I elected to hold off on correcting James’ blame placement for the incredibly stupid money scheme. Who came up with the idea was unimportant. James had been the one to do it. “And speaking of Dan, let’s talk about him for a bit.”
“Do we have to?”
“You’re the one who teamed up with him, not me. Straight up — do you think he killed Kate?”
“He couldn’t have.”
Damn. There went the most likely suspect. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. Mandy and I were on Soursop when Dan and Kate had a big fight. We’d all been in the kitchen, Dan made us dinner, and then Kate started riling Dan to get specific about what job he was going to get her in LA. Dan tried to bluff, he stayed vague, but Kate kept pushing. She said he’d better come up with something solid, and fast, or else she’d put both Dan and I out of our jobs. Nobody threatens Dan — nobody. He yanked her outside and they yelled at each other for a couple of minutes and then Dan came back into the kitchen alone. He was with us for the rest of the night except for about five minutes. He had something he wanted to straighten out with Ted, but I could see them the whole time they were talking. He rode back to Virgin Gorda with us. He stayed at my place bitching about Kate for a while. He must have been at my place for over an hour and he would have stayed longer, but then Winnie called.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know, maybe around twelve-thirty or one?”
“What did she want?”
“I’m not sure, but when Dan left to go to his place he said something about to having to find some information in a file for her.”
“At one in the morning?”
“We don’t exactly work nine-to-five, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Even so, one o’clock in the morning seemed like a strange time to be doing some filing. Another thing was strange about it — Dan plus filing. The two didn’t add up. “Why would Winnie be asking Dan about a file? The man dictates emails. He doesn’t strike me as someone who’d be office savvy. Does he keep a lot of files in his villa?”
“No. Now that you mention it, it does seem strange. Winnie handles all his paperwork. She won’t even let him touch an original of a document because she says he loses them all the time.”
“What about Winnie? Could she have done something to Kate?”
“I doubt it. She and Kate got along, which was kind of surprising, actually. She’s been with Dan since his Toronto days and she’s never liked any of his fiancées.”
Had Winnie spent her entire professional life hoping that she might, someday, become Dan’s last fiancée? “Winnie was on Soursop, right? She had opportunity …”
“But Kate didn’t fight with her or threaten her job.”
“Not directly, anyway. If she took Dan down, Winnie would be out of a job, too.”
“I guess so.”
“Any idea what Kate had on Dan?”
“No. You name it, he’s probably done it — at least twice.” He sighed heavily.
“Could Ted be here to investigate something to do with Dan?”
“It’s possible, I guess.”
A thought occurred to me and I quickly tried to push it out of my head — but it wouldn’t go. What if Dan had set James up? What if he’d been the one to twig CSIS to James’ tax evasion? If James was out of the picture Dan would reap all the rewards — both fame and finance — from the show. I couldn’t fit Kate into that scenario, though. Unless she’d figured out what Dan was up to and threatened to expose him to James.
I listened to Glenn’s phone ringing as I watched James drive away from my cottage. He answered on the second ring. After doing a quick verbal polka around the “Where the hell were you?” question (we both asked and answered it), we easily slipped into working together and quickly shared what little information we’d each managed to find. We were so caught up in the questions about Kate that neither of us had the time, or desire, to worry about the questions regarding our personal relationship.
“Frozen? Dad said it might have been frozen?”
“To keep the bugs at bay. If your dad’s right, it was a real foot and someone stuck it in a freezer right after it was cut off and then got it out and took it to the tidal pool just before it was found. And on the footage I watched …” Glenn explained the two women he’d seen going in and out of the kitchen.
“That sounds like Winnie! She runs at night and dresses like a frump for work. And we know that she’s the one who took Ted’s shoes.”
“Which begs the question, did she do it and then try to frame Ted by leaving his footprints in the sand? It’s a possibility. Ted’s a front-runner, too — too many things aren’t adding up about him. Like the call he said he got from his sister — it’s pure fiction. I’m looking at his application for the show right now, the one you had your aunt send me, in the family information section he just wrote “all deceased.” There’s no mention of a sister. My bet is that it was the receptionist at James’ editing place who called him.”
“Why would she do that, though?”
“Because they’re old friends. She saw him on one of the monitors when we were in the editing suite and she called him Phil and said they went way back.”
“Phil? Who is this guy, Glenn, and why is he here? Is he Ted or Phil or Jake?”
“You’ve got me.”
“Could he be here investigating why James is moving so much money?”
“Uh-uh. If he really is a CSIS agent he wouldn’t be there for that. CSIS only worries about national threats. James isn’t a threat to anyone but himself. Listen, let’s wait until I hear back from the hotel in Dubai before we go off on the Ted tangent. In the meantime, I need you to find out why two discs weren’t in the shipment of camera originals that came up here. The technical guy, what’s his name?” I could hear Glenn rustling through some papers. “Bear — weird name.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you saw him.”
“Well, two of the scenes he wanted us to watch aren’t here. Got a pen?”
