Really Dead Read online

  REALLY DEAD

  A Ria Butler Mystery

  J.E. Forman

  For D

  Wish you were here to see this

  PROLOGUE

  The severed foot was only mildly annoying; what really pissed her off were the footprints that led to it. Against all orders, warnings, and memos, some moron had walked from the treeline to the water and then back again. The footprint trail in the sand reminded Pam of the V formation geese made in the sky when they were flying south for the winter. But there weren’t any geese here, unless they wore size eleven or twelve men’s shoes. There wasn’t ever any winter here either.

  The gigantic spotlight in the sky had risen above the palm trees, its barn doors wide open. The bazillion foot-candles it gave off made the white sand shimmer and scattered sparkles across the sea all the way to Great Dog Island. Pam smiled. Using the lingo of the biz was becoming second nature to her. A year earlier her meteorological thoughts would have been more along the lines of: the sun was up, there weren’t any clouds blocking its rays, and it was really, really bright. Like, how boring was that? No matter how you said it, Mother Nature had sure produced one nice deserted (looking) beach. Go figure, it was a human who’d totally screwed up that whole deserted beach thing with his big stupid feet.

  Hearing the blades of the helicopter chopping through the air as it flew over the island she looked up to see Adam, strapped into position with his legs straddling the gryo mount and hanging out the open side door, the big camera looking down on her. As mad as she was at whoever had messed up the beach, she was glad she didn’t have Adam’s job. She hated heights and there wasn’t a paycheque big enough to ever get her to hang out the side of a helicopter! There was, however, a paycheque big enough to get her up at the crack of dawn on her day off to rake smooth a set of footprints on a supposedly deserted beach. Besides, she hadn’t really been sleeping in, but Esther didn’t need to know that. If Esther had called her room two minutes earlier Rob would have answered the phone and that would have ignited an explosion of gossip. One explosion a day was Pam’s limit (unless she was being paid double overtime).

  The two-way radio hanging from her belt crackled to life.

  “How much longer, Pam?” Esther asked. “They’re getting antsy over here.”

  I’ll bet they are, Pam thought. She also bet that more than one camera was focused on her, watching and waiting to see how she’d react to what she’d found.

  Even though the sun had only been up for about an hour it was already stinking hot and humid. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead, a trickle of sweat ran down her spine as she stood up straight. Squinting hard, Pam turned to see if she could pick out Esther in the sea of humanity that was clumped together at the other end of the long, long beach. Resting the rake on her own foot she brought the radio to her mouth. “Fifteen minutes, tops.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  That was it? Esther was good, really good. She hadn’t given anything away, but Pam knew that she was probably squirming with curiosity, wondering if Pam had seen the foot yet. Esther and her crew were going to be disappointed by Pam’s reaction; she’d make damn sure of that. Pam and her crew, on the other hand, were guaranteed a big reaction to their carefully planned shocker. It was way better than Esther’s stunt — gorier, too, if the blood bags had survived the night.

  Most of Pam’s crew were hiding behind the rocks just north of where Esther and her crew were congregated. They’d be wondering what the holdup was, but she couldn’t radio them to fill them in. Operation Albert Go Boom required complete radio silence to safeguard the element of surprise. The sooner she finished wiping out any trace of the footprints, the sooner the fun could start.

  But first she had to deal with the severed foot. It had been submerged in a tidal pool that was about the size of a transport truck’s tire. The cameras on the ground couldn’t see it but Adam’s camera had spotted it when he’d tried to shoot the beauty shot approach to the beach.

  Waves sloshed around Pam’s knees as she walked into the water and bent over to get a better look at it.

  “Oh, please,” she said to no one but herself. “Is that the best they could do?”

  The shallow water in the tidal pool blurred the tentacles of a small blue octopus tattoo on what was left of the ankle. An orange starfish had draped one of its arms, or legs, or whatevers, over the big toe. Pam lifted the foot out of the water, shook the starfish off and looked harder at the tattoo. It was just like the octopus that Kate had on her left ankle. The little-girl pink coloured chipped polish on the toenails looked like Kate’s shade of choice, too. Wow, that was bitchy.

