“I thought you’d known him longer than that,” I said.
“No, only a month,” she said.
“Is he a writer too?”
She shook her head. “He’s a businessman. Import-export, I think he said, although he’s semi-retired now.” We climbed the ramp to the quay. “By the way,” Maggie said, “that Barry Chisholm character was hanging around here last evening, handing out pamphlets.”
“What sort of pamphlets?” I asked.
“Oh, you know the kind,” she said. “Anti-everything polemics. Homosexuality. Paganism. Television. Fashion. Rock ’n’ roll. Meat. Genetically modified food. Pets. SUVs. You name it, he’s against it. I’m surprised they let a person like that teach at the Emily Carr Institute.”
“He knows everything and then some about computer graphics and digital photography,” I said. “That’s how I got to know him. He’s harmless. Just annoying.”
Harvey tugged gently on the leash and Maggie took him off in search of grass to water.
When I got to the studio I told Bobbi that Reeny had spoken to Quayle about his failure to get back to us about the proposal, and that she’d offered to talk to the producers of Star Crossed if we didn’t hear from him soon.
“That’s nice of her,” Bobbi said. “But as far I’m concerned, I hope we never hear from him.”
But we did. He came breezing into the studio just before lunch, while Bobbi and I were wrapping up a family portrait shoot. Such sittings didn’t usually require two of us, and Bobbi had superior people skills, especially with children, even though I was a parent, but I had nothing better to do. When Quayle arrived I left Bobbi to finish up and took him into my office.
Before I could speak, he held up his hand. “I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to take a hike. The look on Barbie’s face when I came in was clear enough. But I can’t begin to tell you what kind of week it’s been, Tom. My boss has been fired. She was ordered to clear out her desk and escorted to the front gate by security. It seems she was passing trade secrets to the competition. Sleeping with the enemy, as it were. Literally. You might not know it, Tom, but the toy business is incredibly competitive. Downright cutthroat. Industrial espionage is a serious problem. Just between you and me and the lamppost, we wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to learn what our competition had on the drawing boards for next year.” He shrugged. “Lucy’s lucky Bev — she’s the VP of marketing — didn’t turn her over to the cops. Who knows, though? Lucy’ll probably be working for Mattel next week.”
“Where does that leave us?” I asked.
“Up against it, I’m afraid,” he said. “Frankly, we’re going to have to pull out all the stops if we’re going to have the site up by U.S. Thanksgiving. I’ve had a look at your proposal and it’s fine, very thorough. There’re just a couple of minor details that need to be ironed out, but we don’t have to worry about them now. Cost-wise, well, it’s a bit more than we expected, but I don’t see that we’ve got much choice. You’ve got us over the proverbial barrel, my friend. The advance shouldn’t be a problem, either. I can have a cheque for you first thing Monday. Will that be all right?”
“I suppose,” I said.
Willson Quayle’s mouth twitched and his handsome face acquired a look of concern, as much as was possible. “Do I sense a certain lack of enthusiasm, Tom?” he said.
“I think you’re going to have to make other arrangements, Will,” I said, feeling as though I had bits of gravel in my throat.
“Tom, Tom, what are you saying? I know you have a right to be pissed, but think what you’re doing. We’re talking about an awful lot of money here.”
“I’m not pissed,” I said. “I’m disappointed. I’d like to say yes, let’s go, but we’ve lost a week already. I don’t see how we can make the deadline in the time that’s left. You aren’t — wouldn’t be — our only client. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to sign a contract that includes a penalty for failure to meet the deadline.”
“Okay, look, don’t worry about that,” Quayle said. “No penalty clauses, all right? And, since the delay was our fault, how about we cover the costs of hiring temporary help to get us over the hump? You hire the bodies you need. We’ll pay any reasonable expenses out of our own pocket, over and above your proposal.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It still doesn’t leave us much time. If there’s the slightest hitch in the schedule, we won’t make it.”
“There won’t be,” Quayle said. “I guarantee it.”
“How can you guarantee it? Some things are beyond even your control. The Star Crossed production people, for instance. We need free access to Reeny and the Rice woman, in character, and to the film sets and locations. I’ve worked with film people. I know how touchy they can be about anything that interferes with their shooting schedule. They have deadlines themselves.”
“Let me worry about them. And, Tom, I know you and Reeny are friends and all, but, to be frank, I don’t appreciate you siccing her on me like that. It was embarrassing, to say the least.”
“I didn’t sic her on you, Will. She spoke to you on her own initiative. As you say, we’re friends. She was just concerned, that’s all.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers, Tom. Forget it, all right? We’re all under a lot of pressure here.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Good, good. Say, Tom, I stopped by her boat last night and this very unpleasant little man told me she wasn’t living there any more.”
“The boat’s been sold,” I said.
“Is that right? Really? So where’s she living?”
“Actually,” I said, “she’s staying with me until her house in Ladner is vacant.” I changed the subject. “Look, Will, there are still a couple of things we need to settle before I can commit fully to this project. For example, what about the streaming video segments? We need better originals than the tapes you left us.”
“That’s under control, Tom. You’ll have everything you need in plenty of time. Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“You and Barbie aren’t going to be the only ones working your butts off on this,” Quayle said.
