by Louise Clark
“I don’t think the Premier of the province of British Columbia did it,” Ellen said. She wasn’t writing anything down.
“No, but maybe one of the people Jarvis worked with every day, did,” Sledge said. “You know, his office staff, campaign manager, those kind of people.”
Christy shook her head. “They might be there, but there’s no point investigating them. Patterson said that the taskforce already has and they all came up clean.”
“Friends then.”
Ellen nodded at Sledge’s suggestion and wrote down Friends? Then she said, “Mistresses, too?” as she wrote down the word.
Sledge slouched back in his chair, holding his wineglass. His mouth quirked into a wry smile. “Pretty ballsy to show up at your lover’s funeral.”
Christy laughed. “Not really. All you have to do is pretend you’re supposed to be there.”
Sledge shifted forward. “Talking about being there, do you want me to escort you?”
The cat narrowed his eyes. What do you mean?
Sledge looked at the cat, his expression non-committal. “This is going to be tough for Christy. I want to know if she needs my support.”
She’s got mine!
Sledge raised his brows.
Stormy stood and placed his front paws on the table. I’ll be going with her.
“Good grief,” Ellen said. She put down her pen with careful precision. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Frank.”
If she showed up with Sledge, there’d be mass hysteria, Christy thought. “Thank you both. Frank, you’re a cat. I’m wearing a dress and heels. I’m not bringing a tote I can carry you in. Besides, cats don’t go to funerals. Sledge, you’re a rock star. If I showed up with you, we’d make more news than Frederick Jarvis himself.”
Sledge’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “Exactly.”
Christy laughed. “I think it’s better if we stick with the plan and just Ellen and I attend.”
Sledge sighed theatrically. “Okay.”
The cat said nothing.
Christy shot him a determined look. “Frank?”
The cat blinked slowly. Right. No tote. Sure, babe.
Now why did his agreement fill her with concern?
Chapter 15
Frederick Jarvis’ funeral took place at a venerable church located on the corner of two of Vancouver’s main downtown streets. It was a very visible event, designed to highlight his position in the provincial government, as well as the national one he aspired to and might have achieved had his life not been cut short. Attendance was by invitation only, and the guest list was packed full of the great, the famous, and the wealthy.
Like any celebrity event, the media was out in full force, and security was tight. Crowds pressed against the barriers erected by the police to provide a safe perimeter for the guests to arrive and mingle. They cheered or clapped as people they recognized disembarked from chauffer driven cars or limousines that then moved off, out of the compound, as there was no parking allowed in the area.
The audience was not universally approving of the spectacle that was being presented. Amid the cheers were boos and a determined group of anti-Jarvis protesters had set themselves up in a prominent position on the corner of Burrard and West Georgia streets. They held up signs with slogans like “Funerals should be private not public” and “Jarvis just ordinary man. Grieve, don’t deify.” At their head was Roy Armstrong.
As Christy’s town car slid through the mobs of people into the security area, she noticed him through the darkened window. He was carrying one of the “Funerals should be private not public” signs. As she watched, he lifted a megaphone to his mouth. She dimly heard him shout, “Fred Jarvis may have been a jerk in life, but he deserves better than this!”
Ellen, who was seated on the church side of the vehicle, leaned around Christy to look out her window. “Is that Roy over there with the sign?” She sounded incredulous.
Christy managed the ghost of a laugh over the panic that was tying knots in her stomach. “It is.”
“What is the man thinking? This is a funeral.”
Christy laughed again. “I think that’s his point.” Their car slid past Roy, who had put down the megaphone when a man with a microphone and a cameraman behind hustled over to him. Christy identified the man as a senior reporter from Canada’s public broadcasting network and thought that Roy would be pleased by the attention he was generating.
“This is insane,” Ellen murmured, shaking her head as she observed the masses of ordinary people who had come to view the event.
Christy said, “I don’t know if I can do this,” as she stared out the window. She waved her hand to indicate the chaos on the around them. “Be one of the celebrities all these people have come to see, I mean.”
“Yes, you can.” Ellen’s tone was stern, her expression serious. “You were Frank’s wife for ten years. You’ve been in situations like this before.”
“Yes,” Christy said quietly. “But then I had Frank to take the heat. People looked at him, not me. I just followed where he went.”
Ellen was silent for a minute. She reached up and smoothed Christy’s hair at her temple in an oddly tender, almost maternal, gesture. “And now people will look at you, even though you aren’t comfortable with it. But you are the head of the family now. You decide how the Jamieson name will be perceived. You are an intelligent, capable woman who has come into her own. You lead, Christy. I’ll follow and make sure you don’t come to harm.”
Her words were the closest thing to a statement of affection Ellen had ever uttered. Christy teared up and sniffed. “Thank you.”
The car came to a stop. Christy had enough time to straighten the short spencer jacket that covered the bodice of the slim black silk dress she wore before the door opened and an usher leaned in, extending a hand to help first Ellen, and then Christy, alight.
