Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 2

The one saving grace was that I’d planned on meeting my sister Charlotte for a late lunch at Betty’s Café, a cute little café/bakery a little ways down the main street of Willow Bay. Willow Bay was a small village on the Oregon coast, about an hour from Portland. We were definitely a tourist town, with one main street and about six thousand permanent residents. Every year, in summer especially, people flocked from Portland, the rest of Oregon, and even Washington and California to enjoy sitting on the beach under the willow trees, wiling the days away and sometimes even getting to see a few surfers on days with big surges. I’d grown up in Willow Bay, and while I went to veterinary school in Seattle, I had always planned on coming back, and I did. After all, Willow Bay was home. It might not have been perfect, but I absolutely loved it here.

Three hours after the adventure with Missy we had given all the Maynard dogs their vaccines, given X-rays to a black lab called Puffy who was what I liked to call an adventurous eater – this time the X-ray showed six whole extra-large muffins, paper wrapper included – and spayed Lottie, the youngest of the Maynard dog clan, who was happily resting and being checked on by Sophie.

I barely had the energy to change out of my scrubs and make my way down to Betty’s, but I did it, and when I got there I collapsed into the chair at the corner table across from where my sister Charlotte was sitting.

Charlotte was my little sister, but we looked nothing alike. She had beautiful blonde hair that reached her shoulders, with just a slight curl to it, and skin so pale she looked like an English rose. It would have been impossible from looking at her to guess that our mom had Italian roots.

Charlotte was also incredibly book smart. Currently finishing off her second year of medical school in Portland, an hour’s drive away from Willow Bay, she was most comfortable when researching things. She also wasn’t taking any time off; even in the summer semester she was taking classes, although she was “only” doing two of them.

I wasn’t a total idiot, after all they don’t give veterinary degrees to absolutely anyone who walks in off the street, but Charlotte was off-the-charts smart. And I loved her more than anything in the whole world.

When I was four years old and Charlotte was six months old, our parents were killed in a car accident coming back from an anniversary dinner. Their best friend, Lisa, who also happened to be Sophie’s mom, took us in and raised us as her own, but I still felt like it was my duty to take care of Charlotte, being her only biological family and all. We didn’t have anyone else.

“Fun day at the office?” Charlotte asked, raising an eyebrow as I struggled to move back into a socially acceptable seated position.

“Don’t even get me started,” I replied. “If I ever complain that Bee’s a little bit too crazy, please remind me that cats like Missy exist.”

Charlotte laughed. “Well, lucky for you I already ordered us BLTs, so you don’t need to go up to the counter and order.”

“Have I ever told you you’re my favourite person in the whole wide world?” I asked Charlotte, who grinned in reply.

“I know you said not to get me started, but I’m curious.”

I told Charlotte everything that had happened that morning, from Milo coming in with the injured paw to the adventure with Missy.

“Luckily everything after that went pretty smoothly, because I’m not sure how much more crazy I would be able to take today,” I finished.

“Wow. And here I was going to tell you about how some students managed to screw up a chemistry experiment. They accidentally set up the buret incorrectly and sent a whole bunch of hot liquid everywhere. I still think your story is better.”

I laughed. “Nope, that one’s pretty good,” I replied. I thought back to my own days of doing chemistry and how sometimes I thought it wouldn’t take much for something to go wrong. Nothing ever had while I was there, luckily.

“I’m not sure it’s better, but one of the guys had some land in his hair and it burnt it all down to his scalp. He had to use the emergency chemical burn tap and then got sent straight to the hospital.”

“Wow! That’s actually serious!” I said.

“Yeah, well, the professor said he’s probably not going to suffer any sort of long term damage, other than the psychological scarring that comes with learning chemistry safety lessons the hard way.”

“That’s good.”

“Definitely.”

Just then, Betty came over with our sandwiches and a side of fries. Betty McMahon was a kindly old woman in her 60s, who had decided that when she was finished teaching elementary school, rather than retire she would rather live out her dreams of running a little bakery. And oh boy was she ever good at it. Betty’s treats were known around the state, and people driving from Portland down south were known to detour well out of their way to stop in Willow Bay and get a taste of Betty’s amazing little treats.

And she also made BLTs that were to die for. Thick sourdough bread, fresh lettuce and tomato, thick cut bacon – she always made mine with a vegetarian version - and the perfect amount of slightly spicy mayonnaise, grilled to perfection. This was one of my favourite treats in the whole town. And of course, the thick cut fries were a nice bonus as well.

“Ohhhhh this is exactly what I need right now,” I said, picking up the sandwich and taking a huge bite.

“Be careful there, Angela,” Charlotte told me. “We don’t want to have a When Harry Met Sally moment right here in the café.”

I blushed at the insinuation.

“I’m not that bad,” I said. Charlotte laughed.

“I’m pretty sure you just made love to that first bite of the sandwich.”

“Fine, well, I’ve had a bad day. Don’t judge me.”

