of paper into her coat pocket.
chapter five
Thursday, December 16
Charles Merigold’s secretary’s name was Gillian Whistle. She regarded Shoe with cool grey eyes as he approached her desk. Her face, framed by wings of dark blond hair, was triangular, smooth brow a trifle too wide perhaps, chin a trifle too pointed, but the overall effect was pleasant. Shoe put her age at somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five.
“Is Mr. Merigold in?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. She blinked and Shoe imagined he could feel the breeze from her long dark lashes. She picked up her phone and pressed a button. “Mr. Schumacher would like to see you, sir.” She listened, said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “You can go right in,” she said, smiling at him with perfectly even and brilliantly white teeth.
“Thank you,” Shoe said. He went into Merigold’s office.
“You want to speak to me about Patrick O’Neill, I presume,” Charles Merigold said. He gestured toward a chair facing his desk.
“That’s right,” Shoe said as he sat down.
Charles Merigold’s desk was not as big as Bill Hammond’s, but it was big enough to put some distance between the two men. Shoe wasn’t quite sure what to make of Hammond Industry’s Managing Director. Merigold was pompous and vain, perhaps even a bit prissy, but he was competent and intelligent and had a reputation as a savage competitor on the squash court. While he was somewhat formal and standoffish, Shoe had always found him to be polite and respectful toward everyone in the office. Patrick hadn’t got along with him at all, though.
“Basically, Charles’s job is to piss on everyone’s shoes,” Patrick had said. “And he enjoys his job. Which is probably why no one likes him.”
“You worked regularly with Patrick,” Shoe said. Merigold nodded. “In the last few weeks, was there anything out of the ordinary about his behaviour or demeanour that you noticed?”
“No,” Merigold replied. “Nothing.”
“He didn’t seem worried, distracted, preoccupied?”
“No,” Merigold said again. “But he wasn’t the most demonstrative of men, was he? Kept himself to himself, as it were.”
“You and he had an argument last month. What was it about?”
“You must be aware that Patrick and I did not always see eye to eye on matters of business,” Merigold said. “As a result, our working relationship could get somewhat intense at times. We had occasionally heated discussions. They could be quite animated, but to call them arguments is to imply animosity. Perhaps Patrick did not like me—I’m told I’m not a likeable person—but I can assure you, neither he nor I allowed personal issues to interfere with our work. Patrick’s job was to grow the company’s assets. Mine is to protect those assets. We were both simply doing our jobs.”
“What was this particular heated discussion about?”
“I don’t recall the specifics,” Merigold said. “But from time to time we did not agree that a property he was considering for acquisition would make a worthwhile addition to Hammond Industries’ assets. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Patrick could be, shall we say, somewhat cavalier with the company’s money and often let his enthusiasm for a project get in the way of his good sense. I’m sure the exchange to which you are referring was no different.”
“Were there irregularities in any of his business transactions?”
“Certainly not,” Merigold said. “Patrick may have been adventurous, but he did not abuse his position for personal gain. I may not have approved of some of his acquisitions,” Merigold said, “but there was nothing irregular about any of them.” Merigold paused, then said, “I thought he was your friend.”
“He was,” Shoe said. “But the police are working on the hypothesis that he was killed by a professional. Revenge is a strong motive for murder. If someone felt cheated in a business deal, he might have hired a hit man to even the score.”
“That may be so,” Merigold said. “Patrick was a shrewd businessman, and some of the people with whom he came into contact may have undoubtedly felt that he’d got the better of them. But to the best of my knowledge there was nothing improper about any of his business dealings.”
“He recently shut down a gasket manufacturing plant in Surrey,” Shoe said. “Is it possible someone who worked there was upset about losing his job?”
“Possible,” Merigold conceded, “but unlikely. Patrick gave them all rather more generous severance packages than I would have. Or Sandra St. Johns, for that matter.”
“How well do you know her?” Shoe asked.
“She seems competent.”
And damned with faint praise, thought Shoe. “Is there anything, do you think, to the rumour that she and Patrick were having an affair?” he asked.
“I couldn’t say.” Merigold looked at his wristwatch. It was gold and wafer thin, with an oxblood leather strap that fit his wrist more snugly than looked comfortable.
“Do you have any theories about why Patrick was killed?” Shoe asked.
“No, I don’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with Mr. Hammond in three minutes.” He stood up.
Shoe thanked him for his time. There were a few other people in the company with whom Patrick had worked. Although Shoe very much doubted any of them would be able to add anything useful, he spoke to them anyway. At ten o’clock, doubts confirmed, he returned to his office and looked over the list of former employees of the gasket manufacturing company that Sandra St. Johns had printed for him. It included home addresses and telephone numbers. He dialled the number for Ramona Ross, the office manager with whom Patrick had become friendly, but there was no answer, human or machine. He spent the next hour speaking to other people on the list, as well as the owner of the brewery in Port Moody. No one was able to shed any light on Patrick’s death. He tried Ramona Ross’s number again. Still no answer. According to the printout she lived in Ladner, in South Delta, about a thirty-minute drive from downtown. Perhaps tomorrow he’d take a drive out there. There was something else he had to do today.
Mr. Seropian had been acting strange all day, muttering to himself and staring at her through the rows of suits and coats and dresses hanging on the overhead conveyor. It was obvious he had something on his mind and Barbara was certain she knew what it was. He wasn’t satisfied with brushing against her breasts or her backside a couple of times a day, accidentally on purpose, as her mother used to say. He wanted more.
What was it, she wondered as she sorted through a bundle of shirts, that made almost every man she had ever worked for think she would be willing to have sex with him to keep her job? Did she give off some kind of scent, like those moths she’d read about? She’d heard about women who’d had their employers charged with sexual harassment, but as far as she was concerned, those stories were a cruel joke. Maybe women who worked in banks or for politicians could afford to complain that their bosses told dirty jokes or demanded sex in exchange for a promotion, but nobody gave a hoot if a grocery store manager played grab-ass with the checkout girls or if jerking off the supervisor was the only way you could get time off to attend your kids’ school recitals. In the real world, if you needed the job bad enough, you gritted your teeth and went along with it. And in the twenty years since her husband had died, leaving her with two kids to raise on her own, she’d needed a job bad enough more times than she cared to remember.
The familiar throb of pain reminded her that while she’d raised two children, she’d borne three. As she’d done every day for thirty-five years, Barbara wondered what had become of Annie. She’d be a grown woman now, married, perhaps with children of her own. But Barbara’s last memory of her was as an infant, sleeping sweetly as the woman from the adoption agency took