“Don’t be,” she said, signalling the waitress. “I should get some sleep, too. I’m meeting with my thesis advisor tomorrow.”
“Thesis advisor?” I said stupidly.
“I’m doing a masters in geology at UBC. My thesis is called ‘Movement on the Cascadia Subduction Zone and Liquefaction: Risk Assessment in the Metro Vancouver Region.’ Catchy, eh?”
“Very. If it means what I think it means, it makes me glad I live in a floating home.”
“As long as you’re home when the Big One hits,” she said with a smile.
chapter eight
Friday began as just another perfect day in paradise. The early morning rain was warm and soft and sweet, scrubbing the air until it smelled like new wine, and washing the dust off the huge blue-and-white ready-mix trucks that rumbled in and out of the Ocean cement plant as I skipped along the glistening cobbles to the Aquabus dock by the Public Market. I may be overstating the case slightly, the skipping-along-the-cobbles-part, anyway, but I felt pretty darned good that morning. Better than I had in a long while. Whether it was a “hangover” from my late-night beer with Jeanie Stone or the result of having unconsciously arrived at some conclusion about the future of my relationship with Reeny, of which I was still consciously unaware, it had been just what the doctor ordered.
When I got to the studio, Mary-Alice and Wayne were already there. The movers were due in less than twenty-four hours and there was still a lot to be done. We got down to it. About half an hour later Mary-Alice threw an empty film canister at me.
“Will you please stop that,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“That bloody humming.”
It looked impossible, but between us, we managed to get everything done. It took all day, and by four o’clock we were dirty, grumpy, and tired. Well, Wayne and I were dirty, grumpy, and tired. Mary-Alice was just grumpy and tired. Somehow, even though she had worked just as hard as Wayne and I, she had managed to stay immaculately clean despite rooting through years of accumulated dust and grime. After Wayne and I cleaned up as best we could, I took us all downstairs to Zapata’s, the Mexican restaurant on the ground floor, for a much-deserved beer or three and a plate of nachos. The beer and nachos improved our moods, but by five-thirty we’d run out of conversation and were almost falling asleep in our chairs. I paid the tab, leaving a fat tip for Ping, the waitress. I then exchanged hugs and kisses with Rosie, the owner and chef, promising to deliver her best wishes to Bobbi, then followed Mary-Alice outside.
“See you at seven,” Mary-Alice said as I walked her to her car.
“Pardon me?”
“Our cocktail party,” she said. “For the Children In Peril Network. You promised you’d come.”
I groaned, recalling that in a moment of weakness I had accepted an invitation to attend a party Mary-Alice and her husband David were throwing in honour of Elise Bridgwater Moffat. She was head of the Josiah E. Bridgwater Foundation, Mary-Alice had explained, whose main preoccupation was the Children In Peril Network. She was also wife of the ex-Honourable Walter P. Moffat, erstwhile Member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre and would-be MP for West Vancouver — Sunshine Coast — Sea-to-Sky Country, the official name (I kid you not) of the riding that included the town of Squamish.
“I really don’t think I’m up to it, Mary-Alice,” I said. “I’m beat. And I want to drop by the hospital and see how Bobbi’s doing.”
“You don’t have to stay all evening,” Mary-Alice countered. “Besides, it’ll give you a chance to schmooze with Walter Moffat. He may have changed his mind about the exhibition catalogue, but he’s still in a position to send more work our way.”
“Isn’t schmoozing why we took you on as a partner, Mary-Alice?”
“Believe me, I’ll being doing my share. I’m going to be busy with other duties, though. There’ll be some interesting people there. Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself.”
“I doubt it.”
“It will do you good to get out, Tom, take your mind off things. You’ve been moping around for weeks, ever since — well, for weeks.”
Ever since what? I wondered. “Who else is going to be there?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, a cunning glint in her eye. “Jeanie Stone, for one.”
“Oh.”
“You’ll come?”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” I said.
Mary-Alice and her husband, Dr. David Paul, lived in West Vancouver on the north shore of Burrard Inlet, in a big glass-and-redwood house that clung precariously to the rocky slopes above Marine Drive, propped on cantilevers that didn’t look sufficient to support it at the best of times, let alone when it contained at least seventy-five guests and a dozen or so caterers. The view of Burrard Inlet from the living room was spectacular, though, and David’s taste in single malt whisky wasn’t bad, either. I was enjoying both, while keeping an eye out for Jeanie Stone, when David came up to me.
“Glad you could make it, Tom,” he said in his deep, wet voice. “Are they taking care of you all right?” I presumed by “they” he meant the caterers.
“They’re being very generous with your Laphroaig,” I told him.
“I was very sorry to hear about Bobbi,” he said. “I’m certain she’ll be fine. Are the police making any progress?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” I replied.
“Terrible thing,” he said. “Who’s her attending physician?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve talked to a number of doctors.”
“No matter. I’m sure she’s in good hands.”
David was in his mid-sixties, a year or two younger than my father. An inch over six feet, he had a short salt-and-pepper beard and thick, dark-grey hair that made him look very professorial and distinguished. He was, in fact, both, teaching at UBC and lecturing all over the world on things proctological. He could be a bit pompous at times. My father, never one to mince words, called him “that arse doctor.” But he was a decent enough guy.
“Have you met our guests of honour?” he asked, voice rattling with phlegm. I resisted the urge to clear my throat.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Well, let’s rectify that oversight, shall we?”
“That’s not really necessary,” I said.
“As it happens,” he said, as he guided me across the room, “I’m under orders.” I didn’t have to guess whose. “And who knows?” he went on. “You might even find Walter Moffat interesting. Walter certainly does. He styles himself as a real Horatio Alger boy-made-good type, a true self-made man.” David snorted, which sounded like someone inhaling a raw oyster. “Who was it who said self-made men tend to worship their own creators?”
“Conrad Black?”
David laughed and gave me a laudatory clap on the shoulder. “He’d know, wouldn’t he? Walter Moffat thinks just as highly of himself.”
Across the room a small crowd of mostly middle-aged women had gathered around a tall, broad-shouldered man with immaculately coifed dark hair, highlighted with just enough silver to give him an air of maturity without making him look old. Jeanie Stone had been right: Walter Moffat was indeed a handsome man, although personally I wouldn’t have described him as “drop-dead gorgeous.” Nevertheless, he was favoured with just