What I saw was the most surprising thing I’d ever seen in all my time working at the vet clinic.
Bee and Buster were sitting together on top of the cupboard at the back of the clinic, looking down on Karen and Gloria, seemingly both incredibly content.
“I can’t believe I had to go through this today,” Buster complained.
“Well, it could be worse, you could have to live with her,” Bee told him. “You know she let a dog live with us? It belongs to the other one, but it’s still in my home.”
“The one with that absolutely garish streak of purple hair? Does she think she’s a fifteen year old emo chick or something?” Buster replied.
“Thank you, I’m so glad someone else thinks it looks ridiculous,” Bee said. “Everyone’s always complimenting her on her individuality, and how good it looks. But it’s ridiculous. Anyway, Angela, the one who’s standing at the door glaring at us, she can understand us speaking. She’s a witch. But see, she’s not allowed to tell any of the humans she’s a witch, so she has to hide her powers. So as long as there’s normal humans around, we can say what we want and she can’t do anything about it.”
I seethed with rage as Bee said all of this while looking right at me. I knew exactly what she was doing, and the worst part was, she was right! I couldn’t do anything about it. Not right now, anyway.
Shaking my head I turned on my heel and headed back into the exam rooms.
“I think Bee’s made herself a friend,” I told Sophie, who was just finishing cleaning up the room for the next patient.
“Really? Bee?” Sophie asked, incredulous.
“Yeah, I know, I wasn’t expecting it either. But she and Buster are sitting on top of a cabinet, judging people.
Sophie howled with laughter. “Oh, finally, another cat that’s exactly like Bee.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Bee having a friend wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’d just never seen it before. And honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could handle there being two Bees in the same town. For another thing, I wasn’t sure Bee would be able to handle it either.
“Ah well,” I said. “It’s not like Bee’s going to see Buster again until next year, when he needs another booster shot, in all likelihood.”
“True,” Sophie said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about the murder. It feels like right now we’re only getting bits and pieces of information. We need more. A lot more.”
I nodded. “I agree, completely.”
“I think Corey can be strongly considered our main suspect, especially after what you overheard. But how are we going to prove that he did it? We need some more info,” Sophie continued.
“Definitely.”
“So I was thinking about that invisibility spell. I think we should use it again, and sneak onto the grounds. That way we can have a look around and see if we can find any documents or overhear anything else that might give us a hint.”
I shook my head slowly. “I like the idea, but the invisibility spell won’t work. It only makes us invisible, and the way Susan told me there’s sensors on the grounds, and a huge fence, we won’t be able to scale it at all. We need a way to get onto the property without being noticed, but also without actually touching the ground.”
Cogs whirred in my brain as I went over all the magic I knew. When I finally arrived at a solution, I knew we were going to need some help.
“I know what we can do, but we’re going to have to get Charlotte to do the magic.”
“Oh no, she’s never going to want to help!”
“We’re going to have to convince her that we need to do this. After all, she seems more into helping us now that I’m an actual murder suspect.”
“What’s your plan, anyway?”
“Charlotte has to turn us into birds. We can fly over the fence, and just hang out around everyone. Since it’s a farm, most of the people work outside anyway.”
“Turn us into birds?” Sophie replied, her eyes widening. “Is that a thing you can do?”
“Well, I can’t do it,” I replied. “I’m almost certain Charlotte can though. She spent so much more time than me studying magic, she knows a ton of spells that are way more advanced than what I can do.”
“Ok, fine, we’ll tell her when we go home. That’s our new plan. We turn into birds and go spying. Because that’s a totally normal thing.”
I laughed as Karen knocked on the door to announce the arrival of our next patient.
Chapter 8
“Are you kidding me? That’s your plan?” Charlotte was evidently going to take a bit of convincing to get on board.
“What?” I asked innocently, shrugging my shoulders. As soon as Charlotte had come home from her classes that afternoon I asked her if she was willing to turn us all into birds for a couple of hours so we could go spy on the people at Gibson Farms.
“Well for one thing, you seem to think that high-level magic has no consequences. Do you know how hard it is to turn someone into a bird from human form?”
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking you to do it for me,” I replied, and I heard Sophie snicker behind me.
“It’s so dangerous! Things can go wrong. Very, very wrong. What if I mess it up and you end up half-bird, half human? Or what if I can’t turn you back?”
“Charlotte, we all know that if anyone can pull off a high-level spell, it’s you.”
“But there’s still risks involved!”
“A bigger risk than the idea that I’m a suspect in a murder investigation?” I asked. That stopped Charlotte, she looked like she was definitely going to give in.
“Fine,” she sighed. “We’ll do it. But if this goes badly, I want it on the record that this was so not my idea, and that I am not enthusiastic about it.”
“That’s fine, we know you hate all the good ideas anyway,” Sophie replied, and Charlotte glared at her.
“When are you guys thinking of doing this, anyway?” Charlotte asked.
“How about tomorrow afternoon?” I offered. “You have no classes on Saturdays, and I looked at the appointment book before we left, and we should be done by two thirty.” It seemed most people didn’t want to spend their nice summer weekend days at the vet’s office.
“Fine,” Charlotte said, resigned to the idea. “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, remembering something. She went back to the front hall and came back with this week’s copy of The Willow Bay Whistler, the local paper Jason Black worked for. “I almost forgot! I grabbed this when I was going through town on the way home. I imagine neither one of you thought to get a copy yourselves.”
To be totally honest, in all the excitement of the day, I’d completely forgotten that the Whistler came out on Fridays, and that Jason’s article about the murder might have just made the deadline. Sure enough, this week’s headline screamed: “Gibson Farms Owner Found Strangled.”
Sophie and I pored over the article. I smiled to myself as I read the headline; I imagined Chief Hawthorne hadn’t released the manner of death late last night, and was going to be pissed that the information had been leaked so quickly. Good, he deserved it.
Jason had actually managed to write a pretty decent amount for how little info he must have actually gotten yesterday. He wrote up a small history of the Gibson family on the Oregon Coast, a little bit about their most popular horses – including Touch of Frost, of course – and mainly just the information that Caroline Gibson had been found strangled on her estate. There was a picture of police cars driving into the estate yesterday afternoon to accompany the photo. He had even managed to get an interview with Tony, the jockey, who described Caroline Gibson as a terrible boss who was impossible to work for – the same sorts of things I’d heard him say over the body the day before. I begrudgingly admitted that Jason Black actually seemed to be a pretty decent reporter. It was also a reminder that I had to re-schedule our date. I quickly put that thought out of my head.