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  “Where does she live?”

  He looked uncertain. “Point Grey,” he said. “But, look, I’m sure Mrs. Waverley didn’t have anything to do with your friend getting hurt.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Mr. Waverley, what does he do?”

  “No idea. Whatever it is, though, he must do all right to have a house in Point Grey and that boat.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Only seen him a couple of times. Seems friendly enough. About sixty, sixty-five, a little on the chunky side, but not obese or anything. Lotsa hair. Might even be his. Both times I seen him he was wearing a suit that looked like it cost as much as my car. He drives a big Mercedes.”

  “I appreciate your help,” I said.

  “No problem,” he said.

  I hesitated, then said, “Can you give me the Waverleys’ address? I promise no one will know where I got it.”

  He shook his head. “Look, man, I’m sorry about your friend and all, but it would be my ass — not to mention my job — if my boss ever found out I gave out the addresses of the people who keep boats here.”

  “Just this one,” I said.

  “Sorry. No can do. There must be some other way you can get it. Maybe they’re in the book.”

  “You gave it to the police.”

  “Sure, but that’s different, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t press him. When I went outside, the two detectives were climbing the ramp from the docks. The younger detective looked relieved to be on solid ground again.

  “Look,” Kovacs said to me. “I appreciate that the victim is your friend, and that you’re a pal of Constable Firth and Greg Matthias, but neither one of them will be a help to you if you interfere with our investigation. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. “I have no intention of interfering with your investigation, but I don’t think you can do a damned thing to stop me from talking to people.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask,” he said. “No guarantee I’ll answer.”

  “Bobbi was driving our van. A white ’94 Dodge Ram. She also had a few thousand dollars’ worth of photo equipment with her. I don’t give a damn about the van or the equipment — it’s all insured — but if either turns up it’ll provide you with a lead, won’t it? Have you found the van?”

  Kovacs shook his head. “I haven’t heard,” he said. “Give me the plate number.”

  I gave him the van’s license number, which he wrote in his notebook. “I’ll have to look in my files to give you any information about the equipment. Can I fax it to you?”

  Kovacs wrote something on the back of a card. “That’s the case number,” he said, handing me the card. “Write it on each page of the fax. Are we done?”

  “Just one more thing, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why should I mind?”

  I told him what Witt DeWalt had told me, that Anna Waverley didn’t own the Wonderlust, and that the woman who’d hired us probably hadn’t been Anna Waverley.

  Kovacs nodded. “Yeah, so what’s your question?”

  “If the people who own that boat didn’t hire us, who did? And why?”

  “Yeah,” Kovacs said again. “Good question. The woman who called herself Anna Waverley, she touch anything while she was in your office?”

  “Now that you mention it, no, I don’t think she did.”

  “She paid you in cash. What about the money?”

  “We used a couple of twenties to pay for pizza last night. The rest Bobbi may have still had on her.”

  “So fingerprints are out. How much money are we talking about?”

  “Not a lot. Two hundred and fifty.”

  “We’ll put out a description of the woman, but if it was a set-up, chances are she altered her appearance. Did she seem upset or disconcerted at all that your partner was going to meet her here, not you?”

  “As far as she knew, I was going to meet her, not Bobbi.”

  “We’ll canvass the area to see if anyone saw your partner here last evening,” Kovacs said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to set you or her up like this?”

  “You mean you think it was just a ploy to get Bobbi or me, or perhaps both of us, here to beat us up?” Or worse …

  “It’s a possibility,” Kovacs said. “Sergeant Matthias told me you’ve had your share of excitement in the last couple of years. Trouble tends to follow you around, he says. Usually wearing a skirt. Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a woman in a skirt.”

  “Maybe you hang out with the wrong crowd.”

  “No doubt about it,” he agreed. “So have either you or Bobbi pissed anyone off lately?” He said it as though he’d be surprised I hadn’t.

  “No one who would hurt her like that.” As far as I knew, Vince Ryan was still in the wind, and since I’d thrown a wrench into his resort development deal in Whistler a few years earlier, he might think he had reason enough to beat the crap out of me and throw me into False Creek to drown. He was certainly crazy enough. As crazy as he was, though, he had nothing against Bobbi. Chris Hastings, Reeny Lindsey’s old boyfriend, was also out there somewhere, but he had even less reason to hurt Bobbi.

  “What about ex-boyfriends?” Kovacs asked. “She break anyone’s heart lately? Or their balls?”

  “Well, there was a guy she was living with three or four years ago,” I said. “An artist named Tony Chan. He tapped her credits cards out to the tune of about twenty thousand dollars, and she sued him. The van she was driving last night used to be his. He might hold a grudge, but the last we heard, he was doing okay.”

  He made a note. “That’s it? No one else?”

  Besides Greg Matthias? I wondered. “Not that I can think of.”

  “Well, if you do think of anyone else, you’ll let me know?”

  “Of course.”

  “And,” he added emphatically, “don’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Certainly not,” I said. From his expression, it was obvious he didn’t believe me.

  chapter four

  It was after nine by the time I staggered off the elevator into the studio, eyes grainy, feeling as though I hadn’t slept in a month. My exhaustion must have been plain to see, because even Mary-Alice noticed it.

