Cassie thought Blankenship was going to fly off the bed and beat Nick with his clipboard. “What! How? It was that wretched car of hers, wasn’t it? I didn’t think it was safe. H – how bad is it?”
Cassie laid a hand on his arm. “She will recover, I know she will. It wasn’t a car accident. She was bitten by some raccoons at her property. They scratched her up pretty badly.” She deliberately avoided the worst of it.
Royce looked faint. “She is the best thing that’s — ” He seemed to recognize where the sentence was headed, thought better of it, forced himself calm, and started again. “Don’t you see? She did me a favor. I was so intent on the launch that I don’t know when I would have made time for a checkup. As you know, I’m not fond of them probing my nose.”
Indeed he was not. Cassie was willing to bet it had taken at least two burly orderlies and one husky nurse to hold the Nose still enough to capture the polyp. The mental picture made her wince.
Royce seemed so sad. “I left messages on her home phone and at the office to call here, in order that I might alleviate her concern myself.” He paused. “May I see her? I know I can help her recover.” He appeared flustered at how that might sound. “I hasten to add that I have requested to be released in the morning and will soon be at my station. No one signs off on Cassandra for delivery without my approval.”
Cassie nudged Nick, who sent her a warning with his eyes. She understood. Royce was in love, and his Joy was two floors up in the same hospital, unconscious and unresponsive. Cassie sighed. “We’ll check on her and let you know when she can have visitors.”
“Good,” Royce said, sagging only a little. “I want to show her my list of smells and compare them with hers.” He was disconcerted. “Her room’s, I mean.”
Nick tried to hide a grin. Cassie blushed and was grateful when food ser vice swept in with a fish sandwich, Jell-O with cottage cheese, and a sharply dressed young man right behind in suit and overcoat.
“Royce Blankenship?” He shook hands with the patient. “I’m Detective Ryan Philips of the San Francisco Police Department. Sorry to trouble you as you’re visiting and all, but I do need to ask a few questions about an acquaintance of yours.” He glanced at the Dixons. “Perhaps you folks wouldn’t mind waiting in the hall?”
Cassie did mind, but she said, “We’ll be right outside the room, Royce, if you need us.” Was it her imagination, or had he gotten smaller at the prospect of having to answer undoubtedly personal questions from a stranger?
Chapter 14
They paid a brief visit to Joy’s room on the fourth floor. Cassie buried her nose in the red, yellow, and purple flowers Mark sent. They formed a sharp contrast to medicine’s stark utility.
It hurt to look at the bed where Joy lay. She was barely recognizable. And what was familiar was covered in angry red welts and bandaged lacerations. The few words they spoke did not rouse her, and Cassie soon suggested they leave.
In the car, still disturbed by Joy’s injuries, Cassie saw that she had another message from Fr. Byron. Though he did not identify himself, there was no mistaking his rich, patrician lilt. “Did you build an altar?”
“Now, what does that mean?” Cassie asked, holding the phone to Nick’s ear so he could hear.
“Priests,” said Nick, “are notoriously possessive. He probably thinks you’re being stolen away and that next week he’ll hear you’re worshipping over at St. Whatever’s in the next county.”
Cassie regarded the backs of her hands in the glow of a passing streetlight. “More likely, it’s that we haven’t worshipped anywhere in a long time.” She sighed. “It’s all happening so fast.”
Nick kept one hand on the wheel and gently rubbed the back of her neck with the other. She felt some of the tension subside. “Write him a fat check for the roof repair fund, and he’ll lay off. He’s bucking for dean of the cathedral, and the more denari he can show for himself, the more votes at ballot time. It’s all percentages.”
“What is?” She sounded snappish but she didn’t care. Upset over Royce and Joy, the last thing Cassie needed was one of Nick’s cynical commentaries about the church.
“Church governance. Priestly succession. Hail Byron, full of grace and aspirations to a higher chair. With clerics, it’s all about promotion in this life to guarantee plusher surroundings in the next.”
“Fr. Byron’s not like that and you know it. He really cares. He worries about us. I think he’s afraid we’ll get run over by the glitz and glamour.”
