How to Moon a Cat (27 page)

I looked up from the letter, my thoughts racing as I stared at the Plexiglas surface of the display case holding the replica flag. If the original Bear Flag had been destroyed in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, as DeVoto and every other source I’d read had reported, why had Oscar sought an estimate of its current worth?

Napis had raised this same issue in his response. After a few sarcastic remarks about the difficulties of assessing the value of an item that did not exist, he had provided a potential dollar range based on recent sales of items of similar age and historic significance.

The fingers of my free hand wrapped tightly around the handle to the stroller as I read the eye-catching amount.

 

 

ISABELLA POINTED HER
nose into the air, trying to get a better angle on the figure in the flowered dress on the opposite side of the room. He was engaged in a glowering standoff with the side-whiskered man in the wide-lapelled coat. Her blue eyes scanned down past the hem of the lumpy flowered dress to the bony knees, hairy shins, and mud-splattered construction boots.

Hmm, she thought curiously as the man in the flowered dress stiffly followed General Vallejo out into the breezeway.

I wonder what happened to Harold’s overalls.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
the cats and I exited the barracks. I hadn’t located a toy bear pointing to the next stop on the hunt, but now, at least, I had a better hint of what kind of hidden treasure Oscar might have left for me to find. Somehow, I suspected, the original Bear Flag had escaped its widely reported destruction in the 1906 earthquake.

I began to retrace my steps across the plaza’s park to the van. The rain had finally abated, and the slightest hint of blue was beginning to creep into the sky—but my head was still clouded with thoughts of the Bear Flag trail.

Isabella was apparently pondering her own theories. A light singsong of feline commentary floated up from the carrier compartment of the stroller. I rolled up the rain cover so I could look down through the mesh screen. Rupert was stretched out across the blankets in a deep snoring snooze, but Isabella sat alertly upright, her head tilted slightly to the left, her expression conferring the impression of focused deliberation.

“You let me know when you’ve got it figured out,” I said with laugh.

As we neared the opposite side of the park, Isabella’s musing chatter sharpened into an instruction-sending chirp. She leaned forward in the stroller, her eyes honing in on the restaurant across the street from the parked van.

I felt my forehead crinkle as I followed her gaze. Monty stood next to a table littered with a pile of used plates, silverware, and glasses. He stepped out into the aisle, turning toward us. With a brisk, efficient motion, he brushed his hands over the front of his suit and smoothed out the dark fabric. Then he leaned forward to shake hands with the man who had been seated across the table.

Monty’s metal cufflink flickered in the afternoon’s growing sunlight as his slender hand met the stubby-fingered grip of his lunch companion—a man in a wrinkled linen suit and tattered black bow tie with a bristly white mustache.

My mouth fell open as I recognized Clem’s Mark Twain costume, and I whipped around toward the barracks. If Clem had been sitting at lunch with Monty for the past hour, who had been playing the role of General Vallejo?

The shadowed breezeway past the dripping eaves was vacant. The General, I felt certain, was long gone.

I pursed my lips for a long moment, a feeling of terror amplifying along my spine. I had one guess who had been entertaining me in the exhibit room. For the second time in as many days, I had the sudden intuition that I had come into contact with Frank Napis—and lived to tell about it.

As I struggled to calm my racing pulse, I tried to reassure myself that this was a good sign, an indication that I was on the track of Oscar’s treasure.

There had to be something more for me to uncover, I thought, feeling a fresh wave of optimism. It was time to head back to the Green Vase.

A BRIGHT SUN
hit the finish line’s wet pavement outside Spigot and Carlin’s Santa Rosa broadcast booth. Crowds of spectators were beginning to line the race route to watch the riders come in. Despite the day’s soggy start, it looked like the fans would be treated to a thrilling finale for the race’s second stage.

As yet, the commentators had little information about just who would be coming into town at the front of the peloton. The helicopters were scrambling to return to the skies, but the race would be nearly over before any overhead shots were available. Scattered radio reports indicated that the original breakaway group of ten riders had been whittled down to a much smaller posse, but the number of riders and the size of their lead over the peloton remained a mystery.

