A Grizzly Discovery (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Willow Bay Witches Book 5) Read online

  “Yeah,” I replied. “The more I think about it, the more I think that man was murdered.”

  “And in that case, we’re the only people who are going to be willing to solve it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So that’s why my information from Taylor is going to come in handy. The man was from England; he had a driver’s license on him with a London address and a UK passport. His name was Jeremy Wallace.”

  “Well, that certainly explains why neither one of us recognized him. England isn’t exactly right next to Oregon. What was he doing here?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Taylor had no idea. The only thing they have so far is his name.”

  “Who on earth would want to kill a man so far from home? Unless it was totally random. Or someone followed him from England.”

  “The list of people who want him dead and are in this country is probably pretty small,” Sophie agreed. “On the bright side, just think of it this way: it’s probably not going to be that hard to solve this murder case.”

  Little did we know at the time just how wrong Sophie was.

  3

  “I know what you’re going to say before you say it, and the answer is absolutely not.”

  My sister Charlotte had her arms crossed when we walked into the door after work that day, Bee trotting in behind us.

  “That one’s never any fun,” Bee said haughtily, jumping up onto the back of the couch to avoid being near Sprinkles, Sophie’s dog, who came running toward us at top speed, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

  “I agree with you, Bee, Charlotte isn’t any fun,” I said to my sister, sticking my tongue out at her.

  “I might not be any fun, but I don’t get myself almost killed on a regular basis.”

  “What are you opposed to us doing now?” Sophie asked.

  “You’re going to look into that bear attack,” Charlotte replied.

  “How do you know there was a bear attack? You’ve been in Portland all day.” Charlotte was just starting her third year of medical school in Portland. She was hands down the smartest person I knew, as much as it pained me to admit it sometimes.

  “News travels fast. I also heard that they weren’t sure it was a bear attack, and that a vet was called in to have a look at the remains.”

  “So, I just went and did my civic duty,” I said.

  “And I guarantee you think the guy was murdered and want to investigate.”

  “If it was a bear attack, then what’s the problem? There’s no murder, so we can’t get into any trouble,” I tried. Charlotte threw up her hands.

  “You’re impossible, you know that?”

  “What? My logic is impeccable,” I replied. “If it really is a bear attack, like the cops think, then there aren’t any problems, because there’s no murderer around to try and stop us from investigating.”

  “I agree with Angie,” Sophie grinned. “What’s the harm in finding out if anyone wanted that guy dead?”

  “I can’t believe you two. What happens if he was actually murdered? Then the two of you are the only people trying to figure it out. That’s a great way to find yourselves in the murderer’s crosshairs.”

  “Well we don’t know that there even is a murderer.”

  “I knew it,” Charlotte said. “I knew you weren’t going to be able to leave well enough alone. Hell, I should have let the two of you go to San Francisco and find that stupid diamond that got stolen. At least the robbers didn’t kill anyone over it.”

  Two days earlier, one of the most valuable diamonds in the world was stolen from its owner in San Francisco. The Helena Diamond, named for the woman over whom the Trojan war was fought, was discovered in South Africa over a hundred years ago. Its current owner, the daughter of a rich businessman from South Africa, was in San Francisco where the diamond, valued at over fifty million dollars, was taken from her hotel room. So far, no arrests had been made, but it made a bigger splash in the news than Kim Kardashian having her first baby.

  “Please,” Sophie scoffed. “After you’ve solved a few murders, robbery is child’s play.”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I’ll remind you that I was the one who happened to solve most of those murders.” Ok, I was being just a little bit petty.

  “Yeah, but you never would have solved them without our help,” Sophie retorted.

  “I guess that’s fair,” I had to admit.

  “Ok, we’re definitely getting off topic here,” Charlotte interrupted. “We agree then; we’re not going to investigate this at all?”

  “No!” Sophie and I replied in unison.

  “We absolutely don’t agree,” I said.

  “Besides, I already found out his name from Taylor. At the very least we can look him up online and see what he was doing in Willow Bay.”

  Charlotte threw up her arms. “The two of you are impossible. I’m not coming to your funerals when you get yourselves killed one day.”

  “Good, we want our funerals to be fun,” Sophie said, sticking her tongue out at Charlotte while grabbing my iPad off the table. Charlotte rolled her eyes as she grabbed some vegetables out of the fridge to make an omelette for dinner while Sophie opened my Facebook account and typed Jeremy Wallace into the search bar.

  Unfortunately, with it being a relatively common name, it took us quite a while to figure out which one of the hundreds of Jeremy Wallaces with Facebook accounts we were looking for.

  “How about that one?” Sophie asked.

  “That guy lives in Michigan.”

  “Oh. Well narrow it down then. You can search by city.”

  “Fine. How are we going to recognize him, anyway?”

  “We saw him today.”

  “I really hope for his sake that he didn’t always look like he did today with his head bashed in and blood all over him.”

  “Fine, well use your imagination just a little bit. Did you notice any tattoos or anything?”

  “On his face?”

  “Mike Tyson made that kind of a thing, didn’t he?”

