The Bohemian Murders (30 page)

“I’d be so grateful.” I reached into the reticule and withdrew an envelope containing the photograph of Sabrina Howard. Placing it on the counter I slid the photo out and kept my hand on its edge. Then I leaned forward and said in a low voice, “This woman has, I believe, stayed here often. Do you recognize her?”

“That would be Miss Howard, a famous actress from San Francisco. She does come here a lot,” he said, still nodding, still grave. “However, she hasn’t been with us in recent weeks. I expect you might find her in, as one says, the city?”

When he said “the city,” he smiled, and it was like the sun flashing briefly out from behind a thin gray cloud.

“You are from the city yourself!” I said with unfeigned joy. “So am I!”

For a few minutes we exchanged information and condolences on our losses from the earthquake, an exercise with which I was by now (alas!) all too familiar, and then I got back on track. “Sabrina—Miss Howard—has not been seen in any of her usual haunts for quite some time. I am trying to help her mother, and a member of the San Francisco Police Department, gather as much information as possible in order to locate her.” Of course Wish
Stephenson didn’t know I was helping, but one cannot put too fine a point on these things.

The clerk gave me a look and I nodded significantly, even as I prayed he would not ask me for any sort of official identification. I leaned forward again. “If you could check the hotel register and see when she was last here, I would be so grateful.”

He grinned, letting out not the whole sun but one warm ray. “I expect I could do that.”

As in many large hotels, the register was not a single book but rather a series of bound books, like ledgers, one for each month. Only the current one was kept on the desk. The others were arranged on a shelf behind. While the clerk located the ones he wanted, I put the photo back into my reticule. It had served its purpose.

He returned with a scrap of paper to which he referred, but he did not pass it over to me. “The party you’re interested in was here twice early last month. The first time she arrived was actually in December, the thirty-first, New Year’s Eve. She left on January second for five days and came back on the seventh.”

I nodded; I had sighted Sabrina Howard’s body on January ninth. “And when did she check out?”

The clerk scrutinized the paper he kept cupped in the palm of his hand. “The tenth.”

That’s impossible!
I almost said, but managed to swallow the words instead. “Was she by any chance checked out by Mr. Furnival? I presume it was he who made the reservations on her behalf.”

This got me another look. “Just a minute.” He went back to the bank of little cubbyholes where the keys were kept and opened a drawer down below. In a moment he returned, chuckling and gazing over my left shoulder. “Speak o’ the divil! I guess you wouldn’t want to say hello?”

“I beg your pardon?” But even as I cautiously turned my head, I understood: The familiar large form of Braxton Furnival was striding across the lobby toward the elevators. “Good heavens!” I said, but so softly that it came out sounding rather like a hiss. I kept my face turned away and could only hope that the gray satin and
all those pleats down my back would be enough of a disguise. To the amused clerk I whispered, “I would of course be most grateful if you were to keep my inquiry to yourself.”

A prosperous-looking couple with two shrill children came up next to me and were pounced upon by one of the raw-faced lads. The other lad was helping a man in a homburg down at the far end of the counter. My clerk and I moved in that direction, away from the couple, who really ought to have thought about shushing their children.

“Anyway it was not he,” said the clerk, the very model of proper diction.

“Not Furnival? Are you sure?” From the corner of my eye I could see Braxton standing with his head tipped back, watching the elevator’s floor indicator.

“We don’t record the actual checking out, but a Mr. Peterson paid the bill on that day, the tenth of January.”

“Oscar Peterson?” I recalled Oscar’s face looking down at the photograph, the total lack of recognition registered on that scrawny, somewhat ascetic visage. “How odd!”

“Not when you consider that about half the times when she was here over the last six months, it was Mr. Peterson rather than Mr. Furnival who paid for her to stay. Now mind you, this is confidential information, and I wouldn’t be telling you if you weren’t working with the police.”

“Of course!” I agreed, with only a small qualm. I heard the elevator ding and its doors slide open. I felt—but surely it was my imagination—a pair of eyes bore into the back of my skull.

Sotto voce the clerk said, “And I don’t think the two of them were exactly cooperating on taking turns, if you know what I mean.”

