“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