Lipstick On A Pig

Chapter 14

We dropped Jason back off at his home, then Sophie and I went back home. We opened the door to find Sprinkles lying next to it with his hands in between his paws.

“I didn’t do anything,” he whined as soon as we entered. Sophie and I looked at each other. Uh oh. This wasn’t good.

As Sophie and I made our way to the living room, my first thought was how on earth did it start snowing in here? until I realized it wasn’t snow. It was toilet paper.

“Bee,” I muttered, looking around for the guilty party. It couldn’t be that hard. After all, Bee was a black cat, in a living room covered in white toilet paper. It had all been torn to shreds; even the two cardboard rolls I spotted lying on the ground had been thoroughly destroyed. And it wasn’t like she’d just left the toilet paper in a neat little pile in the middle of the room.

No, the toilet paper was everywhere. She would have made teenagers playing a prank proud. Shreds of toilet paper covered the couch, the bookcase; a string was hanging off the TV. There was even a long string of toilet paper hanging off one of the blades of the fan, reaching halfway down to the floor. Bee had obviously put a lot of effort into ensuring the living room had been well and truly decorated.

“What?” my cat asked innocently. She was lying on top of her climbing tower—which was, unsurprisingly, the only part of the room that didn’t have any toilet paper on it—basking in a ray of sunshine that was pouring in through the window.

“Do you want to explain this?” I asked, motioning to the toilet paper.

“Explain what? I don’t know what you mean.”

“The toilet paper, Bee. How did all this toilet paper get here?”

“Ohhh, that. I think it was the dog. I barely even noticed it.”

“Well I don’t think it was the dog at all.” I crossed my arms across my chest to let Bee know I was serious about this. She replied by rolling onto her side and stretching her limbs, then closing her eyes once more.

“You’re allowed your opinion. Oh, wait. You think I did it?” Bee suddenly asked, opening her eyes wide in innocent protestation.

“Yes, Bee. I think you did it.”

I could see Sophie struggling not to laugh next to me, even though she could only understand my half of the conversation.

“Well, I can’t say I did. However, I must say that whatever gremlins crawled out of the woodwork and did do this might have left if you had been home.”

Ah. So I was being punished for going away. That was the reason for today’s batch of psycho from my cat.

“Oh, so that’s what this is about, is it? And why did my going away result in this redecoration of the living room?”

“You should ask Gloria. She came by with Buster earlier. She might know, even if she wasn’t able to get into the house.”

That explained it. Gloria was a woman who had recently retired to Willow Bay from Portland. She’d brought her cat Buster to my vet clinic a couple of months ago, and he and Bee had immediately hit it off. Ever since, Gloria would bring Buster into the clinic once or twice a week and the two of them would spend the day together—usually sitting on top of the bookcase, mocking and judging the other animals that came into the clinic together. Gloria must have come by to drop Buster off for a play-date while the vet clinic was closed.

“Look, Bee. I’m sorry you didn’t get to play with Buster today. But this is completely unacceptable,” I told her as I started to scoop up shreds of toilet paper off the ground.

“I told you, I didn’t do it,” Bee replied comfortably from her spot in the ray of sunshine.

“Of course you didn’t,” I muttered as Sophie began to help me clean up. Just then, Charlotte came in through the front door.

“Well, this is different,” she said as she walked into the living room.

“Bee had a bit of a fit because Buster came by and no one was here to let him into the house,” I explained, glaring at my cat.

“Don’t tell her lies, I told you I didn’t do it.”

“And I don’t believe you,” I shot back.

“First you abandon me for the whole day, and now you don’t take my word for anything. The betrayal is like a knife through my heart.” I rolled my eyes. Bee could be so dramatic.

“What was the spell you cast when we saw Jonathan Cork?” I asked Charlotte, who gave me a small smile.

“I have to say, I surpassed even myself,” she bragged. “I managed to pull off a truth-telling spell.”

Sophie and I stared at her. “Really?” I asked. Truth-telling spells were among the most difficult spells in the witch world to pull off. Charlotte nodded, unable to hide the slightly smug smile from her face.

“Yup. First one I’ve really tried. At least, I’m pretty sure it worked.”

“How would you know if it didn’t work?” I asked.

“He probably would have started babbling incoherently, or making completely false statements. That’s why it’s such a dangerous spell to pull off.”

“Wait,” I said. “What about the fact that he wouldn’t admit he was having an affair with the three women?”

“Well he never actually denied it. He just said he wouldn’t admit to anything. Plus, it was my first ever truth spell, it was never going to be perfect.”

“Oh, sure, now you’re being humble about it,” Sophie teased.

Charlotte shrugged. “Hey, if you had pulled off an almost fully functional truth-telling spell, you’d be bragging too.”

“Yeah, well, I can talk to Sprinkles,” Sophie said, patting her dog’s head happily.

“Get back to me when you can do more than just one magic thing,” Charlotte replied, and Sophie glared at her. Sophie’s lack of magical abilities were a little bit of a touchy subject for her, so I interrupted before she had a chance to reply.

“So what this means is that Cork wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t hire a hitman?” I asked Charlotte. She nodded.

“Yes. He wouldn’t have been able to lie about it; he would have only been able to dodge the question.”

“So that definitively crosses him off our suspect list,” I muttered. In a way, it was a good thing. After all, I couldn’t see a man like that murdering women in cold blood. I could have seen him hiring out a hit, though.

“And now we’re back to no suspects,” Sophie muttered, grabbing a pile of toilet paper and throwing it dejectedly back onto the floor.

An hour later I decided to drop past the vet clinic to grab some files I wanted to look over before we re-opened, and also take a few minutes to myself as I thought about everything we knew about the case.

