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

13

Six hours later my work day was over. There weren’t any real dramas. Bee had appeared, meowing loudly at the front door, about two hours earlier, then pranced inside and went to sleep on her bed as if she hadn’t been out for four hours. I mentally reminded myself to ask her—again—what it was she was doing. My cat was up to something; I just knew it.

I sent Jason a text, and he came by the clinic. After asking Sophie to take Bee home with her—“I don’t want to, people will think I’m friends with her dog,” came Bee’s protest—I texted Jason and he said he’d be there ten minutes later.

“How was your day?” he asked when he arrived, carrying a vanilla latte for me that I eagerly took from his hands.

“Not nearly as bad I was expecting, thanks to you and everyone else in town,” I said with a smile, taking a sip of the warm, soothing beverage. Jason grinned.

“Good. What do you say we walk down to the beach and hang out there for a while?”

“That sounds great,” I replied. Jason held out his hand and I took it, saying a quick goodbye to Karen and heading out into the afternoon. The sun was poking out of the clouds today for the first time in a week, and I basked in its glow as we walked slowly down Main Street. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn a gorgeous shade of yellow; fall was well and truly on its way.

As we casually strolled along, I couldn’t help but notice a larger-than-normal number of people hanging out in front of the Willow Bay Inn.

“What’s going on there?” I asked Jason, pointing toward the Inn. He frowned.

“I don’t know. Let’s go check it out.”

We joined the small clumps of people that made their way toward the front of the inn, but when we arrived at the front door, Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend, was standing in front of the door and refusing access to anyone.

“I’m sorry. This is an active crime scene. Only current guests are being allowed inside, and they’re having to be escorted to their rooms.”

“I’m a guest at the hotel!” I heard someone cry out.

“You live three blocks from here, Jonathan,” Taylor replied, rolling his eyes, and I worked to hide a smile.

“What’s going on?” Jason asked someone else nearby.

“Apparently they found a body in the Inn.”

“Seriously?” I replied, and the man nodded.

“Yes. Though as far as I’m concerned it may well have been natural causes. God knows Elizabeth Armstrong has to be on borrowed time by now.”

Elizabeth Armstrong was technically one of the owners of the Willow Bay Inn, and although her son ran the day-to-day operations these days, Elizabeth still lived there. She had to be pushing ninety-five, by now. I’d heard a rumor that her son was going to be retiring soon as well.

I pulled Jason away from the crowd and we made our way further away from the Inn.

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“Yeah, me neither. I mean, it might be as that man said, that someone died of natural causes, but do you really believe that?”

I shook my head. “Not for an instant. Not when the other four thieves are all staying at the Willow Bay Inn, not days after one of them was just murdered.”

“Agreed,” Jason replied, nodding. “We have to confirm it though. I assume you’re not going to want to wait for the official announcement?”

“Not a chance!” I replied. “Especially since, Willow Bay being a tourist town, they’re going to wait as long as possible before releasing the information about the victim. One tourist being mauled by a bear is one thing. A second tourist being brutally murdered in a local hotel just days later? That’s the sort of thing people have nightmares about here.”

Jason grinned. “I thought you’d say that. So how are we going to get in to see the body?”

I frowned for a minute while I thought about things. Not for the first time this week I felt a pang of guilt that I couldn’t tell Jason about my magical abilities, but this time there was also annoyance. It would be so easy to simply cast an invisibility spell and make our way inside the hotel. And yet, I knew I couldn’t do that. We were going to have to find a way in that didn’t involve magic.

“Let’s go check and see if the back door is covered,” I suggested, and Jason nodded and followed me as we subtly made our way to the back of the building. Sure enough, there was a police officer there. However, I also noticed that in the loading dock, on the other side of the back of the building, was a large truck with “Cascadia Linens” written on the side. A couple of workers were taking large tubs of towels and sheets out of the truck; the hotel must have just received a large order of new linens.

