Really Dead, Page 26

  “But why? What good would that do her? She wanted a job from Dan, not Ted.”

  “Good point.” Glenn heard and felt his stomach grumble. It had been a long time since he’d had a real meal, almost twenty-four hours. “Dan couldn’t have known what she had. There’s no way he could turn this around to make himself look good. And if Dan didn’t know, neither did Winnie.”

  “You haven’t met Dan. He’s cocky enough to think he can do anything. Winnie’s super protective of him and we’ve got proof that she’s involved somehow, which is more than we can say about Ted.”

  “We need more.” Glenn opened the file where he’d stored the pictures from Kate’s digital frame on his computer. “The person who sent these knows something.”

  “And we know that Winnie knew there was someone in Kate’s apartment to see them. I’m telling you, it’s Winnie.” Ria pulled her chair closer to Glenn’s. “Let me see them.” She put her hand on the touchpad and quickly flipped through the pictures of Kate with Dan and James. She didn’t spend much time looking at the pictures of Kate with Ted, either. But she looked long and hard at the picture of the camera in the tree. “That could be the tree by the front steps of the hotel. There’s a camera in it.”

  “Are they building something there?” Glenn pointed at the corner of the stack of lumber. “See that?”

  “I know where that is! That’s up at the north end, where they’re building Manderley. That’s where Kate was killed.”

  The north end? Glenn ran into the villa and dug his notebook (his paper one) out of his backpack. “I watched a video from up there,” he said as he flipped through the pages and walked back outside. “It was the one after the one Bear had listed. Here is it — all I saw was a backhoe. Its bucket was full of sand.”

  “When I watched the one that was in Winnie’s desk the bucket was empty. The gardeners had left their tools leaning up against it.”

  “So somebody used it in between recordings. A backhoe would come in mighty handy if you had to carry a body somewhere … like down to a boat that you knew was going to explode the next morning.” Glenn held his hand out for Ria to take. “Come on. We’re going around in circles and we’re not going to find any answers here. Let’s go find out how they rigged that exploding dinghy. If I’m right, Kate went down with it.”

  She took his hand without hesitation. She took his hand! The day just kept getting better and better.

  Glenn drove like a race car driver. I slithered around on the slippery seat as he took the curves in the road too quickly. The tires squealed more than once. The crew members in the golf cart I flagged down didn’t know where Pam was but they said I could find Esther up at Ariel’s cottage.

  Through Ariel’s open front door I could see Esther, a cameraman and a camerawoman, two lighting people, and a man wearing headphones shooting Ariel and Judy. Ariel was standing on a low pedestal as two seamstresses did adjustments to her gown. I didn’t want to knock so I waved my arms up and down. Eventually, Esther glanced over at me, held her index finger up, and mouthed “One minute.” Three minutes later, one of the lighting men turned off his big light and the crew members started to move around. Esther ran out onto the front veranda.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “We need to talk to the special-effects person who rigged the dinghy,” Glenn immediately answered.

  “That’s nice.” Esther stared up at him. “And who might you be?”

  “He’s a friend of mine, Esther. He’s helping me sort this out.”

  “Okay. You want to talk to Ray.” She unclipped her radio. “I’m not sure where he is, but Pam might know.

  “Hey, Pam,” she said into the radio, “do you know where Ray is?”

  “Do I look like his coordinator?”

  “You don’t look like anything, I can’t see you. Do you know where he is?”

  “I think they’re down on the back docks.”

  “Thanks.” Esther hooked her radio back on her belt. “Tell him I sent you. He won’t talk to you if you don’t. James still doesn’t know for sure who blew up Albert and we’d like to keep it that way.”

  Esther went back to work. Glenn went back to driving the golf cart as if it were a Maserati.

  “Down there!” I yelled seconds before Glenn was about to miss the turn off.

  He yanked the wheel to the left and the cart left the ground when we bounced over — and off — a bump. He slowed down just in time to avoid driving straight down one of the docks and into the water.

