Yikes, that was definitely a threat. Looking at my phone, I realized I really had to get out of there, my time was almost up. I scrunched the note up and put it back in the garbage can, then wiped my fingerprints off everything I touched and headed back to the car.
Half an hour later I’d reversed my invisibility spell and driven back into Portland to pick up Sophie, who was waiting for me in front of a Sephora nearby, where she’d evidently refreshed her makeup stash.
“Did you find anything? Please tell me you found something, so I feel less dirty about talking to that creep.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I did. I found one of those threatening letters Jake mentioned.” Pulling out my phone, I handed it to Sophie, who opened up the photos file.
“Yeah, I’d say whoever wrote this should be pretty high on our list of suspects,” Sophie said, her eyebrows rising.
“It’s going to be tough to find out who wrote it, though,” I said as I pulled back onto the interstate to go back home.
“For sure.”
“So, are you going to go out with that guy?” I asked Sophie with a grin, who punched me lightly on the arm.
“Gross. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to pick my face out of a lineup if it came to that,” she said. “My boobs, on the other hand…”
“Yeah, he was pretty blatant about it.”
“He did ask to take me out for a drink later, but I told him I had to work. I gave him a fake number. Hopefully we never need to see him again.”
“Agreed. Thanks for sacrificing your dignity for the greater good.”
“Anything for my best friend, right?” she replied with a grin.
Chapter 9
As soon as we got back home I started getting ready for my date with Jason that night; we’d planned on going out to dinner at a local Italian place that was quickly becoming our favorite hangout.
After doing my hair and makeup, and deciding that I looked pretty good, I made my way down the hallway and back toward the kitchen. As I passed the laundry room, however, I heard Bee’s voice coming from inside, and I couldn’t help but take a peek.
She was sitting on top of the washing machine, with the four kittens sitting on the ground below. Her back was straight, her eyes boring into her subjects, who were all sitting in a line, all giving their adoptive mother all of their attention.
“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of cats fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of dogs and shattered bits of kibble, when the age of cats comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Cats of the West!” Bee announced with passion.
I figured this was a sign I’d watched the Lord of the Rings movies a few times too many. Bee could recite Aragorn’s speech by heart, and yet she didn’t know who Beyoncé was.
Not wanting to intrude any more–and not really wanting to know exactly who Bee was going to war against, since it was probably me–I slipped past the laundry room and grabbed my purse before heading out to meet Jason downtown.
Jason was waiting for me outside the restaurant. It was a cute little place, with exposed brick, posters from Italy on the walls and quiet classic Italian music playing through the speakers. I’d known the family that ran this place my whole life, and as soon as we sat down we were greeted by a server who handed us our menus with a smile.
“Hi, I’m Jessie, I’ll be your waitress tonight. Can I get you anything to drink to start with?” she asked.
“We’ll have a bottle of red wine, whatever you recommend,” Jason said, flashing her a smile. I couldn’t help but notice the blush creeping up her neck as he did so; Jason tended to have that effect on women. But, to her credit, unlike others who were straight up hostile toward me, Jessie simply smiled at both of us and said she’d be back in a moment with the wine and to take our orders.
“So, let’s get straight to it,” I told Jason as I opened my menu. “Did you get the address from Chief Gary’s computer?”
Jason grinned as he leaned back in his chair. “Of course I did! After all, I had no real choice after you failed miserably, didn’t I?”
I stuck my tongue out at him for his gentle teasing. “I found out information about Matt Smith’s murder, though! So I wasn’t totally useless.”
“That’s very true,” Jason conceded. “You’re never totally useless anyway. You’re actually surprisingly good at investigation and intrigue, for a vet.”
I laughed. “How did you manage it?” After all, Jason didn’t have magic at his disposal to cause diversions the way I did.
Before Jason had a chance to reply, however, Jessie came back with a bottle of red wine from Tuscany, which she poured out for each of us before taking our orders. Jason ordered the house-made lasagne, while I went for the tagliatelle puttanesca.
“Ok, I need to know,” I said when Jessie finally left. “How did you do it?”
Jason grinned the widest smile I’d ever seen. “You’re never going to believe this. I asked him!”
“What?” I replied, my mouth dropping open. “You… asked?”
“Yeah. He mentioned the giraffe, I told him that you were trying to find out where it came from, he said if there was anything he could do to help to let him know. So I gave him the license plate number, he ran it through his system, and now we have a name. The truck belongs to a guy named Richard Steele, who lives at a property out in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of some place called Sister.
“Sisters,” I corrected automatically. “Wow. That really is the middle of nowhere. Sisters was a tiny community about three hours inland from Willow Bay. To be totally honest I had no idea what was there; I just knew it from having seen it on so many maps as a kid. I’d possibly driven through it once or twice before, but had no memory of the place.
“Yeah, that’s right. I looked it up. It has a population of two thousand people, and when I typed in the address Chief Gary gave me the farm looked to be about a ten, maybe fifteen minutes’ drive out of town. Google street view doesn’t even exist out there, that’s how isolated it is.”
I laughed. “I like how that’s now the benchmark of whether or not something is in the middle of nowhere: whether there’s a street view of it.”
“Pretty much,” Jason conceded. “I could literally do virtual tours inside of stores in New York using Google street view, and yet here there are areas whose streets aren’t even on there. If that’s not the middle of nowhere, I don’t know what is.”
“You’re such a city boy,” I teased as the waitress came by with our food. “I’m glad you got the info from Chief Gary, too. Thanks for that. Hopefully this way we can track down Lucy’s smugglers.”
Jason’s face turned serious. “I know, but please Angela, be careful. These people are smugglers. They’re not going to want you looking into their business. They’re dangerous.”
“I know,” I replied. “I promise, I’ll be careful.”
“If you decide to go over there, please make sure not to go alone. And if I can’t come with you, please at least text me and let me know where you are.”
“I will,” I said, digging into my pasta. “Don’t worry.”
“I always worry,” Jason said with a small smile as he took a bite of garlic bread. “I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt, but I also know that saving that giraffe is important to you.”
“Thanks,” I replied with a smile. “Listen, after this is all over I think you should run an exposé on animal smuggling in the paper.”
“Oh yeah?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Definitely. I was reading up on it last night, and did you know that the black market for animal smuggling is worth over twenty billion dollars? It’s the second biggest illegal market after drugs. A baby chimpanzee on the black market can cost $50,000. I’d be willing to bet Lucy cost her previous owner nearly one hundred grand.”