Читать книгу Joe Shoe 2-Book Bundle - Michael Blair - Страница 6

Wednesday, December 15

“Aren’t you supposed to be out shopping for a sailboat?” Muriel said when Shoe walked into the offices the next morning.

“Slight change of plans,” he said. He tilted his head toward the door to Hammond’s office. As usual, it was closed. He couldn’t remember ever seeing it standing open. He explained what Hammond had asked him to do.

“You’re joking?” Muriel said.

“I need the money,” Shoe replied.

“Right,” Muriel said skeptically. Over the years, Shoe had used information obtained as a result of his investigations into the companies Hammond Industries had targeted for acquisition to make his own investments. Nothing too large, nothing that would attract too much attention, but it had allowed him to pay cash for his house, as well as accumulate a tidy nest egg for his retirement. Patrick may have been suspicious, and Hammond likely took such activity for granted, but Muriel was the only person Shoe had actually told. In fact, she had made a few investments of her own, which was how she had been able to buy the townhouse in New Westminster.

“Sailboats aren’t cheap,” Shoe said.

“Ah.” She smiled.

Del Tilley came into the reception area.

“Schumacher, what are you doing here?” he demanded. His yellow eyes glinted like chips of polished amber.

“Rejoice with me, Mr. Tilley,” Shoe said. “I’ve been reinstated.”

Tilley’s face tightened, as if someone were over-winding a clockwork spring in his head. “I haven’t been informed of your reinstatement,” he said. “I’ll have to speak to Mr. Hammond.”

“By all means,” Shoe replied. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate your diligence.”

Tilley, expression rigid, used his cellphone to call Hammond at home. “Pardon me for bothering you, sir,” he said when he got Hammond on the line. “I’m calling about Mr. Schumacher. He claims he’s—” He broke off suddenly. Ears slowly turning red, he listened for a moment, then said, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He disconnected, glared at Shoe for a moment, then began to walk away.

“One moment, please, Mr. Tilley,” Shoe said.

Tilley turned. “What is it?”

“Did Mr. Hammond tell you he asked me to look into Patrick’s death?”

“No, he didn’t,” Tilley replied as though his mouth hurt. “However, any investigation into O’Neill’s murder should be the responsibility of my department.”

“You can take that up with Mr. Hammond,” Shoe said. “In the meantime, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

The planes and angles of Tilley’s face hardened.

“Where were you between three and four on Monday afternoon?”

“As I told the police, I was in my office.”

“When Hammond Industries took over the building maintenance and security company you worked for,” Shoe said, “Patrick didn’t want to keep you on, did he?”

“That’s right,” Tilley replied. “He didn’t. But,” he added with a tight smile, “I harboured no ill will toward him. Besides, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“You are indeed,” Shoe said. “Thank you.”

Tilley turned on his heel and stalked out of the reception area, back stiff and fists clenched at his sides. Shoe watched him until he disappeared down the hall toward his office, then turned to Muriel.

“Do you have any plans for lunch?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

“Have lunch with me? My treat.”

“In that case, of course.”

“Good,” Shoe said. “It’s a date, then.”

“Ooh, I haven’t had one of those in a while,” she said.

Patrick’s office was down the same hall as Del Tilley’s. Shoe found Patrick’s former assistant, Sandra St. Johns, sitting at Patrick’s desk, tapping at the keys of a laptop computer, her large round glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Can I help you?” she said, slipping her glasses off and placing them on the desk, which was littered with open file folders and documents.

Sandra was twenty-seven, slim, and coltish, with long sandy hair, brown eyes, and slightly boyish features. Shoe hadn’t exchanged more than a couple dozen words with her at any given time in the year and a half she had been Patrick’s assistant. Patrick had praised her competency more than once. Naturally, because she and Patrick had spent a lot of time together, there had been rumours of an affair. An equal number of rumours, however, likely initiated by men who’d crashed and burned after hitting on her, had her pegged as a lesbian. Shoe was inclined to discount both.

“Have you taken over Patrick’s office?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” she said. “I’m just trying to bring myself up to speed on some of the things he was working on.” She stood. “If I keep busy...” she said, but her voice trailed off and she left the thought uncompleted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Was there something you wanted? I’ll get out of your way if you like.” She leaned over the desk and started to close and stack file folders.

“No, please,” Shoe said. “You don’t have to leave. I’m just looking for Patrick’s appointment book. Is it somewhere in that pile, or did he take it with him when he left?”

“Patrick kept his appointments in his Palm,” she said.

“Pardon me?”

“This is a Palm,” she said, picking up a brushed metal device about the size of a personal cassette player, but slimmer. It had a small screen with a row of tiny buttons below it. “A palmtop computer,” she explained. “I suppose he had it with him when he—when he left.”

“He didn’t have a real appointment book,” Shoe said.

“This is a real appointment book,” she replied with a tolerant smile. “And address book, notepad, to-do list, calculator. You can even...” She paused.

“What?” Shoe asked.

“Do you know where Patrick’s laptop is?”

Shoe looked at the laptop on Patrick’s desk.

“This one’s mine,” she explained. She held up her Palm device. “You can synchronize the information on these things with other computers. That means—”

“I think I understand,” Shoe said, hoping he did.

“But if he took his Palm with him, wouldn’t he have also taken his laptop?”

She shook her head. “The company supplies the laptops.”

“You didn’t find his in his office?” he said.

“No.”

