The light went on for Jamieson. What had brought Letitia here – and why?
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.” He rang off, leaving Jamieson thinking. Maybe this was not a death from natural causes. Murder? Again?
How did you prove someone – Ferguson? – had killed someone with crab asthma?
***
The lawyer didn’t stay long, and it was soon all over the village. The lawyer was married to one of the Dunn girls, the medical and mortician family.
“He’s practically left out of the will.” Estelle Joudry had considered the information too important to relay by phone, and had trotted down to communicate it to Gus in person.
“He’s got enough to live on very comfortably, but most of the money…” She paused for dramatic effect, “…most of the money goes to the cats.”
Gus’s eyes and mouth opened wide.
“Imagine,” she said. Maybe the man had known what he was doing leaving his wife in that lonely grave.
Hy burst through the door. “Did you hear…?”
Gus and Estelle nodded their heads.
“Gladys might be wanting to adopt those cats herself now.”
“Now that they’re rich.”
Privately, Hy was thinking that Letitia might have left her money to the cats to protect them from Ferguson.
“I bet you don’t know this.” Hy grinned with anticipation at the gossip she was about to impart.
“She’s left the house and the barn and caring for the cats to Billy and Madeline. With an income.”
“Moira will be wanting them cats now.” Estelle’s smile was mean.
“This calls for a fresh pot of tea.” Gus hoisted herself out of her chair and padded to the pantry.
***
“So you heard about the will?” Finn had dropped by the police house as soon as he found out about it.
“No. I imagine Ferguson’s a very rich man now.”
“Not at all.”
“No?” Jamieson looked surprised.
“Left it to her cats – and Billy and Madeline.”
Jamieson had made a pot of coffee. She poured some into the two ducky mugs. She’d begun using them all the time. Partly because, like Hy wearing the Tilley hat, she hoped it would lead her to Abel.
She gave Finn a mug and they both sat down.
“Nothing for him?”
“It’s something, but just a trust fund, keeps him on a leash. Two million. In trust. For life.”
“That’s a lot, and not a lot, at the same time. How did he react?”
“Shoved the lawyer out of the house. Dropped the F-bomb four times. Looked grim. Spoke to no one. Certainly not the media. Lester Joudry and his pals were waiting outside the house along with some villagers.”
“And you.”
“And me. The paparazzi hardly even got a decent shot. He was lowering his head and covering his face like a criminal.” He paused. Grinned. “Maybe he’s practising.”
“Two million…in trust…is a pretty good price to put on a wife.”
“Sixteen million is better. That’s how much she had.”
“You think someone might kill for the prospect of sixteen million, but not if they knew it would be just two…in trust.”
“The question is, what did he know? Maybe he thought the whole sixteen would be his.”
“True. She must have made that will very recently, to include Madeline and Billy.”
“Consider it now. If Ferguson did murder Letitia, it’s going to be hard to pin down a conviction. The money helps. But we need more. The fact is, if he’d known he wasn’t going to get all the money, that could have been a disincentive.”
“A reason to keep her alive.”
They both sipped their coffee, silent for a moment.
“I think this suggests we revisit the case.” Finn hesitated when he said it. He knew Jamieson didn’t like people giving her advice. But she liked Finn. More than liked Finn. Now that Dot was out of the way…
“But she could have died of ordinary asthma, right? Simply that.”
“Absolutely. If she had it badly enough, this smoky environment won’t have been good for her, and the steam might have tripped off an attack.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m not sure what I’m saying.”
“You are saying natural causes? Or not natural causes?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So what was she doing, cooking crabs?”
“Good question.”
“Could we prove it medically?”
He didn’t answer. Of course they couldn’t, with Letitia reduced to ashes and in her grave.
“We can only say it was asthma, not definitively that it was caused by crabs.”
“So we’d need a motive. A strong motive.”
“Money’s all we’ve got,” said Finn.
“And a modus? The change in menu?”
“So we need to find out how, why, who made the change.”
“Exactly.”
It had been too good to be true. A whole year at The Shores without a murder.
Chapter 27
Ferguson was at his most charming when he opened the door to Jamieson’s knock. He hardly looked like a man bereaved, she thought, as he ushered her in with a sweep of his arm.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure?” he inquired as he led her down the long hall into the parlour, still very much a parlour in this old house, with the wrought-iron coal fireplace surround gleaming black beauty under a marble mantel.
“Please.” Ferguson motioned to a dainty needlework-covered chair beside the fireplace. She declined. For one thing, it looked too small. For another, she didn’t want to make him – or herself – too comfortable by sitting down. Standing up helped her keep her edge.
Because she was standing, he remained standing, too. Two can play at that game, he thought. Had he sat down, he would have had to look up at her to respond. This way, though Jamieson was tall, he still had a few inches the advantage.
Jamieson cut right to it.
