Really Dead, Page 20

  Dan Shykoff showed up in a lot of shots. In the daylight shots Glenn could see his face more clearly. In one of them he was wearing the same shirt he’d been wearing in the picture on the slideshow in the digital picture frame in Kate’s apartment.

  That’s where he’d seen the other guy! The one who’d slapped high fives with another crew member after the boat explosion, the friend of the receptionist, the contestant named Ted Robarts (a.k.a. Phil to his friends). Well, that made sense. Kate’s digital picture frame was full of pictures of her with television and movie people. As a finalist, Ted Robarts would be a fairly famous television face once the show aired. He’d get more than his fifteen minutes of fame, that was for sure. The other contestant, what’s-her-name, Judy? Kate had probably sent a picture of herself with Judy to the frame, too. He’d check that out when he got home.

  “Morons!” Dex clicked through many screens of folders. “They’ve forgotten another disc.”

  “What’s on it?” Glenn wasn’t so sure that the missing discs had been accidentally left out of the Toronto shipment. Those discs were important enough, valuable enough, to pay someone to fly back and forth between the islands. Without those discs James wouldn’t have a show. Every penny he’d sunk into the production was on those discs and Glenn was willing to bet that James’ staff double and triple checked to make sure that they all made it safely to the editors.

  “Ext. East Beach Aloe Camera/Day 38. Bear wanted you to watch Scene 1 on it.”

  Glenn quickly wrote down the missing disc information. “That would have been more of the boat exploding stuff, right?”

  Dex shook his head. “It might have caught some of the crew set-up, but that camera’s down at the other end of the beach, where Pam was raking, so it would have long shots only.”

  “Day thirty-eight, though, right? It would have stuff from the same morning.”

  “Mostly before the shift started. For the stationary cameras the day is broken down into four scenes, each one six hours long because that’s all you can get on one disc. Scene one would have been shot between midnight and six in the morning.” Dex jotted the information down. “I’m going to call Bear and tell him to get his act together down there.” Dex clicked the mouse and the Butler B screensaver floated across all the television screens. “That’s a wrap. Did you see what you were looking for?”

  “No.” Glenn exhaled. He’d seen a lot, but not enough. What had he expected? A perfectly focused, well-lit shot, with sound, of Kate being killed? Her killer cutting her foot off and putting it in the tidal pool and hiding the rest of her body? If that footage did exist, Glenn bet it was on the missing discs. He and Ria were no further ahead — they still had a missing body, that was missing a foot, and the foot was missing, too. Now they could add missing discs to their list.

  Pam left quickly after our phone call to Dad, and I spent the next hour perfecting my impersonation of a lion slowly going insane in a small cage — pacing back and forth, back and forth. My gecko friend got bored with watching me and scuttled across the patio to disappear under a red Hibiscus shrub. To change things up I swam some laps, but they were basically pacing in water instead of on the flagstone patio. Glenn hadn’t called me after leaving Dad’s place. The hotel phone system was working, but my cellphone still wasn’t getting any reception so I was stuck waiting for his call. I was just about to call him and leave a decidedly curt message when my doorbell rang.

  I opened the door and then looked down. “Hi, Bear. What’s up?”

  “You alone?” He walked past me and out onto my patio. “We might have a problem.”

  I followed him and watched as he walked around the edge of the patio, spreading open many of the bushes and plants. “What sort of problem?”

  He didn’t answer, he just kept looking through the bushes. “Son of a bitch.” He leaned over and most of his upper body disappeared into a bush. When he stood up he turned around and I saw what he’d lifted out of the bush. A camera.

  I protectively wrapped my arms around myself. I felt violated. Someone had been watching me!

  “I just found out about this this morning, so don’t blame me!” He pushed some buttons on the camera and took out the disc. “In fact, you’ve got Winnie to thank for me finding it.”

  “When? How?” I was so shocked that I couldn’t form multi-word questions.

  “It was put in yesterday, just before you got here. Dan told one of my assistants to do it.”

  “But Winnie? Why?” Someone had been watching me. Recording me. Without my permission or knowledge. No, they had my permission. I’d signed their damned release form.

  “When I was going over the log sheets this morning I told her how wrong I thought it was that Dan had secret cameras in the contestant’s rooms and she agreed with me, said it was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Her conscience was really bothering her, and she thought about it all morning and then called me. She told me to disconnect all the secret cameras. We’re going to tell Dan that the X-lites on them are acting up. He won’t know what I’m talking about — his technical knowledge hasn’t moved beyond black and white. In reality, an X-lite is an electronic device that dentist’s use to check for oral cancer. I told her I’d get right on it and get the cameras out of Judy and Ted’s rooms, and then she dropped the bombshell and told me there was one here. I haven’t looked at the log sheets for the last few days, so I didn’t know about it. Ria, please believe me, if I’d known I would have ripped it out right away.”

  “But what about the stuff it recorded?” I pointed at the camera Bear was holding, lens pointing down to the patio.

  “That’s the good news. Winnie said Dan hasn’t looked at any of it yet and Dan will never see it — not now.” He handed me the disc he’d taken out of the camera and then reached around behind his back and gave me the three discs he’d pulled out of his pocket.

