Really Dead

  “But you still think he’s up to something.”

  “I know he is.”

  Glenn hoped his next question wouldn’t get Ria all uppity about Bobbie again. “While you’re snooping around James’ place don’t forget to check out the room that Rob said he saw Kate’s suitcases in.”

  “I already planned to,” Ria said without any testiness.

  “Okay. So we’re good?” Talk about a loaded question, Glenn thought to himself as he turned the light off.

  “I guess so.” Ria didn’t sound like she wanted to hang up, either.

  The telephone made their silence awkward. The full moon over Toronto had turned Lake Ontario a shimmering dark grey and it reminded him of the night they’d lain together on the lounge chair outside of their room in Machu Picchu watching the stars. That night the silence between them had been heavenly.

  “What about her sister?” Ria broke the silence. “Maybe she was lying? Maybe she knows where Kate really is?”

  “No. She really thinks Kate is with Chris.”

  “Are you going to tell her…?”

  “Not yet. Let’s see what we see tomorrow.”

  “I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”

  The silence in his room after hanging up lasted only a minute and was replaced by barely muted laughter from the living room. Glenn buried his head under the pillows again.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  The sun peeked over Gorda Peak on Virgin Gorda early the next morning and woke me up by blasting my bedroom with brilliant light.

  Carefully holding an empty can of Diet Coke to clearly show the label, I managed to run only one lap of the island. Before I reached the halfway point my foot started to remind me of the twist I’d given it on Huayna Picchu. My quads complained bitterly for the uphill last quarter of the run. Without bothering to change into a bathing suit I collapsed into my pool with only one thought in my head — how the heck did Winnie stay upright for four laps? Bear said she ran her laps every night after Dan left the island. Her resting heart rate was probably in the low forties. Running the hilly island once, let alone four times, was an excellent cardiovascular workout.

  I floated on my back, enjoying the refreshing chill of the water. Even though it was still early the air was already thick with humidity. My sweat combined with the salty moisture in the air made me wonder if running through an island -sized vat of French onion soup would have felt the same. My legs had sure ended up feeling like wobbly stretched and melted cheese. No wonder Winnie chose to run at night. I hadn’t passed many people during my run, mostly hotel groundskeepers. At night, Winnie could potentially do her entire run without seeing anyone. What had she done under that cloak of darkness the night before Kate’s foot was found? She could have easily nipped off the path down onto the beach and dropped the foot into the tidal pool without being noticed. Heck, I hadn’t noticed her until she was between my headlights.

  But what about the rest of Kate? Where was she? Winnie was in great shape but even she couldn’t have run around carrying the weight of a ninety-nine percent whole person.

  Using only my arms, giving my quads more time to forgive me, I swam over to the side of the pool and hooked my elbows over the infinity edge. There were some signs of life in the crew quarters below me. A group of equipment-laden people got into three golf carts and drove away. Room service delivered breakfast to a room at the end of the cell block. Then I saw Rob, wearing only a bathrobe, come out of a room on the ground floor and walk up the stairs to a second-floor room farther down the building. He knocked on the door and I instantly recognized Pam’s pink bangs when she opened it. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down to hers, and planted a big kiss on his lips. Any possibility of something happening between Rob and myself ended with a much louder bang than the door made when Rob closed it behind himself.

  The urge to move hit me again. I got out of my wet clothes, dried off quickly, changed, and let the wind blow-dry my hair as I drove to the hotel.

  A large buffet had been set up by the pool. The majority of the people on the patio didn’t look familiar to me so I guessed they were members of the incoming movie crew. I easily recognized Bear and Winnie (once again dressed to spinsterly perfection). They were sitting together at a table in the middle of the throng. Winnie sat facing me. She was as still as a Great Blue Heron waiting for its prey, only her eyes were moving — they followed me as I made my way to the buffet table. Bear had his back to me and was bent over, making notes on a pad of paper as he flipped through the pages in a three-ring binder. He stopped writing, looked up at Winnie, and talked to her as he spun the binder around so she could see what it was he was pointing to on the page.

