The Lost Mine Murders

by Sharon Rowse

  “Barbara?” The voice and accompanying touch on my shoulder startled me. I turned to see Ian Wong, the polished—and well-connected—owner of the Omega Gallery.

  But it was the woman standing beside Ian who grabbed my attention. “Do you know Cassie Stewart?” he asked.

  “We’ve never met,” I said.

  I’d seen pictures of her at one fund-raiser or another, but grainy black dots in two dimensions don’t convey much. In person, she was just as blond and slender as in those photos. She’s one of those women who are elegant down to their fingertips, always immaculately groomed, not even a hair out of place.

  Tonight her hair was pulled smoothly back from her face and caught in a large barrette at her nape. She was wearing something beige and ivory, that draped fluidly and gave her a regal air. Of course, perfect posture didn’t hurt, either.

  I couldn’t picture her ever wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt, munching popcorn in front of the fire. On the other hand, I couldn’t picture myself at a fundraising dinner, so I guess that put us even.

  “You’ll know Cassie is on the board of the Vancouver Art Gallery?” Ian was saying.

  I nodded. She also collected works by new artists and has been known to make or break careers. There was a time I’d have given anything to meet her and try to interest her in my own art.

  It seemed all wrong that I’d meet her now, after I’d finally given up those dreams and switched careers.

  “And Cassie, this is Barbara O’Grady,” he continued. “Formerly one of our promising young artists, she now runs her own investigative firm.”

  I was both a little embarrassed and a little sad to hear that description.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said automatically and shook the cool, slim hand she held out to me.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, also,” Cassie Stewart said. “Thank you, Ian.”

  With a nod, he departed, leaving Cassie and I contemplating each other. It seemed she’d asked him to introduce us. Before I had a chance to wonder why, she leaned towards me.

  “I’d like to hire you, Ms. O’Grady,” she said in an undertone.

  Here? Now? I really hadn’t expected that.

  And it set off all my internal alarms.

  Why me? With her money, she could easily engage one of the bigger, better-resourced firms.

  Plus she couldn’t have known I’d be here tonight. Attending had been a last-minute decision on my part. So why this conversation? Had someone mentioned I was a P.I. and she saw an opportunity?

  She had to be desperate.

  Curious now, I lowered my voice to match hers. “How can I help you?”

  “First, I will need to know I can rely on your discretion.”

  “In my job, that’s a given.” If I wanted to stay in business, anyway. And it shouldn’t even need saying.

  “I’ve heard good things about you,” Cassie Stewart was saying. Her eyes met mine. Hers were a clear blue, and cold. “But I’m well known in Vancouver, and people love to gossip. I dislike gossip.”

  I’d just bet she did. “You have my word that I’ll keep anything you tell me strictly confidential,” I said, wondering exactly what she’d heard about me. And from whom?

  “As long as we understand each other,” she said with another sharp glance. “But we can’t talk here. I’ll meet you at the Moka Café tomorrow at ten a.m.”

  The location suited me fine, as the Mocha makes the best muffins in town. I found her abruptness grating, though, so before I agreed to the meeting I asked for details on the case.

  “I need a background check done,” she said. “Beyond that, I’ll give you the details you need at our meeting.”

  I should have said no, right then and there. I knew it. And from her frozen look she probably knew I knew it.

  But curiosity has always been my undoing. And everything about Cassie Stewart intrigued me.

  Even without her almost legendary ability to spot a good artist early in their career, she seemed just too elegant for the edgy modern art I knew she collected. And she had about as much human warmth as one of the icebergs in Glacier Bay.

  But as I watched the subtle changes in her face, my fingers suddenly itched for some charcoal. I wanted to catch on paper the contradiction between that fragile blonde surface and whatever emotion was seething beneath it. It would have made for a terrific portrait. Though probably not one she’d have much liked.

  All of which left me really wanting to know more about the person behind that facade. And why she’d sought me out.

  So I kept my tone—and my expression—scrupulously professional. “Ten is fine.”

  “Good. I will see you then.” And with a sharp nod, she moved on, leaving me to continue my viewing of Yuriko’s work.

  And to wonder about Cassie Stewart and whatever job she really needed done.

  Tuesday morning found me sitting in one of the booths at the Moka, a sixteen-ounce mug of dark-roasted Sumatran in hand. The opening door let in the usual cacophony of sound as taxis, buses and delivery vans raced by outside. I looked up to see my potential client walking towards me, haloed by the thin spring sunlight streaming through the windows.

  The deceptiveness of that image had me grinning into my oversized mug.

  When Cassie Stewart reached the booth where I sat, she paused, sizing me up. Then slid gracefully onto the seat opposite me, waving away the server as she did so.

  “Good morning, Barbara,” she said. “I hope you are prepared to begin work on my case tomorrow.”

  Again with that combination of impatience and arrogance. This was the woman that as art students we’d whispered about and schemed to meet—while our work was being rejected by one gallery after another? “If Cassie Stewart likes your stuff, you’re on your way.” It was gospel in our small world.

  And now she was a potential client. And it was my decision as to whether to help her. I’ve always been a fan of irony, but this was pushing it—even for me.

  “I’ll need a few details first,” I said. “What kind of background investigation did you want me to do?”

  “I’d like you to investigate my husband,” she said, her face carefully blank.

  I stared at her, caught off-guard for a split second. “You want me to investigate your husband?” I repeated, just managing to keep the disbelief out of my voice.

  No wonder she was hiring an obscure PI. She couldn’t use any of the bigger firms without word getting back to him almost immediately. For a big city, Vancouver can be a pretty small town.

  Cassie Stewart placed long-fingered hands with French manicured nails on the table and studied them, perfectly mascaraed lashes fanning against her pale cheeks. “I believe Brian is having an affair. I’d like you to follow him and find out with whom.”