  We walked over to the northernmost dock, the dock where Glenn said he’d seen Ted carrying Albert’s dummy to the waiting crew. Both of the speedboats were docked there and two men were working inside one of them.

  Glenn watched them for a minute or two. “Ray?”

  They both looked up from the boat to Glenn.

  “Not me,” the one with the crewcut said.

  “Who wants to know?” The almost-anorexic one with the long blond hair asked.

  “I do.”

  I could tell from his tone that Glenn was starting to flex his macho defensive muscles and quickly jumped in to ask his questions for him, in a much friendlier tone. “Esther sent us. She said you rigged the dinghy for Pam’s crew. We were just wondering if you could tell us how you did it. We don’t know anything about special effects and we’re curious. How did you make it sink bow first?” I hoped I’d remembered everything that Glenn had mentioned on the thrill ride from Ariel’s cottage.

  I’d been close enough. Glenn quickly warmed up to Ray as he explained the intricacies of blowing up a boat and dummy. The menfolk bonded over things that go boom. Ray dropped his guard so much that he stepped out of the boat and started drawing sketches for Glenn.

  “… so we put the trap mortar here, in the bow. It’s shaped to aim the fireball upwards for a directional charge. And we put a sheet of three-quarter-inch ply on the bottom of the boat to take the kick from the explosion. Pam wanted us to make sure there wasn’t much debris, she said she’d have to clean it up, so we were trying to keep the boat in one piece. The bendy —”

  “What’s a bendy?” Glenn asked.

  “The dummy, they bend, he was taped onto the seat with gaffer tape …”

  “Duct tape.” I added my one and only bit of technical knowledge.

  “… yeah, gaffer tape. And here,” he drew a tiny circle near the bow of the dinghy he’d sketched, “we put a little bit of det cord.” He saw the confused look on Glenn’s face and got more specific, “Detonation cord, to make a hole in the bottom of the boat so it would sink bow first.”

  “I think I get it.” Glenn took the sketch from Ray and stared at it. “Did you use duct tape, or gaffer tape, anywhere else? Like on the bottom of the boat?”

  “Nope, just to hold the bendy in place.”

  “And you set it all up the night before?”

  “Everything but the charge. We drove it over to the other side that night, but didn’t put the charge in until the next morning.”

  “How did you trigger the explosion? Was it on a timer or something?”

  “Radio remote.”

  “Okay, I think that answers all my questions. Thanks.” Glenn and Ray shook hands.

  It wasn’t until we were back in the golf cart that Glenn explained to me why he’d asked those questions and what the answers meant to him. “… and if I’m right, it makes Ted even more of a suspect. He was here that night. He knew the dinghy would be exploding the next morning, and he’s the one who turned the camera off.”

  “Winnie would have known about the dinghy explosion. Rob said that Dan helped to plan most of the stunts. If Dan knew about it, Winnie would, too.”

  “When do I get to meet this Rob guy?”

  “Later.” Much later, I hoped. “He said something else, too.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” Glenn muttered loud enough for me to hear him.

  I ignored his mutter. “He said that a bag of gaffer tape rolls went missing that night, whic
h fits your theory about where Kate is.”

  “And it adds to my theory about Ted. He was there, with the special effects guys. He would have known where to find enough tape to strap Kate up.”

  “That doesn’t preclude Winnie. Trust me, she knows where everything and everyone is on this island.”

  Glenn wisely changed the topic. Until they had more facts, they weren’t going to agree on the most likely suspect. “Let’s go look at the scene of the crime.”

  I held onto the handle of the glovebox as Glenn sped up the mountain road, and closed my eyes when the tires hit the gravel road at the end of the pavement. I didn’t want to know how close the road went to the side of the mountain, especially when I felt us sliding a bit on the gravel. When the golf cart jerked to a stop I opened my eyes.

  What had looked like a small cleared field from the air twenty-four hours earlier was now a manicured lawn that surrounded a big, extra big, billboard that was still under construction and had some rectangular openings cut in it. The lines between the strips of recently laid grass sod were easily visible.

