Sea to Sky (17 page)

“Like my horses,” she said, sitting down with her own coffee. “I wish your dad liked to ride, but with that hip of his, I don’t think that’s even remotely possible.”

“Maybe you guys could travel. You could come up to see me and Mo and the kids.”

She snorted softly, as if it was a bad joke. “We’ll see. Tell me about your truck. It’s a pretty nice looking rig.”

Sorry remembered how happy his father had seemed about the truck, that he obviously hadn’t noticed that the name on the door was J.H. Rayne. He had meant to explain that the truck wasn’t his, that he was just hired to drive it, but then he figured it wouldn’t hurt for the old man to think otherwise. He was probably just glad that his son hadn’t roared into town on a Harley like he’d done in the past, always in summer, always in a muscle shirt that showed off his Black Cobra tattoo. If the old man was bummed out about getting old and selling the store, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for him to think his son was doing something respectable.

“It ain’t paid for yet,” he told his mom. “You don’t make a ton of money haulin’ freight these days.”

She smiled. “It looks nice. You must take good care of it.” She was back at the stove, and lifted the lid off the soup, letting steam and a wonderful aroma loose into the room.

Sorry inhaled deeply. “Mom, you make the best chicken soup in the world.”

“It’s turkey,” she said.

Ten minutes later, he was ready for a long nap.

C
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    TEN

Meredith was pretty happy with her morning, in spite of sitting through three conference presentations aimed at purchasing professionals and supply chain managers. You never knew when information about the purchasing field might come in handy in her line of work. Between presentations, she’d spent most of the time pretending to hang on every word Todd Milton said about how to be a successful purchasing manager in the aerospace industry. Sadly, it involved a lot of engineering knowledge that she didn’t possess, she’d told him. She found it terribly exciting, though. Did he have any stories to tell about top secret aerospace plans, or maybe industrial espionage?

Unfortunately, he didn’t know anything about espionage, he said. He did say there was so much money floating around, especially from government contracts, it was easy to coax some of it your way, if you knew how things worked. Bonuses for getting orders delivered faster, for example. Bonuses for getting a better price on components. Even bonuses from your suppliers for giving them lucrative contracts. “Bonuses?” she’d asked, and he smiled slyly and winked.

They sat together during lunch, placing her binder and his briefcase on adjoining chairs while they went to the buffet table. She dished herself two kinds of salad, a whole wheat roll and some cold cuts while he piled his plate with a portion of almost everything on the table. When they were settled at their table, she asked him if he knew ‘the poor guy who was killed on the chairlift’. At first he didn’t answer.

“He was supposed to be at the conference, wasn’t he?” She looked sideways at Todd while raising a forkful of romaine lettuce to her lips.

Todd was chewing something and just nodded.

“I’ll bet it’s making people think twice about sitting on a chairlift with someone they don’t know.”

“I doubt that it was a random murder,” he said.

“How would you know? I mean — did you know something about the guy?” She leaned closer and touched his arm.

“Yes.” He took a few swallows from his water glass, and Meredith got the impression that he was stalling. She left her fingers touching his arm and gave him her full attention.

“Let’s just say, Stella, that I knew his reputation.”

“Don’t tease me, Todd. I’ve never been so close to a real murder before, and it’s kind of exciting. Tell me more,” she said, giving his shoulder a playful poke. Interesting, she thought, that he wouldn’t admit to having drinks with Irwin the night before he was killed, although it was in a public place and already known to the police. Why would he hide it from her? Did he somehow know who she was, and who she was working for?

He lowered his voice, and leaned in close to her. “Rumor has it he was on the take.”

“Okay.” She waited for him to elaborate.

“Let’s just say, he wasn’t as loyal to his company as they would have liked.”

He was confirming what she already knew. “Industrial espionage?”

He shook his head and put a forkful of roast potato into his mouth.

“Then what?”

He seemed to be considering how to put it. “Or yes, but maybe not in the way you think. It’s not about selling designs or manufacturing secrets. More like purchasing espionage, you might say. Do you know how valuable it would be to a company to know what their competitors were bidding on a contract before they submitted their own bid?”