It had been a long rainy slog through the wine country hills for the waterlogged cyclists, a particularly dismal stage for the sprinters. The World’s Fastest Man, who had thoroughly enjoyed the hot, flat finish into Sacramento the day before, now trailed in a straggler group at the back of the race. His only goal for this stage was to ensure he finished close enough to the main pack to avoid being eliminated from the overall competition. The yellow jersey would change hands at the end of the day, but who would be wearing it remained an open question.

Harry Carlin fiddled with the console of his computer, tapping keys and twisting dials as more and more data came in from the field. Suddenly, he pushed away from the counter and pressed his hands against the earphones he wore over his head.

“Oh, this could be interesting,” he said eagerly as he listened to the static-laden voice coming through his headset. “We’re starting to get some more concrete details.”

Will Spigot looked up from the chessboard and cocked an intrigued eyebrow at Carlin.

“There are three riders remaining in the breakaway,” Carlin reported to Spigot. “They’ve got an eight minute lead, and—your little friend from yesterday is leading the bunch.”

“The one who got blown out at the Sacramento finish line?” Spigot asked, his interest piqued. He leaned back in his chair, considering. “Eight minutes is a good lead, but the peloton might still have time to reel them back in. What does the computer think?” he asked, an edge of excitement creeping into his voice for the first time that day. “Will they be caught?”

Carlin’s face pinched with concentration as he returned to the keyboard and began frantically punching keys. “The computer is struggling to process all the new data coming in. It isn’t sure what to think at this particular time,” he reported, his voice perplexed.

The television monitor that had been pushed to the side of the booth suddenly burst into color with a shot of three muddy riders. The chessboard fell clattering to the floor as Spigot leapt across the broadcast booth to swoop in on the screen.

“That’s him,” he yelled, enthusiastically pointing at the video picture. “Harry,” he demanded, spinning around to face Carlin. “How far out are they?”

Carlin was now pounding the keys to his computer. “I believe they’re about fifteen kilometers from the finish line,” he replied.

“And the computer can’t tell you whether they’ll be caught?” Spigot asked again.

Carlin threw his hands up in exasperation, “The computer appears to be completely befuddled by the situation.”

“We’re back in action!” Spigot called out. He jumped into his broadcast chair and whirled it around to face the cameraman, who had just resumed filming. With a wink, he confided, “And not a minute too soon. I was about to lose that chess game.”

 

 

THAT AFTERNOON IN
San Francisco, a small group gathered behind the locked doors of Wang’s flower shop. An impromptu meeting of the Vigilance Committee had been called to address the unexpected events that had taken place in Sonoma earlier that afternoon.

Dilla Eckles paced back and forth beside the makeshift lab table, nervously wringing her hands. Behind her, the cages stacked up against the back wall were busy with activity from the ninety-nine bald creatures spinning and scurrying inside.

“Well, that’s it, then,” Dilla said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Frank’s stolen the last Bear Flag clue. She won’t know where to go. We’ll have to call the whole thing off.”

Wang sat calmly in his wheelchair, his fingers twiddling with his oxygen tubes, his thoughts silently turning.

Harold Wombler looked uncomfortable as he surveyed the scene. He reached up to his green baseball cap and smoothed his fingers over the gold-threaded stitching of the cycling bear. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I understand there’s another clue.”

Hands on her hips, Dilla squared up in front of him, the fierce expression on her face demanding further explanation.

Harold’s shoulders slumped forward as he dug his hands into the frayed pockets of his overalls. His thin lips squiggled uneasily. When he finally spoke, his scratching voice was the only sound in the flower shop.

“It’s in the apartment above the Green Vase.”

“In the kitchen?” Wang asked softly from his chair.

Harold nodded somberly as Dilla’s head whirled around to look at her husband. A stern look on her face, she slowly returned her gaze to Harold.

