The Bohemian Murders (33 page)

Carefully I searched my memory of the grisly business, which was almost preternaturally clear in every detail. “Yes. I am positive.”

“He raped me, you know, many times. He beat me. The other one was nice, after Pete. But he forced me, too.”

“I am so sorry,” I said, my voice sounding hollow with horror.

“If you hadn’t shot Pete, he’d have gotten loose and
killed us both—but not before he’d done other unspeakable things. It was self-defense, Fremont.”

“Not technically, it wasn’t. He was still tied up and had no weapon. I would have a hard time proving self-defense in a court of law.”

“So?” Phoebe shrugged, put the brush down, turned and faced me. She was not her old self after all; she was profoundly different in more than appearance, and I wondered if forevermore she would have this feral edge. “So you continue to protect yourself, which is what you were doing when you shot him. You make sure you don’t have to try to prove self-defense. That is why you removed the rope and threw away the gun. Believe me, Fremont, if I could have got hold of any sort of weapon, I’d have killed that bastard a hundred thousand times!”

Slowly I nodded, accepting a burden I knew I would carry for the rest of my life. “And that is why I must now go out and clean the Maxwell, and when I get back to the lighthouse I will tell Quincy I made Pete tell me your whereabouts and then I let him go.”

“Good!” Phoebe said vehemently. She rose, came over to where I sat, and leaned down to place her cheek next to mine. So softly that I barely heard, she said, “Thank you, Fremont, for saving my life.”

I walked to the Pine Inn on the corner of Lincoln and Ocean Avenue to buy some already-prepared soup for Phoebe. Like Mother Hubbard, all her cupboards were bare. I had covered my bloody blouse and skirt with a fringed Spanish shawl, one of Phoebe’s artistic props. I would not have worn such a thing in Pacific Grove but it seemed just right for Carmel. In fact, I rather liked all its bright bands of color. I found myself smiling and humming, giddy, light-headed, the way one becomes when a crisis is past.

But when I emerged from the Pine Inn with the soup in a covered pail, I discovered that I had let down my guard too soon. There was another crisis, right here in Carmel, and it was just beginning.

S
omewhere in Carmel, someone was ringing a great, deep bell. I thought at first it might be the bell at the Mission; but since the Mission is in near-ruins, on second thought that was hardly likely.

When one lives near the sea, one soon learns to look in that direction for whatever out-of-the-ordinary thing may be happening. Thus in response to the ringing bell, people were coming out of their houses and places of business and walking—or in some cases running—down Ocean Avenue toward the beach. I continued on back to Phoebe’s. Of course I was curious, but first things first: A woman who has been kept a prisoner on starvation rations should have her food!

Phoebe, however, had other ideas. When I was still half a block away she came out of her cottage, tottering a little in her haste. “That’s the alarm!” she said breathlessly. “We must go down to the water. Someone must be drowning!”

I could not dissuade her, but I did convince her that she was in no condition to walk that far; so I drove us both down in the Maxwell.

“Park here.” Phoebe pointed to a grove of trees still some distance from the white sand. “I can walk the rest of the way. But before we see any of the others, Fremont, I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything!”

“I don’t want anyone to know I was kidnapped, held prisoner and all that. You can think of something else to tell Quincy about why you let Pete Carlson go. Tell him … tell him Pete got loose and grabbed his gun from you and took off into the forest. Please, Fremont. The note they made me write when Braxton and Pete forced me to go with them, it only said I was going away for a while. I remember telling them it didn’t need to say more than that, because in Carmel we don’t question each other’s comings and goings.” She put her hand on my arm, her fingers gripping like claws. “I just don’t want to have to talk about what happened, it was too humiliating, I don’t want them to know!”

I hugged Phoebe and stroked her hair. “Of course I won’t tell, if that’s what you want. You can give whatever explanation you like for the time you’ve been away.” Artemisia would have a field day telling me I-told-you-so, and somehow we would need to placate the sheriff, but that could all come later. I had been accused before of filing frivolous missing persons reports, and survived.

“Thank you,” Phoebe said, “you’re a good person, Fremont Jones.”

I smiled. “Now shall we go see what all the commotion is about?”

They were all there on the beach: Artemisia in her layered purple dress; Irma Fox accompanied by Khalid, the Burnoose Boy (sans burnoose today); Tom, Dick, and Harry, alias the Twangy Boys; my Diogenes, Professor Storch; and the skinny La Señorita, who was so shy and reclusive I had never gotten to know her. But Arthur
Heyer, the Medium-Everything Man, was absent—and if I did not miss my guess, the alarm bell was ringing for the person who missed him most.

Oscar Peterson, naked as the day he was born, had a long-barreled revolver in one hand and a bottle of either gin or vodka in the other. His skin was fish-belly white and loose on his long bones. His testicles swung when he moved like stones in a withered pouch. He looked part crane, part mad prophet. He was either chanting or singing—one of his own poems, perhaps—and he seemed intent on wading into the winter-cold waters of Carmel Bay.

“Oh, no!” Phoebe exclaimed. “What has been happening here?”

“Let Artemisia explain it to you, but if she mentions me, I hope you’ll take whatever she says with a grain of salt,” I said. “I’m going to see if Mimi will talk to me.”

Mimi Peterson stood alone at the north end of the beach on a broad, flat rock that had been exposed by the low tide. Her cornsilk hair was loose, not braided as I had always seen it, and rippled in the onshore breeze. Tears rolled silently down a face as set as marble and she wore black, as if she already mourned. I expected that she did.

