Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  “You can relax, then. We didn’t discuss anything of a personal nature, either, although he did ask after my partner. And we briefly discussed Anna Waverley’s death.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Elise — Mrs. Moffat — must be taking it quite hard. She and Mrs. Waverley were friends. I understand the police are treating it as a home invasion or robbery gone bad.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Well,” Getz said. “Let’s hope they catch whoever did it. Anyway, look, I hope you won’t think I’m being a control freak or anything here, but in future, if you need to talk to my — to Mr. Moffat, I’d appreciate a heads-up. You understand.”

  “Sure,” I said. “No problem. Why not?”

  “Good,” he said. “Oh, and how’s your friend doing, anyway? Has she been able to tell the police anything about what happened?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, sticking his hand out again. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. In the meantime, take it easy.”

  “Likewise,” I said, as he turned and strode purposefully away, a man on a mission.

  chapter seventeen

  Traffic was as terrible as usual on the Lions Gate Bridge and it was after five by the time I got back to Granville Island. Mary-Alice was still at the studio. I filled her in on my meeting with Walter Moffat. She wasn’t particularly surprised when I told her about the nature of his art collection.

  “I had a feeling it was something like that,” she said. “Although she never came right out and said so, Elise implied that his collection made her uncomfortable. At least it isn’t child pornography.” Her eyes narrowed. “It isn’t, is it?”

  “No,” I said. “The wood nymphs look a bit like sexually mature little girls, but there’s nothing even remotely pornographic about them. Even the early twentieth-century photographs, which were probably considered pornographic in their day, are tame by modern standards. You see more nudity on cable TV.”

  “Still, you can’t blame her for being upset by it,” Mary-Alice said. “The Bridgwater Foundation is extremely conservative. Its supporters, too.”

  “Does it do anything else besides rescue children in peril?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “These days it’s dedicated exclusively to the Children in Peril Network.”

  “Which does what, exactly?”

  “It sponsors orphanages and foster homes in Central and South America, as well as providing medical supplies and educational materials to hospitals and schools. David and a number of his colleagues donate a week or two of their time once a year, going down there and working with the local doctors. Originally, the foundation ran group homes all over the province for Christian girls in peril, which was a polite way of saying unwed mothers. Josiah Bridgwater was Elise’s grandfather …” She hesitated, then said, “Did David tell you about her, how she ran more than a little wild when she was a teenager?”

  “Yes, he mentioned it. Something about a jazz musician.” I looked at her for a moment. “Are you saying that she was one of the foundation’s girls in peril?”

  “She may have been,” Mary-Alice said. “During the last election one of Walter’s opponents started a rather nasty whisper campaign that when she was fifteen she had a child, which was put up for adoption. Elise has never denied that she had some fairly serious problems as a teenager. In fact, on the foundation’s web site she describes how, ‘with God’s help,’ she turned her life around. There’s nothing in her bio about her having had a child, but it might explain her dedication to helping children in the Third World.”

  “So might a number of things,” I said.

  “I suppose.”

  “How did her grandfather make his money?” I asked.

  Mary-Alice smiled. “You’re going to love this. He made his first fortune from mail-order sales of women’s undergarments. He made even more money after expanding into hardware, farm equipment, and cleaning supplies, but he went to his grave known as the Corset King of the Pacific Northwest.”

  “Seems somehow fitting then that Walter is obsessed with breasts.”

  “He’s following the Bridgwater family tradition in more ways than one,” Mary-Alice said, a worried expression replacing the smile. “He didn’t ask you to donate your time, did he?”

  “No. In fact, money didn’t seem to be a problem. Why?”

  “According to Elise, Walter’s almost as tight with a dollar as her grandfather was. She says the old man turned miserliness into an art. His only indulgence was the house, which he built for Elise’s grandmother, who was apparently as mortified by the nature of the goods her husband sold as Elise is by Walter’s collection.”

  “They certainly don’t waste any money on the house or the grounds,” I said.

