Never Going Back Page 6

  “All true,” Phil said.

  “What’s more likely—that she broke in and took them, or that some other person broke in for her, gave her the photos and planted evidence to frame her?”

  “Maybe that other person felt threatened,” Phil said. “Maybe she didn’t feel she had a choice.”

  “Maybe. But she—or he—would have had to somehow get Lisa’s fingerprints on the glass inside the frames. Wouldn’t that mean they had to carry around a piece of glass that Lisa had touched and then cut pieces to fit the frames? Is that even possible?”

  “If that person was desperate, maybe.”

  “But it’s hard to believe,” I said. “To do that, you’d have to be really smart. And feel really threatened.”

  Phil sipped his coffee, closed his eyes and let out a sigh of satisfaction. “Best dark roast in the city. I should come here more often.”

  “Any time,” I said.

  It was five thirty. Time to open up. I flipped the sign in the window from SORRY—WE’RE CLOSED to WELCOME—WE’RE OPEN! I handed Phil a menu, but he knew what he wanted. Eggs over easy, bacon and sausage, black pudding, brown toast and silver-dollar pancakes. A newspaper. And a lot more coffee.

  Dean had finished the fish and was heating the grill. I handed him Phil’s order. “That’s a lot for a small guy,” he said, cracking the eggs with one hand. He began to hum as he cooked.

  Two more customers arrived. I took their orders. When I brought Phil his food, he pointed to something in the newspaper.

  “New exhibition at the art gallery,” he said. “Rare impressionist masterpieces on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. What do you think?”

  “Security will be tight,” I said. “Difficult but definitely not impossible.”

  “I meant what do you think about going there?” He blushed. “With me.”

  “Oh. Sure,” I said. “I like art.”

  “Just to look at, right?”

  I shook my head. “How can you ask that, Phil? I’m 100 percent retired.”

  “Then I’ll pick you up after work,” he said. “Is six o’clock all right?”

  I was thinking about the gallery. The way to do it would be from inside. Get hired by the security company, maybe using fake identification. Wait until closing time, when people were leaving all together. Maybe arrange for an alarm to go off in a different room. In all that confusion, would anyone notice?

  Phil caught my look. He folded up the paper. “You really meant it, didn’t you, Ali? About being retired? One hundred percent?”

  I shrugged. “Let’s start with 99.9 percent and see how it goes.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Ruth Linka, Vivian Sinclair, Olivia Gutjahr, and the people at Orca for their editorial guidance; to copyeditor Sarah Weber; to Andrew Nicholls for the info on security codes; to my mom, Linda, and brothers Dan and Josh; and to Dieter, Linda and everyone in the Vancouver crime writing community.

  SAM WIEBE is the award-winning author of the Vancouver crime novels Cut You Down, Invisible Dead and Last of the Independents. His short stories have appeared in Thuglit, Spinetingler and subTerrain. He is a former Vancouver Public Library Writer in Residence and the winner of the 2015 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Sam lives in Vancouver.