A HARD WINTER RAIN
for Pamela
A HARD
WINTER RAIN
Michael Blair
A Castle Street Mystery
Copyright © Michael Blair, 2004
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Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-editor: Jennifer Bergeron
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Blair, Michael, 1946-
A hard winter rain / Michael Blair.
(Castle Street mystery)
ISBN 1-55002-533-3
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8553.L3354H37 2004 C813'.6 C2004-905471-6
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04
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A HARD WINTER RAIN
chapter one
Monday, December 13
Until this moment, he hadn’t realized just how much he dreaded this meeting.
“Sit anywhere, dear,” the matronly, bottle-blond waitress said, as she swabbed the table of an unoccupied booth near the back of the restaurant.
He took off his coat and slid into the booth.
“Do you need a minute?” the waitress asked, handing him a dog-eared, vinyl-bound menu.
“Just coffee,” he replied, handing the menu back.
A two-minute walk from the Waterfront SkyTrain and SeaBus terminal in the refurbished Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the restaurant was two-thirds filled with a rainbow coalition of commuters, students, office workers, early-bird Christmas shoppers, and off-season tourists seeking shelter from the penetrating damp of a Vancouver winter. Over the mid-afternoon buzz of conversation and the clatter of dishes, Bob Seger sang about turning the page.
After the waitress brought his coffee, he unfolded his rain-damp newspaper and tried to read, to occupy his mind while he waited, but it was impossible to concentrate. He put the paper aside. Was he doing the right thing? he asked himself for the umpteenth time since arranging this meeting. Maybe it would be better to just let sleeping dogs lie. Sleeping dogs had a tendency to snap when disturbed. And what if he was wrong? He had no proof, circumstantial or otherwise, just conjecture and supposition, a feeling in his gut that he was right. It was too late to back out now, though, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t.
He breathed deeply, slowly, trying to relax. No, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting at all. But it was going to be a walk in the park compared with his next conversation with Victoria. Christ, he thought, in the eight years he and Victoria had been married he couldn’t remember her ever being as angry as she’d been last night. The depth and intensity of her anger had shocked and surprised him, although in retrospect, perhaps it shouldn’t have done either.
“Goddamnit, Patrick,” she’d said. “This is our life you’re screwing with. You could have at least discussed it with me first.”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” he’d replied.
“Oh, bullshit,” she’d snapped.
It was bullshit, at least partly. The main reason he hadn’t told her he’d handed in his resignation, effective immediately, was because he knew she’d have tried to talk him out of it. She might have succeeded, too. He’d been with Hammond Industries for ten years, more than half of his professional life, and the decision to leave had been hard enough as it was.
“What are you going to do?” she’d asked, worry ringing in her voice.
“I’m looking into a couple of things,” he’d replied, uncomfortably aware that he was evading the question. “Worse comes to worst,” he’d added with a grin, “I can always accept Sean’s offer to manage his campaign.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Patrick, what do you know about politics? In any case, I thought you already told him no.”
“I did,” he’d said, sighing. “Jesus, Vee, the way you’re carrying on you’d think we were two meals away from starvation. In any case, you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? You’ve got your trust fund.” Which, he could have added but hadn’t, had more than doubled since he’d started managing it. “All I’ve got,” he’d said, trying to lighten the mood with an atrocious Irish brogue, “is me wits.”
It hadn’t worked, of course. She’d turned cold and distant after that, responding in flat monosyllables when she responded at all. He’d let his anger get the better of him then. “Oh, for god’s sake, Vee,” he’d said. “Stop behaving like a spoiled child. It’s about bloody time you grew up and accepted that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
She’d slept in the spare room.
He looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty. If he didn’t get this over with soon there was no way he was going to make Horseshoe Bay in time to catch the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo. And if he didn’t make the five o’clock ferry, he wasn’t going to make the seven o’clock meeting with the Geeks, as he had dubbed the motley crew of post-adolescent programmers at LogiGraphics. Why they couldn’t work reasonable hours, like normal people, was completely beyond him. He might as well reschedule for Tuesday morning, just in case. He took out his cellphone and made the call.
The Geeks were more than happy to accommodate him. After all, their business plan was an absolute shambles, poorly thought out, sloppy, and full of inconsistencies, and their marketing projections were pure caffeinestoked fantasy. But if they’d been businessmen, he thought, a bit smugly, they wouldn’t have needed him. And they needed him very much indeed.
He wished he knew more about computers and the Internet. He felt fairly confident that the Geeks were on to something interesting, perhaps even revolutionary, but too much of what they’d told him had gone right over his head.