“Do you know who he is?”
“No. Look, I’m enjoying playing twenty questions with you, but don’t you think you should send the police or something?”
“The police and paramedics are on their way, sir,” the operator said.
“I think it’s too late for paramedics,” I said.
The paramedics came anyway, waking Kevin again as they lugged their equipment through the house and up the stairs to the second floor and thence the roof deck, where they examined the man lying there and pronounced him dead.
“I could’ve told them that,” I said. “I think I did.”
“Don’t be a smartass, Tom,” Constable Mabel Firth said. “A man’s dead. Show some respect.”
“Sorry.”
“You look like hell, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
Mabel Firth was a big, strapping blond in her early forties. She worked out of the Community Policing office on Granville Island. I’d made her acquaintance professionally a couple of years before and we’d become friends. She and her husband, Bill, had been at the party, but they’d left early. Bill Firth worked for the city, too, in some capacity involving water treatment. At what stage, I wasn’t sure.
Mabel’s hulking younger partner, whose name tag read “B. Tucker” and whom she called “Baz,” finished searching the dead man’s pockets. Better him than me, I thought. “Nothing,” Baz said.
“And you’ve no idea who he is?” Mabel asked me again.
“Not a clue,” I said.
“You don’t remember seeing him at the party last night,” she said.
“No.”
There was no external access to the roof deck. Beyond scaling the outside wall, landing by parachute, leaping out of a hovering helicopter, or direct descent from the heavens, the only way to get to the roof was through the house. He must have arrived with one of the guests. Or maybe he’d just arrived. Who’d have noticed a stranger in the house? Not me for sure, in the state I’d been in.
Mabel looked at Kevin Ferguson.
He shook his head and winced. “Me either,” he said. “Someone must’ve seen him,” Mabel said. “I’ll start with the people I know, but we’ll need a guest list.”
“No problem,” I said. “And there were a couple of single-use cameras lying around for people to use. First thing tomorrow, I’ll get the film developed.”
One of the paramedics came over. “No sign of foul play,” he said. “Looks like cardiac arrest or a stroke.”
“Thanks,” Mabel Firth replied. “We’ll let the coroner make that call, I think.”
The paramedic shrugged and he and his partner collected their gear and left. Shortly thereafter a team from the coroner’s office arrived. A squat, balding man in his fifties performed a hands-off in situ examination, dictating in a hushed, self-conscious voice into a tiny tape recorder. Another man took flash pictures with a nice little Nikon digital I would have asked him about had the circumstances been different. All the while a pair of burly attendants stood quietly by with a body bag and a gurney. Although they all had undoubtedly performed this ritual many times, it was done with solemn efficiency and respect. For both the living and the dead.
It was almost noon before the body was removed and the police and the coroner’s people left. Kevin Ferguson was the last to leave.
“You gonna be okay, Flash?” he asked. Flash was the nickname Kevin had given me when I’d worked as a photographer for the Sun, where he was managing editor. I’d left eight years before, though, to start my own commercial photography business.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Do me a favour, though, will you? Try to keep it out of the paper, my name at least.” I didn’t want to provide my ex-wife with any more ammunition than necessary to seek full custody of our daughter; I saw little enough of her as it was.
“Sure,” Kevin said. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Not much news in a guy dying of a heart attack, even at one of your parties. I can’t speak for my esteemed colleagues, though; Sundays are SNDs — slow news days. But maybe you could use the publicity.” With a stab of embarrassment I recalled whining to him sometime last night about how bad business had been lately.
Kevin left. After checking the living room again, the spare bedroom, and the sofa in my home office, and finding no more bodies, dead or alive, I chased a couple more extra-strength Tylenol with a glass of ENO, swished a capful of mouthwash through my teeth, and crawled into bed. I slept, but fitfully. At some point I dreamed that my house had broken loose from its mooring and drifted out to sea, with only me and the dead man aboard. He complained that he wasn’t dressed for a sea voyage. In the dream I knew his name, but I couldn’t remember it, of course, when I woke up at a little past three in the afternoon. I got out of bed, feeling somewhat better, albeit still a bit shaky and with a dull, throbbing ache behind my eyeballs. I took more Tylenol, showered, decided it was too much trouble, possibly even risky, to shave, and went downstairs to the kitchen. One look at the mess, though, and I almost went back to bed.
I half-heartedly restacked the glasses, dishes, and cutlery in the dishwasher, added detergent, and got it started. I made some more coffee, not quite so strong this time. While the coffee dripped, I ate a quarter cantaloupe with cottage cheese and whole wheat toast and drank a half-litre of orange juice. When I opened the dishwasher and began removing the clean dishes, I found a black lace brassiere and a pair of matching panties. The cups of the bra seemed rather large in comparison to the chest circumference, and the panties contained hardly enough material to fill a shot glass. I looked forward to meeting the owner, if she ever came to retrieve them. They’d be clean, at least.
The phone rang at five. I was keeping Kevin’s place on the sofa warm. I groped my way into the kitchen and answered without looking at the call display.
“Happy birthday, Daddy.” It was my daughter, Hilly, calling from Toronto.
“Hiya, Scout. Thanks.”
“Did you get my card?”
“Yes, I did. It was very funny. But forty isn’t that old.”
“It is when you’re fourteen,” she replied.
“Haw,” I said. There was a high-pitched squeal from the phone. “Ouch.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got new hearing aids.”
“That’s okay,” I said. Hilly had worn hearing aids since she was four, tiny things that fit into her ear canals and were almost but not quite invisible. She kept outgrowing them.
“Do you have a cold?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
We chatted for a few minutes, catching up. Hilly usually spent the summer with me, but this year she’d spent only three weeks in July. She was getting older and there were more interesting things to do than hang around with her dad. She asked me to give her regards to Bobbi Brooks, my business partner, to Daniel Wu and Maggie Urquhart, my Sea Village neighbours, and to Harvey, Maggie’s huge Harlequin Great Dane. She then spoke those most dreaded of words: “Mom wants to speak to you.”
“Uh, what about?”
“She’ll tell you,” Hilly replied ominously. “Bye.”
There was a click, then Linda, my former spouse, came on the line.
“Hello, Tom. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. Had Linda always sounded so much like my mother? I wondered.
“Are you getting a cold?” she asked.
“I