Shoe wondered if it would do any good to get in touch with Sergeant Matthias to see if Patrick had his Palm or his laptop with him when he was killed and, if so, to ask for a printout of the appointment book data. Probably not. The police wouldn’t be keen on sharing information with a potential suspect.

“What’s this about?” Sandra asked.

“I’m conducting an internal investigation into Patrick’s death,” Shoe said.

“I see,” she said.

“You spent a lot of time with him. Is there anything you can think of that might give us an idea why he was killed?”

She shook her head. “Not a thing,” she said. “I wish there were. We may have spent a lot of time together, but we weren’t really friends. Our relationship was strictly business. I know very little about his personal life.”

“Did you know Patrick was planning to leave the company?”

“No, but it didn’t come as any great surprise. He was pretty angry about Mr. Hammond’s refusal to go public.”

“He told me he was looking into a couple of business opportunities,” Shoe said. “Do you know anything about them?”

“No,” she said.

“In the weeks before he left,” Shoe said, “did you notice anything unusual about his mood or behaviour?”

“He did seem distracted,” she replied. “A little preoccupied. But, in retrospect, that makes sense, if he was planning to resign.”

“What were you and he working on?”

“We’d just begun negotiations for the acquisition of the micro-brewery in Port Moody. That’s what I’m working on now. Your report was very helpful, by the way. We had also just wrapped up the sale of a marina property in Delta to a condominium developer. Nothing very exciting.”

“And before that?”

“Let’s see,” she said, brow furrowing. “We spent a couple of months restructuring the Handyman hardware chain. Oh, yes, and we closed down an old rubber gasket manufacturing plant in Surrey. It was one of the first companies Mr. Hammond acquired when he was starting out.”

“Was anyone particularly angry or upset at losing his job?”

“No,” she replied. “We actually hired staff for the hardware chain. As for the gasket plant, everyone there seemed relieved that we’d finally put the place out of its misery. It hadn’t had an order in months.”

“Could you give me their names anyway?” Shoe asked.

“Sure.” She sat down, put on her glasses, and pulled her laptop closer. She spoke as she tapped at the keys and stroked the touchpad. “There were only six people left,” she said. “The manager, who was in his eighties, almost doddering. An office manager/bookkeeper in her sixties who’d been there since the mid-fifties and pretty much ran everything. A secretary/receptionist, also in her sixties. Two lathe operators at least as old. And this guy in shipping and receiving who didn’t have any teeth and kept looking down the front of my blouse.” She tapped the return key. “Not that there’s anything to see,” she said, peering down at her chest. She stood up. “Okay, it’s printing now. You can pick it up in the photocopy room next to your office.” Removing her glasses, she rubbed the furrow between her brows with the tip of her index finger. “There was one thing that was kind of unusual,” she said.

“Unusual how?” Shoe asked.

“Patrick seemed to hit it off with the office manager/bookkeeper, Ramona Ross. He took her to lunch a couple of times, rather long lunches, which wasn’t like Patrick at all, and one day she was pretty tipsy when they came back. Happy tipsy, though. And I think he spoke to her a couple of times after the plant closed.” She looked thoughtful for a moment longer, then said, “Other than that, it’s been business as usual. Oh, he had an argument with Charles Merigold last month.” She shrugged. “But then he and Charles were always arguing about one thing or another. This one was a little louder than usual, though.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“No.”

“Patrick travelled quite a lot,” Shoe said. “Did you often go with him?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not always.”

“Do you recall anything out of the ordinary happening on any of your trips with him?”

“No. Nothing. He usually left me on my own for a while whenever we were in Montreal, but he had family there, so there’s nothing unusual about that.”

“Were your trips always strictly business?”

“What does that mean?” she said. A pink tinge coloured her throat, whether from anger or embarrassment, Shoe wasn’t certain.

“There were rumours that you and he were having an affair.”

“Of course there were,” she snapped. “There are also rumours that you’re an intelligent man.” The flush deepened and spread to her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m a little sensitive about that.”

“There was nothing to them, then?”

She smiled thinly. “No, nothing,” she said, but she didn’t make eye contact with him as she said it. She stood up and closed her laptop, a little roughly, Shoe thought. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“Stay put,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

“How’s your investigation going?” Muriel asked.

The restaurant on the ground floor was crowded and noisy, and Shoe had trouble hearing Muriel’s soft voice over the clatter and buzz of the lunch-hour trade in pasta primavera and investment strategies.

“Hard to tell,” he said. “But I’ve only just got started.” He summarized what he’d learned from Sandra St. Johns, which didn’t take long. “Were they having an affair?” he asked when he’d finished.

“According to the water-cooler crowd they were,” Muriel replied. “But then, according to the water-cooler crowd, so are we.” She smiled. “We both know how much truth there is to that, don’t we?”

Shoe felt himself colour. “So you don’t think they were?”

“I don’t really know,” Muriel replied. “I’d be disappointed in Patrick if they were. But people often fail to live up to our expectations, don’t they?”

“Only if your expectations are high,” Shoe said.

She said, “Hmm,” and picked at her salad in silence for a moment, then laid down her fork. “I was angry with him, you know. Do you know when he told me he was leaving? At five o’clock on Friday. He came by my desk, handed me his keys and his parking pass, and told me he wouldn’t be needing them anymore.” Her eyes misted. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t he tell anyone he was leaving? I thought we were his friends.”

“He wasn’t moving to Mars,” Shoe said. “It wasn’t like we were never going to see him again.”

“But we aren’t ever going to see him again, are we?”

