Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  “What’s up?”

  I told him about my encounter with Chrissy Conrad. As I repeated what she’d told me, I realized that it distilled down to very little of any real value. And how much of it could be believed was anyone’s guess.

  He said he’d send someone to check out the boat, then said, “Any reason to think anything she told you was the truth?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not even sure she told me her real name.”

  “What about her relationship with Anna Waverley?”

  “She was probably lying about that, too. At least about being friends. She might have been telling the truth about working for Sam Waverley, though.”

  “At least that gives us a place to start tracking down her real identity.”

  “She was also probably lying about not being at the marina when Bobbi was attacked. She may have even been on the boat. I doubt she’s personally responsible for Bobbi’s beating, unless she had help, but I’m sure she knows who is. She may also know who killed Anna Waverley, but I’m not quite so sure about that. I’d give you odds she knows the identity of Anna Waverley’s lover, though.”

  “Too bad you let her get away.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll circulate her description. Do you know what kind of vehicle she might be driving?”

  “No, sorry. Have you been able to track down the ownership of the Wonderlust?”

  “I couldn’t say. Why?”

  “Everything seems to revolve around that boat. It’s obvious Bobbi’s attack is tied to it, but Anna Waverley’s murder may be, too. Then there’s Chrissy Conrad’s scam to sell it. Joel Cairo was asking about it, too.”

  “Who?”

  “The slippery character who came to my studio last week and who tried to get into Bobbi’s hospital room. I call him Joel Cairo because he reminded me of Peter Lorre’s character in The Maltese Falcon.”

  “I’ve never seen it,” he said. Was he kidding? “But you may be right,” he added.

  He hung up and I went to bed without brushing my teeth; Crest and single malt whisky do not mix.

  chapter nineteen

  I spent the following morning finishing the estimate for Walter Moffat’s CD catalogue, then emailed it to the address he’d given me. There was still a lot to do to get the new space in shape for the official opening two weeks hence, so after sending off the quote, I went downstairs to lend a hand. Mary-Alice was standing at the new glass-topped display counter that we hadn’t yet decided where to put, talking on her cellphone. Her face was set and her back was rigid.

  “All right, fine,” she said coldly, and closed the phone with a hard, plastic snap. She threw it onto the countertop.

  I recognized the tone of her voice — I’d heard it often enough from Linda, my former spouse — and assumed she’d been talking to her husband, so I kept my mouth shut. The last place I wanted to be was in the middle of their marital no man’s land.

  “I sent the quote to Moffat,” I said, figuring it was a safe enough topic.

  “Did you?” she said. “Bully for you.”

  “I decided to donate our time to the foundation after all.”

  “Fine. Whatever. You’re the boss.”

  “I’m joking, Mary-Alice.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” She began viciously stripping bubble-wrap from framed examples of my and Bobbi’s work that had hung on the wall of the old studio.

  I picked up one of the photographs Mary-Alice had unwrapped. It was a shot of a pair of bridge workers dangling by their safety harness from the underside of the Lions Gate Bridge. I’d told Anna Waverley about the award I’d won for the photograph of the man rescuing the six-foot marijuana plant from the burning house, because I’d hoped it would make her smile. The photo of the dangling bridge workers had also earned me an award of sorts. I’d shot it from Wes Camacho’s helicopter. I’d been hired to take aerial photographs of the harbour area and had subcontracted Wes and his whirlybird. We were about to call it a day due to high winds and head back to the heliport when we saw the bridgeworkers’ scaffolding come apart and plummet into the water two hundred feet below. We hovered under the bridge while the wind beat at the chopper and Wes radioed information to the rescue workers and I snapped pictures. Wes had deserved the citation for bravery from Vancouver Fire and Rescue we’d shared, but as for me, I’d been scared half to death and had simply kept shooting as a distraction from my terror. Maybe Anna Waverley would have found that story worthy of a smile, I thought, as I stacked the photograph with the others.

