Secondhand Spirits (23 page)

“I . . . Could I ask how your father died?”

“He hanged himself. Couldn't deal. Apparently I wasn't enough without his precious Elisabeth.”

“I'm so sorry.” I knew how it felt to grow up without a father. His absence was a void, a dull ache throughout my life. Not intolerable, but undeniable. It left a scar. But at least I hadn't known him. . . . I couldn't imagine losing a loving father to suicide.

She shrugged and with a slight inclination of her head sent the dog out of the room.

“And your father's parents?”

“They died not long after my sister disappeared. Then Mother sent me off to boarding school so she wouldn't have to deal with me. All told, it was a fabulous adolescence.”

“But you made it through,” I pointed out. “You have a lovely home, children. . . .”

“I found my own way. Let's leave it at that.”

Since we arrived I had been trying to sense Katherine's vibrations, but she had been difficult to read. She didn't shake hands, so I couldn't rely on the more evocative skin-to-skin contact. But now she was emitting plenty; unfortunately, scared and angry vibrations feel very nearly the same, as they are two sides of the same coin. Her facial expression was so flat that it was hard to figure out which of the two emotions she was experiencing. Or could it be both?

I looked up to see that the young man had arrived again. Was he the modern equivalent of a houseboy? A boyfriend? He hadn't introduced himself, and there was no obvious husband-wife interaction, so we were left to speculate.

My gaze shifted back to Katherine. Overall, hers seemed a sad, sterile, bitter life . . . but who was I to say? Perhaps she was a relaxed laugh riot when not speaking of death and childhood trauma. Maybe she kept the Pacific Heights ladies-who-lunch rolling in the aisles with her clever quips.

“Please see these two out,” Katherine said to the man. He nodded and gestured that we should start down the stairs.

“Thank you for speaking with us, Katherine,” I said as Maya and I stood. “I really am sorry about your mother. I didn't know her well, but she was very kind to me. You . . . Your eyes are very much like hers.”

“My condolences,” said Maya quietly.

Katherine remained mute.

Maya and I crossed the room, headed down the narrow staircase, and let ourselves out the heavy wood-and-bronze door.

We both paused outside on the sidewalk, breathing deeply of the fresh air. Maya lifted her face to the last rays of the sun; after dawning overcast, the day had turned warm and sunny, but now there was a thick fog rolling in.

The construction workers across the street were still making a racket, their Bobcats disappearing into the garage. We both watched the lurching, noisy movement for a moment.

Finally, our eyes met.

“That was truly bizarre,” said Maya.

“Good, it wasn't just me,” I said, relieved to know my judgment was sound. “I think we need hot chocolate.”

“With marshmallows.”

“
Lots
of marshmallows.”

“A shot of rum in it wouldn't be such a bad idea, for that matter.” Maya smiled.

“You missed your chance with that vodka tonic upstairs.”

“Emphasis on the vodka.”

We laughed and started across the quiet residential street. I began to dig around in my backpack for the car keys.

To our right, I noticed a red sedan coming down the steep hill. It seemed to be picking up speed, so I hurried a bit to get across the street and urged Maya to do the same.

The car sped up.

We increased our pace and reached the curb on the other side.

Suddenly the vehicle swerved toward us.

Chapter 14

I grasped Maya by the arm to get her attention. We broke into a run and leaped over the sidewalk.

The car was still headed straight toward us.

Racing up the short driveway, we ducked into the small alley between the house and its neighbor. A barred metal security gate kept us from going back farther than a few feet. Maya and I plastered ourselves to the wall, huddling in the farthest corner.

The car careened into the metal garbage cans, sending the heavy missiles sailing toward us.

A fraction of a second later we heard the terrible screech of steel on concrete as the car itself crashed into the buildings. The force of the impact shook the ground. Part of the nose of the car jutted through the opening between the two houses, coming to a stop a mere two feet from us.

Everything seemed to freeze for a moment. Even the Bobcats had stopped their roar. All I could hear was my own ragged breathing, and that of Maya. We were clutching each other, squeezing our eyes shut.

Finally we looked up. The grille of the car was close to us, far too close, trapping us between the walls of the houses and the metal gate at our backs.

We stood, still shaky, to peer inside the car.

There was no driver. No one in the car at all.

I turned back to Maya. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“Just bruised, I think. But you're bleeding.”

I looked down to see a gash on my knee bleeding profusely. What a day to wear a wiggle dress.

A small crowd gathered, a few neighboring house-keepers and the men from the bulldozers. One of them handed me a clean handkerchief for my knee. Another helped Maya and me over the wrecked hood of the car to stand on the driveway.

“It must have been a runaway,” said a rather ashen-faced man in an orange and black Giants baseball cap. “Sometimes people forget to curb their wheels.”

“Yes, I'm sure you're right,” I said with a nod. It was the logical explanation, except for the fact that the car steered straight toward us.

“Lily, look,” said Maya, and I followed her gaze up to the sheer glass wall of Katherine's house across the street. She stood at the window, her big black dog at her side.

Katherine looked neither shocked nor pleased, simply . . . unmoved.

As I looked closer, her lips seemed to be moving, as though she were invoking a charm.

* * *

“My cousin doesn't live very far,” said Maya after the bystanders helped to extricate us from the wreckage. “He works at home—I'll call him and see if we can clean up there, gather our wits.”

She must have noticed my shaking hands. It took all my concentration to steer us the two miles to the marina. It took us only five minutes to drive there, but another ten to find a parking place—I didn't want to use my special parking charm in front of Maya. She'd had enough surprises for one day.