“It’s Bobbi, for crissake,” I said.
“Eh? Oh, yeah, sorry,” he said with a twitch of his wrist. I wouldn’t have bet a free lunch that he’d get her name right next time. “Are you on board, Tom? Can I count on you?”
“I want that cheque first thing Monday morning.”
“You got it,” Quayle said. “All right! Gimme five.” He raised his palm. Feeling like an idiot, I slapped his palm.
I should have given him five in the mouth.
I spent most of the afternoon on the telephone. While preparing the estimate Bobbi and I had talked to a number of people about their availability to help us out temporarily. Most of them were still available, despite the delay in getting back to them. We had also picked the brains of a few of them about the kind of hardware and software we’d need and had called a couple of computer dealers for quotes and availability. I’d also spoken to our bank, making sure our line of credit, pitiful as it was, was still good. If Quayle came through with the cheque as promised, though, we wouldn’t need to tap our line of credit. If.
“I sure hope this doesn’t blow up in our faces,” Bobbi said over a beer in my office at the end of the day.
“If it will make you feel better,” I said, “we won’t unpack anything until we have Quayle’s cheque in our hands.”
“Then you’d better chain D. Wayne to the film fridge. He’s frothing at the mouth in anticipation of new toys to play with. Besides Star Crossed dolls.” After a few seconds of contemplative silence, she said, “You aren’t really going to hire your sister, are you?”
“Not permanently,” I said. “But we’ll need help with the bookkeeping and office admin stuff. And she’ll work cheap.”
“I thought she wasn’t interested in menial labour.”
“I talked her into it.”
“I’ve seriously underestimated your powers of persuasion. Don’t get me wrong. I like Mary-Alice. Sort of. I think she’s smart and attractive and maybe even talented, but she’s, um, well…”
“Spoiled?” I suggested.
“That too.”
“What then?”
“Well, she isn’t very nice.”
“She isn’t, is she?” I shrugged.
“I don’t mean to say she’s nasty or purposely cruel or anything like that. She’s just too self-absorbed and that makes her insensitive to other people’s feelings. She doesn’t really understand how other people feel.”
“I’m not sure I do, either.”
“Of course you do. I think sometimes you go too far out of your way to avoid hurting people’s feelings. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you only agreed to take on this job because you felt sorry for Will Quayle.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Damn right it is.”
“Right. I forgot Reeny.” She finished her beer and stood up. “So what now?”
I picked up a CD-ROM Willson Quayle had left. It contained the preliminary designs for the website. “Let’s see if this stuff is any good,” I said. I opened the CD drawer of my computer, inserted the disc, and closed the drawer. The CD-ROM drive whirred and buzzed as the disc spun up. Then the computer froze with an almost perceptible lurch.
“Well,” Bobbi said sourly over my shoulder, “we’re off to a great start, aren’t we?”
Meg and Peg Castle were identical twin sisters who ran an escort service and soft-core porn website out of a small office on the second floor, next door to the driving academy. A testament to plastic surgery, their ages were impossible to guess, but they looked like slightly over the hill Penthouse“Pets of the Month.” They usually dressed like overdeveloped schoolgirls in short plaid skirts, knee socks, and frilly but decidedly unschoolgirlishly low cut white blouses. With their implants, cascades of honey blond hair, and come-hither smiles, they’d caused quite a stir at my birthday party. Bobbi claimed she could tell them apart, although she wouldn’t — or couldn’t — tell me how, but to me they were as identical as bookends. D. Wayne Fowler, because he couldn’t tell them apart either, called them both Em-Peg, which, for reasons completely lost on me, they found hilarious. As Bobbi and I were about to lock up at seven, one of them, I couldn’t tell which, emerged from the stairwell into the studio.
“Hiya, Bobbi,” she said. “Tom.” She was carrying three big paperbound books, each about three inches thick.
“Hi, Peg,” Bobbi said. “Where’s Meg?” We seldom saw them apart.
“Minding the store,” Peg said. The sisters spoke with soft, vaguely British accents, although they’d been born and raised on the West Coast.
“What can we do for you?” Bobbi asked. For a couple of years we’d been doing modelling comps of Meg and Peg’s escort girls, as well as their annual print calendar, which sold for $29.99 on their website. The comps were not very different from the kind modelling agencies produce to tout their clients’ wares, although a bit more suggestive. Curiously, some of the escort girls were uncharacteristically shy about having their photographs taken by a man, so I usually let Bobbi handle them herself. The calendar, on the other hand, while far from hard-core, was pretty risqué, and I refused to allow Bobbi to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. It featured Meg and Peg themselves, in locations and costumes appropriate to each month. The previous year’s December page, for example, had them in absurdly scanty Santa’s helper outfits, cavorting in the snow on Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler. It frequently taxed my creativity, but Bobbi always seemed to be able to come up with something new. Meg and Peg were pretty imaginative too. It was fun sometimes, but it was hard work too; Meg and Peg were nothing if not professional.
Peg held up the books. “Is Wayne here?” she asked. “I have the books he wanted to borrow.”
