Once upon a summer afternoon a few years before, I’d happened across a couple in Stanley Park. They’d been sitting in each others’ laps under a tree, mouths greedily fastened, her legs wrapped around his waist and her wide peasant skirt spread across their hips, as they’d rocked and writhed with ever-increasing urgency. I felt as I had then, a reluctant voyeur. I wanted to stop listening to Anna Waverley, as I’d wanted to stop watching the lovers in the park, but I couldn’t. Although it was painful hearing her bare her soul to someone she had known for less than an hour, I felt a strange sense of duty to keep listening, to be there for her, to be her sounding board. Her passive therapist. Or her confessor.
“When you were married, Mr. McCall, were you ever unfaithful to your wife?”
“I was tempted once or twice,” I admitted. “But I was never actually physically unfaithful.” In this timeline, I added to myself.
“In the Bible the thought is often as sinful as the deed,” Mrs. Waverley said.
“Then, biblically speaking,” I said, “I’m doomed to burn in hell.”
“Are you a believer?”
“Fortunately not.”
“Nor I,” she said. “Thoughts are easier to keep secret than deeds. My husband never tried to hide his affairs, perhaps because he does not consider himself to be unfaithful to me. In his mind, adultery is not a sin, any more than having red hair is a sin. As the scorpion said to the fox, it’s simply in his nature. To give him credit, he was faithful for the first three years of our marriage, but it is unrealistic, is it not, to expect a scorpion to change its nature just because you wish it? And to be fair, he gave me a choice. He would grant me a divorce, if I wished, as long as the settlement was fair and reasonable, or I could take lovers myself, as long as I promised to be discreet. And careful, of course. Not about disease, although we were just beginning to hear about AIDS then, but about pregnancy. If he did not want children of his own, he certainly didn’t want some other man’s bastard around.”
If thoughts were sins, it was fortunate for me that I didn’t believe in hellfire and damnation, because I was doing some very serious sinning at that moment. Not only was Anna Waverley an exceptionally attractive woman, she was also fragile and vulnerable and so very lonely, which tended to bring out the ride-to-the-rescue romantic in me. Unfortunately, the romantic in me also wanted to take Anna Waverley to bed. Badly. I didn’t for a moment believe there was a chance in hell of that ever happening, but it was, I thought reluctantly, finally time to take my leave, before I dug myself in any deeper.
“… long while before I took a lover,” she was saying. “Take isn’t the right word, though. I wasn’t looking for a lover. I wasn’t sure I even wanted one. It just seemed to happen. I’ve had five lovers since then, Mr. McCall, and, with few exceptions, each was less satisfying than the last. Would you believe me if I told you that I still love my husband? No, of course you wouldn’t. Why would you? But I do. And, in his way, I suppose, he loves me as much as he’s ever loved anyone. I’ve had five lovers, when all I’ve ever really wanted was a real marriage. To Sam. Instead, I’m trapped in this sham of a marriage and having affairs I don’t really want with lovers I don’t really like.” Tears glittered in her eyes. She gestured toward the almost-empty wine bottle on the table in front of her. “And drink myself into a stupor every night so I can sleep.”
Run away with me, I wanted to say. I’ll sell my business and my house. You can dump your lover and divorce your husband. We’ll take his sailboat, fill it with good wine, and sail the South Pacific until we find a small, deserted island where we’ll build a little tree house, lie naked on the beach, drink fermented coconut milk when we run out of wine, and live happily ever after without a care in the world.
That was sure to make her smile. So what the hell, I thought, and said it. And it worked. After a fashion. It was a very sad smile, though, but a smile nonetheless. It near to broke my heart.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a very long time,” she said. “Would that it were possible.”
“In some parallel universe we’ll do it,” I said.
