The Purr-fect Crime

Chapter 16

I met up with Charlotte and Sophie that afternoon at Silver Beach, a small but gorgeous beach a couple of minutes outside of town. We decided to have a picnic and settled down on the sand, our backs against one of the big logs that had a tendency to wash up on west coast beaches. Despite the sunshine and unseasonably warm weather for early May, the beach was almost abandoned – there was only us, and a couple of kids on the other side of the beach, playing in the shallow water while their parents watched over them.

I pulled out containers of take-away Indian food that I’d ordered from Pashma’s Palace on the way here, and passed everyone’s orders around.

“I could pretty much live off samosas if I had to,” Charlotte announced as she pulled out one of the crispy pastries. “Hell, I could do it even if I didn’t have to,” she continued, and I laughed.

“I’m so glad we have good Indian food in Willow Bay,” I said. “It would suck if we had to drive up to Portland to get it.”

“Amen to that,” Sophie continued, dipping her naan bread into her container of chicken tikka masala. Although they usually tried to stick to a vegetarian diet when they were around me, Sophie told me once that our friendship wasn’t as strong as her love for chicken tikka, and so she still ordered it whenever we ate out.

“So Angela, you said you went to the courthouse on your lunch break and got all the info about the property Nyman owned?” Charlotte asked, turning to me. I nodded while I swallowed the delicious mouthful of my vegetable biryani.

“Yeah,” I finally replied, reaching into my purse and handing her the piece of paper the lady had given me. “It’s pretty much as useless as Chief Gary told me it would be, but I had to know for sure. Nyman owned a whole bunch of random plots of land in the area, but they’re all just random empty lots that are so far out of town they’d be kind of useless for most things.”

Charlotte looked at the list.

“Wait though,” she said. “This plot here. 184 Rural Road 92. That’s right by where that stupid resort is being built, right?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s weird that a guy gets killed right when the project gets approval?”

Sophie shook her head. “No, that makes no difference. The Ocean Mist people have owned the land they want for their resort for like, five years or something now. If they wanted Nyman’s land, they would have bought it off him already.”

“I know, Sophie. What you’re saying makes sense. But I think that this just can’t be a coincidence. Like, seriously, what are the odds of a guy who owns land adjacent to the new resort being murdered just after they get approval?”

I put my head in my hand thoughtfully as I looked out over the water.

“I mean, to me it doesn’t make sense, because what kind of company murders someone over a plot of land? Like, you don’t see Mr. Toyota going around hiring someone to kill Elon Musk because Tesla cars have become popular.”

“I don’t think there actually is a Mr. Toyota,” Charlotte piped up unhelpfully, and I glared at her.

“Yes, thank you, I really thought Toyota was headed up by a guy called Mr. Toyota, and didn’t just use the name as a stand-in because I don’t know the name of the CEO,” I shot back. Charlotte just shrugged.

“Just in case. You never know what you believe.”

I glared at her while Sophie acted as the voice of reason for once.

“Ladies, ladies,” she said, holding up her hands. “We’re not here to fight each other, we’re here to fight a criminal.”

“Well for what it’s worth, I think my point was a good one.”

“I actually agree with Angie for once,” Sophie replied. “Big companies don’t hire hit men. They just don’t.”

“But do you dismiss out of hand my theory that they have to be linked?” Charlotte asked, crossing her arms.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think that should be ignored. Not at all. But I think maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong angle in thinking Ocean Mist is behind everything. I think maybe if Nyman was killed because of something to do with the resort it must have been someone else who did it, for some reason.”

“Oh my God,” Sophie said, putting her head in her hands. “This is just getting way too confusing. We have so many different ways to go with this.”

“We really do,” Charlotte said, listing them off on her fingers. “There’s the property near Ocean Mist that may have something to do with it, but we’re not sure what. Then there are those sketchy looking men from the funeral that we asked Chief Gary to look into. We still don’t know what’s up with them.”

“Then there’s Jason Black. He keeps saying he has nothing to do with the murder, but I definitely do not trust him at all. He’s involved in this somehow,” I said, tearing off a chunk of garlic naan and shoving it into my mouth inelegantly.

