How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  For all of his success, Ralston had been a troubled, isolated figure. The ouster from his failing bank was but the last tragedy of his fortune-filled life.

  Early on in his career, he had fallen madly in love with the granddaughter of shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, a young woman named Louisa Thorne. Ralston succeeded in obtaining her family’s approval of their courtship, and the happy couple giddily began to plan their wedding. But not long after their engagement, Louisa fell gravely ill and, after several bed-ridden months, died days before the scheduled betrothal.

  Ralston never recovered from the loss; he carried a miniature portrait of Louisa in the front breast pocket of his suit—every day for the rest of his life. When he eventually married, his consolation bride was the niece of a close friend. Built on this foundation, the marriage was destined for strife. His wife’s feelings of neglect and abandonment were only compounded by the christening of several of the Ralston children as namesakes for the long-deceased Louisa.

  Ralston’s other passion—second only to the ever-present ghost of Louisa—was his beloved city of San Francisco. Even as his bank began to founder, he decided to finance the construction of a five-star hotel that would cement her standing in the world as a first class city.

  Ralston obsessed over every detail of the aptly named Palace Hotel, bedecking the windows with silk hangings and the marble floors with finely woven carpets. He mined far-flung forests for the best teak and mahogany panelling. No detail was too small; no expense too extravagant.

  But now, as the icy water swirled around him, even that dream was slipping through his manacled fingertips. His pending bankruptcy threatened not only his bank, but the yet to be completed Palace Hotel as well.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw him drop further and further into the deep silence of the circling, scavenging water, sinking under the weight of his own despair.

  A scrum of screaming children scaled the stairs, racing towards my seated position. I stood up and continued my jog.

  My running shoes followed the edge of the bay, treading on an asphalt trail that took me up a heart-pounding hill into an abandoned army base that had been turned into a public reserve. Towards the crest of the hill, the asphalt path ducked under a dark tunnel of cypress trees. For several strides, I was hidden beneath a canopy of leafy, sea-infused green.

  As I hit the downward slope on the opposite side, the trail broke out into an open field. I rolled down the path, tracking along the water’s edge as my route skirted the long line of the Marina Green.

  The wind swept across the dandelion-infested field, buffeting a stone head that stared out from a concrete obelisk. I cut across the weedy grass to inspect it more closely.

  William Ralston’s round, bearded face protruded from a relief set in the base of the skyward-pointing monument. The discolorations of the stone made his wide, balding forehead look sunburnt and wind-chapped.

  Ralston’s memorial marker had been positioned with his back to the scenic bay—so that he faced the skyline of his beloved city. Underneath his portrait, the glowing tribute read:

  HE BLAZED THE PATH FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S

  ONWARD MARCH TO ACHIEVEMENT AND RENOWN.

  I left Ralston’s proud gaze and crossed over into Crissy Field, a public park fronting the famed Presidio.

  The wind picked up in intensity as I headed closer and closer to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, my feet crunching rhythmically on the cinder pathway. The whipping air streamed around me, lifting up the damp, sweaty roots on the underside of my head, softly cooling my overheating skin. A thousand troubled thoughts soared out of my head, numbed by the constant caresses of the wind.

  The path turned to pavement as I started the last stretch to my destination. Waves crashed along the rocky embankment, foaming up, licking at my heels.

  I approached the gaping mouth of the bay, and the city slipped from consciousness. The wild periphery of the Pacific roared around me, a mystical, untamed force. A voice made of wind and crashing water pealed across the span, pummeling me with its unwavering certainty, its overbearing confidence.

  I remembered a line from Oscar’s Leidesdorff story. “This is a place where anything is possible. You can do, or become, whatever or whoever you want.”

  I dug my feet into the pavement, desperately resisting the seductive coaxing of the wind.

  But I was too weak to repel it.

  The mirrored surface of the bay winked mischievously as my thoughts plunged down into the mire of Monty’s persistent theory.

  Chapter 32

  MONTY’S RIGHT FOOT kicked out from under the red brick archway in front of the entrance to the Green Vase as I turned the corner into Jackson Square. His foot was encased in a brand-new, brown leather wingtip. The rest of Monty followed the foot.

  I nearly turned and ran the other way when I saw him.

  “Ah, there you are,” he greeted me, a look of relief on his face.

  “Don’t you ever work in your studio?” I asked, wondering how long he had been standing in my doorway.

  He didn’t answer my question.

  “I was thinking,” he said, touching a long finger to his forehead. “We should make a visit to Mission Dolores, the chapel where your friend Leidesdorff was supposed to have been buried. Come on, I’ve got to be back in a couple of hours.”

  I threw my hands up and looked down at my sweaty running gear.

  “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll give you ten minutes for a shower.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, brushing past him. I un-hitched the padlock and turned the tulip key in the door.

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, Monty and I stood at the corner of 16th and Dolores, staring up at a towering church.

  “Not bad digs for a final resting place,” Monty said, standing on the sidewalk, gawking up at the stately building. “Maybe I should get on their waiting list.”

  Cream-colored walls rose up in a cluster of dome-capped turrets. Each dome formed a smooth onion shape, embossed around the bulb with bright, turquoise tiles.

