Busy as a Beaver

by Samantha Silver

  Gloria waved a hand away. “Oh, I’m not calling my kids over to stay with me like some scared old woman. I’m sure whoever it was got the fright of his life thanks to Buster, and he won’t be back.”

  “Well, good, that’s the right attitude,” Karen said with a smile.

  “Is there anything you can think of that might have slipped your mind yesterday?” I asked Gloria quietly a couple of moments later. “Anything that might help give me an idea who did this to you?”

  Gloria shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not, Angela. I thought about it for quite a while yesterday after you left. I’m afraid you know everything I do.”

  Slightly disappointed, I suddenly saw Bee and Buster making their way back towards the vet clinic. To my immense relief, Buster was still only using three paws, limping slightly but managing. I was glad; he seemed to understand the importance of staying off the one with the broken ulna.

  Five minutes later Gloria and Buster had been reunited, Bee was sulking at the front now that her best friend had gone home, and I was in the back with Sophie as our next patient got settled in one of the exam rooms.

  “So no new info, hey?” Sophie asked disappointedly.

  “Nope,” I replied. “Honestly, I just don’t know what to do. It kind of feels like we’ve run out of leads before we even started.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sophie agreed. “I just don’t know what we should do next.”

  I sighed. Maybe we had bitten off more than we could chew this time around.

  Jason texted me just after our last patient for the day went home.

  Have you heard about the shooting in Portland?

  My eyebrows rose when I read it, and my heart jumped in my chest. I hoped whatever it was that no one had gotten hurt. No. What happened?

  Another home invasion, a couple hours ago. Only this time, the homeowner didn’t make it out alive.

  Send me the address.

  Two home invasions in broad daylight in two days? There was no way that could be a coincidence.

  “We’re going on a road trip,” I announced to Sophie when I made my way back into the room. “There’s been another home invasion, in Portland this time, and this person didn’t have a cat to save them.”

  “I’ll grab my jacket,” Sophie instantly replied. We grabbed Bee and took her home, despite her protests that she wanted to come along with us, and headed off.

  As I drove down the highway towards Portland, Sophie had her phone out and was checking news sites like crazy.

  “There’s no real information here,” she said. “Only that there was a shooting at a home in Mt. Tabor in the middle of the day.”

  “Well, hopefully Jason will have more for us,” I said. “He’s going to meet us there.”

  The address Jason had sent me was in Mt. Tabor, a pretty decent neighborhood on the east side of Portland. Winding my way through narrow residential streets, past houses that looked to have been built mainly in the fifties and sixties, I knew I was coming up to the right place when I reached the crowds of people huddled around yellow police tape.

  There had to be about fifty locals all coming to have a look. Whether they were out walking the dog or had heard from nosy neighbors that disaster had struck here, they were pressed up against yellow crime scene tape while an officer held everyone back.

  I managed to find a parking spot a couple of blocks away, and Sophie and I made our way towards the crime scene. I texted Jason to let him know we were coming, and as soon as he saw us he motioned for us to join him.

  Jason had moved off to the far side of the house, a ways away from the crowd but still within sight of the crime scene.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I looked at the house and shivered. It wasn’t just the fact that the sun had almost completely set, bringing an extra chill down on the town. It was that I knew all too well this was how Gloria’s home invasion could have gone, and I wondered who the poor soul who hadn’t been so lucky was.

  The crime scene was a bungalow that fit in with the rest of the homes on the street: low-rising, surrounded by shrubs, painted a rather ugly shade of green that looked like it needed a fresh coat fifteen years ago.

  “They’ve just removed the body and taken it to the morgue about ten minutes ago,” Jason said. “The shooting took place a couple of hours ago, at two in the afternoon. I spoke to some neighbors who heard the shots and called 9-1-1, but it was too late.”

  “Do you know who it was?” Sophie asked.

  “I have a name. Michael Carlton. He was retired; worked as an accountant for the school board downtown until about five years ago when he took his pension. Never married, no kids.”

  “Another retiree, another middle-of-the-day home invasion,” I muttered. “That can’t be a coincidence. Maybe in New York, but not here.”

  “Hey, even in New York that would be considered pretty out of the ordinary,” Jason said, defending his hometown. “But I agree, and that’s why I texted you. I think there’s got to be a link between that invasion and this one, and I think they were both almost certainly committed by the same person.”

  “Going from Willow Bay to northeastern Portland is a pretty long commute, don’t you think?” Sophie pointed out. “If you just wanted to do a smash-and-grab robbery, there have to be what, ten thousand homes between the two? What made the culprit decide to go from one place to the other?”

  “That’s a good point,” I mused. Unfortunately, this case seemed to be all about more and more questions and fewer and fewer answers. I had absolutely no idea what the culprit’s reasoning could have been.

  “Was there a link between Gloria and this Michael Carlton?” I asked Jason. “Did you find out anything?”

  “Not as far as I can tell,” Jason said, shaking his head. “We should ask her when we get back to Willow Bay.”

