A Hard Winter Rain: A Joe Shoe Mystery

By Michael Blair

Someone walked up to Joe "Shoe" Schumacher’s best friend, Patrick O’Neill, in a Vancouver restaurant and shot him dead. It looks like a professional hit, but who wanted O’Neill dead? Was it, as police believe, a "settling of accounts"? Was it Victoria, O’Neill’s beautiful but damaged wife? Or was it O’Neill’s boss, industrialist William Hammond, with whom O’Neill had a falling-out and with whom Victoria had once had a short-lived affair? Former cop, chauffeur, and bodyguard Joe Shoe sets out to find Patrick’s killer, and along the way he uncovers dark secrets going back years -secrets some people will kill to keep.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Oct 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781554884797

Michael Blair

Michael Blair’s first novel (If Looks Could Kill, M&S, 2001) was shortlisted for the 1999 Chapters Robertson Davies Prize as well as the 2001 Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Prize. He published four more novels, including Depth of Field (Dundurn, 2009) and True Believers. He lived in Montreal with his family, and died in 2022.

Book preview

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. Sandra St. Johns, his assistant—his former assistant, he amended—knew a lot about the Internet, but he’d well and truly burned that particular bridge, hadn’t he? Sandra was almost as pissed at him as Victoria was, maybe more.

Christ, what a fool he’d been to have had an affair with her, if affair was the right word for it. Sandra had called it recreational sex, more fun than squash or racquetball, with no club fees, and almost as good for the cardiovascular system. But of course affair was the right word, he berated himself. He couldn’t weasel out of it that easily. Things may not have been going very well between Victoria and him lately, especially where sex was concerned, but that was no excuse for cheating on her. Despite their problems, he still loved her. Trouble was, though, he couldn’t erase the memory of Sandra, skirt hiked up around her hips as she writhed atop him on his office sofa, humming deep in her throat as she neared orgasm. Even now, his pulse quickened and the god-damned one-eyed worm raised its single-minded head.

Christ, life could be complicated sometimes.

More coffee? the waitress asked, hovering over him with the coffee pot in her hand.

No, thanks, he said. She went away.

He looked at his watch again. Almost four. He’d give it ten minutes more, then he was out of here. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe he was meant to let the sleeping dogs alone after all.

He looked up as the door opened, letting in a blast of cold, damp air. A man came into the restaurant, a street person from his raggedy appearance. He had a great, bushy moustache that almost completely covered his mouth and his hands were shoved into the pockets of a grimy green parka, shoulders darkened by rain. A filthy scarf muffled his chin and the hood of the parka was up, cinched tight against the chill, and from it protruded the curved bill of a baseball cap. Despite the overcast sky, he wore big wraparound sunglasses. He stood by the entrance, surveying the room, as if looking for someone. It might be easier, Patrick thought sourly, looking at his watch again, if he removed the bloody sunglasses.

The man in the parka approached Patrick’s booth and stared down at him, eyes invisible behind the dark lenses of the glasses.

Can I help you? Patrick asked irritably.

The man didn’t answer, just continued to look down at Patrick. Even though his face was almost completely obscured, Patrick felt there was something vaguely wrong about him. Then the man took his hands out of his pockets. He was wearing gloves and had something in his right hand. It took Patrick a fraction of a second to realize that the object in the man’s hand was a revolver. It was the longest fraction of a second of Patrick’s life.

He looked up from the gun. The ridiculous glasses had slipped. Patrick looked into the familiar eyes of his killer. No, he said, starting to stand. Wait. It’s—

The gun roared and leapt. Patrick felt a massive impact as the first bullet struck him in the sternum, mushrooming and slamming him against the backrest of the bench. The gun roared again, and the second bullet struck just to the right of the first, pinning him momentarily against the backrest. Patrick didn’t feel that one. Nor did he feel the third, which struck on a downward angle as he rebounded, shattering his left clavicle, flattening and tumbling, shredding his lung and blowing apart his heart.

Witnesses would later tell the police that the killer then placed the muzzle of the revolver against the side of Patrick’s head and fired once more, after which he dropped the gun on the table and walked out of the restaurant as calm as could be.

