Саманта Сильвер - The Purr-fect Crime

“He was dressed in all black. Completely black. Head to toe. Exactly how death would dress.”

“So a man dressed all in black walked upstairs, took some stuff down, and left?”

“Yes. Although I don’t think it was a man. I think death was a woman,” the tan and white hamster said.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because these two misogynists think everyone is a man.”

Great. So the hamsters really had no idea about anything, other than someone dressed in black came and stole some stuff yesterday.

“Do you guys know what was taken?” I asked, hoping to get some more concrete information out of the little critters.

“Tom Riddle’s Diary,” the brown hamster replied. “That’s how we know it was death. He was linked to he-who-shall-not-be-named.”

“Stop being stupid, Marnie,” the tan and white hamster spat, and I had to smile. He looked at me apologetically. “They’ve been doing a reading of Harry Potter books here the last week. Yesterday we heard The Chamber of Secrets.”

“Ah, that explains it,” I replied, smiling. The tan and white hamster continued.

“We’re not sure what was taken. It looked like individual sheets of paper though, not a book. If that helps you at all.”

“It does, thanks,” I told him. So someone had stolen some paper of some kind from the library. “Ok guys, I’m going to go. Please don’t worry. It wasn’t death that came by last night, it was a robber. And I don’t think he cares that a few hamsters saw him. You can’t identify him at all, so you should be safe.”

“Are you sure?” asked the orange hamster. “I’ve been losing fur all day over this.”

“I’m sure. You guys can relax.”

I left the hamsters, my head reeling. I still wasn’t sure they weren’t totally insane, but they seemed pretty set on the idea that someone had been here last night and had stolen something.

That was strange. This was Willow Bay. This wasn’t the kind of place where people stole things. Especially from the library. I mean, you could just slip anything you needed in your bag and walk out. Rose certainly wasn’t going to notice. This wasn’t exactly a high security establishment.

I made my way up the stairs to the second floor, where the purported theft had taken place. There really wasn’t that much up there. Computers in the corner that all looked fine. One man was using it to browse the internet. There was a section with old stuff like maps, microfiches, a kind of makeshift historical society for Willow Bay. It wasn’t exactly high value stuff.

Not noticing anything out of place, I eventually left, thanking Rose.

Things in Willow Bay were getting weird.

Chapter 18

When I got back to the house I told Sophie and Charlotte about what I’d learned from the hamsters. Obviously, we argued about what it meant.

“Are you sure this even happened?” Charlotte asked, looking sceptical.

“What do you mean, do you doubt Angie’s ability to talk to animals now? You’re joining me in the ranks of thinking she’s a crazy person?”

Charlotte laughed. “No, of course not. But I mean, the way Angela’s describing it, the hamsters don’t seem to be the most… reliable witnesses.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean. I kind of thought that too. And while I think there’s basically no chance any of the details are right – I mean, the closest I came to getting information on what was actually stolen was that it was Tom Riddle’s Diary – I think they are actually telling the truth about the overall story. There was someone there, and that someone stole something. After all, they were legitimately terrified that when I came over I was death and I was coming to kill them. They saw something. ”

“But is it linked to Tony Nyman’s death? I bet whoever did it was doing it for some completely different reason,” Sophie said.

“Seriously?” I asked. “Two major crimes in Willow Bay in the course of like, a week, and you think the second one is a coincidence?”

Sophie nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not like Nyman’s death is the only thing happening around here. Maybe it’s something to do with the new resort. Maybe it’s some drunk kid who decided to be funny. Who knows.”

“I agree with Angela. If something did happen, it was linked to Nyman’s death,” Charlotte said. “And since I think Nyman’s death was related to the resort, if I’m right, then it means that the theft was linked to both.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Of course you guys would agree with each other.”

I looked at Charlotte. “Why is she in a pissier mood than usual?” I asked.

“Excuse me?” Sophie said, and I ignored her.

“Lisa called and wants Sophie to help her with some computer stuff tomorrow after work,” Charlotte said, trying to stifle a laugh.

“Ohhhhh, I’m sorry Sophie,” I told her, shooting her a half-fake sympathetic look. Sophie glared at me in reply. Lisa was notoriously terrible with computers. An absolutely amazing witch, but somehow human technology was completely beyond her. As an accountant, she’d been forced by her job to start using one, and whenever she had problems with it, Lisa always called Sophie to help her out.

Once Sophie went over to her mom’s place because her printer “wasn’t working.” It turned out that at some point Lisa had unplugged the printer cable from the computer, hadn’t realized that was what made it work, and complained that for two weeks she had no access to her printer because it was “broken”.

I supposed one small mercy for Sophie was that playing tech support was never a difficult job.

“I’m so not in a pissy mood,” Sophie replied angrily.

“Yeah, you’re the picture of sunshine and rainbows right now,” I replied, which earned me another glare.

“Whatever. I don’t have to listen to this,” Sophie replied. “I’m going to bed. Go see Chief Gary tomorrow and see what he says about the break in. If he doesn’t know about it, it didn’t happen. I still trust Chief Gary over a couple hamsters.”

And with that Sophie got up and headed off to her room while Charlotte and I watched a few old episodes of Orange is the New Black.

Despite her bad mood, Sophie’s idea wasn’t actually a bad one. So the next day, when we had a little bit of downtime after a scheduled surgery went faster than expected, I headed over to the police station and walked into Chief Gary’s office.

“Hey, Angela,” he told me, giving me a small smile. “What can I help you with today?”

“Well,” I said, “I heard there was a break-in at the library the other day.”

Chief Gary sighed. “Great. News has gotten out about that, has it? I asked Rose not to tell anyone; with all the panicking going around after the Nyman murder I figured the last thing anyone needed to hear was that someone broke into the library and stole some old map. Even if it was just some kids messing around.”

“So it actually happened?”

“Yeah. How did you hear about it?”

“Someone mentioned it to me last night. They didn’t seem sure about their source though. I wouldn’t worry too much about word getting around too quickly.” Obviously I wasn’t going to mention that my source was three hamsters, and since I was the only person in Willow Bay who could actually talk to them, the odds of anyone else finding out about the break-in were pretty low.

“Good.”

“Did you say it was a map that was stolen?”

“Yeah. That’s why I think it was kids pulling a prank. With school getting out and stuff, I figure it’s probably some of the grade 12s deciding to do something stupid as a dare, or something. I’m not really that worried. After all, it’s not like an old map outlining the boundary of a state park is exactly worth anything.”