Jeopardy in July: A Jamie Quinn Mystery (Jamie Quinn Cozy Mystery Book 5)

by Barbara Venkataraman

  "Nothing to worry about, Nick," I said. "Everything's under control, ten-four, over and out."

  "What is Duke Broussard doing there?" he demanded to know. "This is an FBI operation, Quinn, not a tea party--"

  "Oops," I said, pulling the earbud out of my ear and sliding into my pants pocket. "Sorry," I said to my stick pin, "the earbud just fell out. I told you I had small ears."

  Duke grinned at me. "You're gonna catch hell for that."

  "I think I already did." I laughed. "You get me into more trouble, Broussard."

  "Girl, I get you out of trouble." He picked up the papers on the ground. "You want these?"

  I shook my head. "I have bigger fish to fry. I'm going to track down Herb now. What are you going to do?"

  "I'll be securing the perimeter," he joked.

  "You do that," I said, "but chances are the bad guy's already here."

  I went back inside and headed for the library which I had no trouble finding after wandering in circles with Bob the last time. Herb was in there, alone, typing away on his computer.

  Hi Herb!" I said cheerfully.

  He didn't look up. "I don't have time today, Jamie Quinn, I'm very busy."

  "Oh, sorry," I said. "I just had one question to ask you."

  "Then ask it already."

  'Were you here on Memorial Day?"

  "What kind of cockamamie question is that? Of course I was here, I'm always here," he said. He seemed tense, his typing frenetic.

  "Okay," I said. "Maybe we can talk some more later?" When he didn't respond, I said "you must be working on something important."

  He stopped typing and gave me a haunted look that caught me completely off guard.

  "It's a matter of life or death."

  "I'm sorry to bother you." I closed the door, leaving him alone again.

  I realized I'd forgotten to ask him if he knew who Samuel was, which might have been a better question. As I walked down the corridor I heard someone walking behind me. I turned around and saw it was Eli. He looked none the worse for wear after his ordeal. He caught up with me.

  "I never got to thank you for helping me that day," he said, sounding sincere.

  "Oh, you're welcome," I said. "Glad you're alright. Did you find out what it was?"

  He shook his head. "All the tests were negative."

  "Weird!" I said. I was going to ask him why he thought someone had been trying to kill him, but instead I asked the question of the day.

  "Do you happen to know Samuel?"

  His dark eyes flashed. Was it anger? Surprise? He recovered quickly.

  "Yes, I do, he's a friend of mine. Would you like me to take you to him?"

  "That would be great!" I said. "I really appreciate it. I've been trying to track him down all day."

  "Come with me," he said. "We can check his apartment."

  We took the elevator to the sixth floor, which I knew was independent living. We walked to the end of the corridor and stood in front of the very last door. Eli knocked, but there was no answer.

  "Let's leave him a note," Eli suggested. "I know where he keeps his spare key."

  "Oh, I don't think we should go in…"

  "Just to leave a note," he said. "It's no problem." He reached behind a potted plant and took out a key. He unlocked the door and before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my arm and yanked me inside. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out his wicked-looking knife.

  "If you scream, I will kill you."

  I nodded, terrified.

  "I heard you were looking for Samuel, asking everyone. Why are you so damn nosy?"

  In a whisper I asked my question. "Are you Samuel?"

  "Of course I am, you stupid girl. My name is Samuel Elijah Zeiger."

  I didn't think there was any hope that he was not going to kill me, so I scanned the room for a weapon, a way to escape, anything. I decided to keep him talking, try to distract him.

  "What happened to you that day you collapsed?"

  "I know you looked in my wallet, but you didn't figure it out, did you?" He sneered.

  "I didn't look in your wallet! There was a blue piece of paper sticking out, that's all I saw."

  Then I remembered why that paper looked so familiar. We had gone through boxes of the stuff in college. It was an Alka-Seltzer packet. Eli had stuck a tablet in his mouth to make it foam!

  "Why did you do it?" I asked. "Fake an attack."

