“Good night, old man,” I whispered as I went back outside to turn the pool lights off.
Glenn woke up with a start, not sure of where he was. He felt the bed move and looked over to see Ria, sound asleep, snoring ever so slightly, all tucked in under the covers. He was on top of the covers and fully dressed. Gently lifting the covers up he took a quick peek at Ria. Wow. She’d stayed awake long enough to take her clothes off. It was tempting, very tempting, but he didn’t want their first time together again to happen in an early morning fog. He wanted Ria to be an active participant.
As slowly as he could, he got off the bed.
A little green lizard clung to the stone wall of the shower and watched him lather up.
Ria slept through his shower, and his shave, and his unpacking (which didn’t take long) and through him getting dressed.
Hearing a dial tone when he picked up the phone made him smile. It was all systems go.
I woke up to the sound of Glenn’s voice, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was sitting on the patio, his computer open on the table in front of him, talking on the phone. He smiled and waved when I sat down in the chair across from him.
He pointed at a carafe that was sitting on the top of the bar, beside a sugar bowl and a cream pitcher. “Look, James, I’ve got enough to print. I’m offering you the opportunity to make yourself look good, not just stupid.”
I listened to him as I went to the bar and got a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator for me and then took the coffee carafe over to top up Glenn’s mug.
“I’ll see you there.” He put the handset down on the table. “Good morning.”
“It looks like you’ve been busy. How long have you been up?”
“A couple of hours. Sorry about last night. I was beat.”
“Apparently.”
“Rain check? Tonight? Unless you’ve already got plans, that is.”
“I think I can squeeze you in.” Not a bad teaser for an old broad, I mentally patted myself on the back.
“Don’t do that to me,” Glenn growled. “You hungry?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
Glenn sighed heavily. “For breakfast, Ria, food.” He’d caught my meaning. “It should be here any minute and we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
“Do we,” I used the royal we, “get to know what we’ll be doing to fill this busy day?”
“Chris gave me an idea yesterday. We’ve been running around in all directions, right? Not sure of who did what. But someone’s been trying to direct us, right? The person who sent those pictures.”
“I guess so.”
“No guess about it. Think about it. Winnie had access to the stuff that was recorded on the camera that was here. So let’s assume she watched it and heard you talking to me. You mentioned something about Winnie going over the phone records because of the long-distance charges. She’d see that you dialled my number a lot. She could do a reverse lookup and bingo, she’d know exactly who you were talking to. And she knew that Allie was in Kate’s apartment — so she knew that Allie would see those pictures. She couldn’t have known if Allie and I were talking, so she highlighted my upcoming article on the picture of the front page.”
“But why the secrecy act? Why not just call the police?”
“You yourself have said how Dan’s the master of making himself look good. He’s got visual proof that Winnie put the foot in the water. If she went to the police he could have used that to get her charged with an accessory or something. Same with James, he had Kate’s suitcases put at James’ place to make it look like James was involved.”
“His grand finale.”
I nodded. “That sounds like him. That bit I believe. But I’m still not sold on Winnie being little Miss Innocent. She could have just called the police that night, she didn’t have to take Kate’s foot, or …”
“But she knows how good Dan is at twisting images around to make himself look good. She’d be risking her job if she called the cops, and from what you’ve said her job is her life. Dan’s got too much riding on this show — not just because he’s sunk a fortune into the production, but because of the free promotion it’s going to give his two movies.”
“Okay.” But I still wasn’t sold. “So why did she do anything at all?”
“Because she’s got a conscience? Maybe she really did like Kate? Or maybe, just maybe, she’s getting fed up with Dan? We’ll never know. Maybe she wanted him to get caught, too?”
“But he didn’t kill Kate! And you know what? I’ve heard too many people say that Dan’s this all powerful being who controls the women in his life, but I think it’s just an act. He didn’t control Kate, did he? She stood up to him. You’ve never met Winnie, but I’m telling you — she’s got more control of him than he’s got of her. If you’re right that she figured out we were talking, found you, and came up with a way to get your attention, those aren’t the actions of a puppet on a string. Those are the actions of someone who’s in charge, someone who’s capable of directing others actions. I still think she could have done it.”
“But you saw that footage, someone else was holding the scythe.”
“Or someone edited that stuff to make it look like Winnie didn’t do it. Yeah, Bear says they can’t do editing down here, but he didn’t know about the cameras watching me, so maybe there’s some editing equipment that he doesn’t know about? The fact is we don’t have any proof of anything.”
“You’re right.”
Why did he always do that to me? It got confusing when he agreed with me like that.
“And that’s why we’re going to rewrite the script and direct the next scene. James and Dan will be on Soursop in two hours to meet with us. If I’m right, that Ted’s the killer and Dan knows it, he won’t let himself go down on the same ship. I’ll bluff, pretend we have all the answers.”
“But we don’t …”
“Not yet, but if I play my role well we’ll get them.”
“Go on then, rehearse, prove to me that Ted is the killer.”
