“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