“Mary-Alice,” I said patiently. “If David’s having an affair, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive — ”
“Humph. You come by it naturally.”
“ — but men don’t usually have affairs for no reason. Does David have a reason, or think he has a reason?”
“He must,” she said.
“Look,” I said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“Too much, obviously.”
“Are you having an affair, Mary-Alice? Is that why you think the man that died on my roof may have been a private detective?”
“No,” she said stiffly, “I most certainly am not having an affair. But perhaps out of guilt over his own infidelity, David hired a private investigator to spy on me, hoping that in fact I was seeing someone else, which would excuse his own behaviour.”
“I think I’ll go back to work now.”
“You haven’t eaten your lunch.”
“I seem to have misplaced my appetite,” I said.
Mary-Alice didn’t say anything for half a minute or so, just sat staring down at her own untouched lunch. Finally, she lifted her head and said, “Tom, I’m sorry. Maybe I am just letting my imagination get the better of me, but things haven’t been the same between David and me lately. He’s never home, and when he is home, well, he isn’t, if you know what I mean. I’ve tried to be a good wife to him. In every sense of the word.” She gave me a wry smile. “But he just doesn’t seem interested.”
“M-A, he is nearly seventy years old.”
“He is not!” she said emphatically. “He’s only sixty-four.” Our father was sixty-five. “But I see what you’re driving at. Maybe I should suggest Viagra.”
“Sure,” I said. “Do that. Then call your lawyer.” Subtlety was not Mary-Alice’s strong suit.
She made a face. “Can we change the subject?”
“Please,” I replied.
“My therapist thinks I should get a job.”
“You’re seeing a therapist,” I said.
“Sure. Who isn’t?”
“Well, me, for one.”
“Bully for you, but not all of us are as well-balanced as you are,” she said sarcastically.
“Okay,” I said. “Your therapist thinks you should get a job. I think that’s a terrific idea.”
Mary-Alice hadn’t worked since marrying David, unless you counted occasional volunteer work for the country club or the West Bay horticultural society, which Mary-Alice probably did. The last real job Mary-Alice had had, if you can call it a real job, which Mary-Alice probably did, was doing part-time scut work in an art gallery. She’d met her husband when she’d thrown wine on him at an opening, although she claimed it was accidental.
“Did you have any particular type of job in mind?” I asked.
“I was wondering if maybe you could find something for me to do around the studio.”
“What kind of camera do you have?” I asked.
“David bought me a little Canon ELPH for my birthday. It’s digital, I think.”
“You think?”
“I haven’t used it yet. But I didn’t mean anything to do with photography, exactly.”
“Well, Mrs. Szymkowiak is only coming in once or twice a month these days.” Mrs. Szymkowiak was our part-time receptionist/bookkeeper. She was in her early sixties. She and her husband, a retired businessman a year or two older, had recently started their own business, selling ladybug colonies and homemade soap over the Internet.
“She’s your receptionist,” Mary-Alice said, miffed.
“And bookkeeper,” I said.
“I’m really looking for something a little more, well, creative.”
“Do you know anything about website design?”
“What’s that?”
When I got back to the studio, Reeny was there, leaning on her rump against the edge of the table strewn with Star Crossed paraphernalia, ankles crossed, chatting with Bobbi, who was setting up for a portrait shoot. It was a warm day, and Reeny was wearing a light summer shirtdress, with buttons from knees to neck. Not many of them were fastened, though, and she was showing a lot of long, bare leg and the deep, shadowy cleft between her breasts. D. Wayne Fowler hovered nearby, trying without success to look nonchalant, pretending to connect cables. If he’d been wearing glasses, they’d have been steamed up. As it was, his eyes were round and somewhat glazed. I couldn’t blame him; my pulse rate had gone up a notch or two upon seeing her.
Reeny stood away from the table. She and Bobbi exchanged meaningful looks. Oh-oh, I thought.
“Have you got a minute?” Reeny asked.
“Of course,” I said. We went into my office. “What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s about last night,” Reeny said. “Let me make it up to you. Let me cook you dinner tonight. That is, if you’re not busy.”
“I’m not,” I said. I’d’ve cancelled an appointment with God Almighty Himself (Herself? Itself? Themselves?), or even Willson Quayle, to have dinner with Reeny. “I’d be pleased to let you cook dinner for me. But you have nothing to make up for.”
“Yes, I do,” she replied. “We were having a very nice evening until I brought up the subject of Chris.”
“Actually,” I said, “I brought it up.”
“Yes, but I backed you into a corner.” She stepped closer to me. There was a fine dusting of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose and, I couldn’t help but notice, across the tops of her breasts. She smelled of sun and soap and musky perfume. “I’ll see you later, then,” she said, and kissed me quickly on the cheek.
At five a man came into the studio from the stairwell. Bobbi and I were sitting at her desk, playing cribbage and drinking beer, waiting for Willson Quayle to call. The man was tall and dark blond and, judging from the look on Bobbi’s face, good-looking. Despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing a long coat over his dark suit. His striped tie was slightly askew and his polished black shoes were creased with wear. He introduced himself as Sergeant Gregory Matthias of the Vancouver Police Department.