  “Uhhhh not so much, no. Hey, how about him?” I asked, pointing to the picture of a guy who looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was quite frankly a little bit too old to take pictures of himself showing off his abs in a mirror—did any dudes really still do that after they hit 23 or so?—but our dead guy definitely had a lot of muscle on him.

  Sophie tapped on his profile, and fortunately, his whole profile had been set to public. I should have guessed; guys who show off their abs in their profile pictures aren’t usually worried about getting too much attention. Unfortunately, pictures of Jeremy’s abs seemed to make up about ninety percent of his profile.

  “This guy sure loved himself, didn’t he?” Sophie muttered as we scrolled down the page.

  “Find anything interesting?” Charlotte asked as she tossed some mushrooms and red peppers into the frying pan.

  “Other than the fact that this guy probably single-handedly kept selfie stick companies in business?” Sophie asked. “Seriously. Why even bother keeping the shirt on if you’re going to lift it up to your chest to show off your abs all the time?”

  “I’m a big fan of this one, where he’s not only showing off his abs, but doing it at the beach here in Willow Bay,” I laughed, pointing to a photo captioned “American beaches are pretty nice.”

  “Oh, yeah, that is the beach here, isn’t it?” Sophie said, squinting to see better. “That’s taken next to that big tree at the end of the beach, right?”

  “Exactly,” I said, nodding. “It looks like he was a tourist.” Old Oakie was one of the most famous trees in Willow Bay, overlooking the beach from the end of one of the hiking trails. I enjoyed taking that trail and hanging out by the tree, which gave a panoramic view of all Willow Bay. Kids loved to climb the tree in the summer; a hole in the middle of the trunk made it easy to climb up to the thick branches above. A part of me was surprised the guy hadn’t taken a picture of himself doing a pull-up off one of the branches to show off even
more.

  Sophie scrolled down further and we saw a few more pictures. One of them was captioned “Everything’s bigger in Texas” with a rather crude accompanying photo.

  “Did this guy think he was in a frat, or something?” Sophie asked, rolling her eyes when she saw it. “He looks like he’s in his thirties. Like come on man, there’s a time to act sixteen years old, and it’s not when you’re over thirty.”

  “You know what the worst part of this is?” I asked.

  “The photos?” Sophie replied.

  “No, the fact that he’s obviously a tourist. He’s been to Willow Bay, there’s a picture taken in LA, and another from Texas. The dude was obviously doing a US road trip. Which means that either someone from the UK followed him here, or he was killed by some random attacker.”

  “Or someone that he traveled with,” Charlotte offered.

  “If he was traveling with someone you’d think they would have taken his pictures for him,” I replied. “These were all selfies.”

  “You’re also speaking as if he was murdered,” Charlotte said. “Doesn’t this make it even more likely that it actually was a bear attack?”

  My shoulders slumped as I realized Charlotte had a very good point.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll wait for what the police determine. If they decide it’s a murder, then we know that we’re looking for probably someone totally random, or another British person. If it’s a bear attack, well, then we’ll see.”

  “You know who else is good at investigating, if they decide it’s a murder?” Charlotte asked pointedly. “The police. Leave it to them,” she said, putting the omelette in front of me.

  “Fine,” I said. “If the cops decide it’s a murder, you’re right. There’s no reason for us to get involved. But if they say it was a bear attack, well, I don’t think they’re right, and I’m going to get an answer one way or another.”

  4

  It didn’t take long for the answer to come. My third client of the morning the next day, a young couple whose energetic husky was prone to jumping off things that were too high for a dog to jump off, came in to have me X-ray his leg. Again.

  “Did you hear Chief Gary announced that the person who was killed yesterday was mauled to death by a bear?” Irene asked me as I did a quick physical on Jojo, her blue eyes even bigger and rounder than usual.

  I raised an eyebrow. “He’s already said that, has he?”

  “Yes, there was a press conference at nine,” Irene’s boyfriend Kurt replied. “Some British tourist. It’s so sad; that’s going to impact the town. At least it’s late in the season. Hopefully, by the spring people will have forgotten about it.”

  “Do you think we should get a gun?” Irene asked. “After all, our house backs up to the forest. I know Jojo here can handle himself pretty well, but if there’s a bear out there mauling people, well, I want to be able to protect myself.”

  I sighed inwardly. This was exactly what I was afraid of.

  “I don’t think you need to worry,” I told Irene. “I was there, and I saw the body. While it was consistent with a bear attack, I don’t think it was a bear that did it.”

  “Well then what else could it be?” Kurt asked.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It could have been a murder made to look like a bear attack. But black bears very, very rarely attack people. I’ve never heard of it happening here my whole life.”

  “Yes, but if it’s happened now,” Irene said. “It just takes once.”

  “Well, I certainly won’t stop you from buying a gun,” I replied. “But I don’t think you need one. Certainly not to protect yourself from a bear. If you want to be safer, you should probably start wearing a helmet inside your car.”

  “Well that’s just ridiculous!” Irene spouted.

  “So is thinking you’re going to be killed in a bear attack. I know what Chief Gary said, but I also know what I saw, and I know a lot about bears. A lot more than the police do. I don’t think that man was killed by a bear.”