Maya's cousin Russell had decorated his 1920s town house in early English gentleman: There was plenty of cherry furniture, and Ralph Lauren prints everywhere. Russell was on the small side, and the family resemblance was plain. He and Maya shared similarly delicate features, and a serious, calm nature.

He had already put on a kettle for tea, and fussed over us. We used the medicine cabinet in his well-appointed bathroom, got cleaned up, and applied a bandage to my knee. I would put a healing poultice on it when I got home, but right now it stung and made me clumsy.

Maya brewed us a pot of soothing chamomile tea and Russell brought out a box of chocolates and a platter of homemade oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies. Normally I was a great believer in the healing magic of chocolate, but at the moment I was feeling beyond redemption.

I couldn't
believe
that I had invited Maya along on this trip, putting her in the path of danger. She could easily have been seriously hurt or killed. I changed my mind about the buddy system; I should go back to my solo ways. It seemed anyone around me lately was bound to be hurt.

Sitting on his couch, Russell and Maya chatted about family members while I tried to distract myself by picking up today's newspaper lying on the coffee table. I found the article about Jessica that I had read earlier this morning. It made my heart hurt. Her grinning face, the horror of the whole thing. How many parents would have to know the kind of tragedy that had befallen these families? Frances and her husband, Felipa Rodriguez . . . How many others in between? Katherine said her sister wasn't the only one; the article had noted that, too. Numerous children had been disappearing from the neighborhood over the years.

I wasn't the only one with missing children on her mind. I overheard Maya telling Russell about what happened with Jessica's disappearance and our visit to Mrs. Potts the night before she died.They started to talk about the neighborhood redevelopment plan, putting me in mind of Sandra Schmidt. I used to think I could recognize fellow witches, but could I have been fooled in Sandra's case? Could there be more than met the eye, with her interest in the
Malleus Maleficarum
, her purchase of the stone statue at the auction, and her fervent desire to see Frances's clothes? And what about Katherine Airey, chanting while watching us nearly get run over by a driverless car?

La Llorona
wasn't responsible for trying to run us down, any more than she had killed Frances. It wasn't her style. She pulled people into the water with her, reeling them into her watery grave to join her.
Llorona
's violence arose from gut-wrenching guilt and anguish, not from the desire to see a particular person dead . . . or silenced.

No, trying to run us down with a driverless car was the trick of a witch.

Now I just had to figure out which witch.

I used Russell's telephone to call Bronwyn and make sure she was okay alone at the store for the rest of the afternoon; then I called the offices of the
San Francisco Chronicle
. I didn't quite know what to say—I wasn't a detective or a private eye, not a member of any of the affected families. But when Nigel Thorne's gruff voice came on the phone he didn't ask why I was interested in the subject, but simply invited me to stop by his office.

Maya decided to stay and have dinner with Russell, so I made my way alone to busy Van Ness Avenue and drove past a number of car dealerships, the opera house, the San Francisco Symphony building, and the grand domed City Hall. I enjoyed the sightseeing, but as I sat at yet another interminable stoplight I realized that Van Ness was the sort of clogged, stoplight-infested city thoroughfare that no native would ever use. Clearly I needed to make some time to get to know how to drive in San Francisco—the urban center is geographically compact, but unlike many other major cities there are so few taxis that everyone seems committed to driving. Even the public transportation is limited—when I first arrived I made the outsider's mistake of thinking people actually used cable cars to get to and from work, but the quaint historic trams are almost exclusively for the tourist trade these days. The bus system is complicated, and the subway serves only one narrow corridor of the city, though it stretches from the Peninsula to the far reaches of the East Bay.

Twenty minutes later, after missing a few turns, I arrived at the intersection of Mission and Fifth, right downtown. The
Chronicle
building boasted so much intricate plasterwork that it looked akin to a tiered wedding cake. I left my car in the underground garage, but hesitated as I was climbing out. Didn't Inspector Romero mention that Max Carmichael worked for the
Chronicle
? I frustrated myself by stopping to make sure my hair was smooth, applied a little lipstick, and even refreshed my mascara.

Pathetic. A witch in search of love. Sounded like the sort of self-help book Sandra would carry in her store.

The elevator was slow. While I waited I perused the bronze plaque on the wall, learning that two teenage brothers, Charles and Michael de Young, borrowed twenty dollars from their landlord to begin their rag in 1865 as “a daily record of affairs—local, critical, and theatrical.” San Francisco was a relatively new city at that point—in 1848, before the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, the population was listed at a mere eight hundred and fifty souls. One year later that number ballooned to twenty-five thousand, and it would continue to double for the next several decades. By 1868 the de Youngs' paper was renamed the
Morning Chronicle
and moved into its current building.

It was sort of sweet. I'd spent years in ancient parts of the world, in neighborhoods and buildings dating back to the Holy Roman Empire or the Qing dynasty. Now I lived in a city where urban history was counted in fewer than a couple of centuries.

The elevator finally arrived and I rode it to the third floor, where I found Nigel sitting in a nondescript cubicle, hunched over a computer terminal at a beige office desk. In his late fifties, he had male-pattern baldness and unruly eyebrows that gave him a hawklike visage. Three framed pictures sat on his desk: a younger version of himself with a plump brunette at a Christmas party, kissing; and two young girls, not pretty, exactly, but gleaming with the loveliness of youth, wrapped in the black off-the-shoulder wrap typical of high school graduation photos.