“No,” Shoe said. He was gripped by a sudden, pervading sense of loss. Patrick was gone and in his place there was a cold void. There would be no more rambling conversations over slow games of chess. No more weekend sails on English Bay in a rented C&C (Patrick had sold the Hunter two years before). No more summer lunchtime walks along the Stanley Park Seawall admiring the tanned and muscular rollerblade girls. He washed down the tightness in his throat with a sip of water.

“Do you think he was in some kind of trouble?” Muriel asked.

“If he was, he hid it well.”

“Too well,” she said.

They talked about nothing of consequence for a few minutes—Muriel’s townhouse in New Westminster, Shoe’s ramshackle house and the work he was doing on it, January Jack Pine and his makeshift houseboat—and then lapsed into a comfortable silence until the server had cleared the table. Neither wanted coffee.

“Under the circumstances this may seem trivial,” Muriel said as they waited for the check, “but what are your plans for the holidays?”

Last year Shoe had spent the holidays with his family in Toronto, for the first time in years. Generally, though, he didn’t celebrate Christmas, spending his time off catching up on his reading or just puttering about. As a rule, he turned down invitations to Christmas dinner; however, the year before last he had had Christmas dinner with Patrick and Victoria, Muriel and her not-yet-former fiancé, and another couple. After dinner Patrick had distributed song sheets and insisted on singing carols.

“The usual, I suppose,” he told Muriel. “How about you?”

“This will be my parents’ first Christmas since my grandfather died,” she said. “They’ve booked a tour to Las Vegas to gamble away my inheritance, so I’ll be on my own. Maybe we could spend some time together.”

“I could use some help painting my house,” Shoe said.

“Gosh, what a treat,” she said with a smile.

No matter how hard she tried—and for Patrick’s sake she had tried—Victoria found it impossible to like Sean Rémillard. Sean was Patrick’s first cousin, the only child of Patrick’s mother’s younger sister. Patrick and Sean had pretty much grown up together after the death of Sean’s father in a car accident. While Victoria was sure the voters would love him, for her liking his smile was too wide, his hair was too carefully arranged, and his easy French-Irish charm was too contrived. He did, however, appear to be genuinely distraught over Patrick’s death.

“Jesus, Victoria,” he said as he embraced her. “I can’t believe this. Stuff like this just isn’t supposed to happen. God, I’m so sorry. You must be devastated.”

“Thank you, Sean,” she said as he released her. With a grunt, he dropped limply onto the sofa.

Charlotte took Victoria’s hand and held it as she kissed her coolly on the cheek. Charlotte Privett Rémillard was not a hugger. “My father sends his condolences,” she said softly. She let go of Victoria’s hand and patted her hair, although not a single silvery-blond strand was out of place.

“Thank you,” Victoria said again.

Charlotte lowered herself onto the sofa beside her husband, carefully adjusting the skirt of her Versace suit, perfectly cut to make the best of her slightly too thick figure. She sat with her back straight, shoulders square, and plump knees together.

“Can I get either of you anything?” Victoria asked. “A drink? Coffee?”

“What?” Sean said. “No. No, thanks.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Nothing, thank you,” she said, adjusting the overlap of her suit jacket, as if she were concerned about the amount of cleavage showing, which was none at all.

She flinched as Sean lunged to his feet and went to the big window overlooking English Bay a thousand feet below. He stood with his back to Victoria and Charlotte for a few seconds, shoulders slumped, before he turned and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Have the police released Patrick’s body yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Victoria said. “Probably by Friday, though.”

“What’s taking so long?”

“The coroner’s office is busy this time of year, apparently,” she said. “And evidently short-staffed due to a flu bug that’s going around.”

Sean nodded. “Have you spoken to his mother?”

“Yesterday.”

“She wanted him buried in Montreal, of course.”

“Actually, no,” Victoria said. “He’s to be buried here. This is his home.”

“Of course,” Sean said. He looked at Charlotte, then back to Victoria. “Money is a bit tight these days,” he said. “What with campaign expenses and all.” He glanced at Charlotte again. “But I’ll find a way to pay her way out for the funeral,” he said. Charlotte’s heart-shaped face remained expressionless, except for a bit of tightness around her small, cupid’s-bow mouth. “His brothers, too.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Victoria said. “It’s been taken care of.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Sean said.

“Patrick’s former employer has agreed to cover the cost,” she replied.

“The least we can do is spring for the hotel.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

The interchange lagged.

“How’s the campaign going?” Victoria asked.

“What? Oh, fine. Ah, maybe I’ll have that drink now after all. Scotch-rocks?”

“Certainly. Charlotte?”

“Nothing for me,” Charlotte replied.

Victoria went into the kitchen to make Sean’s drink, leaving him standing at the living room window, staring out over the rooftops toward the grey expanse of English Bay, and Charlotte watching him, a little cow-eyed, Victoria thought, from the sofa. He was still standing there when Victoria returned with a Scotch on the rocks for him and a glass of white wine for herself.

He took the drink from her. “I remember when Pat first brought me up here and told me he was going to build a house here one day. It was just a few weeks after we’d arrived in Vancouver. I didn’t think the old Volvo we’d driven from Montreal would make it, but it did. Damned near killed ourselves going back down, though, when the brakes gave out.

Good thing for us it had a standard transmission or we’d’ve ended up in the bay.” He looked at the drink in his hand. “Damn,” he said thickly and gulped at it. Ice rattled against his teeth.

