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
