knew she was listening in,” Hilly said.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yah, well,” she admitted. “So, I can stay with you?”
“Yes, you can stay with me.”
“Beatrix too?”
“Beatrix too,” I said. Beatrix was Hilly’s pet ferret, a sort of domesticated weasel. Cute, insatiably curious, but a domesticated weasel nonetheless. I wondered what I was letting myself in for.
“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” Hilly said. “Love you big time.”
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Sea Village is a community of a dozen or so floating homes moored two deep along the quay between the Granville Island Hotel and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, next to the Pelican Bay Marina. Some people, even some Sea Villagers, who should know better, insist on calling them houseboats, but houseboats are boats, and floating homes aren’t, even though they must be registered as such. A boat has a motor and a rudder and you can unhook it from the utilities and sail off into the sunset. Floating homes are houses that just happen to float, courtesy of the ferroconcrete hulls upon which they are built.
Mine was one of the smaller ones, in appearance not unlike a New England two-storey wood-frame cottage, except it was painted forest green and the roof was mostly flat and surrounded by a cedar railing. There was a kitchen, dining room, living room, and powder room on the first floor, and three bedrooms and full bath on the second floor. None of the rooms was large and there was no basement; however, there was a bilge in which you could store things that didn’t mind the damp. I’d lived in it for six years. For four of those years I’d paid a nominal rent to Howie Silverman, a friend and retired real estate developer, currently residing in Fort Lauderdale, plus the taxes, mooring fees, utilities, maintenance, and insurance. Two years before, though, I had purchased it (and Howie’s share in Sea Village Inc.) for, well, not a song exactly, but Howie had taken pity on me after my insurance carrier had gone south and I’d had to pony up a small fortune in repairs when a deadhead (not a Grateful Dead fan; a semi-saturated log that floats more or less vertically below the surface of the water) had cracked the hull when the tide had gone out.
Immediately across the finger dock from my house was Daniel Wu’s house. It was almost twice as big as mine, not the largest house in Sea Village, but a close second. Daniel was an architect, diminutive and sixty-odd years old, and one of my closest friends. We were sitting in his roof garden, surrounded by a small jungle of greenery. The sun had just gone down over the Granville Street Bridge, which loomed high over the western half of Granville Island, and I had just finished telling Daniel about finding the dead man on my roof deck.
“Never a dull moment, eh, Thomas?” he said.
“You’ve no idea who he might be? Have been?”
“No,” Daniel replied. “I recall seeing him, I think, but I probably thought he was just one of your better-dressed acquaintances. Have you spoken to anyone else who was at the party?”
“A few,” I said. “Maggie. Lester What’s-his-name, the guy who’s house-sitting Dr. Mac’s place, claims to be a writer?”
“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,
