The Purr-fect Crime

Chapter 8

Twenty minutes later Sophie and I had pulled up in front of Tony Nyman’s place, on the eastern side of town. If anyone asked, we were going to say that I got an anonymous tip about a loose dog out here, that I couldn’t get in touch with animal control, and didn’t want the dog getting in trouble.

“So are we just going to sit here and watch, or are we going to go in there and get some actual info?” Sophie asked as I scanned the area.

“Haven’t you ever seen like any detective show ever? We’re staking the place out. We have ninety minutes, we might as well see if anything strange is going on around here.”

“You’re just too much of a baby to come into the house,” Sophie accused me, opening the driver’s side door and getting out. I did the same. Bee jumped out after me. She’d been very quiet in the ride over, insisting on coming after she realized Sophie and I were going somewhere “interesting”.

“That’s so untrue. I just don’t feel the need to rush in there as fast as possible without seeing if maybe we can get a clue as to who murdered him out here.”

“Oh what, because you think the murderer’s just going to come back here and check out the place, just for kicks? Yeah, right.”

“You never know,” I replied, crossing my arms as we made it to the front door. Sophie tried the handle, but it was locked.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

“Really? What else were you expecting?” I asked. “Move your butt over,” I ordered, nudging her out of the way with my hip.

“Recludaro,” I muttered quietly, focusing all of my brain’s power on the door’s lock. I felt an energy seeping from my fingers, and a second later, heard the latch moving. Being a witch made breaking and entering a lot easier.

“That’s so unfair,” Sophie muttered. “I can’t believe I lost out on the genetic lottery.”

We stepped inside quickly and closed the door behind us. Even though there wasn’t anyone else in here, we were both super quiet. It was creepy in here.

“I feel like we just stepped into a horror movie,” I whispered. For the first time, Sophie didn’t look completely confident about what we were doing, either.

The house was a decent size for a single guy on his own. It was two stories tall, with an entrance hall and what looked like a living room next to us. I could see the kitchen cupboards in the room at the back. I supposed that meant the bedrooms were upstairs. It was probably a two bedroom place, given the size of it.

I was the first one of Sophie and I to move forward. At the end of the entrance hall were the stairs leading upstairs, but I walked past them and into the living room. I could hear Sophie following me. The place was dark, especially considering the bright sunshine outside, but I didn’t dare turn on a light.

Everything in the room was so… quiet. There was a stillness, an eeriness to the house that I understood, but was still incredibly unnerving. It felt like there was someone here, someone watching us, even though I knew that was impossible.

The whole house was also incredibly impersonal. There wasn’t a single photo of Tony Nyman, or of any old family members. No pictures of him with a buddy or a brother, no pictures of his mom or dad. It was like he didn’t have anyone on the planet that he cared about.

Bee slinked along past me and I jumped at least two feet high when I felt her furry leg rubbing against mine.

“Oh for God’s sake,” I muttered, trying to get my heart rate back down to something reasonable. Sophie’s shoulders shook with silent laughter behind me, and I hit her before continuing on.

“That’s so not funny,” I added, but her snickering didn’t stop.

When we were finally in the back of the house, in the kitchen, I turned to Sophie. Bee had jumped up on top of the refrigerator.

“Is this the creepiest place you’ve ever been to, or what?”

Sophie nodded.

“Yeah. Definitely. It’s such a weird house. It’s like a robot lived here.”

Suddenly, we heard an unmistakable sound. Footsteps. Footsteps, coming down the stairs. And quickly. Sophie and I looked at each other. We both froze.

What do we do?

There was someone in the house with us!

Was it a ghost?

No, of course not. It couldn’t be. Ghosts weren’t real. And even if they were, they certainly wouldn’t be loudly thudding down the stairs.

Sophie screamed, and at the sound, I screamed too.

Before we knew it, though, whoever it was had made it to the front door and run out.

I finally gathered my courage and ran to the front door. I looked out, but could only see a vague shape making its way down the street. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. The only thing I knew is that they were wearing blue jeans and a red shirt.

“Oh man,” I muttered to myself as Sophie came and stood next to me. I turned to look at her. Her face was white, looking even paler against her mostly black hair.

“I can’t believe that happened. What was that?” Sophie asked. “Was it a ghost?”