Sean no longer seemed quite so slick and superficial. His smile was crooked, his hair was mussed, and his salon tan had turned waxy. Victoria placed a hand on his arm.

“I’m so sorry, Sean.”

“There’s only me left,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“There used to be three of us,” Sean said. “Mary and Patrick and me. Mary drowned, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” Victoria said. She glanced at Charlotte. Her eyes were closed and her round cheeks were mottled, embarrassed, perhaps, by Sean’s public display of emotion.

“Her little boat turned over and she drowned,” Sean said. “And now Patrick’s gone. So there’s only me.” He put his half-finished drink down on the coffee table. “We have to go,” he said suddenly.

Charlotte stood and adjusted the fall of her skirt, the drape of her jacket.

Sean took a deep breath, smoothed his hair with the palms of his hands. “You’ll call if you need anything.”

“Yes, of course,” Victoria said.

She saw them to the door, where Sean held her by the shoulders, kissed her on both cheeks, and said goodbye. Charlotte murmured and kissed her on the cheek again, barely making contact. As Victoria closed the door behind them, the phone rang. She let Consuela answer it and went back into the living room.

Consuela came out of the kitchen carrying the cordless phone. “Mr. Shoe,” she announced. Victoria took the phone.

“How are you?” Joe Shoe asked.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Are you getting any rest?”

“I seem to be sleeping all the time,” she said. “But I wake up even more tired than before.”

“Are you up to a visitor?”

She wanted to say no, but she said, “Yes, of course.”

“I’ll see you in half an hour then,” Shoe said.

She hung up. She had just enough time to take a bath.

Shoe told Muriel where he would be if anything came up, then drove across the Lions Gate Bridge, taking Taylor Way up into the British Properties. The sun was trying to break through the cloud cover. He parked in the steep, cobbled drive in front of the house. A battered Mazda station wagon, which belonged to the housekeeper, was tucked discreetly into a narrow space between the twocar garage and a high retaining wall.

He rang the doorbell, still unable to name the tune it played. Victoria answered. She looked tired but was freshly made up and smelled faintly of floral soap. Her pale hair was tied back, emphasizing the sharpness of her cheekbones.

“Before you go,” she said as she stood aside to let him in, “you’ve got to help me find that fucking doorbell and kill it.”

He left his coat and hat on a chair in the hall and followed her into the kitchen, where she offered to make herbal tea. He declined.

“Coffee?”

“Please don’t go to any trouble,” he said.

“I won’t,” she said. “Consuela makes the coffee around here. Mine is undrinkable.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Shoe said.

They went into the living room. He noted the half-empty glass of white wine on the coffee table. Victoria picked it up.

“Would you like a drink? No, of course you would-n’t. What was I thinking?” He smiled. “You’re so god-damned pure,” she said, almost resentfully. “Have you learned to swear yet? Say ‘fuck,’ Joe.”

“Fuck,” he said.

She grunted and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Profanity doesn’t offend me,” he said. “I just never got into the habit of using it in conversation. And I do drink on occasion.”

“How’s your sex life?” Victoria said.

“Not open for discussion,” he replied.

“That bad, eh? What happened to what’s-her-name, the woman who operated the charter fishing boat? Gabriella something?”

“That ended over a year ago,” he said.

“Oh. Sorry.” She raised her glass. “Well, cheers,” she said, and drank.

The sun broke through a gap in the clouds and bathed the room in green and yellow light. Victoria stood in the window and looked out. English Bay was like beaten silver beneath the broken cloud deck. Shoe stood beside her. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face.

“I’m going to miss this view,” Victoria said.

“You’re going to sell the house?”

“God, yes,” she said. “I hate it.”

“Did Patrick know how you felt?”

“No. He was so damned proud of it. Our dream house, he called it. His dream house,” she added, voice fading to a whisper. “My prison.”

“A very comfortable prison,” Shoe said, “for which you had the keys and from which you could have walked away at any time.”

“But a prison nonetheless,” she said. She drained the wine from her glass. “Was there something in particular you wanted to see me about?” she asked.

He told her what Bill Hammond had asked him to do.

“You can’t save us all, Joe,” she said. “You have nothing to atone for.”

“It’s not atonement,” he said. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help feeling that if he had been a better friend he might have seen that Patrick was in trouble, of his or someone else’s making. It was a form of survivor guilt, of course, the same guilt that the family and friends of suicide victims felt because they failed to see the signs of pain or depression or unhappiness that drove them to take their own lives. Assuming that such signs existed. Patrick may have simply stumbled unwittingly into whatever circumstance it was that had got him killed. But Shoe didn’t think so. “I want to know why he was killed,” he said.

The housekeeper came into the living room from the kitchen, wearing a navy peacoat a few sizes too big for her, a large purse slung over her shoulder.

“I do chopping now, Miss Victoria?” she said.

“Yes, fine,” Victoria said.

The housekeeper returned to the kitchen.

“The police came to see me yesterday,” Victoria said. “A pair of Vancouver detectives named Matthias and Worth.”

“I’ve met them,” Shoe said.

“They think Patrick was involved in some kind of criminal activity and that his murder was a falling out among thieves. A ‘settling of accounts’ they called it.” She raised her glass as if to drink, but it was empty. “I’m going to get some more wine,” she said. “Sure I can’t get you anything?”

“I’m sure, thanks,” he said.

Victoria went into the kitchen. She returned a moment later carrying a terra cotta cooler with a bottle of white wine in it. Putting the cooler on the coffee table, she refilled her glass and sat down on the long sofa, glass in her hand.

