Читать книгу Overexposed - Michael Blair - Страница 9

Wednesday morning Bobbi and I spent an hour fiddling with the proposal, tweaking some of the numbers, tightening up some of the conditions and assumptions, making some minor changes to the wording suggested by the Griz, before faxing the revised version to Willson Quayle’s office at nine.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” Bobbi said as the final page chugged through the fax scanner.

So did I.

We spent the rest of the morning trying to map out how we were going to actually get all the work done by the fourth Thursday in November, while at the same time keeping what other clients we had happy. It was going to mean long days and working weekends, but we were used to that, just not quite so many. A few minutes before noon, my sister Mary-Alice called.

“Can I buy you lunch, big brother?”

“Uh, sure,” I answered, trying to recall the last time Mary-Alice had bought me lunch. It occurred to me that she had never bought me lunch. “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“No occasion,” she said. “I’m in the city, so I thought I’d buy you lunch, that’s all.” She was calling from a restaurant on her cellphone, judging from the noise in the background. “You’re not too busy, are you?” Was that sarcasm I heard in her voice?

“No,” I said. “I’m not too busy.” I was anxious to hear from Willson Quayle, of course, but hanging around the office hovering over the phone wouldn’t make him call any sooner.

“Good,” she said. “How about the VAG café?”

“Fine,” I said. “I can be there in fifteen, twenty minutes.” The Vancouver Art Gallery was an easy walk from the studio.

“I’ll be on the terrace,” she said and disconnected.

I told Bobbi where I’d be in case Willson Quayle called — not that it would do any good; unlike everyone else on the planet, I didn’t have a cellphone — then went to meet my sister. When I got to the VAG, I found her waiting at a table on the café terrace, with a glass of white wine, almost empty.

“Are you fully recovered from Saturday night?” Mary-Alice asked after we’d placed our orders. She’d ordered another glass of wine with lunch.

“Pretty much. Um, have the police been in touch with you?” I asked hesitantly.

“The police?” she repeated. “Why would they want to talk to me?” Her green eyes sharpened. “God, your friend Kevin, he’s not pressing charges, is he? I didn’t hit him that hard. Why, I’ve half a mind to press charges myself.”

“Relax, Mary-Alice. Kevin’s not pressing charges. I doubt he even remembers you hit him. I think you over-reacted a bit, though, if you want my opinion.”

“I don’t. What would the police want to talk to me about then?”

I told her about the dead man. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

“Certainly not,” she replied indignantly, as though she was offended by the very idea that I thought she’d actually know someone with the poor taste to pick my roof deck to die on. “What was he wearing?” I told her. She said, “I think I may have seen him in the kitchen.”

“What was he doing? Was he talking to anyone?”

She shook her head, golden blond hair swishing across her cheeks. “Not that I recall. He was getting ice out of the freezer.” She was quiet for a moment, eyes unfocused, mouth pinched, then said, “What would a man you don’t know, and who doesn’t carry identification, be doing at your birthday party?”

“Well, I don’t suppose he was having a good time, all things considered.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Her cheeks reddened and she swallowed dryly. She took a sip of wine, then said, “Do you think he could have been a private detective?”

It had occurred to me that Linda might have hired a private detective to build a case for custody, but I’d rejected the idea; she’d seemed prepared, if push came to shove, to let Hilly stay with me while she and Jack were in Australia. Nevertheless, I said, “Sure, Mary-Alice. Why not?”

“Oh, god.” Mary-Alice drank more wine, emptying her glass. She looked genuinely alarmed.

“Geez, Mary-Alice. Relax. I didn’t mean it. Yes, I guess he could have been a private detective, but what would a private detective be doing at my party? More precisely, who or what would he have been privately detecting?”

“He may have been privately detecting me.”

While Mary-Alice had always looked younger than her years — she’s three years younger than me — she was wearing more makeup than usual, in spite of which the lines around her mouth and radiating from the corners of her eyes were deeper and more plentiful than I remembered. She was still trim and fit, from a careful diet and hours in the gym every week, but she looked tired and drawn.

