Really Dead

“I know his type. Kate shacked up with him down there. He made all sorts of promises about taking her to Hollywood when the show was over, but she knew he was full of it. He just wanted someone to get his rocks off with someone young enough to make him feel less ancient. Kate said he was wrinkly all over. It kind of made her ill.”

  “Is that why she left?” Glenn wasn’t sure who had been the user in that situation, Kate or the older man.

  Kate shook her head. “In her last voicemail she said she’d found her golden ticket.”

  “You mean like a Willy Wonka golden ticket?”

  “No, her ticket wouldn’t come in a chocolate bar. Her ticket would be a person, someone who actually would take her to Hollywood.”

  Kate sounded like a real piece of work. Not only was she sleeping her way up the cinematic ladder, she’d also inadvertently given Bobbie his opening to start a scam on Ria. Nice people James worked with. Glenn stood up. He’d heard enough. There was just one more detail he wanted from Allie. “Any idea who her ticket is?”

  “She didn’t say, but my guess is it’s Chris Regent.” She opened the door.

  Even Glenn, who rarely watched TV and went to maybe two movies a year, knew who Chris Regent was. “Why is Chris Regent doing a reality show?”

  “He’s not.” Allie kept an eye on the still lounging Salem. “The old guy is making a movie on the same island and Chris Regent is starring in that.”

  “So, Kate left with Chris, who took her to Hollywood once he was done working on the movie.”

  “Yup. She’ll probably send some photos of herself with Chris in the next day or two. If you want, I could sell you copies of them. An exclusive like that would be worth something to your paper, right?”

  Glenn’s paper wouldn’t care about the photos, but Ria would. They’d be something physical, tangible. She couldn’t continue to buy into whatever Bobbie was selling if she saw proof that Kate was okay. “Are the photos time stamped?”

  “Yeah, and so is the file they come in.” Glenn’s complete lack of technical comprehension must have been plastered like a billboard all over his face, because she went on to say, “Kate takes them with her cellphone and then emails them to the picture frame.”

  “That would work,” he supposed. He’d get someone in the IT department to explain it to him, if necessary. “Actually,” it never hurt to get everything, there was no such thing as too much information, “could you email me the pictures she’s already sent from the islands? I don’t know if my boss will want to use them, but he might.”

  “You’ll pay for anything you use, though, right?”

  “Oh, for sure.”

  “Okay. And I’ll email you the Chris Regent pictures when she sends them.”

  “Great.”

  Don’t be mad at Ria, don’t be mad at Ria, Glenn chanted to the beat of his feet marching along the pavement as he headed to his condo. But it’s okay to feel a little bit hurt. It had been her choice to come a runnin’ when Bobbie called her. That was the bit that hurt. But she couldn’t be blamed for falling for Bobbie’s scam. Bobbie probably knew, just as well as the old guy did, that Kate had up and left with their star. That meant James probably knew, too. But Bobbie had been clever enough to make sure that Ria wouldn’t question James.

  “Ooo, I’m scared he’ll fire me,” Glenn said in a high whiny, wimpy voice that came out louder than he’d planned it to just as he walked past a woman wearing a homemade aluminum foil headdress and a sign that read THEY’RE COMING! She looked at him as if he were the crazy one.

  He was going nuts, torn between hurt and worry. What was Bobbie up to? Glenn sat down on one of the park benches along the lakeshore to calm his thoughts before making the call to Ria. One thought refused to be quietened, though. What if Ria chose to believe Bobbie over him?

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Puffy white cotton-ball cumulus clouds floated slowly across the robin’s egg blue sky above me. They reminded me of the opening of an episode of The Simpsons. Looking south, there were clouds with rougher edges. They were taller, darker, wider, and flatter on the bottom. I swam over to the side of the pool, rested my elbows on the infinity edge, and watched the straight column of rain that was shooting down from the biggest cloud. For the second time that day I thought of Star Trek; the rain column was so perfectly formed that it looked like the brightly lit tube that Captain Kirk and his buddies had been beamed up in. The column moved east, south of Soursop, and slowly crossed over the southern tip of Virgin Gorda, soaking everything in its path. Rays of sunshine beamed out from behind the clouds, like spotlights pointed to the sky to advertise something.

