The Bohemian Murders (26 page)
Read The Bohemian Murders Online
Authors: Dianne Day
I was walking both for pleasure and for the exercise. Typewriting is such a sedentary occupation, and due to my late reluctance to walk through the woods, I had been driving whenever I wanted to go anywhere. If not for the lighthouse stairs, I should have had muscles of mush—and that would never do. One of these days or nights I might literally have to run for my life.
The rock formation I’d had in mind did indeed have a high, flat place that made a fine seat. It was worth the fight I’d had with the wind to get there. I watched a few fishing boats headed in for Monterey; most, I knew, would have been out before dawn and back in the early afternoon. I wondered if these few were, like myself, unable to accomplish much that is worthwhile before mid-morning. If my livelihood required landing a catch prior to that time, I’d starve to death.
A myriad of equally silly thoughts were chasing themselves around in my head, when what I wanted was peace. Peace and renewal. But the rhythmically breaking waves, which often have a calming effect on me, today seemed noisy and restless. I raised my eyes to the irregular scallop of hills far across the bay, and above them to long blue savannahs of clouds in the sky. Sweeping, trailing sheer clouds so high in the atmosphere that they seemed unmoved by the burgeoning winds. I caressed the walking stick and allowed myself to miss the Michael I once knew … to miss him, and to hope.
I got into a complete funk, tears and all; between that and the wind blowing constantly in my ears, and the waves not being any too quiet, I failed to hear someone approach. Without warning I suddenly felt a presence behind me. My thumb rubbed the dragon’s scales and found the concealed button, and then I realized I had no space to maneuver, not even enough room to easily turn. One false step, a single ill-considered movement, and I could meet the same fate as Sabrina Howard.
“I thought that was you sitting up here all by your lonesome, Fremont,” said the bluff baritone of Braxton Furnival.
S
omewhere around nine o’clock that night I began to think I’d been wrong about Braxton Furnival. He had walked alongside me back to the lighthouse, then presented me with a beautiful little heart-shaped box of chocolates, all tied up in red ribbons and lace. He had invited me to be his guest for dinner at the Hotel Del Monte, with the most abject apology for asking at the last minute. He’d waited downstairs without complaint while I changed into my one good suit, the olive silk gabardine. Now over dinner he was being an excellent conversationalist, all the more charming for his roughness around the edges. I looked across the table into those silvery eyes in their attractive nest of laughter-wrinkles, and could not find any real malice in him to save myself.
To save myself indeed! I must not forget that such an exercise might well become necessary at any time.
“So you see,” he went on expansively, and I was sure
his voice carried to the farthest corners of the elegant dining room, “we have room in the forest for a golf course to rival the one at Old Del Monte. Rival, hell—when folks see what Cypress Coast Company puts together out by Pebble Beach, they’ll want to play our new course first. You mark my words, Fremont. ’Course, it won’t hurt Old Del Monte none. The more the merrier where golf’s concerned. People like it when there’s several courses to play. They’ll just stay longer, play more, spend more money …” His eyes glinted silver in anticipation of these things even while his voice trailed away.
“You are quite the entrepreneur,” I said, smiling. The béarnaise sauce for the filet mignon had put me in a mellow mood. I had not had such a meal in quite a long time, and I reflected that I could easily get used to this sort of thing again.
Braxton leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “You bet! I’m selling advance memberships in the golf club. When the course is built, everybody who’s bought in ahead of time will get their first year free. You interested, Fremont?”
“No, thank you. I am not overfond of golf. I prefer to do my walking without having to propel a little white ball ahead of me as an excuse.”
He pulled a severe face but couldn’t hold it for long. He knew I was joshing. “Too bad. Have some more champagne anyhow—I won’t hold it against you.”
Dessert was a red velvet cake with white frosting. To cut the sweetness, I asked for coffee even though I knew it would likely keep me awake past my usual bedtime. Then I ate slowly, working up my courage to approach the topic I’d avoided all evening.
“Braxton, do you remember that woman you tried to help me identify?”
“The one who drowned? Sure. I thought somebody came and took her away. Buried her, I reckon.” He directed this remark at the cake, as if forking it up required minute attention.
“According to the coroner, she did not drown—but at any rate you were right about her identity. She was Sabrina Howard, an actress from San Francisco.”
