A Grizzly Discovery (Willow Bay Witches #5)

Samantha Silver

Blueberry Books Press

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Also by Samantha Silver

About the Author

This book is for Jeanie, one of the most important black bears in the history of Whistler, Canada. Thanks to Jeanie we now have a better understanding of black bears. She was a true ambassador for her kind.

1

The lab puppy in front of me was definitely not having a good day.

Keegan was seven months old, pure black, and right now, his face was swollen to about three times its normal size. He looked at me with his sad, deep brown eyes.

“Everything feels funny,” he whined at me.

“Yeah, you’re not feeling that great today, are you little guy?” I asked in a sing-song voice. My name is Angela Martin, and I’m a witch who can talk to animals. It comes in pretty handy in my profession, as I’m the resident vet in Willow Bay, a small town on the Oregon coast. Unfortunately, when the dog’s owner is standing three feet away from me, it’s harder for me to have an actual conversation with the patient.

I stood up and looked at Anne Peters, Keegan’s owner. She was in her mid-forties, with brown hair and a friendly—if worried—face. “He’s going to be fine,” I told her. “At this time of year, when the weather starts to get a bit cooler, the bees start trying to find warmer places to stay. A bee likely got into your home, and I imagine Keegan found him. I don’t see anything to indicate this could be an infection or anything of the sort. We can give him a Benadryl and he’ll sleep away the afternoon and be fine by tomorrow morning.”

“I didn’t mean to eat it,” Keegan whined. “It was just… buzzing. And moving. I couldn’t resist.”

“You’ll feel better in a few hours little guy, don’t worry,” I told him. “In the future, try to avoid eating bees. They’re important to the planet, and that way your face won’t look like a soccer ball.”

Anne thanked me and took Keegan back into the reception area. I made my way there a few minutes later to find Karen, the receptionist, laughing with Sophie, my best friend and vet technician.

“I can’t believe that poor little dog’s face swelled up just from trying to eat a bee!” Karen told me when I came out, and I smiled.

“Yeah, it’s amazing how common allergic reactions to bee and wasp stings are in dogs. Hopefully he’ll think twice before trying to eat another one.”

“That’s because dogs are morons,” Bee, my black cat, said from her curled position on her bed that rested on top of the reception counter. She didn’t even bother opening her eyes to make the statement, and I glared at her. Bee could be a bit of a drama queen. Luckily, she tended to think of herself as being superior to the animals that came to the vet’s office, and made her superiority known by pretending none of the animals existed when they were in the clinic.

“If I know lab puppies, that’s definitely not the last time we’re going to see Keegan in here because he ate something ridiculous,” Sophie replied, and I laughed. Labs were, in general, what I liked to call “adventurous eaters”, in the sense that if it looked like it would fit in their mouth, they would try to eat it. Half the time, even if it didn’t look like it would fit in their mouths they would try anyway.

“We have a bit of a break until the next patient, right Karen?” I asked her. It was the Thursday of the first week of September; all the kids were going back to school, the weather that had been so warm and sunny just a few days earlier had now turned cool and overcast, and the clouds threatened to unleash their anger in the form of torrents of rain every minute of every day. As a result, business was slower than usual at the vet clinic.

“Yes,” Karen said, looking at the schedule. “You’ve got a break now until one this afternoon, when Strawberry is coming in. Something about him being less active than usual.”

“Well, that’ll probably turn out to be that his owner decided to take up running again,” I said. A few months earlier Strawberry had been in for the same reason; the white schnauzer/poodle cross told me that his owner had recently taken up running, and was making the lazy, rather round Strawberry join him, and that was the reason Strawberry was so tired all the time. Apparently the running phase lasted about two weeks before his owner decided it was too hot to run in the summer.

Just then, the phone rang. I was thinking maybe I’d actually get a chance to catch up on some long-overdue paperwork during the slow afternoon when Karen handed me the receiver.

“Hey, do you want to take this? It’s Chief Gary.”

Chief Gary was the local head of police in town. A nice man and a good cop, over the past few months he’d had a bit of fame over his handling of a few different murder cases here in town. I knew he hated the attention; apparently the FBI had offered him a job. All Chief Gary wanted to do, though, was run his small town the way he was used to doing it. I took the receiver and hoped nothing was the matter.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Angela. It’s Chief Gary here.”