“God,” she said, gusting alcohol fumes. “You must think I’m a crazy woman. Maybe I am. You come here to talk about your dear friend’s attack and find yourself trapped with a madwoman who gets blotto and blathers on endlessly about her pathetic excuse for a life as though you were her shrink or her priest. You poor man. If I weren’t so goddamned drunk that I’d probably fall asleep the moment I became horizontal, I’d drag you into the bedroom and make it up to you.”
“Maybe next time,” I said.
And she laughed.
Her laughter was still ringing in my head an hour later as I got into my car and drove toward home. She’d made tea and she’d talked for a while longer, although I remembered very little of what she’d said, except in the most abstract of ways. When I’d left, I’d thanked her for seeing me, she’d apologized again for subjecting me to her foolishness, and we’d shaken hands. I’d wanted to tell her that I’d like to see her again, but she’d have likely smiled sadly and said, “Perhaps in another timeline,” so I’d just let go of her hand and left. I knew, though, that I’d be calling on her again, probably within a matter of days, with whatever lame excuse was necessary to justify it, to ask if she’d have dinner with me, or go deep-sea fishing, or let me weed her garden. I didn’t know if my feelings were based on infatuation, lust, compassion, empathy, or simple curiosity, but one thing I knew for certain was that in a very short span of time Anna Waverley had entangled me in her reality. She mattered to me, or her happiness did, and I would do whatever I could short of a felony to help her be happy again. Reeny would understand, I told myself.
It was after eleven when I got home. I brushed and flossed and fell into bed, and for the second night in a row slept like a baby until my bedroom filled with pearly light. I lay in bed for a while, watching dawn brighten in the bedroom window, then slipped comfortably asleep again, waking next a few minutes past seven, whereupon I got out of bed, showered, and went downstairs. I felt wonderful, even better than I had the day before, after my night out with Jeanie Stone. It was a today-is-the-first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life kind of wonderful. An anything-is-possible, world-is-my-oyster kind of wonderful. In fact, it felt so good to be alive that I knew, deep down inside, where thoughts dwell before you become conscious of them, that something bad was bound to happen.
It was simple thermodynamics.
chapter eleven
I’d magnanimously given Wayne and Mary-Alice Sunday morning off and I was on my own, taking a break after assembling a steel shelving unit, dabbing my barked knuckles with a wad of toilet paper, when Skip Osterman ambled into the new studio. He was carrying two large takeout coffees from the Blue Parrot espresso bar in the Public Market. Skip and his wife Connie operated a deep-sea fishing and charter company out of the Broker’s Bay Marina. Skip was always at loose ends on Sunday mornings when Connie was at church. Otherwise, they were inseparable.
“How’s Bobbi doin’?” he asked as we prised the lids from the coffee containers.
I’d called the hospital for an update before coming to the studio. “The doctor thinks she’ll be waking up any time now,” I said.
“That’s good to hear. The cops have any idea who done it?”
“If they do, they’re not telling me.”
“My money’s on Loth,” he said, blowing on his coffee. He took a cautious sip, sucking it in with a lot of air. “After Bobbi tore him a new one at the public market last month, he was goin’ around cursin’ and swearin’ about how he was goin’ to get even with her some way or another. Maybe he did.” He took another noisy slurp of coffee. “Man, there’s gotta be something we can do about that guy. Bad enough smelling the way he does, but grabbin’ his crotch and makin’ dirty remarks to women. Constable Mabel says there ain’t much they can do. Whenever they talk to him ’cause someone’s complained, he goes on about bein’ a poor sick old man wh
o ain’t never hurt no one. But Christ on a crutch, the other day he’s on the quay and Con is at the wheel on the flyin’ bridge as we’re comin’ in from a charter, two couples from a Calgary church group on the deck, and he yells out at her that she can sit on his face any time, even if she does smell of fish. Con ignored him, but I don’t care if he’s a sick old man, I’ll take a goddamn shark pike to him next time he talks dirty to her.” He scowled and gulped his coffee.
