Ashley Bell: A Novel (33 page)

In rebellion against the claustrophobic fog, which had begun to cloud her thoughts almost as effectively as it shrouded the seaside communities, Bibi drove north to Newport Coast Drive and a couple of miles inland to a shopping center bathed in sunshine. She parked in a quiet corner of the lot, in the feathery shade of nonbearing olive trees, as far as possible from the busy Pavilions market.

If Chubb Coy and the dead professor had known what car Bibi was driving, they might have shared that information with others, and she might soon need new transportation. Lacking a GPS, the Honda could not be easily tracked wherever it went. Her enemies would have to be lucky to spot it in the hustle-bustle of Orange County’s millions, but they seemed to have a lot of luck.

According to Coy, arrayed against her were not merely Terezin and his large cult; there were other “factions.” She didn’t know what to make of that information. Only a day ago, had anyone babbled about a secret occult-powered fascist conspiracy, Bibi would have regarded them as citizens of Cuckoo City. Now she was being asked to fold into that idea the existence of other conspirators with different goals; Chubb Coy was adamantly not a fascist. Could it really be true that, per Shakespeare, our world in all its complexity was a stage and all its people merely players, and
at the same time,
per H. P. Lovecraft, that below the main stage were unknown others on which different dramas played out, secretly affecting the lives of everyone upstairs?

She didn’t want to believe that. Life was tenuous enough without having to worry about what trolls and molochs might be scheming in the basement. Yet it seemed that, to find Ashley Bell and to hope to survive the search, she needed to proceed as if this paranoid vision of the world was indisputable.

Indeed, as she watched people coming and going from Pavilions and the other stores, she quickly realized that she could adapt to this new “reality” more easily than her parents ever would. Their surrender to fate—
it’ll be what it’ll be
—encouraged no serious pondering of cause and effect; by laying everything at the doorstep of fate, you were reducing the intellect from the status of a world-changing tool to that of a toy with which to invent amusements that would soften the world’s sharp edges. Bibi liked the sharp edges. They kept her alert. They made her think harder. They added interest to life.

By contrast, there wasn’t much of interest in Dr. St. Croix’s roomy handbag. Bibi hoped to find it crammed full of evidence of criminal acts and nefarious intentions, all of it pointing to the whereabouts of Ashley Bell. But aside from the usual junk, there were only three items of interest.

The first was an envelope containing five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Chances were, this was either money that the professor had been paid under the table or a payment she was prepared to make to someone else. In either case, it was more likely to be related to some dirty business than to a legal transaction.

Bibi considered the moral implications for five seconds and then took the money. It didn’t feel like theft. It felt like wisdom. When she used her credit cards, she risked revealing her location. She had no way of knowing what cash she might need before she completed this task or died trying.

The second item was either a real wasp or a perfectly rendered little sculpture of one frozen in a lozenge of polished Lucite, its stinger curved in the strike position. Attached to the lozenge was a key chain holding a single electronic key. Not for a car. No company name or logo identified it. She had never seen one like it. The electronic key to St. Croix’s Mercedes was by itself on a second ring, and yet another ring held several conventional keys.

The third thing of interest was a paper napkin bearing the red logo of a restaurant chain celebrated for its hamburgers but also for the fact that it served breakfast all day. On the napkin was the name Mrs. Halina Berg, a phone number, and an address in the Old Town district of Tustin. The handwriting was bold, arguably that of a man. In any case, the good professor hadn’t written it; she was famous for the notes with which she decorated the manuscripts of students, all in precise printing of exquisite readability, some being brilliant and/or enigmatic writing advice, some withering criticism. Perhaps she ordered only water for her meal with Chubb Coy at Norm’s because she’d already eaten breakfast elsewhere.

Halina Berg.

Calling ahead seemed like a bad idea. Like asking to be met with guns and handcuffs. Besides, if another housebreaking was required, leaving a name beforehand would be foolish.

Although Bibi had driven through this neighborhood numerous times over the years, she didn’t know it well. So she was surprised when, without consulting the numbers painted on the curb or those on the houses, she knew the Berg residence the moment that she saw it. A two-story rambling Spanish Colonial Revival house of considerable charm, it was set well back from the street, shaded by tall and majestic live oaks crowned to perfection.

An elderly woman was sweeping the stoop. She did not look up as Bibi drove by and parked half a block away.

