Overexposed: A Granville Island Mystery

By Michael Blair

Just when Vancouver commercial photographer Tom McCall thought he’d got his life back on track, a complete stranger shows up dead on the roof deck of his floating home. No one seems to know who he is, he has no ID, and there’s not a mark on him. If that isn’t bad enough, a prospective new client seems to have had one Botox injection too many, his ex-wife wants to take his daughter off to Australia for a year; and someone’s leaving mutilated dolls on his front step.

And, of course, he’s in lust again.

No wonder he’s feeling a little overexposed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Jan 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781554885893

Michael Blair

Michael Blair’s first novel (If Looks Could Kill, M&S, 2001) was shortlisted for the 1999 Chapters Robertson Davies Prize as well as the 2001 Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Prize. He published four more novels, including Depth of Field (Dundurn, 2009) and True Believers. He lived in Montreal with his family, and died in 2022.

Book preview

coincidental.

chapter one

I found the dead man on a bright Sunday morning in September, the week after Labour Day. He was slumped in a plastic lawn chair on the roof deck of my house, chin on his chest, fingers linked in his lap, ankles comfortably crossed, looking for all the world as though he had just dozed off. I didn’t know he was dead, of course, when I found him, although I suppose he knew. The first thing that occurred to me, standing there in my socks, hung over from the previous night’s celebration of the close of the fourth decade of my life, was that some local homeless person, of which there are a few in Vancouver, even on Granville Island, had somehow managed to get onto the roof deck and had fallen asleep there. On closer examination, however, I realized that he was too well dressed to be homeless, in a blue blazer, yellow polo shirt, grey trousers, and polished black loafers. A friend, then, I thought, left over from the night before, too drunk to drive home — some of my friends are that sensible. I didn’t recognize him, though. A friend of a friend, perhaps.

I wasn’t in the best of shape myself. The slightest exertion caused me to break into an icy sweat. My mouth seemed to be lined with ferret fur, my head felt as though someone had jabbed sharpened sticks behind my eyeballs, and the coffee, which I’d made far too strong, was making me twitchy and nauseous.

Hello? I said to the man in the chair. My voice, roughened from too much drink and talk the night before, was gravelly and unfamiliar in my own ears.

He didn’t answer, of course. I stepped closer. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, I guessed, with a full head of iron grey hair, which appeared to have been recently cut. He was clean-shaven, and his complexion was fine and pale, but with a slightly waxy appearance.

Hello, I said again, louder. I grasped his shoulder, shook him gently. Hey, wake up. Go home. The party’s over.

Unsurprising in retrospect, he felt stiff and unresponsive, curiously cool to the touch, even through the material of his jacket, a condition I attributed at the time to spending the night under the stars. I shook him a little harder, whereupon he toppled out of the chair, landing on the deck with an ugly thud. Startled, I jumped back, spilling coffee on myself and almost tripping over a potted plant. The man lay stiffly on his side, in more or less a sitting position, as though he were made of plaster. Slowly, though, his arms and legs settled into a more comfortable-looking attitude.

He wasn’t dead drunk, I realized then. He was just dead.

I stumbled downstairs — or below, if you insist; I live in a floating home. Kevin Ferguson, my friend and former boss, was sprawled on the sofa in the living room. Kevin may have looked like death warmed over, but he wasn’t dead. Dead men don’t make the kind of noise he was making. I shook him awake. He snorted and snuffled and sat up with a startled jerk that made my head hurt.

What? What is it? he said, looking around with a panicky expression on his horsy, freckled face.

There’s a dead man on the roof, I said.

Eh? What?

There’s a dead man on the roof, I said again.

So why tell me, for crissake? he growled. Call 911. He flopped back down onto the sofa.

I went into the kitchen to use the phone. There were empty wine, beer, and liquor bottles everywhere, and glasses and dirty dishes and every piece of cutlery I owned piled in the sink and stacked in the dishwasher. A pair of green plastic garbage bags overflowed with pizza boxes, paper plates, and Chinese takeout containers. A fat fly buzzed around the remnants of a Costco chocolate cake on the kitchen table. Ignoring the mess, I took the phone off the wall, focused as best I could, and managed to dial 911 on the very first try.

