The 9 Lives Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Louise Clark

  She knew Quinn wanted clarity, to define what they were together and where their relationship was going. But how did she make him understand her tangle of emotions without hurting him? Now the moment was upon her she couldn't see a way.

  He came up beside her, matching his strides with hers. "I have a little time. I was going to go the back way," she said. Her voice was husky with emotion tightly bottled.

  "Works for me," he said.

  There was a grimness to his tone that clawed at Christy. Her throat worked and she fought for control. They walked up the street in silence. She kept her head down, studying the black asphalt surface of the road as if each tiny flaw, each lump on the surface could trip her up and cause her to fall flat on her face.

  The silence stretched, tightened. Quinn made no attempt to talk about the murder, about the fruitless discussion that followed Christy's suggestion that Vince's murderer had been lying in wait for him. He didn't want to talk about the murder. Neither of them did.

  They reached the top of the street and turned onto the path. The trees closed around them, bright new leaves bursting out on the cottonwoods and maples, shoots of vivid, almost neon, green beginning to open on the pines and cedars. The woods were coming alive after their winter sleep and she should be celebrating the joy of a season of rebirth. Instead all she could feel was the bleak despair of crumbling decay.

  "I thought we had something together," Quinn said. He was staring ahead, not looking at her. His voice was low, a rumble of sound filled with all the hopelessness she was feeling. She opened her mouth to reply. He continued.

  "Down in California, I thought..." He paused. She saw his jaw tighten, the muscles flex as he fought for control. "I thought we could be a family."

  A vise tightened around her heart. She had thought they could be a family too. Instead, they returned to despair and crushing guilt she couldn't get out from under. "Quinn, I..." The words wouldn't come. How did she ask a living man to wait while she dealt with the emotions she felt for a man who was already dead?

  They were near the place where the path forked, one arm leading down to the school, one going forward. He stopped and she did too, standing so that they were facing each other. Close, but not intimately so.

  He looked down at her, his expression serious. His finger traced the shape of her face, a slow sensual touch that evoked other, intimate, memories. "I get it, you know. I understand where you're at. Noelle comes first, always."

  "Yes." Her choked voice was thick with unshed tears. She had a sense where this conversation was leading and it terrified her. "Quinn..."

  He put his finger over her lips, asking for silence. She stared up into his eyes and saw sadness there. "This isn't the right time for us, is it?"

  She wanted to break her silence, shout that the timing was perfect, that he was perfect, but she couldn't. His touch, light, almost a caress on her lips, demanded honesty. She couldn't give him the reassurance he needed, so she said nothing. But her eyes searched his face, begging him not to push this conversation to its inevitable conclusion.

  "I've been telling myself to be patient. That you care for me..."

  "I do!" The words burst from her. His finger left her lips, and he stroked her cheek and dug his hand into her hair.

  "But not enough." His mouth quirked up into a rueful smile. "My problem is, I care too much. I want more, Christy. More than I think you can give."

  Christy had no answer to that, because he was right. "Quinn." His name was agreement, and they both knew it.

  "It's time for me to move on."

  "No." The word came out as an exhaled breath. Her throat closed. She couldn't say anything more.

  "We live so close," he said. "Noelle has fun with my dad and he loves her. I'll try to keep this civilized so neither of them notice."

  But Roy would, even if Noelle didn't, and they both knew it. Quinn didn't ask for her help in the deception, though, and that spoke volumes.

  They were done.

  He tugged her closer with the hand tangled in her hair, then lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was tender, a mere brushing of his lips on hers. Tantalizing, expressing all that was lost. When he lifted his head, his smile was wistful. He pulled his hand from her hair, trailing his fingers along her cheek before he let it drop. Then he turned and strode away, leaving her staring after him until a turn in the path hid him from view. Only then did she move, trudging down the fork that led to the school, where she went to collect her daughter.

  Chapter 31

  Christy's suggestion that the rustling sound Kyle and Chef Rita had heard was not made by a cougar, but by the killer, had sparked considerable discussion yesterday afternoon, but they'd been unable to come to any conclusions. If it was a person, then who?

