The Woman in the Camphor Trunk
Page 1
ALSO BY JENNIFER KINCHELOE
The Secret Life of Anna Blanc
Published 2017 by Seventh Street Books®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
The Woman in the Camphor Trunk. Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Kincheloe. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht
Cover design © Prometheus Books
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kincheloe, Jennifer, 1966- author.
Title: The woman in the camphor trunk : an Anna Blanc mystery / by Jennifer Kincheloe.
Description: Amherst, NY : Seventh Street Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017022702 (print) | LCCN 2017025962 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883642 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883635 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3611.I568 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.I568 W66 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022702
Printed in the United States of America
For Sandy, Erin, Lisa, Kristi, Marge, and Lori
because I love you so much.
CONTENTS
Cover
ALSO BY JENNIFER KINCHELOE
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, 1908
Anna Blanc was the most beautiful woman ever to barrel down Long Beach Strand with the severed head of a Chinese man. The tin pail that contained the head banged painfully against her shins as she flew. The sand churned beneath her shoes, grinding the silk from her expensive Louis heels. The wind fought against her unwieldy ostrich plume hat, bending the feathers. Regrettably, she had not dressed for a hunt that morning.
She had not planned to be hunted.
Luckily, she was young. Anna jumped over a pile of seaweed, stirring a cloud of sandflies. She unpinned her hat with one hand and let it sail, gripping the heavy pail so tightly her knuckles whitened. The pail swung and bounced erratically, frustrating her strides. It stank like old fish, rotting pork, and things so vile she could not name them. She gagged, panted, and gagged again.
In the distance, a roller coaster roared.
She heard a shout behind her and looked back. A detective in a gray suit burst from the shadows of the pier at a dead run. Though heartless and incompetent, he ran like an Olympian. He was gaining quickly.
Anna ran harder, her waist cramping, her arms aching, her skirts thrashing about her legs like sea foam. She was beginning to think she had made a mistake stealing the severed head from the scene of a crime.
But without his head, Mr. Yau would never get justice.
She veered away from the water toward the bathhouse and the crowd at the Pike, aware of heavy, hostile panting close behind her.
Music exploded from a bandstand.
A hard shove to her back launched her forward and she fell, jarring her chin on the ground and biting her tongue. She tasted hot, rusty blood. The bucket’s lid popped off and the head rolled across the sand like a bowling ball. Anna crawled after it, gasping for the breath that had been knocked clean out of her.
She felt the detective’s brutal hands grab her boot and tug so hard she feared her hip would separate. With a distinctly unladylike hiss, she kicked. Her boot connected with his man parts, and he dropped to the sand, howling. Anna gracefully regained her feet, scooped the head up with the bucket, replaced the lid, and bolted for the crowd.
She heard him shout, “Stop!”
People were starting to look.
“Help, help!” Anna cried, hoping the crowd would think he was the villain, which, in her mind, he was. She gave a final grand effort, scrambling for her freedom, pushing herself as hard as her legs would carry her, leaving the detective behind. As the great orange sun kissed the horizon, the sea of people parted for Anna. Grim, scowling men formed a protective wall behind her, confronting the monster who was causing her distress. She flew past a peanut stand, a taffy concession, a fortuneteller, and barkers guessing people’s weights. She ran through popcorn smells, skirting the line for the roller coaster, and straight onto a crowded Red Car that was departing for Los Angeles.
Her pleasure trip to the beach had not turned out as she’d planned, but stumbling upon crime scenes could not be planned. It was a horrible serendipity. Anna fixed her hair. She dabbed her face with a dainty handkerchief and slowed her breathing. A gentleman with a wooden leg offered her his seat. She took it and set the bucket down. It was as heavy as her heart. The other passengers held handkerchiefs to their noses. Luckily, Anna did not look like she smelled, even when mussed. She leveled an accusatory stare at a nearby man who did.
And then she cried for Mr. Yau.
CHAPTER 2
Anna rode the Red Car back to LA, shy one expensive hat, bearing the bucket with its lid tight, the head sleeping safely inside. She disembarked at First Street and walked to the Streeter Apartments, number 502, the place where she now slept at night but was loath to call home.
Anna’s apartment building catered to single ladies of good reputation; Thus, Anna had to pay extra. Though Saint Catherine, patron saint of old maids, could testify that Anna was not in fact ruined, her reputation was gray at best. She’d taken a job at the police station—something no reputable lady would do. She’d kissed the police chief’s son passionately and more than once, initially to trick suspects, eventually because she liked it. She’d gone undercover in the brothels when girls were being murdered. Every scandalous bit of it had made the papers, with embellishment. While the city of Los Angeles had mainly forgiven her—she had, after all, captured a killer—her socially prominent father had not. Though he hadn’t loved her nearly as well as Anna would have liked, and she might not care to
admit it, she missed him desperately and felt a little lost.