He took a big sip of his coffee and cleared his throat. “Get comfy — I’m about to give a soliloquy. I managed to find a few facts this morning. Phil Lunden played Billy Packham, the precocious little brother on Packham Inn, the same show that is prominently displayed on a big poster in Kate’s apartment. Ten years ago Phil Lunden got a part in a low-budget TV movie, shot in Toronto. An actress by the name of Holly Stewart also had a minor role in that film. It was a cheap spy flick and Phil played a dark-haired CSIS agent. That fictional agent’s name was Jake Purcell.”
“So he’s not an —”
“No heckling from the cheap seats.” He continued, “Holly didn’t get many roles after that movie, but she did stay in the business. She became the receptionist at VideoPost, James Butler’s post-production facility. The audience may, and should, assume that while working there she heard about a new production in the works — a reality-TV show called Check-Out Time. At the same time, her old friend Phil Lunden was working as a waiter at the Crystal Hotel. The day after the general manager of that hotel left the country to take up a new position in Dubai, Phil Lunden became Ted Robarts. He used that identity to get himself on the show that his friend Holly had told him about.” He looked very pleased with himself and spread his arms out in the air while he bowed his head. “You don’t have to hold your applause, you know. Let her rip.”
“But that doesn’t prove that Ted killed Kate. He’d get to be famous either way — win the show and go Surprise, I fooled you all! or let Kate tell the world and he’d be at the centre of a big scandal and he’d get invited to go on every talk show there is, he could milk it for all it’s worth.”
“You’re forgetting something — if Kate spilled the beans, the show would never be broadcast. Ted wouldn’t get his face on television screens across the continent for one hour every week for thirteen weeks. Sure, h
e’d get some interest, but not the kind of press he’d get if he was able to save his surprise until the very last episode.”
“I still think Winnie did it. She’s a lot like Mrs. Danvers.”
“Who?”
“The housekeeper in Rebecca. Completely devoted, to a psychotic level, to her employer, willing to do anything to protect him. Mrs. Danvers burned down Manderley, a place she loved, and she did it to hurt Maxim de Winter when she found out he might have killed her beloved Rebecca. Winnie found out that Kate could hurt Dan, so she hurt Kate.”
“You read too much. This isn’t a novel or a movie. This is real life.”
“And we really don’t know for sure which one of us is right.”
“We’ll know soon enough. But before that happens, you’re going to get us one more fact.”
“I am?”
The doorbell rang and Glenn stood up to go answer it. “Yes, you are! That’s why I ordered you a light breakfast. You’ve got a date with some little fishes before we meet with the big fish.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
The dinghy was sitting on an angle, its stern resting on a rock, at thirty-eight feet down. A small white stingray shimmied out of its hiding place in the sand when I crouched down to get a better look at the bottom of the boat. Something with claws or sharp teeth had been tearing at the duct tape. The delicate fingers on the bloated white hand that had been pulled through an opening in the tape, the skin picked or torn completely off two of the fingers, made me want to throw up in my regulator. I quickly looked away and nodded at the dive buddy who’d come with me from the dive shop. I gave him the thumbs up signal to let him know that I was ready to ascend. My stomach didn’t start to calm down until we made our five-minute safety stop at fifteen feet.
We drove back around the island to the dock and I changed in the bathroom of the dive shop and then walked up to the hotel. Glenn had waited there to meet James and Dan, just in case they came over earlier than expected.
It was quicker to cut through the kitchen than go all the way around the hotel. Two men in chef’s uniforms were having a smoke on the patio by the back door of the kitchen. They nodded at me as I pulled the door open and went inside.
Ted burst through the swinging doors at the other end of the kitchen just as I passed the sinks. He stopped when he saw me. Then his mouth slowly spread into an unnerving smile.
“Hi, Ted,” I kept on walking.
“Miss Butler,” he nodded as we passed each other.
He grabbed my arm so fast that it took me a second or two to react. I saw a flash of shiny metal as he reached out with his other hand and grabbed a cleaver that was lying on the counter.
“Keep your mouth shut and act natural.” His mouth was so close to my ear that I could feel the moisture in his breath. “One stupid move and I’ll cut you.”
The cleaver in his left hand, tucked inside the front of his Butler blazer, his right hand squeezing my elbow hard, we walked out the back door of the kitchen together.
Glenn had been right. I only hoped that I’d get the chance to hear him say I told you so.
“So what? You’ve got nothing.” Dan scoffed. He calmly crossed his legs and picked a microscopic speck of lint off of his linen pants.
“You knew! All of it?” James looked like he’d just been kicked in the balls.
Glenn glanced at his watch again. Where the hell was Ria?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew.” Dan leaned forward. “This show was all set to have a killer ending. Picture it — the costumes, the set, the dramatic mood of the masquerade, the anticipation of the results from the final vote. Ted wins the vote in the live finale. Then cue the powerful music, I walk onto the stage and confront Ted, tell him we’ve found out who he really is, a former child star with no career or talent, using a stolen identity to try to trick us.”
