Lipstick On A Pig

Chapter 4

Charlotte sighed. “I knew you guys were going to want to do this.”

“What? It makes sense. You knew her. She went to your college. If anyone in Willow Bay has an advantage here, it’s you. And don’t you think it’s your civic duty to do what you can if you can help find a murderer?” I pulled out all the stops.

“And here I thought we might be able to go two whole months without finding ourselves sucked into another murder investigation,” Charlotte replied. “Fine. I’ll do it. But only because of that whole civic duty thing. And I absolutely refuse to do anything dangerous.”

“Deal,” I lied, knowing full well that we’d be able to lure Charlotte into doing anything Sophie and I deemed necessary, no matter how dangerous. It was just after noon; I’d had a long nap, and Chief Gary had told me that the petting zoo would be closed for good this year. I could come pick up the animals and take them back to Joe’s farm later that afternoon, but it wouldn’t be until the crime scene guys were done so he’d let me know when. That gave us at least a good four, maybe five hours of investigating.

“Good. Start by telling us everything you know about her,” Sophie said, plopping herself down on the couch next to me and looking eagerly at Charlotte, who shrugged.

“I mean, I don’t know that much about her. Her name was Jessica Oliver. She was a law student. Well, pre-law when we knew each other. I don’t know if she made it into law school or not. I haven’t seen her around the last year or so, but the medical building and the law building are on opposite sides of campus from each other. She had a, well, let’s say, a reputation,” Charlotte continued, trailing off.

“Oh my God, what are you, eighty years old? What kind of ‘reputation’?” Sophie asked, doing air quotes for emphasis.

“Well,” Charlotte squirmed. “I don’t like to spread rumors about people I don’t know, but apparently she would have affairs with married men so they would pay for her lifestyle.”

“The lifestyle of Louis Vuitton handbags and Hermes scarves that we saw yesterday?” I asked, my eyebrows raising, and Charlotte nodded.

“I don’t know how true those rumors were. I honestly thought she had family money, and that people were making up the rumors because they didn’t like her. Which, it sounds like yesterday you found out why.”

“Was there anyone who did like her?” I asked, and Charlotte nodded slowly.

“Yeah. She had a sister. A twin sister, actually, although they were fraternal twins and not identical. I guess sisterly bonds are like that though.”

“Please, if you ever start acting like that, I’m disowning you so fast your head will spin,” I joked, and Sophie laughed next to me.

“Absolutely. I mean, I know Angela’s really annoying—pretty much all the time, but I can still love her. This Jessica chick took things to a whole new level.”

“Hey!” I replied, insulted.

“Awwww, you know I love you,” Sophie told me, reaching over and giving me a big bear hug that I purposely resisted just a little bit.

“I love you too, I guess,” I grumbled back, eventually letting myself get absorbed into the hug.

“Anyway,” Charlotte continued pointedly, “I know her sister was also in pre-law. From what I saw they got along pretty well. But maybe today isn’t exactly the best day to go and see her.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. I could see Sophie kind of wanted to argue the point, but even she realized that we couldn’t go barging in asking the sister questions the very day that she found out her twin had been murdered.

“Fine, so we aren’t going to do that. Is there anyone else she would have been close to, but not that close to?” Sophie asked. Charlotte shrugged. “I’m really not sure.”

“Well why don’t we try and figure it out the new-fashioned way?” I asked. “Surely she has Facebook and Instagram accounts.”

“Good plan,” Sophie said, getting up and grabbing her iPad off the kitchen counter. The three of us scootched together to pore over the screen as Sophie opened up her Facebook app.

Sophie typed “Jessica Oliver” into the search bar, and pretty quickly we recognized her profile picture. It was Jessica, doing a duck face pose, while lying in what looked like a random hotel room bed. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but hey, to each their own.

“Is all her stuff set to private?” Charlotte asked, and Sophie started scrolling through the profile.

“Nope,” she grinned. “All available for the whole world to see.”

The three of us were silent while Sophie scrolled through post after post of Jessica bragging about her life.

“#thatfeelingwhen you’re at a new salon and the stylist says there’s no way your hair color can come from a bottle #blessed #bottleblonde #butisodontlookit #lookssonatural”

Of course, all these posts were accompanied by selfies taken by Jessica, and despite the fact my one experience with the girl was a little bit less than friendly, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad that most of her pictures only garnered one or two likes. The girl obviously wanted attention, and she certainly wasn’t getting it from her social media.

We scrolled through post after post of tedious nothingness, and I started to think that maybe we weren’t going to get anywhere this way.

“Hold on,” Charlotte finally said. “There’s one person that she keeps tagging in a bunch of her stuff. Click on Laura Walczyk there.”

Sophie did as ordered and up popped the profile of a girl in law school, who posted on social media quite a bit less than Jessica did. Her profile said she went to the University of Oregon, same as Charlotte and Jessica.

“Hmmmm,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “I’m like, 99 percent sure I know her. A friend of mine, Kelsey, is friends with her, I’ve seen them hanging out before.”

“Wait, you have friends?” Sophie teased, earning herself a light punch in the arm from Charlotte. “Hold on, let me text her. I’ll be right back.”

Charlotte got up off the couch while Sophie and I continued stalking Jessica’s Facebook account. When we got back to Christmas of last year, we found a number of photos that she had been tagged in, taken at an Oregon law firm’s staff Christmas party, going by the number of people dressed in suits. The name Forrester, Forrester and Smith was visible on the back wall.

“Do you think she worked there?” I asked. “Maybe she still does.”

Sophie scrolled back up to the top of the page and over to the About section of Sophie’s profile. Sure enough, she had listed that she worked as an intern at Forrester, Forrester and Smith.

“Yup, you nailed it,” Sophie replied.

“Of course, I can guarantee you that we’re not going to be able to go to a lawyer’s office and just start asking them questions. If TV has taught me anything, it’s that they’re totally not going to talk to us,” I said.

“The lawyers might not, but Jessica wasn’t a lawyer. She was an intern. And there’s bound to be other interns working there.” Sophie closed the app and turned to me. “We’re going to Portland!”

“Is there a plan involved in all of this?” I asked warily. I already knew the answer to this. It was Sophie, of course there was no plan.

“Of course there’s a plan! We go to her work, and then we come up with a reason to be there and befriend one of the interns. Then she’ll tell us everything we need to know.”

“So you basically have step one, and then steps two, three and four are question marks, and then step five is we find out who killed Jessica?”

“Exactly,” Sophie beamed. “If you plan it out too carefully, it never works.”

“Yeah, this way sounds much better,” I replied sarcastically.

“Do you have a better idea?” Sophie asked.

“Anything else,” I replied. “Literally, anything else.”

But in all seriousness I didn’t have a better plan. Five minutes later, Charlotte came out of the bedroom. “Kelsey set up coffee with Laura tomorrow, so I’ll see what I can find out then.”

“Cool,” Sophie replied. “Angela and I are going to Portland. We figured out what law firm Jessica Oliver interned at, so we’re going to see if we can dig up some info there.”

“That sounds good, what’s your plan?”

“There isn’t one,” I replied. “We’re just going to wing it.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Of course you are. Well, seeing as you don’t actually have any idea what you’re going to do, I’m going to stay here and study—if you don’t mind.”

“Sure thing, nerd,” I teased. I took ten minutes to go feed the one animal currently in our care in the backyard stables—a doe with a broken leg who’d be able to be re-released into the wild in a few weeks—and then Sophie and I headed down to Portland with absolutely nothing that even remotely resembled a plan. That was okay though, after all, how badly could it possibly go?