Thus Anna paid high rent in a low-class brick apartment on First Street, not far from Central Station. The landlord had made a point of telling her that no men were allowed in the rooms. She assumed an exception would be made for the police chief’s son, because policemen were allowed to go anywhere, provided they had a warrant. Anna would remind Joe Singer to get a warrant as soon as possible.
Anna set the bucket on the front step, her arm aching from the weight, her mind numb with shock, and rummaged in her silver mesh purse for the key. Keys were a new annoyance. At home, her father’s servants had always opened the doors. Her key was gone, no doubt dropped on the beach during the chase, perhaps now resting in the gizzard of a seagull. She groaned and lugged the bucket with the head toward the landlord’s office. She wasn’t eager to see the man. She owed him money.
Anna hid the bucket with the head behind a bush and whispered, “Wait here, dear Mr. Yau. I won’t be long.”
She encountered the landlord on his knees in the yard, laying bricks into a low wall. He scraped the last bits of mortar from a plywood board and slapped it onto a brick.
She loomed over him like an Acanthus flower. “Pardon me, Mr. Cooper, but I’ve misplaced my key.”
Mr. Cooper settled the brick and put down his trowel. “You promised me you would pay yesterday, Miss Blanc, and you didn’t. I only let you move in because I thought your father was good for it.”
He stood, took a shovel of white powder from a sack, dumped it onto a plywood board, and added three shovels of sand. He made a valley in the middle of the pile, splashed in water, and mixed.
Anna pointed at the sack. “Is that lime?”
He scowled. “Miss Blanc. The rent.”
Anna tossed her indignant head. “My father is good for it. And I have my own money.” Of course he wasn’t and she didn’t. But she would. She had a job as a police matron with the LAPD. Tomorrow would be her first day back after two months of leave. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be paid for another week.
Anna’s eyes drifted back to the lime. She had read many a crime book and knew what lime was good for—such as abating the smell of rotting heads of friends that one might be hiding in a bucket. Deathly smells draw busybodies. But, if left too long, lime could dissolve a head entirely. She would have to use it sparingly.
“I need your rent, and I’m going to have to charge you for a new key.”
Anna’s attention returned to the impatient man. “I have the money, of course, I just left it . . . with a friend. I’ll go get it. And besides, I have complaints of my own. I found a dead rat just rotting beneath the stove. It smells something awful. In fact, I can smell it from here.” Actually, it was Mr. Yau she could smell. But she had found a little rat corpse under the stove, and it did make the whole apartment rank. She had picked it up with a newspaper and thrown it in the garden beneath the landlord’s window.
The landlord sighed and reached onto his pocket for a ring hung with multiple keys. “By tonight, Miss Blanc, or you’ll be out tomorrow. I don’t care how many killers you’ve captured.” He stomped back to her room, trailed by Anna, and unlocked the door.
When Anna had rented the apartment, her father sent a wagon with all of her possessions—a sign that he had washed his hands of her. Thus, Anna’s apartment looked like a storage closet for very expensive things, and so it was. An abundance of white, fluffy fur rugs covered the floor. Some still had heads. A white baby grand piano and Anna’s great mahogany bed covered the rugs, the bed’s velvet canopy brushing the flaked plaster ceiling. These two pieces dominated the room and left little space, even for walking. Anna had to squeeze sideways, or crawl over the bed to get to the potbelly stove, which wasn’t worth the space—she didn’t know how to use it.
Three towers of striped hatboxes rose like penny candy sticks from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling. Beside these, four teetering towers of shoeboxes threatened to tumble at a sneeze. Rows of racks of tea gowns, day dresses, walking dresses, visiting gowns, afternoon dresses, dinner dresses, evening dresses, ball gowns, opera dresses, ice skating ensembles, tennis wear, riding habits, and more spilled from the parlor, filling the bedroom.
The landlord stared like Aladdin in the thieves’ treasure cave. Anna bid him goodnight and shut the door before he could ask her for collateral. Though she had assets of sorts, she had no idea how much anything was worth or how to go about selling it. But that was the least of her worries at the moment.
She threw herself onto the great mahogany bed and pondered what to do with dear Mr. Yau. He had been her father’s penultimate cook and lived in a cottage on their property. Anna liked him and his cooking. He played a sort of Chinese fiddle and gave her little cakes. He was kind to her—saintly even—when very few people were. She abhorred the idea of anyone chopping off his head. When she saw that he had been decapitated and was in the possession of an incompetent detective, she felt greatly distraught. Perhaps her judgment had been clouded by grief, but she had had to intervene.
