I had to admit, the quality of the video, even at night, was extremely good. The man in the shop had sold me that model specifically because I asked for something that would work well at night, and he had delivered. Apparently, this camera shot at a higher ISO than most, and it showed. While it wasn’t high-def or anything like that, even in the pitch black I could make out the outline of what was very obviously a beaver waddling around on the land near the lodge.
Afterwards, I began to browse Pinterest, looking for gift ideas to order or make for Charlotte to take with her to San Francisco. I knew I still had a few months, but I wanted to make sure that she had something really special from me. After all, I was her sister. I needed Charlotte to know that no matter what, she was in my heart, and that if she ever needed anything, she could always call.
Jason returned home a few hours later, and I heard Charlotte giving him the news in the kitchen as well. I smiled as he congratulated her. He came over with a bowl full of pasta and sat down on the couch next to me.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m ok,” I said with a smile. “Is the emergency all solved?”
“It certainly is. There was an issue with one of the drivers that the computer through which the printing was done used, but I managed to find an update and apply it. So we’re all good.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to reading your article about the break-in at Gloria’s.”
Jason shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s definitely very far from my best work. I just wish we had more to go on. But none of that is important compared to the news I’m sure you just heard from Charlotte as well. How are you holding up?”
I smiled. “I’m thrilled for her. I mean, of course I’d be really happy if she decided to stay in Willow Bay, or the Portland area. But at the same time, I’m also so excited for her to see more of the world. Oregon is just one small corner of it, and I think getting out there and exploring a little bit more is going to be a great thing for her.”
“At least it’s only a few hours away by car, too.”
“Exactly! Plus, I’ve always wanted to go see the Golden Gate Bridge, and now I have the perfect excuse.”
Jason wrapped his arm around me. “I’m glad you’re happy for her.”
“And I bet you’re glad that we’re finally going to get this house to ourselves,” I teased, poking him in the stomach.
Jason laughed. “I like having Charlotte around here. This way, whenever I’m sick and you take me to go to the doctor, I can just ask your sister what’s wrong with me and she always tells me. Now I’m going to have to actually leave the house whenever I have medical issues.”
This time it was my turn to laugh. Things were definitely changing, but I knew that in the long term it was going to be for the better.
I woke up early the next morning to find Bee insisting that she get to come to the vet clinic that day. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about that; Bee often enjoyed spending her days lying down in her bed on top of the counter, making snarky remarks at or about the clientele. Besides, Buster often came in to spend time with her as well, and I had a sneaking suspicion that as she began to heal Gloria might try bringing him by a few times simply to get a little bit of a break. That was completely fine by me; whatever I could do to help her healing process, I would.
Bee trotted after me towards the car and hopped in, and five minutes later we made our way through the back entrance of the vet clinic. Sophie was already there, drinking a coffee and motioning to an extra take-out cup waiting for me on the counter.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I told her as I took a deep sip of the caramel latte. Yeah, as good as the café we had gone to yesterday in Portland was, there was still nothing quite like a good morning coffee from Betty’s.
“How do we solve a murder when we have exactly zero suspects?” I asked Sophie at the end of the day as we began packing up our things.
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “Find a suspect?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Maybe we should get together and just try to pound it out. Want to come over for dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” Sophie replied. “I’ll make some cookies and we’ll get wine-drunk and regret everything in the morning, but hopefully we’ll be a bit closer to solving the case.”
“Sounds good,” I laughed.
Half an hour later we were home, full of wine and Indian food that we’d picked up on the way, and Sophie was in the kitchen making vanilla bean sugar cookies with salted caramel icing—perfect for these cold winter nights—while Jason and I sat at the dining table watching her as we worked our way through what we knew about the case so far.
“So we still don’t know what the link between Gloria and Michael Carlton is?” I asked as I watched Sophie pour flour in the bowl.
“That’s right, but I have a source at the police station who confirms that the two home invasions were committed by the same person,” Sophie said.
I gave her a sly look. “That person wouldn’t happen to be someone you’re sleeping with, would it?”
Sophie winked in reply. Sometimes it was handy having your best friend dating one of the local cops.
“It must have been the bullet that fired in Gloria’s home,” Jason mused. “I assume they would have compared it to the bullet that killed Michael Carlton and would have found that it matched.”
“That was it,” Sophie said. “Taylor texted me this afternoon to tell me; he knows that I’m curious about this investigation.”
“Just how much do you tell him about how involved you get in these murder cases?” I asked. After all, I was curious. Jason basically knew everything about my investigations, mainly because he often helped out, what with being an investigative journalist and all. But somehow, I had a feeling that Taylor, being an actual policeman, wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic about Sophie’s involvement.
“Oh, he just thinks I’m one of those true crime junkies that’s curious about that sort of thing,” Sophie said with a smile. I laughed; that sounded about right.
“Anyway, the important thing here is that we now have confirmation that the same person committed both home invasions,” Jason said. “So there has to be a link between the two; it makes no sense for these to be unrelated events.”
“Sure, but I mean, what could the link be?” I asked. “Gloria says she’s never heard of Michael, and there was no reason for her to ever have gone to his work or met him in any way.”