  There were far too many suspects, Ellen thought now, as she carefully laid out her working materials on the kitchen table: the leather binder in which she kept all her notes; a stack of lovely, vellum writing paper, delicately tinted a mottled blue and engraved with her name at the top; her collection of fountain pens, each filled with a different color. She set everything precisely, then stood back to admire the effect. She could almost pretend she was about to sit down at the pretty little secretary in the small room she used as her office in her condo to make notes about the meeting she'd attended yesterday morning.

  She suffered a pang at that thought, both because she missed her condo, with its prime location and wonderful views, and because the meeting had been... disturbing, to say the least. She straightened the leather binder a fraction of an inch for no other reason than to comfort herself, and sighed.

  The cat, who had been snooping around its food dish, jumped onto the table and sniffed at the binder.

  "No," Ellen said. "Off." She reached for him and Stormy lifted his nose in the haughty way of annoyed cats and glared at her. As she picked the beast up, she said, "Christy may have no concerns with you leaping onto the table where we eat, but I do." She put him on the floor, where he sat on his haunches, shot up a leg, and inspected his nether regions. Ellen pointedly looked in another direction as she moved around the counter to the coffee machine to make herself a cup.

  By the time the machine had finished its hissing and gurgling, Stormy was sitting at his food dish, back straight, front legs neatly placed in front of him, tail wrapped around his feet. He stared at her pointedly as she passed, on her way back to the table and her carefully laid out work materials.

  "You have food," she said.

  He didn't move. His stare was unwavering.

  When she left this morning, Christy had muttered something about grocery shopping after dropping Noelle. She'd looked dreadful, so Ellen had suggested that she should come home and go back to bed once Noelle was in class, but she'd shaken her head and said that the cat needed food.

  After Christy and Noelle went off, Ellen had checked their supplies. The cat had plenty of food. That made her wonder if something was bothering Christy, but as she looked at the beast, sitting there refusing to eat because whatever had been dished out to him wasn't up to his high standards, she accepted Christy's explanation at face value. The cat had food, all right, just not the right food.

  Well, the creature might con Christy into wasting her money on treats to stimulate his picky taste buds, but Ellen wasn't participating. He had food. He wouldn't starve. Not her issue.

  She placed her coffee cup opposite the binder, by her right hand, and sat down. Her purpose this morning while all was quiet, was to make another list. This one would lay out the suspects for Vince's murder using the clues they'd identified during their discussion yesterday.

  Ellen was a great believer that writing down details focused the mind and cleared away confusion. Her little list might not move the investigation forward—it hadn't been effective in finding poor Chelsea Sawatzky's killer—but it might provide a path for them to investigate, one that they'd missed when discussing the problem verbally.

  She picked up a pen, a lovely handmade cre
ation with a quartzite barrel and a beautiful German made nib. The barrel was a sea blue and the ink inside matched. She pulled forward a sheet of the vellum and started to write.

  "Graham 'Hammer' Gowdy. Had an argument with Vince that caused him to storm out the front door," she said, itemizing the details as she wrote. "Vince followed him out of the house, but they did not talk. Hammer proceeded to walk to the end of the development where he met a neighbor walking a dog. He was talking to this man when Stormy started to howl."

  Hearing his name, the cat abandoned his post by his dish and came over to the table. He stared up, sizing up the distance to the top of the table for a jump. Ellen glared at him. Stormy glanced away, then back at the table, but when he leapt, it was onto the chair beside Ellen's.

  She gave him a pat. "Good cat," then she went back to her work. Stormy sat in his tidy way and watched her.

  "Hammer," she said, writing his name, then tapping the vellum with her finger, "is no longer a suspect."

