Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 10

I spent most of the rest of the morning and the early afternoon lying on the hammock on the balcony, reading an old Agatha Christie novel. Charlotte went back inside to study, and I heard Sophie playing with Sprinkles in the living room with a chew toy she’d bought him from the grocery store the day before.

Around one, when my stomach started grumbling and I’d finished my book, I got up off the hammock and decided to head down to Betty’s. I said goodbye to the others and started walking down, since it was such a nice day and Main Street was only about 20 minutes away from our house.

When I got to the café, everything was bustling and crazy. Early on a Sunday afternoon, this was prime gossiping territory for the town. As I looked around for a spare table, catching Betty’s eye and waving at her, I suddenly noticed Austin Stark, Lisa’s boyfriend, sitting at one of the stools at the counter.

Great. Just great.

I tried to sneak off towards an empty table to my left, but just then Austin turned around and noticed me.

“Hi! Angela, right?” he asked, smiling and motioning for me to take a seat at the empty stool next to him. I supposed I had no choice anymore.

“Hi, Austin,” I replied, plastering a fake smile on my face. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Lisa was going to have lunch with me, but then she had a client ‘emergency’,” he said, doing air quotes around emergency, “and so she recommended I come here for lunch. The coffee’s ok, but the BLT left a lot to be desired.”

Ohhh that was it. It was one thing to vaguely insult my business and my food choices at dinner the other night. He’d also just insulted his girlfriend. Lisa was a professional; if there was an emergency with a client, it was important. I knew that. But to insult the greatest food known to man, one of Betty’s BLTs (which she always made for me with vegetarian bacon), well, that was pure blasphemy! There was no coming back from that. I had it on good authority from both Lisa and Charlotte that the regular meat version of the sandwich was just as good, if not better, than my vegetarian version.

“Betty, I’ll have one of your amazing BLTs and a coke please,” I told her over the counter.

“For you Angela, anything,” Betty told me with a wink.

“It must be you the problem,” I told Austin. “Betty’s BLTs are the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Austin laughed. “I thought you were a vegetarian.”

“Oh, I am. Betty makes mine specially with vegetarian bacon.”

“Well it’s no wonder you think this is the best food ever, when you’re not experiencing the greatness of meat.”

Ok, this wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have, at all. I changed the subject as quickly as possible.

“So are you heading back up to Portland tonight?” I asked casually.

“What? Me, no. I’ve actually been spending most of my time in Willow Bay with Lisa these days. She’s great. I’m glad I met her. Makes the drive up to work completely worth it.”

“I’m glad, you seem to make each other very happy,” I managed. Just then, Betty came and placed my sandwich and coke in front of me with a smile.

“Thanks, Betty,” I told her. “You make the best BLTs in the country.”

“Awww well thanks Angela,” she told me. “You’re just too kind.”

“Have you heard anything about Andrea Dottory’s death?” I asked. This was Willow Bay, you didn’t have to be subtle when you were fishing for information.

“Well,” Betty told me, lowering her voice, as if she hadn’t already said this to everyone else who came in today, “I heard that it’s another murder! Apparently someone disguised it to look like she just fell, when really they killed her!”

So much for Chief Gary keeping that one a secret. I gasped and pretended to look shocked.

“No way! Not another one! Do they have any idea who did it yet?”

Betty shook her head. “Not that I know. But apparently they called Antonia in the other day for questioning. You know how her and Andrea were. They haven’t spoken in years.”

“I know, but I don’t know the story behind that. Do you know what happened between them? I think it was before my time,” I asked.

“Oh sweetie, you know, I wish I knew the details. All I know is it had something to do with Andrea’s husband. It was just before he died, I remember that. He was in the hospital, and Antonia and Andrea had a shouting match outside the hospital in Portland one morning. Rose from the library saw it all, she said Andrea was screaming about Antonia ruining her life, and Antonia yelled back that Andrea did it all herself. Andrea’s husband died a few days later. So sad, he was a good man. Very quiet,” she continued, shaking her head sadly. Obviously the saying opposites attract existed for a reason; I supposed Andrea’s husband had to be the quiet type so that Andrea had someone to talk to all the time. I had a vague memory of her husband, I knew him when I was a child, but I think I was about 12 when he died. He had been older than Andrea, and if I remembered right he was in his late 50s when a heart attack put him in the hospital, and a second one a few weeks later killed him.

“So no one in town knows the details of what happened between them?”

“Nope,” Betty said, moving to the coffee machine to start on a cappuccino for another customer. “I know, strange, huh? That never happens in Willow Bay. But so it goes, those two managed to keep whatever it was a secret for years.”

“Wow,” I muttered under my breath. That was impressive. I thought keeping the fact that we were witches hidden was the biggest secret in Willow Bay. And I supposed it still was; it was just strange for there to be something else so big that everyone knew had happened but no one knew the details about.

“For what it’s worth, I could see Antonia killing Andrea. She told me a few times that she wanted to kill her, and once told me she kept her son’s old baseball bat just so she could bash Andrea’s head in one day.”

“That’s… very specific,” I said, my eyes widening. I couldn’t help but remember that Chief Gary had told me Andrea’s head had been bashed in, as if to imitate a fall onto the concrete.

Betty nodded grimly. “I hope it wasn’t her. Antonia is nothing if not entertaining. Plus she’s such a pillar of the community. I don’t like to think of murders being committed by someone who’s from here.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean. At least Zoe Wright wasn’t from Willow Bay. It’s different when it’s an outsider. Although any murder here is never good.”

“Exactly.”

Just then the bell above the entrance door rang its sweet song.

“Oh,” Bella said, lowering her voice. “That’s Kelly Dottory, Andrea’s niece. The one from Seattle. I remember her from when she was a child here.”

