The Bohemian Murders (22 page)

“You were going to tell me how much of this you’ve done yourself,” I prompted as soon as he opened the door, although he had not precisely said that.

“Oh,” he shrugged, then motioned me to come in, “I had someone put it all together for me. More than one someone, to be exact. Architect, contractor, you know, those kinds of people. Poor little rich boy,” he made a face, “that’s me. After I got moved in, I discovered I like to muck about in the dirt and mud. Put the plants in with my own hands, pat them down, water them, and help them grow. Sometimes—” he pinked again “—I talk to them. I think plants like that, it makes them thrive. They like music too—Oh! I’m sorry. I do get carried away.”

I laughed. “That’s quite all right. I shall have to try talking and music on Hettie’s aspidistras. They are looking rather puny. But shall we be seated somewhere and take a look at your manuscript?”

“Oh, by all means. Not very hospitable of me to keep you standing in the hall.”

I had become so accustomed to small houses that it quite amazed me to walk down an actual hallway with rooms on either side. I guessed there were ten rooms in Arthur’s house, all on a single floor. The room toward which he led the way was directly across the hall from the kitchen at the back of the house. “A library,” I exclaimed from its doorway, “a real library!”

“Had to have it,” Arthur said, beaming. He rocked back on his heels and stuck his hands in his pockets, in a prosperous banker’s sort of pose—except that his denim trousers were all muddy at the knees and his plaid flannel shirt had one elbow out. Hardly a banker’s sort of dress. He added, “Can’t live without my books.”

Suddenly I thought of Michael’s books, how they had filled a whole wall of shelves at Mrs. O’Leary’s house, how many trips it had taken to move them all before the fire following the earthquake rushed to claim Vallejo Street … and I wondered what had happened to those books. They were not in his cottage. Subliminally I
suppose I had noticed, but I hadn’t consciously marked it before. “Michael, I mean Misha, would love this room,” I said, unable to stop myself from talking about him. “Has he ever seen it?”

“No. That is, not that I recall. You see I, uh, I … I’m not as gregarious as the rest of them. Professor Storch comes over now and then, and Phoebe used to, but the rest get too, uh, boisterous for me. May we unwrap the manuscript now? I’m so eager to see it!”

“Yes, of course.” I handed the package to Arthur and could not help smiling as I watched him unwrap it. No child had ever been more thrilled with a birthday present. Here in his own home he blossomed; naturally he would be more comfortable with the quieter Carmelites.

“Oh my, it does look handsome!” said Arthur, carefully setting the stacked pages down on a handsome, oversized partners desk.

I moved over next to him. “I did two title pages,” I pointed out, “so that you can decide which you prefer. I am only a typewriter, not an editor, but it did occur to me that the addition of the word ‘California’ to your ‘Central Coast’ designation might be desirable. That way, people in other parts of the country will not wonder, central coast of what?”

“That is very thoughtful of you.” Arthur gave me a meltingly warm smile. “However, there isn’t a chance in the world that this little book, once it’s published, will be distributed anywhere but right around here. I do it all myself, you see.”

“You publish your own books?”

“Yes and no.” He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head as if, for a moment, he were trying to make himself disappear. Then he lifted his face and a beatific grin spread across his face. “It’s like with the house and all. The experts do the part I can’t do because I don’t know how, and then I do the rest. They do the actual typesetting and the printing and binding, but I do the distribution. You know, I take my books around to various little towns that have bookstores, and sometimes I leave a few copies in a grocery market or a general store—anyplace they’ll sell them. I like doing it. Sometimes I
make enough from one book to pay for the printing of the next. I consider that a great success.”

“Yes, indeed! But perhaps you are too modest? There is such an interest at the present time in spiritualism and the occult; mediums communicating with the dead and such are all the rage, so surely ghosts are an equally fashionable topic. Have you ever tried to get a publisher in New York interested in your ghost tales? Or even one in San Francisco, if you want to stay closer to home?”