  As I looked towards the house, I suddenly saw a large, familiar figure come into view, his face lit up by the red and blue lights of one of the police cruisers.

  “It looks like we’re not the only ones to have made this connection,” I said, motioning to Chief Gary, who made his way straight towards one of the uniformed officers on the other side of the police cordon.

  “Great,” Sophie said, ducking behind Jason slightly. “We’re definitely going to get yelled at if he sees us here.”

  “Let’s go back to the car and decide what to do next,” Jason suggested. “It’s getting cold out, and I haven’t seen anything in the last hour that could help us out.”

  Chapter 7

  Eventually, the three of us decided that it wasn’t worth trying to use my magic to get inside the house—with the whole place swimming with cops, the risk of accidentally running into one of them while trying to find some evidence just wasn’t worth it. Jason went back to his car, and I drove Sophie and myself back to Willow Bay, where we decided to stop by Gloria’s place to make sure she was doing alright, but also to ask about Michael Carlton.

  “Come in, come in,” Gloria greeted us as soon as she opened the door. “Please. I apologize about the mess. I’m afraid the police left a whole bunch of fingerprint powder everywhere. Just when I think I’ve finally managed to clean it all up, I find some more somewhere.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said as we stepped inside. Buster came padding over, carefully walking on three paws.

  “Have you found out who did it yet?” he asked.

  “We don’t know who came here yesterday,” I said to Gloria, answering Buster’s question in the meantime. “However, we think there may be a link to your home invasion and one that happened in Portland earlier today.”

  “Really?” Gloria asked. “Please, sit. Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  “No, we’re good, thanks,” Sophie replied. “Do you know a man named Michael Carlton?”

  Gloria’s brow furrowed. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Maybe he was someone you knew back in Portland?” I offered.

  “I don’t think
so,” Gloria said slowly. “It really doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

  I frowned. There had to be a link of some sort between the two. There just had to be.

  “He was an accountant, does that help?”

  “Not really,” Gloria replied. “I always did my own taxes, and Francis’ as well. They weren’t especially complicated, since we were both teachers. We didn’t know any accountants.”

  “Alright,” Sophie nodded, and the two of us made our way towards the door. “Well, we’ll keep you updated on anything we discover. Thanks, Gloria. Take care of yourself, and of Buster.”

  “Thank you, ladies. Same to you,” Gloria said as we left. I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my jacket as we made our way to the car.

  “There has to be a link, right?” I asked Sophie. “I was sure she was going to tell us she knew Michael Carlton.”

  “Absolutely,” Sophie said. “I mean, you saw Chief Gary there just as well as I did. We’re obviously not the only ones who think there was something going on.”

  When we reached the car, there was a bit of an animal ruckus. I thought it was a couple of raccoons for a moment, until I got a better look at who was out there.

  “Are those…” Sophie started, and I nodded.

  “Beavers? Yup.”

  “You,” one of the beavers said, a dark brown one who going by his size was probably male. “You’re the human we can talk to, right?” He spoke with a bit of a lisp, probably due to his oversized front teeth. There were five beavers in all—I assumed a mother, a father, two of the previous years’ litters and a newborn.

  “That’s right,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”

  “Someone has been messing with our lodge, and we want you to find out who it is.”

  “Alright, where is your dam?”

  “We can’t tell you. You’ll destroy it,” one of the other beavers piped up.

  “Well, I can’t help you if I don’t know where you live,” I replied. “Besides, if you want my help, I need to go and see it, so that I can tell you what caused it.”

  “I can tell you what caused it. It was one of you lot,” one of the other beavers said. “Saw him with my own eyes.”

  “It’s too bad your eyesight is awful, Naba,” one of the other beavers said. Great. Beavers had pretty bad eyesight as it was; a beaver with bad eyesight was basically what I would consider blind.

  “Oh, shut up, Lolo. You wouldn’t know a human if it swam straight into your den.”

  “Hey, I knew how to find this one, didn’t I?”

  “Can it, both of you,” the first beaver ordered. “Fine. We don’t like to give away the location of our lodges, but since you need it, seemingly for good reason, and because you come highly recommended from the local animal life, we will give you that information.”

  “Alright, where is it?” I asked.

  “Do you know the creek that runs parallel to the coast?” the beaver asked. “We call it the stream of the sea, as it leads to the ocean, but not until it reaches the large park you humans use.”

  “Oh, yeah, Ripple Creek.” I nodded. “I know it.”

  “If you go upstream from your human park around four hundred feet, you will find our lodge,” the beaver said. “It is our territory. There are no other lodges in that part of the creek.”

  “Ok,” I told him. “I’ll do my best to leave no trace so no one else knows that your lodge is there.”

  “Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?” one of the younger beavers said.

  “Can I come by tomorrow during the day?”

  “I suppose. We do prefer nighttime, but if it must be daylight, then so be it.”

  “Unfortunately, being human, my eyesight is my best sense,” I explained to them. “I see best during the day, so I’ll try and come in the late afternoon, but it will be daytime.”

