Really Dead

  “Are you going to hide behind the plant again or do you want to join us out in the open now?” Rob and his friends laughed at his own oh-so-humorous question.

  I blushed and hoped that the lighting wasn’t bright enough to show the red patches that were spreading across my cheeks and down my neck.

  A waiter bought us a round of drinks and cheeseburgers for Rob and Esther.

  “How as your day?” Rob asked me in between mouthfuls of burger.

  “Okay, I guess.” To me, the day had been bizarre. To Rob, it would have probably sounded like just another day at work.

  “Did you guys hear about Louise Flavelle?” Pam asked Rob and Esther, who both shook their heads and kept right on chewing. “She was killed by a hit-and-run driver.”

  “No shit?” Rob asked.

  “No shit.”

  “Did they get the guy?” Esther asked.

  “They haven’t even got a description of the car,” Bear answered. “The way I hear it the police interviewed the people who saw it, but all they saw was the star in their midst. Nobody noticed the car.”

  “They’ll get something from the CCT cameras.” Rob reached over and stole a handful of Esther’s fries.

  “Back off!” She swatted his hand away.

  “You should have heard the movie crew,” Pam rolled her eyes. “They were all ‘Oooh, we’ve lost Louise, boo-hoo-hoo,’ as if they were her immediate family members. It was so fake. Sure, some of them probably worked with her, but …”

  “We’d feel like we’d lost a family member if somebody died on this shoot.” Esther smacked Rob’s hand away from her fries, again.

  “Nobody felt that way when Kate disappeared,” Bear opened just the line of conversation that I’d been hoping would open.

  “Two reasons for that.” Esther held up two fingers. “One,” she pulled down her index finger with her other hand, “Kate didn’t get killed and two,” she left her middle finger up in the air, “nobody liked her enough to care when she left.”

  “I liked her,” Pam protested. “And we don’t know what really happened to her. But Bear says that’s what Ria’s going to find out for us.”

  Esther gave me a long, questioning look.

  “Can we maybe have this conversation somewhere else?” Rob asked. “I can point out three cameras and two microphones that I can see from here …”

  “Chillax!” Bear sloughed off Glenn’s concern. “Everything out here’s disconnected. I thought Ria might come out after her dinner with Dan.”

  “Listen, guys, you saw one side of Kate and I saw the other. You thought she was sweet and innocent. The Kate I saw was sneaky, conniving, scheming, shrewd …”

  “Careful, you’ll run out of adjectives soon.” Bear cut Esther off and tapped some tobacco into his pipe. “Besides, who she was doesn’t really matter. Whether she was a victim or a villain is unimportant. What’s important is finding out what really happened to her.” He turned to look straight at me. “How’s that going?”

  “I’m still fact gathering.” I didn’t want to admit that I’d gathered next to no facts. Then again, I’d only been on Soursop for what, a day? Had it really been such a short time? So much had happened in those few hours that I felt as if I’d been there for weeks. “Pam, would you be willing to describe what you saw to someone for me?” Hearing the crew discuss metacarpals and carpals had made me think of Dad. He’d know if the foot was real, if Pam could give him a good description of what she’d seen.

  “Okay. Who?”

  “My father. It’s too late now, but maybe you could drop by my place tomorrow morning and we can call him from there? He’s a doctor.”

  “Sure, but I’m pretty sure the foot was fake. I think it was a red herring, like those fake clues they have in murder mysteries. Maybe she even put it there herself? Maybe the real mystery is why did Kate fake her own death?” She looked around the table. “What? Why are you all looking at me like that?”

  “That sounds plausible. I know that I never travel without a personalized replica of a severed limb in my carry-on. You never know when you’ll need one.” Bear shook his head.

  “Face it,” Esther said, “this isn’t a mystery. Kate left. Bu-bye. End of story. Roll tail credits.”

  “So, what’s with that doctoring thing?” Bear turned to me. “Is it a hobby, or something? Your father owns the majority of this hotel chain, so it’s not like he had to work or anything.”

  I wanted to give Bear a swift kick to the groin.

  “And what about you? You flit around the world on someone else’s dime, staying at places like this without having to worry about paying for it. Even if you did have to pay for it, you could afford it with the Butler billions padding your wallet. Must be nice, huh? Never having to work. Sweet life, if you can get it. We really appreciate you slumming with the likes of us.”

  “Oh boy,” Rob cringed.

  I could have answered calmly but I’d heard one too many snide comments and supposed jokes about my presumed wealth and perfect life. That irritation mixed with my concern about whatever was going on between Glenn and me, and my confusion about whatever was or wasn’t going on between Rob and me and/or Rob and Pam, and my disappointment in and anger at James, and the repulsion I felt for Mandy, and the resulting sympathy I felt for my sister-in-law — combined, those emotions were explosive. If this was Bear’s way of checking me out he’d regret it. Rob had been right to cringe. I figuratively threw my manners muzzle to the ground and set free years of resentment, whether Bear deserved to have them hurled at him or not. “You’re right, Bear,” I said as if I was actually going to agree with his assessment of my life. “Money does buy happiness. Like when I was fifteen and my mother was killed, we were really happy about the fact that we could put her in the nicest coffin money could buy. Sure, Dad lost his eyesight in the same accident, but he could afford to buy more than enough Chivas and Glenfiddich happy juice. And he can still sit around counting his dough — there are Braille dots on all the Canadian bills. He’ll never see his grandkids, though. That’s kind of a buzz kill …”

  “Ria,” I heard Rob say.