  “It looks much bigger up close than it did from the boat,” Glenn said as he slowly nudged the golf cart forward onto a wide swath of freshly poured gravel that looked like a driveway of some sort.

  The driveway curved around the billboard.

  “I can’t believe it! They actually built Manderley.” The front of the billboard was painted to look like the front of a plantation with white wood siding. It even had a wide set of steps that came down from the front veranda.

  Manderley had a resident. He was sitting on a folding lawn chair on the veranda, watching the sun set over the Caribbean.

  “Hey! Ria!” Chris jumped out of his chair and ran down the stairs.

  “That’s Chris Regent,” Glenn whispered. “That’s really him.”

  “Chris, I’d like you to meet Glenn Cooper.”

  Terence Grey had been getting a feel for Manderley, according to Chris. Chris, on the other hand, had been getting bored. He was puppy-dog happy to see us and got even more excited when I asked him to help us by acting something out.

  Finding the camera in the trees wasn’t easy, it was well hidden.

  Glenn picked up a rake that had been leaning against the back of the Manderley facade and walked over to stand by the camera. “So whoever was standing here, right?” He lifted the rake up and let it rest on his right shoulder.

  “Whoa! I know what this is. You’re re-enacting that Grim Reaper scene.” Chris walked over to Glenn and repositioned him. “More stage right. Your head and shoulders will be in the shot if you stay there. And you’ve got your hands backwards; he had his right hand above his left hand.”

  “He?” Glenn asked.

  “Yeah,” Chris looked at me. “You saw the hands, didn’t they look like dude hands to you?”

  “I didn’t look that closely.” I should have.

  “Hold that.” Chris was done with Glenn. “You can be the girl in the golf cart.” He pointed at me and then went to stand right beside Glenn. He held his hands up and put his thumbs and middle fingers together to form an almost square, which he then looked through. “Got it.” He dropped his hands and ran out from the camera, stopping abruptly where he used his feet to scrape a line in the gravel. “There’s your mark. Drive the cart up to this line and then stop. I’ll be the running lady. On my cue, you drive into the shot, get out, and stand by the front tire.” He turned to Glenn. “Then you wail down on her with the rake handle, but don’t really do it, miss or something, ’cause I like Ria and we’re just faking this. Then Ria will fall down and you’ll bring the rake up again and hit the camera. That’s when I’ll come into the shot. Are we good?” He looked from Glenn to me.

  We both nodded.

  “Places!” he yelled out as he ran down the hill until he was out of site.

  “Is he directing us?” Glenn asked.

  “I think so.” I got in the cart and backed it down the hill a little way.

  “Ready?” I heard Chris yell.

  “Ready!”

  “ACTION!”

  I drove up to my mark and got out of the cart. Glenn brought the rake down a few feet in front of me, and then lifted it up again. He didn’t smack the camera in the tree, but we both looked in the direction that camera would have been pointed if he had.

  Chris came jogging up the hill, his body slowly appearing above the rise. A shocked expression came over his face and he slowed down and began to walk like the Pink Panther sneaking up on someone.

  “Did she slow down like that?” I asked.

  “Yeah, in the last few frames you could tell she was trying not to be noticed.”

  I hadn’t noticed.

  “And that’s a wrap. Good work people,” Chris said proudly. “Why are you guys doing this, anyway?”

  “Um …” I didn’t know what to say.

  “Ria’s helping me do some research on a piece I plan to write,” Glenn tried to sound nonchalant.

  “You’re a writer? Like a screenwriter?”

  “Investigative journalist,” Glenn said with pride.

  “Wicked! My character, Terence Grey, one of his possible identities is a reporter! I’m hungry. Have you had dinner yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Cool. Let’s eat together.” He ran over to the golf cart and hopped into the back seat. “To the pool patio, my good man!” he shouted, doing a very good British accent.

  “Is he on something?” Glenn asked me quietly as we walked to the golf cart.

