked, looking over at me. I handed him my phone wordlessly, and he read the comment, then went back to the picture.

  “Did they ever find Ella Port?” he asked finally. I shook my head.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, we can look it up, of course, but I remember her disappearance, even if it’s only vaguely. I would definitely remember hearing if she was ever found. This was huge news in the Portland area for a while. Pretty blonde woman disappears without a trace? The media was all over that.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Ok. So now we have three people who are either dead or missing, who all had a connection to that law firm.”

  “Who were all sleeping with Jonathan Smith!” I replied.

  “Well, we don’t know that for sure.”

  “Come on, look at her. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption to make.”

  “He wasn’t even her lawyer!”

  “So? Doesn’t mean they didn’t run into each other in the hallway and end up being together.”

  “I know when I run into pretty people I just immediately have sex with them,” Jason deadpanned, and I punched him lightly on the arm.

  “You know what I mean,” I replied. “They could have started talking in the elevator, that sort of thing.”

  “I do know what you mean, I’m just teasing you because you just get so cute when you’re angry,” Jason laughed. “You make this cute little face, like an angry squirrel. Yeah, that one!” he exclaimed as I sneered at him.

  I flipped him off as I jumped out of bed and went to grab my clothes. “We have to tell Sophie and Charlotte. I think we may have just found a serial killer!”

  * * *

  Half an hour later we were sitting in our living room. Taylor’s shift at the police station was about to start, so he’d gone home to get changed. Sophie opened a bag of white cheddar popcorn and poured it into a bowl for us while Jason and I explained everything we’d found.

  When we got to the end of the story, Sophie had a handful of popcorn stopped halfway to her mouth.

  “That’s insane,” she finally muttered. “A serial killer?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “A lot of this is conjecture. Besides, didn’t that Gary guy say that the police in Chicago found out that Jonathan Cork had an alibi?”

  “Yeah, but how good was his alibi? Haven’t you watched any CSI shows, ever? It’s super easy to fake an alibi. What if he just got a friend to lie for him, or something?” I retorted.

  “Sure, but I just think maybe we’re jumping to conclusions here.”

  “I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas,” Sophie said. “I’m fully on team serial killer.”

  “Uhhh, you might want to rephrase that,” I teased.

  “Don’t mock me, I’m on your side for once,” Sophie replied.

  “Ok, ok, enough fighting for now,” Jason said. “We have to decide what we’re going to do.”

  “Murder Jonathan Cork and hide the body!” Sophie exclaimed.

  “Nope, we’re not doing that,” Jason replied. “Angie, what’s your take?”

  “I think we should tell Chief Gary,” I said slowly. “After all, it’s his murder investigation. And besides, he’ll know what to do. If Jonathan Cork really is a serial killer, he’s already killed at least two, and probably three people. I think this is probably something we should leave to the police.”

  “When did you become such a baby?” Sophie replied. I opened my mouth to reply, but Charlotte got there first.

  “If by ‘baby’ you mean responsible adult who doesn’t want to get us all killed, sure. I’m with Angela. I think we need to go to the police with this.”

  I groaned. “Great. I hate agreeing with you, you’re such a goody two shoes. It always makes me feel like I’m being the teacher’s pet or something.”

  Sophie laughed. “Well if we can’t murder him, I think we should at least confront him. Maybe if we go to see him we’ll either find out that he does have a good alibi, or we’ll shock him into confessing, or something. Can’t we record the conversation or something? If he admits to us what he did, then we can give that to Chief Gary.”

  Jason nodded. “I agree with Sophie. Oregon is a one party consent state, meaning we can record the conversation without him knowing about it.”

  “Oh, you just want the tape so you can have a scoop for your paper,” I muttered, irritated that Jason didn’t take my side on this. Feeling my annoyance, he reached over and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Don’t worry, Angie. I still think you’re awesome, I just think you’re wrong about what we should do. Besides, why don’t we just give this a shot? If it doesn’t work, we go to Chief Gary.”

  “And in the meantime, Jonathan Cork has time to dig graves for all four of us,” Charlotte muttered.

  “Well, it’s two against two,” Sophie said. “So I guess the only way to decide what we’re going to do is with a game of rock, paper, scissors.”