  She went on to Kyle and Chef Rita, noting that they both had opportunity and Kyle certainly had motive, but they had separately mentioned a rustling in the trees prior to the murder. Would they have brought this up if they themselves were guilty? Unlikely. Of course, it could have been that the rustling had been a cougar, but Ellen was inclined to believe Christy's suggestion that the sound had been made by the killer. She looked at the cat. "Christy told us Chef Rita spoke with Hammer's girlfriend, Jahlina, just after she returned to the kitchen, so that pretty much rules her out. Kyle Gowdy doesn't have a witness who saw him return to the deck, so I'll leave him in for the moment. Who else should I consider?"

  The drunk and whiny Hank Lofti, who had motive and no true alibi; the self-absorbed Brody Taupin who had motive, but reasons that explained it away; and Mitch Crosier, whose motive was business related. Would a man kill because of a difficult contract negotiation? "Hank Lofti and Mitch Crosier both said they were looking for Chef Rita. She, of course, was out at her van, loading it with dirty pots and pans, so they couldn't find her." She made notes on her sheet, then tapped the lovely pen against her lips.

  She looked over at the cat. "Sledge's house is huge. Rita stayed in the public areas—the kitchen, the great room, some of the side rooms on the ground floor—but a man like Lofti, who has his mind in his pants..."

  The cat's eyes seemed to widen and Ellen found herself blushing for some reason. She pressed on. "A man like that, and intoxicated as well, might think he'd find her flat on her back in one of Sledge's bedrooms."

  Stormy licked his forepaw and didn't look at her.

  "Mitch Crosier said he wanted a recipe. He claims he eventually did find Chef Rita and asked her for it, but she refused. He might have had time to both look for Rita and kill Vince. But would he?" She looked at the cat, who stared back, unblinking.

  "Then there is Brody Taupin. He says he was in the washroom and saw no one." She sniffed. "A thin excuse, one that I've heard used before." She thought about Chelsea's murder, the one that had been superseded by the more immediate and intimate death of Vince Nunez. "Bernie Oshall and Kyle Gowdy both said they were in the washroom when Chelsea was killed." She sighed. "I believed them. I suppose I should believe Brody Taupin as well. Though," she added reflectively, "I did like him as the perpetrator of the crime. He is so self absorbed. He could well be the one who was talking to Vince when Chef Rita heard two men arguing outside."

  Stormy sat in his familiar, alert pose and she thought with some amusement that she had his full attention now. "'Leave it! We've been over this before.' Who would Vince say those words to? Brody, certainly. Hammer, but he's been cleared. Would he say it to Kyle Gowdy? I don't think so."

  She picked up a new pen. The barrel on this one had a milky white base, with a pattern in cinnamon red swirls. The ink was a vivid crimson. It stood out well on the fresh sheet of beautiful vellum as she made her notes. "Kyle doesn't fit in any way. I'm going to rule him out."

  The cat butted her elbow and she put her pen down to give him a pat. "Hank Lofti needs to remain on the list. Vince's words are just the sort of ones he'd say to a man he had no intention of employing again." She tickled Stormy under the chin. "I like this fellow, Lofti, for the crime. What do you think?"

  She wrote down her thoughts, then looked at the first page she'd written. "I must not forget Mitchell Crosier, but the tone of Vince's words doesn't fit with his relationship to Mitchell. Now if it had been Mitchell talking and Vince the voice Rita couldn't make out, that would be different."

  She tapped the pen against her chin as she thought about this. Stormy yawned. "You don't appear to be impressed by this argument," she said, then shook her head, amazed at herself for attributing rational thought processes to a cat. "Chef Rita didn't know the voices because she didn't know the people, so it could have been Mitch, not Vince, talking. Oh!" she said, throwing her pretty pen down on the table. A spot of crimson ink marred the surface of the elegant paper. "Damn!" She dabbed at it with a tissue she found in the pocket of her trousers. "Look at the mess I've made."

  Stormy put his paws on the tabletop and stretched his body full length so he was standing, staring at the paper. Ellen pointed sternly to the chair and he subsided back into his tidy sitting position.