  “But what if she’s lying? Maybe Dan has seen what’s on these? Maybe he even made dubs?”

  Bear shook his head. “Didn’t happen. Dan doesn’t know how to make dubs, he needs me for that and I give you my word I haven’t done that with these. And Tony, my soon-to-be-deaf-because-I’m-going-to-blast-him assistant, didn’t get around to giving Winnie these discs until this morning. She hasn’t looked at them. Like I said, Winnie’s good people. Doesn’t the fact that she came clean about this and handed over the discs tell you that?”

  “I guess so.” But I wasn’t convinced. I knew I hadn’t done anything embarrassing on my patio. I hadn’t gone skinny dipping. Even if Winnie or Dan had watched the footage, what would they have seen, anyway? Me talking to a gecko? Me swimming laps? My heart sank. I looked at the microphone that was attached to the camera. What they might have heard was more upsetting — me talking to Rob, me talking to Glenn on the phone.

  Bear apologized profusely a few more times and did his best to reassure me that it wouldn’t happen again, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been violated. It felt like I was covered in a layer of dirt that I couldn’t wash off.

  I threw the discs into the deep end of the pool and watched them sink to the bottom. Then I tore through every bush, not caring how much damage I was causing to the landscaping. I got the hotel supplied binoculars out of a drawer in the living room and scanned every tree I could see. I was in the master ensuite, looking carefully to see if there was a hidden lens behind the grate of the steam vent in the massive shower, when I heard an army of housekeepers invading. Donnella was leading the charge.

  Her cleaning crew spread out and attacked every room, while she came and found me in the bathroom.

  “I know you say you got nothing to do with running the hotels, but you be the one I’m coming to with this.” She closed the door and looked at me quizzically. I stepped out of the shower and didn’t bother explaining why I’d been standing in it fully clothed. “I can’t go calling Ms. Whitecross about it; it’s three-thirty in the morning where she is.” She handed me a laminated identification card. “The girls foun
d it in Mr. Ted’s room this morning, behind the dresser.”

  I looked down at the card. Ted was looking back up at me, his expression stern and serious. I didn’t recognize the logo on the ID badge — a small red Canadian maple leaf in a white square, with thick prongs of blue shooting out from it and a golden crown sitting on top — but I did recognize the name of the government agency: Canadian Security Intelligence Service. CSIS. Canada’s version of the CIA. Ted was a spy? The photo on the card was of Ted’s face, but the name was different. Who was Jake Purcell? Ted’s twin brother? Ted had a twin, too? What were the odds of that happening? The title printed under Jake’s/Ted’s name was intelligence officer. What the heck was a CSIS agent doing pretending to be a contestant on a reality show, the goal of which was to be hired to manage a hotel?

  “What do you know about this?” Donnella asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “I like working for this company. Your aunt is a fine woman, but if this hotel is involved in something fishy I want to know about it. I’ve seen a lot of strange things going on with all those television people. With all the boats coming and going, and big boxes with I don’t know what in them coming to the island, and now this. I have to wonder — just what’s really going on here? We got enough troubles with drug runners using our islands. If you Butlers are involved in that I want no part in it!”

  She thought we were drug runners? I would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious, and confusing. “Donnella, I promise you, Aunt Patti runs hotels — nothing else.”

  “So what’s that about then?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” I met her questioning stare. “Honest.” My bafflement must have been plastered all over my face, because she slowly started to nod.

  “I believe that.” She crossed her arms mostly over her chest. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She held up one hand and waved her index finger. “I told you he was no hotel manager. The man knows nothing about PMS. Nothing!”

  I wanted to give my head a shake. Maybe if I knocked my brain around a bit it would be able to make sense of Donnella’s comment about premenstrual syndrome?

  “He say he got all this experience, working all over the world in fancy hotels, and he don’t know how to work the systems?”

  “What systems?”

  “Property management systems — PMS.” She smiled at me. “You really aren’t part of the hotels, are you?”

  “I told you I’m not!”

  “I knew there was something about that man. All your people been eating here for how long?” I didn’t know. They weren’t my people. “Must be over two months now. Not one of them has had a single complaint about the food — except for Mr. Ted. He tried to say our food made him sick! And didn’t he just have to do all his vomiting in front of the cameras, telling everyone it was because of something he ate? That won’t help your aunt book any rooms if your brother puts that on his show!”

  “When was he sick?”

  “Oh, last week sometime. The day they blew up that boat and found the foot. See what I mean about seeing some strange things? Then he starts accusing someone of stealing his shoes. Nobody stole his shoes! He’s just looking to get a free pair of new shoes. The fool should have watched where he was walking. Saltwater and leather don’t mix so good.”

  “I thought he was only complaining about sand on them?”

  “That’s what he said, but I’ve seen them with my own eyes. They was in the water all right.”

  “Are we replacing them?” I accidentally used the royal we, as in we the Butlers.

  “No, Mr. Dan is. He stuck his nose into it, just like he does with everything else.

  “Now, what are we going to do about that?” She pointed at the ID card in my hand.

