Cat Got Your Tongue

by Louise Clark

  Vince shrugged, then nodded. He didn't look at all bothered by the thought.

  A laugh bubbled up in Sledge's chest. "Better let him bring his cat then."

  Vince frowned. "His cat? What are you talking about?"

  "The cat's cute," said Hammer. "I've got no objection."

  Since Vince still looked baffled, Sledge said, "Armstrong has this big old tom called Stormy who's a traveling cat. Likes to visit and make new friends."

  "That's right," Hammer said. "He brought the cat to the meeting we had yesterday." He shot a pointed look at Vince. "The one where my friend Sledge and I asked Quinn Armstrong and Sledge's dad to keep my brother out of jail."

  "Roy takes the cat everywhere," Sledge said. He figured he'd better steer the conversation back onto the cat before Vince and Hammer came to verbal blows again.

  "He was stoned, right? I've heard about Armstrong. He was pretty wild in his younger days."

  Sledge shrugged. "Could be."

  Vince contemplated this, then he nodded. "Okay. We'll invite the cat too. Maybe it'll—"

  "He," Sledge said, interrupting. Amusement bubbled through him. He was still tickled to think he'd been communicating with a cat. Or rather the dead guy living in the cat.

  "What?"

  "He. The cat's a he."

  Vince eyeballed him for a minute to see if he was serious. To prove he was, Sledge nodded a couple of times. Vince shrugged. "Maybe the cat will pee on Mitch's shoes."

  That broke the ice with Hammer. He grinned and said, "Shed all over those fancy dark suits he always wears."

  "Scratch him where he lives," Sledge said. He liked the way the conversation was finally going. So did that nasty lump of foreboding that had been churning in his stomach. It had finally started to ease.

  They all chortled as they envisioned the cat persecuting Mitch, then they got back to business.

  "Better invite my dad, then," Sledge said. Vince raised a brow in silent question. "Give Roy someone to talk to. And he can save him from Mitch."

  Vince nodded, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If we're inviting the senior set, what about that old broad with all the money who's friends with your dad and Armstrong? What was her name? Your dad invited her to the suite."

  "Ellen Jamieson?"

  "Yeah, that's her. Starchy old broad. She probably won't come, but maybe she'll donate to Syd's charity anyway."

  "You mean like if you're invited to a wedding you have to buy a present, even if you don't go?" Hammer asked. He looked dubious.

  "Something like that," Vince said.

  "Could work," Hammer said. He didn't sound like he expected it to.

  "Right. Who else?" Vince's expression brightened, as if he had just had a brainwave that delighted him. "How about inviting Quinn Armstrong? He's well known. And he's media. He could spin the party for us, heavy on the good deed stuff."

  "He won't be in town," Sledge said. "He's going to Disneyland."

  Vince reared back as if he'd just been bitten by an adder. "Disneyland? What the hell's he doing there?"

  Sledge grinned wickedly. "Playing dad."

  Vince pondered that with a frown, then his brow cleared. "The hottie he was with has a kid."

  Sledge nodded. The wealthy, high society Jamiesons, and the scandals that had plagued them, meant nothing to Vince. If you weren't part of the music business, or you weren't someone who might be useful, he didn't notice you. Though, from what Sledge had seen of Christy Jamieson, she was a down-to-earth woman who didn't play the rich bitch card.

  "Kyle comes to the party," Hammer said. His expression had tightened, the goodwill of moments ago gone.

  Before Vince could reply, Sledge asked, "Would he and Kristine come?"

  "They always come," Hammer said impatiently.

  "Yeah, but they both know Kyle is under suspicion. They probably don't feel much like partying."

  "Kyle needs to know that people believe in him. That his family—" Hammer paused to glare at Vince. "His family and friends are behind him."

  "Kyle comes," Sledge said. He stared at Vince and hoped the man got it.

  Vince caved. "Fine," he said. "Moving on. I'll connect with the media and get the promo going. Who invites Syd?"

  "I do, I guess," Sledge said slowly.

  "Great, as long as it isn't me," Vince said.

