“That would be our friend Carla,” I said. He cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “She stole something from him. I don’t know what, but he called it the key to making a lot of money.”
Wes shrugged. “Next time you see him, tell him that it would probably be a good idea to stay clear of this place for a couple of hundred years. Henry and Layton may not be smart, but they’ve got long memories, especially when it comes to money. They’re rough old boys, too, apt to settle differences with the blunt end of an axe.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He said, “What’re friends for?”
* * * * *
Wednesday was not a good day. The weather didn’t co-operate. Bobbi was in a foul mood. Nigel was impossible. The motor drive on the Hasselblad crapped out. The golf club steward bitched endlessly about the disruption and that everyone on the crew, with the exception of Nigel and the models, was in violation of the dress code. And Hilly and Courtney took a golf cart for a joy ride and drove it into a water trap.
I was about to ground Hilly until she was twenty-one, leaving Courtney to the mercy of her parents, when Nigel stuck his two cents worth in, claiming it was the high point of the day and that I shouldn’t be so stiff necked. I told him to fuck the hell off.
“What’s with you?” Bobbi said as we packed up the Land Rover at the end of the day.
“Nothing,” I snapped.
“Dry it off, it’ll work fine,” she said.
“What?”
“The golf cart. A little water isn’t going to hurt it. Besides, they’ve got insurance for this kind of thing.”
“I don’t care about the damned golf cart,” I said.
“I’m sure you got into your share of trouble when you were a kid. Why be so hard on Hilly?”
“It’s in my job description,” I said. “Anyway, I wasn’t that hard on her.”
“None of my business,” Bobbi said with a shrug.
I looked at her. Pert nose. Big eyes. Generous mouth. Long brown ponytail stuck through the opening in the back of the Blackcomb Mountain baseball cap. If only she had tits. “McCall,” the mouthy little voice in my mind said, “you are a disgusting bastard. She’s your friend.”
“Sorry,” I said to her. “Of course it’s your business. You’re almost family. Hell, you are family.”
She stared at me for half a dozen heartbeats, then hiccuped, held her hand to her mouth, and almost ran into the clubhouse. Christ, now what?
Hilly and Courtney came out of the clubhouse a second or two later.
“What’s wrong with Bobbi?” Hilly asked accusingly.
“I don’t know,” I said. She didn’t look as though she believed me. “Listen, scout, I’m sorry I came down on you about the golf cart.” Courtney was standing mutely behind Hilly. “You too, Courtney. I should have realized you guys were gonna get bored.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” Hilly said. “We shouldn’t have taken it.”
“We didn’t drive it into the water on purpose,” Courtney said.
“I know,” I said.
“Did you get any pictures?” Hilly asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
They grinned at each other.
Nigel drove up in a golf cart with a pink fringed canopy. “You two keep away from it,” he said to Hilly and Courtney as he parked it beside the Land Rover. “I think it went well today,” he said to me. “Don’t you?”
I nodded, closing the back of the Land Rover. He didn’t need me to tell him how the job had gone. He was just trying to ease the tension between us. I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t going to apologize for sticking his nose into my domestic life and he knew me well enough to know I wasn’t going to apologize to him for telling him to butt out.
“I’ll have the films ready for you tomorrow,” I said, telling him something he already knew. “I’ll send them over as soon as they’re dry.”
“We’ll take care of scanning them,” he said, which I already knew. He offered his hand. “Good job,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let’s have lunch sometime,” he added as I let go of his hand.
“Let’s not overdo it,” I said.
* * * * *
There was no sign of the white Buick on the drive back to Vancouver. The girls dozed or listened to their Walkmans and Bobbi spoke perhaps half a dozen words the whole way. If she wasn’t going to tell me what was bothering her, I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg. But I could have used the distraction; my mind kept circling back to Carla and Ryan. I didn’t particularly care what Carla had stolen from him, I just didn’t want my family, my friends, or myself to get caught in the middle. I tried to tell myself that I was worrying for nothing, that Carla was out of my life for good now, but the man in the white Buick had been strong, albeit circumstantial, evidence to the contrary.
Bobbi and Hilly waited in the Land Rover as I delivered Courtney to her parent’s door. Her parents weren’t home and I didn’t feel comfortable about leaving her on her own, but she assured me she’d be all right. She thanked me for letting her come along and I said that I’d enjoyed having her along, which, to my surprise, I meant. Perhaps enjoyed was overstating it, but it hadn’t been as unpleasant as I’d expected. She was a good kid.
Bobbi dropped Hilly and me off at Sea Village and took the Land Rover to the studio to unload it. I said I’d see her in the morning. There was no sign that Bernard Simpson had done any more work on the house. It still listed slightly but didn’t seem to be taking on water. Hilly went next door to Maggie Urquhart’s to retrieve Beatrix while I checked the answering machine.
