If It Bleeds Read online

  “So…okay. You were super busy at the event. Did you notice any weird comings and goings out of the back door?”

  Terese lifted her eyes from her work to shoot me a disbelieving glance. “Seriously? At a gallery opening? There was nothing but weird comings and goings.”

  “Still,” I insisted, “the guest of honor ended up dead. Anything you might remember could be helpful.”

  “Now you’re a cop?” It was knife-and-earrings, though by now she’d put the knife down and was shredding ginger with a tool that looked like it belonged in a woodworking shop.

  “I’m not a cop,” I said solidly. “But investigative journalists have been known to be extremely helpful in uncovering and exposing criminal behavior and activities.” I don’t know where the words came from. Some manual from Journalism 101, I expect. But I flushed as I said them and wished I could take them back.

  “What book did you get that out of ?” said the girl with the earrings, whom I was starting to think about not liking.

  “Ingrid, c’mon. Play nice.” This was Terese.

  Ingrid shrugged and went back to her ginger.

  “Well, we didn’t see anything. We talked about it after, of course. We haven’t talked about much else all day. And we’d hired on extra serving staff for the event. None of them saw anything either.”

  “You talked about it?”

  Terese nodded. “We went for a drink afterward. We were so shaken. And we all agreed. We saw a lot of people coming and going. A lot. People were going out there to smoke. Some people were parked back there. But there was no one that caught the attention of any of the catering staff.”

  I felt something inside me that had been hopeful crumble slightly. Terese sounded sure. They’d discussed it among themselves and come up with zip. I wasn’t surprised. It was too much to ask to find a solid lead this early in—I knew that from journalism school as well. Still. It would have been amazing to uncover something significant at this stage. Something Brent hadn’t gotten.

  “What about Buddy?” Sioban asked suddenly.

  I felt my ears prick up.

  “Buddy?” I asked.

  Terese wiped her hands furiously again, walked over to a small desk in the corner of the room, flipped through an old-fashioned Rolodex and extracted a business card.

  “Buddy Gareth. You might want to talk to him. We use him on a lot of our jobs,” Terese said, handing me the card. I turned it over, saw a dove’s wing that looked like glass. Turned it back again. Buddy Gareth, it said in plain black lettering. And under it, larger: The Ice Man.

  SIXTEEN

  On my way to the Pan Pacific Hotel, I tried Buddy’s number and got voice mail.

  Rock music. Something thick and old. And over the music, “Hey, you’ve reached the Ice Man. Leave your digits and I’ll slide ya back.”

  I left my digits, then promptly forgot about him as I parked my car at the Pan Pacific. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten the name of the event I was attending until I stood in the hotel foyer and checked the board.

  It came back to me when the words Art for Schizophrenia caught my eye. Now, art by itself is not funny, and certainly schizophrenia is no laughing matter, but the two of them together? To me it felt like mushroom gravy on ice cream. I couldn’t reconcile them as a set.

  I braced myself for the sight of painting schizophrenics and was disappointed when I pulled open the ballroom door and saw a crowd that looked like every other fundraising group I’d ever encountered.

  I checked the room quickly, trying to determine if any of my bosses were there, then made a beeline for the buffet table, slowing only to take a glass of wine from a passing tray.

  Either I was very hungry or the food was super good, because before I’d even introduced myself to anyone or taken any pictures, I found a standing-height table in a far corner and began to stuff my face.

  “I wish I could do that.” The voice was masculine. And nearby.

  He was standing at the next table with a cocktail glass in hand, dressed in a tuxedo that was obviously not a rental and looking as at home in it as other men do in chinos. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I swallowed the canapé I’d been working on and said, “Why can’t you?”

  He moved to my table.

  “I’m on the organizing committee for this event, for one. That puts me in a sort of host position. And it wouldn’t do for the host to be seen loading up on the grub.”

  “It wouldn’t?” I said. “Why not?”

  “I’m meant to be mingling and taking people’s money from their wallets.”

  “But you’re not doing that now.”

  “Maybe I am,” he said smugly. “Maybe that’s why I chose this moment to come speak to you. You were vulnerable with all that food in hand.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  I indicated my jacket. “Not enough brass buttons.” Then my hair. “And my highlights plainly didn’t cost enough.”

  “All right. You have me there. So why am I here talking to you?” It was in his eyes, the reason. And in his voice, startlingly intimate even while he spoke of things that were not.

  “It’s my food,” I said. “You thought, Look at that girl. She’s small. I can push her over easily and grab something off her plate.”

  “Is that what I thought?”

  “You did. But here.” I snagged a piece of white asparagus from my plate and handed it to him. “I’ll save you the trouble. It wouldn’t look good, you pushing me to the floor. What with you playing host and all.”

  He took the asparagus, bit the top off gingerly, then reached across and put it gently back on the edge of my plate. “Thank you,” he said seriously. “You’ve saved me from falling down in a hungry heap.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Now what will you do?”

  “I’ve got hosting duties, don’t I? And checks to seduce from willing hands. You’re not leaving right away, are you?”

