Really Dead, Page 7

  “Mostly, but I do have one question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s a gaffer?”

  “They’re like the aglets.”

  “The what?”

  “Those hard bits on the end of shoelaces that hold all the strings together.”

  “So gaffers hold everything together on a production?”

  “Yeah,” he chuckled for a reason I was so far from understanding that I didn’t even try to get him to explain. “They hold it together with gaffer tape.” Rob broke into real laughter. “Damn, that was a good one.”

  I let him laugh at his own joke. Maybe it actually was funny?

  “Gaffer tape?” He kept on laughing. “Get it?”

  “No.” I popped open a second can of Diet Pepsi, mainly to give myself something to do while Rob enjoyed his own humour.

  “Hey, that reminded me of something else that’s weird about that morning Kate’s foot was found.”

  I’d almost forgotten about Kate and, for some strange reason, started to wonder if she (or her foot) was wearing a shoe and if it had shoelaces or was a slip-on.

  “A big bag of gaffer tape rolls disappeared the night Kate disappeared. Could mean nothing, but it might mean something.”

  “What’s gaffer tape?” I didn’t want to know, but knew I had to ask.

  “It’s tape, strong tape. Oh, hell, what’s the name they use in hardware stores …” Rob tapped his foot at a rapid pace and looked at the stones on the patio. I immediately recognized that he was having what I called an old-age moment — the word he was looking for was just beyond the tip of his tongue. His foot stopped tapping, his fingers snapped once, and he looked at me. “Duct tape! Gaffer tape is duct tape!”

  “Finally, a product name I understand! Don’t you dare tell me how it’s made.”

  The radio on Rob’s belted squawked to life. “Rob, we’re heading to the north end,” a female voice said. “Judy’s doing some final prep on Chris’s place and then we’re going over to St. Thomas to pick him up. We’re supposed to shoot his arrival on the island, but if he’s still too wasted we’ll re-do it tomorrow. We get to go for a ride on the fancy boat! Sweet, huh?” She didn’t stop talking long enough to let Rob reply. “And it’ll mean overtime, because we won’t be back until late. Even sweeter! Do you have a ride or do you want me to send someone to get you?”

  Rob unclipped the radio. “Send somebody. Actually, send two carts. I’m still at Ria’s place and she’ll need a cart to get herself around the island.”

  “You’re still there? Well, excuse me! La-di-da. Aren’t we moving up in the world. Does she want the Bentley or the Rolls Royce golf cart?”

  “She can hear you.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen.”

  I wished that my last name was Smith.

  “Back to our shoelaces,” he lifted the lid off the final plate. A small mountain of chocolate chip cookies had stayed warm under the domed lid.

  “Please, no more shoelaces,” I privately resolved to only buy slip-ons in the future.

  “I’m almost done. I brought them up for a reason. They’re how I break down the two types of people who work in production. There’s the people who see shoelaces, and then there’s the people who see stars. Kate saw stars.”

  “And that means?” The cookies smelled so good that I almost started to drool. Instead, I reached over and grabbed two of them before Rob could empty the plate.

  “One of Dan’s favourite lines is ‘It’s called show business and business is the big word for a reason.’ The people who see the stars only see the show. The people who see shoelaces understand that it’s a business, just like any other business. Kate was, or maybe she still is, so totally hooked on the fantasy that there’s no way, no way at all, that she’d walk away from it. She was in, just where she’d always wanted to be. And, according to Narc —”

  “Who?”

  “The DOC on the movie. His name’s really Mark, but everybody calls him Narc — I’ll let you guess why — anyway, he told me that Kate was talking to him about how to get a job on the movie crew.”

  “But she already had a job with Dan. Wouldn’t that have kept her here for the movie?”

  He shook his head as he finished chewing a bite of cookie. “Dan won’t stay for the whole shoot and, knowing Dan, he would have been extra careful to avoid even hinting at the possibility of taking her back to LA with him.”

  “And Narc, or Mark, or whoever, didn’t give her a job, right? So maybe I was right, maybe she figured out she was being used by Dan and she simply decided to go back home early?”