Meredith smiled and turned her attention back to her salad. Her client had been right. “And something like that could get him killed? Are the stakes really that high?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said, putting a hand up, as if to say ‘whoa’. “He could have made some enemies, is all I’m saying. Plus the guy was a jerk on a personal level, and he tended to piss people off.”

“It sounds like you knew him fairly well, then.” She pretended to be busy with her salad, so it would seem more offhand than it really was.

Todd pushed a roasted carrot around his plate before spearing a piece of beef with his fork. “I’ve seen him in action a time or two,” he said, looking off in another direction until he had chewed and swallowed.  “I’m sure the Mounties will find his killer. Don’t they always get their man?”

Meredith was convinced that Todd Milton was somehow part of the puzzle she had been hired to solve, but it was time to back off on the subject. The question remained, however, could Todd Milton be a viable suspect in Mike Irwin’s murder? She washed down her lunch with a drink of Perrier before turning to her companion with an ingenuous smile.

“So tell me, Todd … do you ski?”

Hunter still wanted to talk to Mike Irwin’s wife, but he knew it wasn’t going to be comfortable for her, and perhaps she wouldn’t even consent to see him. Not only had she seen her husband confront Hunter in the restaurant at the Coast Peaks soon after their arrival in Whistler, she had now also been talking to Alora. Girl talk. No doubt he had come up in their conversation, and he had no idea what Alora would have said about him after he left their table. After all, she had been upset with him at the time.

He considered calling Kelly Irwin at the hotel, but decided it would be just too easy for her to say no over the phone. He was going to need almost impossible luck to find her alone.

Hunter glanced at his watch as he entered the Coast Peaks Hotel lobby. Noon was still fifteen minutes away, and it would be a reasonable time to expect a family with small children to be finishing up lunch. He remembered doing that with Chris and the girls when they were small. Little kids tended to wake up early and get hungry for lunch early. ‘Let’s go early before the rush,’ was a standard phrase. Chris was always self-conscious if the girls started making too much noise and disturbing the other patrons. As a matter of fact, so was he.

He had changed out of his ski clothes after arriving back at the RCMP detachment with Shane Blackwell, donning his usual jeans and boots and sheepskin jacket. They had both been frustrated with the results — or lack of them — from the morning’s ski adventure. Shane’s first fall in the snow was followed by several more during their inspections of suspicious tree wells, and his mood had turned blacker with each one. They had found nothing of value, and by the end they were convinced that only a miracle would turn up the murder weapon on the eight thousand some odd acres of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. When they got back to the detachment, the reception desk told Shane that he had an important call to return, so he had gone directly into his office, closing the door before Hunter could ask him what his next move would be. Hunter shrugged and left.

His hunch about finding what was left of the Irwin family in the restaurant for an early lunch paid off. He sat down at a small table near the entrance and ordered coffee and a sandwich. When John Irwin got up to visit the men’s room, Hunter followed him.

“Hello,” he said. John had walked up to a urinal and Hunter felt he couldn’t just stand and watch, so he bellied up to the adjacent urinal and unzipped his fly. “We meet again.”

The man glanced over briefly. “Hello. Hunter, wasn’t it? Why do I get the feeling you don’t really need to be here?” He motioned at the urinal with his chin. “You trying to catch me with my pants down?”

Hunter laughed. “I just wanted to catch you alone. I enjoyed our talk Saturday night, and I wanted to apologize for leaving so abruptly.” He debated telling John about his morning with Staff Sergeant Blackwell, but decided against it. Now that he was essentially being included in the investigation — although Shane’s mood when they parted made him question how long that would last — he would be betraying the trust of the detectives if he revealed new information without their consent.

They finished at the urinals and moved to the sinks as Hunter continued. “I can understand if you don’t want me speaking to your wife. As Mike’s mother, I’m sure she’s taking it harder than anyone else, so I won’t even ask. Do you think Mike’s wife would agree to talk to me? I spoke to her briefly the other night, but I’ve got more questions.”

“She might. I don’t really know.”

“Any chance you can put in a good word for me?” Hunter opened the door for the older man, and they walked back toward the restaurant.

“You’re sitting here?” John asked, as Hunter stopped beside his table near the entrance. When Hunter confirmed it, he added, “The kids are just about finished. I’ll ask Kelly to wait in the booth for you. It’s a little more private.”