  "You know why I did it," he said, pulling me into the kitchen.

  "So nobody would blame you when the others died."

  "Very good," he said sarcastically.

  In my panic, I'd forgotten I was wired, that Nick and Jayashree could hear everything. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to find me. Even if I could whisper the apartment number to them, there wasn't enough time for them to send someone. At least, they would have the recording as evidence. Time takes on a new quality when you think you're going to die. Every second seems like an hour.

  "If you kill me, don't you think you'll get caught? I'm a bit young to have a heart attack from your poison cookies."

  He stopped what he was doing. "You're right. That's why you're going to kill yourself by jumping off the balcony. Five stories ought to do it."

  "I'm going to jump out of your apartment?" I was stalling. "They'll still blame you."

  "No, they won't. This isn't my apartment." He started pushing me towards the balcony.

  I heard a siren in the distance and prayed it was someone coming for me. Eli opened the door to the balcony and I tried to twist away. He tried to pull me by my hair but he couldn't get a grip. I kicked and punched at him, but he was stronger than I was. I was inches from the guard rail of the balcony when, all of a sudden, Eli grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. He was dead! I started screaming at the top of my lungs just as the door was broken down and a SWAT team burst into the room.

  I don't remember much after that. I'm told I went into shock and they took me to the hospital by ambulance. I finally had my own hunky paramedics and I didn't even get to see them. When I woke up at Boca Regional Hospital a few hours later, I had a lot of visitors. Duke was sitting by my bedside, Grace on the other side. Jayashree and Nick were sitting in chairs by the door.

  "Jeez," I said when I opened my eyes, "can't a girl get a little shut-eye before she gets debriefed?"

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  "No need to debrief," Jayashree said, gently stroking my hair. "We heard everything. You were very brave."

  "You're too damn trusting," Duke scolded me. "You could've died!"

  "Yeah," I said, "then you couldn't be my arm candy anymore."

  He gave me a smile, although I could tell he wanted to lecture me some more.

  Nick walked over to put in his two cents. "Good job today, Quinn."

  "Thanks, Nick. Are you being nice because Grace is here?" I teased.

  Grace was sitting at the foot of my bed and she leaned forward. "He means it, but I'm mad at you. First, you don't tell me what's going on and then you blithely follow a murderer into his lair. You know it was my turn to rescue you and you didn't give me a chance."

  I shuddered. "I'm so glad you weren't there, Gracie! I'm sorry, I won't do it again. All I wanted was a little side job to break up the monotony and somehow I ended up here."

  Nick laughed. "I've gotta hand it to you, Quinn--you're the only person who could find trouble at an old folks' home!"

  "Speaking of finding trouble, how did you find me?"

  "Your stick pin had a GPS tracker in it," Nick said. "It looks like you missed a few episodes of NCIS."

  The nurse came in to say visiting hours were over and that I needed to rest. She started to shoo everyone out, but I asked Jayashree to stay a minute.

  "What's going to happen to the real Chagall?" I asked.

  "Well," she said, "normally it would go into evidence, but since the case is now solved and the perpetrator is dead, it will go to its rightful owner."

  "And who is that?
" I asked.

  "The people with the bill of sale and the certificate of authenticity are the rightful owners," she said, smiling.

  "Yippee! Jeff will be so happy," I said. "Can I be the one to tell him?"

  "I'd say you earned that right--and then some. I'm so sorry this happened, Jamie. I never imagined you would be in danger."

  "It was my own fault," I said. "Duke's right, I'm too trusting. I have one more question for you."

  'Sure, what is it?"

  "How did Eli die?"

  "His pacemaker malfunctioned," Jayashree said. "Fortuitous timing, I'd say."

  "No kidding! Wait, are you saying you think it was, like, divine intervention?"

  "If there was an intervention," she paused, "it wasn't divine. More of a math problem someone solved."