“Do you have any idea who Patrick was meeting at the restaurant?” Shoe asked, sitting on the sofa but keeping a distance between them.

“No,” Victoria replied. “The police asked me that too. He had this silly little electronic agenda thing he kept his appointments in. I guess they can’t find it. Or he didn’t make a note of it.”

“What else did the police ask you?”

“They asked if Patrick had any enemies. It sounds so melodramatic, like a bad television show. Men like Patrick don’t make enemies, I told them. Men like Bill Hammond do, but not men like Patrick. I’m sure there were people who didn’t like him. Sometimes I didn’t like him very much myself. But, to the best of my knowledge, as they say, there was no one who disliked him enough to kill him.”

“When he left the house on Monday morning,” Shoe said, “did he seem upset or worried about anything?”

“No,” Victoria said again. Then she shook her head. “Actually, I didn’t see him that morning.” Her eyes closed and the pain of whatever she was recalling was evident on her face. She opened her eyes and sighed heavily. “We’d had an argument Sunday night,” she said, then paused, mouth a grim line. “Over his resignation. He expected me to just go along with whatever he decided, like the good little wife that I am.” She looked stricken, shocked by the bitterness in her voice. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “I’m not good with change. It scares me.”

“Everything’s okay financially? No money problems?”

“No,” she replied. “There’s five or six thousand dollars in the joint account, no outstanding bills, and the mortgage is up to date.” Shoe didn’t want to think about what the mortgage payments were on a house like this. “Patrick didn’t gamble, he didn’t even buy lottery tickets, and his investment strategy was fairly conservative. He was very good at managing his money. Almost obsessive. And he didn’t have extravagant tastes. Except for this house, of course,” she added as an afterthought.

“How about you?” Shoe asked. “You haven’t developed any bad habits, have you?”

Her smile was thin. “New ones, you mean?” He returned her smile. “No,” she said. “I don’t buy lottery tickets either, my wardrobe is hopelessly dull, and my car’s eight years old.” Patrick had given her the BMW as a wedding present. “I’m not even carrying a balance on my credit cards. Patrick may have been careful with his money, but he was generous, too. I haven’t had to touch the trust fund that my aunt Jane set up from my father’s life insurance and the settlement from the ferry company.”

“You’ve probably been through this with the police,” Shoe said, “but what did Patrick do on the weekend? Did he meet with anyone?”

“He spent Saturday morning in his home office, playing with his new computer. I think he was surfing the Internet.”

“The Internet. Patrick?” Patrick had known even less about computers and the Internet than Shoe did, which was next to nothing.

“It had to do with a business he was thinking of investing in, I think,” Victoria said. “After lunch he worked for a while longer, then went out. He got his hair cut, had his car washed, and ran some errands. After dinner he spent more time in his office and came to bed around eleven. On Sunday he played with his computer some more, then went to see Sean to tell him he wasn’t interested in working on his campaign.” She took a breath. “On Sunday night we argued about his leaving his job.”

“Was Sean upset that Patrick didn’t join his campaign?”

“No, I’m sure he wasn’t. In fact, I think he would have been surprised if Patrick had actually agreed.”

The telephone rang. Victoria excused herself and went into the kitchen to answer it. Shoe heard her say, “Hi, Kit,” then, “Can I call you back?” After a lengthy pause, she said, “Sure. That sounds fine. See you later.” She came back into the living room. “Kit,” she said as she sat down again. “She worries about me.”

Shoe hesitated, then said, “Pardon me for asking you this, but are you and Kit, well, involved?”

Victoria’s hazel eyes blazed. “Having an affair, you mean? No, we’re not having an affair. Not that it’s anyone’s goddamned business.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Shoe said. “The police can’t afford to have much regard for privacy, not in a murder investigation.”

“Well, then it’s none of your goddamned business.” She picked up her wineglass, then put it down again. “Did—did Patrick say anything to you?”

“Only that he thought she was gay,” Shoe said. “Why? Did he think you were having an affair with her?”

“He may have,” Victoria replied. She sighed heavily. “I’m pretty sure Kit’s in love with me, but we’re not having an affair. Even if we were, she wouldn’t have to kill Patrick to get him out of the way, if that’s what you’re driving at. If he’d found out I was having an affair with her, he’d have thrown me out the door faster than you could say Billy Jean King.” She shook her head. “No,” she amended. “He wouldn’t have thrown me out. He would have politely asked me to leave. And I’d’ve left, too. I could easily live on my trust fund.”

“Maybe your trust fund isn’t enough,” Shoe suggested. “Patrick had a pretty hefty life insurance policy and the mortgage on the house was undoubtedly insured. You stand to come into a sizable chunk of money.”

“Which would make me the prime suspect, wouldn’t it?” she said. “I killed Patrick so I could have the money and my lesbian lover both.”

“That works too,” Shoe said.

Victoria’s brief smile was sour. “Let me ask you a question,” she said.

“Sure,” Shoe said.

“Was Patrick having an affair with Sandra St. Johns?”

“What do you think?” Shoe replied.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I couldn’t blame him if he was. We haven’t been very close lately.” She shook her head, ponytail swishing from side to side. “No, I don’t think he was. Patrick was never very good at deception. He was a terrible liar and an awful poker player.”

Shoe hoped she was right, but he didn’t think she was. Sandra St. Johns wasn’t a very good liar either, and Patrick may have been a better one than Victoria thought.

“Can I take a look at Patrick’s home office?” Shoe asked.

