Brush With Death (21 page)

I had paid off my credit card bill in full last month, for the first time in five years. I ran it right back up again making my escape from L.A.

After fleeing the sinister Donato Sandino, I took a wildly expensive cab ride to the airport, where I hopped a South-west flight to Oakland. From there I took the shuttle to BART, BART to the City, another taxi to my studio, picked up my truck, drove back to Oakland, holed up in my apartment, turned off the phone, and opened a bottle of wine.

I didn't want to deal with Frank. I didn't know if he was working with Sandino, the FBI, or both. All I knew was that Grandfather was in trouble, Donato Sandino had given me an ultimatum, and I was no closer to finding
La Fornarina
than I had been a few days ago. In brief, I was clueless, frustrated,and scared. I comforted myself with Chinese takeout and Merlot, watched a mindless reality TV show, and drifted off to sleep.

Saturday morning I sat at the kitchen table and paged halfheartedly through the
Oakland Tribune.
I never used to subscribe to the newspaper, but I'd grown weary of friends nagging me to keep up to date. I now had half-read newspapers stacked in piles throughout the apartment, creating a mazelike atmosphere reminiscent of library archives before the advent of microfiche. The mess was annoying, though my biggest worry was that if I choked to death on a chicken wing one night the authorities would think I was one of those sad, lonely hoarders.

I glanced at the headlines, decided to read the articles later—chaos, politics, and destruction were too much to deal with first thing in the morning—and turned to the local section, where I spied a follow-up story on Cindy Tanaka. I sat up straight and read:

I dropped the paper, dug through my backpack, and found Detective Hucles' business card and phone number.

“Hucles,” he answered on the first ring.

“Detective, this is Annie Kincaid. I found Cindy Tanaka's body, remember?”

“Yes, Ms. Kincaid. How can I help you?”

“I read in the paper this morning that her death has been declared a suicide.”

“That's correct.”

“But are you sure? I saw Cindy just a couple of days before and she seemed fine.”

“That's not uncommon, Ms. Kincaid. Often suicides find an inner peace once they've made the decision to kill themselves.”

“Did you know that someone had been stalking her?”

“Her professor, a Dr. Randall Gossen, mentioned it, as did her roommate. But there was no evidence to suggest foul play by that particular individual or any other.”

“But who—”

“I appreciate your concern, Ms. Kincaid. If you think of anything pertinent, give me a call.”

I hung up, dissatisfied but unsure what to do. This was when a person could really use a friend in the police department. In my case such a friendship seemed as likely as convincing my hair to behave on a regular basis.

I couldn't shake the feeling that Cindy's untimely death was connected to the Raphael, and/or the grave robbery. After yesterday's lovely little chat with Donato Sandino, I felt like I should be tracking down a masterpiece. I glanced at the clock.
Oops.
No time for such things now. I had to head into the City to teach the faux-finishing class at the Home Improv. I threw on some clothes and rushed out to the truck. Traffic was light and I got creative with the speed limit. Twenty minutes later I exited at Bayshore, careened across Home Improv's pitted parking lot, and raced through the cavernous warehouse store to the paint department, a mere seven minutes late.

Waiting for me were two men wearing the bright red Home Improv apron and buttons reading ASK ME! One was a fortyish, short man in a Burpee cap, the other a pimply-faced, elongated teenager. They'd cleared off two large tables and brought out the prepainted boards, paint samples, and before-and-after photographs I'd dropped off a couple of days ago. Next to these were the mounds of faux-finishing supplies the store hoped to peddle to the class: brushes and paints, glazes and rags, solvent and overpriced “faux-finishing liquid.” When the store manager offered me the job he'd made it clear that he expected to sell plenty of the premixed quarts to my students even though they could mix their own, and achieve a better effect, at one-tenth the cost. I'd held my tongue and agreed to his quid pro quo. The guy had to make a living, I supposed, though it got my goat that art supplies were so expensive. The art supply house near me sold “artists' mineral spirits” in cute little six-ounce jars for the same price as a gallon of the stuff at the no-frills hardware store down the street.

