Саманта Сильвер: A Grizzly Discovery

“Well I’m coming with you,” Jason said quickly, slipping on his own shoes and following after me. We got into my car and I drove us straight back to the Willow Bay Inn.

I found Willis Armstrong behind the front desk. As Elizabeth Armstrong’s son, he wasn’t young—nearly seventy years old with greying hair but a bit of a beer belly and a friendly face.

“Hi, Willis,” I greeted him, and he flashed me a smile.

“Hello, Angela! What can I do for you today?”

“I’m wondering if I can ask you a question about a few nights ago, when that man died.”

“Ah, yes,” Willis replied, shaking his head slowly. “In all my years living in Willow Bay, I’ve never heard of a bear attacking a human. You ask me, that’s not the whole story. Something else must have happened.”

I smiled at Willis. Finally, someone else in this town who also believed in the bears. “Yes, exactly! I don’t think it was a bear attack at all, I think that man had been murdered.

Willis stroked his beard thoughtfully. “And now you’ve come to ask me questions.”

“Yes, I know that the night before, Jeremy Wallace went out in the middle of the night. I’m wondering if anyone else did anything weird that night.”

Willis let out a bit of a wheeze that I think was supposed to be a laugh. “Are you joking? It was the first night of the full moon, lots of weird things happened that night.”

“Like what?” I asked eagerly. “Anything out-of-the-ordinary. Please!”

Willis stroked his beard for a couple minutes, thinking. “Well, there was a bit of a power outage just after ten that night. I got three complaints at the front desk, and one person wanted a refund on the pay-per-view movie he’d been watching.”

“Anything else?”

“I had two people check in around 11 that night. One was a girl from Montana, another a man from Massachusetts. Then, come to think of it, the man from Massachusetts came back out about two minutes after that Jeremy did. He looked like he was in a hurry, almost as though he was following him, but then about three minutes after he left, he came back in.”

“Do you remember who that man was? It’s important.”

Willis stroked his beard for a minute. “Yes. He’s still a guest here. Fischer. Andy Fischer. Greasy black hair, super skinny.”

Andrew! It had to have been Andrew.

“Thank you so much!!” I said to Willis. “Is he here? Andy Fischer?”

Willis shook his head. “He went out a while ago. I’m not sure where.”

“Thanks,” I told him, rushing back out of the hotel, Jason hot on my tail.

“What’s going on?” he asked, as I looked up and down Main Street.

“I think Andrew Fischer is our killer!”

18

“Wait, what?” Jason asked. “Slow down. Explain this to me like I’m an idiot, because I have no idea where this is coming from.”

“The person who killed Jeremy Wallace had to be after the diamond. Otherwise why would he be out in the woods? What if someone threatened him, and made him go out there? You with me so far?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Jeremy went out the night before. That had to be when he hid the diamond. And it sounds like Andrew tried to follow him, but failed since he came back just a couple minutes later. So presumably, Andrew knew that was when he went out to hide the diamond, and the next day he would have threatened Jeremy, made him show him where he hid the diamond, but for some reason he killed him before he found out.”

“Ok,” Jason said slowly. “I guess that maybe makes sense. So what are you going to do now?”

“I need to find Andrew and get him to admit what he did.”

“Seriously?” Jason crossed his arms. “Come on. We’re going back to the car. You do realize a seasoned thief is never going to admit to murdering two people for you, no matter how nicely you ask him.” Jason had a point, I grudgingly had to admit. “Go home, figure out a way to prove it was him, and then you can prove he committed the murder.”

“Fine,” I replied, trying not to sulk too much. What Jason said made sense, but I wanted to do something now . I’d been so frustrated with this case, there was nothing more in the world that I wanted than to find Andrew, tell him I knew he’d killed Jeremy Wallace—and also probably Jack—and have him admit to me the truth so I could tell Chief Gary and have him arrested. But of course, Jason was right. There was no way that was going to happen. I was going to have to be stealthier. I was going to have to find proof.

Fifteen minutes later we were back home, but I let Jason tell Charlotte, Sophie and Taylor what had happened while I went into the bathroom to check on Bee and the kittens and then took a few minutes for myself. I had no idea how I was going to get proof that Andrew Fischer was the murderer. But at least now I was almost completely certain I knew who the murderer was.

The next morning, I was no closer to figuring out how I was going to prove that Andrew Fischer had killed Jeremy Wallace. We had a two-hour break in the middle of the morning—now that everyone was getting settled the vet clinic’s schedule was filling up pretty quickly once again—and so I settled myself in a chair in the back room with my iPad and began to absent-mindedly look through Jeremy Wallace’s Facebook profile once again.

I thought back to what I’d heard the others say. Jeremy Wallace was arrogant. He thought he was better than everyone else. Kevin had said it would eventually get Jeremy into trouble during a job, that he would eventually get caught because he was so sure of himself.

Scanning through the photos, it was obvious that was true. The man never met a selfie he didn’t post to social media. I had no idea how much of his profile was legitimate and how much of it was simply a front to make it look like he was a real tourist, but nobody showed off their abs that much if they didn’t absolutely mean it.

Rolling my eyes at the photo, I opened the only photo Jeremy had posted while in Willow Bay. It featured him showing off his abs once again, standing at the end of one of the most popular hiking routes in Willow Bay, the Bay View Trail. He was at the end of it, standing next to Old Oakie, one of the Willow Bay landmarks. I realize the irony of an Oak Tree being a landmark in a place like Willow Bay, known for its willow trees, but that was just the way things worked out.

Behind Old Oakie was the reason almost everyone who visited Willow Bay did the short and easy one-mile hike to get there: the absolutely stunning view of Willow Bay. Jeremy’s photo had obviously been taken in the evening; the low sun cast a beautiful yellow glow on the still water. A single paddle-boarder in the background was making his way back toward shore, and a man threw something—maybe a stick? It was hard to tell from so far away—for a dog on the beach.

Suddenly, though, my eyes moved away from the beach and back to Old Oakie. I gasped as I looked at the tree. One of the biggest features of the tree was the natural hole about six feet high; it was known as Oakie’s Eye. About six inches in diameter, the hole was natural, perfectly round and frequently visited by squirrels, Stellar’s Jays and other small woodland animals. I’d obviously never thought of it this way, but it was also the perfect place to hide a fifty-million-dollar diamond.

After all, Jeremy Wallace was an arrogant man, and a risk taker. That much I’d gathered from his associates. Maybe posting a picture of the place where he would go to hide the diamond on his social media was his way of arrogantly flaunting what he’d done. Maybe he didn’t know that was where he was going to hide the diamond. But that had to be where it was!