Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  “Hello, Sam,” Chrissy said.

  “Hello, Christine,” Samuel Waverley said, his voice dull and grey. He looked at me.

  “Sam,” Chrissy said. “This is Tom McCall.”

  “How do you do, Mr. McCall. Did I hear you tell Doris you were a friend of Anna’s? I don’t recall her ever mentioning your name.”

  “I only met her recently,” I said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, thank you.” He had the good grace to look embarrassed, accepting condolences on the death of his wife in the presence of two women with whom he’d also shared his bed.

  “He’s the one who found Anna’s body,” Chrissy said. I shot her an angry glare, which she ignored.

  “Ah,” Waverley said, as if he weren’t really interested. “That, um, couldn’t have been very pleasant.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said.

  He nodded toward the redhead. “Doris has just made coffee. There’s probably enough for the four of us. Doris, why don’t you bring it.” Silently, Doris withdrew to the kitchen. As she passed in front of the fire, the skirt of her flimsy housedress was momentarily translucent. Her legs were long and strong and straight. She reminded me of Reeny Lindsey, with a little more mileage on her.

  “Why don’t we sit down,” Waverley said, gesturing toward the long, rustic wood-frame sofa against the wall facing the far side of the fireplace. Without waiting for a reply, he sagged into a matching armchair. “How well did you know my wife, Mr. McCall?” he asked.

  “Not well,” I said, sitting at the end of the sofa nearest his chair. “I met her just a couple of days before she died.” Chrissy sat beside me, perched on the edge of the sofa, hands on her knees. Her jeans were spattered with dried black paint.

  “Were you …?” he began. “Did you …?” he tried again. Finally, he said, “What was the nature of your relationship with her?”

  “It was too soon to tell,” I said.

  “I see,” he said. “How did you come to meet her?”

  “Her name came up in connection with an incident in which a close friend of mine was badly hurt,” I said diplomatically.

  “Incident? What sort of incident?”

  “My friend and business partner was attacked while attempting to photograph a boat called the Wonderlust.”

  “The Wonderlust? But that’s …” He paused, then said, “How could Anna possibly have been involved in your partner’s attack?”

  “I don’t think she was.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Someone,” I said pointedly, “posing as your wife, hired us to photograph the Wonderlust.” Chrissy gave me a hard look. “My partner was beaten and thrown into False Creek under the Burrard Street Bridge. Your wife may have witnessed the attack. She left me a telephone message the night she was killed, saying that she had something to tell me, but by the time I got to your house, she was dead.”

  Doris came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with four coffee cups, sugar, and creamer. She had tied her unruly hair back, which accentuated the length and strength of her face. She placed the tray on the table beside Waverley’s chair.

  “Help yourselves,” she said, taking one of the cups and folding herself into another armchair at the far end of the sofa, tucking her long legs under her, arranging her skirt over her knees.

  “I’ll be mother, then, shall I?” Waverley said. “I know Christine takes hers black.” He handed me a cup. It was only slightly more than half full. I passed it to Chrissy. “How do you take yours, Mr. McCall? It’s only milk, I’m afraid.”

  “Black will be fine,” I said.

  He handed me a cup. “That was easy.” He added sugar and milk to the fourth cup, stirred it in with two strokes of a spoon. After he’d tasted it, he nodded, set it down, cleared his throat, and said, “So, you were explaining why you went to see Anna the night she was killed. She had something to tell you, you said. What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She never got the chance to tell me.”

  “Yes, of course.” He picked up his coffee cup and saucer and, holding the saucer in one hand, the cup in the other, delicately pursed his lips on the rim of the cup and sipped. He returned the cup to the saucer and put both down again. “The police told me a man visited Anna at our home on Saturday evening, and stayed for over two hours, but that he was not a suspect in her murder. Was that yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you deny you were having an affair with her.”

  I hadn’t denied it, because he hadn’t asked. I said, “I went to talk to her about my partner’s attack.”

  “About which you yourself said she knew nothing.”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know. No, I don’t think I did. I think she was killed by the same person who attacked my partner.”

  “The police gave me to believe that it was likely a home invasion gone wrong,” Mr. Waverley said.

  “Whoever killed your wife tried to make it look like suicide, Mr. Waverley, as if she’d hanged herself from a ceiling beam.”

  “That’s absurd,” Waverley sputtered, face reddening. “Anna would never …” He hesitated, shaking his head, his expression uncertain. “She’d been depressed lately, but …” He shook his head again, as if trying to dislodge an unwanted thought. “No, I can’t …”

  “You’re not listening,” I said, a little more harshly than I’d intended. “I said her death was made to look like suicide. Why would a home invader bother to do that?”

  “Uh, yes, of course. My apologies. I’m very upset.” He picked up his coffee cup, took three small, noisy sips, then set it down again, his composure seemingly restored, although he still looked like death warmed over. “How is it that you were the one to find my — Anna’s body, Mr. McCall? What were you doing in my house at that time of night? Were you having an affair with her?”