  "I'm not sure what you mean," I said. "

  "Your friend, Herb Lowenthal, he's a genius with math problems, isn't he? Perhaps you should ask him. Good-night, Jamie. I'll stop by to see you tomorrow."

  After Jayashree left, I took my purse out of the bedside drawer and found a business card I'd stashed in there. I dialed the number on the card using the hospital phone.

  "Bob Beckman speaking."

  "Hey Bob, it's Jamie Quinn. How's the new job?"

  "It's a dream come true and I have you to thank for it."

  "I'm glad to hear that because I need to ask you something."

  "Of course, anything at all."

  "What's the glitch you found in Herb's design?"

  "Anything but that!" he said. "You know I can't tell you."

  "Tell me."

  "But I signed a non-disclosure!"

  "Tell me," I insisted.

  "It could cause problems for Herb."

  "Tell me."

  "I'll get fired!"

  "Tell me."

  "I'll get sued."

  "You could get fired, Herb could get in trouble, I could get sued, but Bob, you're forgetting one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that."

  Bob laughed. "Fine, I'll tell you, but this stays between us, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Herb designs software for--"

  "Pacemakers," I said.

  "How did you know?"

  "Just a lucky guess," I said. "Today happens to be my lucky day."

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  "Why did you kill him, Herb? I'm not saying he didn't deserve it--I mean he did poison Clarence and Stanley and try to push me over a balcony."

  We were on our second cup of coffee, eating breakfast together at Herb's favorite deli. It had been a week since my wild day at La Vida Boca and I wanted some answers. To my surprise, Herb agreed we needed to talk.

  "I'll tell you why I did it, Jamie Quinn, but that's the end of a long story and I should start at the beginning." He took a sip of coffee, his hand a little shaky. "I told you before that I had a beautiful daughter, she was the light of my life and she died far too young. If I could give her my time on this earth, I would, but she's dead and I'm not. She was so gifted at such an early age that my wife and I sent her to Paris to study when she was eighteen. That's where she met Eli. He was twenty-five, a smooth talker, charming, not like the man you met--he was different then. But he was always a manipulator; someone who took advantage of people, used them and discarded them. He got my little girl hooked on drugs so she would depend on him and do what he said. He exploited her talents and made himself rich off them. When she died of an overdose at the age of twenty-one, he fled the country. My wife died soon after of a broken heart and I swore I would find Eli if it took me the rest of my life."

  I was shocked by these revelations, but there were still things I didn't understand.

  "So, you tracked him down to La Vida Boca?"

  "I did."

  "How did you find him?" I asked.

  "Through his pacemaker," Herb said. "I designed the software for several models and each pacemaker recipient is registered. That way, the doctors can scan an unconscious person for the microchip and know which pacemaker they have."

  "What about the flaw that Bob discovered, where someone can hack into the device? You put that there on purpose, didn't you?"

  Herb nodded, calmly admitting to his act of premeditated murder.

  "Eli had no idea who you were?"

  Herb shook his head.

  "Were you ever going to tell him?"

  My companion looked thoughtful. "I didn't know what I was going to do. I played with so many scenarios in my head. It wasn't until I learned that he had killed Clarence and Stanley that I knew I had to kill him."

  "How did you put all that together?" I was stacking the sugar packets on the table until they fell over.

  "The same way you did," he laughed. "I paid attention. But I also had an advantage--I knew what he was capable of."

  "Isn't it ironic that he pretended someone was trying to kill him, not knowing someone really was?"

  "It's no less than he deserved," Herb said bitterly.

  I reached over and touched his arm. "You never told me your daughter's name."

  "I think you already know it," he said. "Her name was Andrea."

  I was floored. "Your daughter was Andre? She forged all of those paintings?"

  He nodded, his eyes filled with sadness.

  "What a talent she had, I love her version of the Chagall more than I could ever love the original. It gives me such joy to look at it."

  "Thank-you for that, it means a lot to me," he replied.

  "Don't thank me, Herb, you saved my life." Tears started rolling down my face, I couldn't help it.

