Let Sleeping Cats Lie: The 9 Lives Cozy Mystery Series, Book Four

by Louise Clark

  “Frank is quite right,” Ellen said briskly. “The Jamieson family has treated you quite disgracefully, Christy. You deserve to have our support while you create your new role as the senior Jamieson.”

  “The senior Jamieson? Wait. What?” Christy wasn’t going to say it, because age was always a dicey subject, but Ellen had thirty years on her, and that made Ellen the senior Jamieson, didn’t it?

  “You are the mother of the Jamieson heir, Christy, which means you are the senior Jamieson. I know Trevor said that makes you ineligible to be one of the new trustees—”

  Why? The demand had the impact of a slap and stopped Ellen cold.

  “As your wife, Frank, as Noelle’s mother, I benefit from the Trust, even though I am not the direct heir. In legal terms, as a secondary beneficiary of the Trust, I am precluded from making decisions on how the money is invested or distributed.”

  “You can be an employee of the Trust, however,” Ellen said. She spoke crisply, once more in control of herself. “As the senior Jamieson, you would represent the Trust and the family. The Jamiesons have been part of the fabric of this city and this province for three generations. It’s time for the new generation to take its place. Frank can’t do it and Noelle is too young.”

  “Which leaves me,” Christy said. There was a horrible logic to Ellen’s position. But to be the senior Jamieson? It was not a job she wanted.

  She’s right, said Frank. We’ll help you learn what you need know. I’ll be there for you, this time.

  “What would you expect me to do?”

  “In addition to being the face of the Jamiesons?”

  The face of the Jamiesons. That meant attending events, accepting board positions on appropriate charities, being visible. Christy swallowed hard.

  Ellen continued on. “I think you should be the CEO of the Trust. Isabel Pascoe is a good office manager, and she has been fine managing the funds that remained after the embezzlement, but she was never the representative of the Trust. As CEO, you would be able to ensure that the Jamieson name once again means something in this city.”

  However little she wanted the position, Christy had the sinking feeling there was no way out. Still, if she was going to be pushed into a situation she hadn’t sought, she wasn’t about to go alone. “I may regret this, but all right. I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Ellen. Stormy rose from his crouch and stretched.

  “Provided,” Christy said, spinning out the word, “that you stay on as a trustee, Ellen.”

  Ellen’s hand fluttered to her throat again. “I can’t—”

  “I need you with me on this, Ellen. Please.”

  She hesitated, fiddled with the pearls, then finally said, “All right. Thank you.”

  Christy smiled and squeezed her hand. “Start thinking about candidates for the other trustees. We don’t have to talk about it now,” she added hastily. Not with all of the fraught emotions swirling around them. “But I think we should prepare new operating rules for the trust before the funds are returned and I’d like to have the input from the new trustees for it.”

  “Very sensible,” Ellen said.

  Stormy began to purr. See? You’ve already got the hang of the job. This is why you’ll make a good CEO.

  Ellen retrieved her cup, sipped the coffee, then wrinkled her nose.

  “Is it cold?” Christy asked. She reached for the coffee urn and held it up. “Would you like a top up?”

  Ellen nodded. As she watched Christy pour, she said, “Is the future of the Trust what that dreadful Detective Patterson wanted to talk to you about after the meeting broke up?”

  Christy thought about the detective’s request as she finished pouring for Ellen, then added to her own cup. Had Patterson meant their conversation to be confidential? Probably not. “Patterson wants me to look for Fred Jarvis’ killer.”

  Ellen froze, her saucer in one hand, her cup halfway to her mouth in the other.

  The cat stared, green eyes wide. You’re kidding, right?

  Christy laughed and shook her head.

  “There’s a whole taskforce looking into his death,” Ellen said. “Why would she need your assistance?”

  “I’m a Jamieson.”

  “Of course you are, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The taskforce is assuming a political motive for the murder. Patterson thinks the killer is closer to home. Hence the need for Jamieson involvement.”

  “She wants you to use your social connections?”

  Christy nodded. “Yes.” Then she sighed. “Though I don’t really have any connections to Fred Jarvis or his wife. I know his daughter from the parent council at Noelle’s old school, but that’s all.”

