And--still in my mind--thinking it hadn’t come out quite right, tried: “I think I’m falling in love with you, Katie.”
I was pretty sure that wouldn’t sound right either, probably because I shouldn’t be thinking about it at all, much less saying it. So I continued on silently beside her, glancing down to find, surprisingly, that I actually had taken her hand. That she had let me.
A gull screamed a warning just above me, startling me.
Katie looked up calmly and smiled at it as the sea breeze made tendrils of her hair. But for me, the horizon of sea looked abruptly vast and foreboding, endless with unanswered questions, the bloody band above it vivid as a scar. I wanted to bolt--I wanted to pull her to me. To crush her to me, make the world spin back into sense again.
“What’s the matter?”
I turned innocently. “Nothing. Why?”
She shrugged small shoulders. “I don’t know…your expression.”
I could begin to see her face now, amber in the orange ball of sun and--unreasonably fearful abruptly of her eyes--looked beyond her past the just-forming details of the point. “I guess…it’s all a bit awesome, don’t you think?”
She turned to follow my gaze. “Just thinking the same thing myself.”
With no warning at all my heart swooped painfully.
“Why,” I heard myself ask, “didn’t you mind? My watching you undress?”
She turned back and I couldn’t avoid her eyes now without it seeming obvious.
“Elliot, really. We’re adults.”
I nodded at the sand. “Yeah…”
And, as if fearful she’d offended me, she looked back at the sea and murmured, “No. I didn’t mind at all.”
I looked up. Katie. I’m in love with you.
But it wouldn’t seem to quite come out.
“If I were going to mind,” she said, “I would have minded. I didn’t.”
“Maybe…you should. Mind.”
She watched the point. “Clearly you didn’t. Or mind holding my hand.”
I looked down at our laced fingers, hers warm against chill breeze. “No. But maybe I should.”
She watched the point.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for ‘maybes’, Elliot.”
I stood there silently, feeling both panicked inside and invulnerable to the cold wind.
“It’s really so beautiful,” Katie was saying to the sea.
“Yes.”
“This would probably be a good time, Elliot…”
“Time?”
“To kiss me. Or are you still thinking about panthers?” She turned from the point, searched my face, her own so lovely I could have cried.
“That’s the really scary part, I wasn’t. Katie, listen—“
She pressed a finger to my lips. “It’s okay. It’s all right to kiss me without thinking only about love.”
I cupped her cheek. “Are you looking into my mind, Ms. Bracken?”
She leaned into me, mouth parting. “No need. Your eyes suffice.”
Something crashed loudly behind us.
We both jumped, spinning.
“Oh! Elliot! Look!”
Not eighty yards behind us, buttery morning light etched the high turrets and Victorian gables of the big hotel. A man in a gray jumpsuit and cap was emptying trash barrels near the beach entrance.
Katie’s stood on her toes in the sand like a kid, eyes sparkling. “It’s incredible! Like a fairy tale castle! Oh, I want to go inside, don’t you?”
“Not as much as I want to finish the kiss.”
She grinned up, took the back of my neck in her warm hand, pulled me down again when my phone went off. “…help me Rhonda, help-help me Rhonda…”
“Whether you leave this beach alive or not,” Katie warned, “may depend on if you answer that!”
“My dear Ms. Bracken, I will not stand on a glorious white sand beach under the glow of first light and kiss you to the sound of the Beach Boys.”
Katie sighed, turned back to watch the point as I retrieved my phone, glanced at the caller screen: RITA BLAINE.
“Hi! No, it’s not too early. No, I was awake. Of course I don’t mind your just checking-in! Everybody’s fine yes, Liz got here just fine. We’re all fine. The Sandersons? Uh, yeah, they’re good. Who? Katie--?”
I looked up.
Katie watched the point.
* * *
Liz, of course, had breakfast all ready when we returned to the house.
“And what time did you get home?” I said, brow arched, as I slid into my kitchen chair before steaming mounds of pancakes.
“Oh, Adam and I had a wonderful time! Hung out with all the big social swells on the island!”
“Which is not answering your son’s question,” Katie winked, sitting not beside me as usual, but across from me beside Byron.
Liz grinned obliviously, ladling out more hotcakes. “Mr. Adam Adams of Adams Avenue was a perfectly gentlemen! He did not overdrink, did not try making a pass! Though he did seem inordinately fixated with my top blouse button. You don’t think my buttons are strange, do you Katie dear?”
Katie chewed around delicious cakes. “I think they’re really swell. Both of them.”
“Speaking of which,” I pressed, “what big social swells are on the island?”
Liz tightened her apron and began ticking off the fingers of one hand. “Let’s see, there was Edward, Prince of Wales with future wife Wallis Spencer…Presidents McKinley, Taft and Wilson, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon…oh, and a host of Hollywood celebs! Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro—oh, you people are far too young to remember them!”
“So are you, Liz…Anybody still alive?” I munched skepticism.
“Uh…is Tony Curtis still alive, dear?”
“No. Sadly.”