  Herb handed me a clean napkin and gave me a tender look. "It was a tragedy that I couldn't save my daughter, but now I see why God let me live so long. It was so I could save you, Jamie Quinn."

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  We drove back to La Vida Boca and I walked him in. As we passed the receptionist desk, I said "Look who I found, Glenda," and pointed at Herb.

  She almost smiled before she caught herself. "Finders, keepers."

  We said good-bye in the lobby and Herb handed me a large, thick envelope.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "Why, you writing a book?" he joked. "Make it a mystery and leave my chapter out."

  "Never!" I said, grinning.

  "Open it later," he said. "You can give me your answer next week."

  "You're so mysterious, Herb," I said and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  I was running late for my next appointment and had to hustle to make it to Hollywood on time. Duke was also planning to be there. When I walked in, I saw my client reading magazines in the waiting room.

  "Sorry I'm late!"

  "No problem, I was early." He gave me a nervous smile. "Duke said you guys had an update for me?"

  "We sure do, Jeff," I ushered him into my office.

  Ten minutes later, Duke arrived with a shopping bag which he placed carefully on my desk.

  "How y'all doing?" he asked ebulliently.

  "We're fantastic," I answered.

  "We are?" Jeff Rappaport said. "Does this mean you found out who sold my dad the forgery?"

  "Yeah, you could say that," Duke replied, taking a seat next to Jeff. "But those guys didn't know it was a forgery either."

  "I see." Jeff looked crestfallen, his last hope gone up in smoke.

  "They did want you to know they were very sorry," he added.

  "Sorry?" Jeff was incredulous.

  "Say, Duke," I said, "wasn't there one more thing we needed to tell Jeff?"

  "Pretty sure we're forgettin' something." Duke agreed.

  "Oh, yeah! I have this letter for you." I handed him an envelope.

  "Who is it from?" Jeff asked.

  "A friend of mine," I said, "She works for the FBI."

  Baffled, Jeff took the envelope and started reading. Duke and I
could barely contain ourselves waiting for him to get to the good part. Jeff's face lost all color, then immediately turned crimson.

  "Is this true? I don't understand--you found the real Chagall? The FBI says it belongs to us?"

  When Duke and I nodded, Jeff gave a loud whoop and leaped out of his chair.

  "Oh, Lord, this can't be happening! How is this possible? My sister's gonna flip out! You two, I can't believe you did this for me! How can I thank you? What do I owe you?"

  Duke laughed. "He took the news well, don't you think?"

  "I'd say so," I agreed.

  "This calls for a celebration!" Duke opened the bag on my desk and took out a bottle of champagne and three plastic glasses. He popped open the bubbly and filled the glasses.

  "Aren't you a classy guy," I said.

  "First class all the way," he agreed, handing us each a glass before raising his.

  "To fine art!"

  "To fine art!" Jeff toasted. "And to the best day of my life! How did you do it?"

  "That's classified, isn't it, Duke?"

  "Yup, classified."

  "How can I ever thank you?" Jeff asked. "Send me your bill," he said to Duke.

  "Got it right here," Duke said with a laugh, pulling the bill from his pocket.

  "Jamie, what do I owe you?" Jeff asked.

  "Nothing," I said. "You didn't hire me for this. There is one thing you could do for me."

  "Name it," he said.

  "I would love to have the forged painting," I said.

  "Of course you can have it!"

  "Excellent!" I said. "That calls for a drink in the middle of the day."

  "Or, as I call it, lunch," Duke said.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  After our impromptu celebration was over and I was alone in my office, I decided to open the envelope Herb had given me. Inside was a fat packet of papers with a letter on top.

  Dear Jamie Quinn,

  Remember I said I wanted to hire you? Well, here's the job offer. I'm a rich man and I want to honor my daughter's memory with all that money. I also want to do some good in this world--what else is money for, am I right? I've set up a trust, The Andrea Lowenthal Memorial Fund, and I want you to run it. You would be the trustee and you would be paid an annual salary. Here's what you would have to do: