And rumours were already floating around the waterfront about a fortune of diamonds lying somewhere on the bottom of Burrard Inlet.
“Are there any diamonds?” I asked Matthias.
“Who knows?” he replied. “Bickerdyke says so. Likewise Evans. Rogers doesn’t say much of anything. Their story seems to check out, though. About eight months ago a man named Conrad Eberhardt did in fact steal slightly more than two thousand carats of uncut diamonds from the Sierra Leone Diamond Mining Company. It might have been an inside job, but the company isn’t particularly forthcoming. Evans says he and Rogers were hired to get the diamonds back, but no one at the mining company will confirm that either.”
“Where do George and Chris Hastings fit?”
“Bickerdyke — he seems more than willing to talk, despite his sore jaw — told us that about three months ago he was contacted via email by a man calling himself Tobias Zim. Zim claimed to be an engineering consultant who’d been working in Sierra Leone and had been paid for his services in a million dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds. He was offering a one-third share in the diamonds for a hundred thousand dollars, about a third of what they were worth. Bickerdyke was sure it was a variation of the classic Nigerian scam, but figured he had nothing to lose and replied. A week later he received a package in the post containing a sample, along with instructions, if he was interested, to transfer half the money into an offshore account. The rest of the money was to be transferred on delivery.”
“And he fell for it?”
“Not quite. But shortly after the sample arrived, he was contacted by Frederica ‘Freddy’ Eberhardt, Conrad’s estranged daughter. She told Bickerdyke Zim’s real name and that she’d helped him set up the email scheme in exchange for a percentage of whatever they could get for the diamonds. She then offered him the classic ‘deal he couldn’t refuse.’ They would double-cross Eberhardt, take all the diamonds, as well as all the money. She told him that Eberhardt had lined up another buyer and that they would rip him off, too. She also provided some added incentive.”
“The other buyer was Hastings. He was roped in by the same scheme?”
“So it would appear. And it would also appear that Freddy Eberhardt, going by the name of Nicola Zim, offered Hastings the same deal she’d offered Bickerdyke. My guess is that she was planning on ripping them all off. If what he told you is true, he played along, but tried to warn Zim that she was planning to double-cross him.”
“Where is Freddy now?” I asked.
“We’ve no idea,” Matthias replied.
“Neither does Bickerdyke. For all we know, she found the diamonds in your house and is long gone.”
“Or Bickerdyke murdered her and buried her in a Delta onion field.”
Matthias shrugged.
Bobbi came into my office then. Her hair was down and she was wearing a black turtleneck, a tight black skirt that ended at mid-thigh, and black hose. Was there a Jack Kerouac retrospective in town? I wondered. She smiled at Matthias as he stood, and said, “I’m ready when you are.”
“I think we’re done,” he said.
“Let’s go then,” she said to him. She smiled at me and said, “Close your mouth.”
That evening I was sitting on the roof deck eating leftover pizza and polishing off the rest of the bottle of Chilean Merlot. The shoot was over and the crew was dismantling the equipment and striking the sets. Barry Chisholm’s flock hadn’t returned for the second day of shooting. I was looking forward to things getting back to normal.
Reeny waved from the top of the embankment as she headed toward the ramp. She was wearing the short, red Virgin wig and a trench coat. I went downstairs to let her in; the door hadn’t yet been repaired and I had to use a chair to keep it closed.
In the living room Reeny took off the trench coat and threw it onto the sofa. Her eyes were their normal colour, but under the coat she was in full Barbarella cheerleader regalia: uplift black vinyl bustier with water-filled prosthetic boobs — which did indeed jiggle quite realistically — short black vinyl miniskirt-cumbreechclout thing, black vinyl boots. The only things missing were her short sword and long ray gun.
“Someone steal your street clothes?”
“Do you remember what you said when I brought the Virgin action figure from the studio, about wanting to undress the real thing?”
“Um, yes,” I said, mouth suddenly dry and adrenaline, among other things, pumping through my veins.
“Well, now’s your chance,” she said with a smile. “Assuming you’re still interested.”
“Are diamonds forever?” I said.
Some time later we were in the kitchen. Reeny was wearing a long T-shirt. Period. She was rummaging through the lower shelves of the fridge. The T-shirt wasn’t all that long and I was enjoying the view.
“God, when was the last time you did any grocery shopping?”
“What?”
“There’s nothing to eat.” She closed the refrigerator compartment and opened the freezer. “Ice cubes, fish sticks — yuck — and a couple of Lean Cuisines that look like they’ve been here for a year.”
“Longer, I think.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it’ll kill me.” She jiggled them free of the frost, selected one, and put the other back. “Are they supposed to be this heavy?” she said, hefting the package.
“I dunno,” I said. “I’ve never eaten one.”
She started to open the package with the little cardboard zipper-like contraption, but the end flap of the box came unstuck instead. She touched the tip of her finger to a sticky substance on the end flap. “It’s been opened and resealed with something.”
I stood and examined the end of the package. “Double-faced tape.”
Reeny slid the little plastic tray out of the package. “Whoa, what’s this?”
Whatever delicacy had originally occupied the little plastic tray, it had been removed. What Reeny lifted out of the tray was a narrow length of fine, soft cloth, rimed with frost and long enough to wrap twice and a bit around the average man’s waist. She laid the strip of cloth across the kitchen table. A series of four small pouches had been sewn into it, each about the size of a flattened hen’s egg. I fingered one of the pouches. It seemed to be filled with small angular pebbles that slid across each other like silk.
Reeny got scissors from a drawer, carefully slit one of the pouches, and spilled the contents across the tabletop.
“Holy shit,” I said.
Eberhardt hadn’t been getting ice out of the freezer when Mary-Alice had seen him in the kitchen. He’d been looking for a place to stash the diamonds. It seemed unlikely, though, that he’d have had time to replace the contents of the Lean Cuisine package, carefully reseal it with the double-faced tape he’d found in the salad bowl, and put the package back in the freezer without anyone noticing. Then I remembered Peg — or Meg — Castle telling me that Eberhardt had let her sister use the downstairs bathroom ahead of him. A gentleman to the end, he must have concealed the Lean Cuisine under his jacket, taken it and the tape into the bathroom with him, and made the switch there.
I looked at Reeny. “Do you think the Sierra Leone Diamond Mining Company is listed in the Yellow Pages?”
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the following people for taking the time out of their busy lives to read and comment on drafts of this novel: Alan Annand, Marc Cassini, Stuart Ramsey, Philip Mongeau, and Terry Marshall. For their help and advice, thanks also to Rob and Anne Carson; Leah Kelsey, Vancouver Police Community & Victim Services; Sergeant Bob Cooper, Vancouver Police Homicide Squad; Sergeant Jock Wadley, Vancouver Police Marine Squad; and Dr. Judith Paterson of Concordia University, Montreal. Any procedural or technical inaccuracies, of course, are entirely my own. Thanks also to Barry Jowett, Jennifer Gallant, Jennifer Scott, and the staff at Dundurn. And, of course, as always, to Pamela Hilliard for her love, encouragement, and endless patience.
lair, Overexposed
Overexposed Page 27
