“I’m still here. I’m waiting for you to get to the point. You’ve got thirty seconds. Then I call the police.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, I know who you are. You’re that photographer whose assistant was attacked and thrown into False Creek. I feel just awful about that, Mr. McCall. I really do. But if you’re looking for some kind of compensation, it hasn’t anything to do with me or my husband, despite the fact that the woman who hired you evidently used my name.”
“It’s not about money,” I said. “It’s about my friend lying in the hospital in a coma. I’d just like to talk to you for a few minutes, to see if there’s anything you might be able to tell me that will help me figure out who attacked her.”
“I’ve already told the police everything I know,” she said. “Which is nothing.”
Her voice had an odd stereophonic quality, as if it were coming from two places at once. I realized that she must be standing on the other side of the door and that I could hear her voice through the mail slot as well as the intercom speaker. I moved closer to the door. “Mrs. Waverley,” I said, speaking up slightly, but keeping my voice calm and even and as reassuring as I could. “Someone who said her name was Anna Waverley hired my partner and me to take photographs of that boat. The police have evidence that my partner was attacked on the boat, before she was thrown into False Creek under the Burrard Street Bridge to drown. I’m sure that neither you nor your husband are involved in any way, but I would nevertheless appreciate it if you could spare me a few minutes of your time. I’m just trying to understand why Bobbi was attacked. The police aren’t getting anywhere. I —”
A chain rattled and a bolt clicked and the door opened.
Anna Waverley was a handful of inches shorter than me, with wavy reddish-brown hair worn short, rectangular hazel eyes, and a long, straight nose. Her most arresting feature was her mouth. It was wide and slightly crooked, and her lips, which were full and almost too straight, had a bruised quality, like overripe plums. It was not, I thought for some reason, a mouth that smiled often. Matthias had told me she was forty-five, but she could have looked much younger, if she’d tried a little.
“I don’t know what I can tell you, Mr. McCall, but come in.” She stepped back, holding the door open. “Please excuse the way I’m dressed,” she added as I went into the house. “I just got back from a run.” She closed the door. “This way, please.”
From the outside the house had looked spacious, but inside it seemed dark and cramped. It wasn’t that the rooms were small — they weren’t — but the front hall and the living room contained enough heavy, ornate furniture for three houses. Likewise, the dining room. Anna Waverley read my expression.
“I’m afraid my husband regards this house more as a warehouse than a home,” she said. “Come through this way. We’ll be more comfortable in the day room. Would you care for a glass of wine? Or something stronger?”
“Wine is fine,” I said.
She excused herself and left the room.
The day room wasn’t quite as big as the living room, but contained less furniture. What it did contain was eclectic and casual and comfortable. There was a big, blond wood entertainment unit containing a medium-sized flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and mismatched but high-quality stereo components. One wall of the room was mostly glass. Sliding doors opened onto a patio surrounded by semitropical plants in big terra cotta planters and beds of live bamboo and overshadowed by a towering magnolia. An ornate Victorian dining table by the windows looked as though it had seen better days, the finish scarred and cracked. One end of the table was piled high with magazines and newspapers and books. At the other end of the table, a white Apple laptop sat atop a four-inch stack of volumes from an old set of the Encyclopædia Britannica, raising the screen to a more comfortable height to use with the external keyboard and mouse. The computer’s power adaptor was plugged into a heavy-duty orange extension cord that snaked across the flagstone floor to an outlet by the entertainment unit.
Mrs. Waverley returned carrying a tray loaded with a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine in a sweating beaten-silver cooler, and two tall wineglasses. She set the tray on a massive Spanish-style coffee table. In the short time she’d been out of the room, she’d also managed to brush out her hair, apply a little makeup, and change into jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and sturdy Rockport walking shoes.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted white or red,” she said, sitting on a heavy, worn leather sofa.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I said.
“White, then,” she said, lifting the bottle from the silver cooler. “Please, sit down, Mr. McCall. I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police. I feel just terrible about what happened to your friend. You said she is still in a coma. The police told me she’s expected to make a full recovery, though.” She deftly levered the cork out of the bottle.
“That’s what the doctors tell me.” I sat in an equally worn burgundy leather tufted armchair, facing her across the coffee table.
“Well, I certainly hope it’s true.” She handed me a glass of wine. It had a rich, slightly fruity aroma. I imagined that that one bottle cost more than what I usually spent on three bottles. She raised her glass. “Here’s to your friend’s full and speedy recovery,” she said. We drank. The wine was very good. I upped my estimate of its cost.
“I understand you were at the marina at around nine that night.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Waverley replied. “Three evenings a week I park my car at Jericho Beach Park near the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and run to Granville Island and back. Don’t look so impressed. It’s a total of only a little more than ten kilometres. Ten years ago I used to run more than a hundred kilometres a week. Slowing down in my old age, I suppose.”
“It’s all I can do to run to answer the phone,” I said.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she responded.
It wasn’t true, or at least not quite, but I was hoping to make her smile. I wanted to see what a smile looked like on that wide, sensuous mouth. I was disappointed when she remained straight-faced. I was going to have to try harder.
“Do you normally run at that time of day?” I asked. “After dark, I mean?”
She shook her head. “No, in the summer usually I run between six and seven, but I was, well, running late that day.” She didn’t even smile at her own joke. “More wine?” she asked, holding out the bottle.
“No, thank you,” I said. My glass was still almost full. Hers was almost empty. She refilled it.
“Your friend — Bobbi?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I saw her photograph in the newspaper. She’s very attractive. Are you and she lovers?”
I was taken aback by the bluntness of the question. “No,” I sputtered. “Just friends. Good friends, though. We’ve worked together for almost ten years.”
“Is it interesting work?”
“It can be,” I said.
“Have you exhibited?”
“My photographs? Not hardly. No one’s interested in photographs of shopping malls or bridges and helicopters. I did win an award once, though, for a photograph I took when I was working for the Vancouver Sun of a man rescuing a huge potted cannabis plant from a burning house.” Did her ripe, bruised mouth twitch slightly? I couldn’t be sure because she lifted her wineglass and drank.
She lowered the glass. “Ralph Steiner’s photographs of everyday objects are