“What’s going on, M-A?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”

“As it happens,” she said, “no, everything is not all right.”

Before I had a chance to ask what was wrong, our food arrived, along with Mary-Alice’s second glass of wine. She picked it up as soon as the waitress departed and gulped a third of it down. I knew from experience that Mary-Alice did not hold her wine well.

“Are you driving?” I asked.

“Oh, fuck off,” she snapped, reminding me that she only looked ladylike and demure. She put her wineglass down. “Sorry,” she said.

“All right, what’s wrong?”

“Well, for starters, David is having an affair with his nurse.” David was Dr. David Paul, Mary-Alice’s husband, a highly respected proctologist, if there was such a thing, who was old enough to be Mary-Alice’s — and my — father.

“If that’s true,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“Of course it’s true.”

“How do you know he’s having an affair? Jesus, you didn’t hire a private detective yourself, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how do you know he’s having an affair?”

“How does any woman know?” she replied.

I sighed. “Just like Mom knew Dad was having an affair with Maggie Urquhart.”

“Okay, so she may have been wrong about that, but I’m not wrong about David.”

“Linda knew I was having an affair with the photo editor at the Sun,” I said. “I wasn’t. So, I repeat, how do you know David’s having an affair?”

“I thought it was Bobbi you were having the affair with,” Mary-Alice said.

“I wasn’t having an affair with anyone,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t even know Bobbi at the time. But that’s — ”

“ Have you slept with Bobbi?” Mary-Alice interrupted.

“Jesus Christ, Mary-Alice.”

“Okay, I can’t be absolutely certain David’s having an affair,” she said. “But I know he is.”

“All right,” I said with an exasperated sigh. “That’s it. I’ve had it. Go home, Mary-Alice. And when David gets home tonight, meet him at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap and give him the goddamned best blowjob he’s ever had in his life. According to a Cosmo I saw in the supermarket — or was it Good Housekeeping? — men don’t leave women who give good head.”

“Tom! That’s disgusting.”

“You do know how, don’t you, Mary-Alice?”

She stared at me for a handful of heartbeats, green eyes blazing and the heat rising in her face, mottling her cheeks. Then she laughed.

“Okay,” she said. “I deserved that. But that’s hardly the way you’re supposed to talk to your little sister.”

“I’m waiting,” I said.

“For what?”

“An answer.”

“Forget it.”

“I’ll rephrase the question, then. I have it on good authority that you’re a fairly attractive woman.” She smiled. “And you certainly haven’t let yourself go.” Her smile widened. “So what’s David’s nurse got, or do, that you haven’t, or don’t?” Her smile evaporated.

“Goddamnit, Tom,” she said. “I thought you’d be on my side in this.”

“What on Earth gave you that idea? You weren’t on my side when Linda divorced me and married the Fat Food King of Southern Ontario.”

“I thought you divorced her.”

“See what I mean?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” She said it loud enough to turn the heads of the diners at the nearby tables.

“Mary-Alice,” I said patiently. “If David’s having an affair, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive — ”

“Humph. You come by it naturally.”

“ — but men don’t usually have affairs for no reason. Does David have a reason, or think he has a reason?”

“He must,” she said.

“Look,” I said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t know what you expect from me.”

“Too much, obviously.”

“Are you having an affair, Mary-Alice? Is that why you think the man that died on my roof may have been a private detective?”

“No,” she said stiffly, “I most certainly am not having an affair. But perhaps out of guilt over his own infidelity, David hired a private investigator to spy on me, hoping that in fact I was seeing someone else, which would excuse his own behaviour.”

“I think I’ll go back to work now.”

“You haven’t eaten your lunch.”

“I seem to have misplaced my appetite,” I said.