“Sure,” Victoria said, standing. “It’s upstairs.”

Patrick’s home office was a small bright room at the rear of the house. It was neat and well organized, but there wasn’t much in it. A new Apple iMac computer sat on the desk, a small printer beside it, a flatbed scanner beside that. The shipping boxes still stood against the wall by the door. The furniture also looked new. The two-drawer filing cabinet was wood-grained, matching the desk. A bookcase, also matching, contained mostly software packages, some still shrink-wrapped, and a couple of black and yellow “For Dummies” books on computers and the Internet.

“He’d only had the computer a few days,” Victoria said. “The police looked at it but said there was nothing on it but the stuff that came with it. They checked the Internet browser history, but they said he visited mostly e-commerce sites. They seemed disappointed that he wasn’t surfing kiddie porn sites,” she added with a flicker of a smile.

Shoe opened the drawers of the desk and filing cabinet. The desk contained nothing of interest—hardly anything at all—and all he found in the filing cabinet were a few files pertaining to the purchase of the computer and the office furnishings. A small paper shredder stood beside the desk, similar to the one in his Hammond Industries office. Shoe examined the mound of colourful strips in the collector bin. It appeared that Patrick had tested the shredder by shredding printouts from the printer: computer spec sheets and photographic quality prints of tropical birds and beaches.

Shoe drove back across the Lions Gate Bridge and downtown. Leaving his car in the underground garage of the Hammond Building, he walked the few blocks to the restaurant near the Waterfront SkyTrain station. He didn’t expect to learn anything helpful from a visit to the scene of Patrick’s murder, nor did he. The manager refused to speak about the incident and none of the staff on duty had been working on Monday. As he emerged from the restaurant, though, Sergeant Matthias and Detective Constable Worth were waiting for him on the sidewalk, leaning against the front fender of a blue Ford Taurus.

“We need to talk,” Matthias said.

“All right,” Shoe replied.

“Let’s get some coffee somewhere.”

“As long as it’s not this place,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at the entrance to the restaurant in which Patrick had died.

“Not a problem,” Matthias said.

They got takeout coffees, Matthias’ treat, and took them out onto the Canada Place promenade overlooking the harbour, where they found an unoccupied bench. Matthias and Shoe sat on the bench while Worth leaned against the railing.

Mathias prised the lid from his coffee cup, saying, “You want to tell me what the hell you think you’re up to?”

“I’m conducting an internal investigation into Patrick O’Neill’s murder,” Shoe said. “At Mr. Hammond’s request.”

“Oh, swell,” Matthias said. Then he said, “Wait a minute, I thought you’d been fired.”

“I’ve been temporarily reinstated,” Shoe explained.

“And O’Neill? He’d resigned too, hadn’t he?”

“He had,” Shoe said. “But Mr. Hammond hadn’t accepted his resignation, so technically he was still an employee of the company when he died.”

“You know you’re a goddamned suspect, don’t you?”

Detective Constable Worth raised a finely shaped eyebrow at her partner’s language.

“Yes, of course,” Shoe said agreeably. “What’s my motive again?”

“The wife, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“We did some checking on you,” Matthias said. Shoe waited, blowing on the coffee, sipping the hot brew carefully. “You remember a cop named Henry Trumbull?”

Yes, I remember him,” Shoe replied. He and Hank Trumbull had graduated from the academy together and, for a time, had worked out of the same downtown Toronto station.

“He’s an inspector now,” Matthias said. He took a mouthful of coffee, seeming oblivious to the temperature. “When we interviewed you,” he said, “you told us that you’d been discharged from the Toronto police service for striking a superior office. In actual fact, you resigned after your partner, one Ronald Mackie, assaulted you in the locker room with his nightstick and you fractured his cervical vertebrae taking it away from him.” Shoe sipped his coffee and waited for the other coin to drop. “He claimed you were sleeping with his wife.”

“Former wife,” Shoe corrected him. “I knew her as Sara Rosen. When I met her, she and Mackie had been divorced for a year and a half.”

“She was a cop too?”

“That’s right,” Shoe said.

Shoe had met Sara at someone’s retirement party, he didn’t remember whose. She’d been twenty-seven then, three years older than Shoe. She worked out of another station, and they’d been seeing each other for a month before Shoe had learned that she was Mackie’s ex-wife. Over the years, Shoe had asked himself many times if he’d have gone out with her that first time if he’d known. The answer was usually yes, despite the fact that Mackie had talked incessantly about “his ex,” certain they’d eventually get back together. According to Sara, though, there was no chance of that. Mackie knew Sara was seeing someone, he’d told Shoe, another cop. He didn’t know who, some suit, probably, he’d said. He’d find out soon enough, though, and when he did, the guy had better watch out.

“What else did Trumbull tell you?” Shoe asked.

Matthias looked up at his partner. Her strong, solemn face was expressionless.

“He said Sara Mackie died in the line of duty a few weeks later.”

Shoe was constantly surprised that even after all these years the memory of it still hurt. “She was killed when a drunk driver rammed her squad car at eighty miles an hour,” he said. “I suppose you could call that ‘in the line of duty.’”

“Is that why you quit?” Matthias asked.

Shoe nodded. “Between being responsible for ending Ron Mackie’s career and Sara’s death, I lost my enthusiasm for law enforcement.” And, for a time, just about everything else, he recalled. Two days before Sara had died, he’d asked her to marry him. She’d said yes.