  Looking down over the edge of the pool I could see four two-storey buildings below my villa. The back of the buildings looked like cell blocks, the doors to the ten rooms on each floor lined up in uniform precision. A woman wearing only a towel, carrying what looked like a bottle of shampoo, came out one of the second floor doors in the building directly under mine, ran down the outside stairs, and then went into the room underneath hers.

  “Brad, I’m using your shower,” I heard her call out, presumably to the inhabitant of the room.

  I rolled over onto my back and floated into the middle of the pool. I felt completely useless.

  “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” With my ears submerged, my muffled voice sounded deeper than normal. I wondered if there was a saying about idle minds. Not that my mind was completely idle, it just didn’t know which thoughts to concentrate on. Should I try to think of a way to reach James and get him to open up to me? Should I maybe try to understand and solve the tension between Glenn and me? Nope. Didn’t want to think about that one. There was no point in trying to figure out what had happened to Kate. Not yet, anyway. The person I wasn’t letting myself think about would tell me if she was really missing. If she was, I’d let her consume my thoughts. A cloud floated into my line of sight and I decided to set my mind to work on thinking of what its shape reminded me of. After several minutes, as it moved off into my peripheral vision, the only thing I could come up with was that it looked like a cloud.

  “It is what it is,” my muffled voice told its audience of one.

  That saying had always annoyed me. Of course it was what it was. What else could it be but it?

  My ears heard a sound, but my brain didn’t want to recognize it. The ring of a doorbell wobbled through the water. A doorbell in a pool? Was that what it was? I lifted my head up and heard it ring again, this time without watery distortion. Of course, how silly of me. In the pampered world of Butler luxury a guest would just take for granted that there was an underwater speaker hooked up to the doorbell of their luxury villa. It was what it was.

  I pulled myself out of the pool and grabbed one of the perfectly folded beach towels that were stacked in open shelves near the patio bar. The towel was the size of Tortola and it took me until I was standing by the front door to get it completely unfolded. Once I was suitably wrapped in Egyptian cotton (probably brought to the island by the direct descendants of King Tut himself), I opened the door.

  A Butler-uniformed, middle-aged woman, whose width far surpassed her height, stood on my threshold, her arms authoritatively crossed over her ample bosom. She looked me up and down and made me feel like I was being X-rayed. Just enough of her name tag poked out from under one of her crossed arms for me to be able to figure out who she was. I read “Donne” and knew I was looking at Donnella, the head of housekeeping, the Diet Coke dealer.

  “Rob tells me you be wanting something different to drink.”

  “Oh, yes please!”

  “You’re really not working with your brother, Mr. James, on the show?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re not working for Mr. Dan, neither?”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that!”

  She smiled. “And you got nothing to do with running the hotel?”

  “Nope, I’m just a non-paying guest.”

  She tilted her hea
d slightly to the side and looked at me hard, with a razor-sharp stare that felt as if it could dissect a lie as skilfully as a scalpel. “Why are you here?”

  I had one slow blink of her eyes to decide how to answer her question. “Rob asked me to come to try to find out what really happened to Kate Bond.”

  Donnella pursed her lips and nodded slowly. “All right then. I got a delivery for you. Come help me get it out of the car.”

  I tied the towel on tight like an over-sized toga, shoved my feet mostly into my sandals, and ran down the steps after her.

  Donnella’s car was a pygmy pickup truck. Sitting in the back of it was a canvas-covered rectangular box. She looked around before lifting the edge of the canvas sheet and I caught a glimpse of the contraband stash — two beautiful cases of Diet Coke. Forty-eight fixes, just waiting to be chilled.

  “Bless you,” I said as I bent over and picked up one of the cases.

  “Just don’t be getting me into trouble! There be eyes everywhere.”