I pointed to it, and Jason nodded. We went back around to the front of the hotel, then around the other side of it, so we were hidden from the police officer guarding the back door by the truck. I peered around the edge of the truck and saw that there was a police officer inside the building; I could just see the edge of his jacket.

“Shoot,” I whispered to Jason. “There’s another cop in there.”

“Can he see the truck?”

I shook my head no. “Not unless he turns the corner.”

“Good,” Jason replied. “Follow me.”

With a nimbleness that I absolutely could not match, Jason jumped up onto the truck’s ramp, then gave me a hand to help me up. He grabbed a handful of sheets from one of the tubs and moved them into another tub, then jumped into it. I looked at him, surprised.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to be hidden in here before the workers come back.”

I nodded quickly and followed him into the tub. I crouched down, and Jason did the same, covering us up with some of the sheets just seconds before I heard voices coming from inside the building.

“How many more trips to do guys have to do?”

“Oh, probably two more, then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Thanks.”

My heart practically stopped beating as I heard footsteps coming toward us. What if they could tell something was wrong? What if we were caught? There was literally no way we could explain why we were in here. I didn’t even dare to breathe. Jason squeezed my hand in reassurance, and I squeezed back so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bruise there the next day.

Suddenly, the cart we were in began to move.

“Geez, this one weighs a ton. What are these sheets made of, bricks?” the man pushing it complained. I tried to make myself feel as light as possible.

“Stop complaining, Tom,” the other guy replied. “Let’s just get this stuff to the laundry room and get out of here.”

Tom grunted his disapproval, but the cart continued to roll. We made it around a few corners—Tom wasn’t a very good cart driver and we hit the wall a couple of times—but eventually the cart stopped, and I made sure to listen for the footsteps indicating that Tom and the other man had left. As soon as I was sure they were gone, Jason and I jumped out of the cart. We were now in the hotel’s laundry room; there were another six carts identical to ours nearby. Jason smoothed the top over so no one would notice anything was wrong while I looked out the door to make sure we could get out of the room without being seen.

When Jason joined me, a minute later, we slipped out of the room and went down a hallway.

“Where do you think the body is?” I asked.

“My guess, if it’s one of the robbers, is somewhere on the ground floor. If they were killed in their rooms, the cops would only block off the floor they were on, not the whole hotel.”

“Ok,” I replied. “Well, we’re on the ground floor now.”

“Let’s try and make our way to the lobby,” Jason suggested, and I nodded. I had no idea where in the hotel we really were, but I figured it was safe to assume we were near the back. We walked down the hallway, trying to look as casual as possible, as if we were totally supposed to be there. I knew it wouldn’t pass muster with anyone official, but maybe Tom and the other worker wouldn’t bat an eyelid if they saw us.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps coming from another direction. I glanced at Jason, my eyes widening. I didn’t know who it was, but I also didn’t want to find out. I saw a door a few feet further down the hall and rushed toward it, opening it and rushing inside, Jason following behind me. He closed the door carefully, making sure not to make a sound, and a couple of seconds later we heard the voices of Chief Gary and another man I didn’t recognize but must have also been a cop, going by the conversation.

“The victim is one of the people you suspect of being behind the diamond heist, right Gary?”

“Yes,” came Chief Gary’s reply. “At least, as far as we can gather, this is likely one of the suspects.”

“You realize that if things get leaked to the media things are going to get out of hand very quickly in this town, don’t you?”

“Of course. That’s why the only two people in this building, in the whole state even, who know about my suspicions are the two of us.”

“Make sure it stays that way. I don’t want to see this state overrun by gold diggers hoping to find the diamond. Mind you, we don’t even know it’s here at all.”

“I know. My gut tells me it is, though.”

“How come you think this victim is one of the robbers?”

Unfortunately, at that point, the voices faded away as the two of them continued down the hall, and I looked at Jason. It seemed as though we were right: one of the robbers was dead.