Busy as a Beaver

Chapter 14

I woke up the next day, made my way to the kitchen, blended up a smoothie for breakfast, and checked my phone, looking over the previous night’s videos from the camera I had set up by the beavers’ lodge.

For the most part, I had expected the results to be pretty similar to the last time: the occasional video of a beaver coming out from his or her lodge, looking around, waddling out of sight from the camera, then eventually coming back, sometimes with a freshly chopped down piece of wood, and making their way back into the lodge.

I scrolled through the videos at double speed as I drank a smoothie, half wondering if I had time to make a pot of coffee before work or if I was going to have to stop at Betty’s, when I stopped suddenly.

Something completely different had popped up on the screen. There was motion, which had triggered the cameras to start recording, but it wasn’t beavers. It was a person.

Straightaway, I sat up taller in my chair and forgot about my smoothie, focusing on the video. I restarted it and watched as a human came in from the right-hand side—the opposite way from how I had accessed the area—and made his way towards the beavers’ lodge. It was definitely a man; I focused on the video to see if I could make out any identifying features.

The man was obviously angry: he stomped right over to where the beavers’ dam was set up and, grabbing a large piece of wood off the ground, began hacking at the setup near the lodge. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. After he had finished hacking away at the dam, the man made his way over to the lodge directly and began kicking at it. I held my breath; I knew that the lodge was still protected by my spell, but that didn’t make this any less terrifying. My heart went out to the beavers, who I knew must have been huddled inside their lodge, afraid of what was going to happen.

Luckily, my spell did hold up. The man kicked and kicked at the lodge, but no matter what, it didn’t budge. I could see his frustration growing, and eventually he simply grabbed the stick he had used to destroy the dam and threw it at the lodge as hard as he could before turning around and storming back off in the direction from which he had come.

As he turned, the man faced the camera I had set up absolutely perfectly, and I paused the app on that one frame, taking a quick screenshot for the future before zooming in with my fingers to get a closer look.

The man wore dark pants—they were probably jeans, but I couldn’t quite make them out in the dim light—and a light-colored jacket. Maybe it was a windbreaker? It was that sort of size, anyway. His hair was dark, and he had at least five days’ worth of stubble on his face. I squinted, but I wasn’t sure I recognized him. I made a mental note to ask Sophie when I saw her at the clinic. Maybe she knew who the man was?

Bee hopped into the car with me and the two of us drove down to the vet clinic. Looking at my watch as I dropped Bee off, I figured I had just enough time to go see the beavers this morning and make sure they were alright after the repeated attack from the night before.

Explaining the situation to Sophie, I darted off towards the park, which was only a couple of minutes’ walk away from downtown, and reached the beavers’ lodge shortly afterwards. They were all out of their lodge, in the woods nearby, rebuilding. I narrowly avoided being hit by a falling tree as Lolo called out an apology.

“I didn’t see you there, human!”

“It’s alright,” I said. “I came by to see if you’re all ok.”

The other beavers stopped what they were doing and made their way towards me. “Did the magic box work?” Naba asked. I nodded.

“It did, yes. I have a picture of the man who came here last night and attacked.”

“It was terrifying,” the youngest-looking beaver said. “I thought the lodge was going to come down.”

“Well, not to worry, it didn’t,” Naba told him reassuringly. “The human put a spell on it so that he couldn’t hurt us, and it worked.”

I nodded. “Yes, it did. I saw that, and I’m glad you’re all alright.”

“What are you going to do about this man?” the main beaver asked.

“I’m going to find out who he is, first. Did you hear anything he said?”

“He was complaining about our dam flooding his yard,” Lolo said. “He was hitting the dam and yelling about how us ‘stupid beavers’ were flooding the place.”

“Ok.” I nodded. That gave me a lot more to go on. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go find him later this afternoon, hopefully, and I’ll see if we can’t solve this peacefully. In the meantime, I recommend you follow the same safety procedures as you have been: if you see anyone, go back into your lodge. They can’t hurt you in there.”

“Thank you,” the main beaver told me. “We appreciate that you are trying to solve this for us.”

By the time I was walking off, the beavers were all busily chopping down more trees to get their dam back into shape. They were definitely nothing if not hard workers.

Most of the morning was spent dealing with the morning’s animal issues—two separate sets of kittens came in for their initial shots, which was absolutely adorable and led to Bee complaining that I loved them more than her; one six-month-old Labrador came in because she had eaten her own collar; a sheltie had sprained her tail from wagging it too hard and whined in pain as she continued to wag; and another lab had eaten an entire bag of chocolate chips. Luckily, they were white chocolate, so I told the owner to watch out for some exciting bathroom times over the next few days but that otherwise he would be fine. It certainly was one of the more eventful days I’d had recently.

When Karen announced that I had a two-hour break for lunch before my next appointment, I decided I was going to try and take care of the beavers’ problem a bit earlier than I’d initially planned.

“Alright, I’ll be back,” I told her.

