She paused, her hands wrapped around the long stems, her arms frozen in the air above a slender green vase.
A second knock, this one more persistent, echoed from the broom closet.
Her forehead wrinkled with concern. She wasn’t expecting any visitors—at least not anyone from the shop’s tunnel entrance. Her father wasn’t due back yet from his trip to Pier Seven; his fishing expeditions often lasted several hours.
Lily threaded the stems through the mouth of the vase and then cautiously approached the closet. The knocking sounded a third time as she crept up to the door.
The handle moved as someone jiggled it from the opposite side. The floorboards creaked, indicating a heavy, formidable presence.
“Who’s there?” she whispered tensely.
But it was a gravelly voice from inside the flower shop that made her jump.
“I believe that’s for me.”
Lily spun around to find Harold Wombler standing beside the front rack of flowers. A light sheen of sweat dotted his brow, as if he’d been hobbling at top speed, and he was loaded down with a large box. Panting, he carried his carton across the flower stall.
“I’ve had to chase them all over town,” Harold muttered without explanation as he pushed past Lily to the broom closet.
Setting his box on the floor, Harold released the lock and pulled open the door. Sam smiled apologetically at Lily as Harold bent down to the container.
“You’ll be needing more of these,” Harold said, handing Sam a plastic bag of brown pellets.
He reached back into the box and fished out a stack of folded clothing. “This outfit is for you.”
As Sam juggled his packages, Harold tossed a red scarf on top of the pile.
“And this one’s for your friend.”
Chapter 41
A HOLLOW STOMACH
SPIDER HUDDLED BEHIND a bookshelf in a corner of the Green Vase showroom, his heart pounding from his latest close call. He’d managed to scoot out from beneath the dentist recliner and scramble into this hiding spot while the woman with the long brown hair and her elderly companion were bent over the opening to the basement.
Peeking around the corner of the bookcase, he’d watched as the woman tossed a package wrapped in white butcher paper—from the discussion, he gathered it was some sort of frozen meat—down into the hatch. The projectile had apparently caught Mr. Carmichael, socking him in the stomach.
Strange goings-on inside this antiques shop, Spider mused as he pulled back from the edge of the bookcase.
Hunched in the corner, he propped his notebook on his knee and steadied his pencil. Still listening to the conversation in the rear of the room, he began quietly taking notes.
• • •
GRIPPING HIS STOMACH, Monty collapsed onto the dental chair, which had been reextended to its flattest reclining position. Moaning, his narrow face contorted into exaggerated expressions of pain.
“Good thing it hit me in the middle here,” he said, pointing feebly at his stomach. “That’s all muscle, you know.”
The woman appeared unmoved by his physical discomfort. Isabella sat beside her person, similarly unsympathetic. Rupert hovered near the stairs to the second floor, wanting to head up for his long-delayed nap but intrigued by the package lying on the floor next to the hatch.
“I think I broke a rib,” Monty said pitifully, gripping his lower chest.
“Would serve you right,” the woman replied as she walked to the opening and peered into the hole. “You’re lucky that’s your only injury,” she muttered grimly.
Brow furrowed, she turned her gaze from the hatch to the recliner. How had Monty missed the alligator? Her eyes dropped to her female cat, the hunter who had nearly attacked the beast during their earlier encounter.
Isabella yawned, as if to communicate that her second trip to the basement had been far less eventful than the first.
The woman returned her attention to the recliner. “What were you doing in my basement?” she asked suspiciously.
Monty let out a pitiful groan. “I heard something bumping around down there. I thought you had an intruder.”
The niece shook her head. “Afraid you had competition?”
“You should be thanking me for going to check it out,” Monty insisted. “I’m a hero in this situation, you see.”
The woman held out her hand, palm turned upward.
“I don’t know how you got a copy of the key, but hand it over.”
Monty lifted his head from the recliner’s top cushion. Wincing, he raised his left hand to point a bony finger at the front door.
“You left it unlocked,” he said, his voice pitching despite his attempt at a sincere expression. “You’re lucky it was me who came inside. Anyone could have sneaked in here off the street.”
Monty swung his head back and forth as he searched the room for signs of the other intruder—the one he had exchanged hellos with before being ambushed on the basement stairs.
Oscar’s niece sighed, taking his antics as mockery, but the young man hiding behind the bookshelf gulped nervously.
“Key,” she demanded testily.
“I just have one question,” Monty replied as he reached into his pocket.
“Fire away,” she said, exasperated.
“What did you just throw at me?” he asked, this time his expression truly perplexed. “What’s wrapped up in that butcher paper? A cannonball?”
The woman turned away from the recliner. She would have tried to come up with a false answer to Monty’s question, but the label that had been affixed to the butcher paper clearly identified its contents.
Monty’s gaze followed hers. Squinting, he read the printing.
“Boneless breast meat?” he exclaimed, jumping up from the recliner, instantly recovered from his sore stomach. He bent over the package, rereading the description.
“Why would you be throwing a ten-pound pack of frozen chicken into the basement?”
The woman pursed her lips. She didn’t have a ready explanation—at least not one that didn’t involve a rogue albino alligator on the loose in the sewer system beneath downtown San Francisco.