“Your wife was ill.”
“Apparently so.”
“Are you saying you didn’t know?”
“Letitia was…of delicate health, it’s true.”
“Did you know about the smoke before you came?”
“Of course not. What exactly are you insinuating?”
“Nothing – yet. I’m just asking questions, as I’m bound to do as a law enforcement officer when there has been a death.”
Ferguson gave up his advantage and slumped down on a French provincial loveseat, a dainty piece that exaggerated his size. He buried his face in his hands.
Jamieson was familiar with the gesture. People did that when they didn’t want you to see their face. When they wanted you to think they were grief-stricken. Easier than producing crocodile tears, and more convincing.
Uninterested in taking part in a charade, Jamieson got right to it.
“Did you know your wife had crab asthma? Did you kill her by substituting crab for lobster?”
***
Ian and Hy had retreated to their most useful tool in cracking crime: Ian’s computer. They googled Brock Ferguson.
“Woohoo,” said Hy and stabbed a finger at a link halfway down the screen.
“Minister leaves community in disgrace,” Ian read.
Hy picked it up.
“Anglican priest Brock Ferguson, 41, has been removed from his parish for improper relations with parishioners whom he was counselling.”
“A priest!”
“Minister.”
“Yes, but Anglican. That makes him a priest.”
“What does it matter? Still a holy man.”
Ian clicked to the newspap
er article. “Not that holy.”
“Wow.” Hy read along with him.
Three women have come forward, claiming Reverend Ferguson made sexual advances when they were meeting with him to discuss personal problems. Their marriages were the problem. That’s what Ferguson told them, encouraging them to leave their husbands and insinuating that he would be happy to take up where their men had left off. In all cases, that was the beginning of a series of sexual overtures. The women had two things in common: they were Anglicans, and they were wealthy.
Ian returned to the Google page. There were six more postings about the scandal.
“No charges were ever laid.”
“What?”
“It looks like the women ran scared after they’d opened up to the media. None would press charges against a minister. I bet there was some kind of deal between the powers-that-be in the church and police. Who’s to say? It’s a small place. Smaller than here, and look what people get away with here.”
Murder, thought Hy. Jamieson or no Jamieson.
“There’s nothing more. He apparently left the church and the area…until he turned up in the village of Seven Houses. He lived in the eighth. That was over six years ago.”
“Before he met and married Letitia.”
“After she won the lottery. The first time.”
“Wait until Jamieson sees this. She is so going to charge his ass.”
“Whoa.”
“Why ‘whoa’?”
“Just because he was a scumbag priest doesn’t make him guilty of murdering his wife.”
“Oh c’mon, Ian, you know as well as I do.”
“I’m not sure I do. I haven’t figured out how you think asthma can be murder.”
“Because it’s not in the method, Ian, it’s in the intent.”
Ian shrugged his shoulders.
“If a charge of murder came every time a person thought of killing someone, we’d all be in jail.”
“Intent is not thought, it’s plan. In this case, I think there was a plan.”
***
“Preposterous.” Ferguson’s face puffed up with the word, his deep voice lending it weight, authority.
Jamieson wasn’t convinced. Preposterous? What an unusual word. Who said preposterous anymore? She wrote it down, as something to think about after the interview. Jamieson was trained in reading body language, and part of that language was language itself – the words people chose to express their innocence, or, unconsciously, their guilt. There were movements, too, that went with the choice of words. Like Ferguson’s puffed-up face, the way he straightened his back, thrust out his chest.
The only problem with reading this kind of language was interpreting it correctly.
That word “preposterous,” that straightening up might mean he was guilty of something, or merely that he felt guilty about something – or he might simply be insulted.
She said nothing but waited, creating a silence into which he might pour words that would be of value to her. She was not wrong. People hated silences and usually jumped in to fill the dead air.
“Preposterous.” He repeated the word, putting extra stress on the second syllable to lend weight to it. “Ludicrous.”
Another word to note. Jamieson scribbled it down. Her action wasn’t lost on Ferguson. He hadn’t said anything else, except these two words. Why was she writing them down?
“Simply ludicrous,” he said, to see what she would do.
Nothing. She’d already written down that word.
“I’m only asking.”
“It’s preposterous.” That word again. “She died of asthma. You were there. There was no weapon.”
No weapon that she knew of, she had to agree. Finn had been there, too. Letitia couldn’t breathe, couldn’t be made to breathe; she was choking from her old ailment. That’s what Finn said, and there was no reason not to believe him. He was a forensic scientist after all, a luxury and a real treasure in a backwater like The Shores. Even he couldn’t confirm that Letitia had died of crab asthma.
Then why was she pursuing this? Why wasn’t it adding up for her?
“As I said, I was just asking.”
“On what grounds are you asking? Why on earth would you think that I might have killed my wife, however I might have done it? The conclusion was natural causes. Naturally. That’s what it was.”