  “Maybe. She and Dan did have a big fight the night before her foot showed up, but I don’t think even that would have made her quit. She could have just moved her stuff back here, to the hotel, and kept on working the shoot. Remember, she worked for James’ company, not Dan’s. The thing is, she was positively gaga about Chris coming in today. He’s one of the leads in the movie and Kate couldn’t shut up about how much she was looking forward to meeting him. Seems she’s had a major crush on him ever since he did Silent Lucidity.”

  I almost choked on a chocolate chip. “Chris, as in Chris Regent?” He was barely in his thirties but he’d already won two of the three Oscars he’d been nominated for, in between his well-publicized stints in rehab.

  “One and the same. He’s who we’re heading over to pick up on St. Thomas. Nobody was supposed to know that he was coming, but it slipped out a couple of weeks ago and when Kate heard about it she went nuts.” Rob stood up and walked over to his camera. “She was over the moon about Ariel coming, but she would have circled Pluto to meet Chris.”

  “Ariel? As in Ariel Downes?” She’d only won one Oscar. “That’s the Ariel who was freaking out about the chickens?”

  “Yeah. She just did a remake of Hitchcock’s The Birds, which Dan exec produced, and then she gets here and, gosh and by golly, someone let some birds get trapped right under her veranda. What a shocker, huh?”

  “Dan?”

  “I bet they got some great footage from that.” He pushed a few buttons on the camera. “And it’ll get some promo airplay for the Hitchcock remake, the show we’re shooting, and his next feature.” He turned around and looked at me. “Kate didn’t leave here voluntarily, Ria, I’m sure of it. And that foot was put where it would be found, where it would be caught on camera when it was found.”

  “You think Dan did that?”

  He nodded. “I’d bet your inheritance on it.”

  I ignored his inheritance jab. “Where does James fit into all of this?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? James is Dan’s boy. Most of the time, he’s a shoelace guy. We’ve worked together for a lot of years and he’s never paid much attention to the glamour and glitz. But Dan’s dangled some pretty shiny stars in front of him on this production and he’s changed. Something’s really changed in him. I went to him, one on one, with my concerns about Kate. When the police showed up —”

  “Someone called the police?” If they were involved, why had Rob called me?

  “No, they came over after Albert was blown up. Nobody thought to get a permit for the explosion and I guess somebody on Virgin Gorda called them. They came over to find out what we were up to and I think Dan might have been fined for it. While they were here, Pam —”

  “The one who found the foot? The lady with the chickens?”

  “Right. Anyway, Pam said something to them about the foot so they went off with Dan and James to discuss it. Rumours were building, big time, about what might have happened to Kate and then, on Saturday, two days after she disappeared, Dan held a crew meeting and told us that the BVI police confirmed with the police in Toronto that Kate was back home. Most people bought it, but it still didn’t sit right with me or Bear …”

  “Bear?”

  “Our TD.”

  “Technical director.”

  “Nicely done, you’re getting the hang of it!”

  �
�So this Bear person doesn’t think she quit, either?”

  “No. He and I agreed that I should be the one to talk to James about it; I’ve known him the longest. So, I went to James and told him I wasn’t buying it. He got pissed — really pissed. Being his sister you probably haven’t noticed this, but he gets this weird look on his face when he’s lying.” Rob picked up his camera. “I’ve worked with him long enough to recognize it, and he got that look.”

  “I know the look you’re talking about.”

  “He swore up and down that Kate had quit, that he’d seen her leaving Dan’s villa with all her stuff on Friday morning, the morning the foot was found. I could tell he was lying, but I couldn’t prove it. Then he told me to drop it if I ever wanted to work again. He said that to me! The guy who’s worked with him the longest. That’s not the James I know.”

  I stood up and started to stack the plates on the tray. “He can’t fire somebody without just cause. You could sue him for everything he’s worth.” What I didn’t say was that my brother, at least the brother I thought I knew, would never have threatened someone like that — unless he was really scared. But of what?

