all the while watching her. “I met Laurel at university. She worked in the admin office. I thought I’d never seen a woman so beautiful but I didn’t think about approaching her. I was a few years younger and she was out of my league. She actually introduced herself to me at the university pub one evening and we hit it off. I asked her out the next day, and we dated my senior year. I brought her home in the summer to meet my family after we got engaged. My father offered her a job, which she took. A few months later, she called off our engagement for no reason that I could understand. I found out why a few months later when she moved in with my father, who’d not so coincidently moved out of our family home into an apartment downtown.”
“Do you blame Laurel for ending your parents’ marriage?” Kala was still fishing for a reaction. He’d told the story as if it was about somebody else.
“I’ve thought about it recently with my father coming around to see me and asking to make amends. I think if it hadn’t been for Laurel, he would still be married to my mother, or if he hadn’t died that is. Laurel was the catalyst.”
“So your mother and father had a good relationship before Laurel?”
“I’d say yes. They were comfortable with each other and always said they were in it for the long haul. They’d been together since high school.”
“You must have taken Laurel’s defection hard.”
“I distanced myself from her and my father and soon got over it. I was blinded by her but came to realize that we didn’t have anything in common. It wouldn’t have been a good marriage.”
“You say that like you’re certain.”
“Because I am. Laurel definitely is not my soul mate.” He looked directly into her eyes. “You know how it is when you meet somebody and know right away that you fit? There’s just something about them that feels like coming home. It wasn’t that way with me and Laurel. I was infatuated and mistook it for something deeper.”
Kala broke his stare and looked past him out the window. The depth of his gaze was disconcerting. Maybe he’d meant it to be. “Your mother and Geraldine. How did they take your father marrying Laurel?”
“About as you’d expect. My mother was a wreck for a few years. I think in hindsight that she had a breakdown, but we didn’t recognize it then. She started seeing a counsellor and that helped her to recover her equilibrium. It also helped that Geraldine and I sided with her, and of course her best friend Susan was always there. Geraldine forgave our father after a little time passed and they’ve stayed close. He was excited that she was having a baby.” Hunter smiled and spread his hands wide, “I didn’t want to hear about my father at all, but Geraldine wouldn’t give up. She kept telling me things and it got so I looked forward to her updates. When Dad asked to see me at the beginning of the month, I was ready to see him. More coffee?”
Kala looked down at her empty cup. “No, I need to get moving.” She began packing up her notebook and began to stand. She stopped partway and sat back down as if she’d thought of one last question. It was the question she’d wanted to ask all along. “What was Laurel doing here this morning?”
Hunter grimaced. “I thought you might have seen her leaving.”
“I’m finding it odd that I keep finding the two of you together.”
Hunter stood up and crossed to the stove to refill his coffee cup. With his back to her, he said, “I didn’t conspire with Laurel to kill my father. She drove here to tell me that there wasn’t going to be a service. Dad wanted to be cremated with just his family to accompany his ashes to the vault. She wants me to organize Geraldine and Max, my mother, and Susan and Clinton.”
“She could have phoned.”
“Anybody who knows me knows that I rarely answer. I like my solitude.”
His explanation was weak, just like the one about parking his Jeep far away from Laurel’s driveway. Kala got up and walked to the front door. She bent to put on her boots and he stood leaning against the wall. When she straightened, Hunter was next to her. He waited until she was looking at him.
“I’m not involved with Laurel. If you start thinking that he was murdered because we wanted to get rid of him so we could be together, you are going entirely in the wrong direction.”
Kala zipped up her jacket and opened the door. She turned to him before she stepped outside. “Perhaps you weren’t involved, but I’ve only known you a little while and I have the impression that something is going on between you two. I wonder how many others thought the same, even if it’s not true as you allege.”
Rouleau looked across the table at J.P. Belliveau. His face was a purplish-red in the glaring fluorescent light of the interview room. He’d refused coffee or water and at the moment was glaring at Grayson, who was tinkering with the recording device in preparation for the interview. Rouleau leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. This was Grayson’s show.
“Let’s begin,” said Grayson. He leaned into the microphone and named the people in the room, date, and time. Malik sat next to him ready to play good cop if needed. “How long were you and Tom Underwood business partners?”
“Going on twenty-five years. We built the business together. If I’d wanted to off him, I wouldn’t have waited so long.”
“For the record, we’re not suggesting you killed him at this time.”
“Good to know.” J.P.’s eyes let them know he didn’t believe it.
“What was Underwood working on when he died?”
“He was setting up a contract with an engineer in Montreal to test a design with an eye to manufacturing a vehicle that could withstand land mines. He was getting the contract ready to send the day he died.”
“Who takes over the file?”
J.P.’s eyes narrowed. “Max Oliver. He’s leaving for Montreal as I speak to reassure the client and work on getting the contract signed. You can’t seriously think Max or I had anything to do with this. We needed Tom. He was our closer.”
“So you keep saying, but it looks like you’ve managed to carry on without him.” Grayson paused and looked down at his notes. “Did you know that Tom Underwood was planning on getting out of the business?”
“Who told you that?” J.P. looked at Grayson, but when he didn’t respond, J.P. shrugged. “Tom mentioned a few times over the past year that he was tired and considering a career change. The problem was he had an expensive young wife and kid to worry about and a certain lifestyle to maintain. I don’t know where else he’d make the kind of money he was making in our firm. He wasn’t serious.”
“What would have happened if he was?” Rouleau interjected.
J.P. took his time answering. “From what I know about Laurel, she might have taken the kid and left him. She’d fight him for a big chunk of change. He couldn’t afford that drop in fortune.”
“That doesn’t say much for his marriage,” said Rouleau.
J.P. let out a harsh laugh. “Anybody with eyes could see that she was just sticking around for the money. He had a lawyer come by to discuss a separation. His concern was having the kid half-time.”
“You
