The Purr-fect Crime

Chapter 17

It was just after six, and the sun was starting to make its way towards the horizon. I liked this part of the day, but it was starting to get a little bit cool as I walked back home. There was a shortcut, where you could cut through parts of the forest and go along a pretty rural dirt road to make it back to our place about five minutes faster than going through town, but I liked the look of Willow Bay at night, and went the long way.

The lights in the few shops that were still open flowed onto the street, giving the main road a nice, homey look to it. I couldn’t help but wonder if this feeling was going to stay once Ocean Mist made their resort. A couple walked down the street, hand in hand, the warm glow of the streetlights turning them into silhouettes. I could see Betty closing up shop, and I waved at her from the other side of the street. She waved back happily then walked towards her house, which was only a couple blocks away from the shop.

I kept walking down Willow Bay’s main street, and as I did, it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. This place always knew how to rejuvenate my spirit when I needed it most. And I supposed that was what home was supposed to do to you. It was times like these when I knew I was meant to live here. Times like these when I knew I’d made the right choice by not setting up shop in the city like everyone at vet school had recommended.

Walking past the vet clinic, I could see Bee in her little bed on the counter, by the window, fast asleep. What can I say, she was never supposed to be a guard cat. I smiled at her, then kept going. When I got to the library, I stopped. I wasn’t sure why, but that came with the territory of being a witch. Witchy intuition was kind of like women’s intuition, only a lot stronger. It came and went, and sometimes the feelings were stronger than others, but whenever I had a feeling that I should stop somewhere, I did it.

I turned and looked up at the library. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was just after six. It would be open for almost another hour. Figuring what the hell, I went inside.

The Willow Bay Library was actually pretty decent considering the size of the town. The land and building – an old brick building that looked a lot like a house, which used to house the post office way back in the 1800s – were very well maintained by the city. The library was two stories high, with the bottom floor being dedicated to books and magazines, with the top floor housing more obscure stuff, as well as a few computers with internet access.

I recognized the librarian, Rose, as being the same woman who used to check books out for me when I was a kid. She was old back then, and while I knew she’d aged almost twenty years since the first time I checked out “Where the Wild Things Are”, she still looked exactly the same to me. She had to be nearly eighty by now.

“Why hello there, Angela. It’s been a few years, hasn’t it?” she greeted me as I walked in, and I shot her a warm smile. I couldn’t believe she’d actually recognized me. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been in the library since I graduated from high school, and still have a few fingers left over.

“Hi, Rose,” I said, warmly. “It’s lovely to see you again.”

“You too. You young ones and your technology. Makes us old ducks in the library feel unwanted. Can I help you find anything today?”

“No, thank you Rose,” I replied. “I’m just going to have a look around for a bit.”

“Alright, dear. Let me know if you need anything.”

I smiled at Rose and made my way into the stacks. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Hell, I didn’t know if there was anything here for me to even find. Maybe I’d confused a stomach rumble after that heavy Indian food as an intuition thing. I reminded myself that I might very well be wasting my time here.

Looking around the library, it seemed almost deserted. On the lower floor there was just a man in his 50s reading business magazines, and a woman scanning the science section, obviously looking for something specific.

I began to wander through the racks, wondering if eventually my intuition would give me a hint as to what I was looking for. I made my way to the corner with all the kids books, however, and found the resident hamsters moving quickly around their cages, panicking.

“Hey guys, hey!” I said to them softly, glancing around to make sure no one was around to hear me talking to the animals. The last thing I needed was to get labelled as the town crazy person, so I always made sure I was alone when I had conversations with them.

“Guys! Guys! She’s coming to kill us!!” a big brown hamster squealed, and the three of them started running around their cage once more.

“I’m not here to kill you,” I whispered. “Why would you think that?”

“Because we saw,” a small tan and white one replied.

“Saw what?”

“Death,” an orange one whispered.

I had to work hard not to roll my eyes. Hamsters were so prone to dramatics, and I knew it was going to take a little while to get the actual truth out of them. Because no, I did not believe that they did in fact, see death.

“Alright, well when did death come here?”

“Last night,” the orange one said. “But he’ll come back. He didn’t see us. We hid. But he must have known we were here.”

“What exactly did death do?”

One of the hamsters, I’m not sure which, let out a loud squeal.

“He went upstairs, and he stole some things,” the brown one said. “But we saw him. He knows we saw us, even though we hid. He’s going to come back. He’s going to kill us.”

“Ok, little dudes, relax. I don’t think death is going to come back and kill you. After all, I don’t think it was death. Why do you guys think it was death?”

“He was dressed in all black. Completely black. Head to toe. Exactly how death would dress.”

“So a man dressed all in black walked upstairs, took some stuff down, and left?”

“Yes. Although I don’t think it was a man. I think death was a woman,” the tan and white hamster said.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because these two misogynists think everyone is a man.”

Great. So the hamsters really had no idea about anything, other than someone dressed in black came and stole some stuff yesterday.

“Do you guys know what was taken?” I asked, hoping to get some more concrete information out of the little critters.

“Tom Riddle’s Diary,” the brown hamster replied. “That’s how we know it was death. He was linked to he-who-shall-not-be-named.”

“Stop being stupid, Marnie,” the tan and white hamster spat, and I had to smile. He looked at me apologetically. “They’ve been doing a reading of Harry Potter books here the last week. Yesterday we heard The Chamber of Secrets.”

“Ah, that explains it,” I replied, smiling. The tan and white hamster continued.

“We’re not sure what was taken. It looked like individual sheets of paper though, not a book. If that helps you at all.”

“It does, thanks,” I told him. So someone had stolen some paper of some kind from the library. “Ok guys, I’m going to go. Please don’t worry. It wasn’t death that came by last night, it was a robber. And I don’t think he cares that a few hamsters saw him. You can’t identify him at all, so you should be safe.”

“Are you sure?” asked the orange hamster. “I’ve been losing fur all day over this.”

“I’m sure. You guys can relax.”

I left the hamsters, my head reeling. I still wasn’t sure they weren’t totally insane, but they seemed pretty set on the idea that someone had been here last night and had stolen something.

That was strange. This was Willow Bay. This wasn’t the kind of place where people stole things. Especially from the library. I mean, you could just slip anything you needed in your bag and walk out. Rose certainly wasn’t going to notice. This wasn’t exactly a high security establishment.

I made my way up the stairs to the second floor, where the purported theft had taken place. There really wasn’t that much up there. Computers in the corner that all looked fine. One man was using it to browse the internet. There was a section with old stuff like maps, microfiches, a kind of makeshift historical society for Willow Bay. It wasn’t exactly high value stuff.

Not noticing anything out of place, I eventually left, thanking Rose.

Things in Willow Bay were getting weird.