Patrick had suggested they get something to eat. “Victoria is out tonight,” he’d said. “With Kit Parsons.”
“Kit as in Christopher?” Shoe said, thinking of Kit Carson, the American frontiersman and “Indian fighter.”
“As in Katherine,” Patrick said. “Victoria met her when she took an interior design course. Kit was the instructor. Wait till you meet her. She’s only about five feet tall, but tough as nails. Very butch. I’m sure she’s a lesbian.”
They’d driven in Shoe’s car to the Kettle O’ Fish on Pacific, parking on Beach almost directly under the approach to the Burrard Street Bridge. After they’d ordered, barbecued tuna for Shoe, surf-and-turf and a half-bottle of California Chardonnay for Patrick, Patrick had asked, “How do you see yourself living after you retire?”
“Pretty much the way I’m living now,” Shoe replied. “I expect I’ll have more time to read and sail. I might not have anyone to sail with, though. You’re going to be too busy getting rich.”
Patrick smiled wryly.
“What’s with all these questions about my future?” Shoe asked.
“I guess what I’m trying to tell you,” Patrick said, “in a roundabout way, is not to expect things at Hammond Industries to remain quite what they’ve been for the last twenty-five years. Or the last ten, for that matter. Maybe it’s time for you to consider getting out too. While the getting is good, so to speak.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“Is your leaving going to be the cause of things not staying the same?”
“No, but my leaving isn’t going help. I’m getting out before things start falling seriously apart. And, believe me, they are going to start falling seriously apart pretty damned soon. Bill’s getting old. He’s not going to be able to hold it together much longer.”
“No offence, Patrick,” Shoe said, “but am I detecting a hint of sour grapes here? I know you and Bill didn’t see eye to eye on whether the company should go public, but that’s hardly evidence he’s losing control.”
“Maybe not,” Patrick had replied. “But going public is the only way the company is going to survive into the twenty-first century. That’s not the only reason I resigned, though. It’s time for me to move on.”
And now it was time, it seemed, for Shoe to move on too, whether he liked it or not.
When Shoe got home, Jack was sitting on the back steps, in the light of the porch lamp, smoking a cigarette and twirling the putter from the incomplete set of clubs Shoe had inherited with the house. There was a plastic beer cup full of old golf balls on the step beside him. Jack stood as Shoe climbed the back steps.
“Cops were here looking for you,” he said. “Homicide dicks. Two of ’em.” Shoe opened the door and Jack handed him a card. “Said to call that number first thing in the morning. You kill someone?”
“Not recently,” Shoe said. “Do you remember Patrick O’Neill? He used to keep a thirty-eight-foot Hunter at the marina where I moored the Pete.” Shoe had helped Patrick buy the Hunter ten years ago when Patrick had first started working at Hammond Industries.
“Sure,” Jack said. “Skinny guy. Looks like an accountant. Nice lookin’ wife.”
“He was shot to death this afternoon.” He told Jack what little he knew about Patrick’s murder.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“You coming in?” Shoe said.
“I’m goin’ t’ finish my smoke first.”
Upstairs, Shoe looked up Muriel Yee’s telephone number—she had recently moved into a new town-house in New Westminster and he hadn’t yet committed her telephone number to his or the phone’s memory—and dialled. She picked up on the second ring.
“Will Victoria be all right?” Muriel asked when Shoe had finished filling her in.
“I think so,” he said.
Muriel was silent for a moment, then said, “He wasn’t serious about firing you, was he?”
“Yes, I think this time he was.” Since Shoe had been working for him, Hammond had fired him at least half a dozen times. It had never stuck.
“I’m sorry,” Muriel said.
“I’m not,” Shoe replied. “I’ve been thinking about retiring anyway.”
“Retiring? What will you do?”
“I haven’t thought it that far through yet,” he said.
Del Tilley hummed tunelessly as he cat-footed through the quiet corridors, past the empty cubicles and darkened offices. The rubber-cushioned heels of his custom-made boots made no sound on the heavy-duty industrial carpeting. He was a happy man. He didn’t really believe in luck—you made your own opportunities—but things were working out better than he’d hoped. A spark of anger flared briefly at the memory of the disrespectful way in which Hammond had spoken to Victoria, but even that wasn’t enough to ruin his mood.
Out of sheer exuberance he gave a muted yell and performed a quick spin and kick, but he misjudged slightly and his boot heel clipped the edge of a workstation partition. The partition shuddered and something crashed to the floor on the other side. He went into the cubicle. It was just books and binders. He picked them up and dumped them haphazardly onto the desk. The cleaning staff would be blamed.
He resumed his tour, humming again.
As he approached the door to his office, Sandra St. Johns, Patrick O’Neill’s former assistant, came out of her office.
“Oh,” she said, a look of surprise on her face. “I didn’t know there was anyone else here. What was that noise?”
“Nothing to concern yourself about,” he said. She was wearing a white blouse that looked like a man’s shirt, half the buttons open, and no bra, just some kind of undershirt thing. She was so flat, though, it made no difference. “Some binders fell off a shelf.”
She shook her head. “It sounded more like a shout.”
Tilley could feel his ears grow warm. “I didn’t hear anything like that,” he said. He turned his back to her and thumbed a five-digit code, which he changed weekly, into the security lock on his office door. “Good evening,” he said over his shoulder, opening the door and slipping into his office.
Through the gap in the door, he watched her turn and go back into her own office. The rear view was definitely more interesting than the front, he thought. Her legs were her best feature, long and strong, runner’s legs. He grinned tightly, remembering the sight of her with those legs clamped around Patrick O’Neill’s hips as they did it on the sofa in O’Neill’s office, hair in her eyes, making a weird sound in her throat.
He closed the door.
As attractive as Sandra St. Johns was, Tilley thought, how O’Neill could have cheated on Victoria with the likes of her was completely beyond his comprehension. Of course, none of that mattered now. Patrick O’Neill was dead. Yes, Tilley thought. Things were working out just fine.
Barbara was cashing out at the end of her shift when the assistant manager told her they wouldn’t need her any more after tonight. “Business has been slow,” he said by way of explanation, but she knew the real reason was that she’d refused to work another shift in the strip club next door to the lounge. One would have been enough, but she’d endured three, half-naked in a skirt that barely reached her crotch and the see-through top they’d insisted