Саманта Сильвер: A Grizzly Discovery

“Well, welcome to Willow Bay,” I told her with a smile. “We might not be Big Sky country, but we try to be Big Heart country.” Great. That sounded lame, even to me. I was tempted to roll my eyes at myself. At least Sophie wasn’t here to hear me say that. Luckily, the girl just laughed.

“Thanks! I like it here. I’ve just been here for a couple days, but I love it. I was just thinking about that poor man. I heard he was a tourist as well?”

“From England, apparently,” Betty replied. Oh good, now that was public knowledge I didn’t have to keep that a secret anymore.

“Yikes. His poor family. I wonder what he was doing in those woods.”

“Hiking is really popular here,” I offered. “Especially for people who come from places, like England, where there aren’t really any mountains. Everything is just so different here.”

“Oh, of course. I mean, we have a few mountains in Montana, but I’m from the flat part in the far north of the state. I saw Mount Hood on the drive over and it almost blew me away. I don’t know how anyone hikes around here, I think it would be way too exhausting!”

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “Most of the trails around here are actually pretty low elevation. We’re close enough to the ocean that you won’t climb more than maybe a hundred feet on a good hike here.”

“Could you show me?” the girl asked, pulling out a map of Willow Bay and surrounds that I knew the local tourist information center gave away.

“Sure,” I replied, pulling a pen out of my purse and looking at the map. I pointed out the trailheads for a few popular trails.

“Just make sure you don’t take the Bay View Trail,” Betty offered. “That rain storm we got last night washed away parts of it, so it’s closed for now.” I smiled at Betty. She was always the first to find out about everything that happened in this town.

“And which one was the one where the man was killed?” the girl asked. “I just want to avoid that one, since I assume the cops will have sealed it off for a few days.”

I showed her, and the girl thanked me.

“Are you talking about the dead Englishman?” I suddenly heard Antonia deLucca say from behind us. She had obviously been eavesdropping on our conversation.

“We were,” I said, wanting to know what Antonia had heard. “Why?”

“Apparently he was staying at the Willow Bay Inn,” Antonia told us in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’d only stayed one night. A bit of a strange character; the owner, Willis, saw the man leaving at three in the morning. He came back about an hour later.”

“Weird,” I said, and the girl next to me nodded.

“I wonder what he was doing in the middle of the night,” she asked.

“Well that, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter now. He wasn’t killed in the middle of the night; he was killed by a bear.”

“That’s true, I guess that settles it. He probably wasn’t doing anything too weird, and if he was, well, it’s all over now.”

“Yeah,” I said absent-mindedly. I knew Jeremy Wallace wasn’t killed by a bear. I wondered what on earth he was doing going out at three in the morning on his first night in Willow Bay, and whether it had anything to do with his death.

This had been a very productive visit to Betty’s Café after all, I thought as Betty put my BLT in front of me and I dug into my lunch.

7

“Well obviously we have to get into his hotel room and look for clues,” Sophie told me in a hushed voice as we got ready for the afternoon—preparing a vaccine for a dog coming in for his yearly booster, and then getting ready to look at the sample we took from a lump in the cat from this morning. I was fairly certain the lump was just going to end up being fat-filled, rather than anything dangerous, but it was always a good idea to know for sure. Karen was in the reception area, and probably couldn’t hear us, but I agreed with Sophie that it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Good, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“We should go after work. Right at five is when hotels are at their busiest, since that’s when people check in. Since it’s slow season, any other time will probably result in at least somebody in there noticing us.”

“I like your thinking. Plus, Charlotte won’t be home by then, so we don’t have to tell her what we’re doing until after it’s done.”

“That’s an even better reason. Awesome. We leave from here and we go straight to the inn.”

The afternoon seemed to fly by, and at exactly a quarter to five I sent Karen home for the day as Sophie and I took turns changing in the bathroom in the back of the store. When we came out, no longer wearing our scrubs, we put them in the car and walked the two blocks down to the Willow Bay Inn.

The Inn, as it was known locally, was a three-story high building toward the end of Main Street. One of three hotels in town, it was easily the most recognizable. Built entirely of red brick, with white wooden balconies leading out of the half-moon windows that faced the street, it had that rustic, old-world charm that Willow Bay was so known for.

Sophie and I quickly made our way inside and found ourselves in a warm lobby with hardwood floors covered in a number of rugs, and an old oak reception desk against the far wall. Luckily for us, the one person at the desk was busy with a client, and Sophie and I quickly made our way to the door that led to the stairs on the left side of the room.

“How are we going to figure out which room was his?” Sophie hissed at me as we reached the second floor.

“The cops will have sealed it off, right?” I said confidently. I hoped that was right, at least.

We walked down the hallway on the second floor, but there were no indications anywhere that the police had sealed off any rooms. Hoping I wasn’t wrong—if I had to turn myself invisible to get a look at the room register downstairs, who knew how long that was going to take—Sophie and I continued up to the third floor using the stairs at the other end of the hall. Luckily, when we got there, we struck gold.

“Bingo,” Sophie said, pointing to the first door on our right. Across the front of it was a police seal and a strip of police tape warning people not to enter. “How are we going to get in without breaking the seal?” she asked, looking around. Luckily, the whole hallway was empty. It was slow season, after all.

“ Nonvideroa,” I said, pointing at Sophie, and instantly she disappeared. I repeated the spell, this time pointing at myself, and I quickly disappeared from view as well.

“You know, it’s not that I don’t trust your critical thinking skills, but this just means no one can see us, not that we can get past a police seal.”

“Gee, really?” I asked sarcastically. “I hadn’t thought of that. Give me a second, at least.”

“ Pondoroa,” I said, pointing at Sophie, feeling another burst of energy exuding from the tip of my finger. “There. Now you should be weightless, you can travel through the wall. Just walk straight into it, and I’ll meet you in the room,” I said.

“Ok, here I go,” Sophie said. I couldn’t see her, but a moment later I heard a loud thud, followed by a string of swear words. That wasn’t good.

“I’m going to kill you when I can see you again,” Sophie finally said when she felt like stringing a sentence together, her voice sounding incredibly stuffed up, like she had a cold.

“Shhh, keep your voice down,” I admonished. Just because nobody could see us didn’t mean nobody could hear us. I looked over at the door to the room and saw a dark red blotch that wasn’t there a minute before. “Are you bleeding?”

“How on earth should I know? I can’t see anything. But I do know I went straight into that door and I definitely didn’t go through it. You can’t tell me to keep my voice down when your stupid magic is the reason my face feels like it just got bashed by a baseball bat.”