  “I thought that might be the case, seeing as the other human came during the day,” the beaver named Lolo said. “At least one of us will be awake then.”

  “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I told the beavers. As Sophie and I got into the car, she raised her eyebrows.

  “Trouble in Beaverland?”

  “Apparently, someone found their lodge and messed with it,” I explained.

  “Oh, that’s not nice,” Sophie said. She frowned. “Who would do something like that?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Teenagers looking to make trouble? Someone who liked having more water cross their property before the beavers built their dam? Honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find out who did it. But I’ll go over and have a look for them all the same. I hate it when people destroy nature. Beavers are majestic, and they worked hard to build that lodge. It’s not fair for someone to come over and destroy it.”

  “Agreed,” Sophie nodded. “No one comes over and destroys our homes for no reason. We shouldn’t do it to animals, either.”

  “And speaking of, I think we need to look into Michael Carlton’s life as much as possible.”

  “Right. Should I come over to your place? After all, Jason will be there, and maybe he’s got some information as well.”

  The two of us hopped into the car and headed home—making a pit stop for pizza on the way.

  “Well, this just made my night of investigation a lot more palatable,” Jason grinned as Sophie and I walked in.

  “Awwww, look how sweet he is,” Sophie said, but Jason shook his head.

  “I meant the pizza.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him as I placed the boxes on the kitchen counter and got out some plates. Charlotte came in from the next room at the aroma.

  “It smelled way better than when you usually come home,” she said, and I pretended to be hurt.

  “Does no one appreciate my presence here anymore?” I said, faking an overly dramatic pout.

  “I appreciate you, because you’re the greatest human known to man, and you take such good care of your perfect and obedient cat,” Bee said, rubbing herself against my legs.

  “You’ve overdone it,” I said to her. “Now I know you’re just trying to get some pizza yourself.”

  “I knew calling you the greatest human known to man was just too unrealistic,” Bee muttered. “Can I at least get a slice for trying?”

  “You can have a small piece,” I said with a stern look, and the contented look that appeared on my cat’s face let me know just how pleased she was with that decision. I made my way to the small dining table, on which sat Jason’s iPad.

  “I wanted to look up Michael Carlton,” I said, pressing the home button.

  “Oh, yeah, let me just look something up first real quick,” Jason said, grabbing the iPad out of my hand. That was definitely weird; he never seemed to care if I used his tablet without asking in the past.

  He tapped away at a few things for a moment, then handed it back to me. “Sorry, I’m waiting on an important email from my boss about whether or not we’re running with the angle that there might be a link between Gloria and Michael Carlton.”

  I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just use his phone for that, but what did I know?

  What I did notice was that when I opened Facebook, Jason’s account—which he kept perpetually logged in because he constantly forgot his password—was logged out.

  I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help worrying slightly as I logged into my own account to do the search for Michael.

  “Why couldn’t our murder victim have a less common name?” I muttered as I did the search, Sophie poking her head over my shoulder as she took a huge bite of pizza and placed two slices of veggie supreme on a plate in front of me.

  “I vaguely know what he looks like,” Jason said, coming over. “I got a picture of him from an old, un-updated page on the city’s website. That’s him, there.”

  I clicked on the name, the profile picture a man with graying hair but a friendly face and mischievous eyes. He looked a lot like a kindly grandfather, but the kind who
would get you candy and take you on adventures so long as you promised not to tell your parents about it.

  “He doesn’t seem to have much on his personal profile,” Sophie pointed out. “He mainly shares memes and stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said, disappointed. “That’s too bad. I was hoping there would be more here to help us.”

  “Did you two see Gloria and ask if she knew him?” Jason asked, and I nodded.

  “We asked, but she didn’t know the name.”

  “That’s too bad,” Jason mused. “You don’t think she’s lying about it, do you?”

  “What reason could she possibly have for that?” Sophie asked. “No, I felt like she was telling the truth.”

  “Well, you never know. It certainly sounds like something happened in here that links Michael Carlton to Gloria. We just need to find out what.”

  “Maybe it has to do with their old jobs,” I said. “After all, Gloria worked as a teacher, and Michael was an accountant for the school board, right?”

  “That could be it,” Jason mused. “I was going to spend tomorrow in Portland anyway. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Or you could, you know, let the police deal with it, seeing as now both the Willow Bay police and the Portland police are involved,” Charlotte suggested as she took a big bite of pizza.

  “Absolutely no chance,” Sophie said. “This case gets more interesting by the day.”

  I really hoped it wasn’t going to get any more interesting. One woman in the hospital and a man murdered was more than enough excitement for my liking.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, I popped by Betty’s café once more.

  “Do you know a Michael Carlton?” I asked when I got to the counter, and Betty gave me a knowing look.

  “That wouldn’t happen to be the name of the man who was killed up in the city yesterday, would it?”

  “Ah, so the rumor mill has already made its way through here, has it?” I laughed.

  “To answer your question, though, no, I don’t know him.”

  “I can’t find a link between him and Gloria. But there has to be one.”