  I felt the heat rise in my face, along with the frustration. How many times was I going to have to explain the nature of my relationship with his wife before it stuck? “No, sir,” I said. “I was not having an affair with your wife.”

  “Again, my apologies,” Waverley said. “I’m not tracking very well. The shock, I suppose.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You don’t know what it was she wanted to tell you?”

  “Not specifically,” I said. “I’m sure she was killed to prevent her from telling me who was responsible for the attempted murder of my partner, though.”

  “Did you not say that it was someone posing as Anna who hired you, not Anna herself?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said.

  “Then how could Anna have known anything about your partner’s attack?”

  “She was at the marina around the time of the attack.”

  “She’s often there. The marina is on her running route. Also, we keep our sailboat there.”

  “It’s also possible she was on the Wonderlust?”

  “The Wonderlust?”

  “The boat my partner was attacked on,” I said, trying without much success to control my impatience.

  “Yes, of course. Both Anna and myself have been on the Wonderlust a number of times. Surely you’re not suggesting that Anna was present when your partner was attacked.”

  “I think she was.”

  “Well, you’re wrong, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think I am,” I said. “I think that’s why she called me the night she was killed.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you certain it was Anna who called you?” he asked. “Could it not have been the same person who impersonated her to hire you to photograph the boat?”

  “No, it was Anna.”

  “How can you be so positive?”

  I looked at Chrissy. “Do you want to tell him?”

  She shook her head. “Go ahead. You’re doing fine.”

  I turned
back to Sam Waverley. “It was Miss Conrad who posed as your wife to hire us to photograph the Wonderlust as part of a fraudulent sales scheme.”

  From her chair by the far end of the long sofa, Doris laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. Chrissy glared at her. “Sorry,” Doris said, but she didn’t seem the least bit contrite.

  Waverley stared at Chrissy in silence for a long moment, before saying, “Anna was right about you, wasn’t she?”

  Chrissy replied with a shrug.

  “Can you think of any reason your wife would be on the Wonderlust?” I asked.

  “We’ve both been on it as guests of the owners,” Waverley said.

  “Do you know the owners?”

  “Of course. It’s owned by a charitable foundation Anna supported. I, ah, don’t recall the name. Something to do with children. It’s headed by …” He hesitated.

  “Elise Moffat,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s right. However, surely it’s common knowledge that Mrs. Moffat’s foundation owned the boat. After all …” He paused, looking at Chrissy. “You certainly knew.”

  “I did not,” Chrissy denied vehemently.

  “In any event,” Waverley said, “what reason would Anna have to be on the Wonderlust the night your partner was attacked?”

  “I think she was meeting her lover. I think Bobbi interrupted them, and your wife’s lover attacked her.”

  “Her?”

  “My business partner is a woman.”

  “I see.” He leaned forward and reached for his coffee cup. His hand shook slightly as he picked it up, took a sip, and made a face. It rattled in the saucer as he put it down. “An interesting theory,” he said. “But what makes you so certain Anna even had a lover?”

  “She told me you encouraged her to take lovers,” I added, glancing at the silent and watchful Doris. “To assuage your own guilt.”

  “Assuage,” he said, undoubtedly impressed by my vocabulary.

  “Do you know your wife’s lover’s name?” I said.

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “Because if you do, the police would be very interested in knowing it.” As would I, I added to myself.

  “I don’t even know for certain that Anna had a lover.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Waverley —” I began.

  “That’s bullshit,” Chrissy Conrad concluded.

  “You know damned well your wife had a lover,” I said.

  “So do I,” Chrissy said.

  Waverley waved his hand in front of his face. “Who cares what you think?” he said. “You are nothing but a thief and a whore.”

  “Hey,” Chrissy protested. “I am not a whore.”

  Did Doris frown? I thought I caught the glowering of a frown, but she hid it behind her coffee cup, a gesture that was painfully reminiscent of the way Anna Waverley had hidden her smiles.

  “Perhaps it’s time you left,” Samuel Waverley said. “Before it gets too dark to drive back down the mountain.”

  “I came here because I hoped you would be able to help me figure out who tried to kill my partner and who killed your wife. I get the feeling, though, that you aren’t really interested in who killed your wife.”

  He looked as though I’d sucker-punched him. “That’s preposterous,” he protested.

  “You know who her lover was, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” he sputtered.

  “Why are you protecting him?” I demanded. “There’s a good chance he killed her.”

  “No, I —”

  “Goddamn it,” Chrissy said, jumping to her feet. “You hired someone to kill her, didn’t you, you bastard.” She was singing a different tune than she had earlier, when she’d said she didn’t think Waverley would know how to hire a hit man.

  “What? No. That’s ridiculous,” Waverley said, his voice weak and rasping.

  “Sure you did, you son of a bitch. She was going to divorce you, wasn’t she?”

  “No …”

  “And if you didn’t give her everything she wanted, she was going to tell the police how you’d been fiddling provenance for years, ripping off your clients with fakes and reproductions and student copies.”