Nick whistled through his teeth. “They can blind me with all the bright lights in Vegas, baby, and I won’t complain. And the good Reverend Wills is one to talk. Look at those fancy brocade vests he wears. The cost of one of those would feed a homeless person for a month of Sundays. He can stop worrying about us. We hold tickets on the success express!”
Cassie suppressed her annoyance and smiled at the goofy face he made as he tried to tease her out of negative thinking. Lately he’d grown fond of saying, “When you’ve outrun screaming savages and killer bees and wild hogs, you come to appreciate an IRS audit so much more!”
He still bore the lingering bug bites and sunburn of the jungle. Wore them like badges of courage. Still, she wondered how he could not be more troubled by the recent accidents.
They stopped for a red light. “Cass, honey, why so glum?” he said, brushing her cheek, smoothing her hair. He studied her a moment, then added, as if reading her thoughts, “I’m sorry for Royce and Joy. Rotten luck. But let’s don’t deny ourselves. Those industry jerks who once wouldn’t give us the benefit of the doubt now freshen our drinks and plump our pillows. I say let them. Nicholas and Cassandra are gonna live forever!”
She tried to share his optimism. The accidents were just that, surely. She should read nothing more into them. Instead she should count her blessings. Beth’s future had been assured. And Azure had been handed a stay of execution.
The Brenda episode had come and gone, a weak moment late in the pregnancy when Cassie’s body had ballooned and Nick’s maturity had deflated. She remembered that awful moment when the stark truth stared them down and would have pushed them to jump from the highest bridge had it not been for her parents and Fr. Byron. And a grace greater than sin.
Brenda had not taken Nick’s departure with good grace. She sought ways to embarrass him and cause Cassie to doubt. Foolish things that, though never signed, bore the unmistakable mark of Brenda’s wrath. A napkin with lipstick stains arriving through the mail. An exotic dancer showing up unexpectedly at the unveiling of Trapeze for Men. A quarter-page display ad appearing in the Chronicle, congratulating Nick on both his fortieth birthday and his lithe physique.
Nick had been reluctant to bring Fr. Byron in, but Cassie needed the priest’s firm guidance and his healing humor.
“How many priests does it take to change a lightbulb?” he asked at their first counseling session.
Nick fumed but Cassie played the game. “I don’t know, Fr. B, how many does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“Change?” The priest was incredulous. “Blasphemy!”
Cassie felt it was a good start to facing change in their marriage. They settled the issue and emerged stronger than before. She had married Nick forever, including “in sickness and in health.” The Brenda affair had been a brief sickness, and that was the end of it. Nick adored Cassie, as she did him.
The rest of their lives blurred: the struggle to build and keep the business; Beth’s metamorphosis into a teenager; the inevitable drifting apart of two lovers who, now defined by their profession, neglected that which first drew them together. Then along came Cassandra, the impossible dream. How strong was this elixir?
Stronger, she prayed, than their ability to blow it. She was not so smug as to think a marriage didn’t take constant work and refreshing. First on her agenda after the launch was to arrange a Jamaican cruise for the family. And church. It was certain they needed to get back into the habit.
“Maybe we will,” she conceded t
o Nick. “Live forever, I mean.” They neared the steep climb to their home off Portolo Drive. Despite the expense, he had insisted they live in the Twin Peaks area with its spectacular views. Now, at last, they could afford to burn the mortgage. Build a mansion. Nick’s extravagance had been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“At least the Dixons will survive long enough to snatch the Grand Crystal Decanter from the paws of the jackals of doubt and put it on display in its rightful place,” she said. “Nothing too ostentatious, you understand. Maybe on a nice little bed of crushed blue velvet that just happens to revolve in a glass-enclosed case atop a stainless steel obelisk studded with jewels and lit by a beam of purest light that never goes out.”
“Very modest, my dear,” said Nick with a straight face. “And the tricky Dixons should survive long enough for Mrs. D to rub Barbie Silverman’s face right in her sanctimonious cue cards.”