There was a message from Bernard Simpson, apologizing for the delay and assuring me that the repairs to the hull would be completed soon.
There was a rambling, disjointed message from my mother, to the effect that my father had moved out, abandoning her to her the cruel whims of fate, what was she going to do, how was she going to live, and how was she going to break it to Mary-Alice, would I do it, please?
And there was a message from my father: “Your mother has probably already called and told you that I’ve moved out. Not my idea, believe me, but her constant whining was driving me crazy. I told her it wasn’t my fault she was getting old and she screamed at me that sixty wasn’t old. I think she needs help, but I’m afraid to suggest it. Maybe you could talk to her.” He hung up without leaving a number.
The dissolution of my parent’s marriage made me feel like a six year-old again, huddling under the covers listening to them fight, not understanding any of it, just wanting it to stop. Out of duty, I tried calling my mother, but there was no answer. I hung up with a mixture of relief and guilt.
I was too much of a coward to call Mary-Alice.
Chapter 29
The next morning I was running late and didn’t get to the studio until almost nine. There wasn’t a soul in sight save for Bodger, who was asleep in the sun on the window sill of my office. The Land Rover wasn’t parked out back, although the cameras and lighting equipment had been returned to the storage cabinets. It wasn’t unusual for the studio to be deserted early in the morning. I didn’t run a particularly tight ship, we had no walk-in trade to speak of, and the answering service handled phone calls. As long as people did their jobs, they were free to define their own hours. But I’d promised Nigel the films for today and if Ron didn’t show up soon I was going to have to process them myself. It had been a while since I’d spent any time in the lab.
I made coffee and Bodger and I ate the sweet rolls I’d picked up at the Chinese bakery. At a quarter to ten I went into the lab. The film we’d shot in Whistler was in the refrigerator, neatly labelled. Damn, where was Ron?
“Hey!”
I turned to see Ron at the door to the lab.
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded, moving to stand between me and the revolving blackout door into the darkroom. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not looking for anything,” I said. “You
weren’t here and I need these processed by noon.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, holding out his hands for the film canisters. “You’ll only fuck it up.”
He was probably right, but I was damned if I was going to admit it. “I know my way around a lab,” I said, handing him the canisters.
“Yeah,” he said, “but this is my – my job.”
“Don’t get your territorial imperatives in an uproar,” I said. “I promised the client he’d have the films by lunch time. Damnit, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Where were you, anyway? It’s almost ten.”
“All of a sudden you got problems with what time I come to work. I work late a lot o’ nights, y’know.”
It was true, he was often still in the lab when I went home at night, but for all I knew he was practising shadow puppets under the enlarger. “Forget it,” I said. “Just have those done by noon.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but it wasn’t the time to get into his attitude. I needed those films. But I thought, not for the first time, that it was time to start looking for a new lab tech.
“Do you know where Bobbi is?” I asked.
“How the fuck would I know where she is?”
“Take it easy,” I said. “I just thought she might have said something to you.”
“Well, she didn’t.” He disappeared through the revolving blackout door into the darkroom.
I went back to my office and did some paperwork for an hour or so. By eleven Bobbi still hadn’t arrived. I picked up the phone and dialled her home number, only to get a taped message to the effect that the number I had dialled was no longer in service. I tried again, but got the same message. I dialled once again, very carefully. Same thing. What the hell? I called the operator, explained my problem.
“That number is no longer in service, sir,” she said.
“Could it just be out of order?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
“Why is it out of service?”
“You’ll have to contact our business office, sir.”
I thanked her and hung up.
I flipped through my card file, looking for Bobbi’s father’s number. There were two numbers on the card. On the off chance that he was home, I punched in the first number. There was no answer, not even a machine. I tried the other number on the card and got the Richmond police.
“This is he,” the gruff voice said when I asked for Norman Brown. “Who’s this?”
“Thomas McCall,” I said. “Bobbi – Roberta’s employer.”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
Friendly guy. “Mr. Brown, is Bobbi in some kind of trouble?”
“What makes you think she’s in trouble?”
“She hasn’t shown up for work yet,” I said.
“So she’s late for work.”
“And her phone’s been disconnected.”
“Gimme your number.”
I did and he abruptly hung up. This guy’s interpersonal skills could use some work, I thought. He called back fifteen minutes later.
“When was the last time you spoke to her?” he asked.
“Late yesterday afternoon. We were on a job in Whistler, she dropped me off at my place then came back here to unload the equipment. She was driving my Land Rover.”
“She hasn’t paid her telephone bill in six months,” he said. “And she’s been evicted from her apartment.”
“When did you last see her?”
“We haven’t been close since – for some time.”
“It sounds like she’s having money problems.”
“No kidding. Maybe you oughta pay her more.”
