Busy as a Beaver

Chapter 6

“Gloria!” I exclaimed. “Come in, please.”

“Thank you, dear,” Gloria said to me with a smile. I couldn’t help but notice she walked with a bit of a limp.

“How are you feeling? Please, have a seat. Bee and Buster decided to go out this morning, but Buster ran off without using his injured paw, which was nice to see. I’m sure they’ll be back shortly.”

“A seat would be nice, actually,” Gloria said as she plopped herself down in one of the lobby chairs. “And don’t worry about Buster. In fact, I think a bit of a rest is just what I need.”

“If you’d like I can get Karen to drive you back home after the two cats get back.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to be a bother.”

“I’m happy to do it, ma’am,” Karen said cheerily from behind the counter. “It’s really no trouble at all. You’re only a couple minutes away. I’m glad to see you looking so much better.”

“It’s quite alright, really. The doctors told me I should try to do some light exercise anyway, that sitting around all day would only make things worse. Frankly, I’m more worried about the state of my home.”

“I’m sure it’s all fine,” I assured her, not letting Gloria know that I knew all too well what the inside of her home looked like. “Are you worried about staying in it alone? Is there anyone who can stay with you for a few days?”

Gloria waved a hand away. “Oh, I’m not calling my kids over to stay with me like some scared old woman. I’m sure whoever it was got the fright of his life thanks to Buster, and he won’t be back.”

“Well, good, that’s the right attitude,” Karen said with a smile.

“Is there anything you can think of that might have slipped your mind yesterday?” I asked Gloria quietly a couple of moments later. “Anything that might help give me an idea who did this to you?”

Gloria shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not, Angela. I thought about it for quite a while yesterday after you left. I’m afraid you know everything I do.”

Slightly disappointed, I suddenly saw Bee and Buster making their way back towards the vet clinic. To my immense relief, Buster was still only using three paws, limping slightly but managing. I was glad; he seemed to understand the importance of staying off the one with the broken ulna.

Five minutes later Gloria and Buster had been reunited, Bee was sulking at the front now that her best friend had gone home, and I was in the back with Sophie as our next patient got settled in one of the exam rooms.

“So no new info, hey?” Sophie asked disappointedly.

“Nope,” I replied. “Honestly, I just don’t know what to do. It kind of feels like we’ve run out of leads before we even started.”

“I know what you mean,” Sophie agreed. “I just don’t know what we should do next.”

I sighed. Maybe we had bitten off more than we could chew this time around.

Jason texted me just after our last patient for the day went home.

Have you heard about the shooting in Portland?

My eyebrows rose when I read it, and my heart jumped in my chest. I hoped whatever it was that no one had gotten hurt. No. What happened?

Another home invasion, a couple hours ago. Only this time, the homeowner didn’t make it out alive.

Send me the address.

Two home invasions in broad daylight in two days? There was no way that could be a coincidence.

“We’re going on a road trip,” I announced to Sophie when I made my way back into the room. “There’s been another home invasion, in Portland this time, and this person didn’t have a cat to save them.”

“I’ll grab my jacket,” Sophie instantly replied. We grabbed Bee and took her home, despite her protests that she wanted to come along with us, and headed off.

As I drove down the highway towards Portland, Sophie had her phone out and was checking news sites like crazy.

“There’s no real information here,” she said. “Only that there was a shooting at a home in Mt. Tabor in the middle of the day.”

“Well, hopefully Jason will have more for us,” I said. “He’s going to meet us there.”

The address Jason had sent me was in Mt. Tabor, a pretty decent neighborhood on the east side of Portland. Winding my way through narrow residential streets, past houses that looked to have been built mainly in the fifties and sixties, I knew I was coming up to the right place when I reached the crowds of people huddled around yellow police tape.

There had to be about fifty locals all coming to have a look. Whether they were out walking the dog or had heard from nosy neighbors that disaster had struck here, they were pressed up against yellow crime scene tape while an officer held everyone back.

I managed to find a parking spot a couple of blocks away, and Sophie and I made our way towards the crime scene. I texted Jason to let him know we were coming, and as soon as he saw us he motioned for us to join him.

Jason had moved off to the far side of the house, a ways away from the crowd but still within sight of the crime scene.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I looked at the house and shivered. It wasn’t just the fact that the sun had almost completely set, bringing an extra chill down on the town. It was that I knew all too well this was how Gloria’s home invasion could have gone, and I wondered who the poor soul who hadn’t been so lucky was.

The crime scene was a bungalow that fit in with the rest of the homes on the street: low-rising, surrounded by shrubs, painted a rather ugly shade of green that looked like it needed a fresh coat fifteen years ago.

“They’ve just removed the body and taken it to the morgue about ten minutes ago,” Jason said. “The shooting took place a couple of hours ago, at two in the afternoon. I spoke to some neighbors who heard the shots and called 9-1-1, but it was too late.”

“Do you know who it was?” Sophie asked.

“I have a name. Michael Carlton. He was retired; worked as an accountant for the school board downtown until about five years ago when he took his pension. Never married, no kids.”

“Another retiree, another middle-of-the-day home invasion,” I muttered. “That can’t be a coincidence. Maybe in New York, but not here.”

“Hey, even in New York that would be considered pretty out of the ordinary,” Jason said, defending his hometown. “But I agree, and that’s why I texted you. I think there’s got to be a link between that invasion and this one, and I think they were both almost certainly committed by the same person.”

“Going from Willow Bay to northeastern Portland is a pretty long commute, don’t you think?” Sophie pointed out. “If you just wanted to do a smash-and-grab robbery, there have to be what, ten thousand homes between the two? What made the culprit decide to go from one place to the other?”

“That’s a good point,” I mused. Unfortunately, this case seemed to be all about more and more questions and fewer and fewer answers. I had absolutely no idea what the culprit’s reasoning could have been.

“Was there a link between Gloria and this Michael Carlton?” I asked Jason. “Did you find out anything?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Jason said, shaking his head. “We should ask her when we get back to Willow Bay.”

As I looked towards the house, I suddenly saw a large, familiar figure come into view, his face lit up by the red and blue lights of one of the police cruisers.

“It looks like we’re not the only ones to have made this connection,” I said, motioning to Chief Gary, who made his way straight towards one of the uniformed officers on the other side of the police cordon.

“Great,” Sophie said, ducking behind Jason slightly. “We’re definitely going to get yelled at if he sees us here.”

“Let’s go back to the car and decide what to do next,” Jason suggested. “It’s getting cold out, and I haven’t seen anything in the last hour that could help us out.”