“Did you manage to get any information out of Matt Smith?” I asked, and Chief Gary shook his head.
“No confession, no. Honestly though, I am quite certain he did it. He almost seemed like he wanted to flaunt it to me, and he obviously hates you. I want you to be careful around him, ok?”
“Yeah, I will. I promise,” I said.
“Unfortunately I had no choice but to let him go, this time.”
I nodded. “I get that. Listen, if you’ve got a minute, I also had another question I wanted to ask.”
“Sure, shoot.”
“A few nights ago, the night before Jeremy Wallace was killed, were there any break-ins reported anywhere in Willow Bay?”
Chief Gary raised his eyebrows, but then leaned back in his chair. “No, I can’t say there were.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll remind you this is Willow Bay. I can count on one hand the number of break-ins that have happened here in the last three months.”
I smiled ruefully. Of course he would know off the top of his head. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I just wanted to be sure.”
“Why did you want to know?” Chief Gary asked me.
“Just a hunch, about the diamond theft.”
“If it even is in Willow Bay. Which it might be. I have people working on it. But so far we’ve found nothing to corroborate the information your boyfriend got; I’m starting to wonder if perhaps his source wasn’t playing a joke on him or something.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s legitimate,” I replied.
“Well, I’m not dismissing it out of hand, of course. I do have people on that case. I’m just not sure it’s ever going to pan out to anything.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” I replied almost absent-mindedly. “Thanks, Chief,” I told him, standing up. I’d gotten all the information I came for.
“No problem, Angela. Anytime. And remember, stay safe out there. I’d like to think I scared some sense into Matthew Smith, but there are no guarantees.”
“Thanks Chief, I will,” I said, flashing Chief Gary a smile to assuage the concerned expression on his face. I was going to be careful. I knew Matt Smith was out to get me. I would be on the lookout, but I also wasn’t going to live life as a hermit because some spoiled rich kid was mad at me.
As I left the police station, though, I was more agitated than ever. I was hoping that there was a break-in reported the night before the murder; that would have indicated that perhaps Jeremy Wallace had hidden the diamond there. As it stood, I had zero leads. I had no idea who killed him. I had no idea where the diamond was. And worse than all of that, I had no idea what to do next. I was completely and totally stuck.
The next morning, I was still feeling depressed about everything: the vet clinic being broken into, the lack of any sort of leads when it came to the Jeremy Wallace murder, and to top everything off I’d heard there was a petition going around asking the government to allow the hunting of bears in the National Park that surrounded Willow Bay. All in all, right from the word go, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good morning. I left early to clean up, Sophie promising to be ten minutes behind me.
When I arrived at the vet clinic, however, my mouth dropped open.
Not only was the yellow police tape gone, but so was the plywood covering the broken glass. All of that was gone as well. In its place was a brand new shiny glass window. A man was adding stencil lettering reading Healthy Paws Vet Clinic. My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t had a chance to call Chief Gary’s glass guy yet.
Outside was a group of people huddled around the man, watching. Bee darted off at the sight, but I wasn’t too worried; I knew she’d come back.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I reached the group. Betty was at the front of it, and I wondered what brought her over here; normally she would be in her café by now. Jason stepped out from behind her.
“We wanted to make sure your clinic wasn’t out of commission for even one day,” Betty said, motioning to the people around her. “So we all pitched in and called the repairman yesterday. He came in early this morning to fix your window. We also got a crew to clean up the inside of the shop.”
“You work so hard for the animals in town, we thought it was so unfair this happened to you,” said Patricia Wilson from her spot in the crowd.
“This is Willow Bay, we locals have to stick together,” said Antonia deLucca, who was normally the town’s gossip, and rarely said anything nice about anyone since that didn’t create as much drama. The crowd around her murmured their agreement.
I suddenly felt tears welling up in my eyes, and I wasn’t the type to cry very often.
“You guys,” I suddenly said, my voice cracking. Jason came over and wrapped an arm around me. I swallowed hard and started again.
“You guys, all of you, everyone who did this. I want to thank you. The last twenty-four hours have been some of the most difficult of my life, and that I could come here this morning and see that everyone has done this for me…” My voice trailed off as the tears threatened to flow once more. I’d never been so touched by a gesture in my life.
“You’re very welcome,” Betty told me, coming over with her arms open. I let myself be taken into the hug, holding Betty close. “Now, everyone,” she announced. “We’re going to have to let Angela go. After all, she has a vet clinic to open today,” she said, to the sound of cheers.
I thanked the dispersing crowd once more and made my way into the shop, my cheeks flushed with pride and happiness, Jason following after me. The smile on my face was permanent; even if I tried I knew I couldn’t get rid of it. And I didn’t want to. My whole community had just shown me an act of love that meant more to me than words could explain.
“You look like a kid on Christmas,” Jason told me, taking a seat in one of the chairs, as I looked around at the spotless floor. All the shards of glass were gone. All the files had been picked up and put carefully on the reception desk. There was even a brand new computer and monitor sitting in a box on the desk as well. I made my way toward it and stroked the cardboard box.
“This is amazing,” I told Jason. “How did this happen?”
He grinned. “I was interviewing a few people outside the shop for a story on the vandalism. Everyone was so upset about what had happened to you. One person said they wished there was something they could do, someone else mentioned that she had a friend who knew someone who worked with glass, and the next thing I knew my interview was over and there was a whole group of people banding together to make sure you would come to work today and find everything fixed. Some of the older ladies asked me to look over the specs of the computer and make sure it was good enough.”
“It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing.”
“Yeah, it’s great to see what everyone can do when they put their minds to things. I guess this is that small town loyalty everyone always talks about.”
“For sure. Willow Bay is amazing.”
“I don’t disagree,” Jason told me with a smile. “I’ll let you get started here. I’m sure you’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”
“Yeah. Thankfully we kept everything important on Dropbox, I didn’t like the idea of having only one copy of everyone’s information. So after I get the computer set up I’ll have to get Karen to log in and re-download all the information, but at least it’s not lost forever.”
“That’s my girl, I didn’t think you would be the type not to have any backups.”
“What are your plans for the day?” I asked, and Jason shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t really have that much to do. I was mostly going to hang around Betty’s and see if I could find anything remotely interesting happening around town. I have about three articles to fill for the rest of the next issue. Then I figured when I was done that I might try and get some more information from the people running that petition to get the bear hunt going in the national park.”