“You’re not wrong,” David said. “I bought a watercolour from him last year, and that bronze just last month.” He gestured toward a niche that contained a small, dark sculpture of a young ballerina. “I visited Samuel Waverley’s gallery on your recommendation. Although I don’t know the Waverleys personally, I have met them both at various charitable events. He’s, well, a bit cold, I thought, but she’s very charming. Quite lovely, really. Quiet, though, and … sorry,” David said, with an apologetic smile. “I’m prattling.”
Walter Moffat nodded, as though he agreed, but Elise Moffat’s smile, while distant, was not without sympathy.
“And you’ve no idea who the woman was who hired you?” Moffat said to me. “No, of course you don’t. It was a foolish question. I am rattled. We are not accustomed to such violence hitting so close to home.”
It was then that a man slid into position partly between David and me and the Moffats. He reminded me of my daughter’s pet ferrets, Beatrix and Harry, except that he was nowhere near as cute or cuddly. His suit looked expensive and his dark, thinning hair was combed over his skull from above his left ear and lacquered into place. Jeanie Stone’s description fit him to a tee.
“Is everything all right here, Walter?” the man asked, eyes darting suspiciously between David and me.
“Yes, yes, of course, Woody,” Moffat intoned reassuringly. “Everything is fine.”
“Woody Getz,” the man said, thrusting his hand toward me. “Walter’s campaign manager. And you are …?”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, reluctantly taking his hand. It was cold and damp and limp. I let go quickly.
“My brother-in-law,” David said. “Tom McCall.”
“Oh, right. We spoke on the telephone the other day,” Getz said.
Moffat took his wife’s arm. She leaned against him.
“David,” he said, “I think it’s time Mrs. Moffat and I said good night. Mr. McCall, I hope that your partner makes a full and speedy recovery.”
“Thank you,” I said.
David reiterated Moffat’s best wishes for Bobbi, said good night, then led the Moffats away in search of Mary-Alice, leaving me alone with Woody Getz. He smiled at me. I felt like a fish stranded on the beach and Getz was a hungry weasel.
“So you’re Mary-Alice’s brother?” he said.
“I am,” I admitted.
“You live on Granville Island, don’t you?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Eh?”
“I live in a floating home in Sea Village.”
“But isn’t …? Ah, I get it. Very good. I should’ve said ‘at’ not ‘on,’ eh? Arh arh.” He didn’t quite nudge me with his elbow. “I’ve been thinking about maybe buying a place there myself.”
“Is that right?” I said. “Well, good luck.”
“We have a mutual acquaintance, you and I,” he said.
“Who’s that?” I asked. Did he mean Jeanie Stone? I hoped not. Perhaps he was referring to Blake Darling, the real estate broker, recalling Darling’s little chortle as he’d told me that his mysterious client “usually gets what he wants.”
“Kenny Shapiro,” Getz said.
“Who?”
“Kenny Shapiro. The director. I used to be in the industry. Kenny’s an old friend.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t …”
Then I remembered. Kenny Shapiro had directed the second season of Star Crossed, Reeny Lindsey’s syndicated sword-and-sex sci-fi series. They’d shot part of an episode at Sea Village the previous fall.
“You mean Mr. See-em-sweat,” I said.
“Eh?”
“Never mind.” Reeny had dubbed Kenny Shapiro ‘Mr. See-em-sweat’ because he had frequently overheated the sets to satisfy his penchant for authenticity. No spray-on sweat for Kenny. He wanted to see the real thing. His predilection for the real thing did not extend too far, though. Reeny had come close to quitting the series when he’d tried to persuade her to get breast implants.
I excused myself and went looking for Mary-Alice. There was still no sign of Jeanie Stone. “She was on the guest list that Walter’s manager provided,” Mary-Alice claimed, but I was certain she’d fibbed to lure me into her charitable web. I hated it that I could be so easily manipulated. I left soon after, which necessitated manoeuvring my car past a sleek Jaguar coupe, a couple of Mercedes sedans, and a hulking Cadillac Escalade that made my little Jeep Liberty feel downright puny. It was after ten, too late to go to the hospital, I decided, so I drove straight home.
chapter nine
The movers arrived at the Davie Street studio promptly at eight o’clock Saturday morning, three hulking steroidal men in their twenties and a tall, wiry black woman in her thirties, who appeared to be the boss. In under two hours, notwithstanding our good-intentioned help, they moved everything it had taken us all week to pack down the freight elevator and into their truck. Although the elevator complained loudly and frequently, fortune smiled upon us and it didn’t break down. The drive to the new location took less than thirty minutes and by noon, the truck was empty. I thanked the woman and her crew, handed her the envelope containing the prearranged tip, then they all piled into the cab and the truck rumbled away, leaving us with our office furniture and filing cabinets, crates and cartons and equipment cases, not to mention the film fridge and Bodger’s cat carrier, stacked in the middle of the floor of the new studio space.
Prior to the rehabilitation of Granville Island in the seventies, the building into which we were moving had once been a chain and wire-rope manufacturer. It had been renovated to house artisans’ workshops, artists’ studios, and small galleries and shops. Originally, the building had had a concrete floor and a thirty-foot ceiling, with high, tall windows letting in plenty of light. Our new space still had a concrete floor, but it had been freshly painted a cheerful battleship grey. The front two-thirds of the space still had a twenty-foot ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows. The back third, however, had been vertically subdivided, with office, washroom, and kitchen facilities upstairs, which is where we stashed a very unhappy Bodger’s cat carrier while we unpacked and tried to get organized.
At four o’clock Constable Mabel Firth poked her head through the front door. She was dressed in jeans and a tweedy jacket, and her dark blonde hair was loose. Although she was stationed on Granville Island and her husband Bill worked for the City of Vancouver, they lived in Burnaby, not far from the Chevron tank farm just east of the Second Narrows Bridge, so I didn’t often see her in mufti and almost didn’t recognize her. At first I thought she was off duty, then I noticed she was armed. There’s something about a big, attractive woman carrying a Glock …
“I guess you haven’t come to help us get this place sorted out,” I said.
“’Fraid not,” she said. “We’re re-interviewing all the witnesses in Bobbi’s assault case, in case we missed something the first time.”
“Have you been promoted to detective?”
“No, but a girl can always dream.” She took a spiral-bound notebook out of her inside jacket pocket. “Have you got a minute to go over your meeting with the faux Anna Waverley again?”
“Sure,” I said. We went outside and sat on a bench in the sun. “Faux?”
“Cute, eh? When I used it this morning, Jim Kovacs almost choked on his coffee. So …?”
I told her about the meeting, in as much