“Oh hey. I’m real sorry about that.” He did look genuinely sorry. “No wonder I haven’t been able to get hold of her for so long. It’s too bad. Sabrina was real decorative. Useful, too.”
“Decorative and useful?”
He completely missed my sarcasm. “You know, pretty. Hell, Sabrina was outright beautiful. She was a big help to me lots of times. Kept the men happy, put ’em in a buying mood. But you couldn’t say Sabrina was smart,” he shook his head and looked directly at me, “not like you. Brains and beauty, that’s what you got, beauty and brains. Add some luck to that, Fremont Jones, and you’ll have it made in the shade!”
“Thank you, Braxton—I appreciate your opinion. Thanks also for the fine meal. It has been a while since I had such excellently prepared food.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said negligently, then raised his hand to signal for the check. “There’s just one thing I wonder, though. How’d you find out that was Sabrina Howard? Did I miss something?”
I tucked my napkin under the edge of the dessert plate, properly, without folding it. “I heard recently from a good friend who happens to be a policeman in San Francisco. He has been working with Sabrina’s mother, who reported her missing at about the same time you and I went to that funeral home—so it could not have been the mother who took the body away. My friend has since been able to trace Sabrina’s movements down to the Monterey Peninsula. I presume the police, or someone, recovered her body—but I have no idea how. The information he imparted did not extend to that.”
My statement was deliberately laced with falsehoods; I wanted to see how he would react.
Braxton smiled. That was all—no twitches, no nervous tics, no wavering in the eyes—he just smiled and said, “Well, that’s good then. Her mama can give her that Christian burial you were so het up about. Now to a more pleasant topic: How’d you like to take a turn in the garden outside before I drive you home?”
Since the Del Monte Hotel gardens are spectacular, and do not offer the opportunity of anything more
dangerous to one’s body or reputation than kissing in the shadows, I agreed. I do like kissing, and Braxton does it well.
KEEPER’S LOG February 17, 1907
Wind: W, moderate and steady
Weather: Clear, cool, no fog a.m.
Comments: A body was found S of Point Sur early this morning and is being brought to Monterey for identification and coroner’s examination.
I had stayed up all night typing
The Merchant of Dreams,
not only because I was eager to finish it so that I might have a reason to go over to Carmel, but also because I simply had to know how naive Heloise was going to get herself out of a situation that she really should have had more sense than to get into in the first place. Though I supposed to one in her circumstances, the money really could be a great temptation. At any rate, I am not averse to a certain suspension of disbelief when it comes to storytelling, and I was enjoying Artemisia’s tale immensely.
When the sun came up I went down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee; while it perked, I went back up the circular stairs to make my morning observations and start the day’s entry in the log. I was back in the kitchen grilling a piece of toast for my breakfast when the Coast Guard messenger came by with news of a drowning to be added to the logbook. This news neither surprised nor saddened me unduly, for a review of Hettie’s previous two years of log-keeping had shown between three and five deaths in the water each year. Of course with two already and it only February, I thought, if the deaths didn’t slack off we might break some kind of record in 1907.
By seven-thirty I was back at the typewriter, quite determined to finish
The Merchant of Dreams.
I had not much more to go. I rolled in a fresh sheet of white paper and flexed my fingers, meanwhile finding my place in the story. Heloise was living at the Morpheus Foundation
now, in a bedroom adjoining the Room of Veils. (Actually, the Room of Veils might more properly have been called the Suite of Veils, but this seems not to have occurred to Artemisia.) She, Heloise, was sleeping almost all the time and having dreams so erotic that it was a wonder the words describing them did not scorch the paper. I quite understood that most people would want to read this novella for the dreams themselves, but I was simply itching for Heloise to wake up and pull herself together! Surely Artemisia wasn’t just going to leave her there with the evil Morpheus—and what was he doing with all those dreams he was buying, anyway?
I found my place and began to type again at page 110, vowing not to stop until the end. Once more I immersed myself in Heloise’s voice:
Morning and night blended into one another until my mind, my very life, was as shadowy and insubstantial as the veils that swathed the room. My breath was shallow; I had little appetite. It seemed to me that they fed me less and less but I did not care. I did not care, that is, until I had a dream so monstrous that I woke myself out of it abruptly—and for once Morpheus was not beside me when I awoke.
