“Fine by me. But not now. Do you have a card? I —”
“Someone hired you to take pictures of that boat. Why?”
Who was this guy? I wondered. I didn’t figure him for a cop; a cop wouldn’t have refused to identify himself. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said he was a lawyer. Representing whom? Again, if I’d had to guess, I would have said that he represented the nameless corporation that owned the Wonderlust, perhaps concerned about liability issues. “Who are you?” I asked again. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t need to know that,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t tell me. I’ll just have to call you ‘Mr. Cairo,’ then.”
He blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ve got to go. I’m late for an appointment.” I pulled open the door to the stairwell.
“I don’t care if you’re late for your own funeral,” he said. “I want to know who hired you to take pictures of that boat.”
“I told you,” I said. “I don’t know who she was.”
“It was a woman that hired you?” he said sharply. “What did she tell you her name was?”
I didn’t know the real Anna Waverley from Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, but the chances were good that she too was an innocent bystander, like Bobbi and me, so I was reluctant to tell this man her name. “She gave a false name,” I said.
“What’d she look like?”
“Good day, Mr. Cairo,” I said, urging him out the door.
“Just hold on,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere till you answer my questions.”
“No, you hold on,” I said. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to answer your questions. They might have a few of their own, too.”
He stared at me for a long moment, dark eyes hardening, before finally shrugging slightly and stepping through the door onto the landing.
“We’ll talk again,” he said and began to descend the stairs.
I closed the door and locked it and took the freight elevator down to the loading dock.
I got back to the studio at 2:30. I gave Wayne a dozen rolls of exposed film to send to the outside lab we used from time to time. I also gave him Meg and Peg’s digital, with which I’d shot a couple dozen frames, some of which might even be usable. With Mary-Alice hovering over his shoulder, asking questions and making him nervous, he downloaded them to his computer, then burned them to a couple of CDs, one of which he gave to me to check on my computer before erasing them from the card in Meg and Peg’s camera. I was just finishing when Mary-Alice came into my office and dropped onto the sofa with a weary sigh.
“Tell Wayne he can return the camera to Meg and Peg,” I said to her.
“Okay,” she said. I looked at her. She looked back. “What?”
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“You want a list?”
“I mean, with you. Are you all right?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You look tired.” She was neat as a pin, nary a hair out of place, clothes clean and carefully co-ordinated and accessorized, but despite her makeup, her complexion seemed dry and pale and there were dark smudges under her eyes.
“I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.”
“Oh?” I said warily. Call me insensitive, but my sister prided herself on the control she exercised over her life. If something was getting sufficiently under her skin to keep her up at night, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know what it was.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll be glad when things get back to normal, too.”
She made a derisive gagging sound, got up, and left the office. I wondered if somehow I’d stumbled into a David Lynch movie.
When I got home that evening, I turned on my computer and looked up Waverley in the Internet telephone directory for Vancouver. There weren’t many. There weren’t any S. or Sam or Samuel Waverleys in Point Grey or elsewhere. It wouldn’t be hard to find Samuel Waverley’s gallery in Gastown, but I couldn’t see myself walking in off the street and asking for the owner’s home address. I was going to have to find some other way to get Anna Waverley’s address. Why I felt I needed it, I wasn’t sure.
After fixing something to eat, and eating it, I flaked out for a while on the sofa and tried to read. I came to at eight o’clock. Although it was late, I decided to go to the hospital, anyway. There was a good chance I’d run into Bobbi’s father, but there was also a chance he’d gone home or to a bar somewhere. As I drove past the Broker’s Bay Marina on my way off Granville Island, however, a parking space opened up, so, acting on impulse, I parked and walked out to the quay overlooking the moorings. The Wonderlust wasn’t in her slip. I went into the marina office. A middle-aged woman was behind the counter, leafing through a magazine. She looked up at me and smiled.
“Where’s the Wonderlust?” I asked.
“The Wonderlust? Police towed her away this afternoon. Said she was a crime scene.”
“A crime scene?”
“Yeah. A woman was raped on her the other day. Almost killed.”
My guts clenched, even though I knew that Bobbi hadn’t been raped. As I looked out over the marina, I had a sudden inspiration. I wouldn’t have recognized a Sabre 386 if one rammed into my house, but I remembered Witt DeWalt, the Mariners fan, telling me that the Waverleys owned a sailboat called Free Spirit. I turned back to the woman behind the counter.
“Almost forgot,” I said. “I was supposed to deliver some photographs to Mrs. Waverley. I was told she was staying on her boat. Which one is the Free Spirit?”
“I dunno who told you that,” the woman said. “She hardly ever stays on that boat. She and her husband live in Point Grey.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Um, look. I have to deliver the photos tonight. They’re very important. I left the address at home, though, because I thought she was supposed to be on the boat. I don’t suppose you could give it to me, could you? I’d really appreciate it. Mrs. Waverley will, too.”
“Sure, why not?” the woman said helpfully.
Three minutes later I was heading up Granville toward 12th, Anna Waverley’s Point Grey address in my shirt pocket. Now that I had it, I still wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it. I didn’t think Mrs. Waverley was very likely to speak to me if I just walked up and knocked on her door and told her that someone posing as her may have been responsible for my friend getting half beaten to death.
As I circled the block around the Vancouver General Hospital, looking for parking, I spotted what I thought was Greg Matthias’s Saab. I wanted to ask him some questions about the investigation. And if Bobbi’s father was visiting, Matthias might be able to keep me from doing something stupid or that I’d regret, not necessarily the same thing. Fortunately, Brooks wasn’t there. Matthias was, though.
“How’s she doing?” I asked him as I stood beside Bobbi’s bed. I gently touched the back of her hand with the tips of my fingers, hoping she’d wake up. She didn’t.
“No change,” Matthias said. “For better or worse. The doctors say it’s just a waiting game, but that they have every reason to be hopeful.”
“How long have you been here?” I pulled a straight chair