  “I’ve met Letitia Jarvis a number of times, but she’s a political wife and she tends to move in different circles than I do.” Ellen hesitated, then added, “Gerry Fisher used to schmooze with Fred and Letitia. On behalf of the Trust, I used to think, but probably to feather his own nest.”

  I don’t know them either. I went to the same high school as Colin Jarvis, their kid, but he was a couple of years ahead of me. He’s intense and just as political as his old man. Not my kind of guy. We weren’t close.

  Ellen was frowning again. “Why did you agree to take this on?” Her expression said she knew there had to be more to Christy’s agreement than simply doing the detective a favor.

  Christy sipped her coffee before she said, “Apparently, the taskforce is investigating everyone who has ever had a political disagreement with Fred Jarvis. Even more than that, they are focused on individuals with exposure to international crisis situations.”

  Ellen sucked in her breath. “Roy and Quinn.”

  Christy looked at the cat, then feeling a little like a traitor, she said, “Exactly.”

  Stormy sat on his haunches and shot out a hind leg, which he proceeded to clean with considerable enthusiasm.

  Looks like we’re all about to get close to the Jarvis family.

  Chapter 8

  The Inspector watched Quinn with flat, emotionless brown eyes. “I must ask you again, Monsieur Armstrong, what was your exact location on the afternoon Minister Jarvis was killed?”

  “I was in my car, driving downtown to meet Tamara Ahern at her hotel,” Quinn said for what must be the fifth time since the taskforce, in the person of its chief officer, Bernard Fortier, came to call.

  “Please provide me with the precise route, Monsieur Armstrong,” Fortier said.

  Quinn assessed him coolly, mainly as a way to beat back the feelings of anger, annoyance, and fear, which were churning in his gut in equal measures. In appearance, Fortier was dressed in an off-the-rack charcoal gray suit, which he’d combined with a white shirt and a dark blue tie. Black shoes and dark socks completed the look of respectful sobriety. His bearing, just short of military, had him sitting ramrod straight in the deeply padded chair Quinn’s dad usually slouched comfortably in. The military look continued in Fortier’s short cropped black hair, though his round face sported a bushy black mustache. Fortier looked what he was and Quinn had pegged him for a cop from the moment he opened the front door and saw the man standing there.

  “Monsieur Armstrong? Is there a problem?”

  “No,” Quinn snapped. Fortier liked to drop words from his native French into his speech, and for some reason it annoyed him. “I just resent repeating the same information over and over again.”

  “I wish to be clear, Monsieur Armstrong,” Fortier said, blandly without the hint of an expression crossing his face or gleaming in his eyes.

  “I was clear,” Quinn said. He kept his voice even, but he could feel emotions building, gathering strength, the energy searching for an outlet.

  “Your route, Monsieur, if you please.”

  He and Fortier were in the living room. Fortier’s sergeant was in the kitchen interrogating his father. Quinn could hear the sergeant’s rather nasal voice demanding Roy explain exactly what he was doing between the hours of two and
five on the fateful day Frederick Jarvis was killed. Quinn couldn’t see his father, but he hoped Roy was handling the questioning better than he was.

  “I took the highway to Hastings—”

  “From the beginning please, Monsieur, with correct street and route names.”

  Fortier wasn’t a local cop. He’d been imported from Ottawa where he apparently worked in some special national security unit. If Patterson had been handling the case, she’d have known exactly what Quinn was talking about and realized with considerable precision how long it would take to get from Burnaby Mountain to downtown Vancouver. But this guy, Fortier, apparently wasn’t interested in using the skills of a local expert like Patterson. Patterson was a murder cop. She specialized in normal killings—the ones motivated by greed, lust, jealousy and all the other powerful emotions that made human beings tick. Fortier’s focus was political, a world away from Patterson’s.

  “Monsieur Armstrong, you are stalling. That makes me wonder why you would do so. Do you have something you wish to hide from me?”