Hunter thanked him and prepared to sit down, but John remained standing by the table, an absent look on his face. Finally he nodded with a tight smile. “Kelly seems to be having a bad day. Go easy on her,” he said. “You know, I wouldn’t mind meeting you again for a drink. We can talk some more. Can you come by again tonight?”

Hunter hesitated, sitting down and straightening his chair to buy time. He had no specific plans, but he didn’t want to commit in case something else came up. Something with the RCMP, or maybe something with Alora. He looked up at John’s face again and changed his mind.

“I’d like that,” he said. “Meet you in the lounge at eight?”

The older man put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “That’d be fine,” he said, and walked away.

Five minutes later, John saluted as he left the restaurant behind his wife and the two children. Kelly remained seated at the booth, and Hunter immediately got up to join her, signaling his intention to his server as they passed each other.

“May I sit down?”

She nodded, not meeting his eyes. His immediate impression was that she was uncomfortable about talking to him. With the natural light coming in through the restaurant window, he could see her more clearly today than he had in the lounge the night before. She didn’t look all that much older than his own daughter, Janice, but the strain of the past two days had obviously taken its toll. There were dark circles under eyes that darted everywhere: from her hands, to the window, to the adjacent tables, landing for a brief second on Hunter, then gone again. Her hands were in constant motion as well, touching her fork, her cup, a napkin, then each other. Hunter felt he had to calm her down, for the sake of her sanity if nothing else.

“Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. I know your lawyer told you not to, but please be assured I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I just want to get as much information as possible about your husband.” When she said nothing, he continued. “Are you okay with answering a few questions?”

She nodded again, then said, “I have nothing to hide.”

He was about to speak when she said, “Look. I’m sorry about yesterday. It was nothing personal, refusing to talk to you. And it wasn’t even what Alora said about being my lawyer. It’s just that I want this whole thing to go away. I want to stop having to think about it; about Mike, about death, about his mother hurting so much, about what I’m going to do next.” She put her hands over her face and shook her head vigorously, as if trying to shake all of the unpleasant thoughts right out of it. “Have you ever just wanted to stop the world and take a break from life? I feel like my head’s going to explode, or I’m going to go totally crazy.”

Hunter bowed his head and sighed. He knew exactly what she was talking about. He had been going through the same thing after Ken’s death — piled on top of his divorce from Chris — when he resigned from the RCMP. That’s when the solitude of long haul trucking suddenly seemed so attractive. Better, he thought, than turning to the oblivion of alcohol, not that a few drinks now and then didn’t help to blunt the pain.

“How about a glass of wine?” he asked her. “That might help take the edge off. It sometimes works for me.”

She seemed surprised.

“I’ll keep you company,” he added, waving the server to the table. “A sauvignon blanc good for you?” and she agreed.

“I get so tired of holding it together for the kids and Mike’s parents. That’s why I spent time with Alora yesterday. I didn’t have to pretend with her, you know?”

He smiled sympathetically.

“I don’t want you to get the impression that I wished Mike any harm, but the fact is, he made me miserably unhappy. I was so worried about how he treated our son, Jordan. Jordan is only five, but he’s my little man.” She smiled, her eyes closed. “He’s sensitive and kind, and Mike hated that. He wanted Jordan to be more like him. A tough guy. A jock.” She looked up abruptly. ``Do you have a son?”

Hunter shook his head. “Two daughters,” he said. “They’re in their late teens, not that much younger than you.”
And God forbid they should ever go through what you’ve been through
, he added to himself.

“I’m almost thirty, but I feel like I’m forty,” she said.

“Forty’s not so bad.”

“Mike would’ve been forty next year.”

The wine arrived, and Kelly picked up hers immediately, took a good sip, and put the glass down with a sigh. She rubbed her cheek, then her elbow, then started massaging her other hand. “Beth offered me one of her pills — some kind of sedative — but I said no. I was looking forward to another one of these,” she nodded at the wine glass, then picked it up for another sip.

“You’ll feel better soon,” he told her. “Time really does heal. I promise.” He remembered what John Irwin had said about her father. “Of course, you already know that. You lost your dad, too. Life isn’t fair, I’m afraid.”