  Yeah, Kate’s kid-in-a-candy-shop, “This is soooo cool!” enthusiasm had worn thin mighty fast (like on the second day), but still. Kate was right, they did have the coolest jobs in the world — but the pros, even junior pros like Pam who’d only worked on a couple of shoots, never publicly admitted how cool they thought their jobs were. Sleeping with one of the big bosses hadn’t scored Kate any points in the popularity pool either. Somebody sure had a hate on for her — the fake foot thing wasn’t a love letter.

  It felt clammy and it was cold. Really cold. Whatever plastic the special-effects guys had used for skin hadn’t reacted well to the salt water — it was all puffed up and looked kind of waxy. Under the fake skin the red meat of muscle that circled the bones looked like a thin strip of thawing frozen steak wrapped around two wooden straws that had gunk in them. She poked the meaty bit with her finger, it was frozen meat of some sort — how unoriginal. The straws were what really gave it away. There was only supposed to be one leg bone going from the ankle to the knee, at least that’s what she remembered from the song she’d sung as a kid, “the leg bone’s connected to the ankle bone,” or something like that. The ankle bone — as in just one.

  It was kind of creepy that the crews had both gone gross for their last stunts, but that could be because of the arrival of the incoming movie crew’s special effects team. Or maybe they’d all just started to think alike. After two months on the island they were one big, happy, slightly demented, definitely dysfunctional family and Pam loved it. Production life was her crack. She’d been addicted from her very first day on her very first production.

  Of course there was a down side to working with people who got to know you so well. Everyone knew how scared she was of anything creepy or crawly or gross. That’s why she’d been sent to find the foot, she was sure of it. They were probably all sitting around, microphones and cameras ready and waiting for the scream. She’d show them.

  Calmly, without even a hint of a girly scream, Pam threw the foot as hard as she could out into the sea. It splashed into the water and caught the attention of a passing pelican. The big bird pulled his wings into his body and nosedived into the water. She didn’t bother to wait and see how the bird reacted. Instead, she looked up at Adam. He’d turned to shoot the flight path of the foot. Weird. He’d watched the foot, not her reaction. Whatever.

  Adam looked around the camera and kicked his legs to wave goodbye as the helicopter banked to one side and swerved off around the point.

  Pam quickly finished raking smooth the footprints that led to the treeline and then made her way to where the real action was about to happen. Quietly weaving through the crowd, she sat down in the empty folding canvas chair next to Esther’s.

  “Everything okay down there?” Esther asked expectantly.

  “Yup, all done.” Pam faked a yawn and tried to look bored.

  “Quiet on the set!” the assistant director shouted into a bullhorn.

  Esther stood up and walked down into the water, staying off to the side of the crew so that her footprints in the sand would be out of the shot.

  Numerous camera operators shouted out a
chorus of “Recording.”

  Esther stood in the epicentre of the semicircle of cameras and held the electronic slate board out in front of herself.

  “Hang on,” one of the sound guys shouted and pointed to the sky.

  Pam looked up and couldn’t see anything but blue. Then she faintly heard a mechanical humming sound. The sound grew louder as the propeller-driven Air Sunshine flight from San Juan came into view and buzzed over the island, making its final approach to the neighbouring island, Virgin Gorda.

  “We’re clear now,” the sound guy gave a thumbs-up signal and adjusted his large headphones.

  “I’m not,” the cameraman in the chair at the top of the crane yelled. With his camera he followed the plane until it dropped out of sight behind Gorda Peak and then turned to focus back on the set. “Clear.”

  The assistant director pointed at Esther. “Do the slate!”

  “Judy Ingram’s Butler Hotel commercial, scene three, take one.” She held the slate board up long enough to allow all the cameras to get the timecode, then ran through ankle deep water until she knew she was out of the shot and walked up the beach to join Pam in the shade of the leaning palm tree.