“What can I do for you?”

“How busy are things with you at the clinic right now?”

“Not busy at all, actually.”

“Would you mind coming by this crime scene I’ve got here? I’m looking for some expertise from someone with animals.”

“Uh, yeah, of course,” I said, fearing the worst. Willow Bay didn’t have any dogs that I’d consider dangerous in any way. There were three people who owned pit bulls in town, but they were the absolute nicest dogs. I sincerely hoped none of them had attacked anyone. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“We’ve found a body in the woods, and it looks like it’s been mauled by a bear.”

Well, that certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “Oh. Wow, yeah, I’ll come down and look. I have to tell you though, I don’t have any special training in bear attacks or anything like that.”

“I know, but you’re the closest thing we do have to an expert. The medical examiner in Portland requested that I get someone to come look at the body. If you park at Railworkers’ Memorial Park and take the trail leading from behind the gazebo you’ll come across us pretty quickly; we’re about a quarter of a mile down the path.”

“Sure. Yeah, I’ll come by,” I said. “I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

I hung up the phone and looked at Karen and Sophie. “Someone’s been killed in the woods behind the park. Chief Gary thinks it might have been a bear attack.”

Sophie’s eyebrows rose while Karen brought a hand to her mouth. “Seriously?” she asked, and I nodded.

“Yup. Chief Gary wants me to go have a look and see if I can confirm. It does seem really weird though.”

“Yeah, we don’t have any grizzlies in this area,” Sophie said. “And I can’t imagine a black bear actually attacking anyone. I’ve never heard of it happening, ever.”

Despite the common conceptions, bears actually very rarely attack people. In general, a bear will only attack if it feels provoked. Mothers with cubs are the most likely to attack a human, as they feel the protection of their young is the most important thing. However, even then a black bear mother is more likely to bluff charge (pretend to attack, then stop at the last second) a person she sees as a threat and run away than actually attack. A grizzly bear is more likely to attack than to run away, but the Willow Bay area hasn’t had a grizzly bear spotting in over fifty years. Most of the grizzlies moved to the woods deeper inland, further from human contact.

I’ve spent my whole life living in Willow Bay, and I had never heard of a bear attacking a human.

“It’s weird,” I agreed.

“I mean, remember in high school when I was dating that guy, Brodie or something?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re going to have to be way more specific than that.” Sophie had been, well, a little bit on the promiscuous side in high school, and through most of adulthood. In fact, her current relationship with Taylor Shaw, a local policeman, was currently at an all-time record for Sophie of five months.

“Oh shut up,” Sophie replied, sticking her tongue out at me. “There was only one guy named Brodie at our high school. Tall, football player, brown hair. You’re just jealous because you didn’t get any back then.”

“One of us had to care about their grades instead of chasing boys.”

“And look where it’s gotten you; you spend your days being peed on by cats and puked on by dogs.”

“I think it’s worked out really well, I’m your boss so I get to make you do all the gross stuff!”

“I’m going to pee and puke on both of you if you don’t stop arguing,” Bee muttered from her bed. I rolled my eyes at her; with Karen in the room I couldn’t actually reply.

“Anyway,” Sophie emphasized, “there was that one time when Brodie and I got drunk and decided to streak through the woods, naked. It was like, four in the afternoon or something, so the sun was still out. I came across a bear, and I was so drunk that I had no idea what to do, so I just started screaming. It bluff charged me, and I ran away as fast as I could.”

“I remember that; we made fun of you for days because you totally panicked and didn’t listen to the rule that you’re just supposed to back away slowly.”

“Yeah, well, if a two-hundred-pound bear came charging toward you at top speed, I’d like to see you walk calmly backwards with your eyes on the ground.”

Karen laughed. “That’s true, though picturing Sophie getting bluff charged by a bear while streaking through the woods certainly is something.”

“Well, as entertaining as this conversation has been, I’m going to go to the crime scene,” I said. “Sophie, do you want to come with? Karen, we should be back before one, but in case we’re not I’ll text you to let Strawberry’s owner know, ok?”

“All good,” Karen told me. “I have a whole bunch of paperwork I can catch up on, and if not, there’s always Netflix.”

I waved goodbye to Karen, gave Bee a quick pat on the head, then headed out to the crime scene where my presence had been requested.

