at all, but a mushroom-shaped peninsula joined to the Kitsilano mainland by a thick stem of land — around to the little park known as Cultural Harmony Grove just east of the Burrard Street Bridge, looked like one continuous marina. It was really three marinas: the Broker’s Bay Marina, the False Creek Harbour Authority, and the Burrard Bridge Civic Marina. The latter extended a hundred metres beyond the bridge and had moorings directly beneath the span. I didn’t know precisely where Bobbi had been found by the off-duty paramedic in his kayak, but I guessed it must have been somewhere near the docks under the bridge.
I returned to the quay.
Bobbi was supposed to have met Ms. Waverley on the Wonderlust at eight. Matthias had said she’d been found just past eleven. Where had she been between eight and eleven o’clock? What had she been doing under the bridge? Had she been fleeing from her attacker or attackers? Or had she been attacked somewhere else and dumped into False Creek under the bridge? At some point while I had lain abed and sleepless after returning from the hospital, it had occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Matthias if the police had found the van. Had someone assaulted and dumped Bobbi in order to steal the van and the photo equipment? That didn’t explain how Bobbi had ended up in the water under the bridge. She’d have parked the van in the nearby lot between the boat works and Bridges restaurant and pub. It wasn’t there; I’d looked.
I was still standing on the quay at a few minutes to seven, wondering if I really wanted to walk around the bay to where Bobbi had been found, when a man in a red squall jacket and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap arrived to open the marina office. He wasn’t alone. With him were two uniformed cops. The cops worked out of the Granville Island Community Police Office and I knew them both. Constable Mabel Firth was a friend, a strapping dirty blonde in her forties whose husband Bill also worked for the city. Mabel’s partner, a former professional football player named Baz Tucker, was younger and bigger and blonder. Neither appeared pleased to see me.
“What’re you doing here, Tom?” Mabel asked. Before I could reply, she said, “Go home. Let us do our job.”
“I won’t get in the way,” I said.
“Since when?” she said.
“I just want to talk to Anna Waverley, the woman who owns that boat.” I pointed toward the Wonderlust. “Bobbi was supposed to meet her last night, to take some photographs of the boat. Maybe she saw who attacked her.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No. She’s not aboard.”
“Leave it to the RAS investigators, Tom. They’ll be here in a minute. Go on home now,” she said sternly, as if speaking to her ten-year-old. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to leave, she said, “I understand how you feel, Tom. Bobbi’s my friend, too. Look at it from our point of view. You could be a suspect yourself. I know,” she added quickly, holding up her hand to cut off my response, “it’s ridiculous, but tell that to the suits. As far as they know, you and Bobbi could’ve had a falling-out over business. It happens all the time. Or maybe you were more than just business partners and had a lover’s quarrel. See how it can get complicated?”
“Heads up,” Baz Tucker said quietly as two men came along the quay, dressed almost identically in suits so plain they were like uniforms.
“Which one of you is Firth?” the older of the two men asked. He was in his mid-fifties, with watery blue eyes and a pale, acne-scarred complexion. His partner was in his thirties, with a smooth, olive complexion, and full, almost voluptuous lips that I imagined many women would envy. There was nothing even remotely feminine about his piercing, dark eyes.
“I am,” Mabel said.
“I’m Kovacs. He’s Henshaw. Who’s this guy?”
“Tom McCall,” Mabel said. “The victim’s partner.”
“As in husband? Boyfriend?”
“Her business partner.”
“Okay,” Kovacs said. “But he still shouldn’t be here.”
“I told him that.”
He turned to me. “We’ll come find you when we need to talk with you.”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” I said.
He turned his head slightly, squinted one pale blue eye and peered at me with the other. “Are we gonna have a problem with you?”
“A problem? With me? Heck, no.” Mabel looked as though she wished she were home in bed.
He scowled and shrugged and said to Mabel and Tucker, “We can take it from here.” He and his partner went into the marina office.
Mabel turned to me. “Go home.”
“I’ll just hang around out here till they’re finished talking to the marina operator.”
She heaved a sigh of resignation, then she and Baz left. A few minutes later, the detectives came out of the marina office.
“You still here?” Kovacs said.
“So it would appear,” I replied, which earned me another scowl.
“Tell me about the woman who hired you to take pictures of her boat. What’d she look like?” I assumed Greg Matthias had passed on the information I’d given him.
“She had medium-length blonde hair,” I said, “but her eyebrows were dark, almost black. She had an oval face with big green eyes and even features. Good teeth, except for a slightly crooked left upper incisor. She wore a little too much makeup perhaps, but she was quite attractive. In her early thirties. Say five-six in her bare feet. Well built, but Bobbi didn’t think it was all natural. She may have been joking, though.”
“That’s a very detailed description,” he said. “Mostly we get crap. You got a good eye. I suppose that comes with being a photographer.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
He consulted his notebook. “And she told you her name was Anna Waverley and that she got the boat as part of her divorce settlement.”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Who’s Bobby?”
“My partner, the victim. Bobbi — with an ‘i’ — Brooks.”
“Right. Bobbi. Short for Roberta. Does she usually work alone?”
“Not always, but we both do from time to time, especially when we’re busy. Depends on the job. I would have taken this one, but something came up with another client.”
“Did Anna Waverley give you a billing address?”
“No. She paid cash. Something to do with her divorce. She told me she lived in Point Grey, or rather that she got the house in Point Grey in her divorce settlement, but I assumed she was staying on the boat. She isn’t aboard now, though. She told me she had a possible buyer who was leaving for Hawaii today, which is why she needed the photographs last night.”
“All right, thanks.”
He nodded to his
