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

  “No! I didn’t get to see a cow, so I want my money back!”

  “Ma’am, you could see all the animals before you paid.”

  “I don’t care!” She was starting to make a scene. And the more she fought, the less I wanted to refund her quarter. I looked over at Sophie, who was watching with interest. Sophie was a bit of a firecracker, I knew that if I needed backup, she was there. Still, the last time Sophie decided to step in when someone was abusing me, Sophie ended up with handcuffs around her wrists after punching a woman in the face at a funeral. I definitely didn’t want a repeat of that experience, so I locked eyes with her and shook my head. I could handle this.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, please,” I asked the woman politely. “I’ve told you we’re not refunding your money.”

  “No! I will not go! You’re a frigging thief, you know that! A damned thief!”

  “Hey, watch your language around my kid!” someone else called out. Ok, this had gone on far enough. I took out my phone to call the security company that had been hired to take care of the festival. I was on the phone with them, the woman still screaming at me, when the noise evidently woke up Bee.

  She looked up at the woman and began to hiss. Uh oh. This was not good.

  “What are you looking at, you dumb cat?” the woman spat at Bee.

  “Get them here quickly!” I practically shouted into the phone, then dropped it as I tried to get my cat. Too late. Bee jumped up on the woman’s shoulder, claws out. The woman began to howl.

  “Get that cat off me! What is it doing? Ugh, get it off!” she screeched, but Bee hung on tight. Then, she did something I had never, ever seen a cat do before.

  She peed. All over the woman’s outfit. Dribbles of cat pee rolled down the woman and onto her purse. She began to screech and holler as she ran around, realizing what was happening.

  “DUMB CAT! GET OFF! GET OFF YOU WORTHLESS CRETIN, GET OFF ME!”

  As I stared incredulously, Sophie completely lost it. She burst into laughter so hard that tears began to stream down her face. Her total lack of control spurred on a chain reaction as everyone who’d seen the woman’s meltdown over a quarter began to laugh. Eventually, Bee, having finished her role, jumped back off the woman and onto the table like nothing had happened, curled herself back into a little ball, and went back to sleep.

  “YOU GIVE ME THAT CAT, I’M GOING TO STRANGLE IT,” cried the woman as she hurled herself toward Bee, but I quickly stepped in front of the table to block her. There was no way this lady was going to get near my cat. Not that I especially thought Bee needed my protection; her claws would do more than that woman ever could, but after that show, Bee certainly deserved it.

  The woman looked like she was going to throttle me as well. “You stupid bitch! You give me back my money, and you let me at that cat!”

  Just then, however, two men from the security company showed up. It was obvious who they were here to escort off the grounds, and they grabbed the woman gently but firmly and began to escort her away, her niece following silently behind her as the woman continued screaming, cursing me, Bee, and everyone else involved with the festival.

  “Ugh, what’s that smell?” I heard one of the security guys ask the other one, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I began to giggle as well.

  “You know Bee, I might give you a hard time sometimes, but you’re a good cat,” I told her, stroking her fur gently as people began to mill around once more, everything slowly going back to normal.

  “I know,” Bee replied smugly.

  Chapter 3

  My sister Charlotte howled with laughter as Sophie recounted the story that night over dinner. The three of us lived together in the home my parents had owned before they were killed in a car crash. Sophie’s mom, who had taken us in and raised us herself after their deaths, kept the house instead of selling it in case we wanted to live there as adults, and the three of us shared it now.

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe that happened! Bee, you’re amazing!” Charlotte exclaimed. Charlotte had magical powers, the same as I did. She was smart as a whip, and I have to admit it, a better witch than I was. She was currently in medical school in Portland, and at the top of her class.

  Bee was on the bookshelf, happily eating the two pieces of sushi we’d decided to give her. After all, if there was anything she could have done today to earn an extra piece, that was definitely it. She swished her tail in appreciation of Charlotte’s comment.

  “We had like ten different people come up to us and say that woman was totally out of line afterwards,” I told Charlotte. “Plus, one of the teenagers took a bunch of pictures of Bee peeing on her with his phone. I got him to text them to Jason, that’s front page material for sure.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Who gets that annoyed that they didn’t get to see a cow?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “I wish that was the biggest problem in my life.”

  “Something tells me that girl’s got bigger problems than that,” Sophie replied. “Like, if you’re going to get that worked up over the fact that your niece didn’t get to see a calf at the petting zoo for twenty-five cents, well, that’s ridiculous. Plus, I saw them in the petting zoo for at least forty-five minutes. They definitely got their money’s worth. Some people just like to be annoying.”

  “On the bright side, we’ll probably never see her again,” I said as I leaned back and put my feet up on the coffee table. Jason had texted and promised to bring me something for lunch tomorrow, if I could sneak away for twenty minutes, which I promised him I could. The animals had eventually settled into a nice routine, and by the end of the day, they were no longer yelling at each other. I was even vaguely optimistic that they might even be friends by the end of the festival. All and all, day one had been nothing if not entertaining. And exhausting. Surely the next day wouldn’t be nearly as bad, right?

