Black Cat Blues Read online

  Although Maggy had thought she would tell Peterson that the guy wasn’t actually dead when she found him and that he spoke to her, she changed her mind when she was in the police office. The detective would not stop badgering her. She figured the less she said, the better. The guy was dead and there was nothing she could do about that.

  Maggy looked up for the sun, but it wasn’t there. All she wanted to do was get on with her life. Was that asking too much? For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to sing. And after her marriage fell apart, she had decided to go for it. She deserved some good fortune. And the clock was ticking. If she didn’t grab some of it soon, she’d be an old lady with broken dreams and no voice left in her. She was thirty-five.

  A shudder rippled through her body, a certainty that someone was watching her. What the hell? She looked over her shoulder. No one. Why did she even look? There was nothing to be scared of, in the middle of the day, on one of the busiest streets in downtown Vancouver. Besides, Inspector Peterson would find the killer. He looked capable in a policeman kind of way.

  The dead man’s eyes nudged her again. Okay, she could phone the cop and say she forgot to tell him the whole story. He might think her a complete idiot, but in the big picture that didn’t matter. She could still tell him all the truth. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head. But I don’t want to get involved. And the few words the dying guy said didn’t make sense anyway. Emer-Old? Better to stay out of it.

  What about the dead man’s family? Her stomach cringed. Didn’t they deserve more? At the very least, the knowledge that he wasn’t alone at the end might bring them some peace. Can anyone find consolation when someone they loved, in the prime of their life, is stabbed in a dark alley? She winced.

  Maggy looked over her shoulder again. A sea of commuters floated along with black umbrellas and briefcases. A few homeless people wove between them, looking dirty and desperate. All zombies shuffling to their destinations. I really have to stop drinking the cheap wine. The horror of last night clung to her like a second skin.

  She turned up the volume on her music. The cold wind gripped her as she turned onto Georgia Street. Menacing, black clouds swirled in the sky. She could taste a storm coming. At ten o’clock, she pushed open the heavy doors to the library and entered for her mysterious meeting.

  Standing between rows of bookshelves in the reference section, a wiry man waved her over with a Georgia Straight magazine. As she approached, he scanned her closely, and she did the same to him. He’d be easy to remember: middle aged and bald with beady black eyes and rectangular, tortoise-shell, reading glasses perched on the end of a long narrow nose. He looked like a human Minion.

  He motioned for her to sit at the table. After looking around, she complied. It was a public place. What could happen here?

  “My name is Edgar,” he said in a hushed voice. Her eyebrows rose. This guy watches too many spy movies.

  “Edgar?” she prompted.

  “You’re in danger—grave danger.”

  She gritted her teeth. There was no reason for her to be in danger. No reason. She swallowed.

  “Not me,” Edgar said, shaking his head. “I won’t hurt you. But the murderer—”

  Her mouth dropped despite her effort to keep a poker face.

  “What did Jimmy tell you?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “The man who was murdered in the alley behind the Black Cat.”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “Jimmy Daniels was killed because he knew too much.”

  “Look,” Maggy said. “I appreciate your concern for my safety. But I don’t know anything about Jimmy. I found his body in the alley, his dead body. That’s all.” The way Edgar kept looking over his shoulder made her skin crawl.

  His eyes returned to her. “Jimmy told you something.”

  “He was dead,” she said. How could he possibly know?

  Edgar’s eyes narrowed. “He said something to you.”

  “Listen, man. Dead men don’t talk.”

  “I was there.”

  She leaned back. It was dark that night. He could have been in the alley. And that meant he may have seen the murder.

  Edgar’s beady eyes bulged as he motioned for her to lean in. A few yards away a young child laughed and his mother shushed him. Normal, everyday library sounds, were oddly comforting. Her mind spun.

  Edgar continued in his fidgety voice. “I was following him. I wanted to see who he met.”

  She let out her breath slowly. “Why?”

  “Because, I want the gold.”

  “Okay,” she said, standing. “If you know anything about the murder you should talk to the police. The inspector in charge is Peterson.”

  “You have to listen to me. You’re in danger.”

  She froze. “Why would I be in danger?”

  He looked around the room with a nervous twitch in his shoulders. He grabbed her hand. His felt cold and clammy.

  “You have to listen to me. Your life depends on it.”

  She pulled her hand away, but sat back down.

  “I heard Jimmy was good at doing investigations, so I went to him for help. See, I needed help to find the treasure. He did some snooping around for me and the next thing I know, he’s dead.” Edgar’s face went white.

  “I don’t get it. You don’t make any sense. If Jimmy was working for you, why were you following him?”

  A fat tear slid down his left cheek. “I told him the work was dangerous. He just smiled. Jimmy didn’t take me seriously and now he’s dead. Cuz of me.”

  “What treasure?” She had to ask.

  “Brother XII’s”

  Her back straightened. “The Brother XII?” This was too strange.

  He nodded.

  “The cult leader who scammed people in the early twentieth century?” Edgar sure dreamed in Technicolor. The story of Brother XII was legendary on the west coast and Maggy knew all the sordid details. Memories of stories told around campfires late at night, about buried gold, black magic and wild sex, sped through her mind.