“You’re here about the dead man,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right.” He looked at Bobbi then back at me. “Would you mind answering one or two questions? It won’t take long.”
“Not at all,” I said. Bobbi nodded.
We made ourselves comfortable in my office, Bobbi and Sergeant Matthias sitting at opposite ends of the old leather sofa. Matthias refused a beer — reluctantly, it appeared. He took out a notebook.
“Would you mind going over it again?” he said to me. “How did you find him?”
“He was just there, in the chair on my roof deck.”
“And you have no idea how he got there.”
“Well, he had to have gone through the house,” I said. “But there were a lot of people there that night. A number of people say they saw him, but no one I’ve spoken to knows who he is or who he came with, assuming he came with anyone.”
“And what time was it you found him?”
“About nine in the morning.”
Matthias scribbled in his notebook.
“Are you with missing persons?” Bobbi asked.
“Homicide,” Matthias replied.
“Homicide?” I said. My heart thudded, but it wasn’t the same kind of quickening I had experienced earlier upon seeing Reeny in her summer dress. Not the same kind at all. “Christ, he wasn’t murdered, was he?”
“The coroner has so far been unable to determine the exact cause of death,” Matthias said. “Until we know that, we have to treat it as suspicious. Right now we’re just trying to get a line on his identity. Did you have a look around to see if he might have dropped his wallet somewhere?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t think of that. I didn’t find anything while I was tidying up after the party, though.”
“Do you mind if we take a look around?”
“No.”
“How about later this evening?”
“Uh, I’m not going to be home this evening,” I said.
“Tomorrow then? About eight?”
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
“That would be all right, I guess,” I said.
“The people at your birthday party, did you know them all?”
“My next door neighbour, Maggie Urquhart, brought a friend I hadn’t met before. His name was George, I think. My dentist brought his new wife. Her name is Stella. And a couple of friends brought dates I didn’t know. But otherwise I knew everyone else. Of course, there could have been some party crashers. I was pretty wasted by eleven o’clock.”
“How about you, Miss Brooks?”
“Was I wasted by eleven?” she asked with a dimpled smile.
Matthias smiled back. “Did you know everyone at the party?”
“For the most part, but there were a few I didn’t. Mostly Tom’s friends from his days at the Sun, before I knew him. I did see the dead guy, though.”
“Where?”
“On the roof deck.” The skin around her mouth grew pale.
“What time was that?”
“About one, just before I left.” She swallowed. “I thought he was asleep.”
“For all you know,” Matthias said gently, “he may well have been. The coroner put the time of death at around two in the morning.”
“My sister told me she might have seen him in the kitchen,” I said.
“Was he with anyone?”
I shook my head. “He was getting ice out of the fridge.”
“Does she know what time it was?”
“She didn’t say.”
Matthias scratched in his notebook, closed it, and stood up. “That’s all for now. I’ll probably see you in the morning.” He shook hands with me, then offered his hand to Bobbi. She grasped it and hauled herself to her feet. Either that or she was trying to haul him down onto the sofa with her.
“Brooks,” Matthias said to her. “Any relation to Sergeant Norman Brooks of the Richmond RCMP? He mentioned to me once he had a daughter who was a photographer.”
“He’s my father,” Bobbi said. “Do you know him?”
“We worked together a couple of times, before he retired,” Matthias said. “Next time you see him, please give him my regards.”
“I will,” Bobbi said.
After Sergeant Matthias left I said to Bobbi, “Should we call Quayle?”
“If he was really in such a goddamned hurry for us to get started on this, he’d’ve called by now. T’ hell with him.”
Easy for her to say.
chapter five
“She’s right,” Reeny said. “I’m beginning to regret getting you involved in this.”
“What do you mean?” I said with a sniffle. We were in Pendragon’s tiny galley. I had volunteered to chop onions, which had been a mistake in such a confined space. My eyes were watering and my nose was running. Very romantic.
“I thought you knew,” she said. “I recommended you for the job. Didn’t Will tell you?”
“Uh-uh,” I said, scraping the onions into a bowl.
“Thanks,” she said, as I handed her the bowl. She added the onions to a concoction of low-fat sour cream, melted butter, and chopped fresh dill, stirred briefly, then poured the mixture over a salmon filet in a Pyrex dish. She covered the dish with a tent of aluminum foil, then slid it into the tiny oven.
Living on a boat had its appeal, but even one as large as Pendragon also had its drawbacks, such as the cramped galley, with its tiny stove and half-sized fridge. I preferred the more traditional kitchen of my house. At least Reeny had jettisoned the huge collection of books, newspapers, magazines, and journals Hastings had accumulated. Not only did it make Pendragon a good deal more liveable, she probably floated a few inches higher as well. I thought about commenting on it, if only to make conversation, but decided it would be better to leave the subject of Chris Hastings alone for now. The evening was shaping up nicely, and I didn’t want his ghost ruining things, as it had the evening before.