  Mary-Alice was sitting on the floor, a half-unwrapped photograph in her hands, staring at nothing.

  “Mary-Alice?”

  She looked at me. “What?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” She went on with her unwrapping.

  I knew it was pointless pressing her, and likely to just make her angry, but I said, “I’ve been through it, you know. It isn’t easy, but you’ll come out of it okay. You’re strong.”

  She surprised me. “I appreciate your concern, Tom, but I’d rather not talk about it. Not right now.”

  “Reeny called the other night,” I said.

  “Oh. And how is she? Will she be coming home soon?”

  “She got engaged. She says I’ll like him.”

  “Oh, Tom.” She stood. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She surprised me again when she smiled and put her arms around me. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

  “We are indeed.”

  After lunch I told Mary-Alice that I had a couple of errands to run, that I’d be back in an hour or so. A few minutes later I was standing on the quay by the Broker’s Bay Marina. The gate was propped open again and a line from a Dire Straits song about security being laid-back and lax rattled through my brain. The Wonderlust’s slip was empty once more. While I was reasonably certain that Chrissy Conrad had been lying about knowing someone who knew who owned the Wonderlust as a ruse to lure me onto the dock so she could tip me into the water, I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask around.

  I jumped when someone came up behind me on the quay and clapped a hand onto my shoulder. I spun to face Skip Osterman.

  “Christ almighty, Skip.” I saw that Connie was with him. “Uh, sorry, Con.”

  “The Lord has a thicker skin than that,” she said with a smile. “Otherwise Skip would’ve been struck dead ages ago.” Connie Osterman was five feet tall, tough as a juniper root, but every inch a lady. “How’s Bobbi?” she asked.

  “Good,” I said. “She’ll be coming home any day now.”

  “Praise Him,” she said.

  “What’s up, Tom?” Skip said. “I got your message. Don’t know as we can be much help, but we’ll do what we can.”

  “You probably know most of the people who own these boats. They’ll open up to you, tell you things they wouldn’t tell the police. Or me.”

  “Maybe,” he said carefully.

  “Mrs. Waverley was killed on Monday night,” I said. “Murdered in her home.”

  Connie gasped.

  “Heard on the news about a woman gettin’ killed in a home invasion,” Skip said. “Her body was found by a friend. That was her?”

  I said it was. Skip was the second person to mention the home-invasion theory, the other being Woody Getz. I supposed the police were deliberately misinforming the media to lull the killer or killers into a false sense of security. Keeping certain details of the murder under wraps also helps to weed out the crazies who’ll confess to anything, just for the attention. I was grateful, too, that they hadn’t released my name to the media. I liked Skip and Connie, they were good people and good friends, and would be sympathetic and understanding, but I didn’t want to have to relive the events of that night over again.

  “Do you think her murder has something to do with what happened to Bobbi?” Connie asked.

  “It looks that way,
” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  “An’ we’re just simple working folk,” Skip said, without rancour. “Oof,” he added, when Connie jammed a fist into his ribs.

  “Sorry,” I said. “What I meant was, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Then save it for some evening over a couple of beers,” Connie said. “What can we do to help?”

  “It’s not that I think anyone would wilfully withhold information from the police about Bobbi’s attack or Anna Waverley’s murder, but you know boat people, especially the ones who live aboard. They can be an independent, cantankerous bunch. Present company excepted, of course,” I added.

  Not to mention that living full-time on a boat in most marinas around Vancouver not zoned for living aboard was illegal. For one thing, they weren’t equipped with waste disposal hook-ups. Sea Village had a vacuum-operated waste extraction system, but it was for the floating homes only, owned and maintained by Sea Village Inc. — that is, me and my independent, cantankerous neighbours. You could stay on your boat, as long as you had an onshore address and didn’t live on the boat for more than thirty days at a stretch. Many boat people had onshore addresses, those who could afford to, but many didn’t. Generally, the former usually stayed put in one marina, technically living ashore one day a month, while the latter tended to move from marina to marina. Neither group liked attention.

