Was his fear of losing Brandon the reason why he’d pushed Ria so hard about their relationship? He gave his head a shake. He’d been spending too much time with Doc Butler if thoughts like that were popping up in his head. Even though Doc had retired from his career as a psychiatrist long ago, he still had a knack for getting into someone’s head.
He chugged down the last of his ginger ale. The half-melted ice cubes clanked loudly when he dumped them out into the stainless-steel sink. After putting his glass in the dishwasher he walked purposefully back to his home office. His cellphone started to ring just as he was sitting down.
“Cooper.”
“Do you want to tell me why your girlfriend’s calling me about some missing girl in the Caribbean?”
Glenn dropped into his chair. “What?” He and Cam had known each other so long that they never wasted words, but the few words that had just come out of Cam’s mouth didn’t make any sense.
“You and Ria are officially dating now, right?”
“Yeah. Sort of. I think so.”
“So that would make her your girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah.” Cam sure found it easy to define their relationship! So why couldn’t Ria? Get back on track, Cooper. “But she’s not in the Caribbean. She’s in Peru. I mean she was. She’s in the Galapagos Islands by now.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Yes, she is.”
“No, she’s not. She left me a voicemail, asked me to check something out and then call her back. I got the information she was looking for and then did a search on the phone number she left. She’s in the British Virgin Islands. I don’t have the time or clearance to get involved in some international thing so I thought I’d call you to find out what’s going on.”
Glenn opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say. The British Virgin Islands? That’s where James was shooting. Oh man, if Ria had found out about the woman James was shacking up with down there she’d be furious! Furious enough to go blast James in person. He wondered if she’d ever be able to see James as an adult, irresponsibly responsible for his own life, instead of as her little brother. (He didn’t let himself wonder if that was one of the things that was messing them up because, if he went down that thought path, he’d have to admit to himself that sometimes it was hard to think of Ria as a woman — not James’ big sister.) But if Ria had gone there to blast James, what possible reason would she have had for calling Cam? “What did she want you to check out?”
“Uh-uh, I asked you first. What’s going on?”
Glenn reached for his pack of nicotine gum, but tossed it in the garbage can under his desk instead of popping a piece out of the package. He yanked open the bottom drawer and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his emergency carton. Ria was one of the main reasons he’d been trying to quit. Ria was the reason why he suddenly wanted a smoke so badly. “Cam, you’ve got me. I don’t know what the hell she’s up to.” A blast of hot summer air hit him in the face when he opened the door to the balcony. A police car’s siren assaulted his ears as he stepped outside and lit the cigarette, but its sound was nothing compared to the alarm bells that were going off in his own head. “Your turn. Go.”
“She wanted me to find out if our guys were contacted about a missing girl, and if they were she wanted to know if they’d found the girl here in Toronto.”
“Did she say why?” The smoke scratched its way down into Glenn’s lungs. It hurt like a bitch. He took another drag.
“No.”
Who was missing? James’ mistress? “Who’s the missing girl?”
“Kate Bond. Ever heard of her?”
“No.” Glenn tried to remember the name of the woman James had told him about — Melanie, Margery, Mandy … something like that. Definitely not Kate.
“Well, she’s not missing. I did some digging. A call did come in from the British Virgin police — do you think they’re all virgins, or something?” Cam didn’t stop talking. “Two uniforms went to her apartment …”
“Address?” Glenn tossed the cigarette into one of the potted plants and went back inside to get a pen.
“I can’t give you that.”
“Yeah, it’s against the rules. That’s nice. What’s her address?”
“I mean it. I can’t give you that. I don’t have it. Listen, Glenn, this isn’t my department. I had to pull a favour just to get the information I got. If I start asking too many questions people are going to start wanting answers from me and I don’t have any.”
Me either, Glenn thought. “Did the uniforms find her?”
“Yeah, she was there. They talked to her and reported that she seemed fine. You really don’t know what this is about?”
“Haven’t got a clue!”
“You want me to call Ria back with the info or do you want to handle it? I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever’s going on between you two.”
“I’ll call her. What’s the number she gave you?” Now, more strongly than he’d wanted it in Peru, Glenn needed to find out what really was going on between them. Even Cam seemed to have given up the definition he’d had at the beginning of their conversation. And now Glenn, who was supposedly Ria’s boyfriend, was asking someone else for his girlfriend’s phone number. Bloody Butlers! He wrote down the number that Cam dictated. “Thanks for calling me on this one, Cam.”
“Bros before hos, right? Not that Ria’s a ho, mind you. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Is that it? Is there anything else I should know before I call her?”
“One more thing.”
Glenn cringed.
“She asked me not to tell you that she called.”
Glenn went back out onto the balcony, inhaled as deeply as he could, and exhaled every single thought he’d ever had of apologizing to Ria for pushing her so hard about their relationship.
“Thank you for calling the Butler BVI. How many I direct your call?”