  Quinn contemplated telling this officious prig that he was irritating, obnoxious and stupid with it. Instead he said, “Why don’t you have any Vancouver cops working with you? Someone like Detective Patterson of the VPD could translate our local jargon so you wouldn’t have to waste your time coaxing out ridiculous details that don’t really matter.”

  “Detective Patterson is on my taskforce,” Fortier said, his voice holding just the hint of annoyance, though his expression remained bland. “She is working on other leads at the moment.”

  “Other leads,” Quinn said. He raised his brows. “You mean you actually have suspects other than Tamara Ahern and me?”

  “Your route, Monsieur Armstrong, if you please.”

  “I told you my route. An hour ago. I included stop lights and traffic patterns. What more do you want?”

  “I want to know why it took you so long to reach Dr. Ahern’s hotel, which is so conveniently close to the murder site.” Fortier’s voice hardened. “I want to know what you were really doing.”

  He’d pulled over on to a side street half way there and thought about Christy and Tamara and what the hell he was going to do with two women he cared about in different ways. He was not about to mention Christy’s name to Fortier, though. The bastard would probably hurry next door to interrogate her. She’d already had enough wrongful accusations to last a lifetime. He didn’t plan to add to her total through an inadvisable comment.

  He raised his eyebrows and said with the muted scorn of a local, “You’re new to Vancouver traffic, Inspector. It can bunch up for no apparent reason and suddenly you’re crawling along, going nowhere fast.”

  “Every city has traffic problems, Monsieur. Please do not insult my intelligence with such a trivial diversion. Who did you stop to see on your way to meet with Dr. Ahern?”

  “No one!” In the kitchen, Quinn heard his father’s laugh, joined with a chuckle that must have come from the sergeant. His father was probably picking the cop’s brain for his new mystery series, which had grown out of the story he’d written last year when they’d been investigating Frank Jamieson’s murder. He now had a cop—loosely modeled on Patterson, but different enough that she wouldn’t see herself in the role—and a sleuth who was a combination of Christy and Quinn himself, as ongoing characters. He claimed that writing mysteries was a lot more fun than the heavy social commentary he used to do, and his agent was already talking movie deals.

  Fortier’s expression darkened into a frown as he looked toward the kitchen, apparently alerted by the cheerful sounds emanating from it. Quinn wanted to laugh at that annoyed look, but all he allowed himself was a small amused smile. He figured Fortier would go ballistic over a laugh, and the fallout wouldn’t be pretty.

  Fortier’s eyes flickered when he noticed Quinn’s smile, but after a moment his expressionless mask was back in place. “Then you must have met Dr. Ahern earlier than you claim. Why? Were you arriving at the meeting place in advance in order to set up your sniper position?”

  Quinn stared, shocked. This was the first time Fortier had come out and suggested that he and Tamara were in on the murder. “Sniper position? What are you talking about?”

  “Come, come, Monsieur Armstrong. We both know that Dr. Ahern was tasked with inserting herself into Minister Jarvis’ life and that she was to ensure he was in a certain place at a certain time. We do not believe she is the shooter. She had an accomplice for that.”

  “And you think that person is me,” Quinn said, spacing out the words.

  Fortier’s expression didn’t change, nor did he confirm or deny. He simply stared out of cool brown eyes that expressed nothing.

  Quinn drew a deep breath. “Time for you to leave, Fortier.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the kitchen. Not just laughter, but a full on gleeful chortle. A hand slapped the table and Quinn heard his father say, “Awesome idea. Oh man, I can use that.”

  Fortier didn’t move, though his attention was now riveted on the action in the kitchen. Rage bubbled up in Quinn. This was his house, not an interrogation room in some cop shop. Fortier was on his premises, on his sufferance. If he wanted the bastard to leave, Fortier had to go.

  He stood, looking down on the still seated inspector. “Now, Fortier.” He paused, and in the silence they could both hear the cheerful tenor of the sergeant mixing with Roy’s deeper baritone. Fortier looked like a terrier sighting a rat. His eyes were narrowed, his lips pinched together with annoyance. He wasn’t making the least effort to move. Quinn had had enough. “Out. And take your chatty sergeant with you.”

