Саманта Сильвер: Barking Up The Wrong Tree

“Ohhhhh this is exactly what I need right now,” I said, picking up the sandwich and taking a huge bite.

“Be careful there, Angela,” Charlotte told me. “We don’t want to have a When Harry Met Sally moment right here in the café.”

I blushed at the insinuation.

“I’m not that bad,” I said. Charlotte laughed.

“I’m pretty sure you just made love to that first bite of the sandwich.”

“Fine, well, I’ve had a bad day. Don’t judge me.”

“Would some hot gossip make your day better?” Charlotte asked, and I looked up at her curiously. Charlotte wasn’t the type to gossip at all. Which is weird for someone who grew up in Willow Bay, the kind of place where gossiping about anything and everything is the number one pastime.

“It depends on what the gossip is,” I replied.

“Well, I was walking through Portland this morning, going to my car to come back here. And I walked past this cute little restaurant on Market Street, and I looked in, and guess who I saw?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Lisa,” Charlotte replied in a hushed whisper.

“So? Lisa’s allowed to go to Portland. She has clients there, remember?” Sophie’s mom Lisa, who raised us as her own, ran her own accountancy firm. It had started out small, with just a few local clients, but her reputation made its way around the state and now Lisa had opened up an office in Portland and Eugene as well.

“No, no. Not just Lisa by herself. Lisa with a man. And it definitely wasn’t a business meeting.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well as I walked by she was twirling her hair and he was holding her hand, and neither one of them were dressed for a business meeting, and neither one of them had folders or anything.”

“Well, just because she’s old doesn’t mean she’s not allowed to date anyone,” I replied, but at the same time, something about it felt weird.

Lisa had divorced Sophie’s father when Sophie was two years old. I’d known Sophie my whole life, and to date I had never known her to have a boyfriend. Ever.

“Isn’t it strange though?”

“Yeah, it is,” I replied. Why now? Why did she decide she needed someone in her life at this exact moment?

“I wonder why she didn’t tell us though.”

“Maybe because she thought we’d react like this,” I said, with a small smile. “After all, it sounds like neither one of us are totally thrilled about this new development.”

“Well no, but only because it’s so strange,” Charlotte replied. “Do you think we should tell Sophie?”

“You know damn well I’m going to have to tell Sophie. I can’t hide something like this from her.” Sophie was my best friend, but I’d grown up living in the same house as her. We were practically sisters.

“Fine. But you have to make her promise she’s not going to bring him up to her mom until her mom tells us about him. We need to respect her wishes, she’ll tell us about him when she’s ready.” Leave it to my sister to still be the mature one in this situation, despite being the youngest.

“Ok. I promise. We won’t ask her about him until she mentions him. Besides, you might have it all wrong anyway. It might be something totally different.”

“Maybe. But if you’d seen them, you’d be sure too.”

I took another big bite into my sandwich as the bell above the front door went off. Instinctively I looked to see who had come in, and saw it was Antonia deLucca, one of the local town gossips. She was in her late 60s now, I presumed, and spent her whole day sticking her extra big nose into other peoples’ business. And right now, she looked like the cat that had just caught the canary, and wanted to tell everyone about it.

She walked up to the counter, chest puffed out. I caught Charlotte’s eye and pointed subtly. Antonia looked like she had something juicy. But at the same time, her face was pale, and she actually looked older than usual, which was impressive, seeing as Antonia deLucca was pretty much ancient.

I wasn’t her biggest fan, especially after she started a rumour that I was involved in a murder a couple of months ago, when the victim had broken into my vet clinic to try and save himself.

“Betty, my dear,” Antonia told Betty behind the counter. “I’ve just come from the most interesting scene.”

“Oh yes, Antionia? And what might that be?” Betty asked, playing Antonia’s game.

“There’s been another murder in Willow Bay!”

At that, the whole café went completely silent. Even the fridge stopped humming. I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“Another murder?” Betty finally asked. “Are you sure?”

Antonia nodded, looking around the room at the ten or so people sitting at tables, enjoying their lunches.

“Yes! Another murder! Although Chief Gary won’t tell me that himself, it’s obvious that’s what it is.”

“Who is it?” I heard Charlotte ask.

“Poor old Andrea Dottory,” Antonia replied, shaking her head sadly and clucking her tongue. Charlotte and I looked at each other. If anyone in Willow Bay was a likely candidate to be murdered, it was Andrea.

Andrea Dottory was one of the other town gossips, but she was much more malicious than Antonia deLucca. She was in her mid-70s, and had lived in Willow Bay ever since she emigrated from Ireland in the early 50s. No one in town liked her, mainly because she had started nasty rumours about almost everyone, at some point. And she didn’t mind telling people about them to their faces, either.

I looked at Charlotte.

“Murder?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I mean, at 70 plus years old it’s less likely than other things.”

Antonia overheard us and came over to our table.

“No, no. It’s murder. Believe me, I know. Andrea told Patricia Wilson the other day she was going to be murdered soon, she could feel it.”

“Did she happen to tell you tell Patricia who was going to commit the murder?” I asked dryly.

“No. She didn’t.”

“Well, that would have been helpful.”

“It’s not like she died in her sleep. She was found lying in the middle of the road, around the corner from her house, and her head was bashed in!”

Charlotte and I looked at each other. Willow Bay had had its first murder since the 1910s just a couple of months ago. What on earth were the odds that we’d have two in two months?

Chapter 3

After we finished our sandwiches, Charlotte said she had to go home. I looked at my watch. There were still twenty minutes before I had to be back at the vet clinic, and I knew that Andrea Dorotty’s home was only a five minute walk away.

“Come on, Charlotte. Let’s go see if there’s anything we can do, at least,” I begged, trying to appease the part of Charlotte that was becoming a doctor to help people. My sister rolled her eyes, immediately seeing through my ruse.

“She’s dead, Angela. I don’t think there’s anything we can help with.”

“Sophie would totally want to come with me,” I whined.

“Well then invite her. I’m not going to join in the macabre spectacle of trying to see a body.”

Did I mention that Charlotte could be wound up pretty tight sometimes?

“I don’t want to see the body, I just…”

“You just what?” Charlotte asked, putting her hands on her hips. “And if you answer you just want to look for clues, I’m leaving, right now. You know what happened last time you got involved in a murder investigation.”

When Tony Nyman had been killed, and I had found his body in my vet clinic, Sophie, Charlotte and I had decided to investigate. It led to the three of us almost being killed by the head of a planned resort project in the middle of a forest.