The Purr-fect Crime

Chapter 12

“That guy is so weird,” Sophie commented when we were finally back home, safe and sound in the living room with a couple glasses of wine (we swore we were only going to share one bottle tonight) and an old episode of Orange is the New Black on in the background while we chatted about the funeral. I was just going through telling Sophie and Charlotte about my encounter with Jason Black; I didn’t want to do it when we were still out in public.

“There is something strange about him showing up just when the murder’s committed, and then hanging around and asking questions after, but he does have a point,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “If he had really killed Tony, then he could have just left. Literally no one would have even known he’d existed. It would have been like, the perfect crime.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s doing this,” I offered, almost playing devil’s advocate more than believing my own words. “Maybe he thinks that by hanging around he’s taking suspicion off himself.”

“Well the rest of his actions sure as hell aren’t helping him,” Sophie snorted, grabbing a handful of cheddar flavoured popcorn from the bag I’d left open on the table.

“Anyway, long story short the whole thing was a giant bust. He didn’t admit to being the person who broke into Tony Nyman’s house, and he didn’t admit to killing him, either.”

“I can’t believe you just straight up asked him,” Charlotte chided. “What if he had said yes? You guys were totally alone, he could have killed you too.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t,” I retorted, feeling a bit silly just saying it.

“Gee, great answer,” Charlotte answered, rolling her eyes. “I know you guys think I’m a bit of a prude when it comes to these things- ”

“We definitely do,” Sophie interrupted. “You worry too much. You can’t investigate things without asking the hard questions. Besides, he wouldn’t have killed Angie with so many people so close by at the funeral. Plus he would have seen us with Angela, and he would have known that we knew she went off to go see him. So he would have had to kill us, too, and that definitely wouldn’t have been subtle.”

Charlotte’s face paled at the thought, but she had no comeback to that.

“I guess,” she finally admitted.

“So now if you’re done scolding us for going out there and doing something about the murderer that’s somewhere in our town, let’s figure this out. I think the three Men in Black that showed up at the funeral today are probably a good place to start.”

“Yeah, what did you find out about them?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not really about them, but we did find out that Sophie is really, really good at being a total slut when she wants to,” Charlotte mentioned, and I almost choked on a sip of wine.

“Excuse me? I didn’t see you doing anything to try and help,” Sophie told Charlotte, throwing a piece of popcorn at her.

“Ok hold up. Someone tell me what happened. Pretend I wasn’t there. Because, you know, I wasn’t,” I ordered, holding up my hands. Something told me this was a story I wanted to hear.

“Fine,” Charlotte started. “We watched the weird dudes for a while. All they did was stand around and stare. They didn’t talk to anyone, and let’s be honest, most people around looked like they were actually kind of scared of them. So Sophie decides to go up and chat up the young guy.”

“Oh my God, really?” I asked, laughing.

“Oh, so when you go talking to a weird guy it’s all cool and good for our investigation, when I do it it’s funny?” Sophie asked, shooting me a look and sticking her tongue out at me.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, trying to hide the smile threatening to crawl back onto my face. “Please, Charlotte, continue.”

“And basically, well, Sophie got completely shut down by him. Like, he barely even looked at her.”

This time, I couldn’t hold it in. I lost it and burst out laughing. Sophie was gorgeous. She knew it. She had no problem getting guys, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d been turned down before. And two of those times it was because the guy batted for the other team.

“Oh shut up,” Sophie told me, taking a big gulp of her wine. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“It almost makes me wish I was there to see it,” Bee purred from her spot on the windowsill, where she hungrily watched the birds outside, tracking them with her eyes.

“Agreed, Bee,” I told her.

“What? What did your cat say?” Sophie asked, glaring at Bee, who hadn’t even bothered to turn around, so couldn’t see.

“Bee said she wished she could have seen it.”

“I said I almost wished I could have seen it. I had a very warm ray of sun over here.”

“Fine, almost wished she could have seen it. Bee wants me to specify the almost in that sentence.”

“Thanks for your support, cat,” Sophie muttered, as Charlotte snickered.

“So basically, we’re nowhere once again,” Charlotte moaned.

“That’s not entirely true,” I said with fake cheerfulness. “Now we have not one, but two different groups of suspects! The mystery dude who’s been hanging around a lot, and the mystery dudes who are new, that showed up at the funeral.”

“Well, I did manage to take pictures of them while Sophie was getting totally brushed off by the young one, so if only we had access to like, the FBI’s facial recognition software or something, that might actually be handy.”

“Ugh, why does this have to be so hard?” I asked, rubbing my face. It wasn’t like I expected the murderer to just fall into our lap. But this was getting to be pretty frustrating.

“I feel you. Plus, Patricia Wilson told me that she heard that a few people are thinking about leaving town after this. Hell, apparently the Klaussens are moving to Canada!”

I barked out laughing at that.

“Really? Because of one murder that they haven’t even given the police time to solve? Wow. People are crazy here.”

“They really are. But I guess for a family like that, who’s lived here forever, something like that is completely new to them. I mean, we’ve all lived in Portland for at least a couple years, but none of the Klaussens have.”

“That’s true.” If they left, though, I could chalk up one less client for the vet business. And it sounded like they weren’t the only ones considering it. We had to find who had committed this murder, and fast. I had a very limited client pool.

“So what do we do now?” Charlotte asked.

“Send me those pictures you took. I’ll go down and see Chief Gary tomorrow and see if he knows who they are. It’s unlikely, but maybe he can at least find out for us?”

“Yeah, but if he does he’s probably not going to tell us.”

“He might if we ask him really nicely,” I pointed out.

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” Charlotte said, taking out her phone and texting me the photos she took.

“Thanks,” I told her. “If there’s one thing TV has taught me, it’s that one pretty bad lead can end up breaking the whole case wide open.”

“I hope you’re right,” my sister replied as she reached over to grab more popcorn.