“New tenderizing technique,” she responded with a shrug, but her nosy neighbor was not one to be put off from such odd behavior.
Predictably, he ignored the woman’s last comment. Stepping over Rupert, who was inching closer to the package, Monty speared his finger into the air.
“If you were looking to scare off a burglar,” he proclaimed confidently, “there were other weapons at your disposal.” He pointed to a display case containing an antique cutlass. “. . . ones that were easier to wield than a lump of frozen chicken.”
“Did the frozen chicken intimidate my burglar?” the woman asked curiously. If so, she would have to start stocking it in much greater quantities.
“Nope,” he replied with a sharp wag of his finger.
“Just checking.” She sighed ruefully.
Monty began to pace a slow circle around the woman, wrapping his arms around the back of his waist as he made contemplative humming sounds. At the completion of two rounds, he announced his conclusion.
“You’re on the hunt for something.”
It was no use, the niece knew, trying to dissuade him. Capitulating, she pulled the green flyer from her jeans pocket and held it out to him.
Snatching the piece of paper from her grasp, Monty waved it under his nose. After a deep sniff, he arched his eyebrows knowingly.
“Something from dear old Uncle Oscar by the smell of it.”
Monty slid across the floor toward the open hatch. “Something in the basement . . .”
The woman reflected on Monty’s line of questioning. She couldn’t imagine the alligator climbing up the steps to the showroom. There was only one way it could have entered—and exited—the basement, and that was through the underground passageway.
Monty’s eyes lit up as if he had read her thoughts.
“No! It’s the t
unnel!”
“All right, all right,” the niece relented. “You can come along.”
She pointed at the frozen package. “But you’re carrying the chicken.”
• • •
SPIDER HUDDLED BEHIND the bookcase, his feet going numb from lack of circulation while he furiously took notes on the conversation between Mr. Carmichael and the woman with the long brown hair.
As the pair departed, accompanied by one of the cats, Spider rubbed his forehead, puzzling over what he had heard. His pages were littered with questions.
Mr. Carmichael hadn’t mentioned their exchange of whispered hellos—although he’d given Spider quite a fright with his reference to intruders. Why hadn’t he told the woman someone else was in the Green Vase? And why, Spider pondered, had Mr. Carmichael sneaked into the store in the first place?
Tugging on his baseball cap, Spider shifted his queries to the woman with the long brown hair. Who was this Uncle Oscar? What was she “on the hunt” for? And where was the tunnel she was presumably heading toward?
It was all very suspicious, Spider summed up as he crept cautiously out from behind the bookcase, and well worth his earlier climb onto the Dumpster to squeeze through the kitchen window—although, he thought with a sniff, he still smelled like garbage.
Grinning nervously at the plump orange and white cat sitting by the stairs, Spider tentatively approached the hatch. He leaned over the hole, hesitating for only a moment as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light below.
Then, tightly gripping his notepad and pencil, he tiptoed down the steps into the basement.
• • •
RUPERT HAD WATCHED the proceedings between Monty and his person with guarded interest, but when they set off for the basement tunnel, he decided to remain behind in the Green Vase showroom. He, for one, was unwilling to risk another encounter with the alligator. That, and it was long past time for his morning nap.
As Rupert stretched his mouth into a sleepy yawn, a young dark-skinned man in janitor’s coveralls stepped out from behind a bookcase in the corner of the room. After a quick look around, he started down the steps to the basement.
Rupert gave the mysterious man a curious stare, but the cat didn’t budge from his spot by the stairs. He was pondering an issue of far greater importance than the Green Vase’s multiple intruders.
Rupert considered himself an expert on all things chicken: roasted chicken, chicken soup, chicken à la king, and, of course, fried chicken.
He’d had a chance to thoroughly inspect the outside of the butcher paper–wrapped package before Monty carried it down to the basement.
Of this Rupert was certain: whatever its previous existence prior to being frozen, the contents inside that white wrapping had never once clucked or borne feathers.
Chapter 42
A LONG WHITE TAIL
ISABELLA LED THE way as her person and Monty clomped down the steps to the basement.
Picking up the flashlight from the floor, where Monty had dropped it, the woman set off through the piles of boxes and crates. By the time she made her way to the wardrobe on the opposite side of the room, Isabella had already checked beneath the cover, but the woman aimed her light under the cloth anyway, just to be sure.
“Explain to me again why I’m carrying a package of frozen chicken?” Monty asked as he tossed the bundle into the air, catching it like a basketball. “And what does this have to do with the flyer from the chicken restaurant?”
“If you see anything moving toward you,” she replied as she swept the light in an arc across the floor, “throw the chicken at it.”
“What?” he exclaimed, now gripping the frozen package with somewhat greater urgency.
But the niece had turned her attention to finding the secret doorway in basement’s back wall.
“I think it’s over here somewhere,” she murmured as she searched for the keyhole that was hidden in the wall between two bricks.
“What, exactly, might be moving toward me?” Monty asked apprehensively.
“Just keep a close eye on the ground, and I’m sure you’ll be fine,” the woman said as she ran her hand over the wall, waiting to feel the slight current of air from the tunnel.