I hung back. At this moment, Mimi was unapproachable.

It went on for a long time, Oscar croaking nonsense at the top of his lungs, swigging from the bottle and waving the gun. A crowd gradually gathered, not only the sunset group of core Carmelites but others I had never seen. Whenever anyone ventured into the water, Oscar raised the gun and fired wildly. I counted five shots, one of them a near-miss on the Twangy Boys; after that, they left him alone. All the while the tide came in.

I still stood near Mimi, noting that her best friends were all giving her a wide berth. I wondered why—perhaps it was not so much a wide berth as a respectful distance. Still I had not spoken.

Finally the waiting was too much for me. I yelled, at Mimi or at anyone who would listen, “Why don’t some of the men get together and rush him? He’s not trying to
shoot anybody, and anyway, he’s almost out of bullets. Isn’t it obvious that if we don’t intervene, Oscar will drown himself?”

Slowly Mimi turned her head toward me; not another muscle moved, only her head and neck, and her expression did not alter. I felt chills from the coldness in her stony eyes. “Oscar confessed to all of us last night. I knew, of course, that he was having an affair with that actress Sabrina Howard. He paid her bills at the Del-Monte, lavished money on her when we were practically starving. Then at New Year’s Oscar found out she was still ‘entertaining’ Braxton Furnival and his friends, and he started to come apart with jealousy. Oscar killed Sabrina Howard. It was not an accident. If he couldn’t have her exclusive attention, then no one else could have her at all—that’s how crazy he’d become over that woman.”

I did not say anything; there was nothing to say. Down below, now waist-deep in waves, Oscar ranted on.

Mimi had not finished. “It might have all blown over. I was the only one in Carmel who knew—who cared to know—that Sabrina was Oscar’s
whore.
” She spat the ugly word from twisted lips, yet still no other part of her body moved; the effect was eerie, like a statue come to life. “But then you came around with that photograph. And Arthur—poor, pedantic, thorough Arthur—remembered how Oscar had spent a lot of time talking to Sabrina at one of Braxton’s parties. So Oscar had to kill Arthur, so that Arthur couldn’t tell. Oscar drowned him … but it broke my husband’s heart, and what was left of his mind. Now Oscar intends to drown himself in reparation, and we are all agreed to allow him to do it. This is the best way.”

Suddenly Mimi whirled on me, her black skirts swooping like a vulture’s wings: “You will not interfere! Do you understand that, Fremont Jones?
Go away and leave us alone!
”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound would come out. The force of her anger buffeted me; I staggered backward, slipping on the smooth rock. I would have fallen but for an unseen pair of arms that closed around me and buoyed me up. Unseen, but not unknown. A soft,
luxuriant beard filled the hollow behind my ear—so, he’d grown it back. I was glad.

“Your sense of timing was always impeccable,” I whispered, turning in Michael’s arms.

Michael kissed me right there on Carmel Beach, in front of God and Artemisia and everyone, but of course they didn’t see. Their eyes were on Oscar Peterson, playing out the final act in his tragedy.

“Come away, Fremont,” Michael said, “don’t watch this.”

“I can’t leave. I have to take Phoebe home. You don’t know—” I bit my tongue, remembering my promise. “She has been a little ill and I doubt she could walk back up the hill as far as her street.”

“They will see that she gets home. Come with me now, Fremont. Phoebe will understand.”

I looked across the beach, where Phoebe was surrounded by Carmelites, and saw that he was right. Then I looked back at Michael; I gave him all my attention and all my heart.

I went with him. Of course I did.

“
I
am not going to ask you to marry me,” Michael said.

“I am relieved to hear it,” I responded, in a stout voice I could only hope would give the lie to my ambivalence on this risky topic. Indeed if he were to do to me again the things he had just done, who knew what I might end up agreeing to? It had been a mere ten days since Michael’s return and (at least privately, with me) the end of the Misha charade, and already I could scarcely remember that the two of us had ever been other than as close as we were now.

He went on: “I know how you feel about marriage. I’ve heard you expound on the subject often enough.”

“Um-hmm.” I traced my fingertip around and around one of his totally useless nipples until he shivered and trapped my hand. It is quite amazing that men’s nipples get these tiny little erections. I looked down and saw that his magical member was also transforming itself again, and I smiled.

We were having a two-day holiday up the coast, in a little cabin on Half Moon Bay. Quincy was minding the lighthouse. I’d never been before to Half Moon Bay, which is some miles north of Santa Cruz. Michael had chosen the place for its seclusion; we’d sailed up on the
Katya
without letting anyone know our destination. There were things he needed to tell me, Michael had said, that required the most absolute privacy.

He had begun with the reason for his recent bizarre behavior. Michael Archer—or rather, Mikhail Arkady Kossoff—was more than just a spy. He had been, for most of his adult life, a reluctant double agent for both Russia and the United States. This was a role he had inherited, not chosen.

How this inheritance came about was, actually, quite fascinating: Michael’s great-grandfather Kossoff had come to this country early in the last century as a fur trader, and he had prospered. Michael’s grandfather had therefore inherited a thriving business, which he proceeded to increase to such a point that his wealth attracted the attention of the tsar. The tsar raised the grandfather to nobility, with the title of duke—but there was a price: Along with the furs Grandfather brought from California to Russia, he was also expected to bring information. The Kossoffs were thus bound in service to the tsar. And so they had remained, from that day to this.