  Sledge didn't blame Vince for sounding irritated. He and Syd had never gotten along, mainly because Vince thought Syd was a mooch and Vince liked people who were doers. But Syd was Syd. They had to deal with him, or else there could be problems. "We need to involve him somehow. Like Mitch, he needs someone to play with."

  "Doesn't he have a girlfriend?" Vince asked.

  Sledge shrugged and shook his head.

  Vince brightened. "Maybe Kim would like to play with him."

  Hammer looked horrified and Sledge couldn't hold in a laugh. "Christ, Vince. Are you serious?"

  Vince sighed. "Wishful thinking. If she was chasing Syd she wouldn't be bothering with me."

  Now that the issue of his brother had been dealt with, Hammer could laugh. "The man has a point. Mitch couldn't blame us if his missus went after a good deeds guy."

  "He'd try," Vince said gloomily.

  "I'll tell Jahlina to talk to him," Hammer said. He was clearly feeling magnanimous now that he'd forced Vince to agree to have Kyle attend the party. "She can introduce Syd to the money people and he can do his pitch. That'll satisfy him."

  Vince thought about this, then he nodded. Jahlina worked as an events planner at EBU. She was good with people. "Right then, I'll send out the invites and get a press release prepped and out."

  "Anything you want us to do?" Sledge asked.

  "Show up," Vince said, already firing up his computer.

  "Not hard. The party's at my place."

  Chapter 9

  Quinn dressed carefully for his interview with Syd Haynes. He thought that presenting a professional image would lower the man's guard and get him talking, so he wore a gray sports jacket, front buttoned blue shirt, and black slacks. He realized his mistake the moment he entered the small windowless office in the back of Homeless Help. Haynes was wearing serviceable no-name jeans and black T-shirt that advertised the name of his non-profit. What had he been expecting, Quinn wondered? Haynes dressed for his audience, in a way Quinn had not.

  He shrugged off his discomfort. At least he hadn't worn a full suit and a tie and made himself look like a complete establishment hack. "Thank you for agreeing to do an interview, Syd." He held out his hand. Syd took it. His grip was limp, his hand swiftly withdrawn, the handshake of a man who didn't like the touch of others.

  When did that happen, Quinn wondered? As a young adult, Syd had a cocky, in-your-face self-confidence. At the concert, the confidence has been muted, with an underlying caution, but to Quinn's mind, still there. So why the lackluster greeting now? He stashed the question away for reflection later and focused on digging whatever he could out of Sydney Haynes.

  The formalities over, Syd sat on an executive style desk chair, deeply padded and covered in black, butter-soft leather. This was positioned in front of a beautifully worked teak desk that wouldn't be scorned in any CEO's office. Since the room was small and the desk large, it had been pushed against the wall. Beside it was an old wing chair, upholstered in what had once been a fine silk brocade. Now it was threadbare and the stuffing was popping out in places. Syd gestured to the wing chair. "Have a seat."

  Quinn eyed the chair. He suspected it had been rescued from a refuse dump somewhere and wondered if he was going to head home after the interview with bedbugs or lice stowed away on his person. Not something he relished at any time, but just before going on vacation the mere thought made him grimace internally. As he moved to sit down, he happened to glance at Syd. The man was watching him with amusement. Evidently he expected Quinn's reaction. Quinn wondered if he had placed the chair here deliberately to disconcert anyone who headed into his lair.

  Not one
to back down, Quinn raised his brows and said, "I take it from your smile that the chair isn't home to a small army of parasites?"

  Syd laughed and shook his head. A lock of thick golden hair flopped onto his forehead and he combed it back with his fingers. "The chair looks run down, but the springs are good and it's wonderfully comfortable to sit in." He gestured to a floor lamp positioned to one side of the chair. "I often use it when I have to read long documents. It's much easier on the back than hunching over my desk." As Quinn was lowering himself into the chair, he added, "Oh, and yes, the chair did come from someone's garbage, but I had it fumigated before I brought it into the office." He flashed a smile that was wicked. "So you're safe."

  "I'm glad to know that," Quinn said. "I've had body lice before and it's not an experience I'd want to repeat." The chair was, as Syd said, very comfortable, despite its disreputable appearance. He sank back into the cushions and pulled out his phone. He gestured to the beautiful desk. "Mind if I tape the interview?"

