If It Bleeds (7 page)

“You said his paintings are selling well now. Better than when he was alive?”

“As I said, that can be what happens when an artist dies. And when that happens? Well, people line up for opportunity, don't they?”

FOURTEEN

O
n my way back to the office, I thought about what I knew so far. While the ice-pick thing was huge, I'd promised Itani I wouldn't use it for three days. That meant that in three days I'd have an exclusive on the ice pick. This was a byline there was no way Brent was going to wrangle from me. But I didn't think one story would be enough. I needed to make such a splash and impact that I'd secure a position in the newsroom once a spot opened.

Brent was already on the elevator when I got in at the parking level.

“Well, well,” he said with a little smirk, “here's our talented gossip columnist. And tell me, please, what will Nicole be up to on this night?”

No word on my absent byline, my stolen opening paragraph. Nothing at all, really, beyond the patronizing emptiness I'd always gotten from him.

I groped for an answer that would stop him in his tracks, shut him up and remove the smirk from his face as though by a kick from my pointy-toed shoe to his groin. I couldn't think of anything.

When the elevator doors opened for him, I gave up. I felt the defeat through my whole body. He got off the elevator and I'd barely looked at him. As the doors closed, I heard him call out sweetly, “Have a nice day, Nicole.”

I stood for a moment in the empty elevator, my heart pounding. He'd put me in my place without ever lifting his voice. We'd had some kind of contest. He had won.

“Prick,” I said, just as I had the night before. I retreated to my cubicle with a fearsome relief. This was home, I told myself. This was safe. As I sat at my desk, I fingered the neat stacks of invitations. I looked at the corkboard where I'd pinned up a couple of choice photos and some nice memories. “Nicole at Night” was mine. No one would contest me for it, no one would take it away. I was good at it, I told myself. And the parties were fun. There were aspects of the job that I really loved.

The food was great. Event food all the time. Canapés and caviar and cheese and tiny wontons served on delicate spoons… my grocery bill was next to nothing, just eggs and bread and Earl Grey tea.

The notoriety. That was fun. It was like I was famous, though in a small enough dose that it wasn't irritating. My drycleaner gave me special treatment, rushed my stuff right through. At the market, the occasional checkout girl would recognize me from my picture in the paper and be gently flustered and admiring. The best part of fame. Not so much that you needed to watch your steps or that people asked for your autograph over dinner. Just enough that people were nice to you when they realized who you were. That was pleasant. I'd gotten used to a world that was nice to me.

All those things were good, and I was safe. Why would anyone want anything else? As I thought these things, I realized something. Brent was a master manipulator. The impossible-to-get quote. The illusive interview. The access behind closed doors. Not all reporters have this gift, but some do. It explained how he could he make me feel so small with a word and a glance. I pulled myself up and felt as though I was adding steel to my spine. I felt mad and determined and yet serene. I knew what I wanted. And I knew how to get it.

I pushed aside my self-doubt and reached for the phone.

FIFTEEN

“G
ood afternoon, Giggling Gourmet,”

a chipper voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Terese. Can I help you?”

“Hey, Terese, this is Nicole Charles from the
Vancouver Post
. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”

“Hi, Nicole!” It was a gush. Caterers are among those who always recognize me. They're probably big readers, scouring my column daily looking for mentions of them or their food. “I would
love
to talk to you, but it's mad here today. We're getting ready for an event in under an hour and there's a lot to do. Can it hold until tomorrow—no, scratch that.” She didn't even let me answer. “We've got a lunch and two evening events. The best thing might be for you to drop by in person. We're always busy, but we can blab while we work.” She rattled off an address near Granville Island, then hung up before I could respond.

I did a final check of my email, adjusted my schedule and headed out the door.

Giggling Gourmet operated out of a brightly painted reclaimed brick building near the public market. I pushed the bright orange door open on a lime-green reception area with a purple ceiling. A rug in front of the empty reception desk was the color of milk chocolate. A lamp was a vibrant lilac that cast a purplish glow over the yellow walls. But not the ceiling, of course, since that was purple already.