  Judy, followed closely by her merry band of a television crew, joined me at the buffet table while I stabbed some pineapple slices.

  “Good morning, Ms. Butler,” she said cheerfully as she began to load up her plate, keeping her back to the camera (much the chagrin on the cameraman — he kept trying to shoot her from the side, but she kept turning away from him).

  “Hi, Judy.” A piece of mango was giving me a hard time; it refused to stay on the serving fork. The cameraman had moved to aim his camera at me and I pulled my secret weapon out of my back pocket — another empty can of Diet Coke (slightly mangled from being forced into the pocket). I couldn’t do anything about the microphone that was being held in the air above us, but I would do something about the camera trying to shoot me. I put the Diet Coke can on my plate and pushed the pineapple slices into position to hold it in place.

  Judy smiled when she saw the can and stood a little closer to me. “I’d like to apologize to you for last night. I should have talked to Mr. Shykoff in private, but I was just so …”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I would have been screaming mad, too, if someone had just thrown up on me. “It’s not like you did it in front of paying guests.”

  “No, I did it in front of my future employer.”

  “Who? Me?” Why wasn’t my message getting through to anyone? “Judy, I don’t have anything to do with running the hotels. Honest. Even if I did I wouldn’t hold last night against you.”

  “Thank you.” She handed her plate to one of the chefs behind the table. “Just a poached egg this morning, Paul.” Turning to see who was coming through the doors from the lobby, her face fell. “Oh, no.”

  Despite his big sunglasses it was easy to spot Chris Regent. There was a loveable rogue aura about him that was unmistakable. The cameraman focused on Chris as he looked around the patio area, spotted Judy, and headed straight for us.

  “I’m really, really sorry. Mike told me what happened yesterday.” He flipped his sunglasses up onto the top of his head, revealing two extremely bloodshot eyeballs, one of them circled by the spreading blue bruise from Judy’s punch. “Please, let me make it up to you? I don’t even know your name …”

  Judy straightened her spine stiffly. “Judy. Judy Ingram.”

  “Judy.” Chris took both of Judy’s empty hands in his and kissed them. “Please? Forgive me? I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “Apology accepted, Mr. Regent.” She forced a smile onto her face. “And I apologize for …” she pointed at his black eye, “that.”

  “From what I hear, I deserved it. Call me Chris.” He looked up and down the buffet table. “What a spread! You run a nice place here, Judy.”

  “Actually, I’m only the acting manager right now.” She glanced nervously at me. “But I hope to make it a permanent position. Is everything to your liking in your room?”

  “It’s fucking awesome!” Chris pinched a strawberry from the fruit platter and popped it into his mouth. “Seriously, isn’t there something I can do to say thanks for putting up with me? What about a car? Can I buy you a car?”

  A novel way to apologize. I smiled and scanned the drool-inspiring selection of baked goods.

  “That’s not necessary, really. If —” she stopped and corrected he
rself. “When I get the manager position what would I do with it here?”

  “Good point. Okay, when you win I’ll get you a suped up golf cart. Deal?”

  “Again, that won’t be necessary …”

  “Morning, Ria.” Bear walked up beside me, a binder and pad of paper tucked under his arm. “Nice breakfast,” he nodded at my Diet Coke can as he handed me a sheaf of papers from the pad. “Here’s the info for your friend. Tell him to talk to Dex.”

  “I owe you an even bigger apology,” Chris walked around Judy to stand by Bear. “I was incredibly rude to you.”

  “Whatever.” Bear waved Chris away. “I’m used to it.”

  “Hi, guys,” Esther had come out onto the patio. Holding an empty plate, she elbowed her way between Chris and Bear, completely ignoring the star in her midst. “The usual, Paul,” she said as she handed her plate to the chef. “You know what you should get here, Ria?”

  “What?” Was she going to recommend something from the menu?

  “A Timmy’s.” Esther turned to face the camera crew. “You won’t be able to use this conversation, guys. Dan doesn’t have a placement deal with Timmy’s.”