  “I was super happy on my wedding day, because of the money of course. It’s why my ex married me. Boy was he ever unhappy when he found out that I don’t own a single share of Butler Hotels and that I’ve never asked for or received one penny from the company.” I stood up so angrily that my chair went skidding across the patio behind me. “Just for the record, the money that’s in my wallet got there the good old-fashioned way — I earned it. I’m so happy we could have this chat, Bear.”

  Only then did I take my eyes off Bear. Pam and Esther were both staring at me with their jaws dropped and eyes opened wide.

  Any hope I’d ever had of fitting in with these people had been shot to hell. I wasn’t just a rich person anymore; I was a crazy rich person.

  “I deserved that.” Bear stood up, walked over to my chair, picked it up, and carried it back to the table. “And I apologize.” He motioned for me to sit back down. “Of all people I should have been more sensitive. I know what it’s like to be judged based on what people see, not what they actually know. You heard Chris earlier — I’m a midget. Other names I’ve been called include: Ooopma Loompa, Munchkin … you get the drift. None of those identify who I am, though. Looking at me nobody would guess that I’m a classically trained pianist, but I am. Unfortunately, due to my longitudinally challenged fingers there are some pieces that I can’t play.

  “I liked getting to see the real you. Friends?” He held out his hand for me to shake.

  “You can do better than that, Bear!” Esther slapped his arm. “That girl needs a hug.”

  “You should sell your story.” Pam instantly started giggling. “You could get rich off it!”

  I felt more accepted by the people around that table, most of whom I’d only met that day, than I had in any grouping of people in years. Maybe I should have shaken off my manners muzzle earlier? “Friends.” I sh
ook Bear’s hand and he pulled me closer to give me a hug.

  “Now,” he said as he sat back down, “let’s start figuring out what really happened to Kate.”

  “And so,” Esther dropped her head down to her shoulders like a turtle pulling his head into his shell, and lowered her voice dramatically, “the merry band of super spies gathered together, determined to find out what kind of evil lurks in Shykoff’s fiefdom.”

  “I think it’s more of a monopsony than a fiefdom, actually,” Bear said as he lit his pipe.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Rob asked.

  “A monopsony, a firm that is the only buyer of labour in an isolated community. We’re isolated and we supply our labour to the only buyer in town — Dan.” Bear leaned over to me. “I’m not just a pretty face; I play the piano and educate my intellectually challenged co-workers.”

  “Dude, get your ego in check,” Pam spoke up. “And you’re wrong on that monopoly …”

  “Monopsony,” Bear corrected her.

  “Yeah, whatever you call it, you’re wrong. We work for James, too.”

  “But Dan’s a much more likely suspect than James,” Esther added.

  Pam jumped up, ran over to the electronic equipment, and pushed some buttons. “We need a soundtrack for this.”

  Children’s voices came out of the speakers, sounding as if they were laughing and playing in an inner city park. Simple guitar strumming overlapped their voices. Then a woman started singing about how hard it was to live in the devil’s playground.

  “Good one, Pam,” Esther said as she took two fries off of Rob’s plate. “It matches the mood and setting. You ever heard of Gram Rabbit, Ria?”

  I shook my head.

  “They’ve got a song that would be perfect as the theme song for this show — ‘They’re Watching.’

  “It aired on NBC’s show Life, episode two-fifteen, ‘I Heart Mom.’” Bear instantly identified the television tie-in. “I liked that show. I wish they hadn’t cancelled it.”

  I was beginning to understand how my new friends thought. Everything in their world was somehow tied in to either a movie or a television show, right down to the episode number. So what was Kate’s tie-in?

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  I played the part of the audience, while Bear, Rob, Esther, and Pam supplied the dialogue.

  EXT. POOL PATIO — LATE NIGHT/EARLY MORNING

  The last WAITER on duty had cleared our table. The lights in the hotel rooms above us had all gone off as the guests went to bed.

  ESTHER

  You’re talking out of your butt. She came here on a mission, to get Dan to take her to Hollywood. When she figured out he wasn’t going to do that she quit and left.

  PAM

  You are so wrong! It was the other way round — Dan was using her. I bet that’s what they were arguing about that night. She thought she had a relationship with him and he told her the real facts of life.

  ESTHER

  So why would he bother to kill her? If he’d just dumped her his job was done.

  PAM

  Same thing if she dumped him. He’d have no reason to kill her. There’s no way Dan cared enough about her to be that upset.

  ESTHER

  Nobody did anything. She’s back in Toronto like the cops said.

