“Woznicki,” Daniel supplied.
“Bless you.” He smiled thinly. “Him, Freeman and Summer Thom, Lionel Oliphant, Geoff Booksa. No one seems to remember him, or if they think they might have seen him, they don’t know who he is or who he came with. Of course, they all want to speculate endlessly about who he might be, what he was doing there, and the cause of death.” I sighed. “Did you know that Geoff Booksa is allergic to oysters?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I didn’t. How unfortunate. Your point being…”
“Evidently, someone brought smoked oyster canapés. Geoff reckons that’s probably what killed the guy. It would have killed him if he’d eaten one, he says.” I sighed again. “No great loss. I think I’ll just leave the rest of them to the police.”
“Were the paramedics certain he died of natural causes?” Daniel said.
“I don’t know how certain they were, but I sure as hell hope that’s what he died of.”
“There’s no reason to think otherwise, is there? Smoked oysters notwithstanding.”
It was my turn to smile thinly. “I guess not. I don’t like the idea of someone at my party being a murderer. I mean, since he died in — on — my house, I’d be the prime suspect, wouldn’t I?”
“I suppose so,” he agreed.
“I don’t need this,” I said glumly.
“I can recommend a good attorney,” Daniel said.
“Thanks heaps.”
“How’s life treating you otherwise?”
“Better,” I said. “We’ve got a new client coming in tomorrow with what, if all goes well, could be a very nice little contract. A toy company wants photos of a new product line for their website and Christmas catalogue. And Hilly might be coming to stay with me for a year or so.” I filled him in on the details.
“That’s wonderful news, Thomas.”
“Yeah, I think so too. I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m a little worried about what Hilly’s mother will do when she finds out a man turned up dead on my roof. Another reason to hope he died of natural causes. Or a food allergy. Linda threatened to seek full custody two years ago after the thing with Vince Ryan.” I massaged my right ear, the one Vince Ryan’s monstrous henchman had tried to remove from my head without benefit of anaesthetic. “She calmed down eventually, but she wants Hilly to go to Australia with her, and this could be the leverage she needs to force her to go. God knows what she’d do if it turns out the poor bastard was murdered.”
“Even if foul play is ruled out,” Daniel said, “a well-dressed stranger, with no identification, dies on your roof deck following an evening of drunken debauchery. The right judge could see that alone as sufficient grounds to award Linda full custody.”
“Hilly’s fourteen. Her wishes would be taken into account, wouldn’t they?” I said hopefully.
“Perhaps,” Daniel agreed.
“Maybe I just won’t tell Linda about it,” I said. “Her powers of omniscience are limited, after all.”
“If you say so.”
“And I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I wasn’t debauched last night. It’s been weeks since I’ve been debauched.”
“Weeks, Thomas?”
“All right. Months.” I sighed. “Many months.”
“You need to get out more.”
chapter two
With apologies to Bob Geldof (Excuse me. Sir Bob.) and The Boomtown Rats, I don’t like Mondays. But who does like Mondays? At least I was feeling more or less human again. In fact, despite having recently turned forty, the dead man on my roof deck, and the unnerving prospect of having to find a school for Hilly, I felt pretty good. It was a beautiful late summer morning, clean and bright and unseasonably warm. The new client was coming in later that morning. My house was floating on an even keel, more or less. And it had come to me in the shower that if Hilly came to live with me for a year, I could put a temporary hold on child support payments.
My good mood was not to last, however. At a few minutes to eight I was shuffling along Johnston Street toward the Aquabus dock by the Public Market, minding my own business, thinking about what I could do with a little extra disposable income. As I dodged a huge blue-and-white ready-mix truck that rumbled through the gate of the Ocean Cement plant, one of the last remnants of Granville Island’s industrial past, I ran into Barry Chisholm on his mountain bike. Literally.
“Sorry,” I said as I picked myself up from the dusty cobbles and Barry examined his bike for damage. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” If I had been watching where I was going, I wouldn’t have bumped into Barry and his bike; I would have crossed to the other side of the street and avoided Barry Chisholm altogether.
“Everything seems okay,” Barry pronounced with relief.
“It’s a goddamned mountain bike, Barry,” I said. “If you can ride it up and down a fucking mountain without hurting it, you can sure as hell ride it up and down me.”
“You should watch where you’re going,” Barry reminded me in an aggrieved voice.
“Yes, indeed,” I said. I poked at a tear in the knee of my best pair of trousers. My fingertip came away bloody. “I’m all right, by the way,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”
He frowned in puzzlement. “I didn’t.”
Barry Chisholm was a Bike Nazi, one of those fanatical cyclists who apparently believe that every street and path and trail on the planet had been put there for their exclusive use. With no regard for the rules of the road, Barry and his ilk run red lights and stop signs, then raise their fists in righteous indignation at automobile drivers who have the unmitigated gall to honk their horns and swear at them. They ignore crosswalks and ride on sidewalks, thumbing their bells or shrilling their whistles at pedestrians who are too slow to get out of the way. And although they consider themselves to be environmentally enlightened, they ride three-thousand-dollar carbon fibre bikes and wear Lycra shorts, high-tech cycling shoes, and plastic and polystyrene helmets. Most of them have pathetic social skills, if they have any social skills at all. Barry’s were certainly nothing to write home about.
I turned and began to trudge homeward to change into my second-best pair of pants. Barry wheeled his bike along beside me, pedal locks of his cycling shoes clicking on the cobbles.
“Is it true a man died on your roof deck?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“That’s what I heard.” “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
“Eddy Porter said there were police and paramedics at your house and a truck from the coroner’s office on the quay.”
“Eddy Porter believes he was abducted by flying saucer people who put an implant in his head, for god’s sake.”
“You shouldn’t do that,” Barry said.
“Do what?”
“Use the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Goodbye, Barry,” I said. “Have a nice day.”
“Was he a homosexual?”
“What? Was who a homosexual?”
“The man who died on your roof. Was he a homosexual?”
“How