  “I don’t think there’s much of the old man’s money left. Elise’s father wasn’t really very interested in running the foundation, except that it let him mingle with the upper crust. Walter told David the house is literally falling apart around their ears. He thinks the foundation would be better off selling or developing the property and renting offices someplace, but Elise won’t hear of it. She’s launching a fundraising campaign to do repairs. That’s why Walter was going to exhibit his collection, I suppose, to donate the proceeds to the foundation. I guess Elise talked him out of it.”

  “His campaign manager, Woody Getz, may have also had a hand in that,” I said.

  I went home, washed down the soggy second half of the toasted tomato-and-cheese sandwich I’d made for lunch with a Granville Island Lager, then drove to the hospital. The cop on the door was gone. Bobbi was sitting up in bed, playing cribbage with Wayne. The medical monitors and the IV pump stood idle in a corner and the urine bag no longer hung from the side of the bed. Bobbi’s colour had improved, but she still looked as though she had gone three rounds with Mike Tyson, except that both ears were intact.

  “I went to the bathroom on my own today,” she said proudly. “Saw myself in the mirror. Not as bad as I expected, but I guess I’m never going to make the cover of Cosmo any time soon.”

  “Y-you’re s-still b-beautiful,” Wayne stammered, face blazing.

  She grinned lopsidedly, grimacing as she stretched the stitches in her mouth. “Thanks, D. Wayne,” she said. Ever since Wayne had started working for us, Bobbi had called him D. Wayne, running it together, like Duane with two syllables, Duh-Wayne. He never complained when Bobbi did it, but he didn’t like it when I or Mary-Alice did it.

  “A Sergeant Kovacs came to see me,” Bobbi said, as Wayne counted his points and moved his pegs on the board, still flushed. “He was disappointed when I told him I didn’t remember anything about being attacked. He showed me a photograph of a woman with dark red hair and asked me if I’d seen her anywhere. I didn’t recognize her. Who is she?”

  “Has Kovacs or Greg told you anything about what happened the night you were attacked?” I looked at Wayne as I asked. He shook his head.

  “Not much,” Bobbi said. “I was beaten up and was thrown or fell into False Creek under the Kitsilano end of the Burrard Street Bridge. The van was dumped and torched and the gear was stolen. That’s about it.”

  “Do you remember the woman who came to the studio last Tuesday and hired us to photograph a boat called the Wonderlust? You were coming in as she was going out. Thirty-ish. Blonde. Artificially augmented, you said.”

  “I think I do remember something like that,” Bobbi said. “You said her name was, ah …” She shook her head. “I can’t quite get it. I’m sure it wasn’t her in the photograph Sergeant Kovacs showed me.”

  “It wasn’t. Although the woman who came to the studio said her name was Anna Waverley, she wasn’t Anna Waverley. And the Wonderlust didn’t belong to her.”

  “So who was the woman in the photograph? The real Anna Waverley?”

  “Yes. She and her husband, an art and antiques dealer in Gastown, also have a boat at the marina, but it’s a sailboat.”

  “Why did he show me her picture
if she wasn’t the woman who hired us?”

  I took a breath. “She’s dead,” I said, throat tight. “She was murdered in her home last night.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “I found her body.”

  “You what? Jesus, Tom, what’s going on?”

  “Damned if I know. Whoever killed her tried to make it look like suicide.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence,” she said. “I’ve been around cops long enough to know that.”

  “You’re probably right, but so far there’s not much to link her to your attack. The police are working on the theory that someone wanted to set me or you or both of us up. You haven’t pissed anyone off enough lately to want to do this, have you?”

  “Not that I can think of. Except maybe that Loth guy. But I think I’d remember if it was him who did this to me.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but I refrained from saying so.

  “How did you come to find Anna Waverley’s body?” Bobbi asked. “I don’t recall you ever mentioning her name before she came to the studio.”