Industry awards were hung on the wall, so despite the goofy name, Giggling Gourmet knew what it was about. If I stood very still and listened very hard, I could hear it. Giggling. If that wasn't enough of an invitation, the wonderful food smells were. I followed the sounds and smells to the kitchen.

As goofy as the reception area and the name were, the kitchen was all business. Surgically clean stainless steel from bottom to top. Half a dozen young women were involved in various stages of food prep. And, of course, giggling. The giggling died when they noticed me standing there. And then: “Nicole!” It was a chorus from three of the six voices. I guess I'll never get any closer to feeling like a pop star.

Wiping hands on aprons, they mobbed me. And I guess in their world, I
was
a celebrity. I was someone who had the power to make a good business better. If only I would slide a word in here, a photo there. You couldn't buy the kind of advertising I could dole out with a single nod. That's a big responsibility. I don't take it lightly.

I saw a tall blond with long legs and a delicate pot belly under a smeared apron wipe her hands harder than the others, then extend one of them to me.

“Hi, Nicole,” she said, smiling. “I'm Terese. We spoke on the phone.” And then, “Back to it, ladies. The food for the Zimmerman batmitzvah isn't going to walk there on its own.”

At her words, the little crowd dispersed throughout the kitchen, but none of them were out of earshot. Terese led me over to the station where she'd been working. A vat of tasty-looking chicken in a cream sauce stood next to pastry casings.

“I
really
have to finish this vol-au-vent,” she explained. “But we can talk. We talk all the time.”

“We do,” chimed in the girl working nearest us, a half dozen piercings in her left ear. “We talk nonstop!” She was chopping madly—carrots, onions, celery—and dropping bits into a huge pot while she talked.

“On the phone, you said you had questions,” Terese said, expertly stuffing the pastry shells.

“I'm covering the death of Steve Marsh,” I explained. I was the gossip columnist. I understood the question in her look. I decided not to reply to it.

“I spoke with someone from the paper this morning. Buzz somebody.”

“Brent?” I asked. “Brent Hartigan?”

“I think so,” she said. “I didn't have much time for him. We were getting ready for a lunch thing.”

“On the phone,” I said. It wasn't a question. She
would
have made time if she'd seen him. Probably wouldn't have forgotten his name either. Brent is
that
hot.

“Right,” she said, still stuffing. “I'm sorry, but there wasn't anything to tell him. I was there the whole time—”

“So was I,” a voice chimed in behind me.

“Me too,” said another from across the room.

“—but I didn't see anything.”

“We couldn't, could we?” said someone across the room. I looked over at a faunlike girl who didn't look big enough to manage the Dutch oven she was moving across the room. “A lot of people. A big-deal event.”

Terese nodded agreement. “Big, big deal. We've done bigger parties, of course. But they pulled all the stops.”

“Why?” I asked.

Terese shrugged over her work. “I don't know. I don't ask those kind of questions. Just make the food.”

“And cash the checks,” said earrings girl, madly chopping.

“I think it was his grandfather.” This was the faunlike girl, now finished moving her Dutch oven and carefully stirring her brew on the stove.

“His grandfather?” I said.

“Well, isn't he rich and famous?”

I nodded. Shrugged. I hadn't thought about the fact that Marsh's family might have been paying for some of his gallery activities. But it was worth thinking about.

Terese nodded. “You know, I think Ann might be right. I mean, we've been super busy, and I hadn't really stopped to think of anything but work.”

“And work and work and work,” a voice grumbled from across the room. Terese shot her a glance and a grin and went on.

“Yeah.
And
work. But when I think of it, it was way over the top for a gallery opening. You know, they ordered ten pounds of
beluga
for last night. For blini and caviar.”

I blinked. I did enough of my major eating at events to know that ten pounds was a
lot
of beluga. And blini and caviar just did not show up at gallery openings.

“And the oyster bar,” knife-and-earrings added. “Don't forget the oyster bar.”

Terese rolled her eyes. “One will not forget that, will one?” she said in clipped tones.

I wanted to ask—I really did—and Terese so obviously wanted to tell me, but we were getting offtrack.

“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

O
n 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.