Саманта Сильвер - Sleeping With The Fishes

“Should we just go invisible and break in?” Sophie asked.

“Yeah, I think so. I can do the spell in the car. Maybe we should park it a few blocks away, just in case.”

I put the car back into drive and got ready to head off when suddenly Sophie grabbed my arm. “Wait!” she exclaimed. “Look.”

Following Sophie’s finger, I noticed a man exiting the house. He was on the taller side, with blonde hair, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked completely average in every way; the kind of person you never thought twice about if you passed them on the street.

“Do you think he’s a robber?” Sophie asked. “Or someone doing the same as us?”

I shook my head. “No. He just took some mail from the mailbox, and is now bringing it inside.” We watched for another minute as he came back out. “And now he’s locking the front door, with a key.”

If there was any doubt that the man absolutely lived in that home, it vanished when the man waved at a neighbor driving by.

“Do you think Matt Smith was gay? Or did he have a roommate?” I asked.

“Roommate for sure,” Sophie said. “If he was Matt’s boyfriend he’d be a lot more shaken up about the death. He’s acting completely normally here, and smiled as he waved to the neighbor.”

“Ok, we’ll wait for him to leave, and then go inside.”

“Why don’t we follow him instead? Maybe we can casually talk to him and find out about Matt. We might get more information from talking to him than we would from searching the house,” Sophie suggested.

“Good call,” I said, putting the car into drive as the man stepped into a silver Prius in the driveway and headed toward downtown Portland. About twenty minutes later the Prius parked on the street near a coffee shop. I found a parking spot myself about a block further down, and we found the man setting up a laptop computer inside the coffee shop.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “We can’t just go in there and be like hey, we know you’re Matt Smith’s roommate, do you want to tell us everything you know about who might have wanted him dead? .”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “For someone with unlimited witch powers, you have no creativity whatsoever,” she said. “Let’s go in there and order coffee, first.”

We made our way into the shop, which was cute and homely, with dark wood panels everywhere and a guy with a hipster beard behind the coffee machine, which whirred away. It was basically exactly what you’d expect a hipster coffee shop in Portland to look like.

Sophie and I ordered a couple of lattes–mine with a shop of vanilla–and I followed Sophie as she made her way toward Matt Smith’s presumed roommate. I couldn’t help but notice her undoing an extra two buttons of her top on the way over.

We sat down at the table next to his, finding ourselves only a couple of feet away from the man. I took a sip of my coffee as Sophie leaned toward me in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Did you hear about that man who was killed in Willow Bay yesterday?” she asked. “I heard he was shot!” Her eyes were wide and her face pouty. I had to stop from laughing when I realized what she was doing, and as I glanced around I realized it was working! The man was looking at Sophie. Of course, he was looking down her top more than anything else, but it was something, right?

And I had to admit, Sophie was definitely the right person to be doing this. With her almond-shaped eyes from her half-Japanese heritage, and the single streak of bright purple weaving its way through her black hair, she was absolutely gorgeous. I wasn’t bad looking, for sure, but Sophie was just straight up model-beautiful. And this man had obviously noticed that. If there was still any doubt that he was a roommate and not a lover, it was quashed.

“I heard,” I replied. “That’s so scary!”

Sophie nodded. “I heard the man was a really big businessman in town, who wanted to redevelop the whole place. He probably made a lot of enemies down there. But still, it’s scary knowing we live near a murderer! I don’t feel safe anymore.”

The man leaned toward us. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, ladies,” he told us.

Sophie looked at him. “But how do you know?” she asked, giving him her best wide-eyed worried look.

The guy gave her a smug look that I assumed was him flirting. “I’m the murder victim’s roommate. My name’s Jake.”

Sophie’s mouth dropped open. “You knew him?” she asked in an awed whisper. I had to hand it to her. She knew exactly how to handle this guy.

“I did. And while Matt was a good guy, there were lots of people out there who wanted him dead. I’d be very surprised if this turned out to be the work of a random wacko.”

“People wanted him dead?” Sophie asked, and Jake nodded enthusiastically, his eyes never leaving Sophie’s cleavage.

“I never realized how serious it was, obviously, or I would have said something. But Matt was a guy with a lot of friends, me among them, but a lot of enemies as well. We weren’t just roommates, we were business partners in some of his ventures, and let me tell you, when you have ambition, you have enemies. But no risk, no reward, right?” he said, flashing Sophie a creepy grin.

“Ohhh, so you’re going to be a super-rich developer too?” Sophie asked. “But what kind of person would kill someone else?”

“Well, Matt had been getting threats lately,” Jake said. “He was being sued by another developer, for one thing. Tony Fanchini. Tony thought Matt had screwed him out of a deal here in Portland for land that Tony wanted to build a high-rise on. He showed up outside the house the other day yelling about how he was going to kill him. And you know how those Italians always know people.”

I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at that comment, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Matt was talking to Sophie like I didn’t exist, and she was pretending to eat it up.

“Oh wow,” she replied. “That’s scary!”

“And that’s not the only thing. He’s been getting threatening letters from the former tenant of a property he bought a few weeks ago. I told him the tenant was crazy; anyone who has over two hundred clown dolls all around their home isn’t right in the head. But Matt didn’t listen.”

Jake shook his head. “It’s sad, really. Matt was a good guy. He was a good business partner, and I’m going to miss him.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie cooed. “This must be really hard for you.”

Thinking I’d rather puke than listen to any more of this, I excused myself quickly and went to the bathroom. As I turned around I noticed that Jake had already slipped into my seat, and was now holding Sophie’s hand as he told her presumably about how good a person he was. Gross.

It had definitely been worth it–easy for me to say, Sophie might have had a different opinion–since we found out about the threatening letters, and the name of the man behind the lawsuit against Matt Smith. I texted Sophie that I was going to head back out to their home to see if I could find any of the threatening letters, and I drove back down to Lake Oswego.

Thanks to the sleepy suburb, it was pretty easy to park the car on the street next to Millennium Plaza Park, make myself invisible, walk a couple hundred feet to Matt Smith’s home and use my magic to break into the back door without being detected. I was careful when I first went in, in case there happened to be another roommate, a girlfriend, or anyone else in the house, but it quickly became evident that it was empty.

Feeling a little bit more relaxed, I made my way through the house. It was surprisingly tastefully decorated. I wasn’t sure what I expected, maybe because of the kind of person Matt Smith was I sort of imagined his home would be one of those overdone places with fake gold all over the walls and statues of money all around. I made my way past the kitchen at the back of the house and down a hallway that led to the bedrooms. The first bedroom was obviously used as an office by both Matt and Jake; two desks against opposite sides of the walls made that apparent. Looking at the desk on the right, I determined from the numerous printouts of sale properties in Willow Bay that it was Matt Smith’s side.