  BEAR

  How do we know they actually talked to her? Dan could have hired a double …

  ROB

  Or the story about the cops in Toronto could be pure fiction, written by Dan.

  PAM

  If she was killed, Dan’s the most likely suspect I guess. He’s the one who had the screaming match with her. Euw!

  (gags and then shivers as if

  shaking off a bad thought)

  The foot couldn’t have been real, could it?

  ME

  Hopefully my father will be able to tell us.

  (changing the topic before

  Pam can throw up for real)

  Did she get into arguments with anybody else other than Dan?

  ESTHER

  Most of us tried to avoid her; she was annoying, always asking who we’d worked with …

  PAM

  I liked her. So did Winnie. I saw them together a couple of times and she even made Winnie laugh once.

  ESTHER

  Winnie’s capable of laughing?

  PAM

  She’s not that bad! And neither was Kate. She smiled a lot, especially when she heard that Chris was coming.

  BEAR

  (to me)

  Kate worked with Pam on one of the crews that’s shooting Ted.

  ROB

  But she wasn’t originally scheduled to work on that crew. She started off working with us on a Judy crew.

  ESTHER

  She got Dan to switch her over to a Ted crew.

  ME

  Why?

  (wondering why Kate wanted

  to get away from Judy)

  ESTHER

  (shrugs her shoulders)

  Moth to a flame? Ted looks like a movie star.

  PAM

  (nods)

  Yeah, he’s yummy, for an old guy. He reminds me of someone, but I can’t put my finger on who.

  BEAR

  Let’s stay focused on the foot, shall we? We can worry about the fingers later.

  ME

  Where was everybody the night she disappeared?

  ROB

  Our crew …

  (he points at Esther)

  … was shooting Judy prepping for her commercial.

  PAM

  Our crew had the night off. Kate took the fancy boat back over to Dan’s place when we wrapped for the day, then she came back with Dan and James and Mandy. They had dinner together in the kitchen.

  BEAR

  I was in the pseudo control room most of the day and finished around ten. Then I met up with Pam and everybody, setting up the dinghy explosion, and we were doing that until well after midnight.

  PAM

  It was earlier than that, wasn’t it?

  BEAR

  No, remember? Zack radioed me from the north end to tell me that one of the construction guys had knocked the camera up there. That was the last disc change on his rounds. The earliest he would have got there would have been around twelve-thirty, probably later.

  (turns to me)

  The day before Albert comes is always a busy one for me — I have to make sure all the discs have been logged accurately and that dubs have been made. And I go over the footage from the security cameras to see if anything’s been caught on them that could be interesting.

  ME

  What are dubs?

  BEAR

  Copies, duplicates. But the ones we make down here aren’t broadcast quality. Your brother elected to allocate his limited budget funds toward giving Albert more frequent flyer miles than George Clooney had in Up in the Air, because apparently that’s got more production value than replacing his antediluvian cameras or bringing an Avid down. You can bet Mark Burnett doesn’t shoot his shows this way.

  ME

  What’s an Avid?

  BEAR

  A keen or enthusiastic …

  ROB

  Stop messing around, Bear.

  BEAR

  It’s an editing suite. Albert comes down a couple of times a week, picks up the camera originals and then takes them back to Toronto, where they’re being edited on an Avid suite.

  ME

  And he brings you more blank discs when he comes down, right?

  All four characters turn and look at me

  BEAR

  He doesn’t bring anything down with him.

  ESTHER

  Except for his cheery personality.

  PAM

  He doesn’t even bring clothes. He has an extra set of beigeness that he leaves in the laundry bag outside his door for pick-up.

  ROB

  That guy’s skin is so white I could do a white balance on his legs.

&nb
sp; BEAR

  (interjects, for my benefit)

  A white balance is done on all the cameras before they start shooting for the day. A cameraman fills his screen with something that’s true white which then allows the camera to calculate the colour temperature …

  ROB

  TMI, Bear.

  ME

  He does bring something, though — a bag full of DVDs. I saw it. He left it at James’ place.

  BEAR

  Maybe he brought James some movies to watch? There’s some sweet equipment in his villa.

  PAM

  Winnie would know what he brings, but she won’t tell you anything.

  ROB

  Does anybody know where he came from? I’ve never seen him on one of James’ shoots before.

  BEAR, ESTHER, and PAM all shake their heads.

  ME

  Was he here that night?

  ROB

  No, he came down the next afternoon.

  ME

  Did anyone actually see Kate go back over to Virgin Gorda after their dinner?

  PAM

  (shakes her head)

  We saw the fancy boat leaving while we were bringing the dinghy around the north end, but we weren’t close enough to see who was in it.

  BEAR

  Ted may have seen who got in it.

  PAM

  Yeah, he might have. Dan called him back up to the hotel while we were rigging the boat on the back docks, so he might have still been there when they all left the kitchen.

  ME

  What about the next morning? When did you find the foot?

  ESTHER

  Our call was six thirty, but —

  (looks at Rob)

  — wasn’t that the morning you showed up late?

  PAM

  (cuts in quickly, after a noticeably nervous glance at Rob)