Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 13

When we got back to Willow Bay the sun was setting. I put the car in the garage to avoid anyone seeing the damage and asking too many questions, then brought Hehu into the house with me, along with the other two birds.

“Do you mind coming inside with me for a little while?” I asked them. “I just want to make sure you’re safe, plus there are a few other things I wouldn’t mind asking you to see if I can help find the people who brought you here.”

“Of course, we are happy to help,” Cherie replied as she flew around Sophie and me.

“Thank you,” I told them, opening the front door. The first thing I did when I got in was find Bee and her kittens and I put them in my room; I didn’t want there to be any excitement about the birds being in the house. I set Hehu down on the couch carefully; he was still sleeping. I figured I could take him into the vet clinic tomorrow and do what I could for his wing there, where the equipment was better, and the environment more sterile.

Sprinkles came over, wagging his tail, and carefully sniffed Hehu, then lay down at his feet.

“Good boy Sprinkles, this is a very special bird. He saved my life today, as did these other two.”

“I will guard him then,” Sprinkles said, and I knew he wouldn’t move from that spot.

When I walked back toward the kitchen I found that Coolidge and Cherie had perched themselves on the backs of two of the dining room chairs and were curiously watching Charlotte, who was sitting at the dining room table doing some kind of chemistry work.

“How did you run into two cockatoos and a kea?” she asked me without looking up.

“Uh, it’s a long story that involves a collector of exotic animals, me losing track of time and a car chase with a redneck.”

Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “It sounds like the kind of thing I absolutely would have advised against.”

“To be fair, it was only supposed to be a reconnaissance mission. But the birds were so talkative, and knew so much, that I just lost track of time. Also, when I fell, I hurt my wrist. Can you look at it?”

I held out my arm and saw Charlotte inhale sharply. My wrist was now nice and swollen; it looked like someone had shoved a kiwi fruit under my skin. It was bruised as well, and the skin was now a nice deep blue color, with green and yellow spots toward the outer bits.

“You need to get this X-rayed,” Charlotte told me, getting up and going to the kitchen. She came back with an ice pack, which she handed to me. “And for now, you absolutely need to get ice on it, and take a couple Advil to help reduce the swelling.”

“It’s probably just a sprain, though, right?”

“There’s no way to tell for sure without an X-ray. If your wrist was obviously bent to the side I’d say it was a break, but since it looks straight, there’s no way to know for sure if it’s strained or broken.”

“Great,” I sighed. “I’ll go down to the clinic in a few hours, then.” But for now, I had some more important things to do; I had to take care of these birds who had saved my life.

“So I wanted to ask in the barn but never got the opportunity to; how do the three of you know so much about what was happening on the Steele property if you were stuck in the barn all the time?”

“Well, we could always fly up to the hole you came through, though we were too large to fit through it. That way we could get a little bit of a glimpse as to what was going on outside,” Coolidge said, and my heart broke for the life they’d been living, where they could get a glimpse of the outside world but never partake in it.

“And Gemma would come and visit us quite a bit. She seems like a lonely girl, but she was very kind. Even though we couldn’t speak back to her, she would tell us what was happening on the farm, and in her life in general.”

“Ah, ok, that makes sense,” I replied, nodding. “Now, I want to find the people who smuggled Lucy. Do you know anything about them?”

“Well of course we do,” Coolidge said. “We were already there when they brought Lucy into the barn. They came in with The Bad Man, and they explained to him what she needed to eat, that sort of thing.”

This was better than I could have possibly hoped for. “Excellent! What can you tell me about them? Please, I’m trying to find out where Lucy was from so that I can get her back to her mother.”

“Of course, dear,” Cherie said. “For one thing, there were three of them. Two men and one woman. One of the men looked older, perhaps around fifty years old, whereas the other man, and the woman, were both definitely around thirty-five, perhaps forty. The woman was a brunette, with wavy hair and bored-looking eyes. The younger man was overweight, with a decent beer belly, but the older one was of medium build. Both were perhaps one meter and eighty centimeters tall.”

“They came from a place called Las Vegas,” Coolidge added. “I heard one of the men mention to the woman that they were finally going to go home there after the transaction was completed.”

“And the woman’s first name was Kelsey. The older man’s first name was Tim. I don’t believe they mentioned the younger man’s name.”

“Finally, I noticed that the woman had a picture on her lower back. It was an image of a heart, with an arrow through it.”

I grinned at the two birds. Between the first name, the place where they lived and the tattoo, this was so much more information than I could have possibly hoped for. I knew parrots were among the most intelligent birds in the world, but I would have never imagined that they had such good memories of people they had seen once, or that they would have noticed so much about them.

“Thank you so much,” I told Cherie and Coolidge. “That’s so much information, hopefully with that I’ll be able to find out who they are.”