  “So you want us to ask around, is that it? Sure. No problem.”

  “Just put out the word that anyone who knows anything that might help find the person who attacked Bobbi shouldn’t be afraid to talk to the police. The police aren’t interested in busting them for living aboard. But if they really don’t want to talk to the police, they can talk to me. They have my word I won’t reveal their identities. I’ll only pass on the information they provide.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Skip said. “Most regulars know who you are, especially after your house nearly sank. Some might even trust you. What exactly is it you want to know?”

  “It’s a safe bet that someone was on board the Wonderlust the night Bobbi was attacked, either the woman who hired us or Anna Waverley or both. There may have also been one or more men on board, too; I don’t think it was a woman who beat Bobbi half to death. The police haven’t been able to find anyone who will admit to seeing anything unusual that night.”

  “Maybe no one did,” Skip said.

  “No one admits to seeing anything at all.”

  “I’m just sayin’ …”

  “What?”

  “People around here mind their own business.”

  “Bobbi was almost killed by whoever was on that boat, goddamn it.”

  “I know, but —”

  “They may have also murdered Anna Waverley.”

  “It’s all right, Tom,” Connie said. “We’ll do what we can. It’s the least we can do.”

  “Sure,” Skip said. “I didn’t mean … well, you know. It’s just, I …” Connie put her hand on her husband’s arm. He stammered to a halt.

  “I really appreciate it, you guys. And, um, sorry about the language, Con.”

  “I’ve heard lots worse,” she said. Skip smiled self-consciously.

  I spent an hour talking to people in the marina, as well as many who worked in the shops, restaurants, and cafés in the vicinity of the marina. I was acquainted with some of them by name, and I knew many more of them by sight, and many of them knew me the same way. The police had spoken to most of them already, either Mabel Firth and Baz Tucker, the detectives, or both, but those with whom the police hadn’t spoken weren’t able to add anything useful. No one had seen anything out of the ordinary the night Bobbi had been attacked. A number of people recalled seeing Anna Waverley in the marina on a regular basis, although not that night, and a few had seen her husband around, too. Some had even seen activity on the Wonderlust at various times, but not on that particular night. The boat seldom left the slip, and then usually just to go over to the civic marina for fuel or to empty its holding tanks. Almost everyone I talked to reported seeing strangers on the docks, but that wasn’t unusual; there were numerous charter and tour companies that operated out of the marina, two or three boat rental companies, as well as a number of boat brokerages. Between part-time sailors, browsers, tourists, and gawkers, at any time of year there were always strangers coming and going. One or two more weren’t going to stand out.

  Almost the entire southern shoreline of False Creek, from west of the Burrard Street Bridge, where the civic marina and the coast guard station were located, to well east of Granville Island toward the Cambie Street Bridge, was lined with marinas, often so close together they appeared to be one continuous marina. One of the busiest lay between the Burrard Street Bridge Civic Marina and the Broker’s Bay Marina. The False Creek Harbour Authority was a co-operative owned by the commercial fishermen who worked out of the marina, although it rented recreational moorages as well, permanent and transient. At a few minutes past 2:00 I walked along the seawall from Granville Island, past condominiums with decorative gardens and ducks paddling in artificial tide pools, to the False Creek Harbour Authority, where I went into the office underneath the promenade … and almost collided with the malodorous mountain of flesh that was Loth. He stood just inside the entrance, broad back to the door. His powerful body odour filled the small office. Jimmy Young, the marina manager, stood behind the counter, round cheeks and high forehead red with anger. The rest of his face was covered with a bristly grey beard. Behind Jimmy, slightly taller, stood a handsome, middle-aged woman with dark, wavy hair, silvered with grey at the tips, and bright blue eyes. A thin, barely visible line of old scar tissue slanted across the top of her cheek below her left eye. She looked vaguely familiar; I’d probably seen her around, but I didn’t know her name. She looked frightened but defiant.