  * * *

  My alarm went off way too early the next morning. It was Saturday, and Charlotte had no classes on Saturdays this semester, so she promised to come help. We were also going to have a couple of students from the high school—looking for some volunteer hours to look good on college applications—coming by, so we were definitely well staffed for the day. I just kept reminding myself about my lunch with Jason, and that kept me going pretty well.

  Thirty minutes later the three of us, Bee and Sprinkles had all piled into the car. Sprinkles had wanted to spend the day at the petting zoo, saying that Andrea, his old owner, had always taken him to the festival, so we decided he could come and spend the day in the park as well.

  When we finally arrived, we were about five minutes late. I could see Emily in the animal control’s truck, but I also heard enough of a ruckus in the back that it was obvious she hadn’t unloaded the animals yet. As soon as she saw our car, she came over, and I noticed immediately that something was wrong. Her face was white, and strained. My heart leapt into my throat. The animals! There was a large fence blocking off the park that was locked at night during the festival, so we had always assumed it was safe to keep the farm animals there for the twelve days of the festival. It had never been a problem before.

  “Emily, what’s wrong?” I asked her, getting out of the car and looking at her. She didn’t say anything, just pointed to the petting zoo. I sprinted through the open fencing and over to where the animals were. When I saw what had happened, I froze.

  All the animals were fine. In fact, they were happily snoozing away. But in the pen with the pigs was a body. A human body. I didn’t need to go over there to see that she was dead; she’d obviously been stabbed a few times. There were cuts all around her torso, although there was a lot less blood than I would have expected. And I immediately recognized her. It was the woman from the day before, the one that Bee had peed on.

  “Oh my God,” Sophie said, coming up to my shoulder.

  “Stop Charlotte!” I ordered, and Sophie immediately went back to prevent my sister from seeing
the body. I mean, of the three of us, Charlotte had probably seen the most dead bodies, being a medical school student and all. But sometimes being a big sister comes in front of thinking logically. I took my phone out and scrolled down to Chief Gary’s number. I was having to call him way too much these days, I thought to myself as I pressed the call button.

  “Hello?” Chief Gary answered the phone.

  “Hi, Chief Gary, it’s Angela Martin.”

  “Oh, hi Angela. Not getting into any trouble are you?”

  “Well, ummm, actually,” I started, and I could practically hear Chief Gary sighing on the other end of the line. “There’s a body at the petting zoo.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered. “Another one?”

  “I’m afraid so.” On top of all the usual reasons Chief Gary didn’t like having to investigate murders, he’d become a little bit of a celebrity after solving a couple of murders in quick succession. He’d gotten invitations to speak at nationwide events, had articles written about him in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and I knew he’d been invited to take on a larger role at bigger police stations around the country. Roles he’d politely turned down. All Chief Gary wanted to do was be in charge of his little police station here in his little town.

  “All right, I’ll have a crew down there in a few minutes. You know the drill by now. Don’t touch anything.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, hanging up the phone. I made my way over and found that Emily had thrown up behind the animal control truck.

  “Hey, it’s ok,” I told her. “Chief Gary’s going to be here soon. I don’t think we’re going to open today, why don’t you take the dogs back to the shelter, if you feel up to it? Chief Gary will want to ask you what you found, but I’ll let him know where you’ve gone.”

  Emily looked up at me. She was a nice looking girl in her early twenties, probably around Charlotte’s age.

  “Sure, thanks,” she said, flashing me a small smile. “I appreciate that.”

  “No problem,” I told her before heading back to where Sophie and Charlotte were talking.

  “Chief Gary’s on his way,” I told them.

  “Good. We won’t have to wait long for an ID,” Sophie said. “Charlotte decided to have a look at the body anyway, and it turns out she knows her.”

  “Really?” I asked, looking surprised. Charlotte nodded. “Yeah. Her name’s Jessica something. Jessica Oliver, I think. She was in a couple of my classes in undergrad. I remember her because, as bad as it is to speak ill of the dead, she was just as annoying then. I think she was a law student or something? We had some generic classes together, like English, maybe.”

  Suddenly, I realized I should probably text Jason the scoop. I grabbed my phone and sent off a quick one.

  Body at the petting zoo this morning. Thought you’d want to know.

  You know just how to make a guy’s morning Jason replied a minute later. Be there soon.

  “Where are Bee and Sprinkles?” I asked Sophie suddenly.

  “Oh, I put them back in the car as soon as it was obvious there was a body. Sprinkles definitely didn’t want to see it, but I gathered Bee was incredibly upset she didn’t get to.”

  “Oh, good, thanks Sophie,” I told her. “I guess Bee would probably be the prime suspect in this case, if only she had opposable thumbs to be able to stab someone.”

  “They were deep stab wounds, too,” Charlotte said. “It wasn’t like the person just barely grazed her. There was anger in that stabbing. And no blood. My guess is she was killed elsewhere, those wound would have bled like crazy.”

  Ok, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to try and keep her away from the body.

  “Gee, I’m shocked that someone like that would have pissed someone off enough to want her dead,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  “I don’t see you helping dig up clues,” Charlotte shot back.