I decided to stop off at Betty’s first to grab a quick sandwich to go. Betty’s BLTs—made specially with vegetarian bacon for me—were absolutely my favorite meal on the planet, and I figured what better to fuel myself with than one of those?

After all, the morning had been interesting enough that I figured I’d earned one.

As I stepped into the shop, Betty wagged a finger at me with a smile. “I hear you’ve been cheating on me.”

I laughed. “Did Sophie tell you about our trip to the city?”

“She did,” Betty replied with a grin. “She said I should add bourbon pecan pie to my menu, since she’s certain mine would outshine the one at Two Sweets Bakery.”

“Well, I may have cheated on you once, but I always come back in the end,” I laughed as I got my wallet out from my purse. “Can I get a BLT and maybe a slice of brownie to go?”

“Sure thing,” Betty replied, tapping away at the cash register. “Long day ahead?”

“It’s already been a long day,” I laughed. “I’m not sure how the afternoon is going to go. But yeah, I have a few things on the schedule, so it’s going to have to be to go. Hey, do you have a minute to chat?” I figured if I was here, I might as well try and get some information about Francis Romano.

“Of course, let me just go drop your order off in the kitchen,” Betty said, grabbing the slip of paper and disappearing into the back for a minute before returning.

“What can I help you out with? Don’t tell me you’re still looking into that home invasion at Gloria’s. She was in here the other day, poor thing. She’s looking a bit better, but that guy sure did a number on her, didn’t he?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “And yes, she did ask me to look into it, and I couldn’t say no to her. Not in that state. So I am doing it, but I’m going to tell Chief Gary anything really important that I find out.”

“Alright,” Betty said, a small smile playing on her lips. “What can I tell you, then? I told you, I don’t know Gloria all that well.”

“No, but you said you knew her husband.”

“Sure.” Betty nodded. “I grew up with Francis. He was a year ahead of me in school, but at that point Willow Bay was so small we were in the same class three quarters of the time anyway.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

Betty put a hand on her hip as she thought for a while. “He was always a bit of a troublemaker. To be honest, I was surprised to find out he became a teacher. I suppose we all had to grow up eventually, though. He probably would have actually been quite a good high school teacher. He was always very creative, and I imagine he would have made sure that the kids he taught found school fun for once.”

“What do you mean he was a troublemaker?”

“Well, you know, he was always the class clown. And he was always up for all sorts of adventures. Half the stories he told, I can’t imagine they were even remotely true. There was the time he claimed he came across the old abandoned cars from that train that derailed just outside of town back in the fifties, or when he claimed he found an underground bunker in the woods. There was also the time when he wrapped the school principal’s car in toilet paper during the day, and no one noticed. Yes, he definitely had stories to tell. Of course, the railcar story did end up being true.”

“You mean to tell me that Gloria’s husband was the one that found the old railcars in the forest?” I asked. I had never heard this story; there was a trail leading to the railcars now which was super popular among both tourists and locals, as the route was only about a mile long one way, fairly easy, and extremely scenic.

“Oh yes,” Betty said, nodding enthusiastically. “The day when it was officially announced that they were building a trail there was one of the best days of his life, I think. We were still in high school; it was about three years after he had initially discovered the cars. He was extremely excited, I think because it led everyone to believe that some of his other ridiculous adventures had actually happened as well.”

“Did they?” I asked with a smile. I was genuinely curious now. After all, I’d taken the trail to the railcars multiple times in my life.

Betty shrugged. “Who on earth knows? I suspect a lot of them were made up; why on earth would there be underground bunkers outside of Willow Bay? It just makes no sense. He claimed to have found a lot of things in the forest that simply should not have been there.”

“Did you know any of his friends as an adult?”

Betty shook her head no. “I’m afraid not. We lost touch completely after he moved out of town; we had never been close, so when he left I almost never saw him again. He did come back to town a few times, but not often. Last time I saw him would’ve been, oh, around twelve years ago. It was a few months after that woman up in the city strangled the hitman her husband hired to kill her. It was during the school year; I remember thinking that of course Francis couldn’t even take his holidays at the same time as normal people.”

“Right,” I said, nodding. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“That was the last time I saw him.” Betty shrugged. “Then a few years ago I found out he had died.”

“Do you know how it happened?”

“Heart attack,” Betty said. “Quite a sudden one, as well. Apparently, he just collapsed and never regained consciousness afterwards.”

I nodded. “So you’ve never heard the name Michael Carlton before?”

Betty shook her head. “Not in the context of anything to do with Francis. The first time I heard that name was a couple of days ago when it popped up in the papers.”

I frowned. While it was interesting to know Francis Romano’s background, it didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere when it came to a link between him and Michael Carlton. Another dead end. It seemed this case was full of them.

Betty came back with my sandwich and brownie a couple of minutes later, and I thanked her as I left, mulling over everything she’d told me.

Nope, for the life of me I couldn’t see how this could help me solve the case.