“What donut trick?” Charlotte asked suspiciously, and Sophie’s love of making fun of me overrode her plan to not tell Charlotte what we had been doing.
“Angie got caught eating a donut, and then one of the workers told her she wasn’t supposed to eat that since she had diabetes, and Angie just threw it out and said her doctor said the diabetes was getting better and she could have half a donut a week.”
“Why would workers think Angela had diabetes?” Charlotte asked, and I groaned inwardly.
“We made two people fall asleep and then swapped identities with them for a couple of hours to find out as much information as we could about Jessica Oliver.”
Charlotte looked from Sophie to me.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Well, technically, I didn’t do any of it,” Sophie said. “Seeing as I don’t have any magical powers and all. It was all Angie, really.”
I glared at Sophie. “Really? You spill the beans and now you’re hanging me out to dry, too? Thanks, former bestie.”
Sophie shrugged. “It’s every woman for herself.”
“Did you seriously do that?” Charlotte asked, and I shrugged noncommittally. Sometimes it felt like I was the younger sister, not the other way around.
“You are absolutely unbelievable. Do you know how dangerous that was?”
“You mean the magic I was using? And that I did it correctly?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“It wasn’t any more dangerous than when you turned us into birds,” I protested. “It’s pretty much the same thing.”
“It is absolutely not the same thing. Those are other humans! What if you’d messed it up?”
“Well I didn’t, did I?”
“Luckily for you,” Charlotte muttered.
“Oh, so it’s totally fine to shapeshift when you’re ok with it, but not when it’s just us? I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out,” I replied.
“It wouldn’t even be so bad if the two of you had found out anything good,” Charlotte complained.
“What do you mean?” Sophie argued. “I found out she was having an affair with someone at the office!”
“Not only did I already know that, but I also know who with. And I didn’t have to do any magic to find out.”
“Oh, when were you planning on sharing that little tidbit with us?” Sophie asked. “If the meatballs on this sandwich weren’t so good, I’d throw one of them at you.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I was going to get to it, after you guys shared your information. Jessica Oliver was having an affair with Jonathan Cork.”
“Cork as in the guy with his name on the door?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I had a decent length chat with his secretary today.”
“Ohhhh I met him!” Sophie exclaimed. “He gave me the creeps. The kind of guy that you meet in a club and definitely don’t let him buy you a drink in case he roofied it.”
“Well, he was off the market on two counts. He not only has a wife, but he was also seeing Jessica Oliver on the side.”
“Maybe he got tired of her nagging him to divorce his wife and killed her,” I suggested.
“Or maybe his wife found out about the affair and did it herself,” Sophie offered.
“Remember though? Angela said one of the goats saw a man near the petting zoo the night before.”
“Oh, yeah. Ok, so the wife is out, and Cork is our best suspect. Did you find out anything else, Charlotte?”
“Nothing super important. She was getting pretty terrible grades in law school, but not bad enough to be kicked out of the program.”
“A terrible grade to you is less than ninety percent, what numbers are you talking about by normal people standards?” Sophie asked.
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just told they were bad. And this was a ‘normal person’ that told me,” she said, doing air quotes while rolling her eyes to emphasize her distaste of Sophie’s use of the phrase.
My phone suddenly buzzed.
Coffee? It was Jason.
Sure, give me an hour though. In Portland right now.
His reply came a minute later. Ooooh, someone’s investigating another murder case!
You don’t know that :-P
Like you were ever going to do anything else. Betty’s?
See you in an hour.
“Did you get any more info other than that?” I asked Charlotte, and she shook her head.
“Nothing especially important. Just stuff on how she was an amazing person, and she could be a bit vain but she had a heart of gold, that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, that was totally the impression I got from her,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes.
Charlotte shrugged. “Who knows. She had to actually be nice to Laura, or she wouldn’t have been friends with her at all.”
“Hey, if you guys are done eating, let’s head back home. I’m going to meet Jason at Betty’s in an hour. He’ll have been investigating her murder too. I’ll see if I can pump him for information.”
“I bet that’s not the only thing that’ll be pumping when you two get together,” Sophie teased, and I rolled my eyes in exasperation.
Chapter 9
Ten minutes late, I rushed into Betty’s Café. Jason was sitting at one of the corner tables that he’d somehow nabbed. The place was packed with tourists; the display cases holding various pies, cakes and other sweet treats had already been practically emptied, and it wasn’t even two in the afternoon yet. The low hum of a variety of voices passed over the room. Jason seemed oblivious to all the excitement and happiness around him; he had his little moleskin notebook that he always carried with him out, and was going over what he’d written. I slipped into the chair across from him and smiled at him as he looked up. Sometimes, when I caught my first glimpse of him and he smiled at me, I was struck by just how good looking he was. I was a pretty lucky woman. I wasn’t bad looking myself, but boy was Jason ever the head-turning type.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, winking at me. A small blush crept up my face.
“Hey,” I replied back.
“I ordered you a vanilla latte.”
“Ah, the true way to a girl’s heart,” I replied with a smile, just as Betty came by with the coffees.
“I heard you’ve had a couple interesting days,” Betty told me as she put a steaming mug of coffee in front of me, and another in front of Jason. She also put a plate of her now-famous chocolate pecan cheesecake on the table in front of us with two spoons. “On the house, it’s the last slice,” she told us with a wink. “I’d love to chat but I’m being run off my feet here,” she told us. We both thanked Betty profusely as she ran off to deal with a family that had what had to be at least seven children, and Jason looked at me carefully.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“Believe it or not, I think I’m actually getting used to finding bodies around here. I’m starting to think it’s me that’s the problem.”
Jason laughed. “Maybe that’s what it is; you’re a serial killer and you’ve been pinning all these crimes on other people. I was just too smart for you, that’s why you pinned the first murder on that developer in the end.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. You’re already hot as hell, you don’t get to also have brains, that’s just not fair.”
“Oh, so you’re just dating me for my rock-hard abs?” he joked.
“Absolutely,” I deadpanned, grabbing a fork and taking a bite of the cheesecake, even though I was still totally stuffed from lunch. It was like heaven. “So how’s the reporting business going? You’ve probably got enough to write three weeks’ worth of newspapers based on the last couple days alone.”
“Tell me about it. Obviously the murder gets the front page. Especially since I managed to get some photos, and even a video, of that lady deciding to lay into you because there weren’t any calves there. And then, of course, your cat attacking her.”