Of course. She and James were staying at one of their hotels. One of the hotels that was part of the chain that was about to swallow up his only child. “Is Ria Butler there?” Glenn tried not to sound too angry, but knew he’d failed.
“I’ll connect you to her room, sir.”
She answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Hello.” Really, what else was there to say?
“Glenn?”
He chomped down hard on the nicotine gum in his mouth. “Yup.”
“Oh, boy. Cam called you.”
Glenn wasn’t in the mood to waste words. None were required in response to Ria’s enlightenment about Cam’s call. None were offered.
“I can explain.”
He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and twirled a pencil around between his fingers. “I’m listening.” Masticating his gum, squeezing every last drop of nicotine out of it, he listened to Ria’s attempt at an explanation.
As she went on he put the pencil down and started to click around on the Internet to find out exactly where the British Virgin Islands were — east of the U.S. Virgins. It took a while, but he finally managed to find a map that showed the island Ria was on. Soursop was less than a pinprick, in between Tortola and Virgin Gorda, just east of a collection of islands called The Dogs. He changed his screen’s background from the map of the Galapagos Islands to the map of the BVI.
Ria’s explanation left a lot to the imagination, Glenn’s imagination in particular. She said she hadn’t wanted to bother Glenn if it turned out there was nothing to worry about. That was the lamest part of the explanation, but he let her go with it. What it came down to was that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be and she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing — all because of one phone call from some guy Glenn had never heard her mention before. Sure, they were just getting to know each other as equal adults, but the core person hadn’t changed much in either of them over the years. Ria liked to come across as spontaneous, verging on impulsive, but Glenn knew that she never made a move without car
efully thinking it through first. Only one part of Ria was truly spontaneous, her heart. She’d pull a one-eighty at the drop of a hat if someone she loved needed her help. While she started out by saying she’d gone to the British Virgin Islands because James was in trouble, his name sure wasn’t coming out of her mouth very often. Another name kept coming out: Rob.
Who the fuck was Rob? He wasn’t just some cameraman who worked for James, that was for sure. He was the guy who was pulling a scam on Ria, involving a fake foot and a not really missing girl.
No matter how much she tried to distance herself from the family business, Ria was a hotel heiress. She’d be worth a lot of money someday. Then again, she was so much like her father that she’d probably give it all away to a home for stray relatives. But Robbie wouldn’t know that. Was the money what this Rob guy was really after? Or did he just want Ria? Either way, you had to give the guy points for originality. A severed foot. Nice. Too bad for him, Glenn was going to put an end to his scam. As mad as he was at Ria, and hurt by her actions, she did sound sincere in her concern for the girl. She was buying what Rob was selling.
“Ria,” it was the first time he’d spoken since she’d started her fast-talking explanation, “the girl’s not dead. She’s here, in Toronto.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Two cops went to her apartment and talked to her.”
Now it was Ria’s turn to go silent; a rare occurrence indeed. It meant she was really confused. “But the suitcases, Rob saw her suitcases, why would she …”
“Have you seen the suitcases?”
“Well, no, but … you think Rob’s lying, don’t you. Why would he make something like that up?”
To get you to Soursop, that’s why, Glenn thought but didn’t say. Why did Bobbie want Ria there? Was he going to pull off his scam right under the nose of her brother? It wouldn’t be hard to do. James had a self-centred streak that made him almost as blind as Doc Butler sometimes. When it kicked in any person or situation that didn’t directly affect him barely blipped on his radar. “I don’t know why he’s doing it. I don’t know anything about him. All I know is that the girl is alive and well and in Toronto.”
“Something’s not right about this …”
“I’ll say!”
Ria ignored his comment. “Rob isn’t lying, Glenn. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, he’s not being entirely accurate, either.”
“Look, I know we have a lot to sort out between us and this trip hasn’t helped things any …”
Talk about an understatement!
“… but I know — know — that something is going on down here. I haven’t even told you about Albert and whatever he brought to James, or James lying to me about it. Glenn?”
Uh-oh. That was Ria’s I’m about to ask you for a favour voice.
“Would you go talk to the girl yourself? See if you can find out something, anything, about what happened down here?”
He listened to her breathing.
“Please?”
Her request was a simple enough one to handle, if she gave him the girl’s address, but Glenn wasn’t so sure that he wanted to do it. Would it have killed her to let him know that she’d changed her plans before she took off to the Caribbean? “I’m kind of swamped right now, Ria.” He glanced around his home office at the multitude of papers that were spread everywhere. The most important ones were on his desk, but to narrow it down to those important papers he’d had to do one hell of a lot of research and that research had generated the paper wasteland that eradicated his usually neat home office. “Why don’t you just ask James, straight out?”
“Because it would get Rob in trouble. James told him that he’d lose his job if he didn’t drop it.”
Like Glenn gave a rat’s ass whether or not the guy kept his job! He could always call James himself to find out what was really going on, but their last conversation hadn’t gone too well. Not well at all. He doubted James would even answer if he saw that it was Glenn calling.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I was just thinking. “
“So, will you? Go to her place and talk to her?”