Between them, Skip and Connie knew just about everyone who kept a boat anywhere near Granville Island, so I asked him if he knew the Wonderlust, in particular who the real owners might be.
“I know the boat,” Skip said, “but I got no idea who’s behind the company that owns it. Whoever it is, they’ve let it get badly run down. I thought about maybe makin’ an offer on it, y’know, but Witt DeWalt told me not to bother, that everyone who’s made an offer that’s less than the asking price, and that’s everyone who’s made one, has got blown off. Con figures it’s a tax dodge. They’re happy to sit on it, cover the docking fees by renting it out for parties, in the meantime write it off as a loss until someone comes along dumb enough to pay the asking price.”
“Do you know Sam or Anna Waverley?”
“Seen ’em around. Her more ’n’ him. But that’s it. They have a thirty-eight-foot Sabre they hardly ever use. Good-lookin’ woman, I’ll say that, but Con’s talked to her a couple of times and says she’s not a very happy one. Never seen her smile. I heard she had a run-in herself with Loth a while back. April, I think.” He shrugged. “Name me a woman that hasn’t.”
“What happened?”
“I got it second-hand from Witt DeWalt. Loth was standing at the top of the ramp when Ms. Waverley came along the dock from her boat, dressed for running, and wouldn’t move out of the way when she tried to get past him. When she asked him to let her by, he laughed and called her a whore and said he’d let her by if she — well, you know. She had to squeeze past between him and the railing and Witt figures Loth groped her or pinched her, because she yelped and jumped into the air and called him a filthy pig. He acted like he didn’t know what she was talkin’ about and launched into his usual routine about bein’ a poor sick old man who never hurt nobody. Witt asked her if she wanted to call the cops, but she just said, ‘What good would it do?’ Witt said she was pretty upset, though.”
Skip finished his coffee and looked around for some place to dispose of the cup. I took it from him and tossed it into an overflowing waste bin.
“I’ll let you get back to work,” he said, standing.
“Gee, thanks,” I replied.
“Don’t mention it. Y’know, I don’t care if there is something wrong in his head, one o’ these days maybe somebody’s gonna pay that old man a visit where he lives and put the fear into him.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“On some old fishing boat in the Harbour Authority marina. According to what I heard, he claims he’s doin’ work on it in exchange for living there, converting it into a yacht, would you believe, but no one I know has ever seen him doin’ any work.”
Art Smelski, the off-duty paramedic who’d fished Bobbi out of False Creek, was refurbishing an old fishing boat he kept in the False Creek Harbour Authority marina. It was a common enough pastime, I supposed. Given the sorry state of the commercial fishing industry, you could pick up old fishing boats for a song. Nevertheless, I asked Skip if it was Art Smelski’s boat Loth was supposed to be renovating.
“No,” Skip said. “The boat Loth lives on belongs to a fella name of Marshall Duckworth. Some kind o’ hotshot lawyer that works for an organization that gets people who’ve been wrongly convicted out of prison — whether they’re innocent or not,” he added. “Con knows him and his wife from her church.” He looked at his watch, a big waterproof chronometer with a rotating bezel and more dials and knurled knobs than my father’s old shortwave radio. “Speakin’ of which, they should be lettin’ out about now. Gotta go.”
A few minutes after Skip left, Constable Mabel Firth and her partner walked in, both in street clothes, but armed, with their badges in plain view. They looked less bulky and imposing in plain clothes — when in uniform they wore Kevlar vests — but they both wore serious, business-like expressions, so I knew immediately it was not a social call.
“We came by to give you a heads-up,” Mabel said. “Detective Kovacs is mightily annoyed with you. Can’t say I blame him. What the heck were you doing at Anna Waverley’s house last night, anyway?”
“Having a very nice time, thank you,” I replied, which caused Mabel to scowl darkly and Baz Tucker to shake his head in dismay at my irreverent attitude. “I wanted to talk to her about what happened to Bobbi,” I added.
