Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 8

“This is nice,” Sophie said. “I feel like we haven’t broken into someone’s place in ages.”

“I’m really not sure that’s a feeling you should be craving,” I replied. “Plus, the last time we did it we almost got caught, remember? We had to put a guy on his ass and make him think he was super uncoordinated, since we were invisible.”

Sophie laughed. “Yeah, I remember. It was fine, though. You sound like Charlotte.”

“I’m the sane middle ground between your crazy desire to do literally everything and Charlotte’s good-girl scaredy-cat feelings that make her think everything’s a bad idea,” I replied.

“Nothing about you is sane, or middle ground,” Sophie replied, and I stuck my tongue out at her as I got onto the Interstate heading north toward Portland.

We spent the rest of the trip chatting casually about Lucy, about the murder and about life in general, and a quick forty-five minutes later–well, it didn’t exactly feel quick when Sophie screwed up the Google Maps directions and we had to change our route–we found ourselves driving down a small one-lane road in the suburb of Lake Oswego. Matt Smith lived in what I had to admit was a cute little bungalow, new-looking and painted a nice, deep blue-grey color with white trim. I parked the car about thirty feet away from the house as Sophie and I came up with a plan.

“Should we just go invisible and break in?” Sophie asked.

“Yeah, I think so. I can do the spell in the car. Maybe we should park it a few blocks away, just in case.”

I put the car back into drive and got ready to head off when suddenly Sophie grabbed my arm. “Wait!” she exclaimed. “Look.”

Following Sophie’s finger, I noticed a man exiting the house. He was on the taller side, with blonde hair, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked completely average in every way; the kind of person you never thought twice about if you passed them on the street.

“Do you think he’s a robber?” Sophie asked. “Or someone doing the same as us?”

I shook my head. “No. He just took some mail from the mailbox, and is now bringing it inside.” We watched for another minute as he came back out. “And now he’s locking the front door, with a key.”

If there was any doubt that the man absolutely lived in that home, it vanished when the man waved at a neighbor driving by.

“Do you think Matt Smith was gay? Or did he have a roommate?” I asked.

“Roommate for sure,” Sophie said. “If he was Matt’s boyfriend he’d be a lot more shaken up about the death. He’s acting completely normally here, and smiled as he waved to the neighbor.”

“Ok, we’ll wait for him to leave, and then go inside.”

“Why don’t we follow him instead? Maybe we can casually talk to him and find out about Matt. We might get more information from talking to him than we would from searching the house,” Sophie suggested.

“Good call,” I said, putting the car into drive as the man stepped into a silver Prius in the driveway and headed toward downtown Portland. About twenty minutes later the Prius parked on the street near a coffee shop. I found a parking spot myself about a block further down, and we found the man setting up a laptop computer inside the coffee shop.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “We can’t just go in there and be like hey, we know you’re Matt Smith’s roommate, do you want to tell us everything you know about who might have wanted him dead?.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “For someone with unlimited witch powers, you have no creativity whatsoever,” she said. “Let’s go in there and order coffee, first.”

We made our way into the shop, which was cute and homely, with dark wood panels everywhere and a guy with a hipster beard behind the coffee machine, which whirred away. It was basically exactly what you’d expect a hipster coffee shop in Portland to look like.

Sophie and I ordered a couple of lattes–mine with a shop of vanilla–and I followed Sophie as she made her way toward Matt Smith’s presumed roommate. I couldn’t help but notice her undoing an extra two buttons of her top on the way over.

We sat down at the table next to his, finding ourselves only a couple of feet away from the man. I took a sip of my coffee as Sophie leaned toward me in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Did you hear about that man who was killed in Willow Bay yesterday?” she asked. “I heard he was shot!” Her eyes were wide and her face pouty. I had to stop from laughing when I realized what she was doing, and as I glanced around I realized it was working! The man was looking at Sophie. Of course, he was looking down her top more than anything else, but it was something, right?

And I had to admit, Sophie was definitely the right person to be doing this. With her almond-shaped eyes from her half-Japanese heritage, and the single streak of bright purple weaving its way through her black hair, she was absolutely gorgeous. I wasn’t bad looking, for sure, but Sophie was just straight up model-beautiful. And this man had obviously noticed that. If there was still any doubt that he was a roommate and not a lover, it was quashed.

“I heard,” I replied. “That’s so scary!”

Sophie nodded. “I heard the man was a really big businessman in town, who wanted to redevelop the whole place. He probably made a lot of enemies down there. But still, it’s scary knowing we live near a murderer! I don’t feel safe anymore.”

The man leaned toward us. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, ladies,” he told us.

Sophie looked at him. “But how do you know?” she asked, giving him her best wide-eyed worried look.

The guy gave her a smug look that I assumed was him flirting. “I’m the murder victim’s roommate. My name’s Jake.”

Sophie’s mouth dropped open. “You knew him?” she asked in an awed whisper. I had to hand it to her. She knew exactly how to handle this guy.

“I did. And while Matt was a good guy, there were lots of people out there who wanted him dead. I’d be very surprised if this turned out to be the work of a random wacko.”