  The model and her diver had been standing out where the water was chest deep. The diver put his gloved hand on the model’s shoulder, handed her a mouthpiece from his oxygen tank and they both went under and disappeared from sight.

  After a moment of silence the commercial director nodded to his assistant director who called for action through the bullhorn.

  Like Nessie breaching the waters of Loch Ness the blonde bombshell’s head rose out of the water (minus the mouthpiece and oxygen hose) and she walked slowly toward the beach. The water droplets that ran down and over her almost-translucent bikini glistened like glycerine. As she got closer Pam could see that her nipples had visibly hardened and were almost poking through the gauze-like pasty-sized cups of the bikini top. Then the good stuff started.

  At first it was just a dull mechanical whine, but it got louder quickly.

  “What is that?” someone whispered.

  Pam looked to see if Esther had heard it. She had. She was looking at the rocks just off the shore, her eyebrows all scrunched up. Her eyes opened wide when the small skiff came out from behind the rocks and turned as if to follow the blonde babe’s path. The babe just kept on strutting out of the water toward the beach.

  “Who’s driving that thing?” A camera assistant asked no one in particular.

  “Is there supposed to be a boat in this shot?” a producer quickly flipped through the papers on her clipboard.

  Pam bit her lips together to hide her smile. This was going to be awesome! The only thing that worried her was the sound of the engine. The boat looked like it was moving slower than it had during their practice run the night before, and the engine sounded like it was straining. Come on, come on, she chanted to herself. It only had a few more feet to go to get into position in front of all the cameras.

  Finally the babe noticed that everyone was looking behind her, not at her. She turned to see what was going on.

  And that’s when the dummy in the skiff blew up. He blew sky high. His Styrofoam head split in two and the biggest chunk of his chest hurtled through the air, one of the staple-gun attached arms still stuck to it. A big ball of orange fire rolled up into the sky leaving behind very little smoke. The skiff nosedived and sank quickly.

  The babe screamed.

  Her diver popped up out of the water like a cork.

  Esther ran into the water. Her big floppy sun hat flopped and then just plain drooped as it got soaked by the water she was splashing up.

  The babe screamed even louder when the bloodied half-melted torso bobbed in the water beside her.

  Pam slapped one hand over her mouth and wrapped her free arm around her ribcage to hold her laughter in. The torso landing near the babe had been an unexpected bonus.

  Esther bent over and looked at the floating hunk of chest. She slowly stood up straight and began to march (as best as she could in the waist-deep water) back to the beach, dragging the hunk of chest behind her by holding onto the still attached arm. “This is sick. Really sick!” She tossed the imitation chest onto the beach. The arm landed with a wet thwack on the sand.

  The Sharpie pen that Pam and her gang had used to identify the chest had lived up to its advertising. The black ink hadn’t faded or washed out. Still clearly visible on the bloodied Styrofoam were big black block letters that spelled out RIP ALBERT.

  Some people, most of them actually, laughed. Nobody liked Albert.

  One person was royally pissed, though. Unfortunately, that one person was their boss, James Butler, the co-executive producer of the show. His face was beet red and that wasn’t because of a sunburn.

  He yanked the bullhorn out of the assistant director’s hand and screamed into it, “God damn it! Do you have any idea how much money you’re wasting on these stupid stunts? You want me to start taking that money out of your paycheques?”

  The laughter stopped mostly, but a few giggles could still be heard. James’ partner, Dan, was still laughing. Pam could tell it was him because of the loud snorting sound he made in between laughs.

  James barked orders. Anyone and everyone in a position of authority followed suit and shouted out orders to their respective juniors.

  Pam, Esther, and two more production assistants were sent out to pick up any skiff debris and remaining bits of the fake Albert. Pam didn’t mind the job; it was way better than raking a beach. But Esther was not amused. “That was taking it too far, you know. Naming the dummy. It makes it kind of creepy, blowing Albert up like that.”