  “I promise, no one will know where I got these from.” I walked up the stairs, into my villa, and turned into the kitchen and only then realized that Donnella hadn’t followed me with the other case. Leaving the first case on the kitchen counter, I went back outside. She was leaning against the open back gate of the pickup truck, talking into a walkie-talkie.

  “… he’s just trying to stir up trouble. Did he ask you in private or in front of those cameras?”

  “There were two cameras,” a young female voice answered.

  “You tell him to talk to me about it. Nobody’s been stealing his shoes and he knows it. Besides, who’s going to see a little sand on his shoes anyway? Seems to me he’s always sticking his face in front of the cameras, not his feet.” Donnella didn’t wait for a reply. She shoved the walkie-talkie into the deep pocket on the front of her skirt, shaking her head.

  “Troubles?” I picked up the second case of Diet Coke.

  “That Mr. Ted, it’s always something with him. I told Ms. Whitecross my opinion on who should be managing this hotel, you can be sure of that! And it wasn’t Mr. Ted.”

  “You know my Aunt Patti?”

  “She hired me. Asked me to keep an eye on those last two. Your brother got all these cameras all over the place, but she knew I’d see more with my own eyes.”

  I wondered who was backing Ted as the eventual winner of the hotel manager’s job — Aunt Patti or Dan. But it wasn’t my worry. As I kept telling everyone, I didn’t have anything to do with running the hotels. “Well, thanks so much for the Diet Coke, Donnella. You’re a godsend.”

  She snorted like a horse. “Tell my husband that.”

  The refrigerator in the patio bar could only hold eighteen of the cans (and two of those really didn’t fit and would probably fall out the next time I opened the door). I put the remaining cans in the full-sized refrigerator in my kitchen, saving one to stick in the freezer for a quick chill. Ice clunked into the ice maker bucket on the inside of the freezer door when I closed it just as the doorbell rang again.

  Ariel Downes’ mesmerizing hazel eyes met mine when I opened the door.

  “Hi, I’m Ariel.”

  As if there was anyone on the planet who didn’t know who she was! “I’m Ria.” Chances were she wouldn’t have a clue who I was.

  “James’ sister, right?”

  “Yes.” It struck me that I’d never thought much about how James had worked with, heck, employed so many famous people.

  “Can I come in for a minute? I have a favour to ask.” Ariel Downes was inviting herself into my villa. Did James ever get used to everyday, run-of-the-mill conversations with A-listers?

  “Sure.” I stood back to let her float into the villa.

  She was still sheathed all in white but, then again, so was I — only my white sheathing was absorbent while hers was diaphanous.

  “I’m in the villa up the hill and I saw that you just got a delivery of Diet Coke. I know we’re not supposed to have it on the island, but could I buy a couple of cans from you? I promise I won’t drink it out in the open.”

  I had to laugh. I had something in common with one of the most famous movie stars in the world. “I was just about to pop open my first one. Why don’t I open two? I can send you home with a care package, too.”

  “That sounds heavenly.” Ariel took off her sunhat and gloves and started to untie the white scarf that was wrapped around her head.

  Her lengthy legendary hair fell down around her shoulders, but the legend had changed. Instead of her famous golden locks, her hair was now black. She was stunningly beautiful — the cameras that focused on her hadn’t lied. Her resemblance to a young Audrey Hepburn was startling, especially with her new dark hair. And she was surprisingly petite. I was used to seeing her on an eight-foot high screen, not standing less than two feet in front of me. “Why don’t we take these out onto the patio?” I asked as I took two glasses (probably Waterford Crystal) out of the cupboard.

  “Is it covered?” Ariel tidily put her hat, gloves, and scarf on the kitchen counter. “I can’t get a tan. It’ll screw up the continuity.”

  “The what?” I felt my taste buds tingle with anticipation as the Diet Coke bubbles fizzled while I filled the glasses.

  “You’re not with the TV show or the movie?”

  I shook my head and handed her a glass. “Cheers.” We clinked glasses and both took a big gulp.

  “Ah!”