“People wanted him dead?” Sophie asked, and Jake nodded enthusiastically, his eyes never leaving Sophie’s cleavage.

“I never realized how serious it was, obviously, or I would have said something. But Matt was a guy with a lot of friends, me among them, but a lot of enemies as well. We weren’t just roommates, we were business partners in some of his ventures, and let me tell you, when you have ambition, you have enemies. But no risk, no reward, right?” he said, flashing Sophie a creepy grin.

“Ohhh, so you’re going to be a super-rich developer too?” Sophie asked. “But what kind of person would kill someone else?”

“Well, Matt had been getting threats lately,” Jake said. “He was being sued by another developer, for one thing. Tony Fanchini. Tony thought Matt had screwed him out of a deal here in Portland for land that Tony wanted to build a high-rise on. He showed up outside the house the other day yelling about how he was going to kill him. And you know how those Italians always know people.”

I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at that comment, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Matt was talking to Sophie like I didn’t exist, and she was pretending to eat it up.

“Oh wow,” she replied. “That’s scary!”

“And that’s not the only thing. He’s been getting threatening letters from the former tenant of a property he bought a few weeks ago. I told him the tenant was crazy; anyone who has over two hundred clown dolls all around their home isn’t right in the head. But Matt didn’t listen.”

Jake shook his head. “It’s sad, really. Matt was a good guy. He was a good business partner, and I’m going to miss him.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie cooed. “This must be really hard for you.”

Thinking I’d rather puke than listen to any more of this, I excused myself quickly and went to the bathroom. As I turned around I noticed that Jake had already slipped into my seat, and was now holding Sophie’s hand as he told her presumably about how good a person he was. Gross.

It had definitely been worth it–easy for me to say, Sophie might have had a different opinion–since we found out about the threatening letters, and the name of the man behind the lawsuit against Matt Smith. I texted Sophie that I was going to head back out to their home to see if I could find any of the threatening letters, and I drove back down to Lake Oswego.

Thanks to the sleepy suburb, it was pretty easy to park the car on the street next to Millennium Plaza Park, make myself invisible, walk a couple hundred feet to Matt Smith’s home and use my magic to break into the back door without being detected. I was careful when I first went in, in case there happened to be another roommate, a girlfriend, or anyone else in the house, but it quickly became evident that it was empty.

Feeling a little bit more relaxed, I made my way through the house. It was surprisingly tastefully decorated. I wasn’t sure what I expected, maybe because of the kind of person Matt Smith was I sort of imagined his home would be one of those overdone places with fake gold all over the walls and statues of money all around. I made my way past the kitchen at the back of the house and down a hallway that led to the bedrooms. The first bedroom was obviously used as an office by both Matt and Jake; two desks against opposite sides of the walls made that apparent. Looking at the desk on the right, I determined from the numerous printouts of sale properties in Willow Bay that it was Matt Smith’s side.

Making my way over to it, I glanced at the papers just as my phone buzzed. Sophie was letting me know that Jake had left, and she had no way of following him since I’d taken the car. I figured it was safe to assume I had fifteen minutes before I had to get out of there.

Looking through the papers on Matt’s desk I found a few letters from a lawyer about the lawsuit, some notarized documents regarding land purchases in Willow Bay, but no threatening letters. Turning my attention to the garbage can, I finally found one of them. It had been completely scrunched up, and I carefully laid it flat on the desk—holding it with a tissue so I didn’t leave any fingerprints on it–and took a picture of it. Knowing this was a murder investigation, I figured Chief Gary would eventually make his way here, and I was definitely not about to take potential evidence from a murderer’s home.

Keep your scummy hands out of Willow Bay, you disgusting piece of crap, or I’ll make sure you leave this town in a body bag.

Yikes, that was definitely a threat. Looking at my phone, I realized I really had to get out of there, my time was almost up. I scrunched the note up and put it back in the garbage can, then wiped my fingerprints off everything I touched and headed back to the car.

Half an hour later I’d reversed my invisibility spell and driven back into Portland to pick up Sophie, who was waiting for me in front of a Sephora nearby, where she’d evidently refreshed her makeup stash.

“Did you find anything? Please tell me you found something, so I feel less dirty about talking to that creep.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I did. I found one of those threatening letters Jake mentioned.” Pulling out my phone, I handed it to Sophie, who opened up the photos file.

“Yeah, I’d say whoever wrote this should be pretty high on our list of suspects,” Sophie said, her eyebrows rising.

“It’s going to be tough to find out who wrote it, though,” I said as I pulled back onto the interstate to go back home.

“For sure.”

“So, are you going to go out with that guy?” I asked Sophie with a grin, who punched me lightly on the arm.

“Gross. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to pick my face out of a lineup if it came to that,” she said. “My boobs, on the other hand…”

“Yeah, he was pretty blatant about it.”

“He did ask to take me out for a drink later, but I told him I had to work. I gave him a fake number. Hopefully we never need to see him again.”

“Agreed. Thanks for sacrificing your dignity for the greater good.”

“Anything for my best friend, right?” she replied with a grin.