  At that the inspector looked over and up. Quinn caught what he thought was a gleam of pleasure, which didn’t make sense unless Fortier assumed Quinn’s demand that he leave indicated guilt.

  Well, it didn’t. Fortier had nothing on him.

  “Sit down, Mr. Armstrong. We’re not finished here.”

  So the gleam was because Fortier thought he’d cracked Quinn’s nerve and could now squeeze a confession out of him. Think again, Fortier, Quinn seethed silently to himself. He headed for the kitchen.

  “If you surrender your weapon and explain the details of Dr. Ahern’s plan, I can talk to the Crown Attorney about a plea bargain,” Fortier said behind him.

  This guy was unbelievable. “Dad,” Quinn said when he reached the doorway into the kitchen.

  Roy and the sergeant looked up. They both had mugs of coffee in their hands and it was Roy who was writing notes from their conversation, not the cop. It was a cozy little scene, one carefully engineered by his father, of that Quinn was quite certain.

  Fortier came up behind him. He could feel the heat from the man’s body and when he spoke, his breath tickled Quinn’s ear. “Sergeant!”

  Was he trying to see into the kitchen? Or was the bastard deliberately crowding him? If he was, Quinn was not about to give him the satisfaction of moving away.

  Looking guilty, the sergeant stood. “It has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Armstrong,” he said politely, as he reached out to shake hands.

  “Always fun to talk to a fan,” Roy said, in a deceptively good-natured way. In reality he was setting the poor sod up. He wasn’t particularly fond of cops when they were targeting a member of his family or Roy himself for that matter.

  “A fan?” said Fortier, sounding incensed.

  “Mr. Armstrong was telling me about his new series,” the sergeant said, stepping out into the abyss without apparent realization. “A new direction. Murder mysteries,” he added helpfully.

  Roy beamed. The sergeant must have caught sight of his inspector’s furious expression, for he blanched.

  “Fortier and his henchman are leaving,” Quinn said, deliberately reducing the inspector to the level of a thug and his muscle.

  “Fair enough,” Roy said. He made ushering movement with his hands, herding the sergeant toward the doorway.

  Quinn turned, ready to do his own bit of herding on
Fortier.

  The inspector stood his ground, his face inches away from Quinn’s. “I will leave, Mr. Armstrong. For now. But make no mistake, I will be back.”

  “I suggest you call and make an appointment this time,” Quinn said, refusing to back down. The bastard wanted to intimidate him? Force a confession? Not in this lifetime. “I won’t speak to you again without counsel present.”

  Fortier’s upper lip curled. “This is a national security issue, Mr. Armstrong. My rights are extensive. Yours are not.”

  Fury ripped through Quinn. He’d spent his career exposing corrupt organizations that allowed petty tyrants like Fortier to proliferate. He damn well was not about to let one in his own country intimidate him. “Out. Now.” He drawled the last word with satisfying menace.

  Fortier turned on his heel and headed for the stairs. The sergeant followed, shooting Quinn a wary glance as he passed. Together, Quinn and his father chivvied the two men down the stairs and out the door. They stood on the front porch and watched Fortier’s black SUV muscle its way up the steep road, then disappear around the corner.

  “Fortier will be back,” Quinn said.

  “I expect so,” Roy said.

  “The neighbors will be upset.”

  Roy frowned thoughtfully. “Not so much upset, as entertained. Life’s pretty quiet up here.”

  Quinn sighed. “It’s only a matter of time. I need to back up my desktop onto a portable drive.” He turned to his father. “You should too. They’ll confiscate both of our computers to search for their damned conspiracy. I want proof of what’s on my drive now, while I still have it in my possession.”

  “Good plan, but if they want to insert incriminating files onto the hard drive once they have the computer in their possession, who is to say that you simply didn’t copy those documents?”

  Quinn frowned at him. “An interesting point.”

  Roy thought for a minute, then he grinned. “How’s this? We’ll get Three to have one of the lawyers in his firm do the copying. That person can certify that he or she cloned the whole drive and, at the same time, can take the backup drive to McCullagh, McCullagh, and Walker for safekeeping.”