“One way or another, though, he’s responsible for Patrick’s death. I know he is.”
There wasn’t anything to be gained by arguing with her, Shoe decided. Besides, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. They continued in silence until they reached the Lions Gate Bridge Causeway at the east entrance to Stanley Park.
“I like the way you drive,” Victoria said. “It’s very relaxed, like you don’t have to think about it at all.”
“I think about it,” he assured her.
“Patrick was a terrible driver,” she went on. “Like most bad drivers, though, he didn’t know it. He prided himself on always buying cars with standard transmissions, but he didn’t know how to drive them properly. He shifted up too soon and didn’t downshift soon enough. He never had an accident, though, which is more than I can say. I totalled that Corolla I bought after I started working for Hammond Industries.”
“I remember it,” Shoe said. “You called it Ethel.”
“Oh, god, that’s right. You helped me buy it, didn’t you? I’d forgotten.”
They were on the bridge now. She looked out over the wintry grey of Vancouver Harbour toward the high yellow mounds of sulphur at the bulk terminal on the north shore. Victoria might have forgotten, but Shoe remembered very clearly the day he took her shopping for a car. Her ponytails and exuberance had made her seem very young and the salesman had mistaken her for Shoe’s daughter, which had rankled. He was, after all, only fourteen years older than she. It didn’t seem like much of a difference now, but then it had been an insurmountable one.
When he parked the car in front of the house, she said, “I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of days,” she said without looking at him. “Remembering things. Mostly about my life and the complete hash I’ve made of it.” She raised her head and smiled slightly. “I guess that’s not so unusual, under the circumstances, is it?”
“No, I’m sure it’s not.”
“Patrick’s funeral will be on Monday,” she said. “At Hollyburn Funeral Services on Marine Drive.”
They discussed the schedule for a few minutes, then fell into an awkward silence.
“Do you recall Patrick ever mentioning the name Claire Powkowski?” Shoe asked.
“No. Who is she?”
“Evidently,” Shoe said, “she was Bill’s business partner back in the fifties, before he married Elizabeth Lindell and merged his company with her father’s.”
“How would Patrick know about her?” Victoria asked.
Shoe told her about Ramona Ross.
“I see,” Victoria said. She opened the car door. “Would you like to come in?” she asked. “Consuela called in sick today, but I might be able to manage to make some coffee.”
“Thanks,” he said, “but there’s something I have to do.”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman behind the teller’s window. “There are insufficient funds in that account.” Barbara stared at the teller as she slid Barbara’s paycheque back under the thick plastic barrier. “I’m sorry,” the woman said again.
“But what will I do?” Barbara asked, stomach knotted and fingers trembling as she picked up the cheque.
“I didn’t stamp it,” the teller said.
Barbara didn’t know what she meant, but the man behind her in the queue was grumbling impatiently, so she put the cheque back in her purse and left the bank. She hadn’t had breakfast and her legs were rubbery. Her vision blurred at the edges. She sat on the bench at a bus stop and in a few minutes felt better. However, by the time she got home she wasn’t sure she could make it up the four flights of stairs to her apartment. She did, of course, but as she unlocked her apartment door, her heart was hammering furiously and her undergarments were soaked with perspiration.
Taking off her shoes and hanging up her coat, she sat at the kitchen table and drank a cup of weak tea with sugar and milk made from powder because it was less expensive than fresh. Yesterday’s newspaper was on the table, open to the want ads, but most of the ads she’d circled now had lines drawn through them. Feeling better after she finished the tea, she put on her shoes, took her keys and some quarters from her purse, and went downstairs to the payphone in the lobby. She fed a quarter into the phone and called the dry cleaning store. Mr. Seropian’s wife answered.
“Is your husband there?” Barbara asked.
“Who is calling?” Mrs. Seropian asked. Barbara told her. “Not here,” the woman said and hung up.
Barbara dropped another quarter into the phone. Mrs. Seropian answered again.
“Let me speak with your husband,” Barbara said. “My paycheque bounced.”
Mrs. Seropian hung up.
Unwilling to waste another quarter, Barbara returned to her apartment. Her stomach ached with a mixture of anger and fear and hunger. She heated up leftover soup. She would have to go to the store in person, she knew. At least her bus pass was good until the end of the month. She also needed her pink slip so she could apply for unemployment. The thought of confronting Mrs. Seropian made her queasy, but it had to be done.
Soup finished, she lay down on the bed, on top of the covers. Her doorbell rang, but she was too tired to get up to answer. A moment later, it rang a second time, but still she did not get up. It was probably just another tenant, too lazy to get out his keys, or someone calling on the drug dealer who lived on the first floor.
Before returning to the office Shoe stopped by the dry cleaning store to speak to Barbara about the job at the marina. An overweight, black-eyed woman regarded him suspiciously from behind the counter.
“Is Ms. Reese here?” Shoe asked.
“You got cleaning?” the woman replied.
“No, I would like to speak to Ms. Reese, please.”
“She not work here,” the woman said.
“She isn’t working today, you mean? Did she call in sick?”
“Is filthy slut,” the woman said. “Whore. She not work here no more. Go away you, if you got no cleaning.”
As Shoe turned to leave the store, he caught sight of the store’s owner watching him with sad brown eyes through a gap in the row of plastic-sheathed garments hanging from the overhead conveyor.
Shoe drove to Barbara’s apartment building. The narrow, poorly lit vestibule was shabby with wear but had recently been washed down with some aggressively pine-scented cleaner. The glass of the inner door was reinforced with wire mesh. To the right of the door there were four rows of four mailboxes each. The box for apartment 401 was labelled “B. Reese.” There was a button above the mail slot, but no speaker grill. He pressed the button and waited. There was no response. He pressed it again, but still there was no answer.
It was almost four when he got back to the office. He found Sandra St. Johns in her own office, sitting on her sofa, feet up on her coffee table, laptop in her lap. He