“Maybe we’re thinking of the wrong link,” Sophie said. “What about Gloria’s husband?”
“Francis Romano?”
“Yeah, him. What if he knew Michael Carlton, and Gloria just didn’t know about it?”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Jason said, tapping his pen lightly against the desk.
“What do we know about him?”
I thought back to what Betty had told me a few days earlier at the café.
“Well, I know that he grew up here. In Willow Bay, I mean. He was a teacher, like Gloria, but he taught high school whereas she taught middle school. I believe he retired earlier than Gloria because of a scandal of some sort; apparently, one teacher accused him of yelling at her or something, and he decided that rather than fight for his side he would just take his retirement.”
“That’s quite interesting,” Jason said. “Although, I’m not sure how anything like that would have led to his knowing Michael Carlton. After all, the guy was still an accountant.”
My eyes lit up as I suddenly realized why they would have known each other.
“He was an accountant, yes, but he worked in the same building as all of the human resources people!”
Sophie stopped mixing the cookie dough and gaped at me with her mouth open. “Oh my God, that’s got to be it.”
Jason nodded. “It does make perfect sense. Something like that, I imagine Francis Romano would have found himself visiting the human resources department of the District at least a few times. It’s
possible that at some point there the two of them met.”
“True,” I said. “Although that doesn’t necessarily make things add up. I mean, we both know all of each other’s friends. My best friend is standing ten feet away from you now, and I’ve met all of your friends, like Jack, Nate, and Mike.”
“That’s a good point,” Jason said. “Still, maybe things are different when you’ve been married for, like, thirty years. Maybe they stopped caring about each other’s friends because they didn’t think it was as important?”
“Maybe,” Sophie said. “Still, I think Angela is right. There’s something weird about them being friends and Gloria having never even heard the name.”
“At least now we’re one step closer,” I said. “We may have figured out what the connection between the two victims is: Michael Carlton may have known Francis Romano.”
“That’s true,” Jason said. “I think we need to work under the assumption that this is the case. Otherwise, we are still stuck where we were at the beginning of this case.”
We continued to chat for a couple of hours, but the deduction of what may have linked Michael Carlton and Gloria was the only real discovery we made that night. Eventually, Sophie went back home, carrying with her a few cookies on a plate for Taylor, and Jason and I went to bed feeling like even if we were a little bit closer to the truth, we were still light-years away from the ultimate answer.
Chapter 14
I woke up the next day, made my way to the kitchen, blended up a smoothie for breakfast, and checked my phone, looking over the previous night’s videos from the camera I had set up by the beavers’ lodge.
For the most part, I had expected the results to be pretty similar to the last time: the occasional video of a beaver coming out from his or her lodge, looking around, waddling out of sight from the camera, then eventually coming back, sometimes with a freshly chopped down piece of wood, and making their way back into the lodge.
I scrolled through the videos at double speed as I drank a smoothie, half wondering if I had time to make a pot of coffee before work or if I was going to have to stop at Betty’s, when I stopped suddenly.
Something completely different had popped up on the screen. There was motion, which had triggered the cameras to start recording, but it wasn’t beavers. It was a person.
Straightaway, I sat up taller in my chair and forgot about my smoothie, focusing on the video. I restarted it and watched as a human came in from the right-hand side—the opposite way from how I had accessed the area—and made his way towards the beavers’ lodge. It was definitely a man; I focused on the video to see if I could make out any identifying features.
The man was obviously angry: he stomped right over to where the beavers’ dam was set up and, grabbing a large piece of wood off the ground, began hacking at the setup near the lodge. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. After he had finished hacking away at the dam, the man made his way over to the lodge directly and began kicking at it. I held my breath; I knew that the lodge was still protected by my spell, but that didn’t make this any less terrifying. My heart went out to the beavers, who I knew must have been huddled inside their lodge, afraid of what was going to happen.
Luckily, my spell did hold up. The man kicked and kicked at the lodge, but no matter what, it didn’t budge. I could see his frustration growing, and eventually he simply grabbed the stick he had used to destroy the dam and threw it at the lodge as hard as he could before turning around and storming back off in the direction from which he had come.
As he turned, the man faced the camera I had set up absolutely perfectly, and I paused the app on that one frame, taking a quick screenshot for the future before zooming in with my fingers to get a closer look.
The man wore dark pants—they were probably jeans, but I couldn’t quite make them out in the dim light—and a light-colored jacket. Maybe it was a windbreaker? It was that sort of size, anyway. His hair was dark, and he had at least five days’ worth of stubble on his face. I squinted, but I wasn’t sure I recognized him. I made a mental note to ask Sophie when I saw her at the clinic. Maybe she knew who the man was?
Bee hopped into the car with me and the two of us drove down to the vet clinic. Looking at my watch as I dropped Bee off, I figured I had just enough time to go see the beavers this morning and make sure they were alright after the repeated attack from the night before.