  “I met her for the first time on Saturday night,” I said. “Then last night she called and left a message on my voice mail asking me to come over, that there was something she wanted to tell me. When I got there, she was dead. I think she may have known who attacked you.”

  “And someone killed her to keep her quiet? Jesus, Tom, you’re getting to be a dangerous guy to know.”

  “If it was set up,” I said, “you’ve no idea how much I wish I’d gone instead of you.”

  “It’s all Mary-Alice’s fault,” Bobbi said.

  “Eh? How do you figure that? Ah. If Mary-Alice hadn’t got Jeanie Stone’s shorts in a knot, Jeanie wouldn’t have insisted on meeting with me and I’d have gone to meet the fake Anna Waverley on that boat instead of you.”

  “I’m kidding, you know. Don’t you? It really wasn’t Mary-Alice’s fault.”

  “Nevertheless, I wish I’d gone instead of you.”

  “Well, don’t beat yourself up about it,” Bobbi said. “If you’ll pardon the expression. Maybe you wouldn’t have been as lucky as me. Maybe you’d have been killed.”

  “When you put it that way,” I said.

  She grinned and grimaced again. “I wish I could remember what happened.”

  “The doctor says your memory will return in due course. Then you may wish it hadn’t.”

  “It’s scary, not remembering. Like there’s a hole in my life. I’ve read about people who had gaps in their memories and when they were hypnotized it turned out that they believed they’d been kidnapped by aliens. Now I know how they felt.”

  “I wish you had been kidnapped by aliens,” I said. “I don’t recall that Scully ever got the crap beaten out of her by the aliens.”

  “Mulder d-did though,” Wayne said. “And Scully got p-pregnant.”

  “All things considered,” Bobbi said, “I’d rather be beaten up by an alien than impregnated by one.”

  Bobbi and Wayne finished their crib game, Wayne skunking Bobbi, who claimed her powers of concentration hadn’t yet fully recovered. After he left, Bobbi and I played a game, and she beat me by a good margin. By eight she was yawning and so was I. I said good night.

  When I opened the door, I saw the cop was back.

  “Tom?” Bobbi said. I paused in the doorway, looking back at her. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For, well, you know.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Although I’d been yawning in sympathy with Bobbi at the hospital, by the time I got back to Granville Island I was wide awake. I didn’t feel like sitting around an empty house, and I was hungry, having eaten nothing but the sandwich since breakfast, so I parked at Sea Village, then walked back the length of the island to Bridges, all of half a kilometre.

  “Twice in a week,” Kenny Li, the manager, said. “Better be careful, Tom. Might get to be a habit.”

  “The week’s still young, Kenny.” Phil, the bartender, drew me a Granville Island Lager and I ordered a burger. I took my beer to an out-of-the-way corner and nursed it until my burger came.

  I was finished my burger and most of my beer when Greg Matthias dropped into the chair across the table from me. He had a fresh pint in his hand so I assumed he wasn’t on duty. He looked tired. I wondered where he lived. In the time I’d known him, he’d never said. Nor had Bobbi. So I asked.

  “Burnaby,” he said. “Just east of Boundary Road, near the Chevron tank farm.”

  “Mabel Firth lives around there, too, doesn’t she?” I said.

  “Yeah. She and her husband live a couple of streets over. There’re a few cops in the neighbourhood. Misery likes company.” He drank some beer. “Did you see Bobbi tonight?”

  “Yeah. She’s doing fine. They might release her in a day or two. Kovacs went to see her,” I added, “but she wasn’t able to tell him anything.”

  “He thinks she’s holding out on him, that she remembers more than she’s telling.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Good question.”

  “Perhaps he just has a suspicious mind.”

  “It helps in this business.”

  “You don’t think she’s holding out, do you?”