“That much we figured out for ourselves,” Mabel said.
“How do you know I was there, by the way? Who are you watching? Her or me?”
“Her. Until we track down the woman who hired you, or the fellow who paid you a visit at your studio, she’s our only lead. A slim one, I’ll admit, but dollars to jelly doughnuts it wasn’t a coincidence that the woman who hired you used her name.”
“She’s not a suspect, is she?” I said.
She shook her head. “A potential material witness at least. She says she was at the marina that night around nine, maybe she saw something. She claims she didn’t, but Kovacs has a suspicious nature. He figures there’s a reasonable probability that she knows who attacked Bobbi, maybe even witnessed the attack, but for some reason isn’t talking. He figures it’s likely because she’s afraid that whoever hurt Bobbi will come after her. What was your take on her? Could she be afraid of someone?”
“I didn’t get that impression,” I said.
“What sort of impression did you get?” Mabel asked.
“Of an intelligent, very lonely and very unhappy woman,” I said.
“Do you think she’s telling the truth about being at the marina that night?”
“What do you mean? Why would she lie about being there?”
“The thing is,” Mabel said, “no one remembers seeing her. It’s a busy area, even at that time of day. Our canvass hasn’t turned up anyone who saw her along her usual running route that night, either.”
“You’re thinking maybe she wasn’t there?” I said.
“It’s a possibility we have to consider.”
“I don’t get it. Why say she was if she wasn’t?”
“Search me,” Mabel said. “On the other hand, maybe she was there, but didn’t want to be seen, so she said she was there just in case she was spotted.”
I shook my head. Someone, maybe Greg Matthias or Mabel, had once told me that the first rule of police work was to keep it simple, that the most obvious explanation for something was usually the right one. “No one saw Bobbi, either, right?”
“Yeah,” Mabel said. “Look, Tom, I know you. You’re inclined to always think the best of people, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but how has it worked out for you?”
“It hasn’t always been good for my insurance rates,” I agreed.
“Cops, particularly detectives, but street cops, too, have a tendency to be more realistic, pessimistic, even.”
“No,” I said, with mock incredulity.
“You said Anna Waverley was intelligent …”
“Yes,” I said.
“While your average crook isn’t all that bright, some are brighter than others. The smartest ones stick as close to the truth as possible, even if it means admitting to something that might be construed as circumstantially incriminating. A robbery suspect admitting to being in the vicinity of a robbery, for instance. They know it’s not half as damaging as getting caught in an outright lie.”
“So what you’re saying is that Anna Waverley admitted to being at the marina because she’s afraid to be caught in a lie if you do find someone who saw her there?”
“She also admits to having been at a party on the Wonderlust at least once, which would accoun
t for her fingerprints, if they’re found. Kovacs doesn’t believe she’s responsible for Bobbi’s beating, but he’s sure she knows more than she’s saying.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t have an opinion,” Mabel replied diplomatically. “I’ve never met her. I should know better than to encourage you, but what do you think? Could she have been involved?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She told me she doesn’t know anything about it.”
“And you’re inclined to believe her?”
“More than just inclined,” I said. “I do believe her …”
“But …”
“I’ve been wrong before …”
“But …” Mabel prompted again, a little more firmly.
“Well …” I said.
“For Pete’s sake, Tom,” Mabel said. “What?”
“I think she might meet with her lover on the Wonderlust,” I said, with a twinge of something that felt like guilt.
Mabel’s eyebrows went up. Baz grunted softly. Neither of them was half as surprised as I was, though. I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were taking me. It felt as though I was being disloyal to her, which was just plain silly; I hardly knew her. Nevertheless, I liked her and didn’t want to believe that she’d had anything to do with Bobbi’s attack.
“You think that maybe Bobbi interrupted them and lover-boy beat the crap out of her and dumped her in False Creek,” Baz said, more than a hint of skepticism in his voice.
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