  “That would be sweet!” Bear obviously liked Esther’s idea. “We could have Iced Caps and maple glazes every day.” He turned to look at Judy. “No offence, Judy, but the craft services here aren’t quite up to par. I haven’t seen a doughnut in weeks.”

  “What about the beignets?” Judy went on the defensive. “The chefs started making those fresh, every day, specifically to address the doughnut issue on the snack table.”

  “Craft services table,” Esther corrected Judy (and answered my unasked question about what craft services were).

  Bear nodded his head with next to no enthusiasm. “Yeah, they’re good …”

  “But they don’t have holes. They’re kind of like Timbits injected with growth hormones.” Esther’s description didn’t match any beignet I’d ever eaten, but I understood her comparison.

  “And they aren’t Timmy’s,” Bear summed up succinctly.

  “What’s a Timmy’s?” Chris asked.

  “Tim Hortons,” Judy explained. “It’s a chain of coffee and doughnut shops in Canada.”

  “So, is a Timbit just a bit of a doughnut?” Chris looked from Bear to Esther and then back to Bear.

  “A Timbit is the doughnut hole, they …” Bear started to explain.

  “How can you eat a hole?” Chris looked very confused. “And why call a hole a bit? If it’s the whole hole, wouldn’t it be the whole thing, not just a bit of it?”

  Esther spoke directly to me, turning her back on the whole hole episode between Chris and Bear. “Seriously, a Timmy’s down here would be awesome.”

  “Why are they telling you all this?” Chris’ interest shifted from holes to me. “Who are you?”

  “Ria Butler,” Bear offered a little too quickly with a wicked grin on his face. “She owns the place.”

  “Oh!” Chris was impressed.

  “I don’t …”

  Chris turned back to Bear. “Are you working on the television show or the movie?”

  “Check-Out Time. I’m the TD.”

  “And he’s not technically a dwarf, okay? He’s just vertically challenged.” Esther made it extra clear how little she thought of Chris. “So, don’t be an ass around him again.”

  “I’ve already tried to apologize.”

  Judy’s poached egg was ready. She reached out to take her plate from the chef just as Winnie joined our motley crew.

  “Judy? I need to go over the phone logs. The long distance charges are getting out of control. Do you have a minute?” Winnie asked.

  Judy looked relieved to have a legitimate excuse to get away from the whole Timmy’s hullabaloo.

  “You can count on that golf cart, Judy!” Chris called out as Judy and Winnie left us and disappeared into the hotel, a camera crew in tow.

  “What golf cart?” Esther asked.

  “I’m going to buy her one when she wins, sort of like an apology gift. I offered her a car, but …”

  “Does Bear get a car?”

  “Sure, if he wants one.” Chris looked at Bear. “Do you want one? I’d really like to …”

  “I’ve already got a car.” Bear picked up a muffin. “A double-double from Timmy’s sure would go good with this, though.”

  “You could buy him a dentist’s chair.” Esther kept at Chris. “He doesn’t do recliners, he does dentist’s chairs.”

  “Okay, a dentist’s chair it is.”

  “Why don’t you buy a Timmy’s franchise for the hotel?” Bear suggested. “We’d all appreciate that.”

  “Okay! If it’s okay with you, that is,” Chris asked me.

  “I don’t own …”

  “Would you like anything from the kitchen, Miss?” the chef asked me.

  I had been contemplating an omelette but knew that my sanity was more important than my hunger. Listening to the whole bizarre Timbit conversation was making me dizzy. “No, thanks.” I grabbed a Danish and put it on top of the fruit I’d managed to get onto my plate.

  I made my escape while Esther and Bear explained the virtues of Tim Hortons versus Starbucks to Chris, deciding to deliver my own room service and eat in my villa.

  The elevator doors in the lobby opened just as I was walking past them. Ted and his camera crew practically filled the dwarf- (but not midget) sized elevator and they reminded me of a bunch of circus clowns tumbling out of an overstuffed car as they unsuccessfully tried to extricate themselves from the elevator gracefully. Ted must have thought the smile on my face was caused by pleasure at seeing him. He plastered an even bigger smile on his face, waited for the television crew to get themselves organized back into a cohesive working unit, and then walked slowly toward me.