Mary-Alice didn’t say anything for half a minute or so, just sat staring down at her own untouched lunch. Finally, she lifted her head and said, “Tom, I’m sorry. Maybe I am just letting my imagination get the better of me, but things haven’t been the same between David and me lately. He’s never home, and when he is home, well, he isn’t, if you know what I mean. I’ve tried to be a good wife to him. In every sense of the word.” She gave me a wry smile. “But he just doesn’t seem interested.”

“M-A, he is nearly seventy years old.”

“He is not!” she said emphatically. “He’s only sixty-four.” Our father was sixty-five. “But I see what you’re driving at. Maybe I should suggest Viagra.”

“Sure,” I said. “Do that. Then call your lawyer.” Subtlety was not Mary-Alice’s strong suit.

She made a face. “Can we change the subject?”

“Please,” I replied.

“My therapist thinks I should get a job.”

“You’re seeing a therapist,” I said.

“Sure. Who isn’t?”

“Well, me, for one.”

“Bully for you, but not all of us are as well-balanced as you are,” she said sarcastically.

“Okay,” I said. “Your therapist thinks you should get a job. I think that’s a terrific idea.”

Mary-Alice hadn’t worked since marrying David, unless you counted occasional volunteer work for the country club or the West Bay horticultural society, which Mary-Alice probably did. The last real job Mary-Alice had had, if you can call it a real job, which Mary-Alice probably did, was doing part-time scut work in an art gallery. She’d met her husband when she’d thrown wine on him at an opening, although she claimed it was accidental.

“Did you have any particular type of job in mind?” I asked.

“I was wondering if maybe you could find something for me to do around the studio.”

“What kind of camera do you have?” I asked.

“David bought me a little Canon ELPH for my birthday. It’s digital, I think.”

“You think?”

“I haven’t used it yet. But I didn’t mean anything to do with photography, exactly.”

“Well, Mrs. Szymkowiak is only coming in once or twice a month these days.” Mrs. Szymkowiak was our part-time receptionist/bookkeeper. She was in her early sixties. She and her husband, a retired businessman a year or two older, had recently started their own business, selling ladybug colonies and homemade soap over the Internet.

“She’s your receptionist,” Mary-Alice said, miffed.

“And bookkeeper,” I said.

“I’m really looking for something a little more, well, creative.”

“Do you know anything about website design?”

“What’s that?”

When I got back to the studio, Reeny was there, leaning on her rump against the edge of the table strewn with Star Crossed paraphernalia, ankles crossed, chatting with Bobbi, who was setting up for a portrait shoot. It was a warm day, and Reeny was wearing a light summer shirtdress, with buttons from knees to neck. Not many of them were fastened, though, and she was showing a lot of long, bare leg and the deep, shadowy cleft between her breasts. D. Wayne Fowler hovered nearby, trying without success to look nonchalant, pretending to connect cables. If he’d been wearing glasses, they’d have been steamed up. As it was, his eyes were round and somewhat glazed. I couldn’t blame him; my pulse rate had gone up a notch or two upon seeing her.

Reeny stood away from the table. She and Bobbi exchanged meaningful looks. Oh-oh, I thought.

“Have you got a minute?” Reeny asked.

“Of course,” I said. We went into my office. “What’s up?” I asked.

“It’s about last night,” Reeny said. “Let me make it up to you. Let me cook you dinner tonight. That is, if you’re not busy.”

“I’m not,” I said. I’d’ve cancelled an appointment with God Almighty Himself (Herself? Itself? Themselves?), or even Willson Quayle, to have dinner with Reeny. “I’d be pleased to let you cook dinner for me. But you have nothing to make up for.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “We were having a very nice evening until I brought up the subject of Chris.”

“Actually,” I said, “I brought it up.”

“Yes, but I backed you into a corner.” She stepped closer to me. There was a fine dusting of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose and, I couldn’t help but notice, across the tops of her breasts. She smelled of sun and soap and musky perfume. “I’ll see you later, then,” she said, and kissed me quickly on the cheek.