  “He wouldn’t have to fire me, or anyone else on the crew who asked too many questions. We’re not salaried, we’re all freelance. Once this shoot is over we’re unemployed and it’s up to us to find another gig. If word gets around that you’ve caused trouble on a shoot you won’t find another gig.” He stood and watched me for a minute. “You know you have staff to do that for you, right?”

  I slammed the last dome down on the plate that had held the cookies. “Stop with the rich jokes!”

  Holding his camera in one hand, he walked over to me and draped his free arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry. Really. I won’t do it again. But it’s just so much fun to see you get all huffy!” He gave my shoulders a squeeze.

  Despite my physical attraction to him the close physical contact hadn’t done anything for me. In fact, it felt more paternalistic than erotic. I mentally shook off my brush with disappointment.

  The doorbell rang and we walked together through the villa.

  “Bear might be out there. He’s really ticked off at me for calling you. He doesn’t want to lose his career either, and he’ll want to check you out before he opens up to you about what he knows.” Rob stopped just as we got to the door. “I don’t think James had anything to do with Kate’s disappearance, but I know for a fact that he’s covering it up. When I was leaving James’ place the housekeeper was in the little room under the stairs of the building across the pool from the main house. She was doing laundry, the washer and dryer are in that room, but I saw something else in there. Piled up against the back wall is all of Kate’s luggage. And before you ask me if I’m sure about it being Kate’s, I am. She had two Partridge Family lunchboxes that she used as makeup cases. Both of them were sitting on top of her Around the World in 80 Days suitcase. I saw all that and called you. The thing is, if something’s happened to Kate it doesn’t matter if James was involved in it or not. Dan is the living definition of conniving. I could see him doing just about anything, to Kate or anyone else, but he’s smart enough to twist everything around to make it look as if he’s innocent. And he’s sneaky enough to lay the blame quite visibly at someone else’s door … like at James’ laundry room door.”

  A shiver shot through me, knowing that I’d slept in the room above Kate’s suitcases.

  Rob opened my door and waved at the people sitting in one of the two golf carts.

  There was only one person sitting in the other golf cart and he immediately jumped out of it when he saw me. He was wearing a black chauffeur’s hat and I tried to stare at it instead of at his unusual appearance. He looked like the by-product of a conjugal visit between a biker gang member and an Ewok. He was short, wide, overly muscled and tattooed (those muscles and tattoos clearly visible because of the wife beater T-shirt he was wearing), and covered in lots of excess hair — on his body, his face, and his head. He ran up the steps to the villa, whipped off his hat, and bowed in front of me, dangling the key to the golf cart from the hand he held outstretched.

  “Your Highness,” he stood up straight (his eyes coming level with my chest), “your chariot awaits.”

  “Can the royalty crap, Bear.” Rob stepped outside. “Ria, meet Bear, our TD.”

  “Who doubles as a golf cart jockey when the need arises,” Bear smiled up at me, but it wasn’t a warm, welcoming smile. It was just something for his lips to do while his eyes looked hard into mine. “Nice meeting you, Ria.”

  “Hustle it, dudes!” The woman I now knew to be Esther yelled from the other golf cart. “We’re on the clock in less than a minute and Dan and James won’t be off island much longer.”

  I watched them pull away. Bear, who really should have been nicknamed Cub, had hurled his body into the storage bin on the back of the golf cart and then sat up on it so that he could face me as they turned out of the driveway. I wanted to laugh when a politically incorrect thought popped into my head, but stopped myself and felt ashamed instead. (But he really did start to resemble a garden gnome as the golf cart got farther away.)

  My footsteps echoed through the empty villa as I walked back out to the patio. Now what? What the heck was I supposed to do now? I sat down by the pool again, dipped my feet into the water, and tried to think. Unfortunately, one thought was blocking out all others — what would Glenn do?

  I tried to push Glenn out of my thoughts.

  Dan told everyone that the Toronto police had confirmed that she was there. Was she really? If so, why did she leave her luggage behind and why was James hiding it? Had Dan made up the Toronto police story to keep people from asking too many questions? I knew Toronto was where I should start (and maybe even end), but to do that I’d have to call Glenn; he was the one with friends on the force.