  “You look terrible,” she said. “What were you up to last night?”

  “And a good morning to you, too, Mary-Alice.”

  “Did Jeanie Stone give you a bad time? Please tell me you managed to talk her into keeping her clothes on for the calendar.”

  “Most of them,” I said.

  She regarded me with a mixture of exasperation and disappointment. “Poor Tom. Any judgment you possess goes straight out the window at the thought of photographing women without their clothes on, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, fuck off, Mary-Alice,” I said wearily.

  She stared at me, eyes wide. “My, aren’t we Mr. Grumpy Pants this morning.”

  “Sorry, Mary-Alice,” I said. “I’ve had a tough night.”

  “Is there something wrong? Did something happen? Oh, god, it’s not Hilly, is it?”

  “No. Hilly’s fine. Where’s Wayne?”

  “He’s in the back,” she replied. “Why?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you both.”

  “What?” I looked at her and waited. I didn’t want to have to go through it twice. “I’ll go get him,” she said, finally getting the hint.

  While Mary-Alice was fetching Wayne, I looked up the number of the Vancouver General Hospital. Wayne and Mary-Alice came into the office as I was dialling. I hung up before the call went through. There was no point in beating around the bush.

  “Bobbi was attacked last night,” I said. “She’s in the hospital.”

  Wayne’s face went white.

  “Oh my god,” Mary-Alice said. “What happened?”

  “S
he was beaten up and dumped into False Creek under the Burrard Street Bridge.”

  “Is she g-g-going to b-be all r-r-right?” Wayne said, his stammer worsened by the stress.

  “God, was she raped?” Mary-Alice asked.

  “No, she wasn’t raped. But she was still unconscious when I left the hospital at three this morning. I’m going to call now.”

  I pressed the redial button on the phone while Wayne and Mary-Alice watched. Wayne was almost wringing his hands with worry. When he’d first started working for us, he’d developed a terrible crush on Bobbi and was rendered almost incoherent in her presence. He was mostly over it, but from time to time I suspected that it had grown into something deeper and stronger, albeit unrequited. With a sudden cold clench of dread, I wondered if his frustration had finally got the better of him. I immediately rejected the idea as absurd; Wayne couldn’t have done that to Bobbi. The police didn’t know him as well as I did, though. I hoped he had a better alibi that I did.

  I finally got past the hospital’s automated phone system to a human being, who told me that Roberta Brooks had been admitted, and transferred me to the appropriate nursing station, where I had to navigate yet another set of menus to get an actual nurse. I lied then, telling the nurse that I was Bobbi’s brother, otherwise she wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Miss Brooks was still in a coma, the nurse said, but otherwise stable. Scans indicated there were no overt signs of brain damage, but in such cases it wasn’t unusual for the patient to remain in a coma for a few days while the system healed itself.

  “Your father’s with her now,” she said. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Um, no, it’s all right,” I said.

  “I was hoping you could persuade him to go home.”

  “Not much chance of that,” I said. “We don’t get along. It might be a good idea not to mention that I called. It would just upset him.”

  “We wouldn’t want that, would we?” she said, sounding as though she’d seen through my ruse. She hung up.

  “Is she going to b-be all right?” Wayne asked.

  I repeated what the nurse had told me. It didn’t seem to reassure him. He naturally wanted to go to the hospital immediately. “There’s nothing you can do,” I said. “She won’t even know you’re there.”

  “They say that p-people in comas are aware of what g-goes on around them,” Wayne said.

  “Maybe that’s true,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  I wanted to be with her, too, so that someone she knew, besides her father, would be there when she woke up. Was it fair to tell Wayne not to go? Probably not. Definitely not, given how he felt about her. Let him get it out of his system, I thought. He’d be next to useless until he did. Besides, what could it hurt? There was something he wanted to get off his chest before he left, though.

  “She shouldn’t have been alone,” he said, an edge of angry disapproval in his voice.

  “In retrospect, you’re probably right,” I said. “But what do you think she’d have said if you’d said that to her?”

  “Uh, she’d have t-told me to stick it in my eye.”

  “I’m not sure she’d have picked that particular part of your anatomy,” I said. “But she wouldn’t have appreciated any suggestion that she isn’t capable of looking after herself.”

  “Especially since she started taking those stupid karate lessons,” Mary-Alice said.

  “She was studying k-kung fu,” Wayne said.

  “Kung fu, feng shui,” Mary-Alice said dismissively. “Whatever, maybe it made her overconfident and she tried to fight rather than just let them take the goddamned truck and camera equipment.”

  “I’m not sure robbery was the motive behind the attack,” I said. They both looked at me. “The woman who hired us to photograph the Wonderlust wasn’t the owner of the boat. The real owner is some numbered corporation. Anna Waverley likely wasn’t her real name, either. The real Anna Waverley is older. She and her husband own a sailboat at the same marina, though.”

  “Waverley,” Mary-Alice said. “There’s something familiar about that name. I’ve heard it before.”

  “Like here, yesterday?” I suggested.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere else. I can’t put my finger on it.” She shrugged. “Maybe her husband is one of David’s patients.”