  “I don’t think so.” Chris wasn’t drunk, at least. I could spot someone over the limit a mile away.

  The big band was nowhere to be seen. Their chairs and music stands had also disappeared. In their place was a karaoke station. Three girls I didn’t recognize were doing a painfully awful rendition of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” The patio was packed with more people than I’d seen on it at mealtime before and I couldn’t see any empty tables.

  When the terrible singing stopped, and after the booing had quietened, I heard someone calling “Ria! Ria! Over here!”

  It was Glenn who was able to spot Esther’s waving hand from his vantage point above the crowd.

  We made our way through the throng to her table. She was sitting with Bear, Pam, and Rob. It was a small table, with four place settings. Bear moved the place settings around. Pam and Glenn went in search of three more chairs. Rob didn’t move or speak.

  Chris sat down in the first chair Pam brought to the table. “Hi, I’m Chris,” he smiled at Pam.

  “Like we didn’t already know that,” Esther was in fine friendly form.

  “Esther, right?” Chris asked. “You work on the crew that’s shooting Judy. So do you,” he looked at Rob.

  “Yup.”

  “I’m Pam, I work on Ted’s crew.” She was the only one to lean over to shake his hand. “And I was on the arrival shoot with you yesterday.”

  “Who are you?” Esther asked Glenn when he came back with two chairs.

  “Gulliver,” Bear answered. “He’s a friend of Ria’s.”

  Glenn and I almost played a game of musical chairs. He’d put the two chairs down between Chris and Rob. I didn’t want him sitting next to Rob. I won the game.

  “My name’s actually Glenn,” he corrected Bear as he plunked himself down into the chair between Chris and me.

  Bear took over the introductions at that point, starting with Esther, then Pam, then Rob.

  Glenn and Rob acknowledge each other’s presence by leaning forward to look at each other from either side of me.

  Glenn said, “Hey.”

  Rob said “Hey” back.

  It was promising to be a really fun night …

  Thankfully, Chris supplied enough entertainment to amuse us.

  “You guys are way more fun than those guys,” Chris nodded in general toward the tables nearest us. “I wish you were working on the movie.”

  I learned that the increase in bodi
es around (and in) the pool had been caused by the steady influx of movie personnel. They were moving in, eclipsing and ignoring the inferior television people who had been there before them.

  Glenn started to yawn more and more as the evening progressed. He’d had a long day, flying down from Toronto, spending hours exploring the island.

  Chris imitated every move Glenn made. When Glenn put his hand over his mouth to cover a yawn, Chris did the same. When Glenn lifted his right leg to cross it over his left, Chris performed a synchronized movement with a one-second delay.

  The only original movement Chris made was a pout when I called it a night and he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to play with his new little friend anymore.

  I carried Glenn’s backpack into the master bedroom. “Do you feel like a swim?” I wasn’t ready to go to bed. Before anything started up between us I wanted to talk, but I didn’t want that talk to get too serious. The pool sounded to me like the perfect place to have a serious, but not too serious, conversation.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll meet you out there.” I opened the sliding doors from my room and went out onto the patio.

  I’d left my bathing suit hanging over the back of one of the patio chairs. It hadn’t dried completely in the humid air and the thought of putting on a slightly damp suit didn’t thrill me.

  Why not? It wasn’t as if he’d never seen me naked before.

  Then I remembered the camera in the bushes. I ducked behind the bar to change, squiggling, squirming, pulling, and snapping the wet suit into place with the same difficulty that women in previous generations had probably experienced when they shoved themselves into tight girdles.

  I floated. I sat on the steps in the shallow end. I dove down and retrieved the cordless handset (but left the discs were they were). Still no Glenn.

  I stood dripping in the open door to my room and smiled. He’d sat on the edge of the bed, his bathing trunks in his hands, and had made the mistake of lying back. The bathing trunks were still in his hands, but he wouldn’t be putting them on. He was so sound asleep that he barely noticed when I heaved his legs up and slid him around to lie lengthways on the bed.