“But Peter O’Toole, Steve Martin and Rick Moranis are,” from Byron, “and most of the cast of the 4 season of Baywatch. All of whom have photos lining the walls of the hotel’s basement and gift shop level. I told you about them that day at Balboa Park, remember, Elliot?”
“Ah! Yes. Photographs. Impressive, Liz.”
“Well, they all looked like very nice people!”
“I thought you went for drinks,” I said.
“Oh, yes! A lovely place called the Babcock-and-Story Bar! Lots of bamboo and palm fronds! Reminded me of a Tiki room! Afterward Adam took me for a little tour of the place! Lovely old hotel! The beautiful lobby with that wonderful old steel cage elevator. The Crown Room, wonderfully paneled with big chandelier crowns hanging over the dinner tables! The ballroom—The Ocean View, I think it’s called.”
“That’s right,” Byron nodded.
“Which reminds me, dear,” she said, turning to Byron, who was already half through his stack of pancakes, “did you get a good price for your antique clock?”
Byron snorted. “In this economy? Not unless twenty bucks is a good price.”
“Oh, dear, that’s a shame! And he seemed like such a lovely gentlemen, too…”
I poured coffee. “Who?”
“The concierge! The one I asked about it!”
I poured coffee. “Asked about what, Liz?”
“The clock at the hotel, dear!”
I sloshed coffee. “You saw it? At the hotel?”
“They didn’t stick it in the storeroom like they said?” Byron gasped.
“Where?” from Katie.
“In the ballroom,” Liz explained, “it’s all shined up again and back in its original place over the fireplace mantle! The nice concierge said they’ve been doing a lot of restoration in that wing, putting the ballroom back the way it was in 1876! I asked him if he would sell the clock to me, you know, just for fun...”
Everyone at the table stared at her, Byron with open anticipation.
“…he said not for a million dollars! It was back where it came from, the last missing piece in the room!”
Byron flopped back in hi
s chair. “Great! End to a perfect week!”
Katie gave him a wilted look. “I’m sorry, Byron.” She rubbed his back, a little longer than necessary for essential comfort, it seemed to me.
Byron shrugged good-naturedly, sat forward brightly, then patted the table before him in sudden rhythm, smiling philosophically. “Got no wife, got no kids! Got no clock and I’m on the skids--”
“—I got the sun in the mornin’ and the moon at niiiiight!” Liz sang the rest for him, laughing, getting Byron and me laughing, everyone laughing. Everyone but Katie.
She forked another bit of pancake, lifted it, then put fork and cake back on her plate untouched, scooting back her chair. “Excuse me, please…”
“Everything okay, dear?” Liz called anxiously.
“Fine. Just not very hungry this morning,” and she left the kitchen.
I put down my napkin, excused myself and followed her.
Katie was standing in front of her camping mattress folding blankets and sheets.
I approached her by degrees. “Hey…”
“Hey.”
“Are you mad at me?”
She didn’t look up from her folding. “About what?”
I stuck my hands in my pockets, shrugged. “I don’t know—the beach? Rita calling?”
Katie placed a neatly folded blanket atop the mattress. “She called you, Elliot, not the other way around. And I’d never be mad at Rita.”
“For the kiss, then? The attempted kiss? My mind not being on my work?”
“It was my attempt, as I recall.”
“So…what’s the matter, then?”
She dropped the folded sheets on top of the blanket and turned to me. “What do you think?”
I looked out the big picture window. Sighed. “We’re letting them down. Especially Byron.”
Katie frowned. “What do you mean, especially Byron?”
“Never mind.”
“We’ve reached that stage, Elliot.”
“Us?”
“The case! It’s time to reconnoiter.”
“I’ve asked you not to use big words…”
“I’m serious! We need to reexamine what we’ve got! If we have got anything…”
“Okay,” I nodded, calming. “Well…we had a kid. A mysteriously disappearing and reappearing kid, until his mother took him to Sacramento and her family.”
“And we had a nursery, until it went dead after Liz took the carpet ball in there,” Katie began to pace.
“And we had a clock, until Byron returned it to the hotel.”
I started pacing in the other direction. “And we have a computer image of Nathaniel appearing for an instant in the nursery during the Rankin shooting.”
“Which also shows the reflection of one of the so-called Animal People in the clock-face.” She paced. “What else have we got?”
I sighed, passing her. “Not much. Box of old silent films of early San Diego. Does that count?”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t see how.” She shook it again, harder, angrier. “The answer lies in that damn clock somehow! Some…connection between it and Nathaniel! His disappearing act! I can feel it in my gut! I just can’t make the leap in logic!”
“Maybe we’re barking up the wrong clue…”
“No. No, it’s the clock…something about the clock…”
“And the magically appearing carpet ball?”
“That too. But the clock is the key. It’s the clock Nathaniel keeps going to, the clock that’s haunted.” She stopped pacing, sighed. “An old clock above a nursery mantel that was once an old clock above the ballroom mantle of an old hotel…”
“And now it sits there again.” I grunted. “I wonder if it’s haunting the dreams of some hotel guest tonight, if some poor businessman on vacation with his family is seeing a panther face reflected in it?…”
Katie’s head jerked up. “What--?”
