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

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.”