This time Arthur didn’t pink, he turned scarlet. “Oh, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t—I’d just—”

“You’re shy,” I said gently, laying my hand on his arm in what I hoped was a comforting and friendly manner. “I quite understand. I certainly didn’t mean to embarrass you. I enjoyed typing your ghost stories, and that is a great deal more than I can say for many things I’ve typed in the two years I have been doing this kind of work.”

“L-let me pay you,” he said, slipping out from under my hand and going around to sit at his desk. “Ten cents a page? How many pages did it turn out to be?” He turned the stack over to see for himself so I did not interrupt his calculations, although I remembered how many pages and so could have told him the price. By focusing on this activity he was recovering his equilibrium.

I reflected that I never would have guessed what a sweet, gentle person lay beneath Arthur Heyer’s medium-everything exterior. Not only that, but a multifaceted and modest individual. It is rare in my experience to meet a man (or woman) of considerable wealth who is not interested, first and foremost, in either increasing or parading it. Arthur had turned out to be most refreshing.

He presented his cheque with a flourish and invited me to stay for lunch, which I declined, but I did take a glass of iced tea. We sat at a lovely casement window looking out over the back garden, where he had been working when I arrived. I said, “I shall have to ask you to teach me the names of the plants. Having come from the East, I am unfamiliar with so much of the flora here. For example, what do you call those trees with blossoms that look like red bottlebrushes?”

“Bottlebrush trees,” said Arthur, and we both laughed.

When I judged the mood was right I reached into my leather bag, took out an envelope, and removed from it the picture of Sabrina Howard. “You mentioned that you are fond of Phoebe Broom,” I said by way of introducing the topic in a manner I hoped would be palatable to him.

“I am,” Arthur nodded. “Deputy sheriffs were here. They think something may have happened to her.”

“I know. I think so, too.” I put the photograph face up on the table and slid it across to him. “This woman may have something to do with Phoebe’s disappearance, in an indirect way. Have you ever seen the woman in this picture, Arthur? Do you know who she is?”

“Oh, my.” He picked it up and brought it closer to his face. Apparently he was a bit shortsighted. “Lovely girl, just lovely. No, I don’t know anybody who looks like that. I wish I did.”

“Take your time. She has been seen in this area. Perhaps, if you don’t know her personally, you may have been at some gathering or social occasion where she was present.”

His smooth brow wrinkled with concentration. I presumed that Arthur had a sharp memory; the collection and accurate recording of his tales would require such a trait, and practice would have kept it honed. At last his expression cleared and he said triumphantly, “Yes! I remember her in a white dress, and her hair was different. It was kind of—you must excuse me, Fremont, I don’t know much about women’s hair—anyway she had kind of a long curl or two hanging down in the back, and one of them she’d pull over her shoulder like this.” He stroked the side of his neck, then pulled a long face. “But I can’t remember where it was. I seem to see her with a lot of people around. So either she was somebody’s guest at one of our parties, or else … I know! I could have seen her when my parents were visiting back in the fall. They stayed at the Del Monte Hotel, and there’s always a crowd around there.”

“It certainly sounds likely. Anything else? A name, perhaps?”

After a couple of frowning minutes, Arthur shook his head. “No, sorry.”

“Not at all. You’ve been very helpful.” I restored the photograph to its protective envelope and gathered up my things. “And I’ve truly enjoyed talking with you.”

“You have?” He sounded amazed.

“I have.” I smiled.

Arthur escorted me to the front door. As we reached it he said in a dubious tone, “I keep thinking I also saw the lovely lady in the picture somewhere else, not just the big party, but another time. But the exact place just won’t come to me. It’s as if I can almost see her in a different place, but then the picture gets all dim.”

“Don’t try too hard,” I advised. “Your memory will surely sharpen in time, and when it does, I hope you’ll let me know.”