“There it is,” she said as she found the narrow crevice that hid the keyhole.
From her pocket, she pulled out the metal key to the store’s front door. While the toothed portion had been retooled with the changing of the upstairs lock, the three-petaled tulips on the opposite end remained in the same configuration.
Angling her light at the keyhole, she fed the key’s petal points into the opening. She rocked the rod back and forth until the shapes lined up; then, with a twist of the handle, an interior mechanism released, and a four-foot section of the wall slid backward. Placing her hands against the wall, she pushed open the door to the passageway.
As she shone her light into the dank tunnel on the opposite side, the niece couldn’t suppress a shudder. Somewhere in the darkness, a rogue alligator potentially lay in wait. But, with it, she hoped she would find the next clue to the Steinhart treasure.
Juggling the flashlight, the niece scooped up Isabella. She had no intention of letting her cat become gator-food. With respect to her interminably nosy neighbor, however, she was less concerned.
The woman nodded to Monty.
“After you.”
• • •
THE GROUP PROCEEDED into the tunnel, Monty leading the way with the frozen chicken, the niece struggling to balance Isabella and the flashlight. The beam bounced wildly against the walls as Isabella squirmed, trying to look over Monty’s head.
“Can you keep the light steady?” Monty protested. “I’m having a hard time seeing where I’m going.”
“Just keep walking,” the woman replied tensely.
• • •
IT HAD BEEN well over a year since the niece’s last journey through the passageway, but the tunnel had changed little during her absence. She quickly remembered why she hadn’t returned sooner.
The damp, oozing walls reeked of mold, fungus, and, she suspected, raw sewage. The constant chattering of insects filled the dark corridor, wreaking havoc with her imagination. She felt as if bugs were crawling over every inch of her skin.
On top of the aesthetic unpleasantness of the place, she couldn’t help wondering how some of the less stable sections of the tunnel had withstood San Francisco’s frequent earthquakes—and whether they might give way if the next shake hit the right fault line.
• • •
AFTER ABOUT FIFTEEN minutes, Isabella chirped out informatively and pawed against her person’s arm. They were passing the ladder leading to Wang’s flower shop.
The niece glanced up at the broom closet’s trap door. She was sorely tempted to abandon the alligator hunt, exit the tunnel, and head back to Jackson Square, but she pressed on.
Just a little bit further, she told herself. They had to be on the right track.
• • •
ABOUT A HUNDRED yards past the flower shop portal, they reached a fork in the passageway.
“Which way, chicken-master?” Monty asked, stopping in front of the intersection.
The niece didn’t remember the fork from her previous journeys through the tunnel. One of the pathways must have been blocked off during her earlier visits.
She swung her light back and forth from the left to the right. It was impossible for her to tell which was the main route.
“What do you make of this?” Monty asked, kicking a brown puck-sized pellet with the toe of his shoe. “I’ve seen a few of these along the path here.”
He bent down to pick it up, his nose wrinkling as he gave it a sniff. “It smells strangely . . . fishy.”
The niece aimed the flashlight at the pellet, and then shifted it back to the fork. The trail of pellets turned off to the right.
“Mrao,” Isabella called out, pawing again at her person’s arm.
The niece gritted her teeth a
nd took a firmer grip on her cat.
“To the right,” she instructed. After biting her lip, she added, “And Monty?”
He glanced back inquiringly. “Yes?”
“Be ready with that chicken.”
• • •
A SHORT WALK later, the floor of the tunnel began to slant slightly upward. The noise from the street-level traffic grew louder.
As the trio rounded a corner, they could see a pair of shadowed figures in the distance. The duo appeared to be standing outside an elevator, waiting for its car to arrive so they could walk inside and ride it up to the street.
“Who’s that?” Monty whispered as the niece angled her light around his shoulders to shine it toward the elevator.
The beam revealed a broad-shouldered hulk of a man dressed in a flashy suit, tie, and cufflinks.
The woman quickly panned the flashlight toward the ground, illuminating a short-statured creature with a long, loglike body, four crooked legs, and an intimidating snout.
The niece returned her light to the man’s reddish orange hair.
“Is that Sam?” she asked, incredulous.
But she was drowned out by the comment of her skinny partner, who, in his surprise, dropped the package of frozen chicken.
“Is that an alligator?” Monty sputtered.
Isabella offered a one-word answer.
“Mrao.”
Chapter 43
FASHION CLIVE
A SHARP, PULSING tweet whistled through the air outside the St. Francis hotel as a bellman flagged a passing taxi. The guests climbed into the cab’s backseat, and the car sped off down Powell, its worn tires punching through a pothole with a spring-squeaking whomp. All the while, the cable running beneath the street’s center median hummed with movement as it dragged trolleys over the city’s steep hills.
San Francisco’s Union Square graced a pleasant lunchtime scene. The line of flags hanging above the hotel’s front steps fluttered expectantly, the rising breeze signaling a coming shift in the weather. The slightest expression of relief creased the stone face of the Atlas figure holding a clock above the entrance to a nearby jewelry store.
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