He saw her stiffen and said, “Sorry, babe. Poor choice of words.” He pulled her close and gave the required reassurances. “We’re fine. No more bad news for us. It’s been more than six weeks since the intruder. I say we hire a night watchman and tell the SFPD we no longer need them to be on alert.”
Cassie said nothing but snuggled up against him. After a few moments’ silence he said, “Hmm. ‘Jackals of doubt.’ I like that. Mind if I use it in my acceptance speech?”
She managed a smile and kissed his cheek. “Now, now. Must we stoop to their level?”
They were almost to the driveway when Cassie punched a number on her cell phone. Nick arched his eyebrows and said in a low, seductive voice, “What’s this? Alerting Beth to call off the ferocious Great Dane so you and I might save ourselves for activities of a more, how shall I say, intimate nature?”
She gave his arm a playful slap. “How shall I say, it’s no in any language, buster!”
Nick grinned. “And just when are we going to perform our own personal field test on this scent of yours?”
Cassie batted her eyes. “Don’t you worry, eager one. But know that I’ll not take Cassandra out for a test drive until the night of the gala. It’s too personal, and I want a day that we’ll remember forever. Play your cards right, mister, and I might use a double dose. Right now, however” — she put his hand back on the steering wheel — “I’m returning the call I should have answered long ago. Aren’t you dying to know exactly what that message from our dear priest meant?”
In an unused storeroom in a dim corner of the basement at San Francisco City Hall, cleaning crew shift manager Patricia George adjusted the volume on the Walkman until the earphones poured forth with a more balanced Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Concerto no. 1.
Satisfied, she moved some wooden crates aside in the ongoing search for old library records kept in an antique desk filled with pigeonholes and drawers said to have secret compartments. At least that was the sudden recollection of old lady Brampton, a librarian so ancient that she was checking out books at the time of the Frisco Quake.
Some city councilwoman had got it in her craw to track down the old rolltop she claimed was stored at city hall, one of its drawers containing a shopping list for printing supplies rumored to have been compiled by Ben Franklin hisself.
Supposedly, the cabinet, in the cylinder or tambour style, had been Po’ Richard’s and worth a mint at auction. How it got out to the West Coast was anybody’s guess.
Patty liked the forgotten storeroom under the beautifully restored hall of immense size and classical architecture. Stacks of canvas-covered whatnot lined the walls, hidden and unremembered. The room held a certain dangerous charm. Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe had gotten married in elegance upstairs, but an assassin had been in this room. Came in right through that window over there and bypassed building security. Slipped upstairs and murdered the mayor and one of the municipal supervisors. Patty had been two days on the job.
Twenty-seven years later she was management, free to roam the building at will. Patty had volunteered to search for the phantom desk. No gussified councilwoman was about to muck about in a den of dust and infamy when she had a veteran custodian on the city payroll.
Patty was in no hurry. Years ago she might have lit herself a cigarette and turned it into a proper break, but now with smoke detectors, heat sensors, fire codes, and what all, she didn’t dare. And so she role-played.
She was an African Scarlett O’Hara in yards of blue silk and Irish lace. From the pocket of her jeans she fished up the tiny glass vial of that new fragrance she’d scored at the mall south of Oakland when she’d gone to visit her cousin Carmen. A test, they said, only a test.
While Vivaldi played and she danced the tarantella, she dabbed the contents of the vial on her wrists and behind her ears for the first time. Immediately a smell sweetly blissful and beguiling took possession of the room, becoming air rather than replacing it. Gone was the odor of dank, musty abandonment. In its place was an enticement to passion more intense than any she had ever felt.
The room tilted and a light-headedness forced her to sit. She felt the heat rise, tore the headphones away, and fumbled open the collar buttons of her denim shirt. What in the world?
She prayed. Mama said when the world spins out of kilter, you pray. The faster it spins, the harder you pray. The tangle of feelings pricking her now sure enough qualified. Had they all escaped from that little bitty glass vial?
Why hadn’t she seen it before? There, amid the discards of another era, hulked a separate item wrapped in canvas. Right shape, approximate size. She’d bet her mother’s pension it was a rolltop. Without hesitation the shift manager forced her way to the back of the crowded space, unmindful of those pieces that blocked the path. Table legs protested, chair backs collided, a coat tree fell over.