  “Yeah.” He leaned back and held her stare with bloodshot eyes.

  “People searched all over the islands for his treasure for over a century.” She leaned in. “What is it you know that they didn’t?”

  “I came upon some new information. My great-grandmother Rita worshipped Brother XII.” His left eye twitched. “She was one of his lovers. I didn’t know anything about their affair, but when my mother passed last month, I sorted through her things and found Rita’s diary. That’s when I learned about their relationship and the gold.”

  “Brother XII’s followers left him before the end.” Maggy had looked up the con man in the archives, when she was a teenager, to see how much of the legend was fact and how much was fiction.

  “My great-grandma Rita left when Brother XII took up with the dominatrix Madame Z. In her journal she describes her as a sadistic, evil bitch with a whip. She made their lives unbearable and banished any female competition. But that doesn’t matter. Rita knew Brother XII well enough before that. She knew where he hid the gold.”

  “So why didn’t she go get it?”

  “Rita didn’t need money and she was a proper lady. She married a prominent business man less than a year after her affair. Ashamed of her relationship with a cult leader, she didn’t tell anyone. The family thought she had toured Europe with a girlfriend, or at least that became the official story of where she had disappeared to. Her affair stayed hidden.”

  “I always thought someone had to know something.”

  “Brother XII’s gold wasn’t worth ruining her reputation for. Rita and the family didn’t want anyone to connect her to him and his cult. She came from money and married money. She didn’t need the treasure. She loved Brother XII because she believed in his prophecies of the future.” Edgar’s cheeks turned red. “The brother was a skilled lover who had little difficulty seducing a young, virgin. She didn’t want his gold.”

  “Okay,
now I understand her. But what about you? Why don’t you go get it?”

  “I don’t know where it is. I have a couple pieces of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. That’s why I hired Jimmy. I need to know more. I . . .” Edgar stopped. His mouth fell ajar, his hands clenched into fists. He looked around, and then he got up and ran to the nearest exit.

  Seconds later, a stocky man, dressed in a black hoody pulled low enough around his face to hide his features followed Edgar out the door. Medium height, and wearing black jeans, he dressed like a teenager, but he moved like a middle-aged man.

  Fear squeezed Maggy’s stomach, real fear. Edgar was an odd guy, but he was in the alley and he could be telling the truth. She swallowed. Catching her eye, in front of her on the table, beside the Georgia Strait magazine, lay a blue sticky note. It read: “Trust no one.”

  6

  One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. Bob Marley

  Maggy headed home. She couldn’t help but check over her shoulder every few minutes for Edgar or the guy who was following him. Sweet Jesus, my life is going crazy

  Vancouver’s November gloom had gained a whole new dimension, one of strange men. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself she couldn’t be in danger, her body physically disagreed. The goosebumps that rose when the name Brother XII was spoken had not gone down.

  As she reached an intersection, a white delivery van rushed by and brushed the side of her umbrella. It knocked her off-balance and she fell to the ground. Maggy drew a quick breath, and picked herself up off the dirty, wet road. You don’t stay down in a big city. Her jeans were soaked and gravel stuck to her hands. Just great!

  After brushing herself off, she carried on, promising she would only look behind her every ten paces. Counting would slow her down and make her feel in control. But her pulse raced and the short walk home seemed endless.

  Edgar’s story sounded so strange it was hard to believe, but his fear and the hooded man were real. As real as the murder.

  When she walked down the entrance to Granville Island she finally exhaled all the air she’d been holding in her lungs. She’d made it home.

  Maggy loved it here on the man-made island. To her mind it was the best place to live in Vancouver. She’d been born in Burnaby, one of the suburbs, and in her twenties she had lived in different areas of town. When she got married they moved into a sterile, cement high-rise in North Vancouver. Her husband liked it there. After their final fight, six months ago, she chose to live in a houseboat on the docks. It was her place.

  The culture of the island rocked. Always had. Situated in the middle of an inlet, it had a history as a meeting place. It collected people, all sorts of people. Filled with an eclectic mix of nationalities and personalities it had become her sanctuary.

  Granville Island had started out as a sandbar in the middle of a tidal flat in False Creek and was used by the First Nations people during low tide. Every high tide it was totally submerged and washed clean. Members of the Squamish Nation called it “Snauq.” They used it to corral fish and harvest a wide variety of shellfish. Some nights she swore she could hear their songs in the wind, but she didn’t tell anyone that.

  Back in the late eighteen hundreds the harbor commission took it over and reclaimed it from the sea by driving piles around the perimeter and adding fill. They called it “Industrial Island” to start with, but later changed it to Granville Island because it lay directly under the Granville Street Bridge.

  The island had been transformed many times over, with different industries, a shanty town, a grisly murder, typhoid, and Second World War saboteurs. Many ghosts hid in that dark past and she liked the texture they added to the culture. The island’s history lived alongside its present, in the landscape and in people’s minds, giving it a special aura. To her mind, it was a sacred place.