Anna reached over to her nightstand and poured herself a whiskey from a crystal decanter. She told herself she had acted correctly. She needed the head to prove his murder. And, while her actions may have been impulsive and even illegal, once the murder was solved her superiors would agree that the ends justified the means and congratulate her. This strategy had worked for Anna before. In fact, it seemed to be the unofficial motto of the LAPD.
Anna waited until midnight and used her flashlight to find a pair of leather gloves in the landlord’s shed. Collecting the pail from the bushes, she lugged it to the alley behind the apartment building where she could take her time examining the head without someone nosing in or trying to arrest her. Apartment buildings towered in front of her and behind, blocking the moon, their windows dark with night. It had been raining on and off for days. It now began to drizzle, and then pour.
She solemnly dumped the head out onto the wet concrete and shone the flashlight on his face, getting her first good look at his features. Anna let out a happy sigh.
It was not Mr. Yau.
She leapt to her feet and jumped about, clutching her hands to her breast. It didn’t even look like Mr. Yau. His eyes were different. His nose was different. Anna must have simply feared it would be Mr. Yau, because he was the only man from China she had ever met.
Her friend was alive, most likely, though she doubted their paths would cross again. She could think more clearly now—like a detective.
Anna put on an appropriately solemn face and squatted again to examine the victim. Even Anna’s strong stomach turned at the sight. The mouth gaped. The eyes were dark hollows. His thick, black hair was shaved several inches back from his forehead, pulled tight into what had once been a long braid, but was now cut short and unraveled. The neck ended in a stump of pink meat, with multiple cuts as if chopped two or three times with an axe. One ear had been cut clean off.
The sight and the smell made Anna feel light headed.
Though the sea had ravaged his flesh, his good white teeth and the complete absence of gray hair suggested the man had been young—much younger than Mr. Yau. Anna added words to a chorus of crickets: “Mysterious man, I will avenge you.” She made a silent petition to Saint Denis, the cephalophore, who had also been decapitated and had walked six miles carrying his own head, because he would likely sympathize.
Anna took a bath in the communal tub, scrubbing her skin until she glowed like a beet, until the water looked milky with soap, until the scent of death came off her. She dunked her head and scrubbed her scalp. The young man whose head now rested once again in the bucket deserved a proper murder investigation. The Long Beach police were overlooking the evidence, possibly because the cop was stupid, but more probably because the man was Chinese. Either way, it was a travesty. If she turned the case over to the LAPD, they would know she’d stolen the head. And kicked a cop in his man parts. They would likely turn the head back over to the Long Beach
Police Department because it was their jurisdiction.
Anna would simply have to find the killer and bring him to justice on her own—a task she’d accomplished before. This was the sunny side of murder.
Anna had a case.
The clock struck seven a.m., and Anna’s eyes bleared from insufficient sleep. She faced her cold iron stove on which boxes of Cracker Jacks formed a wall around a pile of un-read riddles. Her supply was dwindling, as was her money. She would have to ration. Anna tore the top off a box and cast the riddle card onto the growing pile. She paced, tossing the candied popcorn and peanuts into her mouth, one piece at a time.
As a first step, she would try to determine where the dead man had originated. Most of the Chinese lived in Chinatown, but some peopled the abalone fishing village to the north. The cop had assured Anna that the corpse was an abalone diver. But abalone divers were fish themselves and unlikely to drown. From the beach, she’d seen them dive out beyond the surf and stay under for ages.
Chewing her Cracker Jacks, Anna picked her way over to her bookcase, selected volume C of the Catholic Encyclopedia, and perched in a chair. She opened to the entry on California, and read about ocean currents, ones that might carry heads from the site of their murder to Long Beach Strand. She referred to a map of Los Angeles County, and made calculations in her notebook—distance, time, and speed.
The head couldn’t have come from the south. The currents prohibited it. Neither could he have come from the fishing village north of Santa Monica. She could tell from his state of decay that he hadn’t been dead long. The water moved too slowly to deliver a body so far in a matter of days. However, the river mouth emptied onto the beach just north of where the head was found. Anna’s money was on the river.
CHAPTER 3
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Station waved its large flag near the corner of First Street and Broadway. It had a certain civic grandeur, built of heavy granite blocks, with arched windows, and multiple stories to accommodate a jail, receiving hospital, and stables in the basement. Parked out front were a police wagon hitched to white horses, half a dozen bicycles, and one shiny gas-powered police car with a gold star on the side.