an hour fiddling with the proposal, tweaking some of the numbers, tightening up some of the conditions and assumptions, making some minor changes to the wording suggested by the Griz, before faxing the revised version to Willson Quayle’s office at nine.
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” Bobbi said as the final page chugged through the fax scanner.
So did I.
We spent the rest of the morning trying to map out how we were going to actually get all the work done by the fourth Thursday in November, while at the same time keeping what other clients we had happy. It was going to mean long days and working weekends, but we were used to that, just not quite so many. A few minutes before noon, my sister Mary-Alice called.
“Can I buy you lunch, big brother?”
“Uh, sure,” I answered, trying to recall the last time Mary-Alice had bought me lunch. It occurred to me that she had never bought me lunch. “What’s the occasion?” I asked.
“No occasion,” she said. “I’m in the city, so I thought I’d buy you lunch, that’s all.” She was calling from a restaurant on her cellphone, judging from the noise in the background. “You’re not too busy, are you?” Was that sarcasm I heard in her voice?
“No,” I said. “I’m not too busy.” I was anxious to hear from Willson Quayle, of course, but hanging around the office hovering over the phone wouldn’t make him call any sooner.
“Good,” she said. “How about the VAG café?”
“Fine,” I said. “I can be there in fifteen, twenty minutes.” The Vancouver Art Gallery was an easy walk from the studio.
“I’ll be on the terrace,” she said and disconnected.
I told Bobbi where I’d be in case Willson Quayle called — not that it would do any good; unlike everyone else on the planet, I didn’t have a cellphone — then went to meet my sister. When I got to the VAG, I found her waiting at a table on the café terrace, with a glass of white wine, almost empty.
“Are you fully recovered from Saturday night?” Mary-Alice asked after we’d placed our orders. She’d ordered another glass of wine with lunch.
“Pretty much. Um, have the police been in touch with you?” I asked hesitantly.
“The police?” she repeated. “Why would they want to talk to me?” Her green eyes sharpened. “God, your friend Kevin, he’s not pressing charges, is he? I didn’t hit him that hard. Why, I’ve half a mind to press charges myself.”
“Relax, Mary-Alice. Kevin’s not pressing charges. I doubt he even remembers you hit him. I think you over-reacted a bit, though, if you want my opinion.”
“I don’t. What would the police want to talk to me about then?”
I told her about the dead man. “Do you have any idea who he was?”
“Certainly not,” she replied indignantly, as though she was offended by the very idea that I thought she’d actually know someone with the poor taste to pick my roof deck to die on. “What was he wearing?” I told her. She said, “I think I may have seen him in the kitchen.”
“What was he doing? Was he talking to anyone?”
She shook her head, golden blond hair swishing across her cheeks. “Not that I recall. He was getting ice out of the freezer.” She was quiet for a moment, eyes unfocused, mouth pinched, then said, “What would a man you don’t know, and who doesn’t carry identification, be doing at your birthday party?”
“Well, I don’t suppose he was having a good time, all things considered.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Her cheeks reddened and she swallowed dryly. She took a sip of wine, then said, “Do you think he could have been a private detective?”
It had occurred to me that Linda might have hired a private detective to build a case for custody, but I’d rejected the idea; she’d seemed prepared, if push came to shove, to let Hilly stay with me while she and Jack were in Australia. Nevertheless, I said, “Sure, Mary-Alice. Why not?”
“Oh, god.” Mary-Alice drank more wine, emptying her glass. She looked genuinely alarmed.
“Geez, Mary-Alice. Relax. I didn’t mean it. Yes, I guess he could have been a private detective, but what would a private detective be doing at my party? More precisely, who or what would he have been privately detecting?”
“He may have been privately detecting me.”
While Mary-Alice had always looked younger than her years — she’s three years younger than me — she was wearing more makeup than usual, in spite of which the lines around her mouth and radiating from the corners of her eyes were deeper and more plentiful than I remembered. She was still trim and fit, from a careful diet and hours in the gym every week, but she looked tired and drawn.
“What’s going on, M-A?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”
“As it happens,” she said, “no, everything is not all right.”
Before I had a chance to ask what was wrong, our food arrived, along with Mary-Alice’s second glass of wine. She picked it up as soon as the waitress departed and gulped a third of it down. I knew from experience that Mary-Alice did not hold her wine well.
“Are you driving?” I asked.
“Oh, fuck off,” she snapped, reminding me that she only looked ladylike and demure. She put her wineglass down. “Sorry,” she said.
“All right, what’s wrong?”
“Well, for starters, David is having an affair with his nurse.” David was Dr. David Paul, Mary-Alice’s husband, a highly respected proctologist, if there was such a thing, who was old enough to be Mary-Alice’s — and my — father.
“If that’s true,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Of course it’s true.”
“How do you know he’s having an affair? Jesus, you didn’t hire a private detective yourself, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how do you know he’s having an affair?”
“How does any woman know?” she replied.
I sighed. “Just like Mom knew Dad was having an affair with Maggie Urquhart.”
“Okay, so she may have been wrong about that, but I’m not wrong about David.”
“Linda knew I was having an affair with the photo editor at the Sun,” I said. “I wasn’t. So, I repeat, how do you know David’s having an affair?”
“I thought it was Bobbi you were having the affair with,” Mary-Alice said.
“I wasn’t having an affair with anyone,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t even know Bobbi at the time. But that’s — ”
“