  “Why w-would someone hire us to t-take photographs of a b-boat they don’t own?” Wayne asked.

  “I haven’t any idea. The police think it may have been a set-up to lure me or Bobbi — or maybe both of us — into a trap.”

  “You can be a jerk sometimes, Tom,” my sister said. “But who would want to hurt you that much, or — better yet — Bobbi?”

  “Another good question I don’t have an answer for,” I said.

  In the end, Wayne went to see Bobbi, but was back within an hour. Bobbi was in the ICU, he reported, and only immediate family members were allowed to visit. She was still in a coma, but according to the nurse he talked to, she was stable, out of any immediate danger, and would probably be released from the ICU in a day or two.

  “Was her father with her?” I asked.

  “I d-don’t think so.”

  If he wasn’t there, maybe later I could try passing myself off as her brother again.

  We got back to work. At a few minutes past 1:30, Greg Matthias emerged from the elevator into the studio, sandy eyebrows rising at the mess. A semi-official visit, he said, explaining that they were treating Bobbi’s case as attempted murder, given the circumstances. Due to his association with Bobbi and me, he wasn’t the primary investigator, but his rank and seniority afforded him certain privileges. After he told me that there hadn’t been any change in Bobbi’s condition, I told him what I’d learned about Anna and Samuel Waverley from the marina operator that morning, and about my subsequent conversation with Detective Kovacs.

  “Jim Kovacs is a good guy,” Matthias said. “And a good cop. But he doesn’t take kindly to civilians getting in the way of his investigations. None of us do, really.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  Matthias smiled thinly. “Kovacs and Henshaw interviewed the real Anna Waverley at her home in Point Grey this morning. The description you got from the marina operator is accurate as far at it goes. Kovacs described her to me as quite attractive, but cool and somewhat patronizing. ‘A redheaded ice queen’ is how he put it. Her husband, Samuel, is a fine art and antiques dealer. He has a gallery in Gastown. However, according Mrs. Waverley, he’s away on a buying trip in Europe with his assistant, a woman named Doris Greenwood, and isn’t due back for a week. Kovacs got the impression she wasn’t overjoyed that her husband was travelling around Europe with another woman, but that she wasn’t too upset by it, either. I don’t suppose it will come as any surprise to you that she denies hiring you to take pictures of the Wonderlust. She’s never heard of you and has no idea why anyone would impersonate her to sell it, especially as she doesn’t own it.”

  “Does she know who does own it?”

  “She confirms what you learned from the marina operator, that it’s owned by a numbered corporation and that they’ve been trying to sell it for some time. In the meantime, they rent it out for parties, business meetings, and such. She and her husband have been on it a couple of times, she says, but she has no idea who the real owner is. Kovacs isn’t sure he believes her,” he added.

  “How reliable are his instincts?” I asked.

  “After a while in this game, you get so you can read people. If he thinks she’s lying about something, she likely is.”

  “Where was she last night?”

  “When she was asked to account for her whereabouts, Kovacs said she was mildly offended, but she answered. She told him she runs from Jericho Beach to Granville Island and back a couple of times a week, usually stopping to check on the sailboat she and her husband keep in the same marina, before returning along the same route. Last evening she got to the marina around nine, a l
ittle later than usual, spent half an hour or so on her boat, then headed back. She didn’t talk to anyone and couldn’t say if anyone saw her or would remember her if they did.”

  “If she runs along the shoreline path,” I said, “she’d have gone right by the place where Bobbi was found.”

  “Kovacs says that when he pointed that out she was quite upset that she might have gone right past someone in the water without noticing. But the path is more than fifty metres back from the water at that point. Unless she detoured along the path through Cultural Harmony Grove east of the bridge, she couldn’t possibly have seen anything. Besides, the off-duty paramedic found Bobbi just before eleven and neither he or the doctors think she was in the water for more than twenty minutes to half an hour.”

  “It doesn’t take half an hour to drown, does it?”

  “No. Just a couple of minutes. The paramedic found her near shore by the docks under the bridge. Maybe whoever attacked her didn’t want to get his feet wet and dumped her in the shallows hoping the tide would take her out. High tide was at eleven-fifteen or so. Or maybe she just fell and lay unconscious as the tide came in. Either way, if the paramedic hadn’t found her, she’d have certainly drowned.”

  “How did he find her?”

  “He was kayaking.”

  “At eleven o’clock at night?”

  “He works odd shifts.”

  “Is there any sign of the van?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. You should probably make an official report so you can start the insurance process.”

  “I faxed a copy of the registration and the serial numbers of the cameras and a list of the other equipment she had with her to Kovacs this morning.” Along with the van, our “new” Nikon digital SLR and Bobbi’s older Canon 35 mm SLR were also missing, as well as tripods, a couple of slave strobe flash units and stands, plus miscellaneous lenses, light meters, battery packs and chargers, cables, and whatever else Bobbi hauled around with her. “I’ll call the insurance company this afternoon and see what else I need.”

  Matthias stood. “I’ll need to talk to Wayne Fowler and your sister.”

  “They’re in the back, packing files,” I said, standing as well.