Matthias finished his coffee before Shoe had drunk a third of his and dropped the empty cup into a waste bin beside the bench. “Trumbull told us something else.” Shoe waited. “He told us that unless you’d changed a lot in ways that most people don’t usually change, there’s no way in hell you’d be involved in your friend’s death.” Shoe waited some more. Matthias shrugged. “Anyway, I put my money on the wife. Nine times out of ten, it turns out to be the wife.”

“You’d lose this one,” Shoe said.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Matthias looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “The guy that whacked O’Neill was a pro. Or at least a talented amateur. Left the murder weapon behind but bugger-all else. We didn’t find so much as a nose hair we could tie to him. We’ve got reports of someone answering his description boarding the SkyTrain, but then nothing. Probably removed his disguise on the train then ditched it. Cool. Not the kind of psycho dimwit wives usually hire to off their husbands. They usually leave a trail like a slug leaves slime.”

“What about the weapon?” Shoe asked.

“An old .38 Smith & Wesson service revolver, probably a souvenir from World War Two. The serial number was intact, but it won’t do us any good; the gun’s too old. There were no prints on either the gun or the shell casings. The MO is similar to another shooting a few years ago in Surrey, but otherwise we got squat. The victim back then was an informant who ratted out the wrong dealer, but there’s no evidence O’Neill was connected in any way to drugs. Anyway, most drug-related killings in this city these days involve Indo-Canadians. Still...” He shrugged again.

“What about other suspects? Sean Rémillard, Patrick’s cousin, could there be anything there?”

“I doubt it. Rémillard is what you might call colourful, but so far no one’s been able to come up with a plausible motive. Or even an implausible one.”

“What do you mean, ‘colourful’?”

“After passing the bar on his third try,” Matthias said, “he chased ambulances for a while before discovering politics. He was an independent city councillor for a few years, a real hair in the ass of both Harcourt and Campbell’s administrations. Since losing his seat in ’93, he’s worked as a Liberal party mouthpiece and fundraiser. Now I guess he’s decided to make a run for the brass in a federal by-election. Some say he’s being groomed to be prime minister someday. The theory being, I suppose, that a perfectly bilingual French Canadian from B.C. could restore the Liberal’s fortunes in the West and reunite the country.” Matthias made a face. “He’s tight with a big cheese in the party, um, I forget his name...”

“Allan Privett,” Shoe supplied.

“Yeah, that’s it. Rémillard’s married to his daughter.”

“What’s she like?” Shoe asked.

Matthias looked up at his partner.

“It’s hard to say,” Worth supplied. “She’s a bit on the cool side—”

“Cool?” Matthias snorted. “She’s cold as a frozen mackerel.”

Worth scowled at him. “Are you going to let me finish?”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” Worth said. “She’s of high average intelligence, I’d say, and well educated. She’s an only child and a bit spoiled. Attractive enough, but ...” She hesitated.

“She’s built more like a brick than a brick shit-house,” Matthias interjected.

Worth sighed. “She could use some time in a gym,” she agreed. “Good clothes, though,” she added as an afterthought, which brought a grin to her partner’s face.

“She knew Rémillard and O’Neill when they were kids growing up in Quebec,” Matthias said. “She had some emotional problems when she was fifteen or so, just after she moved out here with her family in ’76. She’s a do-gooder now, sick kids, the environment, women’s rights.” Worth scowled again, but Matthias ignored her. “The perfect wife for a politician,” he concluded.

“When I talked to Patrick on Friday,” Shoe said, “he told me there were a couple of business opportunities he was looking into. Anything there?”

“We got the number of an outfit in Nanaimo named LogiGraphics from his cellphone log. He called them just before he was killed to postpone a meeting. We had the Nanaimo cops talk to them. Bunch of computer nerds, they said, live like moles. They were pretty upset about O’Neill’s death. He was considering buying in and helping them go public to raise development capital.”

Shoe weighed his loyalties for a few beats, then said, “What about Victoria O’Neill’s friend, Kit Parsons?”

Matthias looked at Worth, whose eyebrow lifted again. He turned back to Shoe.

“Have you met her?” Matthias asked.

“Once, the day of Patrick’s murder. She was at Victoria’s house.”

“What’s your take on her?”

“She’s very protective of Victoria.” This time it was Worth who snorted. “How’s her alibi?” Shoe asked.

“She was in her studio with a client from two to four p.m.,” Matthias said. “He confirms it.” He sighed heavily. “She’s got motive, I guess, and attitude to spare, but unless we can connect her to the shooter somehow, we’ve got nothing. You’ve been poking around. Have you come up with anything we might be interested in? Anyone he work with look good for it?”

Shoe shook his head. “Not so far.” He hesitated, knowing it probably wouldn’t do any good to ask, but he asked anyway. “Did Patrick have his palmtop computer with him when he was killed? Or his laptop?”

“We’ve got his Palm,” Matthias said, “but he didn’t have a laptop with him. We didn’t find it in his car or at his home, either. Any idea where it might be?”

“The Palm was his own,” Shoe said, “but the laptop belonged to the company. We haven’t been able to locate it.”

“If it turns up, maybe you could let us know.”

“I’ll do that. Do you think I could get a copy of his appointment file from the Palm?”

“I’m not sure we could give it to you if we wanted to,” Matthias said. “O’Neill’s Palm is password protected and we haven’t been able to unlock it. According to our techs, the only way to bypass the password is to do a hard reset, which erases everything. They’re working on it. You wouldn’t happen to know his password, would you?”

“Sorry, no.”

