Overexposed

by Michael Blair

  “Yes, of course. What happened?”

  Everyone began speaking at once, until the old man roared for them to shut up. “Them people, they didn’t know much about boats, did they?”

  “What people?” Reeny asked. “You mean the Yeagers? I don’t know. They were going to sail Pendragon through the Panama Canal to Texas. You don’t do that unless you’re an experienced sailor.”

  “Well, they sure as hell wasn’t sailors of any kind,” the old man said. “Didn’t know a winch from a wind-lass and thought sheets was sails.”

  I wasn’t sure about the difference between a winch and a windlass myself, but I knew that sheets were the ropes used to adjust the angle of the sails, not the sails themselves.

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  The old man peered at me, nested eyes sharp with suspicion.

  Reeny sighed. “It’s all right, Bernie,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

  “If they was aboard,” Bernie said, “I’d say they was dead now.”

  Sally and Tony Fitzsimons, eating a late supper aboard their little cabin cruiser in the slip next to Pendragon, had been the first to spot the flames in Pendragon’s pilothouse. Sally Fitzsimons immediately called 911 while her husband grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to fight the fire. He was joined by Bernie Potts, the tall old man whose sailboat was moored across the dock from Pendragon. The flames were intense, however, and the heat drove them back. They cut Pendragon’s lines. Tony Fitzsimons cast his boat off, attached a line to Pendragon’s stern, and towed her away from the dock to let her burn until the fireboats came.

  “No one got off,” Bernie Potts said.

  The VPD marine squad patrol boat, the R.G. McBeath, had arrived on the scene first. One of the constables on board tried to board Pendragon, but the fire had all but engulfed the main cabin. They relieved Fitzsimons and towed Pendragon farther out into the harbour, where the Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services fireboat directed its water cannon on her. By the time the fire was extinguished, most of Pendragon’s wood super-structure had been destroyed, her mast had fallen, and she was listing badly. Reeny and I watched from the dock as the R.G. McBeath towed the smoking and forlorn hulk to an out-of-the-way corner of the inner harbour where, if she sank, she wouldn’t block access to the marinas. There were tears in Reeny’s eyes. I held her hand.

  The marine squad cops and the fire department investigators wanted to speak to Reeny, of course, but there wasn’t much she could tell them. Pendragon was an old boat, wood construction, but she had been equipped with all the necessary safety interlocks and ventilators to ensure that propane from the galley stove or space heater did not accumulate in the bilge. As for the new owners, Reeny repeated what she’d told Bernie Potts, that the Yeagers had implied they were experienced sailors. While we were talking to the police, Fire & Rescue divers boarded what was left of Pendragon, emerging a few minutes later to report that there were no bodies on board. Carl Yeager and the Missus had evidently not gone down with the ship.

  It was after twelve by the time Reeny and I got back to my house. In the excitement, we’d almost forgotten the original purpose of our visit to Coal Harbour, but none of the half-dozen people we’d spoken to remembered a man answering John Doe’s description asking questions about Hastings. I suggested to Reeny that we contact the police in the morning. The information would at least give them another area to canvass. However, the connection to Christopher Hastings only deepened the mystery as to what John Doe had been doing at my birthday party.

  “Did anyone else at the party know Chris?” Reeny asked.

  “It’s possible,” I said.

  “By the way,” she said. “How come I wasn’t invited?”

  “Um, er, well, you’d have to ask Bobbi, Daniel Wu, or my sister. They organized it.”

  “If it had been up to you, would you have invited me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really? We hadn’t seen each other in almost a year.”

  “Um, well, it’s not that I didn’t think about you from time to time.”

  “That wasn’t fair, was it?” she said. “Putting you on the spot like that.”

  She stifled a yawn, then stretched, reaching above her head and arching her back. She was wearing a short, stretchy sports top. The muscles of her midriff ridged and rippled and the top rode up her ribcage, exposing the lower curves of her breasts.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, dropping her arms and rearranging the top.

  “Didn’t see a thing,” I said.

  She looked at me for a second, a funny light in her eyes, then said, “I’ve been up since four and I’ve got another early call tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said.

  “Tell that to Mr. See-em-sweat.”

  “Go to bed,” I said. “I won’t see you in the morning, though, not if you’re getting up at four.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then flashed a quick smile and said, “I’ll say good night then.”

  “Sleep well,” I said.

  She went up the stairs. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees.

  As I brushed and flossed and whatnot in the downstairs bathroom I mentally reviewed the guest list I’d given the police. I couldn’t think of anyone who might have known Chris Hastings directly and personally. Bobbi and Daniel Wu knew him by association, of course, through their peripheral involvement in the Carla Bergman affair. I’d probably also told Kevin Ferguson about Hastings and perhaps even mentioned his name to Mary-Alice. Ginny Gregory, who owned a gallery in Gastown that specialized in Pacific Northwest Native Art, had been a friend of Carla’s for a while after Carla and I had broken up the first time (and she’d absconded with my NAD stereo, the Hasselblad, and brand new Macintosh laptop). Carla may have told Ginny about Hastings. The police had probably already spoken to Ginny about the dead man, but I made a mental note to call her in the morning.