  “Chief Gary said not to touch anything.”

  “I didn’t touch anything, I just used my eyes.”

  I was trying to think of a smarmy retort when one of the pigs finally woke up.

  “All right everyone, that’s enough sleeping! There’s things to root, mud to roll in and food to eat!” he announced, and like magic, all the other pigs were suddenly awake. These guys definitely didn’t need coffee to get started in the morning. I noticed the other animals beginning to stir as well, but I really needed the animals to be good.

  “Wait!” I announced to the pigs as they woke up. I couldn’t help but notice just how close they were to all of the evidence. I was going to have to move them.

  “Poop on a stick!” one of them exclaimed. “Is that a human? Why is there a human sleeping with us?”

  “Maybe she realized the hay is more comfortable than where the humans sleep.”

  “That’s so insensitive. Maybe she doesn’t have a home.”

  “Maybe she just likes being with us because we’re so amazing.”

  “STOP!” I practically shouted.

  “Great, the annoying human is back,” I heard one of the goats say, but I didn’t have time to deal with them right now.

  “All these lazy animals. I’ve already laid an egg today,” one of the hens said. I put my face in my hands, as I made a mental note to never, ever take up farming.

  “All right,” I said, stepping into the pig’s enclosure. I made sure to kneel down in between the body and the pigs, facing them. In part so I could grab anyone who decided to go around and mess with any evidence, and also so I could pretend the body wasn’t there. “Did anyone see how the lady got into the enclosure? Please. It’s important.”

  “I can tell you she wasn’t here when I went to sleep.”

  “I had a dream that I was riding in a big car, and there was a human driving, does that count?”

  “Tommy always says I sleep like a log, so I wouldn’t have heard anything.”

  “You do sleep like a log. And you snore. Loudly.”

  “I do not snore, gilts do not snore.”

  “You’re the exception that proves the rule.”

  “Why do you care, anyway?” That last comment came from the goat.

  “I care because it might help us find out who hurt her. She’s not sleeping. She’s dead.”

  Telling the animals that last thing had been a mistake. They instantly began to panic. The roosters began running around the coop, while the hens beat their wings, instinct keeping them from getting off their eggs. The pigs all huddled together, beginning to tremble, while the goats bleated.

  “See, son?” the racist goat from the day before said. “All these other animals, they’re panicking. But we don’t panic. We’re goats. There is nothing to panic about, they could have slit our throats in our sleep if they wanted to hurt us.”

  “Slit our throats?” one of the pigs squealed.

  The baby goat who was being spoken to looked around nervously.

  “Everyone, relax!” I practically shouted. “Did anyone see the lady being brought into the pen last night?”

  Eventually, slowly, all the animals replied in the negative.

  “Do you know how much effort it takes to lay an egg? I slept all night, like a baby.”

  “And I am a baby pig!”

  “So am I!”

  “And me!”

  “And I’m a baby goat!”

  “No you’re not, you’re also a pig.”

  “I’m really a baby goat though.”

  “You are, you’re not like those savage pigs.”

  “At least we’re not stuck up like you goats.”

  They had all been completely asleep. Great. I wasn’t going to get any help there. I was, however, very quickly developing a migraine.

  “I saw a man,” one of the roosters said.

  “What kind of man?” I asked.

  “Well, he was outside of the tent. I only saw an outline, but he was stumbling around.”

  “Was he carrying a body?”

  “No. N
o, I don’t think so. At least, if he was, I didn’t notice. When I saw him there certainly wasn’t a body in here. He was around for quite a while, stumbling around and mumbling incoherently, but he never came into the tent, and I didn’t see the body until waking up.”

  “Thank you,” I told the rooster, thankful for at least a little bit of information. A man stumbling around near the petting zoo that night. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something, right?

  Chief Gary pulled up in his old sedan about three minutes later. I quickly told the animals to stay away from the body, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. As soon as I stepped out of the pen, the pigs decided they were terrified of the dead woman, and huddled together in the far corner. The cops could move them into the pen with the goats later, if they wanted. I certainly wasn’t going to do it, and not only because I didn’t want to accidentally move any evidence.

  “Good morning, ladies,” Chief Gary said as he got out of the car. “Thank you for calling me.”

  “No problem,” I told him. “Emily from the animal shelter was the first one here. I think she got here just a couple minutes before we did. She wasn’t in good shape, so I told her to take the dogs back to the shelter. I’m guessing that she probably went home after.”

  “Thanks for telling me, I’ll send someone over to her place to take her statement in a few hours. Now, Officers Shaw and Jacobs are behind me, they’ll take your statements.”

  Sophie grinned. Officer Shaw was Taylor, her boyfriend, who she’d now been with for a record of almost four months.

  “What are we going to do about the petting zoo?” I asked Chief Gary.

  “Well, we’re going to have to close the whole park down for at least the day,” Chief Gary replied. “Possibly longer. I’m not sure, I’ll have to talk to the mayor and the organizers later today and see what they want to do.”

  “Ok, got it. If you end up needing help with the animals, let me know.”

  “Sure thing, thanks Angela.”