I noticed that he was careful not to say that he didn’t know Ella at all, just that he didn’t work with her case.
“I was sure the case was as close to a slam dunk as you can get in unlawful dismissal cases, which are notoriously hard to prove. Luckily Ella had done everything right. She had recorded dates and times when the harassment occurred, recorded conversations with her boss in secret, had kept all of her excellent performance reviews. The last one had been from a week before she was fired. Then the icing on the cake is she was fired the afternoon after complaining to HR. The morons didn’t even wait a few weeks to make it look like a coincidence. That’s the only thing I know about Ella that could have gotten her killed.”
“And Jessica?”
Smith shrugged. “She sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. She took a lot of care about her appearance, and she could get a bit disruptive if she didn’t get her way.”
Gee, you don’t say, I thought to myself as Cork continued. “But it wasn’t anything that someone would want to kill her over. She might have rubbed some people the wrong way, but that was it.”
“Thanks,” I said to Jonathan Cork.
“You’re not going to write all that in the paper, are you? Please, my wife…” Smith trailed off.
“Maybe if you really care about your wife you won’t stick it into the first skinny blonde thing you see next time,” Jason replied. “But no, I won’t be running an article about you. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Visibly shaken, Cork nodded curtly and got into his car, starting it in record time and racing out of the lot.
As the three of us went to the car, I noticed Charlotte hanging back. Whatever spell she’d set, she was obviously going to reverse it as soon as Jason was out of earshot.
When we were back on the road to Willow Bay—Charlotte driving her own car back—Jason, Sophie and I discussed what we’d found out.
“So do you guys think he’s the murder, or not?” Sophie asked as she drove down the Interstate so fast that I was more focused on our impending deaths in a fiery wreck than the conversation.
“I don’t think he did it,” Jason replied first. “He seems like the kind of guy who just doesn’t have it in him. He’s the perfect weasel-like personal injury attorney. The kind who looks good, says the right thing, and fights all his battles in a court of law. Not the kind of guy to go out and murder women he’s been with in cold blood. That said, I could see him being the type to hire a hit. I just don’t see him getting his hands dirty, and his alibis did seem pretty solid, without checking them.”
“I think you’re right,” I replied slowly, my eyes watching the speedometer. “I don’t think he’s the kind of person that would kidnap someone, murder them and hide the body in the woods.”
“So we’re back to square one, basically,” Sophie said.
“No, I don’t think we’re quite there,” I replied. “I think that there is definitely a link between the three women, and I think there’s a serial killer out there. It’s just probably not Jonathan Cork. Unless he hired a hitman.”
“Which we have no way of figuring out if he did or not,” Sophie answered.
“If solving murders was easy, everyone would be doing it,” Jason offered in reply.
“And the murder rate would probably go down,” I muttered. If only.
Chapter 14
We dropped Jason back off at his home, then Sophie and I went back home. We opened the door to find Sprinkles lying next to it with his hands in between his paws.
“I didn’t do anything,” he whined as soon as we entered. Sophie and I looked at each other. Uh oh. This wasn’t good.
As Sophie and I made our way to the living room, my first thought was how on earth did it start snowing in here? until I realized it wasn’t snow. It was toilet paper.
“Bee,” I muttered, looking around for the guilty party. It couldn’t be that hard. After all, Bee was a black cat, in a living room covered in white toilet paper. It had all been torn to shreds; even the two cardboard rolls I spotted lying on the ground had been thoroughly destroyed. And it wasn’t like she’d just left the toilet paper in a neat little pile in the middle of the room.
No, the toilet paper was everywhere. She would have made teenagers playing a prank proud. Shreds of toilet paper covered the couch, the bookcase; a string was hanging off the TV. There was even a long string of toilet paper hanging off one of the blades of the fan, reaching halfway down to the floor. Bee had obviously put a lot of effort into ensuring the living room had been well and truly decorated.
“What?” my cat asked innocently. She was lying on top of her climbing tower—which was, unsurprisingly, the only part of the room that didn’t have any toilet paper on it—basking in a ray of sunshine that was pouring in through the window.
“Do you want to explain this?” I asked, motioning to the toilet paper.
“Explain what? I don’t know what you mean.”
“The toilet paper, Bee. How did all this toilet paper get here?”
“Ohhh, that. I think it was the dog. I barely even noticed it.”
“Well I don’t think it was the dog at all.” I crossed my arms across my chest to let Bee know I was serious about this. She replied by rolling onto her side and stretching her limbs, then closing her eyes once more.
“You’re allowed your opinion. Oh, wait. You think I did it?” Bee suddenly asked, opening her eyes wide in innocent protestation.
“Yes, Bee. I think you did it.”
I could see Sophie struggling not to laugh next to me, even though she could only understand my half of the conversation.
“Well, I can’t say I did. However, I must say that whatever gremlins crawled out of the woodwork and did do this might have left if you had been home.”
Ah. So I was being punished for going away. That was the reason for today’s batch of psycho from my cat.
“Oh, so that’s what this is about, is it? And why did my going away result in this redecoration of the living room?”
“You should ask Gloria. She came by with Buster earlier. She might know, even if she wasn’t able to get into the house.”
That explained it. Gloria was a woman who had recently retired to Willow Bay from Portland. She’d brought her cat Buster to my vet clinic a couple of months ago, and he and Bee had immediately hit it off. Ever since, Gloria would bring Buster into the clinic once or twice a week and the two of them would spend the day together—usually sitting on top of the bookcase, mocking and judging the other animals that came into the clinic together. Gloria must have come by to drop Buster off for a play-date while the vet clinic was closed.
“Look, Bee. I’m sorry you didn’t get to play with Buster today. But this is completely unacceptable,” I told her as I started to scoop up shreds of toilet paper off the ground.
“I told you, I didn’t do it,” Bee replied comfortably from her spot in the ray of sunshine.
“Of course you didn’t,” I muttered as Sophie began to help me clean up. Just then, Charlotte came in through the front door.
“Well, this is different,” she said as she walked into the living room.
“Bee had a bit of a fit because Buster came by and no one was here to let him into the house,” I explained, glaring at my cat.
“Don’t tell her lies, I told you I didn’t do it.”
“And I don’t believe you,” I shot back.
“First you abandon me for the whole day, and now you don’t take my word for anything. The betrayal is like a knife through my heart.” I rolled my eyes. Bee could be so dramatic.
“What was the spell you cast when we saw Jonathan Cork?” I asked Charlotte, who gave me a small smile.