  Syd shrugged. "Go ahead."

  He leaned forward to place the phone. "Nice desk."

  "It and the chair are discards from a multinational company located downtown." Syd patted the leather on the arm of the chair. "There's a tear near the bottom of the seat. It was repaired and you can hardly see it, but the head of the company knew it was there and it bothered him. So the guy asked us to take it away for him." Syd shrugged. "He wrote off the cost of a new executive suite and I got a great desk and chair."

  "You didn't think of selling it?"

  "I did, but that pesky tear kept people from paying the price I felt the chair deserved." His smile flashed, the cocky grin Quinn remembered.

  "Do you get finds like this often?" He kept the question light, the focus on Homeless Help. Syd had been reluctant to talk to him until he mentioned a national newsmagazine was interested in a story on Homeless Help and Syd's work with the hard hit east side community. He convinced Syd the focus of the story would not be on Syd himself, but on his organization. Syd had given him a cautious agreement. Now the trick was to get him to open up and find the information he'd really come for.

  Syd nodded. "More often than you'd expect. A lot of the stuff businesses dispose of can be reused. It's not usually as fine as this, but it does happen."

  Quinn finished setting up the recorder, so he settled back into the chair, crossed one booted ankle over the other knee, and slipped into interview mode to get Syd talking.

  Forty minutes later Quinn had the core of an article about an organization that was providing hope and opportunity for people in one of the poorest areas in the city. Syd was talking freely, his pale gray eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and his hands moving expressively. Time to see what made the inner man tick. "You started Homeless Help to provide a new way of life for the people you knew when you were on the street."

  Syd nodded, then leaned forward, his expression earnest. "I didn't do it alone. I couldn't have! I came up with the idea, but I faltered. Who was I, a homeless guy myself, to think that I could start a business?" He paused, then deliberately corrected himself. "Not just a business, but a successful business. I talked about the idea endlessly, then one day, Reverend Wigle told me to make it happen." Syd's expression took on the inner glow of a person lit by faith. "He wouldn't let me think of failure. He believed in me in a way no one else ever had." His voice softened as he spoke, his devotion obvious.

  "Not even your family? You father?" Quinn asked, watching him closely.

  Syd's lip curled. "Especially not my father. My biological father, that is. The Reverend Wigle was more of a father to me than Tate Haynes ever was. He pulled me out of the gutter and rebuilt me to be a better man than I'd been before my fall. What did Tate Haynes do when I lost my way? He abandoned me, left me to my fate. I was desperate and he didn't care."

  Angry tone and grandiose terms, Quinn thought. It was almost as if Syd saw his life as a chronicle of the death and rebirth of a hero. He decided to push further. "Reverend Wigle was something of a crusader, wasn't he?"

  The glittering light faded from Syd's eyes, replaced by affection and amusement. He nodded. "The perfect description. Reverend Wigle believed passionately that the downtrodden and poor deserve as much respect as the fat cats in the big office towers on West Georgia Street. He fought for all of us and thought nothing of facing down a bully when he had to. He was fearless."

  "He organized the protests that shut down Hastings over the repurposing of the old Regent Hotel, didn't he?"

  Syd's expression darkened. "The protests that were used as an excuse by the oligarchs to murder him, you mean?"

  It wasn't exactly what Quinn had meant, but he nodded anyway. This was more interesting stuff than the official corporate story Syd had fed him earlier in the interview.

  "Yes, he organized that protest. The city called the Regent a flophouse and a blight on the area. They were happy when a group of fascist developers came to them and asked to have the block rezoned." Syd fairly spat out the words as he leaned forward, one hand flat on the teak desk, the other curled tightly around the luxurious leather of the desk chair. His body was tense, his expression angry. "Reverend Wigle didn't want to do a sit-in. He wanted to talk, to discuss with the city ways the building could be saved for the people of this community! Not so that it could be redesigned as expensive housing for rich bastards looking for fancy digs in the city."

  Quinn kept his expression neutral. He'd broken through a barrier and the angry words were flowing out in a flood of emotion he bet Syd usually kept carefully hidden. Not only was the man tossing out terms loaded with anger, but with pain as well. The protest the Reverend Wigle had organized must have been a turning point in Syd's life, a time filled with opportunity and regret.