Explaining the situation to Sophie, I darted off towards the park, which was only a couple of minutes’ walk away from downtown, and reached the beavers’ lodge shortly afterwards. They were all out of their lodge, in the woods nearby, rebuilding. I narrowly avoided being hit by a falling tree as Lolo called out an apology.
“I didn’t see you there, human!”
“It’s alright,” I said. “I came by to see if you’re all ok.”
The other beavers stopped what they were doing and made their way towards me. “Did the magic box work?” Naba asked. I nodded.
“It did, yes. I have a picture of the man who came here last night and attacked.”
“It was terrifying,” the youngest-looking beaver said. “I thought the lodge was going to come down.”
“Well, not to worry, it didn’t,” Naba told him reassuringly. “The human put a spell on it so that he couldn’t hurt us, and it worked.”
I nodded. “Yes, it did. I saw that, and I’m glad you’re all alright.”
“What are you going to do about this man?” the main beaver asked.
“I’m going to find out who he is, first. Did you hear anything he said?”
“He was complaining about our dam flooding his yard,” Lolo said. “He was hitting the dam and yelling about how us ‘stupid beavers’ were flooding the place.”
“Ok.” I nodded. That gave me a lot more to go on. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go find him later this afternoon, hopefully, and I’ll see if we can’t solve this peacefully. In the meantime, I recommend you follow the same safety procedures as you have been: if you see anyone, go back into your lodge. They can’t hurt you in there.”
“Thank you,” the main beaver told me. “We appreciate that you are trying to solve this for us.”
By the time I was walking off, the beavers were all busily chopping down more trees to get their dam back into shape. They were definitely nothing if not hard workers.
Most of the morning was spent dealing with the morning’s animal issues—two separate sets of kittens came in for their initial shots, which was absolutely adorable and led to Bee complaining that I loved them more than her; one six-month-old Labrador came in because she had eaten her own collar; a sheltie had sprained her tail from wagging it too hard and whined in pain as she continued to wag; and another lab had eaten an entire bag of chocolate chips. Luckily, they were white chocolate, so I told the owner to watch out for some exciting bathroom times over the next few days but that otherwise he would be fine. It certainly was one of the more eventful days I’d had recently.
When Karen announced that I had a two-hour break for lunch before my next appointment, I decided I was going to try and take care of the beavers’ problem a bit earlier than I’d initially planned.
“Alright, I’ll be back,” I told her.
I decided to stop off at Betty’s first to grab a quick sandwich to go. Betty’s BLTs—made specially with vegetarian bacon for me—were absolutely my favorite meal on the planet, and I figured what better to fuel myself with than one of those?
After all, the morning had been interesting enough that I figured I’d earned one.
As I stepped into the shop, Betty wagged a finger at me with a smile. “I hear you’ve been cheating on me.”
I laughed. “Did Sophie tell you about our trip to the city?”
“She did,” Betty replied with a grin. “She said I should add bourbon pecan pie to my menu, since she’s certain mine would outshine the one at Two Sweets Bakery.”
“Well, I may have cheated on you once, but I always come back in the end,�
�� I laughed as I got my wallet out from my purse. “Can I get a BLT and maybe a slice of brownie to go?”
“Sure thing,” Betty replied, tapping away at the cash register. “Long day ahead?”
“It’s already been a long day,” I laughed. “I’m not sure how the afternoon is going to go. But yeah, I have a few things on the schedule, so it’s going to have to be to go. Hey, do you have a minute to chat?” I figured if I was here, I might as well try and get some information about Francis Romano.
“Of course, let me just go drop your order off in the kitchen,” Betty said, grabbing the slip of paper and disappearing into the back for a minute before returning.
“What can I help you out with? Don’t tell me you’re still looking into that home invasion at Gloria’s. She was in here the other day, poor thing. She’s looking a bit better, but that guy sure did a number on her, didn’t he?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “And yes, she did ask me to look into it, and I couldn’t say no to her. Not in that state. So I am doing it, but I’m going to tell Chief Gary anything really important that I find out.”
“Alright,” Betty said, a small smile playing on her lips. “What can I tell you, then? I told you, I don’t know Gloria all that well.”
“No, but you said you knew her husband.”
“Sure.” Betty nodded. “I grew up with Francis. He was a year ahead of me in school, but at that point Willow Bay was so small we were in the same class three quarters of the time anyway.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
Betty put a hand on her hip as she thought for a while. “He was always a bit of a troublemaker. To be honest, I was surprised to find out he became a teacher. I suppose we all had to grow up eventually, though. He probably would have actually been quite a good high school teacher. He was always very creative, and I imagine he would have made sure that the kids he taught found school fun for once.”
“What do you mean he was a troublemaker?”
“Well, you know, he was always the class clown. And he was always up for all sorts of adventures. Half the stories he told, I can’t imagine they were even remotely true. There was the time he claimed he came across the old abandoned cars from that train that derailed just outside of town back in the fifties, or when he claimed he found an underground bunker in the woods. There was also the time when he wrapped the school principal’s car in toilet paper during the day, and no one noticed. Yes, he definitely had stories to tell. Of course, the railcar story did end up being true.”
Busy as a Beaver Page 8