2

Fifteen minutes later Sophie and I were standing at the trailhead just behind the gazebo in Railworkers Memorial Park. A police cordon had already been set up across the trail, but despite the fact that there was nothing visible from inside the park, it seemed half of Willow Bay had shown up to see what all the fuss was about.

“Do they know who it was yet?”

“I heard it was one of those high school kids smoking pot.”

“Are you joking? They wouldn’t cordon off the area if it was just kids.”

“No, I heard he was smoking pot and drowned in the pond.”

“Oh, well that sounds much more reasonable Gladys.”

“Well I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“I already know, it was a woman who was hiking and got mauled by a cougar. I heard that from a very reliable source.”

“Oh yeah, who’s your source, Antonia?”

“Maybe.”

Sophie and I pushed past the crowds of speculators and made our way to the cordon. A young, very frazzled-looking police officer was guarding the yellow tape. He was looking anxiously past us, as though realizing that if this crowd really wanted to get past and see what all the fuss was about, there was no way only one officer who looked like he had just started shaving three weeks earlier was going to be the one to stop them.

“Hi, Chief Gary sent for us. Angela Martin and Sophie Mashito,” I told him.

“Oh. Uh, yeah, step on through,” the man said, lifting the yellow tape for us slightly. Sophie and I slipped under the tape and walked along the path until it became obvious that we were approaching the body.

Chief Gary was speaking with Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of us he waved and made his way over.

“Angela, Sophie. Thank you for coming,” he told us both. “Please, over here. I know it’s not the first dead body you’ve ever seen, but I should warn you, this one is a bit gruesome.”

Sophie and I glanced at each other as Chief Gary led us off the path slightly and into the woods. About ten yards off the trail we reached a tiny clearing where a man’s body lay.

He was facing upwards, his eyes staring into emptiness. He had been blond, and athletic looking. I had to admit, I was a little bit thankful that I didn’t recognize him. Willow Bay being as small as it was, I knew a good seventy percent of the people that lived here; probably more than that just by sight. I didn’t recognize him at all.

His face and body were scratched, his clothes torn. I crouched down next to him and inspected the marks, and Sophie knelt next to me.

“Well, I’m glad the cops didn’t find me like this back when I was a teenager,” she said.

“Yeah, it doesn’t look like a good way to go,” I replied.

“Now, I’m not the expert, but it looks like bear claws to me.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” I said uneasily. I moved to the other side of the body and saw that his head had been caved in; the wound was covered in dried blood. I looked up at the nearby pine trees: one of them had a matching blood stain about five feet up.

“The impact against the tree is the cause of death?” I asked Chief Gary, who nodded.

“Yeah. We think the bear attacked him, then pushed him and he hit his head, which was the death blow.”

I looked over at Sophie. “Do you recognize him?” I asked her quietly, so Chief Gary wouldn’t hear. She shook her head no.

“Weird for a body we don’t recognize to show up here like this, and someone we don’t know at that.”

“Well, if he was a tourist, maybe he ran into the bear and didn’t know what to do and was attacked.”

“If anything could have provoked a bear to kill someone I think it would be seeing you naked,” I joked, and earned a punch in the arm from Sophie for my trouble.

“Oh shut up. What do you think, anyway? You’re the vet.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, getting up from my hunched position. By all accounts, it did look like a bear attack. It was difficult to be exact, of course, and I certainly wasn’t trained in animal attacks, but the scratches were consistent with a large animal such as a bear. “I mean, it could be a bear.”

“What else could it be?” Chief Gary asked, and I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a cougar? I find it unlikely that a cougar would have attacked a man of this size though. But then, I also think it’s unlikely that a bear would attack.”

“But it is possible?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely possible. But something about this is bugging me. There’s something nagging at me, telling me this isn’t a bear attack.”

Chief Gary shrugged. “That’s fairly normal for civilians, I find. There’s an innate desire for something to be more than it is. I’ll tell the medical examiner that you think it could be a bear attack, and I’ll tell him about your nagging doubt, as well.”

“Trust me,” I said. “My intuition is really, really good.” I wasn’t about to mention the fact that it was literally magical. If my intuition was telling me something was wrong, I was sure I was missing something.

I saw Sophie glance at me when I mentioned my intuition, and a minute later she made her way toward Taylor, her boyfriend.