“Yup.”
“Exterior, north-end tree camera, day thirty-seven, and exterior, east beach camera, day thirty-eight. I don’t know what the first one will have, but the second one might have caught whoever putting the foot in the tidal pool. It looks down the beach were the foot was found. The disc that’s missing is the one that would have been shooting that morning.”
“The missing discs are probably here, waiting to go in the next shipment. Bear’s already said how busy his day is whenever the courier comes down to pick everything up. He must have just missed them when he was putting the shipment together.”
“Maybe, but it’s kind of strange that those are the only two that are missing, don’t you —”
I waited for Glenn to finish his sentence, but he didn’t. He didn’t do or say anything. “Glenn?” No answer. No anything. I couldn’t even hear him breathing. “Glenn? Are you still there?”
Crickets chirped from somewhere in the foliage around the pool. A few bars of big band music floated faintly through the air. The water in the pool was glass flat. Instead of shattering it rippled when I hurled the useless cordless phone into it. It sank and landed on one of the discs.
“God damn it!” Glenn hurled the cordless phone across his home office. It bounced off the wall on the other side of the room and landed on the floor about halfway through its rebound trip to his desk. There was a new dent in the wall, but the phone was probably okay. It had been purchased for its ability to endure Glenn’s occasional bouts with frustration.
The crappy phone system at Ria’s hotel was driving him beyond frustration. He put his hands over the keyboard of his laptop and was about to pound out an email to her but stopped himself before hitting the first key. If the phones weren’t working chances were that the island didn’t have Internet access either.
As he exhaled on the balcony he watched the smoke roll up into the sky. Maybe he should try smoke signals? At least with them he felt as if he had some co
ntrol. How were they ever going to sort this out without being able to communicate? Did people still send telexes? Telegrams? Glenn pushed aside a few squished butts in the planter and added another. A pigeon cooed from the balcony next to his. Maybe he should hire a carrier pigeon? Modern technology sure wasn’t doing him any good.
Technology was entertaining Brandon in the living room. He was sitting on the couch, his hands on a controller, his shoulders set, his concentration entirely focused on the big flat-screen television. His character was walking through a futuristic factory of some sort and he was shooting aliens who looked like they had wishbones on their heads. They were carrying big blue shields that looked like man-sized albums — real albums, not little pretend albums called CDs.
“What was that bang a couple of minutes ago?” Brandon asked, without looking away from his game.
“I threw the phone.”
“That’s what I figured.” His character walked past three dead bodies and then started blasting an alien spaceship. “Want to play?”
“Sure.” Glenn had tried playing a few of Brandon’s games and had only been able to master the art of shooting aliens and other invaders in the feet. He hoped that trying to improve his aim might also improve his mood.
Brandon won the mission. Glenn’s contribution had been to shoot several feet, one wall, and two members of Brandon’s team. He’d also shot Brandon’s character once, but the wound to his foot hadn’t been fatal.
Back in his office Glenn split his computer screen — the picture of Ted that Allie had sent him from Kate’s digital picture frame on the right side, Ted’s photo from the CSIS card on the left side. It was definitely the same guy, just a little sterner looking in the CSIS photo.
“Who are you?” he asked both photos.
Ted? Jake? Phil?
If it was the receptionist from the editing place who had called Ted, the man she’d called Phil, why had she felt it necessary to warn him about a reporter asking questions?
He went back to a full screen and pulled up the photo of Kate with Dan Shykoff. The smiling man with his arm around Kate looked happy and relaxed — a far cry from the angry man Glenn had watched yelling at her on the screens in the editing suite. Dan hadn’t had time to kill and dispose of Kate, nor had he had the opportunity to place her foot in the tidal pool the next day. His secretary, Winnie, had the opportunity to do both, though.
His computer pinged to tell him that he’d got mail.
“These just came in but they don’t make sense. They were taken today on Soursop and they came from Kate’s phone. And you’re not an entertainment reporter. What’s going on? Where’s Kate? — Allie”
Glenn quickly emailed Allie back.
“I don’t know what’s going on. That’s what I’m trying to find out. I give you my word — I’ll find Kate. Glenn”
It was a promise he planned to keep.
He opened the first photo attachment. It was a scenic shot that showed nothing but greenery. Lots and lots of greenery, that was very green, with a splash of red flowers. Ria probably would have been able to name some of the bushes and trees. His eyes scanned the image and focused on something not green near the edge of the screen. It was sort of golden, verging on beige. Only a little bit of it was poking into the shot. He leaned in closer and was able to make out thin lines of darkness between beige strips. Lumber. It was the corner of a pile of lumber, stacked up near a tree. Glenn focused on the tree. Its shape reminded him of an open umbrella. Its many branches were covered with green leaves that looked a bit like ferns. Bright red flowers lay over the whole tree like a blanket. But it was just a tree — a brown-barked, green-leafed, red-flowered tree … with a tiny red spot in the V of its trunk. That wasn’t a flower. His nose was almost touching the screen as he looked closer. The V wasn’t empty. There was a box of some sort sitting in it. The red spot was near the top of the box — just above a round shiny lens. A camera that was shooting pictures of lumber? Glenn quickly flipped through the notes he’d written in the editing place. North End Tree Camera — day 37 missing/day 38 — top of hill, lumber, backhoe, bucket filled with sand, spider on lens.