I really hoped those were their real names, but I imagined they had to be. After all, Richard Steele was obviously a good customer. I made a mental note to visit Chief Gary and ask him if he could look up information on people living in Nevada. I didn’t have a huge amount to go off, but hopefully it was enough. After all, Vegas was huge thanks to all the tourism, but I was pretty sure its permanent population was relatively small. Maybe I’d get lucky.

With Sophie in the kitchen making dinner, I decided to text Jason.

Hey, I think I have a sprained wrist, but it might be broken. Can you come get me and take me to the medical clinic? I hoped there wouldn’t be too many questions straight away, I figured it would be easier to explain in person.

Yeah, I’ll be there in five. You ok?

I’m fine, I’ll tell you all about it when we get there. Thanks!

I told Sophie and Charlotte where I was going, then made sure the birds were comfortable. Grabbing my purse, I headed out the front where Jason was already waiting for me. I climbed into his car and saw his gaze immediately drawn to my right wrist.

“Wow, that’s a doozy,” he said, his eyebrows rising. “Do I want to know how this happened?”

“Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway,” I replied. I’d texted Jason that morning to let him know we were going to Tony Fanchini’s office, and then to Sisters. By the time I’d recounted the whole story of my day–getting a little bit creative to hide the fact that I’d used magic to get onto the property, and about how I got the information about the animals–we’d driven to the hospital, I’d presented myself to the nurse on duty, and we were sitting in the waiting room for a doctor to call me in. I didn’t imagine it would be a huge wait; Willow Bay’s “hospital” was basically just a small emergency room that was mainly used by people who sprained their ankles or broke their legs while hiking or biking the trails around here. Anyone with anything more serious would go to the real hospital in Portland.

“Wow,” Jason said, shaking his head when I’d finished. “And here I was thinking you probably wouldn’t get into that much trouble today.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be shot at today,” I admitted. “That one was kind of unexpected.”

“I’m really glad the worst thing you’ve got is a possibly broken wrist. Are you going to be able to work with it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I might have to get a bit creative, and Sophie may have to work harder than ever, but there’s no way I can leave Willow Bay without a vet right now.”

Just then my name was called over the intercom as I was told to report to the nurses’ station. Jason stood up and followed me as I made my way down the hall, and did as requested. The nurse got me to fill out another form–which Jason did for me, since my right hand hurt too much–and led me to a bed about ten feet away. “The doctor will be with you shortly,” she said with a smile.

Five minutes later the doctor walked in, took one look at my wrist and said he’d get me an X-ray straight away. The technician came in three minutes later and took me to the dark room where I got my wrist X-rayed at three different angles, then I was taken back to the bed to hang out with Jason until the doctor returned.

“All right, well, looking at the X-rays nothing is broken, it seems to just be a sprain,” the doctor said. “Continue with the RICE treatment–rest, ice, compression, elevation–and it should return to normal in a couple of weeks.”

I thanked the doctor and Jason and I left. As we were sitting there I suddenly remembered the threatening note that I’d found in Matt Smith’s apartment. “Hey, have a look at this,” I told Jason, pulling out my phone and showing him the picture. “I found this in Matt Smith’s trash, his roommate said he’d been getting mailed threats like that for a few days.”

Jason took the phone from me and looked at the picture for a few minutes. He zoomed in on it, then zoomed out a few times. When he finally handed the phone back to me, he looked perplexed. “It’s definitely a threat, but I can’t tell anything about it.”

“Shoot, I was hoping you might have better luck than me,” I said. “I looked at it, but came to the same conclusion. There’s nothing about it that can tell us anything about who wrote it. I didn’t find an envelope or anything, either. And obviously I didn’t take it, since I didn’t think the police had searched the home yet and I didn’t want to remove potential evidence.”

Jason nodded. “You did the right thing, for sure.”

“Still,” I said, frowning as I looked at the note, “There’s something about it that’s familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Well, unless you figure out who wrote it, we have another suspect who doesn’t even have a name.”

“That’s ok though, because I think we can cross Tony Fanchini off the list of suspects, and if we run out of them, well there’s only us left.”

“That’s a good point,” Jason grinned.

“Speaking of the suspects, do you think you’ll be able to look into the criminal case Smith was involved in in Washington?” I asked.

“Sure, I can do that,” Jason nodded. “I’ve gotten most of the articles for this week finished, I just need to put the finishing touches on another, so I can spend most of tomorrow on it. I’ll let you know what I find out tomorrow night. Plus, I’m pretty sure if you tried to investigate it somehow you would end up arrested, given the kind of luck you’ve had investigating this case.”

Since I couldn’t really argue with that, I just stuck my tongue out at him, then leaned my head against Jason’s shoulder as he pulled out of the parking lot and drove me home.