  Irene shivered. “I’d almost rather a deadly bear be out there than a deadly human.”

  Kurt looked troubled. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  I shrugged. “Continue on with your lives. There’s no need to be afraid of bears. I promise, they’re not out to get us. This isn’t the start of some bad horror movie.”

  Fifteen minutes later we had confirmation that Jojo had luckily not fractured his leg this time; I sent Kurt and Irene back home with some painkillers and instructions to keep his activity level to a minimum (as much as possible anyway) over the next week or so while the strain healed.

  When I made my way back to the reception area, I found that Karen had gone and made an emergency trip to the bank, and we had gained a new addition to the office for the day.

  A few months ago Bee had met Buster, an orange cat belonging to a retiree who had recently moved to Willow Bay. The two of them had immediately hit it off, spending all their time together sitting as high as they could and making snide remarks about all the people or animals who crossed their paths. It was actually kind of cute. Extremely annoying, especially when their snide comments were aimed in my direction, but also cute.

  When it became obvious that Bee and Buster weren’t content with simply seeing each other once a year when Buster had a checkup, Gloria began dropping him off at the vet clinic some mornings. She would go out, do whatever old retirees spend their days doing, then come back in the afternoon to pick Buster back up. Today was evidently one of their play days.

  “Here she is. Should we ask her?” Buster said from his perch on top of the filing cabinet when I came in. Bee was sitting next to him, their eyes boring into me. I sighed.

  “What do you guys want?” I asked.

  “You say that as though you’re expecting us to want something unreasonable,” Bee said.

  “Yesterday you asked me if we could set up a Christmas tree in the living room permanently.”

  “Yes.” Obviously Bee didn’t consider that an unreasonable request.

  “Be nice to her. It’s important that she say yes,” Buster whispered, as if I couldn’t hear. I narrowed my eyes and was even more suspicious when Bee actually did what he wanted.

  “We want to go outside.”

  Well, that was unexpected. Bee wasn’t really an outdoor cat. Mainly because I didn’t want her to be; but often whenever the urge struck her, Bee came back in complaining about something. Last time she decided the grass was too “sticky”.

  “Really?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

  “You’re cramping our style.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?” I asked. “How exactly am I doing that? I didn’t even know Buster was here until two minutes ago.”

  “There’s not enough people and animals coming in this time of year,” Buster explained. “We need a bigger audience.”

  Ah, now that made sense.

  “Really? You’re just going to walk down Main Street and judge people?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is that all you’re going to be doing?”

  “Of course,” Bee said, giving me a look like I’d just betrayed her. “Judging people is what we do.”

  “You know, you’re lucky you’re so lazy, or I might not actually believe you,” I said, heading toward the door. Buster and Bee both leapt off the counter like dogs being told they were about to go for a walk. I put my hand on the door handle but didn’t open the door.

  “However,” I said, “I do have some ground rules. For one thing, absolutely no eating any wildlife. Do not chase birds. Do not chase squirrels. Do not hunt anything. Got it?”

  “We promise,” Bee replied. I looked at Buster.

  “I promise too,” he said. “I’ve never been much of a hunter. I’m a pacifist.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Stay away from cars. Stick to the sidewalks. And do not bother people,” I told them. “Complain about them from afar.”

  “Ye
s mother,” Bee said sarcastically, and I frowned at her.

  “If you’re not back in two hours, you’re never going outside alone again,” I warned them as I opened the door.

  “Look at that, we have a curfew, like we’re irresponsible teenagers,” I heard Bee tell Buster as they darted out the door before I could change my mind. As if. Teenagers were less moody and more predictable than my cat.

  “What are Trouble 1 and Trouble 2 up to now?” Sophie asked as she came out of the back. “Sounds like they’re going on an adventure.”

  “They have a date,” I told Sophie. “Like a pair of true romantics, they’re going to wander down Main Street and judge people. Apparently it’s too slow for them in the vet clinic right now, and it’s cramping their style.”

  Sophie laughed. “Those two are ridiculous.”

  “I know. It’s funny though; I wasn’t sure I ever believed in soul mates, but Bee and Buster are probably the closest thing I’ve ever seen to it.”

  “We should hold a little cat wedding for them,” Sophie suggested. “Complete with a cat-sized dress and tuxedo, a photographer, and all our friends.”

  I laughed at the thought. “I think Bee would kill me in my sleep if we tried that.”

  “I’m still not hearing a downside,” Sophie joked, and I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “Hey, so Kurt and Irene told me that Chief Gary announced that Jeremy Wallace was killed by a bear. They’ve decided it wasn’t a murder.”

  Sophie’s face fell. “That sucks.”

  “It does. Especially since Irene then asked me if I thought she should get a gun, to protect herself. It’s what I’m most afraid of; that people are going to be afraid of bears now.”

  “Yeah, that’s not good,” Sophie said. “So are we going to investigate like it’s a murder?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Charlotte actually made a good point last night—don’t ever tell her I said that—when she said that him being a tourist with no ties to anything in Willow Bay makes it more likely to be a bear attack. And after all, it’s not like I have any solid proof that the guy was murdered. And that’s what we need. We need to know for sure.”