equipment with her. I don’t give a damn about the van or the equipment — it’s all insured — but if either turns up it’ll provide you with a lead, won’t it? Have you found the van?”
Kovacs shook his head. “I haven’t heard,” he said. “Give me the plate number.”
I gave him the van’s license number, which he wrote in his notebook. “I’ll have to look in my files to give you any information about the equipment. Can I fax it to you?”
Kovacs wrote something on the back of a card. “That’s the case number,” he said, handing me the card. “Write it on each page of the fax. Are we done?”
“Just one more thing, if you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind?”
I told him what Witt DeWalt had told me, that Anna Waverley didn’t own the Wonderlust, and that the woman who’d hired us probably hadn’t been Anna Waverley.
Kovacs nodded. “Yeah, so what’s your question?”
“If the people who own that boat didn’t hire us, who did? And why?”
“Yeah,” Kovacs said again. “Good question. The woman who called herself Anna Waverley, she touch anything while she was in your office?”
“Now that you mention it, no, I don’t think she did.”
“She paid you in cash. What about the money?”
“We used a couple of twenties to pay for pizza last night. The rest Bobbi may have still had on her.”
“So fingerprints are out. How much money are we talking about?”
“Not a lot. Two hundred and fifty.”
“We’ll put out a description of the woman, but if it was a set-up, chances are she altered her appearance. Did she seem upset or disconcerted at all that your partner was going to meet her here, not you?”
“As far as she knew, I was going to meet her, not Bobbi.”
“We’ll canvass the area to see if anyone saw your partner here last evening,” Kovacs said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to set you or her up like this?”
“You mean you think it was just a ploy to get Bobbi or me, or perhaps both of us, here to beat us up?” Or worse …
“It’s a possibility,” Kovacs said. “Sergeant Matthias told me you’ve had your share of excitement in the last couple of years. Trouble tends to follow you around, he says. Usually wearing a skirt. Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a woman in a skirt.”
“Maybe you hang out with the wrong crowd.”
“No doubt about it,” he agreed. “So have either you or Bobbi pissed anyone off lately?” He said it as though he’d be surprised I hadn’t.
“No one who would hurt her like that.” As far as I knew, Vince Ryan was still in the wind, and since I’d thrown a wrench into his resort development deal in Whistler a few years earlier, he might think he had reason enough to beat the crap out of me and throw me into False Creek to drown. He was certainly crazy enough. As crazy as he was, though, he had nothing against Bobbi. Chris Hastings, Reeny Lindsey’s old boyfriend, was also out there somewhere, but he had even less reason to hurt Bobbi.
“What about ex-boyfriends?” Kovacs asked. “She break anyone’s heart lately? Or their balls?”
“Well, there was a guy she was living with three or four years ago,” I said. “An artist named Tony Chan. He tapped her credits cards out to the tune of about twenty thousand dollars, and she sued him. The van she was driving last night used to be his. He might hold a grudge, but the last we heard, he was doing okay.”
He made a note. “That’s it? No one else?”
Besides Greg Matthias? I wondered. “Not that I can think of.”
“Well, if you do think of anyone else, you’ll let me know?”
“Of course.”
“And,” he added emphatically, “don’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Certainly not,” I said. From his expression, it was obvious he didn’t believe me.
chapter four
It was after nine by the time I staggered off the elevator into the studio, eyes grainy, feeling as though I hadn’t slept in a month. My exhaustion must have been plain to see, because even Mary-Alice noticed it.
“You look terrible,” she said. “What were you up to last night?”
“And a good morning to you, too, Mary-Alice.”
“Did Jeanie Stone give you a bad time? Please tell me you managed to talk her into keeping her clothes on for the calendar.”
“Most of them,” I said.
She regarded me with a mixture of exasperation and disappointment. “Poor Tom. Any judgment you possess goes straight out the window at the thought of photographing women without their clothes on, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, fuck off, Mary-Alice,” I said wearily.
She stared at me, eyes wide. “My, aren’t we Mr. Grumpy Pants this morning.”
“Sorry, Mary-Alice,” I said. “I’ve had a tough night.”
“Is there something wrong? Did something happen? Oh, god, it’s not Hilly, is it?”
“No. Hilly’s fine. Where’s Wayne?”
“He’s in the back,” she replied. “Why?”
“There’s something I need to tell you both.”
“What?” I looked at her and waited. I didn’t want to have to go through it twice. “I’ll go get him,” she said, finally getting the hint.
While Mary-Alice was fetching Wayne, I looked up the number of the Vancouver General Hospital. Wayne and Mary-Alice came into the office as I was dialling. I hung up before the call went through. There was no point in beating around the bush.
“Bobbi was attacked last night,” I said. “She’s in the hospital.”
Wayne’s face went white.
“Oh my god,” Mary-Alice said. “What happened?”
“She was beaten up and dumped into False Creek under the Burrard Street Bridge.”
“Is she g-g-going to b-be all r-r-right?” Wayne said, his stammer worsened by the stress.
“God, was she raped?” Mary-Alice asked.
“No, she wasn’t raped. But she was still unconscious when I left the hospital at three this morning. I’m going to call now.”
I pressed the redial button on the phone while Wayne and Mary-Alice watched. Wayne was almost wringing his hands with worry. When he’d first started working for us, he’d developed a terrible crush on Bobbi and was rendered almost incoherent in her presence. He was mostly over it, but from time to time I suspected that it had grown into something deeper and stronger, albeit unrequited. With a sudden cold clench of dread, I wondered if his frustration had finally got the better of him. I immediately rejected the idea as absurd; Wayne couldn’t have done that to Bobbi. The police didn’t know him as well as I did, though. I hoped he had a better alibi that I did.
I finally got past the hospital’s automated phone system to a human being, who told me that Roberta Brooks had been admitted, and transferred me to the appropriate nursing station, where I had to navigate yet another set of menus to get an actual nurse. I lied then, telling the nurse that I was Bobbi’s brother, otherwise she wouldn’t have given me the