Brush With Death (14 page)

I presumed the good doctor was trying to distract me, but I appreciated his efforts. Intrigued, I flipped through the glossy photos. There was a section on modern cemeteries, but most of the book was devoted to the funerary history of the San Francisco Bay Area.

“You're that artist working next door? Annie something?” I looked up to see the curly-haired cemetery employee, Russell, standing in front of us. “What are you doing here?”

“She's looking for Helena,” the doctor said. “I was just showing her your book.”

“You wrote this?” I asked Russell, impressed. “It's really something.”

“He certainly did,” the doctor replied. “Russell knows everything there is to know about the area's cemeteries.”

“It's self-published,” Russell mumbled, blushing, and I realized he was more shy than unfriendly.

“What an accomplishment,” I complimented him. “And what a fascinating topic. I've been working on a construction site in the City, and we found some gravestones being used as stepping stones in the garden.”

Like a snake in the sun, Russell came to life. He started talking. A lot.

“. . . and then between 1902 and 1917 they moved the cemeteries to Colma, and some of the remains came to Oakland. Did you know that Colma has more dead residents than live ones? It's a city built for cemeteries.”

Helena's husband stood up. “Well, you seem to be in good hands now . . . Annie, is it? It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you for your kindness, Dr. . . . ?”

“Dick. Call me Dick.”

I nodded, though I would never understand why someone with the respectable name of Richard would prefer to be called a penis. I watched Dick walk down the corridor and go out the side door.

“. . . get together Saturday, I could tell you more.”

“I'm teaching a course on faux-finishing at the Home Improv in San Francisco this weekend. Maybe another time,” I dodged. “Russell, is there anyone else who might know about a graduate student doing some research in the cemetery?”

“Helena's the one to talk to. She knows everything that goes on here.”

“Okay, thanks.” Without Dick's presence, the cemetery office felt stifling and I was anxious to leave. I wrote my cell number on a business card and handed it to Russell. “Would you ask Helena to call me when she comes in? I'll be working next door all evening.”

“I'll tell her,” he said, taking the card with fingers that were clammy and cold.

I ducked out the door and headed to my truck. Through the cottage's front window I saw Curly Top Russell watching me, his expression flat, almost reptilian. I tried to be charitable, but the guy gave me the creeps. Among other things, someone should tell him permanents weren't a good look for a man. And if
I
noticed someone's hair was bad, it must be
really
bad.

My visit with Dick and Russell had distracted me from the afternoon's events, but now gloom settled over me. I unearthed a sketch pad and bag of pencils from behind my truck's bench seat and hiked the hills of the cemetery in search of stone angels and inner peace.

One of the drawbacks of making art for a living was that I seldom had time to sketch or paint just for the sheer pleasure of it. I found a sweet-faced, melancholy angel resting her head in her hand, took a seat on a patch of lawn, and started to draw.

Unlike painting, which encourages the mingling of light and shadow, sketching requires the artist to impose arbitrary lines, dividing the world into separate and distinct planes. In nature there are few real lines, only swaths of color. Painting and drawing are thus two different artistic processes, two ways of interpreting the world. After a day like today I felt a need to impose order on my unruly reality, so I sat with the sounds of the trees and the birds and the faraway city, and focused on creating the length of lines, the breadth of curves, and the relative values of darks and lights. By the time I tossed my sketch pad into the truck and headed into the columbarium, I was relaxed and able to focus on the restoration.

The last of the columbarium's staff was pulling out of the employee parking lot as I let myself into the Main Cloister. I was absorbed in thoughts of tonight's restoration work, relishing the opportunity to commune with the long-dead anonymous artisans who had adorned this beautiful building so many years ago.

Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me into the empty Middle Chapel.

“Manny!” I yelled when my eyes had adjusted to the chapel's dim light. “What are you doing? You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“I'm sorry, Annie, but I need to speak with you in private,” the accountant said, his big brown eyes worried.

“Well, here I am. What's up?”

“Something strange is going on. I can't find the name of the person who appraised
La Fornarina
last year.”

“Don't worry about it. I'm sure it'll turn up.”

“No, you don't understand. The whole
file
is missing.”

“It was probably just misplaced,” I said, shaking off a frisson of fear. “These things happen.”

“Not in my office they don't. It's my
job
to keep meticulous records for insurance and tax purposes, Annie. I've never lost a file.
Never.
”

“Well, surely—”

“Have you spoken with Mrs. Henderson yet?” he interrupted. “The retired secretary?”

I shook my head.

“I wonder if she might know something,” Manny muttered, more to himself than to me. “I found her address, by the way. Will you ask her about the file?”

I nodded and took a slip of paper from him.

“There's something else. A friend of yours came by yesterday and dropped off something with Miss Ivy.”

“I saw Ivy earlier and she didn't say anything about it.”

“She said you ran past her and she ‘certainly wasn't going to go chasing you down the hall.' I told her I'd give it to you.”

“What is it?”

“It's in my office. Follow me.” He stuck his head into the hall, looked both ways, and scurried out of the Middle Chapel toward the business office.

“Who was this friend?” I asked, trotting after him. “Did he leave a name?”

“It was a woman. According to Miss Ivy she blew through here like a bat out of h-e-l-l,” he spelled, and I wondered if, like me, Manny feared the karmic consequences of cursing in the presence of the dead.

I followed him through the empty reception area and down the corridor to his no-frills office. A black rolling suitcase, the kind favored by flight attendants and frequent fliers, leaned against one wall.

“You don't know who left it?” I asked.

“I didn't see her. You can ask Miss Ivy in the morning. Listen, I've got to go. I'm on the board of the Rotary Club, and we're meeting at Inn Kensington in ten minutes.”