Fiepolisamblans, a female voice said.

Uh? What?

Fire-police-ambulance, she said again. What is the nature of your emergency?

Um, well, there’s a dead man on my roof.

On your roof? What do you mean, on your roof?

My roof deck, I amended. I live in a floating home in False Creek.

I see. Name and address please.

My name is Tom McCall, I said. I live in number six Sea Village, Granville Island.

Are you certain the man’s dead?

Pretty certain. I mean, he isn’t breathing that I can tell.

Did you attempt CPR?

Uh, no.

Is he injured?

He doesn’t appear to be.

No sign of external trauma?

None that I can see.

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 guess, I said. What is it you want to talk to me about?

Hillary? Linda said. Are you still on the line? There was no answer; Hilly was smarter than that. If you are, Linda said, hang up right now.

What’s this all about? I asked.

As you may know, Linda said, Jack’s mother and stepfather live in Australia. Jack was Jack Flynn, Linda’s current husband, Hilly’s stepfather. Not a bad guy, as husbands of former spouses go, except that he got to see a whole lot more of my daughter than I did. He was good to Hilly, though, and she liked him, although she frequently referred to him as the Fat Food King of Southern Ontario. He owned a dozen or so fast food franchises in and around Toronto. Bags of money.

Yes, I said. I know.

Jack’s stepfather is terminally ill.

I’m sorry to hear that, I said.

Thank you, Linda said. Naturally, Jack wants to go to Australia to be with his mother.

Naturally, I said. Then it dawned on me. And he wants you and Hilly to go with him, is that it?

Yes.

Did you expect me to object?

No, she said, a little too emphatically, I thought. Well, maybe, a little.

A few months in Australia would be a great experience.

I think so too, Linda said. Hesitantly, she added, But we could be gone for up to a year. After his step-father, um, passes, he wants his mother to come and live with us.

I would miss Hilly, I said. But a year isn’t such a long time. Besides, like I said, it would be a great experience.

That’s very understanding of you, Tom, Linda said, as if bestowing upon me an award for behaviour above and beyond her expectations. She paused, then said, But that isn’t the problem.

What is, then?

She doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay with you while we’re away.

Oh.

Oh, indeed. I want you to talk to her, Tom. Tell her what you told me, that a year in Australia would be a good experience for her.

Wait a second, I said. You want me to tell my daughter that I think she should go to Australia with you and her stepfather and watch her step-grandfather die rather than spend the year with me?

I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly.

What way would you put it? Exactly.

You don’t really want her to go, do you?

I didn’t say that. I actually really do think she could learn a lot from it. How to play the didgeridoo, for instance. Or to like Vegemite.

Oh, for god’s sake, Tom, Linda said with a heavy and martyred sigh. Why must everything be a big joke to you?

Put Hilly on, I said.

Silence, punctuated by the hollow hum of the long-distance connection, followed by a wary, What are you going to tell her?

Listen in, if you like, I said.

Linda gave another long-suffering sigh, then called to Hilly, Hillary, your father would like to speak with you.

A few seconds later, Hilly said, Daddy?

Scout, about this Australia thing —

Mom? Hilly said, interrupting. Hang up the phone. She waited, then said to me, Do you think she’s listening in?

Probably, I said. There was a hard click. It might have been Linda’s teeth snapping together, though. Look, Hilly —

I don’t want to go to Australia, Hilly interrupted again. I want to come and live with you.

Okay, fine.

Really?

Sure. But hear me out, okay?

All right, she agreed warily.

Someday you’ll regret not going to Australia with your mother.

No, I won’t.

Yes, I said. You will. Trust me. When you’re older, you’ll regret all kinds of missed opportunities. This will be one of them.

How do you know? she challenged.

Because I do. Regret things, I mean.

Like what?

That’s not important, I said.

So what you’re saying is you really don’t want me to come and stay with you?

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. All I said was that someday you’ll regret not going to Australia. Of course, I added, if you do go to Australia, you might someday regret not spending the year with me. There was an angry hiss and a harder click as my former spouse banged down the phone.

"I 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, 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