“I said, I wonder if—“
“That old film of Adam’s we watched last night, the one with the gruesome shots of those mauled prostitutes!”
“What about it?”
“At first they thought it was an escaped zoo animal, remember? That’s what the title card said! Then they captured or shot the animal, but the murders kept on going, at least to the end of that reel!”
“So?”
“What kind of an animal did the card say the police shot?”
“A mountain lion.”
She nodded. “What do they call mountain lions down in the Florida swamps?”
I thought about it a second. “Panthers...and they called him The Panther Man…”
Katie’s eyes lit.
“Shit,” I said, “we need more old films!”
“Aren’t any.”
I threw up my hands. “Old records, then! The library!”
“Or better yet…” Katie said excitedly, already sprinting to Donna’s work station.
TWENTY
We kept at it continually right up to lunchtime, with little success.
There just wasn’t much on Google or Yahoo about early San Diego. What there was included little historical material about the Gaslamp Quarter, only about what it was today—an area known as the “heart of San Diego and downtown nightlife,” extending from Broadway to Harbor Drive, and from 4 to 6 Avenue, covering 16 blocks, including 94 historic buildings, most of which were constructed in the Victorian Era and still in use with active tenants, including restaurants, shops and nightclubs.
According to Wikipedia, the Gaslamp was home to a variety of events and festivals like Mardi Gras in the Gaslamp, Street Scene Music Festival, Taste of Gaslamp and ShamROCK, apparently a St. Patrick’s Day event. PETCO Park, home of the San Diego Padres, is located one block away in downtown San Diego’s East Village.
We found repeated information about the area’s listing as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places, and basically what the cans of silent films had said about its development in 1876 by the trusty Alonzo Horton. It also described the way the place went into urban decay until the neighborhood underwent renewal in the 1980s and 1990s, where it remains today as an energetic business and entertainment district. But we uncovered little to nothing about its early bordello period or anything hinting at a serial killer named after a panther.
“I don’t get it,” I grumbled over Katie’s shoulder as she sat back from the keyboard, “there’s lots of information about 19 century killers, serial and otherwise; I mean, what about Jack the Ripper?”
“That was in Whitechapel,” Katie sighed, “not in a faraway little American coastal town. Nobody seemed to realize that San Diego even existed until after those two World Fairs.”
She stood, stretched, patted my back and kissed my cheek. “Be of good cheer, there’s still the library downtown…”
* * *
The pinched-faced old blue-haired lady behind the information desk at the San Diego Public Library was even less help. She kept shoving a newly printed brochure of the downtown district at us.
“No,” Katie kept reminding her, “we don’t need a map of the present day Gaslamp Quarter—“
“I shouldn’t think so,” the old woman replied with curt, schoolmarm enunciation, “you’re only a few blocks from the place now! Why not just go see for yourself?”
“It’s historical data we’re looking for,” I told her, recalling the big red “F’s” on my 5 grade spelling reports, “stuff from around the turn of the century. The 1800’s.”
“That kind of information is not available in the main library, sir,” looking back and forth at the lack of wedding rings on my left hand and Katie’s, “you need the old newspapers, The San Diego Union and so forth.”
“And where are they?” from Katie.
The old bird appraised her like a recently plucked peacock. “In Stacks, of course.”
“And where are stacks?” I asked, the grin beginning to hurt my face.
“In the library subbasement.”
&
nbsp; “Great! How do we get down there?”
“Do you have a library card?”
“Well…”
“Then you can’t be admitted.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Can we apply for a card?”
“Kindly lower your voice, young lady…”
“How can we get a card?” I urged, curled lips trembling.
“You’ll need identification. A driver’s license will do. You are from the area, correct?”
“Well…”
“Then there’s a required 30 day processing delay and a five dollar fee.”
“How about a 3 minute delay and a fifty dollar fee?” Katie asked.
The old woman looked as if she’d just passed a kidney stone.
“So, you’re saying there’s no way we can look at your newspapers, right? Even if a guard accompanies us?”
“A guard? This is a library, sir, not a penal institution.”
“Look,” Katie begged, “all we need is a lousy ten minutes with the newspapers!”
“Impossible.”
I leaned down to the biddy’s desk, out of patience. “You’re being unreasonable. We’re conducting an investigation concerning a disappearance. You are withholding possible important evidence, willfully obstructing justice.”
“Are you with law enforcement?”
“No,” I threatened, “but I’m about ready to call them!”
Katie touched my arm.
“Are you threatening me, sir?”
“I’m getting damn close!”
“Elliot…”
I pulled away from my partner’s hand. “This is a child’s life we’re talking about, Katie!”
“Elliot, let’s go—“
“What child?” from the schoolmarm’s arched brow.
“A local child,” I told her. “Nathaniel Sanderson, hardly four!”
The pursed lips pressed into a momentary white line…then the blue hair bent and retrieved a key from the center drawer of the information desk. She handed it to me, pointing. “First stairs on your left. A young man will show you to the newspaper section.”
I breathed relief. “Thank you.”
“Thank you so much,” Katie smiled.
And as we turned from the desk. “I should warn you…”
We turned back.
“…all the old newspapers before 1920 were burned.”
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 20