  “It’s not my case.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “Yes. No, I don’t think she’s keeping anything back. Kovacs probably doesn’t, either. He’s just letting his frustration show. This is one of those cases that shouldn’t be that hard to solve. Given the time of day and location of the attack there should be witnesses coming out of the woodwork. Just our bad luck, or the perp’s good luck, that when he bundled her into the Zodiac and took her out into False Creek, everyone was looking the other way. By the way, the Marine Squad found a Zodiac adrift in English Bay. Good bet it belonged to the Wonderlust.” He drank some beer. “Anna Waverley’s murder has complicated things, too.”

  “Are you still on that case?” I asked.

  “For now.”

  “And …?”

  “You know I can’t talk about it.”

  “Has anyone been in touch with her husband?”

  “Not yet. According to the woman looking after his gallery, he’s supposed to be in London this week, but he’s not at the hotel he normally uses, and the London cops haven’t managed to track him down.”

  “Could he have sneaked back into the country and killed her himself?”

  “Not if he arrived by air. He’d have had to show his passport and we’ve alerted customs to be on the lookout for him. On the other hand, if he flew to Seattle and drove up from the States, he wouldn’t necessarily have had to show his passport or even identify himself to Canada customs.” He looked at his watch, downed the dregs of his beer, and stood. “It’s one of the possibilities we’re considering,” he said, and left.

  I went to the bar and paid my tab, then found Kenny Li and arranged for Art Smelski and his wife to have drinks and dinner on me. The cobbled streets of Granville Island were quiet as I left the pub. Intending to swing by the studio, I took the roundabout way home, along the Foreshore Walk past the Broker’s Bay Marina. I found myself wondering what Reeny was up to, over in Germany, with her new fiancé, whom she was sure I’d like. I hoped things worked out for them. I also wondered how Jeanie Stone’s meeting with her thesis advisor had gone. Perhaps I should call her, I thought. I could tell her I was no longer spoken for.

  The lights on the docks of the marina were ghostly in the night, shimmering off the inky water. The docks were deserted, most of the boats dark. Another big motor yacht occupied the Wonderlust’s slip. I wondered if the police had had any success tracking down the Wonderlust’s owners. How hard could it be? Even if they had, though, they weren’t likely to tell me about it. I scanned the marina, looking for Anna Waverley’s beloved sailboat, Free Spirit. It was supposed to be berthed about halfway along the dock next to the Wonderlust’s, but I had trouble locating it. No wonder. I wasn’t look
ing for a boat with the interior lights on. Then I saw movement as a figure emerged from the hatch into the cockpit.

  My first thought was that unbeknownst to Greg Matthias, Anna Waverley’s husband had returned from overseas. But Samuel Waverley had been described to me as medium height and portly, while the person that stepped from the boat onto the finger dock was small and slim. A woman. Stooping, she picked up a box or carton, which appeared to be heavy, and carried it aboard the boat and down into the cabin.

  The marina gate was still propped open, so I went down the ramp and walked along the dock to the Free Spirit’s slip, then out the narrow finger dock toward the boat’s stern. The ports were open and I could hear pop music playing softly, but no voices. I stepped up onto the gunwale and down into the roomy cockpit. The Sabre 386 was a good-sized boat and barely registered my weight. The hatch was open. I looked down the companionway into the cabin. A woman stood at the counter that separated the galley from the main salon, her back to me as she removed groceries from a cardboard carton. She had short, dark hair, wide shoulders and slim hips, which swayed gently in time with the music, a woman singing in a smooth, smoky contralto about twisting in her sobriety.

  I rapped on the hatch combing. The woman at the galley counter jumped and turned, eyes wide with alarm.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She stared up at me. “Oh, shit,” she said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  I knew instantly who she was.

  chapter eighteen

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I said, descending into the cabin. I stood by the foot of the companionway, though, blocking her main avenue of escape. “You do know whose boat this is, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” she said in her sandpapery voice. Her eyes were a pale, limpid blue, but they’d been green when she’d came to the studio; she’d worn coloured contacts, I presumed, or she was wearing them now. “It’s my boat. And I don’t remember giving you permission to board, so get the hell off before I call the police.” She took a cellphone out of the back pocket of her jeans.