  Trouble with my mental notes, I keep losing them, so I wrote a note on a scrap of paper and stuck it on the fridge door with a piece of double-faced tape from the roll in the old wood salad bowl on the kitchen counter I used as a catch-all for junk mail and bills and such.

  The rest of the guest list had been people I knew through business or from my years at the Sun, my Sea Village neighbours, and local business folk I’d come to know in the six years I’d lived on Granville Island. Vancouver is a relatively small city and the marine community is even smaller. Any one of my friends or acquaintances could have known Christopher Hastings, but to the best of my knowledge none of them did.

  As I crawled into bed, I wondered if the dead man had come to my party to talk to me about Hastings. It seemed likely, although I was at a loss to explain how he’d connected Hastings and me. According to Reeny, she hadn’t mentioned my name to him. Was there also a link between the dead man and the destruction of Pendragon and the disappearance of her new owners? That seemed probable, too, although perhaps not so likely. More likely that had to do with Hastings’ less-than-reputable business connections. I didn’t give a toss about Chris Hastings, but I was worried that Reeny might be caught somehow in the middle of something nasty. And, by association, yours truly. At least it gave me something else to worry about besides the slippery Mr. Quayle and whether he would deliver a cheque as promised Monday morning.

  I didn’t get up until eight Saturday morning. When I went downstairs there was a note propped against the coffee machine. It read, “Just turn me on.” I did. After breakfast I called the number on the missing persons flyer. A woman with a pleasant voice answered. I identified myself and told her that I had some information about the man who’d died on my roof deck.

  “Do you know who he is?” she asked.

  “No, sorry. But he may have been speaking to people at the Harbour Ferries Marina in Coal Harbour.”

  “Speaking to them about what?”

  “A man named Christopher Hastings.”

  “What is the source of this information?”
the woman asked.

  “A friend,” I said.

  “Your friend’s name?” I hesitated. “Sir?”

  “Irene Lindsey,” I said. “Until recently she, uh, lived there on a boat owned by Mr. Hastings.”

  “There was a fire at Harbour Ferries Marina last night,” the woman said.

  “Yes, I know. It was Ms. Lindsey’s — Mr. Hastings’ boat that burned.”

  “I see.” The woman then said that an investigator would get in touch with me. I told her that I’d either be at home or at the studio, and gave her the addresses. She said the investigator would probably want to speak to Ms. Lindsey too, and asked where she could be reached.

  I had Reeny’s cellphone number, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate being interrupted at work. “She can be contacted here in the evening,” I said.

  “God, they’re appalling,” Mary-Alice said. “They don’t really intend to market these to children, do they?” She fondled the action figure of Star. “Oh, my god.” She thrust the doll away from her. “The breasts are squishy!”

  I picked up the Virgin doll from the desk. “They are?” Indeed they were. I put the doll down with the irrationally uncomfortable feeling that I had just violated Reeny.

  “They’re anatomically accurate, too, I bet,” Mary-Alice said. She looked at me. “Have you checked?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t.” She didn’t look as though she believed me. “Look, I agree with you, they’re pretty tasteless, but a job’s a job.”

  “I imagine prostitutes and porn stars feel the same way,” she said. “The Boobsie Twins downstairs, for instance. God, whatever possessed Bobbi to invite them to your birthday party?” She shook her head. “Don’t answer that,” she added.

  “Look, do you want the job or don’t you?”

  “The pay stinks. The hours aren’t much better.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Sorry to have wasted your Saturday morning.”

  “Not so fast, buster boy,” Mary-Alice said. “Did I say no? All I said was that the pay and the hours were less than desirable. Don’t you believe in negotiation?”

  I sighed. Maybe Bobbi was right, hiring Mary-Alice was a mistake. “Are you interested or aren’t you?”

  “I’m interested,” she said. “I’d be more interested if the pay was better and the hours more reasonable.”

  No doubt about it, hiring Mary-Alice was not shaping up to be one of my more inspired ideas. “Right now,” I said, “I can’t even be sure that we’ll be paid or what kind of hours we’ll be working. And, to be honest, Mary-Alice, what you lack in enthusiasm, you don’t exactly make up for in experience.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “It’s going to take you a while to get up to speed with the way things are done around here,” I said.

  “You’re telling me you don’t think I can do the job?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is that, right now anyway, you don’t know how to do it.”

  “How hard can it be?” she said.

  “It’s not hard, Mary-Alice. Neither is baking a cake, if you know how. Look, let’s give it a week, all right? See how things work out. Come in Monday morning and we’ll get you squared away.”

  “I’m busy Monday morning,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess it’s just not going to work out, M-A.”

  “Oh, all right,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I’ll be here Monday at eight.”

  I asked her if she’d heard from our parents, on their Alaskan cruise. She hadn’t. I asked her how things were going between her and David.

  “I’m going to ask him for a divorce,” she said.

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “Why do you say that? You don’t even like him.” As I was walking Mary-Alice to the elevator, the door from the stairwell opened and Sergeant Matthias came into the studio.

  “I got your message, Mr. McCall,” he said. He looked at Mary-Alice. “Are you Ms. Lindsey?”