In the dream I lived in a blue and green cave, a place that was glittering and cool, so magical that inside the cave it rained from time to time and the raindrops sounded like music. My body was covered all over with blue and green spangles like fish scales—these I wore in lieu of clothes. In the cave I led a languid life; I had no responsibilities whatever, except that I must not try to go outside, or even look through the cave mouth at the world beyond. But I was not lonely, for I had a lover who nightly came to be with me. He was called Oberon.
One night when Oberon entered me, waking me in that fashion as he always did, I dared to question him. I said, “My love, why do you only come at night, in the dark? The cave is so beautiful by day. I wish you could see it, and I might see your dear face.”
“Be silent!” he whispered, his breath moving along my neck like a feather, softly, softly.
The spangles that shielded my skin by day dissolved in sparkles wherever he touched and left me naked, only for him. Vulnerable, but only to him; for as soon as he left me the shining scales would, in an instant, cover me again. It was magic, and our love was a magic that I had never thought to question—until that night.
When Oberon had spent himself in me and turned away to sleep, I could not be still. A flood of questions rose up and spilled from my tongue:
“Where do you come from, love? And where do you go when you leave me? Why can I not go with you? Why can I not see the world beyond this cave? What will happen if I go and stand in the mouth and look out, lifting my face to the yellow sun?”
He answered me in a low growl: “I come from darkness and darkness sustains me. You are my creature, made from the flesh of my groin for my own pleasure. Count your blessings, foolish creature, that you may stay in this cave and do not have to go out into the world by day to toil in the sweat of your brow. You cannot exist beyond these confines, so do not seek to go beyond your limitations. The light of the yellow sun will blind and burn you.”
Certainly I did not want to be burned and blinded, yet the questions had awakened something in me and now I could not be still. When Oberon slept I left his side and slowly—very slowly—walked to the mouth of the cave. Surely I could not be burned and blinded at night, in the dark?
Not daring to breathe, I ventured to the lip of the cave, taking tiny glances like sips until at last I dared to look my fill, to drink it all in: a world vast and beautiful, of hills folded like black velvet and clear crystal stars winking in a never-ending sky of midnight blue. There was no moon. Yet I could remember the moon, a white orb that rides by night across the sky, an orb whose very constancy is ever-changing—it
waxes and wanes and disappears, only to grow and bloom again. This, not the cave, was my world!
I stepped outside and stood poised on the brink of the world. The starlight touched me, and my scales fell in a flurry around my feet. “Oberon has lied to me,” I said. “I am not his creature. He did not make me from his groin after all.”
Behind me in the cave, a disturbance was growing. I sensed it as one may feel from afar a storm gathering. All the tiny hairs on my new-naked skin stood on end, and the hair of my head swirled and crackled. Sparks like tiny fireflies danced in the air, and in their midst a huge darkness coalesced, took shape, and ponderously unfurled its vast black wings—
That was when I woke myself out of the dream, instinctively reaching for Jonah Morpheus, who always slept beside me now, fully clothed, on top of the counterpane. This was—or so he said—so that he could be there to hear my dreams whenever I awoke during the night; and also so that he might keep watch over my delicate health. For a moment I was panicky when I found the bed empty … but then the meaning of the dream began to take hold. I, Heloise, saw the nameless woman of the dream as myself, and Morpheus as Oberon. The dream was a warning.
Even as this realization came to me, Shadow the cat slunk sinuously from between the veils and leapt with cat-grace onto the bed. I knew that Morpheus would not be far behind. The cat looked at me, and I at the cat.
“Speak,” I whispered, hissing on the sibilants, “I know you can. Say what you have to say!” But it only blinked its eerie eyes, then turned away as if I were not worth consideration. And perhaps I wasn’t.…
Even as I had that appalling thought the full truth of my situation came home to me. Jonah came through the veils. I smiled and reached out for him with my poor thin arms. “I woke and you were not here. I was so frightened!” I said in a trembling voice.
He slid down beside me, stroking, soothing, seducing. “Tell me about your dream,” he said.
I told him a dream, but I lied, and that lie was the beginning of my liberation.