Shoe stood under the awning of a Chinese pastry shop on Cordova, coat collar up and hat brim down, watching the front of the dry cleaning store across the street. Despite the rain, the sidewalks were busy, but at six-foot-six he had no trouble seeing over the heads of the majority of pedestrians, most of whom were Asian this close to Chinatown and Japan Town both. A few held surgical masks to their faces as they hurried along on whatever urgent business occupied them this day.

Through the misted window of the dry cleaning store Shoe could see the woman behind the counter. She was talking to a hirsute, pigeon-breasted man wearing a sleeveless undershirt. From their body language, it seemed to Shoe that they were arguing about something. The hairy man’s name was Seropian and, according to the sign above the storefront window, he was the proprietor. The woman’s name was Barbara Reese. She worked in the store from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. She also held down a second job: from four to midnight, every day but Sunday, she waited on tables in the lounge at the North Burnaby Inn on Hastings, east of Boundary Road, a forty-minute bus ride from the dry cleaning store. It was almost three-thirty, though, and even if she left this minute, she was going to be late.

Rain drummed on the awning over Shoe’s head and the late afternoon traffic crept through the gloom, brake lights flashing, tailpipes smoking. His breath steamed and condensed on the tips of his coat collar. A few degrees colder and the rain would turn to snow. The smell of coffee from a nearby coffee shop was almost irresistible.

It was 3:45 when the woman finally emerged from the dry cleaning store. The rain had let up, but it was getting colder. Shoe watched as she ran to catch the trolley bus that had pulled up to the stop at the corner, holding her red beret on her head with one hand and waving her long black umbrella with the other. The bus left without her.

Abandoning the shelter of the awning, Shoe crossed the street to where the woman waited at the bus stop. The rain began again and she opened her umbrella. Two ribs were broken and it sagged asymmetrically. Shoe’s umbrella was in his car, parked around the corner. The woman smiled tentatively at him as he approached, as if she thought she might know him, but her eyes were wary.

Although middle-aged, she was still very attractive, Shoe thought, in a bruised, shopworn kind of way. She had high cheekbones, a full mouth, and a long, straight nose. Her eyes, though, were her most striking feature. Nested in web of fine, spidery wrinkles, they were a clear, luminous blue and almost rectangular. With a jolt that squeezed his heart like a fist, he realized that she looked a lot like he imagined Sara would have looked now, had she lived.

Excuse me, he said. Ms. Reese?

Yes? She held her umbrella higher, to look up at him. Moisture beaded in her thick dark hair where it curled from under her beret. There was a thin, almost invisible furrow of old scar tissue under her left eye, and another slightly longer one on the edge of her jaw. Sara, too, had had a scar, he recalled, the result of a training injury, half hidden by her right eyebrow.

My name is Joseph Schumacher, he said, giving his full name. I wonder if I could have a word with you.

Do I know you? she asked.

No, he said.

Her eyes narrowed. Are—are you a policeman?

No, he said again. Once upon a time, though, many years ago, after graduating from the University of Toronto with a liberal arts degree and no marketable skills to speak of, he’d for a short while been a member of the Toronto Police Service. He didn’t think it still showed. I knew your husband, he said.

My husband? she said, eyes widening now. Were you a friend of his?

Not exactly. An acquaintance.

He’s dead, you know, she said.

Yes, I know. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.

But that was twenty years ago, she said.

The rain intensified. It ran from the rim of his hat onto the shoulders of his coat. The seams of her misshapen umbrella leaked and water dripped from the ribs and trickled down the handle, soaking her glove. The next bus wasn’t due for another few minutes.

May I offer you a ride? Shoe said. My car is just around the corner.

You’re sure I don’t know you? she said, peering up at him. You look familiar.

We’ve never met, he said. Perhaps you’ve seen me in the neighbourhood.

I guess that’s it, she said.

He repeated his offer of a ride. She looked at him for a long time before answering. He knew from the look in her eyes, however, what her answer would be.

No, she said, shaking her head. I don’t think so. Thank you, though.