  “Hey, at least he’s not here to hear about it.” Using the beige hat that had blown off Albert’s split head, Pam scooped up a couple of small pieces of shattered wood that were floating near her. “Kate’s going to be all sad and pouty when she finds out that you put a tattoo just like hers on that severed foot.”

  Esther tilted her head to the side like a curious dog. “What severed foot?”

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  My foot was killing me and I had no one to blame but myself (but I’d never admit that to Glenn). If I’d walked up the uneven stairs at a leisurely, middle-aged, sedate, boring pace I wouldn’t have slipped and my foot wouldn’t have jammed between two of the slabs that the Inca stonemasons had laid down over five hundred years earlier.

  Glenn had done the adult thing, sticking to his methodically made plans. He was probably just landing in Toronto to return to his job so that he could continue to live up to his responsibilities. It was because of my job that I’d been offered the chance to hike up Huayna Picchu early in the morning before the trail opened to the public. The mountain rose proudly above and beyond Machu Picchu. I’d seen it a million times in the background of photographs of the ruins and had always wondered what the view was like from the other side.

  While Glenn waited for his checked baggage, probably worrying that the airline had lost it, or sat stuck in a taxi during morning rush hour on the eastbound Highway 401 across the top of the city, I had Machu Picchu’s main square above the clouds all to myself as I limped back to the hotel. There was no amount of money in the world that could have tempted me to trade places with him.

  How could he come all this way and not want to see Machu Picchu from the peak of Huayna Picchu? He’d said he couldn’t come, but that wasn’t true. He could have — he chose not to. He didn’t want to alter or deviate from his carefully scheduled travel plans. The unexpected private access to Huayna Picchu meant I had to change my flights too, but so what? The adventure of climbing through clouds, the strange-sounding birds, the brilliantly coloured flowers (the Dancing Lady orchid was my favourite — it really did look like a dancing lady, her yellow-and-red skirt flared out as she spun around), the feeling of being cut off from the world when a thick patch of mist swallowed up the Lost City beneath me — all of those experiences had been worth every minute of every p
hone call to the airlines. Even the pain in my foot was worth it.

  Yet, as mad as I was at him for his stick-in-the-mud attitude, I couldn’t help thinking that the adventure would have been more fun if I’d had someone to share it with. When I’d sat on the ledge of a temple ruin, my feet dangling in the air over a thousand feet above Machu Picchu and almost nine thousand feet above sea level, the powerful Urubamba River swirling around the base of the mountain hideaway, it had literally taken my breath away (and not just because of the lack of oxygen). How wondrous it was that such a gem had lain hidden beneath the overgrown jungle for so long. The jungle had been cut back, but the city was still capable of hiding when the mist rolled over it. After spending eight days almost glued to Glenn I’d turned to share a smile that said Wow, aren’t we lucky to be here. The boulder I saw when I turned my head didn’t smile back.

  As I walked the length of the cultivation terraces on my way back to the hotel I passed one of the resident environmentally friendly lawn mowers, a big white llama, and his face looked like he was smiling at me. But it wasn’t good enough.

  Mateo, the nice man at the front desk of the hotel, smiled at me, but he lost some of his niceness when he called me Señora. Despite my nearing-fifty-year-old exterior, I still thought of myself as more of a Señorita. (Glenn thought I should act in accordance with my exterior. Apparently, there was some secret rulebook that outlined how one was to behave at a certain physical age. Having never read it, I acted the way I felt instead. I felt closer to thirty than that mind-blowing number that started with a five.)

  “You have had a phone call from Canada, Señora Butler.”

  Had Glenn seen the error of his mouth and called to apologize? I quickly unfolded the slip of paper that Mateo handed me. Please call your father. Something was wrong.

  I was able to ignore the pain in my foot as I ran to my room, but my aging knees wouldn’t let me forget about the hike down Huayna Picchu. Despite the age of the ruins, the phone system in the hotel was blessedly modern. After a series of clicks I heard my call to Toronto go through. I wanted Dad to pick up the phone and answer in a strong and healthy voice. Instead, my niece Melinda answered.