Out on the street she surveyed the crowd. Mourners waiting to enter the church were gathered in a rough queue that was part line and part clumps of related people. The shouts of the mob behind the barricades caught her attention and she noticed Roy was now waving his sign with great energy. This was so very Roy-like that she had started to smile, when, to her complete horror, she noticed a small tabby striped cat slide through his legs, slip past the reporter filming him, and run toward the assembly area. “Ellen, look,” she hissed as their car slid away to exit the compound.
Ellen peered where she indicated. “Is that Stormy?”
“Yes!”
“What’s he doing here? How did he get here? I thought you told Frank he couldn’t come to the funeral?”
More precisely, she’d said, ‘Cats don’t attend funerals,’ but that was neither here nor there. “Frank must have convinced Roy to bring Stormy.” They’d have a conversation about this when she got home, and neither Frank nor Roy would be happy about it.
“Or Stormy hitched a ride the way he did that day I came down to Homeless Help to talk to Sydney Haynes,” Ellen said. Her tone was soothing. Her eyes tracked the fast-moving cat, who slid between human feet and idling cars with remarkable precision. By now, people in the watching crowd had noticed his progression. Arms were raised, fingers pointing. A buzz went up, containing equal measures of curiosity and amusement.
“Let’s get into the church,” Christy said. “Surely someone will keep the cat out.” Frank seemed determined to make a scene. She was equally determined to avoid one.
As she and Ellen joined the line, Stormy changed direction to intercept them. The crowd of mourners was large and admission to the church was slow, though steady, as people had to pass through a security checkpoint before being allowed to enter. It was impossible for Christy and Ellen to move more quickly than the nimble cat, who went where he wanted.
Stormy reached Christy when the line had twisted so that she and Ellen were alone on the sidewalk, visible to the audience behind the barricades, as well as to the people waiting for entry. He twinned between her legs and she cou
ld feel his purr as it reverberated through his body.
Pat the poor guy, will you, Chris? He’s here because I asked him to come and he’s not keen on all these people. Give him some human reassurance, okay?
“Well,” said Ellen. Christy thought she sounded choked, as if she was only just containing laughter. Ellen crouched down and patted Stormy. “Good kitty.”
Christy sighed, but she crouched beside Ellen and patted Stormy, too. The cat arched his back and preened. His purr was a loud rumble of pleasure. A camera flashed and she looked up to see a photographer with a long lens taking pictures of the scene. Nearby, a cameraman from one of the national TV networks was filming the action. She’d be on the news tonight, a counterpart to Roy’s protest. “Thanks, Frank,” she said, rather grimly.
The person ahead of her in line turned to see what was happening. She was dressed in a practical skirt suit of cloth that was a dark blue, rather than deep mourning black. The matching jacket, with a pearl gray polyester shell underneath, gave Christy the sense that it was a serviceable office outfit, rather than something she’d bought for the funeral. Her brown hair was short, styled in an easy-to-care-for way. Probably one of Jarvis’ staff, rather than a family member or a political associate, Christy thought.
“You brought your cat?” the woman asked, eyes wide. They were nice eyes, a warm blue, fringed with black lashes.
“No. I met the cat here,” Christy said, avoiding the intent of the question, but sticking to the truth.
The woman smiled. “He likes you.”
Until that smile, Christy had thought the woman was somewhere in her late thirties. The smile dazzled though, lightening her expression, eliminating years from her apparent age. The smile triggered something in Christy’s mind, but she couldn’t grasp it. Did she know the woman? But where would they have met? Though she tried, she couldn’t place her.
Stormy twined and purred, making the woman’s comment more a statement of the obvious than an acute observation. “I guess he does,” Christy said. “But he needs to go away. This is no place for a cat.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the woman said. “Fred loved my cat, Cottontail.” She smiled sadly. There was suspicious moisture in her eyes. “They used cuddle together. Cottontail is a Persian. Fred said stroking his long soft fur was soothing. It helped him so much whenever he had a tough decision to make.” She sighed. “I should have brought Cottontail as a tribute to Fred.”
Ellen and Christy shared an incredulous glance. Christy murmured something polite. The line moved and the woman turned forward to pay attention to her feet as she negotiated the steps up to the doorway.
Stormy bounded away. See you inside, babe!
Christy wanted to shout for Frank to stop, but she couldn’t do it with the mourners and media looking on. “I’m going to kill him when I get home,” she said to Ellen.
“Perhaps he won’t make it through security,” Ellen said. She didn’t sound at all certain, though.
She was right. The cat slipped past the feet of the province’s premier as the security detail was ushering him through. Though one officer shouted and apparently tried to grab the cat, Stormy changed direction suddenly and avoided the man’s grasp. He bolted into the dim quiet of the church’s gothic interior and disappeared from sight. The security detail refocused on admitting the human mourners.
The line moved slowly toward the heavy oaken double doors that gave entry into the quiet of the church. Apart from the sounds emitted from the ever-growing crowd behind the barriers, there wasn’t much talking amongst the group wending its way into the church. That gave Christy lots of time to look around.
The church was an excellent venue to hold a public funeral of this kind. The walls were thick, gray stone, and there were few entry points, allowing security to control admittance. A Vancouver landmark for over a century, the Gothic-style building was dwarfed by the office towers that surrounded it. She let her gaze drift around, looking at those glass clad towers and wondering if there were policemen in some of the offices, staking out the crowd, watching for any untoward activity.