I shook my head.

“No. Ghosts aren’t real, dummy. It was a person, I saw them running down the street. I don’t know anything else though. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”

“So that means there was someone up there. Someone in the house.”

“And maybe if we’d stayed in the car and staked out the place for a while they would have come out the front door and we’d know who it was.” I couldn’t help but be a little bit snarky about the fact that my idea was the better one.

“Fine. You were right, I was wrong, blah blah blah now let’s go upstairs and see what that person was after.”

“Uh, don’t you think we should call the cops first?”

“What? And tell them we were breaking and entering and caught someone else breaking and entering?”

“Fine. Maybe that’s not the best idea,” I conceded. “We’ll go upstairs, see what the person was after and see if we find anything else, then when we leave we’ll leave the door open and someone will call the cops. But make sure not to touch anything, we don’t want to leave our fingerprints anywhere.”

“You two are just a pair of criminal masterminds, aren’t you?” Bee asked as she darted past us and up the stairs.

“Oh be quiet, you. I didn’t see you helping when that guy was running out the door.”

“And what exactly did you want me to do if I did stop him?”

“I dunno. Claw his face so we had his DNA or something.”

“You watch way too much TV, Angela,” my cat scolded as I reached the top step of the stairs, Sophie right behind me.

Sure enough, there were two bedrooms on this level, one on each side of the hallway, and a bathroom at the end of the hall. I crept towards the first bedroom, but it just had a double bed that was still unmade, an empty dresser, and no other furniture. It had to be Tony Nyman’s room.

“This house is depressing,” Sophie murmured into my ear as she looked over my shoulder into the room. I nodded in agreement. It didn’t really look like Tony Nyman had much of a life right now.

We moved to the door of the other room, and instantly knew we’d hit the jackpot. I gasped as I looked into the room.

Nyman had obviously been using it as a study. A big IKEA desk lined one wall, and there was a filing cabinet in the other. But more importantly were the hundreds of sheets of paper on the floor. The whole place had obviously been ransacked. This must have been what the person we’d caught was doing; they were going through all of Nyman’s things to try and find… something. I didn’t know what. But it was way too much of a coincidence; it had to be related to his death.

“Oh man,” Sophie said as she moved past me and into the room.

“Careful,” I warned her. “Don’t touch anything.” I rolled my eyes as Bee walked over all the sheets of paper delicately, as cats do, then settled on an empty piece that had obviously fallen from the printer sitting on a table to the side.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry mom, I’m totally not going to get nailed by the cops for this,” Sophie told me, grabbing a piece of tissue and using it to move pieces of paper as she glanced at what they said. I grabbed a tissue of my own and started to do the same.

For around twenty minutes Sophie and I sorted through the papers in silence, the occasional rustle of a sheet the only sound as we were both on high alert for anything out of the ordinary after what had happened.

And I had to be honest: what I’d found was pretty disappointing. There were bank statements showing Nyman had about $50 in his checking account at any given time, and around $400 in a savings account. Not exactly a one percenter.

There were insurance forms – it turned out he had a bad hip – and other generic stuff like old W4s, but nothing explosive. Nothing that would give us any idea why anyone would want to kill him, unless his insurance company decided they really didn’t want to pay for some of his physiotherapy bills anymore.

Eventually I let out a loud sigh.

“This is so stupid. I don’t know about you, but the most interesting thing I’ve found out about Tony Nyman is that he shops on Amazon a lot.”

“Well, that’s still more than I’ve got,” Sophie replied, throwing her hands up in the air. “Let’s face it, whatever the person was here looking for, they either ran off with it, or they never found it. But there’s nothing here that’s going to tell us who killed the dude. Or anything else about him, really.”

“It always sucks when you commit a felony for nothing,” I deadpanned, and Sophie laughed.

“Let’s go back to the vet clinic. The next appointment’s in half an hour, so we don’t really have any more time here anyway.”

“We make a terrible Nancy Drew team.”

“Yeah, we do. But this was only our first idea. We’ll figure something out.”

“Hopefully something a little bit more legal, next time.”

“Hopefully!” Sophie replied, sauntering ahead. Bee jumped on my shoulder as we left the house and headed back for the car. I really had no idea what to do next.