  “… ain’t gonna t’row me outta my home,” Loth was saying as I tried to duck around him. “I jus’ a sick old man, ain’t got no other place to go.” He swung ponderously toward me, leaning on the handle of his sturdy wood cane.

  I backed against the counter. “I believe you,” I said, holding my hands up, palms out.

  “That boat isn’t your home,” Jimmy Young said. “Mr. Duckworth may let you stay on it, but we don’t allow full-time living aboard. Mr. Duckworth knows that.”

  “I got rights,” Loth said to me, ignoring Jimmy. “Tell’em, mister man.”

  “Sure you do,” I said agreeably. “Absolutely. You’ve got rights. Plenty of rights.”

  Jimmy’s scowl was scorching. “He’s been flushing the holding tanks into the harbour. And he’s made filthy comments to Barb,” he added, turning his head toward the woman standing behind him. Her cheeks coloured, causing the thin furrow of scar tissue below her eye to stand out white against pink. There was another scar running along the left edge of her jaw, longer, slightly deeper, but just as old.

  “I din’t mean nothin’,” Loth whined. “I’m jus’ —”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jimmy said. “A sick old man.”

  “Tell’em, mister man,” Loth said to me. “I ain’t hurt no one. No one.” He lumbered out of the office, leaning heavily on the cane. It bent so much under his weight I expected it to snap at any moment. Fortunately, it held; it would have taken block and tackle to get the huge old man onto his feet again.

  “It was just words, Jimmy,” the woman said when Loth had gone. “Crude, but I’ve heard worse.” She leaned toward him, kissed him tenderly on the cheek. “But thanks, you’re a gent.” He flushed and she smiled at me. “Hello, you’re Tom McCall, aren’t you? I’m Barbara Reese.” She held out her hand. Her handshake was warm, dry, and strong.

  “How do you do,” I said. “Um, have we met?”

  “No, not really,” she said. “But I do volunteer work at the community centre and you and a young lady gave a demonstration of digital photography for the kids this spring.”

  Mary-Alice’s idea. Goodwill advertising, she’d said. It hadn’t gener
ated any work that I was aware of, but it hadn’t cost us anything but a little of our time, and it had been fun.

  Jimmy cleared his throat. I didn’t know Jimmy Young well, but he was a regular at Bridges, liked to talk fly-fishing, about which I knew next to nothing. I’d asked him once if he ate all the flies he caught or was he a catch-and-release fly fisherman. He’d actually laughed, as if he hadn’t heard it a thousand times.

  “Cops came around asking about you,” he said. “Did we know anyone who had it in for you? That sort of thing. I told ’em I didn’t know you well enough, just to jaw with in Bridges sometimes. They asked a load of questions about last Tuesday night, too, did we see anything unusual going on. People runnin’ along the seawall or the path under the bridge. Someone dumping something out of a Zodiac.”

  “Did you?”

  “Couldn’t very well. Can’t really see much of the promenade from here,” he added, pointing to the ceiling. “Even if we could, we weren’t workin’ that night. Patsy and Roger were on. They didn’t notice anything, either. Real sorry about your friend, though. Hope she’s goin’ to be all right.”

  “Thanks. She’s going to be fine. There’s something I’d like to ask you, though. Do you know who owns the boat Bobbi was attacked on? It’s called Wonderlust.”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “What about Anna Waverley and her husband, Samuel?”

  “Name rings a bell,” Jimmy said.

  “You remember, Jimmy,” Barbara Reese said. “They came in a few months back looking for a berth for their sailboat, but we didn’t have anything available. She was very quiet. About forty. Pretty. Reddish hair. He was older. Drove a Mercedes. You called her a ‘trophy wife’ because she was younger than him.”

  “Yeah, I remember now.”

  “She was murdered the other night,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” said Barbara.

  Jimmy said, “What’s that got to do with us?”