Death of a Sunday Writer by Eric Wright

go?”
    â€œThe first race is one-thirty. We’ll leave at eleven-thirty. Have lunch at the track.”
    â€œGood. Now I have to get ready to do my first job.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMy first client. I’m keeping the agency. I told you.”
    â€œI thought you were kidding.”
    Her client had said that his wife would be leaving the building at eight o’clock in the evening. She was blonde, he reminded Lucy, medium height, slim. She parked her car — a dark blue Volkswagon Jetta, licence 040 KOO — in a municipal lot on Pleasant Boulevard. All Lucy had to do was wait by the exit, and follow.
    Lucy circled the block three times and decided that she could wait just past the garage, near a driveway, so that she could turn quickly if the woman went the other way.
    At ten past eight the Jetta emerged, flashing a signal indicating that she would be driving past Lucy on her way out to St. Clair Avenue. Lucy followed closely until her quarry turned on to Mount Pleasant Road, andtucked herself into the slow lane going south. She allowed a car to get between them and settled into pursuit. The woman turned right onto Charles Street, then drove along to Bay and turned north and then west on to Yorkville Avenue, where she left the car in a lot opposite Bellair Street. Lucy followed her in, found a space on the same side of the lot, waited for her to start walking, then quickly trotted after her, trying to keep out of sight.
    They walked down Yorkville to a bar near Old York Lane. When her eyes got used to the gloom, Lucy spotted her target in the corner of the room, and she took a seat on the far side, seating herself so that if the woman tried to leave by the back door, she could follow immediately, aware that it would be easy for the woman to disappear in the corridors around the kitchen and the washrooms. She ordered a gin and tonic, remembering to pay for it immediately so that she could be ready to leave instantly at the first sign from the woman.
    They stayed for half an hour, then Lucy followed the woman down old York Lane to a second floor restaurant on Cumberland Street. Here Lucy nearly trapped herself, almost bumping into the woman at the top of the stairs where she was waiting for a table in the tiny restaurant. Fortunately, she turned away as Lucy appeared and Lucy stepped back and studied a poster for a few minutes until her quarry was seated by the window, then asked for a table in the back “away from the street.” She fiddled with the menu, trying to lip-read the woman’s order to the waiter, establishing only that she was having an elaborate meal, then Lucy ordered an omelette and a bottle of mineral water for herself. At this point it seemed to her that her heart had been beatingat twice its normal rate for about three hours. In the end, she had time to drink two cups of decaffeinated coffee before the woman paid her bill and left.
    Lucy tried to do what she had seen done in the movies a hundred times — to drop a bill on the table and follow the woman downstairs. But she could not remember what the omelette on the menu cost, with the two taxes and the tip added in. And the mineral water? And the coffee? She guessed that the total would be about nineteen dollars, so a twenty would not leave enough of a tip. Thirty would have done the trick, a twenty and a ten, but she had only three twenties and some change. Desperate, she dropped two twenties on the table and headed for the door. The waiter barred her way, and she pointed at the money on the table
    â€œThat’s too much,” he said. “The bill is only fifteen-thirty. Here, let me.” He reached past her and picked up the twenty and offered it back to her. “You put two down, see? One came out with the other, I guess. Here. You would have missed it tomorrow. Have a nice evening.”
    This charming, honest waiter had now delayed her long enough to have lost the woman, but Lucy had a small