“I know, Angela. You always were a smart cookie,” Chief Gary told me. “I wouldn’t hold my breath though. The more information we gather, the more it looks like this really was a bear attack. I’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s determination before we declare it for sure, though.”

“So basically what you’re telling me is that it’s almost certainly going to be labeled as being an attack from a bear,” I said dejectedly. I wasn’t stupid; I could read through the lines of what Chief Gary was telling me.

“Well, nothing’s been made official yet, but with what you’ve told me, that the marks on the body are consistent with a bear attack, I suspect that is what the final ruling from the medical examiner is going to be.”

“Great. Now everyone in Willow Bay is going to be calling for a bear cull,” I muttered, mostly to myself. I knew people tolerated bears, so long as they didn’t attack people. If someone was found dead, and the bears were found to be at fault, I knew there was going to be panic. This wasn’t good.

A couple of minutes later Sophie came back to stand next to me. Chief Gary thanked us for coming by, and made us promise not to tell anyone about what we’d seen. We promised—and I knew my journalist boyfriend Jason was totally going to make me break that promise later—and made our way back along the path. We didn’t speak until we got back into Sophie’s car.

“What did you go ask Taylor?” I asked when we were finally sitting there.

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? I was trying to be subtle.”

“We were practically born in the same hospital room; you can’t hide from me.”

Sophie laughed. “Fair enough. I actually just managed to sweet talk some information out of Taylor. If your witches’ intuition is telling you there’s something off about that scene, there’s something off.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “The more I think about it, the more I think that man was murdered.”

“And in that case, we’re the only people who are going to be willing to solve it.”

“Exactly.”

“So that’s why my information from Taylor is going to come in handy. The man was from England; he had a driver’s license on him with a London address and a UK passport. His name was Jeremy Wallace.”

“Well, that certainly explains why neither one of us recognized him. England isn’t exactly right next to Oregon. What was he doing here?”

Sophie shrugged. “Taylor had no idea. The only thing they have so far is his name.”

“Who on earth would want to kill a man so far from home? Unless it was totally random. Or someone followed him from England.”

“The list of people who want him dead and are in this country is probably pretty small,” Sophie agreed. “On the bright side, just think of it this way: it’s probably not going to be that hard to solve this murder case.”

Little did we know at the time just how wrong Sophie was.

3

“I know what you’re going to say before you say it, and the answer is absolutely not.”

My sister Charlotte had her arms crossed when we walked into the door after work that day, Bee trotting in behind us.

“That one’s never any fun,” Bee said haughtily, jumping up onto the back of the couch to avoid being near Sprinkles, Sophie’s dog, who came running toward us at top speed, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

“I agree with you, Bee, Charlotte isn’t any fun,” I said to my sister, sticking my tongue out at her.

“I might not be any fun, but I don’t get myself almost killed on a regular basis.”

“What are you opposed to us doing now?” Sophie asked.

“You’re going to look into that bear attack,” Charlotte replied.

“How do you know there was a bear attack? You’ve been in Portland all day.” Charlotte was just starting her third year of medical school in Portland. She was hands down the smartest person I knew, as much as it pained me to admit it sometimes.

“News travels fast. I also heard that they weren’t sure it was a bear attack, and that a vet was called in to have a look at the remains.”

“So, I just went and did my civic duty,” I said.

“And I guarantee you think the guy was murdered and want to investigate.”

“If it was a bear attack, then what’s the problem? There’s no murder, so we can’t get into any trouble,” I tried. Charlotte threw up her hands.

“You’re impossible, you know that?”

“What? My logic is impeccable,” I replied. “If it really is a bear attack, like the cops think, then there aren’t any problems, because there’s no murderer around to try and stop us from investigating.”

“I agree with Angie,” Sophie grinned. “What’s the harm in finding out if anyone wanted that guy dead?”

“I can’t believe you two. What happens if he was actually murdered? Then the two of you are the only people trying to figure it out. That’s a great way to find yourselves in the murderer’s crosshairs.”

“Well we don’t know that there even is a murderer.”

“I knew it,” Charlotte said. “I knew you weren’t going to be able to leave well enough alone. Hell, I should have let the two of you go to San Francisco and find that stupid diamond that got stolen. At least the robbers didn’t kill anyone over it.” ...