  "The protest wasn't just a short term sit in," Quinn said. "It turned into a tent city that blocked a major artery into downtown. I'm not sure it was only the municipal officials who weren't ready to talk." Quinn hadn't been in Vancouver when the protest went down. He'd researched the incident for this conversation with Syd. Away from the emotion of the moment, it seemed to him that there had been grandstanding on both sides as they each struggled to spin the story so it favored them.

  "Reverend Wigle didn't deserve to die." Syd snarled out the words, his lips drawn back from his yellowed teeth, fury in his voice.

  "No." They could agree on that at least. "Everyone has the right to protest government decisions, but at some point common sense should take over."

  "Common sense." The curl of Syd's lips was derisive now. "The excuse of the fat, stupid, majority."

  Quinn shrugged. "Self preservation, then. Reverend Wigle must surely bear responsibility for his own actions and some for the actions he pushed others into doing."

  Syd sat back. "Reverend Wigle died a saint," he said, his voice flat.

  The Reverend Wigle's church had deplored the violence that led to his death, but they had also apologized for his actions, saying that he had taken his protest too far. The press release had stopped short of stating that he got what he deserved, but the implication was there. "You miss him," Quinn said.

  Some of the tension leached from Syd's shoulders. "I and everyone else on the East Side. He was a light for all of us and I can't tell you how many, like me, he saved from themselves. How many he was a father to, because their own had abandoned them."

  Syd Haynes clearly had daddy issues. Was it worth looking into before he wrote the story? Maybe. He'd let the idea percolate in the back of his mind while he and Christy and Noelle were at Disneyland. "What do you think about the redevelopment now that it's actually happened? I passed the building on my way here and I noticed that the façade has been restored as close to the original as possible. I hear the lobby is lovely and that there is a fantastic roof garden." The description was courtesy of Christy, who'd given him a thorough briefing before he came down today.

  Syd glowered at him. "I wouldn't know. They don't let the riff-raff from the area inside."

&n
bsp; "You didn't continue Reverend Wigle's struggle after he died?" The tent city had come down after the riots. It was as if Wigle's death had taken the heart out of the movement.

  "Reverend Wigle couldn't be replaced," Syd said. He made it sound as if there was a virtue in doing nothing. He moved his beautiful executive chair back, a sure sign that he was planning on ending the interview.

  Quinn took the hint and uncrossed his legs. As he leaned forward, reaching for his phone, he grinned at Syd in a friendly way. "Did you ever think way back when we were teens that we'd end up here?"

  He'd meant the question to be an unthreatening way of referencing their shared past and keeping the door open for follow-up interviews. It backfired.

  "You mean back in the day when Rob and Graham and I were creating SledgeHammer? When they were leaning on me for my business sense? Before Vince Nunez stole them away from me with his promises of fame and success? You mean back in those days?"

  Quinn didn't usually argue with those he interviewed. He let them talk and he didn't impose his views, in the questions or in the article that he wrote. But this? He couldn't let this pass. "You were into Ecstasy and coke before Rob met Hammer. You got into heroin and dropped out before SledgeHammer had been around long enough to have a sound or a presence."

  "I was the brains behind SledgeHammer," Syd said. "I developed the sound, the image. The style! Rob and Graham left me behind because Vince seduced them with his promises. But not me. I had integrity. I stood my ground."

  Quinn frowned. "I'm surprised. You sound angry, but when I saw you at the concert last week, you seemed to be at peace with the past."

  Syd gestured toward his desk. "I'm sorry. My phone is blinking. I'm afraid I have to get back to work."

  He'd morphed in a moment from an angry, bitter man to one who was in charge of his world and comfortable with it. The abrupt change had Quinn rising from the wing chair, leaving his phone recording for the moment. "Of course. A pity about that girl."

  "What girl?"

  "The one who worked our suite, who was killed after the concert." Quinn shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and hitched his hip onto the beautiful desk. He shook his head. "The cops have been all over it. They've questioned everyone in the suite as if we were all potential killers."