When Bibi returned on foot, the woman broomed clean the last of the stoop tiles and greeted her visitor with a smile that a loving nana might bestow upon a cherished grandchild. Although the sweeper appeared to be in her eighties, time had performed one of its rare kindnesses with her face, allowing a suggestion of her early beauty to remain, while plumping and gently folding her features into a pleasing fullness, applying the techniques of soft sculpture instead of its usual hammer and chisel.

“Would you be Mrs. Berg?” Bibi asked. “Halina Berg?”

“I would be, and I am,” the woman said, with the faint trace of an unspecifiable European accent echoing down the years of her voice.

The expression on the winsome face, the generous smile, and an intimation of quiet amusement in Mrs. Berg’s brandy-colored eyes all conspired to suggest that she knew who Bibi was and why she had come to pay a visit. Yet she seemed to harbor no hostility whatsoever, no hint of malevolent intent or capacity. If that was a misreading of the woman, well, there was always the Sig Sauer P226.

When Bibi identified herself, Mrs. Berg nodded pleasantly, as if to agree,
Yes, that’s right,
and when Bibi claimed that Dr. St. Croix had sent her, Mrs. Berg said, “Come in, come in, we’ll have a nice sit-down with tea and cookies.”

Bibi hesitated to follow the old woman across the threshold. But she could think of nowhere else to go. She had no other leads beyond this name and address. Anyway, if Hansel and Gretel had not risked being roasted for dinner by the wicked witch, they would not have found her trove of pearls and jewels.

The ground-floor hallway was lined floor-to-ceiling with books, and unlike the shelves in St. Croix’s office, no empty space remained on any of these. Mrs. Berg led her past archways to a living room and a dining room, the open door to a study; each of those spaces was furnished to its purpose, though they served also as extensions of the through-house library, with more bookshelves than bare walls.

One section of kitchen cabinets, that with glass fronts, was filled with books, too, and none of them appeared to be cookbooks.

As she prepared a plate of homemade cookies and brewed the tea, Mrs. Berg explained that neither she nor her late husband—Max, who had died seven years earlier—had family, nor were they blessed with children of their own. “We had each other. That was miracle enough. And we had our mutual love of books. Through books we lived this life and thousands of others. Never a dull minute!”

Rather than repair to the parlor, they sat across the kitchen table from each other, as if they were longtime neighbors. The sugar cookies were rich with vanilla. The dark-brown tea, almost as black as coffee, might have been bitter if it hadn’t come with a choice of either honey or peach syrup as sweetener.

“Delicious,” Bibi declared. “Both the cookies and the tea. The tea is…formidable.”

“Thank you, dear.” Leaning forward with apparent curiosity, Halina Berg said, “Now tell me, who is this Dr. Solange St. Croix?”

Puzzled, Bibi said, “But I thought you knew her. When I said she sent me, you brought me right into your home.”

Smiling, waving a hand as if to dismiss the misunderstanding, the old woman said, “Goodness gracious, I brought you in for tea because you’re Bibi Blair.”

A sense of familiarity with the house returned, and Bibi looked around the kitchen, wondering.

“I read your novel,” said Halina Berg, with those four words resolving the mystery. “You’re that rare thing—an author who looks even better in person than in her book-jacket photo.”

Having published only the one novel, Bibi was not accustomed to being recognized as a writer. She explained that Dr. St. Croix was the founder of a renowned university writing program.

“How perfectly boring,” said Mrs. Berg. “It’s
you
I’m interested in, dear.”

There followed a few minutes of considered and articulate praise for Bibi’s writing that gratified and embarrassed her at the same time.

As if in recognition of the discomfort occasioned by her guest’s modesty, Mrs. Berg said, “But we can talk more about that later, if you’ll indulge me. One of the secondary characters in your book, the Holocaust survivor…I am intrigued by the insights you achieved with her, given your youth. But first, Dr. Solange St. Croix. I don’t want to be mean, dear, but that’s such a pretentious name. I wonder—is it the one she was born with? Ah, but that’s neither here nor there. Why on earth did this woman I don’t know send you to me?”

Bibi almost said,
I don’t know,
which would have been awkward, but fortunately she said instead, “Research. Maybe she’d heard about your enormous book collection.” That sounded peculiar if not totally lame. A comment Mrs. Berg had made a moment earlier, considered with her slight accent and her age, suddenly gave the old woman a possible historical context that inspired Bibi to say, “Research about the Holocaust.”

Mrs. Berg nodded. “Many people know of my…background. Perhaps this Dr. St. Croix was aware, I survived both Terezin and Auschwitz.”