  “I’m not sure.” I wanted to show it to Glenn and knew exactly how to do it. “Aunt Patti should see this. Let me keep it for a bit. I’ll scan it and send it to her.” Maybe she already knew? I doubted that. But she would know about Ted’s background. There was no way she would have agreed to let him be on the show, be a contender for the top job at her newest hotel, without having done a thorough background check on him. “I’ll give it back to you after I’ve done that and then you can put it back where you found it, so he won’t know that we’ve seen it. Okay?”

  “I like the way you think, girl.”

  “Have you mentioned any of this to my brother?”

  “Why would I?” She shook her head sadly. “That man got enough problems, he don’t need no more from me.”

  I continued to look for hidden cameras inside the cottage, trying not to be too obvious about it as Donnella’s team finished their cleaning mission. (They offered to fish the discs out of the pool for me and proved they were great Butler employees when they didn’t question why I wanted the discs left right where they were.) The front tires of their golf carts had barely touched the main road when I snatched the cordless phone on the patio.

  “There’s been a hidden camera on me here, in my villa, the whole time I’ve been here and Ted Robarts is a CSIS agent. Call me.” Simple. Succinct. Clearly angry and/or frustrated. Would Glenn hear the fear in my voice?

  The phone rang within less than a second of me hanging it up. “Finally!”

  “Huh?”

  The voice on the other end of the line caused my blood pressure to spike so high that if I’d been wearing a blood pressure cuff it would have blown off my arm like the ripping sleeves of the Hulk’s shirt when he got angry. “Hello, Mandy.”

  “Wow, you sounded like such a bitch there.”

  She had no idea how bitchy I could sound and if she didn’t get to the point of her call soon I was more than willing to show her the full extent of my bitchiness.

  “I’m here.”

  And I cared because … why?

  “So, everything’s set. Dan’s private jet is waiting at the airport in Virgin Gorda for Chris’ arrival scene and the crew’s loading up the boat. Your call time is in half an hour. Malvin will be waiting for you down on the front dock.”

  “What are you talking about? Chris arrived last night by boat.”

  “Yeah, but they can’t use any of the stuff they shot from that! You saw him, he was wasted. Instead, they’ll get shots of him landing in Virgin Gorda on Dan’s plane and then they’ll shoot him coming over here on the helicopter.”

  “Why does he need Malvin and the boat? Can’t he take the helicopter over to Virgin Gorda?” As much as I wanted out of my villa I wanted to stay by my phone even more.

  “They’re using it right now to bring over the losing contestants for the scene where Judy and Ted find out who they’re going to be working with on the final challenge. That’ll take a couple of hours and they have to get Chris’ flying into the Virgin Gorda airport stuff shot before they lose the light. They want the sun just setting when he flies over to Soursop in the helicopter.”

  “Why don’t I just take the crew ferry over later? Albert’s flight doesn’t get in until around five, right?”

  “He’s coming in on the earlier flight; it gets in at three-thirty. The crew ferry was just leaving when we pulled in and I don’t think there’ll be another one for a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll be there.” I grabbed a Diet Coke can and ran out the door.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I had just enough time to scan Ted’s CSIS badge, email it to Glenn, and then give the original back to Donnella before my call time on the front dock.

  Chris’ arrival was going to be covered by a crew that was twice the size of the crews I’d seen shooting Ted and Judy. The large group, and all their equipment, was already on the boat by the time I stepped onboard.

  “Hi, Ria! Hey! Where are you going?” Chris ran out onto the stern deck and started to follow me up the stairs to the wheelhouse. “What’s up here?”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” One of the women from the crew ran after him. “You’re staying down here in this living room with us, buster! I’m only doing touch-ups on Virgin
Gorda and if you stick your face in the sun all my handiwork will melt off and I’ll need another bucket of foundation to hide your black eye.”

  “But …” Chris started to plead (and whine a little).

  “I mean it!”

  “Oh, all right.” Chris smiled up at me and shrugged his shoulders. The eye that had been darkening by the minute at the breakfast buffet showed no sign of Judy’s impact.

  I went out onto the upper deck and enjoyed the view as we bounced over to Virgin Gorda … right up until the view included Pam’s pink bangs.

  “Hi,” she said as she sat down on the padded bench seat next to me. “So? What did your dad say? Was it real?”

  “I haven’t heard anything yet.” I hadn’t heard anything from Glenn, but I’d heard too much from Bear and Donnella and I’d been hoping to have some time to myself to sort through my thoughts.

  Pam pulled her legs up under herself and sat cross-legged. “Bummer.”

  We sat in uncomfortable talk-free silence for a few minutes. I started to feel guilty. Her relationship with Rob aside, Pam didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my angry silence. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on Ted’s crew?”

  “Yeah but Sarah’s sick — she’s the PA who’s supposed to be working this shift. I don’t mind working a double. This will be an easy one and working my Ted shift will go pretty smooth, too. He’s a dream to shoot and he never flubs his lines.”

  “But it’s reality TV. It isn’t scripted.” Unless Ted the spy was working off some clandestine script.