“Manny, did Miss Ivy say if the woman told her
anything
? Left a note, maybe?”

“Nope. I assumed you were expecting it. I thought maybe it was an artist thing.”

“An artist thing?”

“I'm a CPA, Annie. What do I know from artistic temperament?” Manny shrugged his well-padded shoulders, locked up his files, and left me alone with the mysterious black suitcase.

Chapter 7

—Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch painter

—Georges LeFleur

I stared at the ordinary suitcase from across the small room as though it were a poisonous snake. Had a resentful Dr. Gossen spent the afternoon thumbing through his tattered copy of
The Anarchist's Cookbook
? Would a tug on the zipper rocket me into the fourth dimension?
This'll teach an artist to mess with an anthropologist,
I imagined him cackling as he stuffed fertilizer and diesel fuel into the bag and rigged it with a timer.

Get a grip,
I scolded myself. Dr. Gossen was a respectable college professor.

This line of thinking failed to reassure me. My father was also a respectable college professor, and some of his colleagues were downright certifiable.

Was that a ticking sound I heard?

Okay, Annie, calm down.
Manny said a woman left the suitcase. It couldn't have been Mary; Miss Ivy would have recognized her. Maybe Evangeline dropped off a few things for the night in the cemetery. But surely she would have called first to tell me. I pulled my cell phone out of my overalls pocket. Recently I had made a vow to keep the gadget charged and on my person, figuring that as a communications device it might work better that way than when it had a dead battery and was stuffed in my sock drawer.

It was fully charged. There were no messages.

The only other woman who might associate me with the columbarium was Cindy Tanaka. With a sense of urgency I crossed the room, knelt, and held my breath as I unzipped the suitcase.

No bang, no explosion, no homemade bomb. Only a leather camera bag and a bundle wrapped in a bright orange towel with Garfield the Cat's grinning face. Inside the camera bag was the dismantled camera Cindy had used the other night along with several murky snapshots of
La Fornarina.

Sitting back on my heels, I listened for the sound of anyone lingering outside Manny's office. All was quiet. Slowly I unwrapped the Garfield bundle. Inside was the metal box from Louis Spencer's sepulcher. The old lock was in place and looked untouched.

I checked the suitcase's side pockets for a note or a letter—anything that would provide a hint as to what was going on here. I knew that suicidal people often made a point of tying up loose ends before making their final departure, and Cindy had struck me as the type to get her affairs in order. But why would she leave all this for me? Why hadn't she turned in the metal box to the cemetery office, as we had agreed? Did she want me to take care of it?

Another wave of sadness washed over me, and I struggled to push aside the memory of finding Cindy's body.

Minutes passed as I debated my next step. I repacked the suitcase, zipped it shut, and eased Manny's door open. All was quiet, so I pulled the black bag, its plastic wheels clacking loudly, out of the office, along the hallways, and up and down the short flights of stairs to the Chapel of the Madonna. Mary was on the scaffolding, touching up the paint of the blue sky as she grooved to her iPod.

“Swear to God, Annie,” she said, peeved. Evangeline had left a message this morning that Mary was in a rotten mood because she had chickened out of last night's graveyard slumber party. Tonight they were set to try again. “That Roy dude? Hung out trying to talk to me, like, for-
ever.
If you leave me alone here one more time, I'm gonna . . .” She glanced down at me. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just a little tired.” Not wanting to relive this afternoon's gruesome discovery, I decided not to mention it to Mary.

“What's with the suitcase?”

“I need to hide it.”

“Where?”

One of the many things I loved about Mary was that when I showed up trailing a suitcase to hide, she asked “where” rather than “why.”

“Somewhere in the columbarium. I don't want to be seen leaving with it,” I said, thinking of Russell, the observant cemetery savant. I had no idea why Cindy had left the suitcase for me, but she must have had a reason. The least I could do for her was to find out what it was.

“Do you need to hide the whole thing?” Mary asked, clambering down from the squeaky scaffolding. “Or can we unpack it? It'd be easier to hide smaller objects.”

“Good point.” Ex-drug-user teenage runaways made by far the best assistants when it came to skullduggery. I unzipped the suitcase and removed the camera bag and the towel-shrouded box.

“Can we lose Garfield?”

“Sure,” I replied, unwrapping the metal container.

“What's in the box?” Mary said, grabbing and shaking it.

“Hey!” I said, snatching it back. “Be careful with that.”

“Why? Is it gonna explode?”

“Hard to say.”

“What's in it?”

“I don't know.”

“Then how do you know you need to hide it?”

“I'd just feel better if it disappeared for a while. Long story.”

“Sure you don't want to see what's inside? I can never wait to open packages. One Christmas my kid sister and I opened all our presents in the middle of the night. It was a real drag on Christmas morning, though.”

“It's . . . private.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Mary shrugged. “It's so old and cruddy it should fit right in around here. Why don't we put it in one of the niches?”

I investigated the nearest glass-fronted compartment. “It's locked. Can you open it?”

“These old locks are tougher than they look,” Mary said, examining the lock. She rattled it, banged on it, and shook her head. “I could probably pick it, but my tools are in the City.”

“You have lock-picking tools? You never told me that.”

“I didn't want to worry you. Remember my ex, Paul, the locksmith? Locksmiths have great tools.”

“So says the bumper sticker.”

“Don't you think it's weird that all locksmiths aren't burglars? I mean, it'd be easy, right?”

“I guess most folks are honest. Rich people give us the keys and security codes to their houses all the time so we can do our work. But we don't steal from them.”