Cat Among the Fishes

by Louise Clark

  Fear and something akin to respect slithered down his spine. He kept his voice low, using the quiet tone to smother emotion. “Did you kill Norman Laing too?”

  Her lip curled. “He was worse than Shane. More vicious. He had a nasty wit about him, making fun of everyone and everything. I found out he taunted Corey that day at the Falls. He called my son a cowardly geek.” She shook her head. “That Norman Laing should say that, when he was just as bright and academically oriented as Corey was and as much of a geek. He was a horrible man.”

  Woodgate walked over to stand in front of Sheila. “Mrs. Bunch, I heard what you just said. I am arresting you for the murders of Shane Higginson and Norman Laing.”

  Quinn stepped back as Woodgate informed Sheila of her rights and put handcuffs on her. She didn’t resist. He had the sense that with Corey gone and her revenge achieved, she didn’t really mind.

  Woodgate said, “Mrs. Bunch—Sheila—why did you let it go this far? I investigated your son’s accident all those years ago. Why didn’t you come and talk to me about your suspicions and your anger before you killed Shane Higginson?”

  “I didn’t intend to kill him,” Sheila said.

  That surprised Quinn. Was it true? Revenge could come in many forms. Perhaps she just wanted to taunt Higginson and Laing the way they had taunted Corey all those years ago and things got out of hand.

  She looked from Woodgate to Quinn. “I didn’t want Shane to die. I wanted to hurt him. I was going to get him drunk and then push him off the cliff. I wanted him to break his back, the way Corey did. I wanted him to suffer, to see his career disappear. To watch his life collapse in on itself, until every moment was a struggle.” She shrugged. There was no remorse in her expression.

  “That night, I came back here because I knew he was going to be in his office. I bought a bottle of vodka and laced it with sleeping pills the doctor had given me after Corey died. I suggested we drink to the success of his project. He was happy enough to consume my liquor and it wasn’t long before he was slurring his words. I meant to get him to walk with me along the edge of the cliff so I could push him off, but…” She shrugged. “He wouldn’t go and I could see he was wondering why I was sober and he was so very out of it. I knew that the next day he’d question everything about that night and…” She shrugged again. “He’d figure it out. Then he’d have me. He’d force me to help him build his fish farm. He’d tie it to Corey’s name. He’d be in my life forever. I… I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So you strangled him,” Woodgate said.

  Another shrug. “He was an arrogant man who thought he could handle a little bit of a woman like me, even though he was falling over drunk. I slipped behind him and used his own tie to do it. He fought, but he was so plastered he just flailed about.” She drew a deep shuddering breath. “It took a long time to kill him.” Her voice cracked and then descended into a whisper. “Too long a time.”

  “What about Norman Laing?” Woodgate asked. “His body was found on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs. Did you just want to make him suffer too?”

  “I told you how he was, how he taunted my poor Corey that day. And the odd time he came to visit Corey? He’d boast about his successes and then he’d say, ‘Corey, you were smarter than I was. Pretty impressive what I’ve done, eh?’ and Corey would nod and smile and seethe inside.”

  She shook her head. “After Shane died, he came to me and told me the fish farm had to go ahead. He begged me to support its implementation. He said he had both his academic reputation and his financial future resting on it.” She snorted with derision. “Turns out Doctor Norman Laing wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. The agreement he had with Progressive Fish Farms to license his new process was only for new installations, starting with the one here. Progressive wasn’t willing to apply the process at an older site, so if the new farm here wasn’t built, his patent would be worth nothing.”

  “You must have lured him to the edge of the cliffs, then pushed him off,” Woodgate said.

  Sheila nodded. “It wasn’t hard. He wanted so desperately to convince me. I told him I needed to visualize how the farm would look, so we walked to the edge of the cliff. I offered him a drink—I had brought a small bottle in my purse—and he accepted it. He chugged down quite a lot, straight from the bottle, then he started to talk. And the more he talked the more he drank. It was easy to give him a shove when the time came.”

  “We’d best go down to the station now,” Woodgate said. He looked at Quinn. “I’ll need that recording you made.”

  Quinn nodded. “I’ll e-mail it to you.”

  Woodgate tugged on Sheila’s arm. She nodded and stumbled after him, lost in the darkness of those nights when half a lifetime of despair coalesced into moments of lost fury.

  Quinn drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The interview wasn’t one he would easily forget. He was glad it was finished.

  Trevor wandered over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done.”

  Watching as Woodgate put Sheila into the back seat of his car, Quinn said, “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Patterson came up beside Trevor. She too watched Woodgate as he settled into the driver’s seat and backed the car out of its space. “He’ll have to let Adam go.”

  Trevor nodded. “I’ll just head down to the station to make sure your brother-in-law’s release is done in a timely manner.”

  Patterson grinned. “I’ll join you. Woodgate is going to be pretty busy for a while. I wouldn’t want him to forget.”

  Greg, who had followed his wife, slipped his arm around her waist and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll come too. I’d like to be there when he’s freed.”

  Trevor nodded and they headed off to their vehicles.

  His gaze still on the parking lot, Quinn felt a touch on his shoulder and looked around to see that Christy was behind him. Back at the demonstration pool, Ellen, Roy, and the cat were fussing over the fish farm man who was loudly telling them to leave the property.

  Christy said, “I heard part of what she said. That must have been tough.”

  Quinn stared moodily at the cars disappearing up the road on their way to the highway. “I ask questions and when I listen, I absorb what the person I’m interviewing tells me. It creates an environment that makes people willing to answer, but…” He paused, then looked down at her. She was listening as intensely as he had been, a little frown between her brows. “Sometimes I absorb too much.”

