Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 16

As soon as I got home that afternoon after work, I went into my bedroom to my desk where I kept my laptop. I created a new user in Chrome and made a fake gmail address. Then, I went to a stock photo site and started browsing pictures of girls who looked both provocative, but still pretty cute.

I ended up settling on a picture of a girl that looked a bit like a selfie taken in a park. The sun kissed her hair as she posed for the photo. The revealing top meant a bit of her cleavage was visible, and she was doing a duck face to the camera. Perfect for the reason I wanted it.

I smiled as I downloaded the picture, then opened up Facebook.

My fingers hovered over the keys for a minute. Was this really a good idea? I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to be doing this for any bad reason, I just wanted to see if there were any clues as to what Andrew Powers had really been up to the day of Andrea’s murder.

The rationalization helped steel my resolve, and a few minutes later I had a fake profile made. Maria Stevens lived in Portland, was twenty three years old, liked rock bands and cheesy movies. I liked a bunch of random pages, friended a bunch of random people Facebook recommended for Sophie when I chose her old high school, and twenty minutes later I had a few friends who had accepted my request (mainly male) and a pretty legitimate looking Facebook account.

I smiled to myself just a little bit. I felt like a bit of a hacker mastermind. Hitting up the search bar, I typed in “Andrew Powers”. His profile was the second one down, and I clicked it. He didn’t really have much information publically available; just his profile picture and cover image. I clicked to add friend.

If I was lucky, Andrew would be a frequent user of his Facebook account, and I wouldn’t have too long to wait. It had actually been Jason telling me about the article he was writing about catfishing people online - pretending to be someone you’re not to get someone to enter into a relationship with you on the internet – that gave me this idea to check on Andrew Powers’ day.

I had no intention of getting into a relationship with him, of course. I just wanted to see if he’d posted anything about his personal day.

After making the friend request, I found myself getting too edgy just sitting at the computer. It seemed like every two seconds my eyes went up to the little friend icon at the top of the screen, desperately waiting for Andrew Powers to accept my friend request. I went out to the living room and started helping to chop up some vegetables for the enchiladas Sophie was cooking up for dinner.

“Hey! Angela! Are you even listening to me?”

“What’s that? Sorry,” I said, giving my sister a sheepish look as she waved her hand in front of my face. “I’m just a little bit distracted, I’ve got a plan to hopefully find out what Andrew Powers was doing the day of the murder.”

“Well it had better not involve any magic,” my sister scolded. “And it had certainly better not involve breaking any laws.”

“It definitely doesn’t involve magic. And I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal,” I added hastily. Was pretending to be someone you’re not online illegal? Surely not. Hopefully not.

“Well as I was saying, I think we should look at Sophie’s idea that the niece is behind all this. I don’t like that Kelly girl. I get the feeling she’s the type who would do anything for money, and who loses her temper quickly when she doesn’t get what she wants.”

“I agree,” I replied. “I think she definitely could have done it. Though I think Sophie’s extra pissed at her because she almost got Sophie arrested.”

“I think Sophie almost got Sophie arrested,” I muttered.

“Fine, next time I won’t step in to defend you,” Sophie said, crossing her arms. I held up my hands in surrender.

“Hey, I’m grateful for that, don’t get me wrong! I knew she wasn’t the nicest person, but I never actually expected her to grab my hair and try and throw me to the ground.”

“And all because you wouldn’t give her Sprinkles,” Sophie said, looking over to the dog who was nicely sitting on the floor, looking up at the counter in case gravity decided to work in his favour. She reached down and gave him a pat on the head. “We’re never going to let that mean lady take you, are we? No we’re not! No we’re not,” she said, ruffling his fur. I smiled to myself. Sophie was definitely getting attached to Sprinkles. He normally liked her, though for the moment I could practically see him drooling. Humans came second to the idea of food, even if it was just vegetables.

Two hours later we’d eaten dinner while watching a couple old episodes of 30 Rock, my favourite comedy when I was a teenager. It was still definitely funny! When we were finished I took our plates to the kitchen and gave Bee some attention. She was finally coming around to Sprinkles living in her house; she’d taken to simply ignoring him rather than being openly hostile, which I thought was an improvement.

“I’ll be in my room,” I announced. “Hopefully in a little bit I’ll be able to tell you exactly what Andrew Powers was doing on his day off.”

I sat down at my laptop, thinking that Nancy Drew would have had to get into a lot fewer dangerous situations if the internet had been invented when she was around.

I refreshed the screen and my heart leapt into my throat when I saw the little red ‘1’ symbol next to the friends icon. I held my breath as I pressed it, and sure enough: “Andrew Powers has accepted your friend request.”

I fistpumped the air in celebration. I was in!

Of course, I still had no idea whether or not his profile had anything useful on it, but this was a step forward! My secret detective work was actually working.

I clicked over to Andrew Powers’ profile. He was the type that shared videos of environmental causes, political memes and, luckily for me, pictures of what he was doing basically every single day.

I scrolled past a whole bunch of stuff – stopping to watch a video on how to make the most amazing frozen fruit pops for summer for a minute – until I got to the right day. I crossed my fingers as I scrolled down, and there! There it was!

“Andrew Powers added eight photos to the album ‘Family’”

I clicked on the first picture. It was Andrew’s mom, after a hip replacement according to the caption. I recognized the rooms; she was at the main hospital in Portland. His mom was smiling and doing a thumbs up for the camera while holding flowers. This must have been what Andrew had taken the personal day for. He went to visit his mom after her surgery.

Still, I thought to myself, these could have been taken in the afternoon. He could have come to Willow Bay, killed Andrea Dottory, then gone to visit his mom in the hospital. That would be ice cold if he did that.

I scrolled through the photos, hoping one of them would give me a clue. Then, bingo! The last photo was taken from the side, and showed the clock on the wall. 11:03. Seeing as the sun was shining through the room from the window, it was obviously taken at 11 in the morning, and there was no way to get from Portland to Willow Bay in under half an hour, short of teleporting. And Andrew Powers had lived in Willow Bay for so long that if he was a wizard Lisa would have both known about it, and told us about it.

I continued to stare at the picture. That right there, that was the picture that meant Andrew Powers couldn’t have killed Andrea Dottory.

Sophie was going to be thrilled; Kelly Dottory was now our number one suspect.