“She makes as much as I do,” I said. “Maybe more.”
“You own the business,” he said.
“A business that employs a total of four people, myself included. And I don’t give myself bonuses. If she’s got herself into financial difficulties, it’s not because I’m not paying her enough.”
I heard the elevator door open and close and heard Bobbi say good morning to Mrs. Szymkowiak.
“She just came in,” I said.
“Have her call me sometime,” Norman Brown said and hung up.
I put the phone down and went into the outer office. Bobbi looked as though she hadn’t slept in a week, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, with bags under them so dark she looked like she’d been punched. She might have been wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, but since she habitually wore jeans and a jean jacket over a T-shirt, I couldn’t be sure.
Mrs. Szymkowiak looked at me, her eyes big with worry.
“Bobbi,” I said, “what the hell is going on? I just spoke to your father and – ”
“I hope you had a nice chat.”
“He told me you haven’t paid your phone bill in six months and you’ve been evicted from your apartment.”
“Did he also tell you my car’s been repossessed?” she said flatly as she dropped onto the old leather sofa in my office. “Shit,” she said, laying her head back and closing her eyes.
She sat up as Ron strode into the office and dropped a thick stack of glassine film sheets on my desk. “There you go,” he said and left. He didn’t look at Bobbi, but if her eyes had been lasers, he’d have been burned to a crisp.
I looked over the transparencies then got up and went into the outer office. Mrs. Szymkowiak was leafing through bills and invoices, entering the data into her bookkeeping program. I asked her to courier the films to Nigel, then went back into my office and closed the office door. I sat on the edge of the desk.
“What have we got on the books for the next couple of weeks?”
“Nothing much,” Bobbi said.
“So if I fired you, I could probably handle it.”
She looked at me. “I suppose.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re fired.”
She stood up. “Fine. See you around.” Her mouth quivered and her voice sounded as though her throat were filled with shards of glass. Her eyes were bright with suppressed tears.
“Sit down,” I said gruffly, struggling to control my own emotions.
She sat. “Am I fired or not?”
“No, you’re not fired,” I said. “But let’s pretend for a few minutes that you are, that I’m not your employer and you’re not my employee. We’re just friends, all right?”
She nodded.
“Where did you stay last night?”
“Here.” She patted the sofa.
“And where are you going to stay tonight?”
“I was planning to stay here again,” she said.
“You used to be some fun to work with, Bobbi. We used to have a good time. Are you ready to tell me what’s going on or do I have to fire you for real?”
She took a deep unsteady breath and said, “I lent Tony some money.” She took another breath, let it out, and went on. “He was trying to get ready for a show and had some extra expenses. He promised to pay me back after the show, but he didn’t. He netted over fifteen thousand dollars, but instead of paying me back the son of a bitch bought a fucking van.”
“How much did you lend him?”
“Ten thousand dollars,” she said. “I had three thousand saved and borrowed the rest. But he also forged my signature and ran both my credit cards to the limit, another six thousand.”
“Swell guy,” I said. “How much back rent do you owe?”
“Five months. Seventy-five hundred dollars.”
“How did you get that far behind?”
“The landlord doesn’t trust banks so we paid our rent in cash. I’d leave my half with Tony, but he never paid it.”
Twenty thousand dollars was a heavy load to have hanging over her head. If I’d had the money I’d have written her a cheque right then and there. As it was, I had a couple of thousand in my personal chequing account, maybe a couple of thousand more in the business account. Ryan had said making money was easy. For him maybe; I’
ve always found it a chore, all the work involved.
“I don’t blame you for being preoccupied the last couple of weeks,” I said. “All right, the first order of business is to get you a lawyer.”
I walked my fingers through my card file. Glenda Gilbert would make short work of Tony Chan and we could use a new van; the Land Rover was beginning to show its age.
“Then we’ll see about getting your personal belongings back.” She started to speak but I held up my hand. “You’re going to have to find a less expensive place to live,” I said as I dialled the phone. “In the meantime, if you need a place to stay, you can move in with Hilly and me.”
Glenda’s service answered. I left a message for her to call me and hung up.
“Now,” I said, “let’s go see your landlord about getting your stuff back.”
“There’s something else,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not sure how to tell you.”
“Just say it straight out,” I said. “That’s usually the easiest way.”
“Ron has some pictures of me,” she said. Her face was hard and her voice was strained, as if the words had been forced out of her.
“What do you mean, pictures?”
“I posed for him.”
I knew Ron did a little photography on the side, but I didn’t know what kind. It wasn’t hard to guess, though, given his taste in magazines and calendar pinups.
“I don’t suppose we’re talking art here.” She shook her head. “Damn,” I said.
“I needed the money.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
I’d always thought she’d make an interesting study, but I’d never had the nerve to mention it.
If Looks Could Kill Page 20