“That’s the niece of the woman who was killed?” Austin asked next to me, and I nodded. He turned around completely unsubtly to stare, as I was sure half the café was doing, but I waited until she got up to the counter to discreetly have a look myself.

Kelly Dottory was dressed like she’d just stepped out of a magazine. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d seen Katy Perry wearing that exact same skin-tight red dress on the cover of a gossip magazine while standing in line at the grocery store a couple weeks earlier. She was tall, at least five foot eight, and looked like she subsisted off entirely off lettuce and celery. I was fairly certain that if she turned side on she would disappear; she was so thin she might actually be two-dimensional. Her blonde hair, with perfect highlights, was tousled into soft waves and her makeup was layered on so thick I wasn’t sure I was looking at her actual face. She rapped her nails along the counter as she ordered.

“I’ll have a latte, skim milk,” she told Betty. “To go.”

“Of course, Kelly,” Betty told her, smiling. “It’s been way too long! I remember you when you were just a little girl, visiting your aunt here. I’m so sorry about her death.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kelly replied with a bored expression on her face. Apparently it was too much to ask to even pretend that she was broken up about her aunt’s death. “Listen, I was told there’s a dog, and I wanna see how cute it is, because, like, I think having a dog would be super cool, and I can’t find it at the pound. Do you know where it is?”

Excuse me? Getting a dog because you think it “would be super cool” was the worst reason ever to get a dog. On top of that, Kelly Dottory just gave off that impression of not caring about anyone except herself. I wasn’t going to give Sprinkles to just anyone; whoever was going to take care of him in the future was going to be a good owner, not just inherit him.

Betty looked over at me, but before she could say anything, I spoke up. “I’m the one taking care of Sprinkles right now,” I told Kelly.

“Oh?” she said, looking me up and down with a sneer. “And who might you be?”

“Angela Martin,” I replied. “I run the vet clinic in town.”

“Well I want to see the dog. When can I come get him?”

“I’m afraid dogs aren’t something you can just inherit,” I told her. “I’m taking care of Sprinkles for now, and when things settle down a little bit I’ll be looking to find him a permanent home. You’re more than welcome to come by and meet him one day, but it’s going to be at least a little while before I send him off to a new family.”

“But I want my dog now,” Kelly whined, stamping one of her feet. I stared at her. Was she really having a tantrum like some kind of two year old? It was hard to tell under all the makeup but she seemed to be about my age. This wasn’t how people in their mid-20s acted.

“He’s not your dog,” I said firmly. And the more I got to see of her, the more I was certain he never would be.

“I’m going to go tell the police Chief. I have to go see him today anyway, it’s the only reason I came up to this hick town before the funeral.”

“Fine. Chief Gary gave me permission to take care of Sprinkles until a suitable home was found,” I replied, and I found myself folding my arms in front of me in satisfaction. I did not like this girl one bit.

“Ugh. I can’t wait to get my aunt’s money and leave this town forever. An ugly bitch like you would never make it in the city.”

Before I had a chance to reply, Austin stood up next to me.

“Alright, young lady, I think that’s quite enough out of you,” he told her as Betty slammed the latte down in front of her, having heard the whole conversation. “I think it’s about time you leave,” he told her, grabbing her forcefully by the elbow and leading her towards the door. The way he grabbed her was a little bit more forceful than I liked, and I narrowed my eyes slightly.

“Get off me,” Kelly whined, pulling away from Austin. She grabbed her latte and her purse, and turned off in a huff, muttering about idiots in this town as she left the room.

“Well, that girl’s a piece of work,” Austin said as he sat back down at the counter.

“Thanks,” I forced myself to mutter.

“She always was a spoiled one,” Betty told us, rolling her eyes. “Even when she was little.”

“You knew her?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Betty nodded sagely. “Not well, of course. Her parents, Andrea’s brother and his wife, lived in Portland. But from time to time they would come here when she was little. Although over the course of the years they seemed to lose touch, I think the last time I saw Kelly she would have been eleven or twelve. And of course, her father passed on when she was eighteen or so.

I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Kelly. She might have been vain and arrogant, but no one deserved to lose a parent so young.

Betty continued. “Her mother was always very high maintenance. It looks like she passed that down to her daughter, although while her father made a very good living, apparently he had no life insurance. And Rose Gelder’s daughter works at the bank in Portland where Kelly does her shopping. Apparently she’s racked up a lot of credit card debt,” she added in a hushed whisper. “For her, it’s really a godsend that she inherits her aunt’s money.”

“But wait, Andrea wouldn’t have been that well off, would she?” I asked. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have made any money, but Andrea Dottory owned a late 90s Toyota that made Charlotte’s car look healthy and new, and I’d never seen her wear any clothes that seemed like they’d been made after 1980.

“Oh, don’t let Andrea’s frugality fool you. The woman was great with money. She wasn’t rich, by any stretch of the imagination, but she invested every cent she had rather than spend it on herself. She liked investing, she treated it like a job. She didn’t necessarily care about having the money, she enjoyed the satisfaction of being able to make her numbers go up.” Betty sighed and stared off into the distance. “If she was born in another era, I think she would have been a much happier woman.”

I couldn’t help but ask myself if Kelly Dottory was the kind of woman who would kill for money. After all, she could have easily driven down to Willow Bay and then gone back to Seattle. It was only a few hours along I-5 between the two cities. Still, taking someone out with a crowbar seemed like an especially brutal way to kill someone. I wasn’t sure if that waif of a woman had it in her. But money, I reminded myself, made people do funny things.

I thanked Betty, said goodbye to Austin, and headed back home. We had another name to add to our already long list of suspects.