  Thinking about the island and all it meant to her brought comfort. Then she reached her houseboat. In front of her door stood a man who looked identical to the man who had died in her arms. Tall, lean and gorgeous.

  Maggy walked up to him. “What do you want?”

  “Were you with Jimmy Daniels when he died?” His voice sounded controlled.

  She looked closer. Dark circles ringed his eyes, but there was no mistaking how much he looked like the victim. He had to be a relative. “Come on in,” she said.

  The man followed her into her home and as he scanned it, she imagined seeing it through his eyes. On the lower floor was a couch handed down from her mother, a comfy chair from the thrift shop, and a basic kitchen and bathroom. Guitar music lay strewn over every surface. It smelled of coffee and orange peels. The bedroom was in the loft above the main room and could only be accessed by a ladder.

  “Sorry about the mess.” But she wasn’t. She ran a hand through her hair and motioned the man to the chair by the window. He walked past her, moved some music sheets out of his way and sat. He smelled of expensive cologne.

  “My name is Logan Daniels.” A buttoned down, baritone. The smoothness of his voice almost hid his grief. He wore well-pressed, brown khakis and a cotton shirt, under a sports coat.

  She nodded. “Are you the dead man’s brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Their eyes locked. His held the kind of depth a woman could get lost in. She looked away. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  He cleared his throat. “Just tell me what happened.”

  She sat on the edge of the couch near him and stared over his shoulder as she spoke, not wanting to be distracted. “I was walking through the alley and I saw his body. I screamed for help, but there was nobody around. I dialed 911 and waited for the police.” The parts she left out wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  “He was dead?”

  “Dead.”

  He shifted in his seat, as if the act of sitting was uncomfortable. “I thought maybe he said something.”

  Damn, she was a lousy liar. Always had been. A prickly sensation ran up her spine. Jimmy had wanted her to tell Logan. It had been his last wish—a dead man’s last wish.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “No, nothing,” she mumbled, looking at her feet.

  He stared at her.

  “Dead men don’t talk.” She couldn’t tell him. What good would it do him to know what his brother said? It didn’t make sense, anyway. Emer-Old? “I tried to stop his bleeding.” She hesitated. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

  He nodded, but the fine muscles around his eyes twitched. She really shouldn’t look at those eyes. He looked away. “I was supposed to meet him. He said it was important. I thought maybe he said something about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

  Logan sat in silence. Grief hung around him like a thick cloud. She wanted to help him, but if she told him what Jimmy said, the cop would be down her throat for lying. It would be far better if she stuck to her story and got on with her life.

  But if she didn’t tell Logan the truth, she was lying to a grieving man who deserved to know what happened to his brother. Her gut twisted. That wasn’t right. And, to top it all off, according to Edgar, she was in danger for knowing the truth. So was it safer to tell, or not to? Sweet Jesus . . .how did I get into such a mess?

  “You sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee?”

  “Okay.” He studied her face as if the answers he sought were there.

  As she brewed a pot, he found his voice. “What were you doing in a dark alley at that time of night? I saw the alley. A beautiful woman like you shouldn’t be walking there at any time of day. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Maggy went back to sit on the couch. “I sing at the Black Cat. I was on my way home. And I may look small to you, but I can handle myself.” She did her best to sound cool, but her body purred from his compliment. It wasn’t often a woman heard the word “beautiful” from a handsome man. Maybe she should open a window to cool the room.

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sp; Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Did you see Jimmy earlier in the bar? I thought the inspector said something about that.”

  “Yeah, actually I did.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “No. But I wanted to.” Her cheeks burned.

  Logan laughed. “Yeah, Jimmy was always the charming one.”

  He was leaning close enough to her that his fancy cologne made her nose itchy. She smiled, “Oh I think you caught enough of the family charm, Logan.”

  Their eyes locked.

  He grimaced. “But Jimmy said nothing?”

  “Sorry.”

  Logan stood and headed for the door. “Can I take a rain check on the coffee? I’m going to go down to the Black Cat to see if he talked with anyone.”

  She wanted to blurt our Jimmy’s message, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded. “Good luck,” she said.

  Maybe she should have said more, but she had her afternoon job to go to and . . . she really didn’t want to be involved.

  Or in danger.

  7

  Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. Plato

  Gilbert’s chair creaked under his weight as he leaned back and swore at the roof of his cabin. Fucking hell. I missed the idiot again. He wanted to strangle more information out of Edgar Whitley. Gil looked out of the port hole of his fishing boat. The day wasn’t over yet. If he could just corner the guy.

  The weasel had to know more than he was saying. Had to.

  Gilbert scratched his grizzly jaw. It had been almost two days since he’d killed Jimmy Daniels. After Gilbert’s body stopped shaking and he’d puked out his insides, a coldness had taken over him and it hadn’t left.

  It was a darkness sent by the devil himself. He hadn’t meant to kill the guy. He didn’t want to be a murderer. At first the weight of his guilt made him contemplate suicide. He didn’t deserve to live. That he knew.