  Spanning across the turrets, the stone figure of a penitent priest presided over an ornamented façade. The priest’s head bent down towards the pavement, positioned so that he could whisper his benediction to the congregation as they exited the church. The statue perched fearlessly on its parapet, several stories above the street, bathed in sunlight.

  “They’re not accepting any new applicants,” I informed a disappointed Monty. “There aren’t any active cemeteries within the city limits. Most people are buried in Colma, a couple of miles to the south.”

  Monty eyed me curiously.

  I bit my lip, staring up at the haloed priest. “That’s where Oscar is.”

  Monty cleared his throat and asked tentatively, “Did you have to pick out his plot?”

  I shook my head. Still looking skyward, I replied, “Oscar had already purchased one.”

  I set off briskly down the street before Monty could start in on another Oscar death theory.

  “Anyway, that isn’t the location of Leidesdorff’s grave,” I called out over my shoulder as I pointed to a smaller building next to the turreted church we’d been admiring. “This is the original Mission.”

  “A little more humble,” Monty said. He followed me down the block to the entrance of the second structure. “You sure I couldn’t even get in here?”

  We stood in front of a demure, two-story building. Wide round columns of white-washed adobe supported a red tile roof. A simple cross rose from the apogee of the narrow pitch. Underneath, a line of cream-colored bells hung serenely in the shadowed belfry.

  Monty tripped along at my heels as I mounted the steps to the entrance.

  The visitor’s center was manned by a harried-looking priest who was trying to organize a boisterous group of second-graders for a tour.

  The priest’s graying hair was clipped short, close to his scalp. He wore iron-rimmed spectacles on his clean-shaven, lightly tanned face. His trim physique had
been carefully packaged in belted slacks and a button-down oxford.

  As Monty and I walked up, it was clear that this very controlled, very respectable figure was on the verge of becoming completely unglued by the unruly tangle of children in the staging area.

  “Children! Children!” he began, a pinched expression on his face as he tried to speak over the din of chatter. “Good morning, children, I’m Father Alfonso . . .”

  I tried to catch the priest’s eye to see if we could join the tour he was trying to start. I pulled out the ten dollar entrance fee for two adults and waved it inquiringly in the air. “Can we add on?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” he said wearily, reaching for the bill.

  The priest opened a pair of heavy, wooden doors, and a waist-high tide of children swarmed through the opening. Monty and I followed the rowdy crowd inside.

  We were standing at the back of the original Mission chapel, a long hall of a space with cream walls and a wooden ceiling. At the far opposite end, beyond the rows of roughly hewn pews, an altar of brightly-painted saints looked down upon a roped-off section of the sanctuary.

  The school children were anxious to explore the colorful display at the front of the chapel, but the priest straddled the open space between the pews, fending off their forward progress.

  Hurriedly, he began to sketch over the Mission’s historical highlights. “Now, then. This is one of the few remaining intact missions within the state of California. Quiet, please. The ceiling is made up of the original redwood beams, strapped together with rawhide strips . . .”

  Monty and I scanned the ceiling as he spoke. The redwood beams had been painted in sharp, repeating, geometric shapes with a jarring combination of scarlet red, burnt orange, and mint green. The mesmerizing effect of the roof drew attention away from the simple clay tiles of the floor, and it was a moment before I noticed the small, rectangular inlay tucked up against the wall, almost hidden by a dingy display case holding a scattering of religious artifacts and an oil painting of the Virgin Mary.

  Text had been etched into the gravestone:

  WILLIAM ALEXANDER

  LEIDESDORFF

  DIED MAY 18, 1848

  I stared at the worn concrete marker, wondering what, if anything, lay beneath.

  Monty apparently spied it a second later, evidenced by the poking joust I received in the small of my back. I turned to administer a reproaching scowl, but found myself staring instead at the back wall of the chapel.

  Monty had kneeled down to engage in a silent but animated conversation with a chubby, curly-haired boy. Monty pointed his long finger towards the front of the chapel, and the child’s bulging cheeks grinned enthusiastically.

  The priest glared primly at Monty as he continued, the prickling in his voice registering his consternation. “The Mission has one of only two remaining cemeteries within the city of San Francisco . . .”

  “Pssst,” Monty hissed at me.

  The irritated priest sped faster and faster through his mandatory list of facts. “Buried within the chapel is early civic leader William Leidesdorff, the Noe family . . .”

  I never heard who else was buried underneath the chapel, because Monty began to buzz in my right ear. “I have a cunning plan—just wait for the signal.”

  I looked back over my shoulder, this time with alarm. Monty had shuffled to the back of the group, next to a spiraling metal staircase that led to a small choir loft in the belfry above us. Thick, hemp-like ropes hung down from the ceiling next to Monty’s right hand. They were presumably attached to the bells we’d seen from the street outside.

  The priest turned to indicate towards the altar at the front of the chapel, and Monty nodded to the chubby second-grader standing next to me. Monty reached over and yanked down on the hemp rope, setting off an ear-splitting, tintinnabular explosion.

  The tightly wound priest uncoiled several inches into the air as the entire squadron of energized second-graders, led by Monty’s pudgy accomplice, charged down the aisle to the front of the church.