  “I guess in this group, reasonable discussion among adults before coming to a mutually beneficial conclusion is definitely out,” Charlotte muttered.

  “Reasonable discussion is overrated,” Sophie said. “Now come on, which one of you is going to battle me so we can decide what we’re going to do?”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. Charlotte looked like she’d rather stab someone than play rock, paper, scissors to determine how we were going deal with a potential serial killer.

  “Hey, why don’t I get to play?” Jason complained jokingly.

  “Because I am way better at this game than you,” Sophie replied.

  “How do you know that?”

  “You didn’t grow up in this family.”

  “I guess that’s fair,” Jason conceded, leaning back on the couch to watch the battle.

  I stared down Sophie, giving her the most threatening look I could muster. We’d been battling over everything by playing rock, paper, scissors since we were five years old. This wasn’t new territory for us.

  Sophie matched my gaze, her eyes steady. We didn’t even look at each other’s hands as Sophie began the incantation.

  “Rock, paper, scissors,” she said, as I took my clenched fist and opened it flat, making a sheet of paper. I looked down and my heart sunk as I saw Sophie’s scissors.

  “Scissors cut paper!” she cried triumphantly. Damn. Sophie almost always went with rock in the first round.

  “Best two out of three?” I tried desperately, but I knew it was hopeless.

  “Absolutely not. That’s it. Jason and I win.”

  I muttered angrily under my breath about Sophie cheating, but I knew that I’d been beaten fair and square. What? It didn’t mean I had to be a good loser.

  “So it’s settled. We’re going to confront Jonathan Cork,” Jason announced. “Are you going to come, Charlotte?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “Do you really think I’m going to trust the three of you to do this alone? One of us has to be a responsible adult in case things get out of hand.”

  I rolled my eyes at my sister: she might have been right, despite being the youngest of the three of us, but that didn’t mean her haughty superiority couldn’t be annoying sometimes.

  Regardless of what I wanted, however, it was all settled. We were going to go confront Jonathan Cork, a probable serial killer.

  Chapter 13

  We agreed to meet Charlotte in Portland after her classes ended the next day, and catch Jonathan Cork as he was leaving work. After all, Sophie reasoned, after a long hard day of work he might be mentally taxed and ready to tell us anything. I wasn’t so sure a highly-paid lawyer was going to break so easily, but I supposed there was no way to know until we tried, right?

  That was how we found ourselves parked in the law firm’s parking lot, sitting in the back of Sophie’s car, watching the front door to Forrester, Forrester and Cork lik
e a handful of hawks. All of a sudden, we saw the form of Jonathan Cork coming out, and heading toward us. This was our chance.

  “How do we know he’s not going to call out for help?” Sophie asked suddenly, looking at us worriedly.

  “If he’s a serial killer he’s probably not going to be scared of us, he’ll just follow us and come slit our throats while we’re sleeping,” I replied.

  “Great, that’s a really helpful visual, thanks Angie,” Sophie replied, and I shrugged.

  “You asked the question.”

  “Shut up guys, he’s coming this way. Let’s go,” Charlotte said, but I noticed that while the three of us got out of the car straight away, she stayed in it for a minute longer. I paused and looked at her questioningly, and she raised her index finger in reply. I knew what that meant; Charlotte wanted to try a spell. Unfortunately in order to use our magical abilities, Jason being around meant we had to be a little bit more subtle about it than usual. Well, that and the fact that we were in downtown Portland, with tons of people around.

  I got out of the car and followed Sophie and Jason, who waited until Jonathan Cork was at his car before greeting him.

  “Mr. Cork,” Jason called out, and the man looked up in surprise.

  “Do I know you?” he asked in reply, a little bit cautious.

  “No, you don’t. I’m Jason Black, a journalist with the Willow Bay Whistler.”

  “Oh?” Jonathan Cork replied. He seemed like he half just wanted to get into his car and walk off, and half wanted to know what Jason was going to ask him about.

  “I understand that Jessica Oliver worked for you,” Jason continued. I had to admit, I was impressed. By starting off with such a simple and innocent question, he had taken Jonathan Cork off his guard completely. The man relaxed visibly; I wondered what else he was hiding that made him tense up at a journalist’s name.