  "This murder is as complicated and unlikely to be solved as poor Chelsea's is," she said. She heard the frustration in her voice and sighed. If she didn't watch herself, she'd sound as whiny as Brody Taupin or that dreadful man Syd Haynes. She shuddered as she thought about the meeting yesterday morning. Haynes had attacked Charlotte Sawatzky. There was no other way to describe the vicious accusations he'd made against her son and his company.

  The Regent Hotel riots and the Reverend Wigle's death had been a dreadful slur on Vancouver's reputation. She could understand Haynes grieving the loss of a man he admired and may even have loved, but he had no right to accuse Charlotte's family of purposefully causing the man's death.

  "Or did he?" she muttered, pulling out a fresh, undamaged, sheet of vellum. "Syd Haynes," she said as she chose another pen. This one was clear acrylic, tinted a lovely hunter green. "Green for envy," she said, writing. The ink, of course, was green as well, a bright emerald that lay garishly on her pale blue paper. "Syd Haynes hated Vince because Vince fired him from SledgeHammer." The impatience in Vince's words was perfect for a discussion over a decision made long ago and impossible to change. "Syd Haynes left the party before the argument between Vince and Hammer happened. Could he have been the creature hovering in the woods that Rita and Kyle heard?"

  Writing furiously, she didn't even notice when the cat put his paws up on the table again and angled his body to watch her work.

  "No one has considered him as a possible suspect because he left before anything untoward happened. Because he wasn't part of the argument in the great room, and we all thought the argument was the trigger. Even the policeman thought that." She looked up, noticed the cat, and didn't chastise him for having his paws on the table. Instead she stared vaguely at him and took a moment to tickle behind his ears. Stormy began to purr.

  "Haynes was at the concert too. After it was over, he left the box and didn't go backstage. He could have left the arena with the rest of the audience. Or he could have found a place to hide out, stayed behind, then killed Chelsea."

  She made a note. Stormy butted her elbow again and she smiled a little smile. "You want more patting, don't you?" She rubbed his fur, the rumble of his purr putting wings to her thoughts. "If he approached Chelsea after we were all gone, she would remember him. She'd be willing to speak to him. She wouldn't feel threatened or wary." Stormy licked her hand. She looked into the cat's eyes. "But would he have been capable of such a horrendous act? He didn't simply murder her. He raped her as well."

  As she thought about the girl's end, tears sprang into her eyes. Stormy hopped up onto the table and butted his nose against her cheek, then he licked her with his rough sandpaper tongue, capturing the tear that trickled from her eye. Ellen sni
ffed, patted his head, and said, "Silly cat." Stormy licked again, his rough tongue scratchy against her skin. Ellen sighed. His cat caress soothed her, surprising her.

  She straightened and the cat sat, curling his tail around himself. He stared at her watchfully. "There is absolutely no evidence that Sydney Haynes is our killer," she said. "No one thought to ask him his movements after the party because he had already left. The police probably asked him about after the concert, but with tens of thousands of people emptying out of the arena, it would be difficult to contradict his statement if he said he simply went home." Detective Patterson was thorough, though. If she thought there was a possibility that Syd Haynes had perpetrated the crime, she'd dig until she found her evidence. She had to identify him as a viable suspect first, and up till now no one was even considering him.

  Ellen capped her pen, placed it with the others, then gathered her papers into a neat pile. She looked at Stormy. "She'll look if she has evidence. I can produce motive. I can connect one murder to the other using that motive, but I can't provide the evidence because no one has thought to ask the questions needed." She shoved her sheets into the leather binder, then put her beautiful pens on top. "Sydney Haynes may have a shady past, but he is now considered a benefit to the community. I can't simply accuse him. I'd be laughed out of the detective's office. Worse," she said, waving a finger at Stormy, "I'd be indulged. A silly rich woman filled with prejudice against a man of the people."

  She placed her hand on top of the pens and binder. "I need to have proof before I make any accusations."

  Stormy meowed and put his paw over hers.

  Ellen looked at the cat and smiled. "Sweet kitty. You shouldn't be on the table." She glanced at her watch before she picked him up. "The morning is still young," she said, with some surprise as she put Stormy on the floor. "He's bound to be in his office at this hour."