Matthias was silent for a moment, then said, “Look, I could tell you not to nose around, although I get the impression that it wouldn’t do any good. But if you get in the way, or if we think you’re obstructing our investigation in any way, we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. A metric tonne at that. Understand?”

“Yes,” Shoe said. “I surely do.”

Matthias stood up. Worth tossed her empty coffee cup at the waste bin, missing by a good foot. Matthias sighed, retrieved the cup, and dropped it into the bin.

At a few minutes past three, Shoe was standing on the sidewalk in front of the dry cleaning store on Cordova. Barbara Reese came out of the store at 3:15. She was looking down, fastening her coat, long umbrella hooked over her right wrist, and so did not see him until he said, “Hello.”

Her head popped up and for a brief moment there was a spark of fear in her eyes. It faded as she smiled tentatively. “Oh, it’s you.” Then her expression grew troubled. “You were lying the other day, weren’t you? You are with the police.”

“No,” Shoe said. “I’m not a cop. I was once, a long time ago, but not now.”

“But this isn’t a coincidence, is it? Your being here? Are you—” She frowned, searching for the word. “Are you stalking me?”

“I apologize if it seems that way,” Shoe said. “As I told you, I knew your husband. After he died I tried to get in touch with you, to see if there was anything you needed, but by the time I learned where you lived, you had moved. You didn’t leave a forwarding address and your mother and your in-laws would tell me only that you’d left Vancouver.”

“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going,” Barbara said. “I didn’t really know myself. We moved around a lot for a while—Edmonton, Toronto, Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Winnipeg—before we finally settled in Calgary.”

“We? Did you marry again?”

“Uh, no. I meant my kids and me.”

“I’d like to talk to you,” Shoe said. “But I don’t want to make you late for work. Perhaps I could take you to dinner sometime.” Sunday, he knew, was the only evening she had free.

“You offered me a ride the other day,” she said. He nodded. “You can drive me home, if you like.”

“Home?”

“I was let go from the bar last night.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yes, I’d be pleased to drive you home. My car’s this way.”

They walked to his car, parked around the corner.

“I guess you’re not a cop after all,” she said when she saw the Mercedes. “Cops don’t drive cars like this.” Shoe opened the passenger door for her, held her arm as she got in. In the car she gave him directions, although he knew where she lived. When they were underway, she said, “How did you know my husband?”

“We worked together,” Shoe said. It wasn’t the truth, but it would do for now.

“He never stayed in any one job for very long,” Barbara said. “How well did you know him?”

“Not well,” Shoe said.

“But you must have gone to a lot of trouble to find me. For someone you didn’t know very well. Why?”

“I wanted to repay a debt I owed him,” Shoe said.

“What kind of debt?” she asked suspiciously. “Not money? Usually he owed other people money.”

“No, it wasn’t money,” Shoe said.

She was silent for a few minutes, looking out the side window. After a couple of blocks she turned to him and said, “How did you find me? I didn’t come back to Vancouver till six months ago to look after my mother. She died on Labour Day.”

“Yes, I know,” Shoe said. “I was looking through some back issues of the Vancouver Sun a few weeks ago when I saw her funeral announcement. It was two months old, but I went to the funeral home and told the director I was an old friend of the family who had missed the funeral. He gave me the phone number of the dry cleaning store.”

“I can’t afford a phone,” she said. “My mother didn’t have insurance and I still owe the funeral home three thousand dollars. I don’t know how I’m going to pay them now that I’ve lost the job at the bar. I barely make enough at the dry cleaning store to cover my rent.” Her eyes sharpened. “So, if you want to repay your debt to my husband by offering me a job...” Her voice trailed off.

“I can see if there’s anything available where I work,” Shoe said.

“You look like you work in an office,” she said. “I used to work in an office a long time ago, but they all use computers now. I wouldn’t know a computer from a dishrag. All I know is waiting on tables and clerking in stores.”

“My employer owns several retail stores.”

She leaned forward and pointed through the wind-shield. “That’s where I live,” she said.

Shoe double-parked in front of a rundown five-storey building on the fringes of the area of Vancouver known as the Downtown East Side, into which the city had corralled most of its homeless population, along with its pushers, addicts, pimps, and whores. The ground floor of the building was occupied by an Asian grocery. The entrance to the apartments on the upper floors was a narrow doorway beside the grocery. Taking a notepad from the glovebox, Shoe wrote down his home and office phone numbers, tore out the page, and handed it to her.

“Call me on Friday,” Shoe said. “I’m sure I can find something for you in one of my employer’s companies.”

She took the slip of paper, looked at it, then at him. Her dark eyebrows were knit with uncertainty.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You seem like a nice person,” she said. “And I suppose I could use all the help I can get right now.” Her right hand was on the door release. He waited for her to continue. She looked at the slip of paper in her left hand, then held it out to him. “But whatever you think you owed my husband, you don’t owe me anything.”

A police car moved up behind and the cop at the wheel blipped the siren a couple of times, probably figuring Shoe was a john out slumming. Barbara opened the door and started to get out of the car.

“Please,” he said. “Let me take you to dinner. I’ll explain.”

She shook her head. The siren blipped again.

“But you’ll call me? About the job?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

Barbara got out of the car and closed the door. As Shoe put the car in motion, he glanced into the rear-view mirror. She stood on the sidewalk, in her long dark coat and red beret, umbrella hooked over her arm, watching as he drove away. As she receded into the distance, he saw her put the slip of paper into her coat pocket.