“Where did you get this information?” Dilla demanded.

Harold stared down at his mud-crusted construction boots, avoiding Dilla’s stare. After a deep gulp, he finally answered.

“From the man who hid it there.”

A figure appeared on the sidewalk outside the flower shop and knocked on the window. Dilla strode purposefully around the front rack of flowers, twisted the lock, and swung open the door.

A man in a wide-lapelled suit and walrus-inspired side-whiskers stood on the opposite side.

“Hello, Dilla.”

AS MONDAY’S DAYLIGHT
dimmed on a damp San Francisco, the sun made a brief appearance, casting up and down shadows across the hilly metropolis. The Embarcadero filled with a dense scurrying of antlike activity as the approaching sunset threw a flickering flash against the mural of rain-soaked windows, masking the city in a collage of dusky pastel colors before it sank into the western horizon beyond the blue of the bay.

The moon arrived early at its post, crawling stealthily over the Golden Gate Bridge, whose fiery steel burned red against the pale gray sky. On this night, its size was reduced to a thin sliver of illumination; the knife-edge of its curve sliced across the landscape.

With the cloaking cover of darkness falling in around its sharp shoulders, the moon sped along the city sidewalks, cutting a direct and deliberate path toward Jackson Square. It stopped in front of a familiar red brick building with crenulated iron columns and focused a pointed prick of light at a front windowpane, honing in on a tinted vase shape embedded in the glass. The image glowed an eerie green of resistance before allowing the moon’s light to pour through.

Once inside, the flow of photons zoomed across the wooden floorboards to the stairs at the back of the showroom and then surged up the staircase to the second floor kitchen.

Two white cats with orange-tipped ears and tails played hide-and-seek on a floor full of shredded wallpaper. The curling scraps bore the printed images of purple tulips in various sizes and arrangements.

A woman with a metal scraper tackled the last bit of paper that remained pinned to the wall. She wore an oversized pair of orange plastic coveralls that crinkled as she walked, but she had long since removed her face mask and goggles. As the scraper dislodged the final piece of paper covering, she leaned in toward the framing with a broad-beamed flashlight and anxiously searched the wall’s interior.

Thirty minutes later, after a lengthy but fruitless examination of the framing of all four kitchen walls, the woman sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, temporarily defeated, but not dejected. She tapped her chin with the handle of the scraper as she watched the cats pounce on each other in the piles of discarded wallpaper.

The moon had been waiting, somewhat impatiently, for just this moment. Carefully, it slid a finger of light across the tile floor to the dishwasher mounted next to the sink. The dormant appliance had not been operated in over a year. A mysterious plug in its plumbing had rendered it useless to the woman now living in the apartment above the Green Vase.

With the lightest touch, the moon planted a shimmering kiss of light on the rusted chrome handle.

As if a lightbulb had turned on inside the woman’s head, her eyes traveled to the glinting metal handle. She stood up, crossed the room to the dishwasher, and cranked open its door to look inside.

TWO CURIOUS CATS
joined me as I pulled out the dishwasher’s lower rolling rack and crawled into its square tub. It was a procedure I’d performed many times before, searching for the source of the blockage that caused the machine to cough up a soapy tidal wave every time I turned it on. After several forays into the bowels of the beast and a couple weeks’ worth of emergency mopping sessions, I had given up and resorted to hand-washing my dishes.

It had been almost a year since my last futile attempt to troubleshoot this cranky appliance. During that time, the dishwasher had sat pushed against the wall next to the sink, its only useful contribution being the additional counter space provided by its top surface.

I puffed out a frustrated sigh, temporarily blowing a strand of stray hair off my grimy forehead as I peered into the tub area. There were, at first glance, no new approaches to the problem—but after having removed all the wallpaper from the kitchen walls, I had somehow got it into my head that
this
was the next logical place to check for a potential Bear Flag clue. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, the item causing the dishwasher’s plug had been intentionally lodged in its hiding place by the previous inhabitant of this kitchen, my Uncle Oscar.