  The priest’s horrified shriek echoed through the chamber. Monty poked me in the side of the stomach and smirked, “That’s the signal.”

  I knelt down and ran my hands over the smooth, concrete stone marking Leidesdorff’s grave, wondering how much time Monty’s little caper was going to buy us.

  As my fingers felt along the edges of the headstone, I realized that a narrow, almost undetectable gap ran along its edge with the clay floor tiles. The stone was loose in its fittings, I noted, wiggling it back and forth.

  From the noise at the front of the room, it appeared that the children were demanding all of the priest’s attention. “Keep an eye up front,” I instructed Monty as I searched my shoulder bag for a nail file.

  Monty’s face broke into an impish, schoolboy’s grin. He murmured to me out of the corner of his mouth as he kept his eyes fixed on the front of the chapel. “All clear at the moment. The father is pulling one of the blessed cherubs out of the baptismal enclosure. It looks like the kid is about to receive a holy dunking.”

  Monty glanced quickly down at me. “How’s it going?”

  I found my file and fed it into the tiny crevice between the stone marker and the floor tiles. I began sawing it back and forth, trying to free the stone enough to pick it up. Despite its small size, it was heavier than I had realized.

  Monty returned to his watch. “Pull it out. Pull it out!” he whispered urgently. “The whole gang’s coming back this way.”

  I slipped the file back into my shoulder bag and straightened up, pretending to study one of the tarnished gold objects inside the display case. A laughing line of children charged down the center aisle of pews, closely followed by the frazzled priest. We watched as they sped out through a side door in the chapel and raced down the path to the cemetery. The priest paused long enough to grab a small bullhorn off of a counter before continuing his pursuit.

  I dropped back down to the floor and quickly reinserted the nail file as Father Alfonso’s frayed voice began squawking out of the bullhorn. The concrete marker shifted upwards about half an inch, and I gripped my fingers around the raised edge. Slowly, painfully, it began to give. I winced as a distinctly audible grating sound knit the air with the lifting stone.

  “A little help here,” I said bitingly to Monty.

  He knelt down, and together we pulled the stone the rest of the way out of its nesting place. Underneath was a flat, metal surface. In the center sat a keyhole fashioned in the same decorative detailing as the front door to the Green Vase. I pulled the tulip key out of my pocket, slid it into the hole, and turned. The key engaged, and I pulled up on the hinged floor piece.

  A cool, musty smell oozed up from the black space below. I had opened the lid to a small rectangular box that sunk lengthwise into the floor. I leaned over the hole, peering inside.

  “What do you see?” Monty asked, his face taut with suspense. “What’s in there?”

  I grimaced, reached my hand in, and pulled out a tarnished set of gold teeth.

  “Ugh!” Monty gulped.

  The bullhorned voice grew louder. Father Alfonso had apparently circled through the cemetery and was back in the visitor’s center where we’d come in.

  “Get in there and distract him until I can get this put back together,” I hissed as I slipped the gold teeth into my pocket and slammed the lid of the box shut.

  Monty’s face paled in panic. “How about you go distract him, and I’ll put the grave back together?” he said, smiling weakly.

  “Hurry up!” I replied, shoving him towards the door. I knelt back to the floor and pulled on the key, trying to release it from the lock.

  Monty winced and slid reluctantly through the doors to the visitor center. His voice carried into the chapel as I continued to jiggle the key, trying to free it.

  “Ah, Father Alfonso,” Monty said nervously. “There you are. I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions . . .”

  I waited through a long,
awkward pause as Monty struggled to come up with a discussion topic to distract the priest. I shook my head as his strained voice filled the void with, “I’ve been considering a career in the church.”

  The lock finally spit the key out of its grasp, and I fell backwards onto the tile floor. I began heaving at the concrete marker, trying to position it over its recessed position in the floor.

  Monty’s singsong falsetto echoed through the door to the visitor’s center. “It must be so inspirational, so peaceful, to spend your days in this beautiful environment . . . devoted to the betterment of our fellow brothers and sisters.”

  “Well,” Father Alfonso replied in an irritated voice, “some days are more blessed than others.”

  The headstone grated against the clay tiles. My fingers burned as I eased it over the recess and slid it into place. Through the wooden doors, I heard the priest offer uneasily, “I could get you some informational brochures if you’re serious about this.”

  I crept across the room and peeked through the vertical crack between the swinging doors. The priest had pulled open a drawer and was flipping through a stack of promotional material, looking for a suitable pamphlet for Monty’s potential career change. Monty was slouched against the front wall of the office, as far away as possible from the counter, with one hand plastered over his face.

  “Do you have anything in there on the chapel?” Monty asked tentatively. “How about—the people who are buried in it? Say, William Leidesdorff?”

  Father Alfonso pushed his wire rimmed glasses up against his eyes. He looked suspiciously at Monty. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just a casual interest,” Monty stammered through his fingers.

  Father Alfonso glared furiously at Monty. “It’s you, isn’t it?! I knew there was something familiar about your face!”

  Monty began sliding along the wall towards the door that led to the street, his face blushing as he stammered, “I . . . I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”