“Would some hot gossip make your day better?” Charlotte asked, and I looked up at her curiously. Charlotte wasn’t the type to gossip at all. Which is weird for someone who grew up in Willow Bay, the kind of place where gossiping about anything and everything is the number one pastime.

“It depends on what the gossip is,” I replied.

“Well, I was walking through Portland this morning, going to my car to come back here. And I walked past this cute little restaurant on Market Street, and I looked in, and guess who I saw?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Lisa,” Charlotte replied in a hushed whisper.

“So? Lisa’s allowed to go to Portland. She has clients there, remember?” Sophie’s mom Lisa, who raised us as her own, ran her own accountancy firm. It had started out small, with just a few local clients, but her reputation made its way around the state and now Lisa had opened up an office in Portland and Eugene as well.

“No, no. Not just Lisa by herself. Lisa with a man. And it definitely wasn’t a business meeting.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well as I walked by she was twirling her hair and he was holding her hand, and neither one of them were dressed for a business meeting, and neither one of them had folders or anything.”

“Well, just because she’s old doesn’t mean she’s not allowed to date anyone,” I replied, but at the same time, something about it felt weird.

Lisa had divorced Sophie’s father when Sophie was two years old. I’d known Sophie my whole life, and to date I had never known her to have a boyfriend. Ever.

“Isn’t it strange though?”

“Yeah, it is,” I replied. Why now? Why did she decide she needed someone in her life at this exact moment?

“I wonder why she didn’t tell us though.”

“Maybe because she thought we’d react like this,” I said, with a small smile. “After all, it sounds like neither one of us are totally thrilled about this new development.”

“Well no, but only because it’s so strange,” Charlotte replied. “Do you think we should tell Sophie?”

“You know damn well I’m going to have to tell Sophie. I can’t hide something like this from her.” Sophie was my best friend, but I’d grown up living in the same house as her. We were practically sisters.

“Fine. But you have to make her promise she’s not going to bring him up to her mom until her mom tells us about him. We need to respect her wishes, she’ll tell us about him when she’s ready.” Leave it to my sister to still be the mature one in this situation, despite being the youngest.

“Ok. I promise. We won’t ask her about him until she mentions him. Besides, you might have it all wrong anyway. It might be something totally different.”

“Maybe. But if you’d seen them, you’d be sure too.”

I took another big bite into my sandwich as the bell above the front door went off. Instinctively I looked to see who had come in, and saw it was Antonia deLucca, one of the local town gossips. She was in her late 60s now, I presumed, and spent her whole day sticking her extra big nose into other peoples’ business. And right now, she looked like the cat that had just caught the canary, and wanted to tell everyone about it.

She walked up to the counter, chest puffed out. I caught Charlotte’s eye and pointed subtly. Antonia looked like she had something juicy. But at the same time, her face was pale, and she actually looked older than usual, which was impressive, seeing as Antonia deLucca was pretty much ancient.

I wasn’t her biggest fan, especially after she started a rumour that I was involved in a murder a couple of months ago, when the victim had broken into my vet clinic to try and save himself.

“Betty, my dear,” Antonia told Betty behind the counter. “I’ve just come from the most interesting scene.”

“Oh yes, Antionia? And what might that be?” Betty asked, playing Antonia’s game.

“There’s been another murder in Willow Bay!”

At that, the whole café went completely silent. Even the fridge stopped humming. I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“Another murder?” Betty finally asked. “Are you sure?”

Antonia nodded, looking around the room at the ten or so people sitting at tables, enjoying their lunches.

“Yes! Another murder! Although Chief Gary won’t tell me that himself, it’s obvious that’s what it is.”

“Who is it?” I heard Charlotte ask.

“Poor old Andrea Dottory,” Antonia replied, shaking her head sadly and clucking her tongue. Charlotte and I looked at each other. If anyone in Willow Bay was a likely candidate to be murdered, it was Andrea.

Andrea Dottory was one of the other town gossips, but she was much more malicious than Antonia deLucca. She was in her mid-70s, and had lived in Willow Bay ever since she emigrated from Ireland in the early 50s. No one in town liked her, mainly because she had started nasty rumours about almost everyone, at some point. And she didn’t mind telling people about them to their faces, either.

I looked at Charlotte.

“Murder?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I mean, at 70 plus years old it’s less likely than other things.”

Antonia overheard us and came over to our table.

“No, no. It’s murder. Believe me, I know. Andrea told Patricia Wilson the other day she was going to be murdered soon, she could feel it.”

“Did she happen to tell you tell Patricia who was going to commit the murder?” I asked dryly.

“No. She didn’t.”

“Well, that would have been helpful.”

“It’s not like she died in her sleep. She was found lying in the middle of the road, around the corner from her house, and her head was bashed in!”

Charlotte and I looked at each other. Willow Bay had had its first murder since the 1910s just a couple of months ago. What on earth were the odds that we’d have two in two months?