“How long have you known?” Some colour was coming back into James’ face.
“I recognized him from the eight-by-ten glossy that he sent in with his application. Hotel managers don’t hand out eight by tens, actors do.”
James stood up and walked to the closed sliding glass doors to the balcony of Winnie’s office. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“We’ve got the footage of Winnie placing the foot in the tidal pool.” Glenn wanted to keep the conversation going. He wanted to know what was keeping Ria even more.
“Do you? I wouldn’t be too sure about that, if I were you. I’ll tell you what you do have, though — you’ve got some friends who might be charged with break and enter. I’ve got footage of them breaking into my secretary’s office and stealing confidential items from her desk.”
“What are you talking about?” James turned around and walked back to stand beside Glenn.
“I’m talking about your sister and your cameraman, and my star — but I’m not going to have him arrested. They were so busy looking for camera discs that they didn’t bother to look for cameras — there are two of them in here, for security purposes.”
Dan pointed up to the ceiling and Glenn slowly scanned the corners. He saw two very small cameras in opposite corners, aimed to get full coverage of the room.
“Too bad for you I had those cameras disconnected a few minutes ago. There’ll be no record of our conversation. So tell me again, Mr. Investigative Reporter, what do you actually have?”
Glenn mentally scrambled to come up with something solid, something that was already up in Toronto that Dan wouldn’t have had time to hide. “We’ve got footage of Winnie taking the foot into the kitchen and then bringing it out the next morning.” For the first time Dan looked concerned. Glenn kept on going. “And we’ve got the footage of the foot. Your guy in the helicopter zoomed in on it.”
“He sure did! Mark Burnett only managed to get a guy’s burnt hands — I’ve got a severed foot! And I plan to show that footage to the police. Through the magic of modern technology we’ll be able to zoom in even closer. I’m sure the local police will be very interested to see that. And I’ll also give them the footage we have of someone reacting very badly to hearing that a foot had been found.” Dan chuckled. “Ted puked his guts out when he heard about Pam finding it. We caught him doing it from three angles.”
Glenn finally thought of something solid. “We’ve got Kate’s suitcases.”
Dan opened his eyes wide and feigned surprise. “Really? What suitcases would those be?”
“The ones at James’ place.”
“Look again, big boy. They’re not there anymore. Like Mandy, they moved. But they served their purpose. If Jamie here had started to ask too many questions those suitcases would have shut him up.”
“A girl died!” James spit out at Dan. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you at all?”
“She brought it on herself. She got involved in something that was none of her business. If Ted hadn’t hit the damn camera we could have made her immortal. I’m telling you, public executions are coming back. That’s where reality TV is heading and we would have been the first to have one. Instead, all we’ve got is her foot — but it’s better than nothing.”
“What happened that night?” Glenn would let Dan fill in a couple more blanks and then he’d find out where Ria was.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here, remember? I was over on Virgin Gorda with James.”
“Dan, stop it.” James finally sounded as if he taking charge of his show, something he never should have relinquished. “Your big dramatic ending isn’t going to happen, so just tell us what we want to know. Then we’ll call the police. We can script something for the finale, you can deliver the lines if you want, and then we’ll announce Judy as the winner.”
“You know what your problem is, James?”
“Why don’t you illuminate me?”
“You think too small. The finale is going to be better than I hoped. Care of your big friend there,” he pointed at Glenn. “I’ve rewritten the script — again. We’ll be airing the,” he counted out
something on his fingers, “fourth draft. The first draft was the basic boring competitor-wins-competition version. Draft two came to me when I realized who Ted was. But Kate forced a rewrite on that one. I wish there’d been a camera on Ted’s face when I told him Kate was on to him. He ran through a very dramatic array of emotions, real ones, before I reassured him that it didn’t matter to me who he was and told him he was going to win, if he got Kate to shut up. I suggested that he talk to Kate in private, like up at the north end where no one had a room with a view, so to speak, but I couldn’t possibly have foreseen that he’d use a gardening implement as a silencer. Imagine my surprise when Winnie told me what she saw him do? So draft three had to be written quickly and it would have worked if Pam hadn’t thrown the foot away. Just picture it — unsuspecting production assistant comes across a severed foot. But she didn’t follow the script, she improvised, and that meant I had to, too. Quite frankly, the fourth draft is the best, much more dramatic, and the big reveal about where the rest of Kate’s body is will really add punch to the finale.”
“How do you know where the body is if you didn’t have anything to do with it?” Even if the conversation wasn’t being recorded, Glenn had James as a witness that Dan had just admitted to knowing where Kate’s body was. It was something — not much, but something.
“Please! Do you really think Ted’s capable of coming up with such a visually dramatic hiding place? Between us, I’ll take the credit for that. The stupid oaf didn’t even realize that he’d cut her foot off and left it behind. I’m just glad that Winnie thought to keep it.”
“I’m calling the police,” James snatched up the phone from Winnie’s desk.