Саманта Сильвер - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

“Good. Antonia is the first on the list. Who else?”

“What about Andrew Powers?” I asked.

“Ohhh good one, I forgot about him,” Charlotte said. Andrew had been a professional here in town, he ran a small bookkeeping business, and Lisa had actually used him once or twice to do some work for her. When Andrea was audited by the IRS she blamed him, and spread a rumour around town that he was stealing from his clients. The rumour had no legs at all, but Andrew famously had a meltdown in the middle of Bella’s Café one day when someone asked about it, then moved out of town the next day and was never seen again, although it had been strongly suggested that he simply moved to Portland. Definitely close enough to drive back and murder someone.

Once the list began, the names kept flowing.

“Betty MacMahon, Andrea started that rumour her bakery was poisoning people.”

“Patricia Wilson, she told everyone her son was a drug addict.”

“Carson Summers, too.”

“And Henry Wright.”

“Don’t forget Kelsey Kolakawa.”

“And Sophie,” I added.

“Wait what? Why should I hate her?”

“Remember when she told everyone your dad was a spy for the Japanese in World War 2?”

“Ohhhh yeah! And I had to tell everyone my dad wasn’t even alive in World War 2.” That had happened when we were still in elementary school

“See? So you should go on the list.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t kill her.”

“We only have your word for that,” I teased, sticking my tongue out at Sophie, who reached over and hit me on the arm.

“Owwwwww. See? Propensity for violence!”

“I’m not putting Sophie’s name down on the list,” Charlotte finally said. “Do you have any more useful names to add?”

Charlotte scribbled down the names as quickly as we could come up with them, and when we were running out of names to add to the list fifteen minutes later, Charlotte threw down her pen and sighed.

“Who knew one person could make so many enemies?” she asked. “It’s going to take us weeks to get through this list.”

“Yeah, that’s a ridiculous number of people to make enemies of,” I said, looking at the list. There had to be fifty names on there, at least.

“So now we figure out who had the most reason to kill Andrea,” Charlotte said, ripping out the piece of paper with the names on it and putting it on the table in front of us. She sat, poised, pen at the ready with another sheet.

“I think it’s Andrew Powers, by a mile,” I said, scanning through the list. “Some of the other stuff is possibly worse – like whatever happened between her and Antonia deLucca, but most of the worse stuff seemed to have happened a long time ago. Like when she told Caroline Prust her husband was cheating on her and it broke up their marriage. That was over ten years ago now. But Andrew Powers… that was only what? Six months ago? And she fully drove him out of town. Six months isn’t a long time to get over something that big, especially since it was his business and his livelihood.”

“I agree,” Sophie replied. “Powers first for sure. You weren’t at the café when he had his meltdown like I was. He was full on insane. Like, I legitimately thought he was going to have an aneurism or something.”

“Wow, this is off to a good start, we all agree on something for once!” Charlotte joked. “I think Andrew Powers should be at the top of the list as well.”

“And Antonia deLucca should be second,” I added. “I don’t know why she and Andrea hated each other so much, but it was obviously something big.”

“Good. Let’s focus on them for now. We don’t want to make our list of suspects too big to be manageable,” Charlotte said.

“Maybe if Andrea Dottory had been a little bit more likeable, we wouldn’t have to,” Sophie muttered. I couldn’t disagree with her there.

“So who’s going to do the online stalking thing to try and find out where Andrew Powers lives now?” I asked. “After all, if it turns out he moved to London, there’s not really any point in considering him a suspect, is there?”

“I’ll do it,” Charlotte said. “I’m going to be spending most of the day on my computer anyway, I have an essay to write for a class.”

“Good. I’ll see if I can wrangle an alibi out of Antonia deLucca,” Sophie said.

“And I guess I’ll go down to Betty’s for lunch and see if I can get any more gossip that can help us out,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. To be honest, I was pretty glad to have a job without a set goal. I was feeling a little bit tired, and getting to enjoy one of Betty’s BLTs for lunch while idly gossiping with Willow Bay residents had just the right amount of eating and lack of movement I was hoping for in my role today.

“So now we have a game plan! Good work, team!” Charlotte exclaimed, and Sophie and I burst into giggles. Sometimes my sister could be the lamest person ever.

Chapter 10

I spent most of the rest of the morning and the early afternoon lying on the hammock on the balcony, reading an old Agatha Christie novel. Charlotte went back inside to study, and I heard Sophie playing with Sprinkles in the living room with a chew toy she’d bought him from the grocery store the day before.

Around one, when my stomach started grumbling and I’d finished my book, I got up off the hammock and decided to head down to Betty’s. I said goodbye to the others and started walking down, since it was such a nice day and Main Street was only about 20 minutes away from our house.

When I got to the café, everything was bustling and crazy. Early on a Sunday afternoon, this was prime gossiping territory for the town. As I looked around for a spare table, catching Betty’s eye and waving at her, I suddenly noticed Austin Stark, Lisa’s boyfriend, sitting at one of the stools at the counter.

Great. Just great.

I tried to sneak off towards an empty table to my left, but just then Austin turned around and noticed me.

“Hi! Angela, right?” he asked, smiling and motioning for me to take a seat at the empty stool next to him. I supposed I had no choice anymore.

“Hi, Austin,” I replied, plastering a fake smile on my face. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Lisa was going to have lunch with me, but then she had a client ‘emergency’,” he said, doing air quotes around emergency, “and so she recommended I come here for lunch. The coffee’s ok, but the BLT left a lot to be desired.”

Ohhh that was it. It was one thing to vaguely insult my business and my food choices at dinner the other night. He’d also just insulted his girlfriend. Lisa was a professional; if there was an emergency with a client, it was important. I knew that. But to insult the greatest food known to man, one of Betty’s BLTs (which she always made for me with vegetarian bacon), well, that was pure blasphemy! There was no coming back from that. I had it on good authority from both Lisa and Charlotte that the regular meat version of the sandwich was just as good, if not better, than my vegetarian version.

“Betty, I’ll have one of your amazing BLTs and a coke please,” I told her over the counter.

“For you Angela, anything,” Betty told me with a wink.

“It must be you the problem,” I told Austin. “Betty’s BLTs are the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Austin laughed. “I thought you were a vegetarian.”

“Oh, I am. Betty makes mine specially with vegetarian bacon.”

“Well it’s no wonder you think this is the best food ever, when you’re not experiencing the greatness of meat.”

Ok, this wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have, at all. I changed the subject as quickly as possible.

“So are you heading back up to Portland tonight?” I asked casually.