  “Please, Mr. McCall,” Waverley pleaded. His colour was even greyer and perspiration beaded his upper lip. The fireplace threw a fair amount of heat into the room, but I didn’t think that was the reason he was sweating. “Don’t listen to her. She’s nothing but a —” He gasped for air. “She —”

  Doris unfolded herself from her chair and went to him. “Sam?”

  “Are you all right?” I asked, suddenly worried. He was sweating profusely and the flesh of his face was splotched with red.

  “Help him,” Doris said to me.

  “I think we should get him to a doctor,” I said.

  Chrissy snorted with disgust. “The bastard’s faking. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  Waverley staggered out of his chair. His eyes rolled up into his head. And he fell to the floor as though he were a marionette and someone had just clipped his strings.

  chapter twenty-four

  “Sam!” Doris cried, throwing herself onto her knees, crouching over him.

  “Oh, fuck,” Chrissy Conrad said.

  “Sam!” Doris cried again. “Oh, god, Sam!” She rolled him onto his back. His face was a ghastly grey-green and his lips were beginning to turn blue.

  I knelt beside her, pressed my fingers to Waverley’s throat. I actually felt a pulse — amazing what you can learn from the Discovery Channel — but it seemed thready and irregular.

  “Does he have heart-attack medicine?” I asked Doris.

  “What? No. Oh, god. A heart attack. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”

  “Is there a phone?” I asked, before remembering that the woman at Waverley’s shop had said there wasn’t. Chrissy had her cellphone out. She pressed buttons. “No service,” she said, closing it.

  I pulled Doris to her feet, looked at her flimsy housedress. “Get some clothes on. Bring some blankets. We’ll take him in my car.”

  While Chrissy and I donned our respective footwear, Doris put on a long, down-filled coat and green rubber wellington boots and slung a purse across her shoulders. Then we lifted Sam Waverley to his feet and half carried, half dragged him out of the cabin. It was raining again, light but steady, and thin tendrils of residual fog hung in the trees. Waverley was a dead weight as we manhandled him down the muddy track to the Liberty. Doris opened the back door, then went round to the other side. Between the three of us we got him into the car. Doris climbed into the back with him and wrapped him in the blankets.

  “You’re going to have to fasten his seat belt,” I said to her as I got into the car. “It’s going to be a rough ride.”

  Rough didn’t begin to describe the drive down the mountain on that miserable excuse for a road. The Liberty shuddered and banged and tilted alarmingly as it careened along the old logging road, bouncing over rocks and splashing through ruts and skidding round switchbacks, while Chrissy braced herself against the dashboard and Doris held on to Sam Waverley, who flopped like a rag doll in her arms. It was all I could do to maintain a grip on the steering wheel. At times I thought it was going to come off in my hands. As we rounded the final switchback, Doris cried out and Chrissy said, “Oh, shit,” as the Liberty heeled over onto two wheels like a sailboat running close to the wind. It slammed down again with a horrendous crash, fishtailed sickeningly as I fought for control, then straightened with a frightful bang and a gut-wrenching lurch.

  “Christ,” Chrissy said, but she was grinning broadly.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun,” I said through clenched teeth.

  It had taken more than an hour to get from the highway to the cabin. It took less than half an hour to make the return trip. When we reached the highway, I had to almost pry my hands from the steering wheel to shift into two-wheel drive. Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the emergency bay of Brackendale Community Hospital in the town
of Squamish, where Sam Waverley was pronounced dead on arrival.

  “I’m sorry,” the young Native doctor said. “There wasn’t anything we could do. You did the best you could to get him here, but even if he’d had the heart attack next door, we might not have been able to save him, it was that massive.”

  “Oh, god, did we kill him?” Chrissy moaned when the doctor had left.

  I was about to say we probably had, but Doris shook her head, her mane of wet red curls fanning, falling across her face. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, almost to herself. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but dry. “It’s as much my fault as anyone’s,” she went on. “Before you arrived we’d been arguing about — well, I’d told him two weeks ago that when this trip was over, I was going to leave. He was very hurt and angry. Added to the stress of travel and the shock of learning of Anna’s death …” She shook her head. “He’d been having chest pains for some time,” she added.

  Chrissy did not look comforted.

  Doris looked at me. In the hard, hospital lighting, her freckles stood out starkly against the paleness of her skin. “With Anna dead, too, who’s going to make arrangements for him?”

  “Did he have any other family?” I said.

  She shook her head. “He has a sister, I think, but I don’t know where she is.”

  “She’s in a nursing home in Toronto,” Chrissy said.

  “Then there’s no one,” Doris said.

  “He must have a lawyer,” I said.

  “Yes, he does. Of course. Thank you. I’m not thinking very clearly right now. I’ll get in touch with him when I get back to the city. Thank you.”

  “Do you need anything from the cabin?” I asked her. I didn’t relish the drive. It was still raining and the thick cloud cover had turned day to night.

  “No, nothing. Oh, except the car. And I suppose someone will have to go back and close it up. But I’ve no way of getting back to Vancouver.”

  “We’ll take you,” I said.

  “Would you? That’s very kind of you.”

  It was the least we could do, I said to myself, after killing her boyfriend.