The line moved and she and Ellen climbed up another couple of steps. They were almost at the doorway now.
She noticed a movement in the crowd not far from where Roy was standing with his little band of protesters, and her gaze sharpened. A dark-haired woman, her long hair falling over her shoulders, was standing, watching the protesters. Her stance, her alert expression, made her standout from the people around her. A breeze teased a lock of hair across her face and she reached up to brush it away. The movement pushed her hair back and revealed a scar on her cheek.
Patterson, and she was watching Roy. That didn’t bode well.
Christy was about to suggest Ellen take a look, when the line shifted again. This time they fetched up at the security checkpoint where they had to show their invitations and back it up with ID. By the time they were through into the church, the moment was lost.
A pretty young woman met them. Like the one whose Persian Jarvis had enjoyed patting, she was dressed in a dark, but not black, skirt suit. Her eyes were red and skin blotchy from crying. Even so, she was a spectacularly beautiful young woman, with even features and lush pink lips that quivered in the moments before she spoke. “Good afternoon. I’m Phoebe Beck. I worked with Mr. Jarvis, and it is my pleasure to guide you to your seat today.”
Christy and Ellen gave her their names and murmured their thanks. Christy said, “Did you work closely with Mr. Jarvis?”
Phoebe smiled tremulously. “Very. I was his admin assistant. I organized his events—” Her voice cracked and she sniffed. “I organized this final one for him. I was part of his team. He was a wonderful man.”
“I am so sorry for your loss,” Christy said as the woman’s quavering voice died away.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She indicated stairs going up to the gallery and they all trooped up.
“You’ll miss him,” Christy said, when they reached the top.
Phoebe nodded, sniffing again. She led them to a pew not far from the gallery railing.
“You’ll be unemployed,” Ellen said, apparently unimpressed by the woman’s distraught manner.
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “The Party has asked me to stay on to close his office and to transition to the new minister.”
“Of course,” Christy said, shooting a quelling look at Ellen.
Ellen ignored her. “The Dogwood Party looks after its own, then,” she said, nodding as if she considered this to be the only acceptable path.
Phoebe nodded back. “They do and I’m thankful for it. Of course, I don’t really need the job.” They’d reached their placement, which Phoebe indicated with a gesture of her hand.
“You don’t?” Ellen asked as she waited for Christy to slide into the pew.
“No. Fred provided for me in his will. He wanted me to have a nest egg for the future.” She nodded to each of them, then hurried away to guide her next group into the dim interior of the church.
Ellen and Christy settled into their assigned places. The gallery was at the back of the church, but it gave them a tremendous view of the glorious interior with its vaulted ceiling and vivid stained-glass windows. They watched the people still filing into the main floor seats through the long central aisle. The family were seated in the front rows, of course, but Christy could see the provincial premier a couple of rows behind, as well as other cabinet members Jarvis had worked with. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of a familiar profile directly behind a woman she recognized as Letitia Jarvis. “Ellen. Look at the woman behind the family row. Isn’t that Olivia Waters?”
Ellen frowned as she peered where Christy had indicated. After a moment, she reached into her purse and pulled out opera glasses for a closer look. “Yes, you’re right.”
Christy looked at the opera glasses, but decided not to comment. “What is Olivia doing seated so close to the family?”
“What is that woman we were talking to while we
waited to enter doing in the same row?” Ellen’s brows were raised as she handed the glasses to Christy.
Christy looked. It was indeed the woman whose cat Fred Jarvis had liked to stroke when he was stressed. She handed the glasses back to Ellen. “You don’t think she was one of Jarvis’ women too, do you?”
“Anything is possible.” Ellen put the glasses to her eyes again for another look. “Well, well, well. Look who’s entering that row now.” She handed the glasses to Christy again.
Christy wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t what she saw. “That’s Archie Fleming and his wife Marian!”
“The competition,” Ellen said, nodding.
Archie Fleming and Fred Jarvis had both been vying for the leadership of the national wing of the Dogwood Party. They were the acknowledged front runners. That meant Archie Fleming had been Fred’s main competition. What was he doing sitting directly behind the family?
The stream of people was beginning to slow and a few minutes later Christy saw Phoebe Beck, followed by a large, good-looking man, slip into her pew.
The one right behind the family.
Wide-eyed, Christy turned to Ellen. “You don’t think … ”
“That all those women in the row behind the family are Fred’s mistresses?” Ellen’s tone was cynical. Her expression was knowing. “There have been rumors for years, so yes, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. We know Olivia was once his mistress. Why not the others?”
“Good point,” Christy murmured. There was no chance for further discussion as the choir rose, and a string ensemble began to play. Together, they performed the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem as the minister led the family into the church.
The service proceeded smoothly, well planned by the emotional Phoebe, except for one disruption when a tiger stripped tabby cat hopped up onto Letitia Jarvis’s lap and proceeded to snuggle against her shoulder. The minister stopped preaching. The congregation held its collective breath.
“Frank!” Christy hissed, sotto voice.
