Overexposed

by Michael Blair

  I told her about the man who’d died on my roof deck, but she had no idea who he was, of course. When the pizza arrived, we switched to red wine and ate above, on the aft deck, enjoying the late summer evening. The gentle breeze rattling through the forest of masts and spars and spreaders had an almost musical quality. Somewhere, someone strummed a guitar and sang quietly, albeit slightly off key, about paving over paradise. We didn’t talk much as we ate. The silences were comfortable.

  “Can I ask you something?” Reeny said when we’d finished.

  “Nothing too difficult, I hope,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “You should be able to handle it,” she said.

  “Shoot.”

  “The producers are pressuring us to do more nudity,” she said.

  “Really?” I said, interest piqued.

  “For the European market,” she added with a smile. “Ricky has a no-nudity clause in her contract, not even body doubles, so of the regulars, that leaves just me.”

  “How do you feel about it?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I leered pointedly at her chest. She filled out her T-shirt nicely, but she was not nearly as well endowed as her character. Reeny looked down, then back up at me, her smile turning crooked.

  “How would it work?” I asked. “I mean, given Virgin’s, um, physical attributes. Latex boobs, like the monster masks? Or, what did you call them, body doubles?”

  “The producers haven’t come right out and said so, but they’ve dropped a few not-so-subtle hints that they wouldn’t object if I got implants.”

  “And how do you feel about that?” I asked. I knew how I felt. Faintly queasy.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “So what is it you wanted to ask me?”

  “I guess what I wanted was some feedback, an objective point of view.” That made me smile. She smiled back. “I don’t have any particular qualms about gratuitously baring my, ah, attributes, as you put it, if the producers make it worth my while. I already gratuitously almost do anyway, although if I really did, there’d be some very disappointed fans. I’m going to tell the producers that they take me as is or not at all. There’s no way in hell I’m going to get implants.” She sat up, struggled to suppress a yawn. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

  I stood. “I should go. You probably have to get up early.”

  “I do,” she said. “But don’t leave yet. Please.”

  I sat down again. I didn’t have to be asked twice.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I could see it in your face when we came aboard,” she said.

  “I’m that transparent, am I?” I said. “All right, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t understand why you stay aboard this boat. I’d think the memories must be painful.”

  “What can I do?” Reeny replied. “Pendragon isn’t mine to sell, and if I’m going to pay the bills, I may as well live on her. I can’t let her just sit here and rot.” She looked me in the eye. “There were some good memories too.”

  “I take it you still haven’t heard from him?”

  She shook her head, eyes downcast, a shadow of sadness falling cross her face. “No,” she said, voice barely audible. I felt like a proper bastard for asking.

  It had been two years since Christopher Hastings, Reeny’s former lover and owner of record of Pendragon, had disappeared without a trace. One morning Reeny had awakened to find that Hastings had packed one small bag of clothing and personal belongings and left with nary a word. Thinking, perhaps wishfully, that he’d simply forgotten to tell her he was going away on a research trip, she’d waited a couple of weeks before filing a missing persons report. The police hadn’t been able to turn up anything, however, and as much as told her not to hold out much hope, that when a fifty-year-old man disappears as suddenly and as thoroughly as Chris Hastings had, it usually means he doesn’t want to be found.

  Nor had Hastings been entirely unknown to the police, particularly the drug squad. His grandfather, who had owned a ball-bearing plant during the Second World War, had died a very wealthy man. Hastings’ father hadn’t worked a day in his life. Fortunately for Hastings, he’d died in a car crash before he’d been able to fritter away all of his son’s inheritance. He’d made a considerable dent in it, though. According to Constable Mabel Firth, who at my request had made a few discreet inquiries on Reeny’s behalf, the detectives on the drug squad suspected that Hastings had been augmenting the income from his small trust fund, and what little more he earned writing true crime documentaries for television, by dealing a little locally grown marijuana. Perhaps he’d pissed off the wrong people, they’d told Mabel, and was fertilizing a field of B.C. Bud somewhere.

  I had my own theory.