She stopped. She thought she’d heard something else, something higher pitched than the scrapings and bangings of solidly made wooden furniture. She turned the Walkman off to silence the music.
Nothing but the distant hum of heating and ventilation. And the sound of her own breathing.
There. She waited. What is that? Nothing. I’m so fuzzed from the perfume, I’m hearing things. Must use less.
She forced herself to continue. The moist wall and damp floor beneath the object warranted a maintenance request. She made a mental note. Queer how all she could smell, though, was a sweet cloud of orchids.
Grabbing the near edge of the cloth covering the object, she gave it a yank.
The cloth slid off easily. Patty gaped. Despite dim lighting, the flowing lines of the venerable rolltop revealed themselves in soft amber contours, small ornate drawers, and a serpentine lid of horizontal laths connected by lengths of stiff fabric.
Two knobs of wood snugged into the base of the tambour. Patty grasped them firmly with her fingers and pulled upward. Finely made, the roll glided along the slides as if in daily use.
A single rat leapt at her, followed by a thick pelting of rat bodies. They struck her in the face and hands. Entangled in her hair. Bit her flesh. She stumbled, fell backward over a low table, and cracked her skull against a tall bookcase. Stunned, she screamed, flailed with her fists, beat back the tough, sinewy forms and needle-sharp teeth that raked and made her bleed.
Her dying thoughts were of how loud rats were, their attack on her ears wild with rage, and how unlike diseased things they smelled.
They — in fact, everything in the dusty old room — were sweet with flowers.
On his side, Koki the killer whale swam slow, lazy circles in the show pool at San Diego’s Sea Spectacular. The three-ton teenager was close to breeding age and full of restless energy.
Bri Lasworth, Koki’s leggy trainer, trotted onto the concrete apron in snazzy blue, skintight wetsuit, flush from a stolen afternoon with her fiancé. She knew she would cut it close for the four o’clock performance, but it had been worth it. Brad adored her new scent, the sensational test sample of Cassandra they were giving away at the mall. It was the most intoxicating thing either of them had ever experienced.
Sea Spectacular regulations discouraged entering the performance pool wearing strong perfumes or deodorants. Whales were sensitive mammals with a heightened sense of olfactory awareness. But there was an allure about Cassandra that made it difficult to shake. Crazy as it sounded, it was like it insisted on remaining.
If anything, the scent was stronger now, and she concluded it was heat-activated. And there were subtle changes with the passage of time: one moment the fragrance was ripe and insistent, an hour later shy and flirtatious. She was almost out and could not wait to return the survey sheet and receive another vial for her trouble. Hers was going to be a rave review. Within an hour of first applying Cassandra, she had placed a preorder with a one-hundred-dollar deposit.
“Huh, Koki boy, that’s a love.” Typically she’d arrive early at the pool and spend some warm-up time with the whale. But because of her tardiness, it was five minutes to showtime and the stands were nearly full.
Three thousand visitors waited to be entertained. The arena buzzed with conversation and shouts of excitement.
She slid into the water and Koki sidled up for a scratch. Bri ran her hands over the smoothness of the whale’s hide. She knew how much he enjoyed the human contact.
Koki blew a geyser of water out his blowhole. A little girl squealed. “The whale snorted!” Her happy family and those nearby laughed. Koki was one of the smartest orcas Bri had ever encountered in five years with the show.
She gave an arm signal and some herring to the whale, and he went “gulling.” He dove down, slowed his momentum, and spit the herring high into the air to simulate jumping fish. Timing was everything and Koki’s was spot-on. A passing seagull screeched and flew at the silvery prey. The bird caught the fish and Koki caught the bird. It disappeared inside the great mouth to a chorus of surprised aahs.
Before the commotion got too big, another wave of the arm and Koki spit the bird into the air. The soggy gull flopped twice on the surface of the pool before making an erratic escape into the air. Out of deference to animal rights groups, gulling was a stunt the management officially discouraged. But it was a guaranteed crowd pleaser, and Bri was in a spunky mood.
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