As I walked the twenty minutes from home toward Main Street, I thought over everything we knew about the case. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure there was a serial killer out there. It was just too much of a coincidence that Jessica Oliver looked almost exactly like the other two women who had presumably had affairs with Jonathan Smith and either disappeared or been killed. No, I knew we had to be on the right track with the serial killer angle.

The problem was, we had no idea who to look at. I thought maybe the four of us could go to the funeral, at least that way we could maybe talk to some of Jessica Oliver’s coworkers again and get an idea of who could be a suspect. It had to be someone who had worked at the firm in Chicago and then in Portland, so it wasn’t likely to be a low-level worker where the turnover would have been high. I suspected we were looking at associates, or maybe even partners.

All that thinking made me hungry; by the time I got to Main Street I decided to pop in to see Betty at her café, which was still bustling with activity.

“Hi Betty!” I greeted her as I walked in and up to the counter. It was late enough that there was a free table, but I opted for a slice of apple pie for take-out instead—unfortunately all the cheesecake slices were long gone.

“Hey, Angela, how are things?” Betty asked as she poured the milk into a to-go latte cup.

“Good, how about here?”

“Oh, busy as always during the festival! My brain is starting to feel a bit muddled from the lack of sleep, but it’s worth it.”

“Don’t say that too loudly, people will start talking,” I half joked, as I noticed Antonia deLucca sitting at one of the tables, straining to listen in on our conversation. I had a feeling that the next day more than a few people were going to hear about how Betty might be starting to lose her marbles.

“Ah, well, people talk. That’s what they do,” Betty said as she rang up my order and handed me my change.

“You have a very Zen view on life for someone who’s probably made two hundred coffees today.”

“It’s keeping me sane,” she grinned. “Oh, that and watching the news. Did you see that the video that was taken of Jessica Oliver having that argument with you the day before her death made the local news?”

I groaned. “Great.”

“Don’t worry. You come off just fine, after all, you were just trying to calm her down.”

“I guess I should be thankful Sophie didn’t punch her in the face, like she did Kelly Dottory that time,” I admitted. With Sophie around, things could have gotten a lot more intense than they had.

“See? Looking on the bright side of life. It’s the secret to getting through tough times, like having to make two hundred coffees in a day,” Betty told me with a wink, handing me my pie. I thanked her with a smile, then left the shop.

I was halfway down the street to the vet clinic when I spotted Matt Smith coming up the street the other way. I checked to see if there were any cars coming so I could cross the road before he noticed me, but just as I began to make my move, I heard his voice call out, “Hey, Angela!”

Great. There was no getting out of it now. I plastered the fakest smile on my face I could possibly muster in the hopes that he would get the hint that I didn’t want to talk to him.

“Hi, Matt,” I greeted him. “Sorry, I’m in a bit of a rush, I have to go to the vet clinic and grab some stuff before I meet my boyfriend for dinner.” So that last part was a lie; I knew Jason was going to spend the night working on his articles for the paper. I just wanted to emphasize to Matt that I had a boyfriend.

“No problem. Hey, I wanted you to know, I’m buying up the building your vet clinic is in, so we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of each other in the future.”

“Why would we be seeing more of each other? I see the landlord now like, once every few months, and mainly just because I have to give his cat her shots.”

Matt looked a bit taken aback that I didn’t seem thrilled with what he’d just suggested.

“Well, I thought maybe we could get to know each other a bit better.”

“I know you want to turn Willow Bay into some plastic resort town that looks like it belongs more in downtown LA than here. That’s all I need to, or care to know about you.”

“Ah, you just don’t understand business,” he told me patronizingly. “I’d love to explain the basics to you over dinner.”

“Sorry, when I’m not having dinner with my boyfriend, I’m too busy taking care of the business I’ve been running for years. You know, during those years that you were reading about how business works in books.” So, I was getting a little bit snarky. But he’d started it.

“Woah, sorry!” Matt said, holding up his arms in front of his chest. “I can see I hit a nerve. I like what you’ve done with the vet clinic. But I think together, we can make it look a lot more impressive. Bring you in a lot more business.”

“I already have one hundred percent of the business in town.”

“Yeah, well, people from Portland whose pets are sick might be willing to see you if…”

“If I pretend my vet clinic is an Apple Store and decorate it accordingly? No, thank you. The building as it is has a lot of character. Not that you would know what that is.”

“Well, it’s not going to be up to you, in a few weeks,” Matt said, obviously annoyed at me now. I had to admit, I took a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that I managed to rile him up so easily. Although my own blood was pretty much boiling over with rage. How dare he want to replace the cute wooden building that housed Healthy Paws and replace it with a modern glass monstrosity? No, I wasn’t going to let that happen.

“That’s what you think,” I told him. “Your deal hasn’t gone through yet.”

“What, and you think you’re going to manage to get something to change about that? Well guess what, money talks, and I have a lot of it. You’d be better off getting on my side here, Angela. Trust me. In a few years, I’ll be the main man here in town.”

“Yeah, ok, you get on that,” I told him. “I really do need to get to work.”

“Well, if you ever decide to dump that boyfriend of yours to the curb, I’m not so insulted that I won’t still take you out to dinner,” Matt said, flashing me a creepy smile. I visibly rolled my eyes at him as I crossed the street and walked to the vet clinic, making extra sure to lock the door behind me.

I made a mental note to go talk to my current landlord. Maybe there was a way I could convince him not to sell the property to Matt Smith. A girl could dream, right? There was one thing I knew for sure: I didn’t want that guy to own any property in Willow Bay, and certainly not the property my vet clinic was sitting on. Willow Bay had charm, it was what brought people to this town. I didn’t want some fresh-out-of-college kid with a trust fund ruining the place because he felt he could make it into the next Waikiki.