  I’d first met Hastings, and Reeny, while trying to track down Carla Bergman. Carla had crewed for him a few times, before he and Reeny had got together, and he’d bailed her out of at least one nasty mess she’d got herself into in Mexico. Hastings was a rangy and slightly ram-shackle man with a lot of sun-bleached greying brown hair and a battered, uneven nose. However, while he affected a laid back, aging hippie demeanour, there was a cold, almost feral watchfulness behind his steel blue eyes. Even then I wondered if he might not have been involved in the drug trade, a smuggler perhaps; Pendragon was a big old boat with plenty of odd places for secret compartments. He was likeable enough, though, and helpful, providing me with a lot more information about Carla and her boss and boyfriend, Vince Ryan, than I really wanted to know.

  “Be careful around Carla,” he’d warned me.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t heeded his own advice and had let Carla hide out on Pendragon. The last time I spoke to him was the day after she’d been abducted and Hastings and Reeny had been left bound and gagged with duct tape in the master stateroom, where they likely would have perished if I hadn’t found them. Hastings wasn’t handling his failure to protect Reeny at all well. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in just a few hours, hair lank and tangled, chin bristly with grey stubble, eyes bleary and breath stale from too many cans of beer.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “But if you don’t get your act together and talk to her, you’re going to lose her.”

  “Yeah, well, if that happens, it happens,” he said, pulling the tab on a can of beer.

  “You’d be a bloody fool to let it,” I said.

  “Get off my case, McCall.”

  “See you around,” I said and left him sitting on the deck of his old boat, staring at the wisps of carbon dioxide vapour drifting from the hole in the top of his beer can.

  I never did see him again, though. Despite, as I learned later, his umpteenth-degree black belt — he’d studied martial arts of one kind or another almost all his life — Carla’s abductors had handled him as though he’d been made of straw. His ego, perhaps his concept of manhood, had been irreparably damaged, and Reeny and his beloved Pendragon were constant reminders of it. So he’d taken the easy way out and abandoned both of them. If anyone had asked, I would have said both, especially Reeny, were better off without him. No one had, though.

  “I’ve ruined what started out as a very pleasant evening, haven’t I?” Reeny said.

  “It’s still a very pleasant evening,” I said.

  “But?” she prompted.

  “No ‘but,’” I said.

  “I heard a ‘but’ in your voice. What is it?”

  “Well, I do think maybe it’s time you got on with the rest of your life.”

  “Just because I’m still living on Pendragon doesn’t mean I’m pining away waiting for the day Chris comes home.” She raised her eyebrows, which were just a couple of shades darker than her hair. “Or am I missing some deeper meaning here?”

  “It was a stupid thing to say. Don’t pay any attention to that man behind the curtain.”

  She smiled thinly at my attempt to lighten the
mood. “Nor does my living on his boat mean that if Chris ever does come back, we’d just take up where we left off. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I — I’m not sure I do,” I said.

  She was silent for a long, awkward moment, then said, “I never told you this, Tom, but when I met Chris, I wasn’t in very good shape. It’s an old story, and not very interesting, so I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, I owe Chris a lot. Maybe my life. I certainly wouldn’t have had the courage to resume my acting career if it hadn’t been for him. But I should have left well enough alone. I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, you’re a good friend, Tom, and…” She faltered and her voice faded.

  I stared at her, wondering what she meant. Wrong ideas again?

  She shook her head and laughed. “See, you’re not the only one who can say stupid things. I just meant — well, I’m not sure what I meant.”

  “I understand. I think.” She smiled, then stifled another yawn. I stood. “I should be going. You look like you’re about ready to fall over.”

  “I am tired.” She saw me to the gangway. “Thanks for the company,” she said. “And I’m sorry I ruined the evening.”

  “You didn’t,” I said.

  There was an awkward moment as we stood by the gangway, looking into each other’s eyes. Would it be all right to kiss her? I wondered. I never had before, but I was always ready for new experiences. While I dithered, she took the initiative, leaned close, and kissed me on the corner of my mouth.

  “G’night,” she said. “Try not to trip over any dead bodies on your way home.”

  chapter four

  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.