  “Good morning, Miss Butler. Another beautiful day in paradise, isn’t it?” He turned, ever so slightly, to give the camera a better shot of his face.

  “Yeah, it’s nice.” I kept moving.

  Ted picked up his pace, but not so much that he’d lose his crew. “Did you sleep well?”

  I half expected him to start into a dissertation on the merits of my bed, complete with the intricate details of how the individual air chambers in the mattress had been inflated by exhaling world champion freedivers, but instead of talking more his mouth stopped moving and fell into a frown. He’d spotted my can of Diet Coke.

  “Oh, dear.” He moved to use his body to block the camera’s view of my plate, leaned in close to me and spoke softly. “Did no one inform you of the placement deal Mr. Shykoff signed with Pepsi?”

  I kept moving. “No, I’m informed and I’m choosing to ignore it.”

  Ted stopped moving, as did his camera crew, and I was finally able to make it all the way to my golf cart. I put my plate on the bench seat beside me and then put the Diet Coke can on display on the almost non-existent dashboard.

  The drivers of all but one of the golf carts I passed as I drove to my end of the island didn’t look at me. The only one who did also waved me down.

  “Hey!” Rob said as I slowed down and stopped beside his cart. “I just dropped Pam off at your place.”

  “I thought we agreed to meet at nine?”

  “Yeah, but Pam got up early and said she saw you fall into your pool, so she knew you were already up.”

  “I hope she waits for me …”

  “She will. The servants’ entrance to your villa wasn’t locked. She’s hanging out by your pool until you get back.”

  Did anyone in production respect, let alone recognize, the boundaries of personal space?

  “Are you going to be part of the dinner shoot tonight?”

  “Not if I can help it.” I wasn’t sure when I’d get back from Virgin Gorda, but planned to make sure it was after the shooting started.

  “I’m not working it, so why don’t we have dinner together? We could set something up by the west beach bar …”

  “I have to do th
e Albert run, remember? I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “Once again, our timing sucks.” He smiled and winked (a lusty wink). “Can’t blame a guy for trying and, just so you know, I plan to keep on trying.”

  There was no rear-view mirror in my golf cart so I didn’t watch him drive away. I looked ahead, and hoped that I wouldn’t feel as awkward around his location lover, Pam.

  Glenn turned onto Riverview Drive and smiled. The tiny countrified enclave of mansions on the winding road in North Toronto always made him feel as if he’d entered a secret world. Half-century old maple trees, their limbs laden with thick green summer foliage, lined either side of the street. Doc Butler’s house, and the three acres it sat on, backed onto a ravine and one of the country’s most exclusive golf clubs, making it feel like a country estate.

  After ringing the doorbell for the sixth time and still getting no answer, Glenn decided to walk around to the back of the house to see if Doc was out there. The French doors to the kitchen were hanging open. Doc’s Seeing Eye Dog, Stephanie, a big blonde German shepherd, lay motionless on the flagstone patio, a soggy well-chewed stick between her front paws. Her eyes opened at the sound of Glenn closing the gate, but she didn’t lift her head. She said hello with her tail — it thump-thump-thumped against the flagstones. Doc was sitting in one of the chairs by the patio table, a set of headphones over his ears, his long legs crossed and wrapped around each other like a pretzel.

  He must have felt the reverberations from Stephanie’s happy tail because he reached up, took the headset off, and said “Who’s there?” as he tried to flatten down the wispy white hair that matched his Einstein-level IQ.

  “It’s me, Doc,” Glenn said as he took a seat.

  Doc’s Butler blues (as Ria called them) pointed in Glenn’s general direction, but their aim was off. If he could have seen he would have been staring at Glenn’s shoulder. “That moniker could apply to anyone, Glenn. Try to be more specific when you’re dealing with a cripple.”