We ate on deck again. She talked about her work, which she made sound considerably less romantic and exciting than the general public, among which I included myself, believed. I talked about my work, which I tried without success to make sound more romantic and exciting than it was. We laughed a lot. When dinner was over, we cleared the dishes to the galley, folded away the table, and sat side by side in deck chairs, polishing off the bottle of wine and listening to the dance music drifting across the water from the boating club clubhouse, perched on stilts on the other side of Coal Harbour. Reeny’s pale, long-fingered left hand rested on the arm of her chair, just an inch or two from my right hand. It was all I could do to restrain myself from reaching over and taking it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but my hormones were raging. I wanted to clamber up the rigging and howl at the moon. I wanted to swing down from the yardarm, sweep Reeny up in my hairy, piratical arms, and have my lusty way with her. I wanted to make frenzied, passionate love with her until dawn.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” she replied.
Her deck chair complained softly as she shifted sideways, folding her legs under her and half facing me. She had used some of the bright blooms from Willson Quayle’s flowers to make a smaller arrangement for the table. It now stood on the engine compartment hatch cover with the empty wine bottle up-ended in the cooler. The soft rattle and creak of rigging and the gentle lap of water against Pendragon’s hull underscored the silence between us. I became conscious of Reeny’s steady scrutiny.
“What?”
“How would you feel about taking a little trip?”
“I guess it would depend on the destination,” I said. “And the company. Why?”
“I was thinking that when we wrap up the season I’d take Pendragon south for a month or so. Or maybe into the Queen Charlotte Islands. I can’t handle her myself, but two can handle her no problem. What do you think? How’d you like to be my crew?”
“When do we leave?” I said.
“I’m serious,” she said. “I talked to Bobbi. She says you need a vacation. You’re not seeing anyone at the moment, are you? Someone who’d get upset if you spent a month alone on a sailboat with another woman?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not seeing anyone at all. And I know you’re serious. But what I know about sailing wouldn’t fill a wineglass.” That was a slight exaggeration. I’d helped Reeny move Pendragon to her winter mooring on the Fraser River, but that had taken less than a day and had been mostly under power. However, I’d never personally sailed anything larger than a twenty-five-foot day-sailer, and only in perfect weather; taking something as big as Pendragon into the open ocean scared me more than a little. Still, it was a very tempting offer. So why was I hesitating? I wasn’t sure.
“I’d like nothing better than to sail away with you,” I said.
“But?”
“Well, for one thing, my daughter may be coming to live with me for a year.”
“Bring her along. We can get a copy of the curriculum and whatever books she’d need to keep up her schooling. I taught elementary school for a couple of years before getting into acting full time. It’ll be fun. And if you’re worried about paying your way, don’t. My idea, my shout.”
“No, that’s not what’s worrying me,” I said.
“What is it, then?” Her face brightened as realization hit her. “Oh, that.” Then her face clouded. “Or am I reading you wrong?”
“Um, no, I don’t think you are. I’m just not sure I’m reading you right.”
She smiled. “The sleeping arrangements can be whatever you like. There’s plenty of room. And no need to rush into things. Personally, though, I’d prefer it if you shared the master stateroom with me. I mean, if that’s all right with you.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course. Take all the time you need.” Her voice was flat.
“Okay,�
� I said. “Um, yup, sounds fine to me.”
She chuckled. “What about your daughter? Would she be all right with it? I mean, young girls can be pretty protective of their fathers.”
“Not to worry. I think you and Hilly will get along just fine. If not, well, I’ll just throw her overboard.”
“Or me.”
“Hell, no. Who’d sail Pendragon?”
She smiled and reached for my hand.
With impeccable timing, a pair of figures appeared on the dock by Pendragon’s gangway: a squat, bald-headed man and sharp-featured woman with enough teased, hennaed hair for the both of them. He wore a rumpled suit and she wore skin-tight jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket. They exchanged looks, then climbed aboard and stepped onto the afterdeck. I stood up to confront them.
“It’s customary to ask permission before boarding someone’s boat,” I said.
“Izzat right?” the man said with an unfriendly smile. He was inches shorter than I was, but sturdy and hard-looking. Turning to the woman, he said, “Y’hear that, Jackie? We gotta ask permission before comin’ onto our own boat.”
“Imagine,” she said, stainless steel studs of her jacket glinting in lamplight.
“I think there’s been some mistake here,” I said. Reeny stood close to me, bare shoulder touching mine. I could feel the warmth through my shirt.
“Izzat right?” the man said again. “If there is, it ain’t us who’s makin’ it.”
“This boat belongs to Christopher Hastings,” Reeny said.
“Not anymore, it don’t,” the man said. “It belongs to me and the missus here. Ain’t that right, Jackie.”
“Uh-huh,” Jackie said. She folded her arms under her full bosom, leather creaking.
“So, why don’t you two lovebirds just haul ass and git offa our boat.”
The man started to push past me toward the pilot-house. I put my hand on his chest. It was as hard and unyielding as a tree trunk. He stopped, though, and stared at me. The woman’s face grew tight and expectant and she breathed through parted lips.
“Just a minute,” I said, relieved, and a bit surprised, that my voice didn’t quaver. “You don’t just walk onto someone’s boat and say it’s yours. Have you got a bill of sale?”
Overexposed Page 6