Glenn recognized the two men in the second picture. Dan and Ted (or Phil) (or Jake) were standing very close to each other on the side of a paved road. The photographer had been standing across the road from them. Behind them was what looked like a marina; there was a barge docked across the end of one of the big wharves and a large group of people where near and around it. Dan’s mouth was open and from the angry look on his face they weren’t having a cheery conversation. Ted’s face, looking worried, was turned to look to the right side of the screen. Glenn followed his line of sight and saw what he was looking at. Ria. She was just a blur, but Glenn easily recognized the swirl of red hair that flowed out in a ponytail from the back of her head. She was running down the road. Running into the shot.
Someone was taking too many pictures of Ria! First with the camera on her patio and now this. Was she in danger?
The third picture really confused Glenn. It was a close-up of the front page of his own newspaper from the day before. Instead of trying to enlarge the image, he picked up his own copy of the paper from the recycling bin beside his desk. The story and pictures about the nightclub shooting had nothing to do with Kate! He lets his eyes scan the whole page, glancing back and forth between the physical page in his hand and the virtual page on his computer screen. That’s when he saw that the person who’d sent the picture had drawn a thin circle around the Upcoming Features box … and they’d double underlined “Glenn Cooper Exposes the Dirty Side of White-Collar Crime.”
Was someone trying to send a message? To who? Allie? What was the message?
Look at the place where the lumber is (is that where the murder happened?) — look at Dan and Ted (was Ria in the shot by accident?) — Glenn Cooper (contact him? How would the picture taker know Glenn was involved?).
If someone had looked at the footage recorded at Ria’s place, they’d know that Ria and Glenn were talking. If the Bear guy had been telling Ria the truth about Dan not seeing it, the only people who could have looked at it were Winnie and Bear himself.
Winnie knew that Allie was in Kate’s apartment, she’d actually spoken to Allie. Winnie knew about the camera at Ria’s.
If Winnie was the picture taker and the picture sender, Glenn could think of two possible reasons for her to do it: One, she knew who killed Kate and was trying to send Allie a message — if true, why didn’t she just call the police? Two, she killed Kate and was trying to point the finger of blame away from herself — but by doing that, wasn’t she at the same time drawing attention to herself?
There were too many questions piling up. The answers were on that island somewhere.
And the most frustrating question of them all: when would the fucking phones down there be working again?
He almost jumped out of his chair when his phone suddenly rang. “Ria?”
“No,” the male voice sounded confused. “This is Ted Robarts. I’m looking for Glenn Cooper.”
“I just got your email. I know who you are, I used to get your paper and I recognized your name. Care to tell me why you’re supposedly looking for information on a reality-TV show that I’ve never heard of?”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Dubai.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
The golf cart outside my cottage hadn’t been mine. It had been James’ and he’d driven away in it. The phone at the bottom of my pool was just as useful as the other phones in
the cottage — none of them worked. If I was going to find Bear I was going to have to do it on foot. A few golf carts passed me, heading for the crew quarters, but Bear wasn’t riding in any of them. Even though the sun had been down for hours it was still sticky hot. I was thankful for the breezes I felt whenever the road swerved near a beach. Winnie passed me once — running almost as fast as a golf cart and hea
ding in the same direction as the carts. I had to sidestep around one or two land crabs. The shadows cast by the road lights made them look bigger than they actually were.
I found Bear standing at the far end of the pool patio, talking to Rob and two other men. A group of production people were in the process of taking light stands down, winding up long lengths of electrical cable, and removing the table that had been set up over the end of the pool.
Rob spotted me and walked down to join me at the shallow end. “Hey, how did it go?”
“It’s getting stranger by the minute.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Welcome to my world. Production life is never — ever — normal.”
“Two of the discs that Bear wanted my friend to watch weren’t in Toronto. Is he busy right now?”
“He’s just having some down time while they strike the set. BEAR!” Rob bellowed.
Bear looked over, smiled, and walked toward us. “So? Anything?”
I shook my head. “Two of the discs you listed weren’t in Toronto.”
“Which ones?” His smile flattened.
I handed him the note I’d written during my call with Glenn.
“That’s weird.” He handed the note back to me. “They should have been there. I packed the shipment myself and checked everything off before handing it over.”
“Who did you hand it over to?”
He thought for a minute. “Winnie. She said she was meeting with Dan and Albert, so she took them for me.”
“So she could have taken them?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I really think you’re wrong about her, though.”
“If she kept them they’d be in her office,” Rob interjected. “She keeps that place locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Even Dan’s not allowed to go in there by himself.”