“His name’s Rob.”
“Fine, Rob.” Rob, Bob, Bobbie, Dickhead, whatever. “Why don’t you get him to call me? He can give me some more background info and I’ll see what I can find out, but it’s a backburner thing right now. Remember that story I told you about, the one on white-collar criminals who never even get charged?” Ria didn’t say anything so he kept on going. “Bob —”
“Rob!”
Glenn took a deep breath and counted to two. “No, Bob. My editor?” Again, no response from Ria. “Bob,” he stressed both B’s, “loved the idea and you won’t believe the stuff I’ve dug up on this one guy in British Columbia.” Glenn built up steam as his thoughts refocused on the thrill of a chase. “He tells everybody that he’s a retired FCA, which is some kind of high honcho accountant, and he’s socially connected up the whazoo. He’s on the finance committees at a couple of big name charities, handling all their money. But get this — the slime bucket pleaded guilty to stealing over a million bucks from some of his clients, was expelled from the accountant association and striped of his FCA, and he had to swear in an affidavit that he’d never accept another position of financial authority ever again. His only punishment was a small fine and the only press his expulsion got was a tiny little announcement in an accountant’s magazine with limited readership and a microscopic announcement in Canada’s other national paper, and he tried to stop even that. He said he’d kill himself if his accounting parents scolded him in public. Because practically nobody saw those announcements, his high-society friends still see him as some sort of paragon of financial authority, but in reality he’s nothing more than a well-dressed crook. Can you believe it? This grown-ass man tried to keep his crimes secret by threatening to hold his breath until he turned blue in the face and died.”
“I’m not asking you to do a complete background check on the girl. I’m just asking you to talk to her.”
What Glenn had wanted to hear was “Wow, that’s unbelievable,” or, at the very least, “Who is it?” but Ria wasn’t hearing a thing he said. “And if she won’t talk to me or if she says everything was hunky dory down there? Then what?”
“Then I guess I’ll come home, or maybe I’ll see if I can get booked on another cruise to the Galapagos. I haven’t thought that far ahead. Why does it matter?”
Because it matters to me, Glenn thought. It matters that I’d like to see you, talk to you, sort out whatever’s going on between us. The only thing that apparently mattered to Ria was that Bobbie kept his job. “Never mind. Get Rob to call …”
“What do you need to know?”
“Her address would be kind of helpful.” He heard the sharp edge in his own voice and did nothing to smooth it out. “A photograph wouldn’t hurt either.”
“Is that it?”
“It’s a start.”
“Does this mean you’ll be able to squeeze a visit to her place into your hectic schedule?”
What the hell was she getting mad about? He wasn’t the one who’d crossed a continent to “help” someone of the opposite sex! “I’ll do what I can.”
Ria’s terse “thank you” met Glenn’s brusque “you’re welcome” and the call ended, leaving Glenn angry, hurt, and disappointed, and probably some other emotions that he didn’t want to think about, let alone deal with.
He tried to get his head back into the story he’d been working on, but couldn’t shake the mental image of a severed foot. What kind of sick mind would come up with something like that, real or fake? He vaguely remembered something about a foot floating up on the shore of Vancouver Island. Maybe that’s where the idea had come from? He Googled “foot on shore British Columbia.” Sure enough, he found page after page of articles about six severed feet that
had washed up on various shores around the Vancouver area. The unusual nature of the story had garnered it a lot of press coverage. The BC feet had been in the water a long time, long enough for the skin, muscle, and ligaments to decompose or wash off, or get eaten by some sea critter. “Through a process called disarticulation, the feet appear to have separated naturally from the body.” Glenn shuddered as he read the more formal description of why the feet had come off. No matter how you said it, it was disgusting. He closed down his web browser, not wanting to know any more gory details.
Bobbie would call and Glenn would slam him for messing with Ria’s mind with his cockamamie story and the whole thing would be over and done with. With the exception of the Bobbie issue.
“Men!” I tossed the cordless phone onto the rattan sofa. A cute little speckled green gecko popped up from behind the sofa and hung on the wall, looking at me with his head tilted to the side. “Testosterone is a highly overrated hormone,” I told my new gecko friend.
With a jerk, he quickly tilted his head to the other side. I took that as a sign of agreement. It must have been a female gecko.
Could Glenn have been any more obvious? I hadn’t lied to him. I was upfront and honest about everything (if you didn’t count me asking Cam not to tell Glenn about my call). I’d come to Soursop because there was a very real chance that James was in trouble. The fact that I’d heard about it from Rob wasn’t important. I’d come for James. (And if I repeated those thoughts in my head often enough I just might start believing them wholeheartedly.)
I wasn’t going to allow myself to feel guilty, because I hadn’t done anything wrong (mostly).
And, my thoughts weren’t done with me yet — my silent rant continued, even if I had had a few less than faithful thoughts involving Rob, none of them had turned physical.