“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,”