  “No. I’m not,” I agreed.

  As he walked away, I found that I liked watching him move.

  He started chatting with a beautiful brunette in a clingy dress. He responded to something she said with a laugh that was more than polite. Just then, he lifted his head and looked straight into my eyes. I flushed at the look and hoped he hadn’t noticed in the room’s dim light.

  I pulled myself together and got to work. He’d finished chatting with the clingy brunette, so I crossed to her and chatted her up myself, knowing her cleavage would be the perfect fit for my column.

  Before long we were joined by a tall blond in a jade-green dress. More cleavage. When a third friend showed up—a redhead this time—I knew I had my money shot. I lined them up near the sign about arts and schizophrenia.

  As I got ready to leave, I looked around but didn’t see the beautiful man in the custom tux. It was unsurprising to me that Prince Charming would show up early and be gone before the evening became full. Story of my life.

  And then he was there, standing right in front of me.

  “Trying to get away?” he said.

  I smiled back, asking my heart to be still.

  “Not trying. This isn’t my only party tonight. I have to run, but it was nice to have met you,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Nicole Charles.”

  He smiled at that. “I know who you are, Nicole,” he said, taking my hand. “I’m Reston Marsh.”

  SEVENTEEN

  It was hard, after that, to keep my mind on my job. I tried to connect the dots. Had I ever heard Reston Marsh’s name before? It didn’t ring any bells. How many society Marsh families could there be in Vancouver?

  And Reston Marsh had sought me out, I knew he had. Why? Sure, I was an attractive young woman alone at a charity function. But the place was crawling with attractive women.

  “Are you related to the artist Steve Marsh?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Our fathers are brothers.�
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  “So he was your cousin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not close, I guess?”

  “No,” he said. “We weren’t. You might say we lived on different sides of the tracks.”

  “On which side of the tracks did he live?”

  “All that artsy stuff. He had an apartment in Yaletown and a studio at 1000 Parker.”

  I didn’t think Yaletown was the wrong side of the tracks. It also wasn’t a surprise. I’d known where he lived. But the studio? That was news to me.

  “You guys weren’t close,” I said again.

  “What makes you keep saying that?”

  “You’re here instead of off crying in your beer someplace. I did the math.”

  “Well, we weren’t tight, but we weren’t unfriendly. Some bad blood with our dads when they were kids, so Steve-o and I never really hung out.”

  “Bad blood?”

  “Something about his dad, I think it was. But no one was ever really talking about it.”

  “What about his girlfriend?”

  “Caitlen?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “We’ve both known her since school. I never got it, really. She always seemed a cold one to me.”

  “In what way?”

  He looked at me carefully. “Off the record?”

  “Okay.”

  “She was never quite right.”

  “Right?”

  “Just this”—he searched for the right word—“distance? She just wasn’t someone you could talk to. Even when we were kids.”

  “Did they live together?”

  To my surprise, he laughed. “Oh no. Steve lived in Yaletown.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’m pretty sure Caitlen had a place on English Bay.”

  “That seems an odd detail for you to know.”

  “Not really. Our family has owned the building for decades. I got the idea Caitlen’s family had money problems a few years ago. Steve had to get the family trust to approve her living there. This is turning into quite the little interrogation.”

  I indicated the party still going on around us. “Just doing my job. But now that you mention it, you did seem awful eager to talk to me. What was that about?”

  He reached out then. Slid one smooth hand down my bare arm. Looked straight into my eyes.

  “You have to ask?”

  We didn’t talk anymore about work or dead cousins after that.

  EIGHTEEN

  There was flirting. Digits exchanged. Arrangements made for an unspecified dinner at some future point. I took some photos and left.

  There were three more stops. By the time I was done and got to 1000 Parker, it was 11:30. I told myself I was just driving by on my way home. It was too late to be bugging people. But there were lights on all over the place, and I figured if I peeked right then, it would save me a few steps in the morning. The thought of Hartigan closing in was never far from my mind.

  In Vancouver art circles, 1000 Parker is well known. A huge old beast of a building in a crappy part of town. Outside it looks like a warehouse. Inside it’s worse. Until you get behind the doors in the maze, to where the magic is made.

  I’d been to events at 1000 Parker. Every fall the Eastside Culture Crawl brought thousands of people through the building. But most of the time, it was just as it was tonight. Lots of studios where artists worked behind battered doors and windowed entries.

  I looked for a directory but didn’t see one. When a bearded man with multiple piercings came out of a studio and looked at me curiously, I returned the look, then asked if he knew where I could find Steve Marsh’s studio.

  “The dead guy, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I think he was up on the third floor.” He directed me up a couple of stairways, across an elevated walkway and up another stairway to the top floor.

  As I made my way through the building, I heard more signs of life than I saw. Bare wood floors, blank gray doors. I tried not to think about rats when I heard scuttling in corners.

  When I reached my destination the studio was dark and the lights off. The lock looked serious. Not high security, but beyond my nonexistent B-and-E skills. There was a pane of glass on either side of the door. It wasn’t flimsy. But neither was it security grade.