  I noted her perfect diction and grammatical correctness. The right schooling did make a difference, it seemed. She didn’t meet my eyes as she toyed absently with a spoon. Her face was pale, composed, and very still.

  It was that stillness that worried me. She was holding herself too tightly, and I thought of the brittleness I’d noted earlier. What I was seeing wasn’t embarrassment, or shame, or even anger. It was fear.

  Fear tightly controlled and forced into submission, but fear all the same.

  “You want me to find out who your husband is having an affair with?” I asked, watching her closely.

  A flash of cold blue fire as she glared at me, then her eyes were focused on her hands again. “Yes.”

  She was lying to me.

  I’d had too many clients talk about too many cheating spouses—they didn’t look or sound like this. She was doing her fairly impressive best to hide whatever she was really feeling. And clearly she didn’t much like being questioned. Never a good sign in a prospective client.

  Whatever she was afraid of, I was willing to bet money it wasn’t a philandering husband. “What did you have in mind?” I asked her.

  “I would like a full report of his actions un
til Saturday night.”

  “You want to hire me for four days?” I nearly told her that was a waste of my time and her money, but some residual sense of awe at who she was stopped me. “You’ll need to understand that a case like this can take a day, but it can also take two weeks.”

  “If you find something in less than four days, I’d still like you to follow him through Saturday night,” she said. “If you find nothing, we’ll review your contract the following Monday. And if that is not satisfactory to you, I’ll find someone for whom it is.”

  Her request made no sense, which intrigued me and concerned me in about equal measure.

  What was she really up to?

  And why was I even discussing it with her?

  Still, this was Cassie Stewart. Reactions learned during the years when I’d have given anything to attract her attention seemed to have taken over. What am I thinking? I asked myself, even as I said to her, “What can you tell me about his schedule?”

  “Until Friday you’ll need to follow Brian only until he returns home from work. On Saturday I’d like you to follow him all day as we’re going to the theater that night.”

  “It may not be an effective surveillance under those terms,” I warned her. “It could take me two days to learn anything. Then again, it might take two weeks.”

  “Those are my terms.”

  Well, it was her dollar, and there would be quite a few of them. But it was my time, and ultimately my career. I’d already failed at one career—I didn’t plan to do so a second time. I drank coffee and let the silence stretch.

  She didn’t flinch.

  Point to her. And I just couldn’t let this one go. Telling my intuition to shut up, I met her eyes and said, “When did you begin to suspect something was wrong?”

  Her mouth tightened but she held my gaze. “The changes in his habits have been subtle, over a period of perhaps a month. It is nothing anyone else would have noticed. But we have been married nearly forty years. I know him rather well.”

  Or at least you think you do, I thought.

  But I managed to keep it professional. “Have his actions changed?” I asked her.

  “He—it is his attitude more than anything. He seems distracted, distant.”

  She’d been about to say something else, but had changed her mind at the last moment. As I watched her guarded face, I wondered about the Stewart’s sex life, and whether those “habits” she seemed so reluctant to discuss were sexual preferences. I nearly asked her, but I had the feeling a direct question about her sex life would end our association immediately.

  Which might not be a bad thing, except that by now I was even more intensely curious. More about my contradictory would-be client than the case. “So what makes you think he’s having an affair?” I asked, suppressing a grin.

  “What else could it be?”

  Surely she wasn’t serious?

  Brian Stewart was a high-powered lawyer in a prestigious downtown firm. I wondered if he shared details from that part of his life with her. “Any number of things. Problems with work, legal issues, health concerns, money problems…”

  “You do know who I am, don’t you? And who my husband is? Money problems are not something Brian or I will ever have to worry about. Not with my trust fund.”

  Must be nice. Was she really this arrogant, or was it the stress talking? “What about his work? Has his schedule changed in any way?”

  She shook her head. The closed look on her face told me she’d finished talking. Too bad, because I hadn’t nearly finished asking questions.

  Now it was up to me. Was I going to take this case, knowing she’d lied to me about everything from why she wanted her husband followed to what she really wanted me to find out? Apparently I was.

  My intuition still wasn’t happy, but I ignored it. This client was far too intriguing to pass up. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  Besides, most of my clients lie.

  “What time do I start?” I asked.

  Cassie looked pleased, and she didn’t even blink when I told her what four days of surveillance was going to cost her. Even though I’d cheerfully upped my fee by thirty percent—I call it the pain-in-the-ass tax, and she definitely qualified. Not that she’d care. She just signed the contract, then wrote out a check.

  Looking at the flourishes of her signature, I tried to imagine getting a check like this for one of my paintings. And felt a flash of pain at the realization that I never would. Which is the price of choosing security over dreams.

  Ignoring the feeling, I filled my new client in on how I’d handle reports and billing and she filled me in on the basics of her husband’s routine. We shook hands, and she left.

  I watched her go.

  When I was twelve, my mother sent me for ballet lessons. I’d just grown to my current height and I think she hoped it would get me over my gawkiness. I loved the class, but I could never get my arms and legs to do the right things at the right time.

  I was never sure whether the teacher gave up, my mother got frustrated or the money ran out, but after a year or two, there were no more lessons.

  I’ve always been glad of those ballet lessons, though, because not only did they give me terrific posture—which showed up when I finally grew out of the gawkiness—ballet also trained my eye so that when I watch people, I see them as bodies moving in space. All those art classes only sharpened that perception. Now I automatically notice how a person moves. Often I can read a client’s state of mind in their movements before I even talk to them.

  Cassie’s departing back looked as elegant as when she’d arrived, but she was holding her head a little less stiffly. Maybe she was relieved she’d hired me to help take care of her problems.

  Whatever they were.

  I just hoped I wouldn’t come to regret it.

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