At five a man came into the studio from the stairwell. Bobbi and I were sitting at her desk, playing cribbage and drinking beer, waiting for Willson Quayle to call. The man was tall and dark blond and, judging from the look on Bobbi’s face, good-looking. Despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing a long coat over his dark suit. His striped tie was slightly askew and his polished black shoes were creased with wear. He introduced himself as Sergeant Gregory Matthias of the Vancouver Police Department.

“You’re here about the dead man,” I said.

“Yes, that’s right.” He looked at Bobbi then back at me. “Would you mind answering one or two questions? It won’t take long.”

“Not at all,” I said. Bobbi nodded.

We made ourselves comfortable in my office, Bobbi and Sergeant Matthias sitting at opposite ends of the old leather sofa. Matthias refused a beer — reluctantly, it appeared. He took out a notebook.

“Would you mind going over it again?” he said to me. “How did you find him?”

“He was just there, in the chair on my roof deck.”

“And you have no idea how he got there.”

“Well, he had to have gone through the house,” I said. “But there were a lot of people there that night. A number of people say they saw him, but no one I’ve spoken to knows who he is or who he came with, assuming he came with anyone.”

“And what time was it you found him?”

“About nine in the morning.”

Matthias scribbled in his notebook.

“Are you with missing persons?” Bobbi asked.

“Homicide,” Matthias replied.

“Homicide?” I said. My heart thudded, but it wasn’t the same kind of quickening I had experienced earlier upon seeing Reeny in her summer dress. Not the same kind at all. “Christ, he wasn’t murdered, was he?”

“The coroner has so far been unable to determine the exact cause of death,” Matthias said. “Until we know that, we have to treat it as suspicious. Right now we’re just trying to get a line on his identity. Did you have a look around to see if he might have dropped his wallet somewhere?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t think of that. I didn’t find anything while I was tidying up after the party, though.”

“Do you mind if we take a look around?”

“No.”

“How about later this evening?”

“Uh, I’m not going to be home this evening,” I said.

“Tomorrow then? About eight?”

“In the morning?”

“Yes.”

“That would be all right, I guess,” I said.

“The people at your birthday party, did you know them all?”

“My next door neighbour, Maggie Urquhart, brought a friend I hadn’t met before. His name was George, I think. My dentist brought his new wife. Her name is Stella. And a couple of friends brought dates I didn’t know. But otherwise I knew everyone else. Of course, there could have been some party crashers. I was pretty wasted by eleven o’clock.”

“How about you, Miss Brooks?”

“Was I wasted by eleven?” she asked with a dimpled smile.

Matthias smiled back. “Did you know everyone at the party?”

“For the most part, but there were a few I didn’t. Mostly Tom’s friends from his days at the Sun, before I knew him. I did see the dead guy, though.”

“Where?”

“On the roof deck.” The skin around her mouth grew pale.

“What time was that?”

“About one, just before I left.” She swallowed. “I thought he was asleep.”

“For all you know,” Matthias said gently, “he may well have been. The coroner put the time of death at around two in the morning.”

“My sister told me she might have seen him in the kitchen,” I said.

“Was he with anyone?”

I shook my head. “He was getting ice out of the fridge.”

“Does she know what time it was?”

“She didn’t say.”

Matthias scratched in his notebook, closed it, and stood up. “That’s all for now. I’ll probably see you in the morning.” He shook hands with me, then offered his hand to Bobbi. She grasped it and hauled herself to her feet. Either that or she was trying to haul him down onto the sofa with her.

“Brooks,” Matthias said to her. “Any relation to Sergeant Norman Brooks of the Richmond RCMP? He mentioned to me once he had a daughter who was a photographer.”

“He’s my father,” Bobbi said. “Do you know him?”

“We worked together a couple of times, before he retired,” Matthias said. “Next time you see him, please give him my regards.”

“I will,” Bobbi said.

After Sergeant Matthias left I said to Bobbi, “Should we call Quayle?”

“If he was really in such a goddamned hurry for us to get started on this, he’d’ve called by now. T’ hell with him.”

Easy for her to say.