  It was late. There was no one in sight. And it didn’t seem like the kind of place that would have an alarm. That, and the very real possibility I’d find something Brent didn’t have, spurred me one. Before I could stop myself, I took off my shoe, pointed the heel at the glass closest to the doorknob and gave the pane a resounding thwack. It didn’t shatter right away. It took a second tap. And then a third. But when it shattered, it did so completely. I didn’t have to push any glass out of my way before I reached around and opened the door from the inside.

  I found the lights and looked around. A desk and computer were pushed against one wall with a couple of filing cabinets. Stacks of painted canvases leaned against both side walls, and at the end of the room, in a window I imagined would be filled with light during the day, sat two large easels.

  One of the easels held a painting. The work in progress was different than what I’d already seen of Marsh’s work. The subject matter was starkly different. A man on a boat. A different era, but something familiar in his face. The boat was long and low and wood. Fleetwood in script text on her stern. It looked like it was on a river. I didn’t know what I was looking at. I was sure of that. But I knew it was something to see.

  I looked around some more. Nothing unexpected on the desk. The computer was password protected. The bookcases held books. The filing cabinets, files. I kept poking, losing hope as I did so until I came across a letter. It was neatly folded in an addressed envelope that had clearly not been sent. Dated three days earlier, it was from Steve to Sam at the gallery. In formal language, it terminated their agreement, effective the first of the upcoming month. I rested my butt on the edge of the desk while I thought back over my interactions with Sam. I was certain there had been no hint that there was anything wrong between Sam and the artist he said he’d discovered.

  Steve had intended to end the relationship.

  And now Steve was dead.

  NINETEEN

  By the time I got back to my place, I was so tired it was all I could do to keep from just dropping into bed fully dressed. The extra effort I was putting into covering a crime had pushed me over the top of my resources. Still, I had work to do. I uploaded the evening’s photos to my computer. I went through and organized them, wrote a few captions and some inane copy, then filed my column to the Post’s news server for the early edition.

  I was just about to drop into bed when I saw something sticking out of my bag. The brochure Sam had given me at the gallery. I’d forgotten about it. I read more about Steve’s background with interest. I wasn’t surprised to discover that there really was someone in Steve’s life named Eldert. It was there in the brochure, in the extract below the picture of the painting.

  Eldert Harris was the son of my grandfather’s best friend. The friendship ended badly and Eldert took on his father’s legacy of anger. The painting before you was created from my imagination. That’s how I think of Eldert: angry and passionate for a reason. So much that happens between us as humans doesn’t get washed away by the water of life.

  The water of life. I was suddenly wide awake. I grabbed my laptop and went back to Google. The first entries I found meant nothing to me. The phrase was often tied into Christian ideology. I hadn’t known that, but it wasn’t what I was after. I read a bunch of definitions until I saw that the phrase could refer to “a concentrated solution of ethanol.” More online searches.

  “Booze,” I said.

  So much that happens between us as humans doesn’t get washed away by the water of life.

  There was something I was missing, that was clear. But what?

  TWENTY

  I was so tired I would have slept all day had my phone not
started ringing in the morning. I checked the time as I pulled it toward me. Eight fifteen. And I didn’t recognize the number.

  “This is Buddy Gareth,” a man’s voice said when I answered.

  “The Ice Man,” I said before I thought about it.

  He sounded pleased. “Yes. That’s right.”

  I asked him much the same as I had of the caterers the day before. The big difference was that he knew something.

  “I saw Steve getting into his car just after I installed the ice sculpture.”

  “Before the opening?”

  “That’s right. Maybe half an hour. And I thought it was odd.”

  “What was?”

  “Well, it was his big night, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t think he’d leave.”

  “And you’re sure it was him?”

  “Absolutely. I didn’t really know who he was before I was contacted for a sculpture. Then I paid attention, you know? Celebrity client.”

  “But you thought it odd he was leaving? Had he just forgotten something? Or was going to pick someone up? Or—”

  “No, sure,” he interrupted. “I thought about all that stuff. But I saw them arguing. Then he just took off, you know? Like someone was chasing him.”

  “Arguing?”

  “I mentioned that, I think.”

  “You did not. Tell me now.”

  The Ice Man described an argument in the gallery between Steve and a man. What man? The Ice Man didn’t know.

  “He was blond and kinda girly, you know?”

  I told him I did. “What was said?”

  Buddy couldn’t tell me. He’d been too far away to hear.

  “But then he left, just as I was leaving. That’s when he almost slammed into the old man.”

  “Old man?”

  “I mentioned that.”

  “You did not.”

  “Pretty sure the old guy was waiting for him. They had words, like, fast, you know?”

  While the two argued, the ice man had gone on his own way.

  “Let me get this straight.” After finding out a whole lot of nothing, hearing all of this was a gift. I wanted to make sure I got it right. “You saw Marsh arguing in the gallery with an effeminate, blond man. Then you saw him outside, arguing with another, older man. But you don’t know how it ended.”