“I expect I do, yes,” I said, hastily gathering my things, “and I’m extremely grateful for the information. Extremely. So will Sabrina Howard’s mother be, I’m sure.”

• • •

I sat in the Maxwell with so many ideas whizzing around in my head that I was almost dizzy. What now?

A glance at the sky and the angle of the sunlight through the surrounding grove of shaggy eucalyptus trees told me the afternoon was drawing to a close. I should return to the lighthouse. I had not even left a note for Quincy, and I’d been away the whole afternoon.

I bit my lip, jiggled my legs impatiently, and pounded a couple of times on the steering wheel. Botheration! I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to know what Braxton was doing in the hotel, whom he was seeing, and where he’d go next. Oscar Peterson and Sabrina Howard—surely an impossible combination?

“Jealousy?” I wondered aloud. Had one of the men found out about the other, subsequently quarreled with Sabrina, and in the heat of the quarrel killed her? And if so, which one?

“But then,” I mused, “where does Arthur Heyer fit?”

Slowly the picture became clear to me, like a scene taking shape out of the fog: Oscar Peterson, a brilliant man, a sensitive poet—with all the emotional maturity of a two-year-old. Oscar came, I had been told, from a prominent family. His father, and possibly Oscar himself, were members of the Bohemian Club. A real member of the Bohemian Club would be irresistible to a beautiful actress from San Francisco: Sabrina Howard. They must have met at Braxton Furnival’s party. Oscar, mothered but also smothered by Mimi, was smitten.

“Oh my God!” I said, as yet another idea came to me. “Mimi!”

Just at that moment the parking valet jumped into an auto a couple of rows up from mine, started it with a few loud, healthy revolutions of the motor, and backed out. I knew that sporty, distinctive car, I’d ridden in it—it belonged to Braxton Furnival. I prayed that Max would start for once without my having to crank, and by great good fortune it did.

While the valet drove right up to the hotel’s main entrance, I lingered just around the corner of the building. Braxton bounded down the steps and into his car. He was alone, so I could not ascertain whom he had called
upon. Out of pure curiosity, or perhaps just for the practice, I was determined to follow and see where else he might go.

I have not had much experience at following people. Most of what I know about real detection I have learned by reading the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the rest by trial and error. Since Braxton had mentioned Pinker-ton’s female operatives to me, I’d had a few thoughts about how I might remedy my ignorance in the future, but for the moment I seemed to be doing all right. Braxton’s car was distinctive and the traffic was not heavy, due to its being late on a Sunday afternoon. I could stay well back and not lose sight of him, although I did not think he would recognize me in Hettie’s gray satin getup. Nor was he likely to take note of the Maxwell, which being black and boxy was so much like most other cars on the road.

Braxton did not take the Seventeen Mile Drive, which actually begins to count its seventeen miles at the Hotel Del Monte. This surprised me, as it was his logical way home, and my alertness increased. He drove instead straight to Pacific Grove.

I had begun to wonder if he had decided to visit me at the lighthouse, when he turned abruptly left off Lighthouse Avenue onto Ash Street, which goes rather steeply uphill. The street is narrow. I would not have dared follow except that, as in much of Pacific Grove, trees with huge trunks and low-hanging branches grew right out over, and in a couple of places into, the street itself. I coaxed Max up behind the cover of a giant cypress, and peered out cautiously while keeping my foot firmly on the brake.

The houses along here were tiny, not much more than shacks. I knew these small houses had not been intended for year-round living when they’d first been erected, back in Pacific Grove’s days as a religious campground. But now for many working-class people they made inexpensive permanent homes. Braxton parked in front of one and tapped his horn, which instead of the usual beep emitted an
A-oo-gah!

And out came the short, strong, compact figure of Pete
Carlson. Pete, the man-of-all-work, detested by Quincy yet high on Hettie’s list of odd-jobbers. Well, why shouldn’t Pete be on Braxton’s list too? I couldn’t think of a single reason why not.

Disappointed by this unexciting development, I decided I would do well to leave before I was discovered. So I slipped the Maxwell into neutral and allowed the car to roll silently back downhill. In very little time I was backing onto Lighthouse Avenue, thence through the Point Pinos woods and to the lighthouse.