  “Regrettably, no,” Mary-Alice said with a coy smile. I introduced Mary-Alice and Sergeant Matthias.

  “Police?” Mary-Alice said. “Who’d you murder, Tom?”

  “No one,” I said. “Yet. Run along, Mary-Alice, and let the grownups talk.”

  “She’s very attractive,” Matthias said when Mary-Alice had gone.

  “She works at it,” I said. “Hard.” I offered him some coffee, which he accepted, then we made ourselves comfortable in my office. “If he bothers you,” I said as Bodger rubbed his blunt head against Matthias’ ankles, “just give him a kick.”

  “I like cats,” Matthias said. Before I could warn him, he reached down and lifted Bodger into his lap. The only person Bodger let pick him up was Bobbi. Bodger hissed and spit and leapt to the floor. “Most cats,” Matthias corrected. He brushed at the cat hair on his trousers, then took out his notebook.

  “Have there been any other calls in response to the flyer?” I asked.

  “A couple. Nothing substantive.” He consulted his notebook. “Irene Lindsey. She’s the actress who lived with Christopher Hastings on his boat in Coal Harbour before he disappeared, is that right?”

  “I think they prefer to be called ‘actors’ these days,” I offered. “But, yes, that’s right.”

  “Was she aboard when it caught fire last night?”

  “No.” I told him about Carl and Jackie Yeager and how they showed up out of the blue with a bill of sale, claiming Hastings had sold them the boat for a dollar and consideration.

  “The bill of sale,” he said. “Do you think it was legit?”

  “It looked legitimate enough,” I said. “And Reeny, Ms. Lindsey, was pretty sure it was Hastings’ signature.”

  “How certain is she that our John Doe is the man she spoke to?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say nine point nine and a bit.”

  “And he was inquiring about Christopher Hastings?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When was this, exactly?”

  “You’d have to ask her that.”

  “I will. Approximately?”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “A week before he turned up dead on your roof.”

  “Yes. Has the cause of death been determined?”

  “Not yet, but we haven’t got all the toxicology reports back. Do you think John Doe might have been at your house looking for Hastings?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose, but more likely he was there to talk to me about him.”

  “And you still don’t remember speaking with him?”

  “No,” I said. “But I was pretty bombed by the time things started to wrap up.”

  “So you’ve said. Do you think it’s possible that Hastings was at your house that night?”

  “Jesus, I never thought of that,” I said with a cold feeling. “If he was, though, I didn’t see him.”

  “Or remember seeing him.”

  “I think I would have remembered him, no matter how drunk I was.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “A little over two years ago. On Pendragon. About a week before he disappeared.”

  “How would you characterize your relationship with him?”

  “We weren’t friends, if that’s what you’re asking. We had a mutual acquaintance who’d got herself into some trouble.” I didn’t see any point in going into more detail; it wasn’t relevant and would only complicate matters.

  “Was this mutual acquaintance Ms. Lindsey?” Matthias asked.

  “No. Her name was Carla Bergman.”

  Matthias scribbled in his notebook, then waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he said, “Can you think of any connection between John Doe and the Yeagers?”

  “Besides Chris Hastings, you mean?”

  Matthias nodded. “Besides him.” I shook my head. “What about the boat? Did Ms. Lindsey indicate that John Doe showed any particular interest in the bo
at?”

  “No. She said he just asked a lot of questions about Hastings.”

  “Does she remember anything unusual about him, something that might help us identify him?”

  “She did say she thought English might not have been his first language.”

  “He spoke with an accent?”

  “She didn’t mention an accent, only that his English was very good. As an actor, she probably has a good ear for speech.”

  He stood. “I won’t take any more of your time,” he said. “I want to thank you for your co-operation.”

  “No problem.” I walked him to the door to the stairwell. He didn’t seem to like elevators.

  He handed me a card. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  “I will,” I said. “Do they know what caused the fire on Pendragon?”

  “I haven’t heard,” he said. “Why do you ask? Do you have reason to believe it was deliberate?”

  “No. It just seems like a hell of a coincidence that a couple of days after Reeny is evicted by the Yeagers, the boat is destroyed.”

  “Could Ms. Lindsey have had something to do with that?” he said.

  “No, of course not.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Matthias said. “But I had to ask.” He pointed to the card in my hand. “Have Ms. Lindsey call to arrange a time for me to talk to her.”

  I said I would and we shook hands. He left and I went back to work.

  chapter nine

  D.Wayne Fowler had managed to get the CD-ROM that Willson Quayle had left to mount on the computer hooked up to the digital camera, but none of the files on it seemed to be readable. Bobbi looked at me, an I-told-you-so expression on her face.

  “Let’s pull the plug on this before we get in any deeper.”

  I was half inclined to agree, but I said, “Let’s wait to see what Simon has to say.” Simon Yeung was a free-lance computer graphic artist and web designer who had agreed to come on board for the duration of the project. “In the meantime, we have other work to do.”

  We had an afternoon shoot, photographing a charity casino, amateur fashion show, and art auction in Stanley Park. Not the most exciting job, but we couldn’t afford to be fussy. At least they hadn’t asked us to donate our time.