I tilted my head and read the titles from the spines. All of them contained the acronym HTML, which I knew stood for Hypertext Mark-up Language and was the programming language used to create websites. That was all I knew.
“He left a little while ago,” Bobbi said.
“I’ll just leave them then, will I?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see he gets them.” I took them from her. “Uh, I hope I didn’t cause problems for you with the police,” I said.
She smiled and shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “Not at all. However, we weren’t able to help them much, I’m afraid. My sister thinks she remembers smiling gratefully at that poor man when he kindly let her use the little girls’ room ahead of him, but neither she nor I have any idea who he was.” Neither of them ever referred to the other by name, which only added to the confusion. Her smiled widened. “Must dash. Friday night, you know.” She waggled her fingers and disappeared down the stairwell in a cloud of musk and pheromones.
Maybe that’s what killed him, I thought, a smile from one of the Em-Peg Twins.
When I got home there was another note from Reeny on the kitchen table: “Tom, I’ve borrowed the Porsche again. Hope you don’t mind. Shouldn’t be late. R.” I cracked a beer, then rooted around in the fridge and found something to eat. After I’d eaten and washed up, I filled the five-disc CD player with blues — Buddy Guy, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, Peter Green, Eric Clapton — flaked out on the sofa, and tried to get caught up on my reading. My eyes closed after just a few paragraphs of a Maclean’s magazine report on the state of Medicare. The next thing I knew, someone was gently shaking my shoulder.
“Tom, wake up.”
I sat up with a jolt. It was Reeny.
“What is it?” I mumbled, scrubbing the sleep out of my face with the palms of my hands.
“Is this the man who died on your deck?” She was holding one of the flyers from the coroner’s office.
“Um, yes. Why?”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“You have?” I was awake now. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know his name,” she said. “But a couple of weeks ago he came around asking about Chris.”
“Chris?” I was awake, but not yet fully functional.
“Yes,” she said, a bit impatiently, I thought. “Focus, Tom.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Came around where? The studio?”
“The marina.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked me about Chris. When had I last seen him? Had I heard from him lately? Had he ever contacted me by phone, written me a letter, or sent me a postcard? Did I have any idea where he might be? Did I know how to get in touch with him? That sort of thing.”
“Sounds like the kind of questions a cop might ask,” I said. “Or a bill collector.”
She shook her head. “He was very polite,” she said. “Not aggressive at all. He spoke very good English. Almost too good. I don’t think it was his first language.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“If he did, I don’t remember it. I was running late and pretty rushed.”
“Did he talk to anyone else?”
“He may have. I don’t know. I didn’t see him talking to anyone, but like I said, I was in a hurry to get to work. The studio driver was waiting for me.”
“Did he tell you why he was so interested in Chris?”
“No. Do you think he was a policeman?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think the police would have any trouble identifying him if he was. He didn’t happen to mention where he was staying, did he?”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t.”
I thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“The marina. Let’s see if anyone else spoke to him.”
“Now?”
“Sure. Why not?” Why did she seem so reluctant? I wondered. Wasn’t she curious about the connection between the dead man and Chris Ha
stings? I certainly was.
“All right,” she said at last, without much enthusiasm, though.
chapter eight
It was almost nine and the traffic was light, but as we neared Denman and Georgia, it ground to a standstill. I found somewhere to park and we walked a short distance to Coal Harbour. As we approached Devonian Harbour Park and the entrance to the Harbour Ferries Marina, we saw that quite a crowd had gathered along the seawall. An eerie flickering glow lit up the sky over the harbour and there were police cars and emergency vehicles parked haphazardly on the wide gravel path and the grass beside it, dome lights strobing, adding to the light show. I smelled smoke, acrid and unpleasant.
“Is there a shoot in the harbour tonight?” I asked Reeny.
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said.
We pushed through the crowd to the marina gate. A fresh-faced, very young policeman stopped us. “You keep a boat here?” he asked.
“I do,” Reeny fibbed. “What’s going on?”
“A boat caught fire,” the cop said.
“Which boat?” Reeny asked, gripping my arm. Her hand was cold through my shirt sleeve.
The cop shrugged. “Dunno the name. A big old sailboat. They towed it out into the harbour before it set fire to the other boats.”
“Can we go through?” Reeny asked.
“Yeah, sure. Hope everything’s okay.”
Everything wasn’t okay, though. When we got to Pendragon’s slip, it was empty. So were the slips immediately adjacent. There were scorch marks and drying blobs of fire suppressant foam on the dock. A dozen or so people milled about, speaking in hushed, urgent tones. A towering old man in baggy shorts and sneakers with holes in them separated from the crowd. His pale blue shirt was streaked with soot.
“Reeny!” he whooped. “Folks, it’s Reeny.” He grasped Reeny by the shoulders. “Goddamn, I’m glad t’ see you.” He pulled her against his chest and gave her a quick bear hug.
Reeny and I were surrounded by a dozen men and women, all of whom had to touch her to reassure themselves that she was real. Some of them seemed annoyed that I was in the way.
“I tol’ you she wun’t aboard,” said a stout, grey-haired woman with a face like a walnut. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked Reeny.
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