“The great thing about faux-finishing is there's no ‘wrong' way to do it,” I lectured to the little crowd of eager stipplers. “It's all about experimentation and having a good time. Remember my personal mantra. ‘You can always paint over it.' So let your inner artist come out and play!”

I felt a little silly talking like this, but my enthusiasm was genuine. No two ways about it, faux-finishing was a hoot.

As the class oohed and aahed over my sample boards and before-and-after photos there was one more tardy arrival: a tall, muscular African-American man dressed in perfectly faded jeans, work boots, and a white linen shirt. He looked like a glamorous Hollywood version of a contractor.

“Bryan!” I hadn't seen my old friend Bryan Boissevain in ages. We hugged. “What are you doing here?”

“You
know
I've been wanting to faux-finish the downstairs bathroom, baby doll, but your rates are too pricey for me. Besides, I never get to see you anymore, so here I am!”

I set him up at the table, turned back to the group, and launched into an explanation of how to apply a tinted, transparent glaze to the prepared surface area, and then manipulate the glaze with rags, plastic bags, dry brushes, combs, or a combination of all four.

“We're using oil-based products today,” I continued. “A common mistake is to use water-based faux-finishing products. They may seem more user-friendly, but the water-based products dry too fast for beginners and are best left to experienced hands. Slower-drying oil-based products keep the surface ‘open' longer, allowing you to start over if you make a mistake. And remember, if you haven't made a mistake, then you haven't faux-finished!”

Everyone grabbed a prepainted sample board, chose paint colors, and began mixing their glazes. I was so busy answering questions and intervening in tinting disasters that I didn't notice someone else had joined the group. Leaving Latisha mixing a burnt sienna glaze, I whipped around and bumped into Curly Top Russell—literally.

“Russell! What a surprise,” I said. Seeing the cemetery employee in a real world setting was as jarring as the time I'd run into my dentist at a bowling alley, rolling a gutter ball and guzzling cheap beer.

“You mentioned the class and it sounded interesting.” He smiled but his heavy-lidded eyes were expressionless. “I own an old Victorian, not far from here. In Hunters' Point.”

“Um, great,” I said. Hunters' Point was full of fine old houses, but had a reputation as a rough neighborhood. It was hard to imagine this anemic cemetery fan living there. “Welcome.”

I set Russell up with sample boards, glaze, and paint at the far end of one of the tables, and tried to ignore him as his pale eyes continued to track me.

“. . . so I said to myself,
why
have you never been to Coit Tower?” Bryan was regaling his tablemates with a long-winded tale of his latest passion: experiencing the tourist's San Francisco. He punctuated his comments with a glaze-filledbrush, flinging drops of solution in the air. I grabbed his hand and repositioned it over the sample board.

I took a spin around the other table, where Katy had gotten so distracted gossiping with Latisha about Selena's good-for-nothing husband that her glaze had developed a hard edge.

“It doesn't look right,” Katy complained. “There's something wrong with the glaze.”

“It's drying before you're done,” I replied and handed her more sample boards. “Here, try again. And this time, concentrate. Selena's husband is no-good trash, but that's not helping you learn to faux-finish.” Katy sighed like a martyr and started over.

“My color looks flat,” Latisha said.

“You're wiping off most of the topcoat.” I had her stir in more pigment. “If you take off too much you won't get the proper color saturation.”

“I dropped my brush,” Warren cried, staring at the floor. “It made a mess.”

What was this, kindergarten? Teaching was clearly not a profession for the patience-impaired.

“Accidents happen!” I chirped with a gaiety I did not feel as I handed him a paper towel. “Pick up the brush, wash it off in the mineral spirits, and get right back to it!”

I went to assist a sweet, overweight man named Rick who tackled his sample boards with more determination than talent. Wrinkling his forehead and biting his lower lip, he dabbed on the paint with trepidation.

“Put a little more oomph into it,” I suggested.