“Exactly,” Charlotte finished. We have three different ways to go here. It would be so much easier if there was only one thing in Tony Nyman’s life which was weird enough to be worth pursuing. I can’t believe a guy who at first glance seemed to be so boring that we wouldn’t find anything worth looking at him over ended up having a life which involved so many motives for murder.”

Sophie swallowed a bite of her chicken, took a sip of iced tea – her favourite drink – and then spoke.

“I personally think it’s something to do with the guys from the funeral. They were just so damn… weird. They were sketchy. Like, they didn’t belong here, but they obviously knew who Nyman was. Like who shows up randomly to a funeral in a place they don’t belong to a guy they have no link with? They had to have something to do with this.”

Sophie had a point. “How long do you think we should give Chief Gary to look them up before we go over there and ask him about them?” I asked.

“I think we should go tomorrow,” she replied, and I shook my head.

“That’s way too fast. He already thinks we’re looking into this case when we shouldn’t be, so if we start having to ask him multiple times about the guys whose photos we gave him, it’s going to look pretty suspicious.”

“I agree with Angela. Besides, I don’t think it has anything to do with those men at all. We hadn’t seen them before the funeral, and we haven’t seen them since. Who knows, maybe he had some weird friends from somewhere else that he didn’t tell us about. After all, it’s not like he was especially popular in Willow Bay.”

“So what do you think, Charlotte?” I asked her. “Which of the three theories do you think we should be following?”

“I think the property records and the resort has the most promise. I just think it’s way too much of a coincidence. I think Jason Black would have gotten out of town if he’d done it.”

I chewed on my biryani as I thought about what Charlotte and Sophie just said.

“How about you Angie?” Sophie asked. “You’re the tiebreaker right now. And we both know you think the same way I do,” she added. I smiled at my best friend.

“Normally that’s true,” I told her. “But honestly, I have absolutely no idea about this. What I do know is that Jason Black does have something to do with this. He just has to. Even if he didn’t commit the murder, I bet he’s involved somehow. I don’t know more than that. But I’m pretty certain about it.”

“Great. So we’re three people, and we all have three different opinions about where to go from here,” Sophie said as she finished off her food, put down the container and stretched out her legs.

“The three of us can’t agree on anything. I’m shocked,” I added, rolling my eyes. It was a total miracle that we got along as well as we did sometimes. We never agreed on anything more complicated than what to order for dinner. And even then, when Indian food is an option, it’s not hard to come to an agreement on things!

I finished off the rest of my rice, leaning back as I let my mouth feel the heat from the slightly spicy food. Everything about the day had been overwhelming. Driving out to Wawnee, getting the disappointing information, having to say goodbye to Skittles as she went back home with her five healthy kittens, then going through with Charlotte and Sophie and finding out that the three of us all disagreed about the motive most likely to have been the reason for Tony Nyman’s death.

I knew I complained about it a lot, but damn, why did this murder have to be so hard to solve?

“I’m going to walk home, I think, you guys,” I told Charlotte and Sophie after a few minutes. “I think I need some more fresh air to clear my head. Plus, you know, I don’t like being seen in public with you guys,” I teased.

“Likewise,” Sophie replied, sticking her tongue out at me. “Do you want me to pick up Bee from the clinic when we head back?”

I nodded. We’d left Bee at the vet clinic while we grabbed dinner. A couple of years ago, just after I got Bee, I’d taken her to the beach to enjoy the sand. It was a hot day, and she did in fact love lying down in it, especially when it was hot. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that Bee didn’t understand the concept of tides, and when her warm, relaxing nap in the sun was interrupted by a giant ocean wave overtaking her, well, that was the end of Bee’s visits to the beach, even though I insisted that we could always go when the water wasn’t going to rise, or “try and kill me”, as Bee always put it.

Despite my insistence that the beach is fine, Bee has never stepped on it since. So when I told her Sophie and I were going there this afternoon, she opted to continue her nap in her bed at the vet office instead.

“Ok. Will do. Text us if you get into any trouble.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Trouble central,” I replied, laughing as I got up and stretched my legs. The bungalow was about a thirty minute walk from where we were, at a leisurely pace. I could definitely use the time to clear my head just a little bit.