This wasn’t working out quite the way he’d hoped. Perhaps we could meet later? he said. She had a half-hour break at eight, took it in the Starbucks up the block from the North Burnaby Inn. I really would like to talk to you, he said. He became aware that the other people waiting at the bus stop were looking warily in his direction.

I don’t know, she said.

The bus came, slowing to a stop with a hiss of tires and a whine of worn brake linings. The doors opened and the people at the stop began to board.

I have to go, she said. Without looking at him, she closed her umbrella and climbed aboard the bus.

Shoe watched the bus grind away, trolley poles popping and sparking on the overhead wires. He then crossed the street and went into the coffee shop, where he bought a black coffee to go and carried it around the corner to his car, an aging grey Mercedes. He unlocked the door, got in, and started the engine. Turning the heater up high, he put a tape in the cassette player. The coffee had smelled better than it tasted, but it was hot, so he drank it anyway, sipping slowly as he listened to David Helfgott playing Rachmaninoff’s C Sharp Minor Prelude. He felt detached and vaguely depressed. The shortest day of the year was a few days away. Then Christmas. Shortly after that, his fiftieth birthday. What did he have to be depressed about?

The first fat flakes of snow began to fall.

Victoria O’Neill stood at the broad living room window of the house high in the British Properties of West Vancouver. A thousand feet below her, beyond the hazy lights of West Vancouver, English Bay was strewn with strings of light from the half-dozen or so freighters at anchor there, waiting their turn to enter Vancouver harbour. She pressed her palms against the cool glass and pushed, imagined she felt it give ever so slightly. She pushed harder, putting her whole weight against it, and in her mind’s eye saw it burst, setting her free to tumble out over the rooftops of the houses farther down the slope and drop into the bay, to sink out of sight below the waves, embraced by the cold and the dark and the deep. The window did not break, of course, and she was not set free. Perhaps if she threw herself against it from across the room, she thought foolishly. She knew even that would not do it; the glass was half an inch thick, the kind of stuff they used in hotels and office buildings and shopping malls.

She laid her forehead against the cool, hard surface and closed her eyes. The big house thrummed around her, the sound of its emptiness amplified by the stiff membrane of glass, as if conducted directly into her brain through the bones of her skull. Behind closed lids, her eyes burned with incipient tears. A pressure built within her chest, expanded, forcing a silent sob from her throat. Christ, she was so fucking tired of it all she could scream. Tired of this ridiculous house and the ridiculous life she lived in it. Tired of silly neighbours and their silly dogs and sillier children. Tired of always waiting for Patrick to come home and tired of always waiting for him to leave when he was home.

On a sudden impulse, she opened her mouth and screamed against the glass. It was a muted, restrained scream, however. Taking a breath, she opened her throat and tried again, but succeeded only in bringing on a coughing fit, forehead jouncing painfully against the glass with each spasm.

You are hokay, Miss Victoria?

Victoria straightened with a start. Consuela, their middle-aged, part-time housekeeper, stood at the top of the steps to the sunken living room.

Yes, Connie. I’m okay. Victoria’s hands and forehead had left oily smudges on the glass of the window. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her blouse.

Consuela’s expression was stern. Nothing is wrong?

No. Victoria picked up her wineglass from the coffee table, but it was empty. I was just being silly.

I stay if you want. But she was already wearing her old navy peacoat and carrying a purse that looked large enough to hold a week’s groceries.

No, no, Victoria said. Go home. I’m fine, really. Just tired. I’ll see you on Wednesday.

After Consuela had left, Victoria climbed the steps to the kitchen. She poured another glass of white wine from a bottle in the terra cotta cooler on the counter. Picking up the cordless phone, she carried it and the wineglass upstairs to her bathroom and set them on the rim of the big square tub. She started the water, adjusted the temperature, and poured in four caps of bubble bath. While the bath filled, she undressed and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the dressing room door. A little doughy, she thought critically, twisting to look over her shoulder, and her butt was beginning to pucker a little. God, she was only thirty-five. What would it look like when she was fifty? Turning to face the mirror again, she hefted her breasts in her palms. Although they probably wouldn’t pass the pencil test, they didn’t sag too badly. She’d certainly seen worse at the health club. Much worse. She’d seen better too, though. Much better.