“The money’s not natural. It’s extraordinary. That bothers me.” Jamieson played with his “why on earth” in her mind. Was he protesting too much?
“Where there’s a death and a whack of money, you see how it gives rise to suspicion. That’s why we’re having this little talk. To clear the air.”
Would the air ever be clear, she wondered. Not just about Letitia, but that smoke from Quebec, smudging life in The Shores.
“Letitia’s money was my money. I hardly needed to kill her for it. You have no proof of any kind. Quite the opposite, I’d say.”
Jamieson was circling the word “preposterous” on her note pad. “You didn’t get all the money.”
“No,” he darted a look at the cat enclosure. “No, I didn’t.”
“You see, that brings us back to my problem with this.”
Chapter 28
Finn had waited outside for Jamieson, and they stopped by Ian’s on the way back to the police house. Hy and Ian told them about Ferguson’s seedy past.
“So you’ve been nosing around Letitia’s death?” Jamieson looked annoyed.
“Yes, we have. I guess that’s obvious.” Ian gestured toward the computer screen, on which a headline screamed: Minister “Knows” Church Ladies.
“Sex always brings a certain something to a murder,” said Finn. Jamieson shot him a sharp look.
“Murder?” Hy jumped in. “Letitia? Are you thinking of it as a murder?”
“There have been no charges laid.” Jamieson’s lips tightened. She didn’t want to have this conversation.
“Except in your mind?” Hy saw right through her.
“If it is a murder, it’s going to be a difficult one to prove.” Finn said. Jamieson looked a warning at him.
“How do you figure?” Ian.
“She may have had a serious kind of asthma. We’re checking medical records. In the meantime, we’re trying to determine how much Ferguson may have influenced her in coming to this deathly place and engaging in the fatal cook-off.”
“Money the motive?” asked Hy.
It was clear, as they looked at each other, that they all believed it was. His history with women and money wasn’t pretty.
***
“Abel may be in good shape, but there’s no way he could be much beyond shouting distance of The Shores.” Hy was hunkered down in front of Ian’s wood stove. He’d stuffed it with paper, kindling, and a couple of small logs after Jamieson and Finn had left. The evening was cool with a fall feel to it, and Ian was in the process of adding his own smoke to the village atmosphere.
Jamieson had tried to stop people from using their wood stoves and running their furnaces, idling their cars and farm equipment, but it had made no difference. Why, the villagers thought, should they make room for smoke from away that was doing nothing for them, not keeping them warm, not driving them to town like their own fumes. Red Island fumes. Smoke made in The Shores. Not healthy either, but at least they were used to it.
“You think he’s close by somewhere?’
Hy nodded.
“What makes you think that?”
“How far could a ninety-year-old man get and us not know about it? A man lost in a place where everybody knows everybody’s business, where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going to.”
They didn’t know about the sighting of an old man in Winterside. Jamieson had asked Nathan not to tell, because there was no real proof that it was Abel.<
br />
Ian put a match to the kindling and sat back to watch the fire roar.
“True.” He tossed the match into the flames and shut the glass door.
“He uses cash only, never credit.” Jamieson wasn’t prepared for that. She thought she might follow a credit trail to find him.”
“There’d be a limit to how much cash he had at home. Surely. He couldn’t get far for long.”
“That’s what Jamieson said. She asked Gus. Gus didn’t know.”
“He must have a bank account. Hasn’t Jamieson followed that up?”
“She found no trace. He may have kept all his money under the mattress.”
“Did anyone look?”
Hy grinned.
“We did. Me, Finn, Jamieson. Gus showed us.”
A spark of interest in his eyes. For what she was saying, and for the flames playing on her copper hair.
“What?”
“Guess,” she said teasing, the warmth of the fire melting her into a playful mood. He reached over and twisted a tendril of her hair around his finger.
“Three blind mice.”
“No, several hundred one-dollar bills. Gus said he was waiting for them to make a comeback.”
Ian whistled. “That was all of his money?”
“No. Gus said there should be more. She didn’t know if he put it somewhere else or took it with him.”
She nodded. The tendril of hair slipped from his grasp. He moved his hand away.
“How much?”
“All his life savings. Thousands?” She shrugged. “Tens of thousands?”
Ian whistled again. “What about Gus?”
“What about Gus?
“What about her money? Her pension…”
“Oh, she uses a bank, but she won’t have anything to do with automatic deposit. She wants the money in her hand.”
“The money? They send her cash?”
“No, dummy, they send her a cheque, and she takes it to the bank. She says Abel never liked banks, and she doesn’t suppose he ever used them.”
“This gets better and better. A ninety-year-old man wandering around with tens of thousands…”
“Maybe hundreds of thousands,” Hy broke in, teasing.
“In thousand-dollar bills, is that the next thing you’re going to tell me?”
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