  No matter when or where our next conversation took place it wasn’t going to be an easy one. Our last words to each other hadn’t exactly been those shared by a happy couple and Glenn hadn’t made any effort to apologize. (Neither had I, but that was because I had been in the right and didn’t owe him an apology.)

  I didn’t want to call Glenn. He’d ask me about where I was … and why, and my answers sure wouldn’t help to smooth things out between us. On top of that, I didn’t want to have to admit to him that I needed his help. But did I have any other options?

  I couldn’t confront James. He was more than capable of lying, especially when he felt trapped or about to be caught doing something wrong by his big sister.

  I couldn’t very well call up the Toronto police force and say, Hi, you don’t know me and I can’t tell you why I need to know this, and I don’t know who would have the answer, if they have the answer, but … They’d either hang up on me or transfer my call to the closest psychiatric hospital.

  Glenn would know who to call. That thought irritated me — a lot.

  Glenn would call his golf buddy Cam. He was a detective sergeant in the homicide unit and I’d met him a couple of times through Glenn. Why couldn’t I call Cam myself?

  I stood up and walked into the cottage, on the hunt for my cellphone. Cam’s number was stored in my address book.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Glenn had never really noticed how loud the silence in his condo was — it was deafening. The walls and windows were so well insulated and double or triple glazed that it was almost as if he was embalmed in a residential cocoon. The sounds of the city streets far below him never made it into the condo. When propeller planes took off from the Toronto Island airport Glenn only knew about them if he happened to be looking out the window at the right time. An ice cube clunked out of the icemaker and landed in the plastic bin on the inside of the freezer door. Damn, the ice-cube maker was loud. Why hadn’t he ever noticed that before? He sighed and heard the air enter and exit his body. Was this what it was going to be like? He turned away from the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room and went to the k
itchen to use one or two of the ice cubes that the freezer had made so loudly. He wanted a scotch but given the time of day and the fact that he didn’t really like the taste of scotch he poured ginger ale on the rocks he’d let fall into his glass. But it still felt like an I-need-a-scotch moment.

  He’d known for ages that Brandon was going to go to Perth, Australia, to do a foreign exchange semester. He’d dealt with the mixture of sorrow and joy — knowing that even though he’d miss Brandon like hell he’d be happy for him to be having such a great experience. He’d been fine with it. Really. Besides, come Christmas everything would be back to normal again. Brandon would be home, living in the condo again, going to classes, not doing the dishes, and forgetting to buy food, life would be good. That was the plan. It was the plan Glenn had known about, prepared for, and accepted.

  Then everything went to rat shit when Brandon was invited to enter the Butler Hotel’s Internship program and Glenn had to slap a big smile on his face and nod and say things like “That sounds great!” and “What a terrific opportunity!” while inside his head he was thinking Don’t go! His little bird wasn’t taking a tentative step out of the nest, he was thinking of hurling his body out, taking flight, and never looking back. Glenn didn’t want to have to deal with empty nest syndrome. Not yet. Not ever, really. Yeah, Brandon would eventually set up a life of his own, but did he have to do it now? The kid was barely twenty years old! To make matters worse, Glenn had either James, Ria, and/or their father to blame for it. All it would have taken was one phone call from Doc Butler to guarantee that Brandon got the internship.

  The old guy did own a third of the hotel chain. He had clout — major clout. Especially since his two partners were only owners because Doc had given them each a third of the company. What kind of nutjob just hands over two-thirds of the hotel chain he inherited when he finds out his father made babies with his two mistresses? Doc Butler, that’s who. Talk about an overdeveloped need to do the right thing! Doc’s half-sister ran the whole operation out of Sydney, Australia. And it was someone in that head office who’d called Brandon and offered him the six month position in Sydney. Those six months would come right after his four months in Perth. Put them together and that was almost a year. A year of living alone. A year of only the occasional phone call and impersonal emails sent whenever Brandon had the time. Don’t go!