The sun hovered about a foot, or so it seemed, above the ocean. The horizon line was smudged with veils of long, trailing clouds in ever-modulating shades of peach and purple. I stood out on the lighthouse platform with the binoculars to my eyes. I had been counting an extraordinarily long string of brown pelicans, mostly as a way to divert myself from an internal argument. A part of me had argued that it was neither necessary nor wise to go to Carmel tonight and confront Oscar Peterson—especially since I would have to drive over at twilight, not a particularly safe time for driving, and back after dark. The very thought of taking Carmel Hill in pitch-black darkness with nothing but the carriage lamps for illumination was enough to give me the willies. But another part of me had simply been itching to get back into the Maxwell and go!

Strangely enough, the cautious side of me seemed to be winning this time. As I am not exactly Miss Prudence, I left off counting pelicans and puzzled over why this should be so. Well, for one thing, I would far rather be able to talk to Oscar without Mimi present. Given Oscar’s condition the last time I’d seen them, the chances of that happening were remote—but still I would be more likely to catch him alone during daylight hours.

The more I thought about it, the more wary of Mimi I grew. How far would she go to protect her husband? As far as she had to? Probably. I would be well advised to have all my ducks in a row before she had an inkling of my suspicions. Speaking of birds in a row …

More pelicans—or was it the same ones going past again? Had they done a loop out over the bay and come around once more? Feeding pelicans will do that, I’ve observed, when particularly taken with some food supply.

As I watched the pelicans skimming along the surface of the water and reflected that once I start trying to figure something out I don’t know where to stop, a human figure walked into the forefront, blurring the view. I refocused, and suddenly had a close-up of Joe, Junior, bent, scruffy, and none too clean. His pungent personal fragrance almost reached me through the lenses. I was curious, as before, about what he might have in his burlap sack.

Junior is a coastal scavenger. He walks the beaches, picking up everything that might even remotely have value. Suddenly I had an idea, and wondered that I had not thought of it before. Probably it was too late now—how often he sold his finds I did not know—but anyway I hurled myself around and down the circular stairs, out the door, and across the dunes. I was completely out of breath by the time I caught up with him.

“Good evening, Junior!” I called out when I was still some distance off. He raised his head and I waved, still coming on. My shoes were full of sand, my calf muscles protested all the slipping and sliding, and the tails of my long hair kept hitting me in the face. I had changed out of Hettie’s dress into my usual blouse-and-skirt combination, and now my skirt was full of stickers from the sea grass that grows on the dunes.

“Miss Hettie, that be you?” Junior closed one eye and squinted at me with the other, presumably the better one.

“No, Hettie is still away. I’m Fremont, the temporary keeper. We have met before.”

Junior nodded. “Yep, I recall it. Shame, ain’t it, what happen to ole Quince.”

I agreed it was a shame about Quincy’s broken collarbone, and listened politely, if somewhat impatiently, to the tale of how Junior had once lost his footing over at Cypress Point and broken his ankle, and had to lie there with the tide coming in and aggressive sea lions barking
at him for quite some time before help came. Finally it was my turn to speak.

“I suppose you must find many interesting things on your walks,” I said.

“Yep. Never can tell what’ll wash up out the sea or blow out from off ‘n the land. But valuable as opposed to interestin’—now that’s another thing altogether. Why one day not too fer back—”

I simply had to interrupt him. “Please excuse me for breaking into your story, but soon it will be too dark to see and I wondered if you would very kindly let me look through the objects in your bag? If I find anything I want, I will of course pay you for it.”

“Well …” He scratched the side of his face, where several days’ growth of beard made a rasp like sandpaper. “I don’t see why not. We’ll just dump ’er out right here.” So saying, he did.

Various odors assaulted my nostrils—the mustiness of burlap, the fetid, salty stench of a large seashell with its creature dying inside, several scents I could not readily identify, plus the unique odor of the man himself. Fortunately the wind, which blows constantly in from the water surrounding Point Pinos on three sides, quickly carried the smells away. Junior, who knew how to take advantage of an audience when he had it, went right on telling about his latest valuable find while I sorted through his stuff.