“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?”
“She 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