Oscar and Mimi Peterson were working in their yard in a rather desultory fashion; there was a kind of thick, sludgy quality to the atmosphere around them that made me think they might recently have quarreled. Not an ideal time for a visit, but since they’d already seen me it could scarcely be helped.

There was once a king—of England, I think it was—called Longshanks; King Longshanks had had nothing on Oscar. If anything, Oscar had grown leaner in the couple of months since I’d first met him, which only made him seem taller still. The habitual pallor of his skin had acquired an unhealthy grayish tinge. Even Mimi lacked her usual ruddy glow today.

“Hello,” I called out as I approached. “Isn’t it wonderful that the storm’s finally over!”

Oscar sneered. “Hello, Fremont. It’d be a lot more wonderful if it had never happened at all. Gawd, what a mess! We’ll be forever getting all this farking shite cleaned up.”

“Excuse the crude language, Fremont,” Mimi said with a strained smile. “Thanks for dropping by. You’ve given us the perfect opportunity to stop work for a while. Let’s go inside. Oscar, are you coming?”

“No!” he said viciously. “There’s too much to do.”

“I can come back another time,” I said in an undertone to Mimi, “but before I leave—”

“Don’t be silly!” Mimi swiped her hand on her skirt before firmly taking my arm. “I hope you’ll stay. I can use a change of company.”

Although I did not want to stay, after that I could hardly refuse.

I had never been inside the Petersons’ cottage before, as they seemed to spend a good deal of time—and much of Carmel with them—in the woodsy clearing that was more or less their yard. The layout of the cottage was much like Michael’s, with a kitchen and dining area at one end of the largest room. There were differences, though: The entire cottage was on a bigger scale, and Oscar had built a magnificent fieldstone fireplace at the opposite end of the main room.

“The fireplace is spectacular,” I said.

“Oscar’s masterpiece. Unfortunately we can’t eat stones, and for every one in that fireplace there’s a poem that didn’t get written, and so won’t be published, and Oscar won’t be paid.” She sighed. “If we didn’t have my income—But you don’t want to hear all that. Coffee or tea, Fremont? I haven’t made any lemonade today.”

“Coffee, please. Mimi, I know it’s none of my business, but I thought Oscar was the one with the family money.”

She laughed, bitterly. “His family knows him too well. Oscar’s money is in a trust fund. It leaks out to us one lean trickle at a time, and he has exotic tastes.”

“Exotic?” I inquired, but she would not be further drawn. She set about warming over the breakfast coffee without saying more.

I reached into my leather bag and removed a small round tin box printed all over with a pattern of red plaid, which I took over to Mimi. “This is for you. To thank you for spending the night at my bedside when I was hurt.”

Her face lit up as she opened the tin. “Shortbread! How thoughtful you are, Fremont, but you don’t have to
give me anything. I was glad to sit with you. That’s what neighbors are for.”

“Nevertheless I am grateful. You must accept it.”

“We’ll open up the tin and have some with our coffee, shall we?”

Mimi and I gossiped and chatted in female fashion, and munched on the shortbread, which proved to be quite good. I ascertained that she did not see anything to be alarmed about where Misha was concerned, which meant either that Mimi was not very observant, or simply that the use of drugs, such as alcohol, did not much concern her. Probably the latter.

When at last I judged the moment was right, I took out the photograph and held it up before Mimi. I did not let go of it, for fear I should not get it back. The few anxious moments I’d felt with Arthur had taught me a lesson: From now on, the photograph would not leave my hands. “Mimi,” I asked without preamble, “do you know this woman?”

Instead of drawing closer, she actually pulled back. Her face, which had become animated and pink-cheeked while we talked, went white. Slowly she shook her head. “No.”

“Take your time.” I leaned over and held the picture closer. “If you don’t actually know her, perhaps you’ve seen her somewhere?”

“No, I’ve never seen her in my life.” Mimi was recovering. Belligerence hardened her square jaw and flashed in her blue eyes. “What are you doing, carrying around a picture of somebody you don’t even know? Who do you think you are, Fremont Jones?”