“For crying out loud, Bry, I said to myself,” I heard Bryan nattering on. “You've never even been on a
cable car
! Have you ever tried Rice-A-Roni? No! Why, that doesn't even half make sense.” His tablemates nodded in agreement.

Margaret, a fifty-something homemaker, had brought her teenage daughter Rochelle, who wanted to faux-finish her bedroom “from top to bottom.” Their color choices made me cringe, but who was I to dissuade the duo from lilac and turquoise harlequin-patterned walls?

I checked in on Russell, even though every molecule in my body screamed to avoid him. “Lookin' good, Russell.” He patted at his sample boards listlessly.

“So then my friend Annette asks me, have I ever been on the Mexican Bus?” Bryan was telling his neighbor, Katrina. “And I said—”

“Annette?” I interjected, my paintbrush pausing in midair over Rochelle's turquoise patch. “Annette who?”

“Annette Crawford,” Bryan said. “You remember her.”

“Of course I do. She stopped taking my calls.”

Annette Crawford was a no-nonsense, supersmart, ultra-cool homicide inspector for the San Francisco Police Department. A decade my senior, she was the type of woman who could dress up in a satin ball gown and four-inch heels, size up a bloody murder scene, and attend an awards dinner with the mayor without skipping a beat. Last year, we had begun a tentative friendship based on a mutual respect for each other's ability to lie (in my case) and to ferret out said lies (in her case).

“You can hardly blame her, Annie, after the drug bust.”

Several heads whipped around to stare at me. I corrected Rochelle's board and then edged over to Bryan, hoping for discretion.

“You and Annette talk? About Rice-A-Roni?”

“Don't be silly. She's a hush puppy fan, and I like to tell you I knocked her on her fine ass with my dirty rice and jambalaya,” Bryan said, his Louisiana bayou accent thickening as he spoke of the food of his childhood. He glanced over at Rick. “Don't look now, buddy, but you've sprung a leak.”

“Help!” Rick called out as he mopped up his board. I reached over and rectified the situation without blinking an eye. After my years in the business, glaze drips were a piece of cake.

“I mean, you and Annette are still friends?” I clarified.

“After the Chagall fiasco, we started talking. She's a local history buff, did you know that?” Bryan gushed. “We took the Mexican Bus last night and went through tequila and limes like there was no tomorrow!”

A few months ago I had hopped the brightly painted bus named “Lulu” with Mary and Samantha. For the cost of a ticket, the Mexican Bus drove the boisterous crowd from one salsa club to the next, ushering us inside to drink and dance, then loading us back on the bus to head to the next stop. As soon as the door closed, the booze, limes, and salt-shaker emerged, the driver cranked up the music, and the bus swayed as its tequila-soaked passengers sang and danced through the streets of San Francisco.

That night my wallet had been stolen while I was mamboing at Rock-a-Pulco, and Mary and I had had to break into the studio through the window, nearly setting off the burglar alarm. We awoke the next day with pounding heads, queasy stomachs, and vague memories of having had way too good a time.

“How come you didn't ask me to go?” I said, hurt.

Bryan looked guilty. “Honey pie, you
know
how much I love you, but Annette needed to let her hair down—she's been working so hard—and you two aren't exactly on good terms, so, well . . .”

“That's okay, I understand.” I felt a rush of self-pity. It was like getting stuck at the loser table at an otherwise raucous wedding.

After another hour of questions about color choices and texture options, I sent my students home armed with buckets of glaze, pots of paint, and bags of paintbrushes, rags, and sponges. Home Improv associates rang up sales in the hundreds of dollars, and the store manager beamed at me.

As Bryan and I made our way across the parking lot, he looped a heavy arm around my shoulders and announced he was taking me to lunch at Fisherman's Wharf.

“No one but tourists eat at Fisherman's Wharf,” I protested. “I haven't been there since I was a kid.”

“That's my point, baby doll. I haven't been in
years,
since I was fresh off the boat from Louisiana. But tourists come from all over the world to see the sights we locals don't take time for. Aren't you the least bit curious?”