  She smiled at him and linked her arm with his. “Sounds to me like you need a vacation.”

  That made him laugh. “I thought I was on vacation.”

  She shot him a mischievous look. “Camping? With Aunt Ellen grousing every morning because she doesn’t have a real bed? Not to mention a murder going on around us.”

  “When you put it that way…”

  She nodded. “I do.” They started to walk back to the fish tank. “I’m taking Noelle to Kingston to visit my parents for a few days before school begins.” She tilted her head and looked into his eyes. “Want to come with us? Meet my parents?”

  His breath caught. When he’d told her he wanted her back, that he’d made a mistake, he thought he would have to begin the relationship process from scratch. Well, maybe not from scratch, but a slow rebuild of trust that would grow into something solid. He didn’t expect Christy to dive in, right back to where they were all those months ago in California. Yet, this invitation to meet the in-laws showed him she had.

  Emotion rose up, caught him in its grip. He pulled her to a stop and there, in front of the fish tank full of agitated salmon, their grouchy caregiver, his father, her aunt-in-law, and the damned cat, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.

  When he pulled away, she was smiling. He smiled back. “Oh, yeah. You couldn’t keep me away.”

  Before You Go…

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  Page Ahead for an Excerpt From:

  CAT IN THE LIMELIGHT

  Cat in the Limelight

  The 9 Lives Cozy Mystery Series, Book Six

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Christy said. She and Quinn were standing in the shadows on the long terrace of a graceful old mansion. The terrace looked out toward the city of Vancouver, lights gleaming in the dark, starlit sky.

  “It certainly is,” Quinn said, drawing her towards him. He wasn’t looking at the view.

  Christy chuckled. They were happily immersed in each other when the evening’s quiet was broken by a scream, followed by shouts, then a babble of voices.

  Quinn jerked his head up, looking byond the terrace. “What the—” His concerned gaze met Christy’s startled one and together they rushed to the balustrade where they looked over the edge and down into the garden.

  Below, at the bottom of a single set of stairs, a woman lay face down on a flagstone path. Her arms were flung outward as if she had tripped and fallen down the stone staircase and had tried to save herself, but to no avail. One of her legs was bent at an odd angle, clearly broken. A little crowd hovered around her. Christy recognized three members of Lightening Rod, the band that had provided music for the fundraising gala she and Quinn were attending. A good-looking man in a tux—one of the professors who worked at the college that was the recipient of tonight’s benefit—stood to one side, his hands in his pockets, his head bent.

  At the top of the staircase stood a middle-aged man and woman, the Hargreaves. The couple had been on the terrace when Christy and Quinn arrived and they must have descended to the lower level by one of the curving staircases at either end of the terrace.

  It had been Mrs. Hargreaves who screamed. Christy knew that for sure, because now she screamed again.

  “Get a grip,” Jackson Hargreaves said, without any sympathy at all. He and his wife had been arguing when they were on the terrace and it appeared they were still arguing now. He descended the single staircase to the little group at the bottom. Mrs. Hargreaves hiccupped, then she sniffed, but she didn’t scream again. She remained standing at the top of the stone staircase, making no attempt to follow her husband.

  The flagstone path on which the body lay led to a shadowed arbor where it joined a second flagstone path that wound through the gardens. A figure appeared out of the gloom, and then another. The indistinct figures solidified into a man and a woman. Christy gasped. “Quinn! That’s Sledge.”

  Quinn nodded. “Isn’t that the drummer from Lightening Rod that he’s with?”

  Christy leaned over the edge of the balustrade for a better look. “I think so.”

  “What’s he doing here? I thought my dad and Trevor were packing him up and taking him home before he lost it and got into a fight with that jerk who thought he needed a singing lesson.”

  Christy shrugged uneasily. “Maybe it was all sorted out and he decided to slip away for some quiet time, like we did.”

  Sledge and the girl reached the group around the injured woman about the same time Jackson Hargreaves did. Sledge crouched down and touched her wrist, then her neck. Searching for a pulse, Christy thought, concerned. He stood up and looked at the others. “Has anyone called 9-1-1?”

  The Lightening Rod band members shook their heads. The prof in the tux shrugged.

  Jackson Hargreaves snapped, “Of course not! I just got here.”

  Sledge pulled out his phone and dialed the number. “I need to report a death.”

  * * *

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  CAT IN THE LIMELIGHT

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  Also by Louise Clark

  The Nine Lives Cozy Mystery Series

  The Cat Came Back

  The Cat’s Paw

  Cat Got Your Tongue

  Let Sleeping Cats Lie

  Cat Among The Fishes

  Cat in the Limelight

  * * *

  Forward in Time Series

  Make Time For Love

  Claim Time For Love

  About the Author

  The author of the 9 Lives Cozy Mystery Series, Louise Clark has been the adopted mom of a number of cats with big personalities. The feline who inspired Stormy, the cat in the 9 Lives books, dominated her household for twenty loving years. During that time he created a family pecking order that left Louise on top and her youngest child on the bottom (just below the guinea pig), regularly tried to eat all his sister’s food (he was a very large cat), and learned the joys of travel through a cross continent road trip.

  The 9 Lives Cozy Mystery Series—The Cat Came Back, The Cat’s Paw, and Cat Got Your Tongue —as well as the single title mystery, A Recipe For Trouble, are all set in her home town of Vancouver, British Columbia. For more information please sign up for her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/b0mHNb. Or visit her at www.louiseclarkauthor.com or on Facebook at LouiseClarkAuthor.