  “I couldn’t have said it better. Come on, there’s a sofa under the awning. You should be sun-free there. Why is it you can’t get a tan?” I asked as we walked outside.

  “Continuity. We don’t shoot the scenes in chronological order, so I have to have an even skin tone throughout the entire production. If I start tanning now I could end up being darker in the first scene than in the last, and that wouldn’t make sense to the audience.”

  “So that’s why you cover yourself up.”

  She nodded. “Dan’s orders. He’s good at giving orders.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Are you with the hotel? One of the owners?”

  “No, I’m just a non-paying guest on vacation.”

  “Must be nice.”

  I felt my defences instantly fire up. Was I once again going to hear the Gee, your life must be perfect jab?

  “Lucky you, you don’t have to deal with Dan. But your brother does. Is Dan being a jerk on the TV show, too? Stupid question. Of course he is. Why? Because that’s who Dan is — an egotistical, vainglorious, domineering, duplicitous, sexist jerk. I bet he killed that girl.”

  I almost swallowed an ice cube, whole. “What girl?”

  “Some PA who’s gone missing.” She looked straight at me. “You haven’t heard the gossip? Oh that’s right, you wouldn’t have. You’re an outcast, just like me, only people usually use the word recluse to describe me.”

  That’s exactly what I’d thought when I’d seen her floating along the road to the main hotel building. “Why am I an outcast?” I’d never been called that, then again I’d never felt as blatantly excluded as I had when I’d walked across the pool patio.

  “Because you’re not part of either family — the television one or the movie one. Your brother probably knows the whole story, but he’s teamed up with Dan so he’s not going to tell you if it’s true or not. Something like that would kill his show. Then again, it might triple his ratings, but he’d have to leak it to the press piece by piece to build up interest.”

  Piece by piece? Like maybe leaving a foot in a tidal pool? James wouldn’t do something like that and he wouldn’t condone it. I hoped. “Did people open up to you because you’re part of the movie family?”

  “Hell no! I’m a star — with a capital S. I’m difficult to work with. I’m reclusive. I’m too high and mighty to mingle with the peons. At least that’s what everybody says about me. Don’t you read the tabloids?”

  I shook my head. Sure, I’d glanced at the front covers of the tabloids whenever I was wa
iting to pay for my groceries, but I’d never really paid attention to them. “If you’re an outsider, how did you hear about a girl getting killed?”

  “I was doing my morning yoga on the beach and was in the middle of a Kapotasana pose when two guys from the television crew came down to talk about it, but they didn’t see me.”

  “What did you hear?” I tried to sound nonchalant, as if I was only mildly interested.

  “They were arguing. The tall one told the short one that he’d asked someone to come to the island to investigate her disappearance — that’s the word he used, disappearance. The short one was angry about it. He didn’t trust whoever the tall one had hired to do the investigation. But they agreed on one thing — they both think Dan killed her. I could see Dan doing something like that. He doesn’t just fire people, he destroys them. From the way they were talking, it sounded like Dan was screwing her. She and Dan had a big fight and the next morning she wasn’t around.”

  “You heard all that?” She must have been holding her yoga pose for a very long time.

  Ariel nodded. “I’m good at people watching. I do it all the time, it helps me develop characters. I sit on the sidelines or meld into the background and watch and listen. Maybe that’s why people keep saying I’m reclusive? You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been compared to Greta Garbo.”

  I believed it — I’d done it. “You mean the whole ‘I vant to be alone’ thing?”

  “What she actually said was ‘I want to be left alone.’ There’s a big difference. Anyway, if you’re really interested and want to know more about the missing girl, blend into the background and listen when the short guy’s around. You won’t be able to miss him. You aren’t the investigator his tall friend hired, are you?”

  “Ha!” I laughed too loudly. “Yeah, right.”

  “The tall one was in your villa and had room service delivered here.” Add Ariel to the ever-growing list of eyes watching me.

  I’d already guessed that Bear was the short one, and now knew that Rob was the tall one. “You mean Rob?”