She stepped into the tub and slowly lowered herself into the foaming water. Settling back, she let the heat soak into her. She’d told Consuela there was nothing wrong, that she was just tired, and maybe that was all it was. After all, she hadn’t slept very well last night, after the argument with Patrick. She knew there was more to it than that, though. Fear clawed at the back of her throat. Damn Patrick. How could he have been so inconsiderate and insensitive? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he understand?

No, he probably didn’t understand, she thought. Sometimes she felt that the only person in the world who really understood her was Kit Parsons. Kit wouldn’t run out on her, abandon her like everyone else had. Would she?

Oh, stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself, Victoria thought angrily. Most people would think she had it made. A house in the British Properties, a closet full of clothes, a BMW convertible, and a husband who at least said he loved her. She was healthy—physically, anyway—reasonably attractive, and still relatively young. What more could she ask? Happiness? A highly overrated commodity, in her experience.

She reached for the wineglass, but it was empty. She should have brought the bottle.

The mixture of heat and alcohol had made her light-headed and loose-jointed, so when the telephone rang she almost dropped it into the water as she fumbled to answer it.

Hiya, kid.

Hello, Kit, Victoria replied, instantly recognizing Katherine Kit Parsons’ scratchy voice, ravaged by the almost two packs of cigarettes she smoked every day.

Whatcha up to?

Nothing much, Victoria said. Taking a bubble bath and getting stewed on white wine. Patrick’s taking the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo.

It’s not healthy to drink alone, Kit rasped. Want some company? I haven’t had a bath today.

Victoria laughed. She was tempted, but said, I don’t know, Kit. I’m really very tired. I think I’ll just watch a little TV and go to bed early.

Have you eaten? I could pick up a pizza or something. A video, too. We’ll just veg out. I’m not going to take no for an answer.

Kit, please. Not tonight. I wouldn’t be very good company.

All right, Kit said, voice flat with disappointment. But call me if you change your mind.

Yes, of course, Victoria said guiltily and pressed the disconnect button.

As soon as she had disconnected she regretted not letting Kit come over. She could have used the company. Reaching out with her foot, she toed the faucet on. Hot water roared into the tub. Despite the rising heat of the bath, the familiar icy emptiness gnawed at her insides and the cold black tendrils of dread that always lurked just beyond the threshold of her awareness slithered into her mind. The flesh of her face grew stiff and numb. The numbness spread, invading her chest. Her heart pounded. She took an unsteady breath, and as she lifted leaden arms to pull herself out of the bath she saw the faint white lines across her wrists and recalled from years earlier the red blossoming into the bath water, frothing pink where the water from the faucet foamed, and her aunt Jane’s screams...

Victoria rinsed off with the hand shower, towelled herself dry, and, wrapped in a thick terry bathrobe, went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The dinner Consuela had prepared needed only to be heated in the microwave, but even that seemed like too much trouble. She closed the door and poured more wine into her glass. Her head buzzed and she knew she would have a headache soon.

She keyed Kit’s number into the phone, but stabbed the disconnect button before the call was completed. It would not be a good idea, she knew, considering her mood and the amount of wine she’d drunk, to be alone with Kit tonight. In the four months Victoria had known her, Kit had never made any overt moves, but neither had she hidden her feelings, apparently satisfied to let things develop on their own. Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she felt about the situation. Not that it was a line she hadn’t crossed occasionally before, but she wasn’t sure it was a line she wanted to cross with Kit. Not now, anyway.

The doorbell rang, playing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Für Elise, which she had once loved but now loathed, thanks to that doorbell. Half hoping Kit had decided not to take no for an answer after all, Victoria went to the door.

It was raining again at five-thirty when Shoe nosed the Mercedes up against the door of the garage in the lane behind the peeling, wood-frame house on West 3rd between Balsam and Larch in Kitsilano. Retrieving his purchases from the back seat, he locked the car and