“And talking business. Makes it harder for us to bug him.”

“So you let him get away with this?”

“Pilato will probably pay for the damage.”

“I don’t care about that. I’d like somebody to go after him with a sledgehammer and leave a couple of dents in his rusting old body.” When he said nothing, I added, “You’re smirking, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m serious, and I’m concerned about you.”

“Mel, I don’t have any idea what’s going on, except that everything is linked. Gabe’s death, what happened to Wayne Honeysett, Glynnis Dalgetty … did you know she was convicted of manslaughter and would have gone to prison if Mike Pilato hadn’t hired a lawyer for her, and when she got a suspended sentence … you know all this, don’t you?”

Mel said yes, he knew. He knew more that he couldn’t tell me.

“Why not?”

“Because there are things going on, Josie, that you don’t want to be involved in.”

I told him he was wrong. I told him I wanted to know everything that involved Gabe’s death.

“Then I’ll tell you. Soon.” He promised to call me the next day.

When the telephone rang five minutes later, I assumed he couldn’t wait.

It wasn’t Mel. It was Pilato. “First you’re not home, or not answering, then you’re talking to somebody so’s you can’t answer. All the time, I’m calling, calling, getting nothing but ringing or a busy signal. Good thing I’m a more patient man than people think, eh?”

“Why did your thugs smash my car?” I said. I am very brave when separated from a gangster by a telephone cord.

“Why did you go to Central Police Station when you left here?”

“How do you know that?”

“You ask me that? I ask you this. What’s it look like, some woman I never met comes into my office, talks about somebody murdering her husband, then goes to the police? You think I like that? You think I don’t wonder what you’re saying, why you see me? Huh?”

“So that gives you the right to have two of your hired hoods smash in my car?”

“Get it fixed and send me the bill.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll drive that poor little car into the ground, and every time somebody comments on the dents in my trunk lid, I’ll tell them that’s what I got for driving down a public street in front of your office. How’s that?”

“You think that’s a big deal to me? You think I haven’t been accused of bigger things than putting a couple of dents in that piece of crap you drive?”

“Like murder?” Nobody was going to swing a sledgehammer at me through a telephone receiver.

“You accusing me of that? Because you better be careful, Mrs. Marshall. You be careful with stuff like that. You come to see me, I’m nice to you, try to help you out, tell you a couple of stories. You start saying people get killed because of me, you forget about us being friends—”

“I am not your goddamn friend!” I shouted through the telephone. “The only thing …” I began. My throat had gone dry. I began again. “The only thing I ever want to discuss with you is the death of my husband, and if you had anything to do with it, I’ll see your Italian ass in prison.” I really said “Italian ass.”

“You watch yourself, okay?” Pilato replied. “You watch yourself. You’re pissed, you’re upset because you think somebody killed your husband. Okay, okay. You loved your husband, that makes you a good wife, a good woman. I like that, it’s good. But you watch who you yell at like that, you hear me?”

“Did you have my husband killed?”

“I already told you, no.”

“No, you said you didn’t kill him. I just asked if you had him killed. Do you think he committed suicide?”

“Again, no.”

“Then who killed him? I mean, the police are saying he killed himself and that he shot Dougal Dalgetty.”

“They’re saying that? How come they’re saying that?”

“They say Gabe must have shot Dougal Dalgetty because the forensics lab matched the bullets, the bullets came from the same gun that killed Gabe, and I don’t think I was supposed to tell you that.”

“Too late.”

“So there’s something going on here that I can’t figure out and maybe you can. Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything more, so whatever you do, you didn’t hear it from me, right? About the bullets matching, okay? Hello?”

Mike Pilato had hung up on me.

“WHENEVER YOU SEE A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET,” my Buddhist photographer boyfriend of a few months told me, “turn around and look 180 degrees in the other direction, to the east. All sunsets are pretty much alike. But the light they cast is always somehow different.”

Facing east across the lake, I was reminded of his words. This was an evening like the one he meant, soft and glowing, with the immediate world acquiring a tangerine radiance that I always find both uplifting and melancholy. Why did Mike Pilato appear to find it so interesting that the lab report identified Gabe’s gun as the one that killed Dougal Dalgetty? Obviously, I had told him all he needed to know, because he hung up on me without asking or waiting for more details. As if I had them.

I walked through my garden, noted with some comfort that the door to the garden shed remained closed and locked, and stepped up to the laneway to look across the expanse of water that lay ahead of me, flat and smooth and glassy. Buildings on the shore to my left and right shone like jewels in the gold rays. I could make myself believe, with a little effort and a larger dose of imagination, that I was looking at an artist’s rendering of an idyllic scene.

The image, like all of my fantasies, lasted only for an instant. I became aware of people around me. An elderly couple walking hand in hand on the water’s edge, both wearing white trousers, the cuffs rolled up over their calves, each carrying their shoes so they could feel the coolness of the water on their bare feet. The woman, her hair silver-grey, leaned her head against the man’s shoulder and laughed at something he said to her. Three guys in their twenties were walking in the other direction, across the sand, passing a bottle of beer between them, laughing and looking constantly around to make sure everyone saw how cool they were, and keeping an eye out for cops who could make things very uncool. Here came Hans and Trudy, walking their schnauzer and maybe discussing recipes for sauerkraut. They waved and were about to greet me when I noticed the slim, balding man about twenty feet to my right, leaning against a tree next to the boardwalk, watching me.

“Who’s minding the bridge?” I called to him, and Tom Grychuk smiled and pushed himself away from the tree to walk toward me.

“Wondered when you might notice me,” he said. He wore a striped golf shirt, cotton trousers, and sneakers. Mister Suburbia with a civil service salary. Hans and Trudy passed, watching us carefully. I smiled to reassure them and turned back to Grychuk. “Okay,” I said, “I caught you. You’re it. Now what?”

“I just wondered if, I don’t know …” He looked at his shoes, then, as though he had read something on them, looked up with a grin that made him look as shy as he no doubt felt. “I was wondering if maybe we could have a coffee together, or maybe a drink at Tuffy’s.”

I wasn’t listening as closely to the words as I was to the voice. “You’re the guy,” I said.

“The guy?”

“The one who called me. On the telephone. Saying you would buy me something.”

“Oh, yeah.” He looked away, then down at his shoes again. “Well, you answered the telephone the first time I called and asked what I had bought you, remember?”

Of course I remembered. I thought it was Tina calling back. It was Grychuk.

“You’re asking me for a date?”

He shrugged. “Maybe just a talk.”

“About what?”

He shrugged again. “Things.”

I felt like I was back in grade eleven, talking to some nerd from algebra class. “Some other time,” I said, and turned toward my gate. “And don’t hang around my house anymore, please. You perverts are liable to trip over each other and wreck the roses.”