by Lind, Hailey
I jumped as a black cat with green headlamp eyes rubbed against my legs and mewed.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I crooned, picking up the friendly feline and scratching her behind the ears. A red metal heart attached to her pink collar said her name was Lurleen.
Lurleen purred, leapt from my arms, and strolled into the kitchen, looking over her shoulder at me. A plastic dish was half-full of dry cat food, but I didn’t see any water, so I filled a large bowl from the dish rack next to the sink and set it on the floor. As I watched the cat delicately lap the water, I felt an unexpected warmth. Maybe I should get a cat.
A door off the living room stood ajar. Lurleen dashed into the room, then returned and rubbed against my legs some more. I scooped her up.
“What’s up, sweetie? Is that your room?” I pushed the door open.
The rank smell of stale vomit hit me in the gut like a sucker punch. The bedroom was lined with shelves full of textbooks, precisely labeled binders, and boxes of minicassette tapes, and was spare and tidy except for an empty bottle of Jägermeister and some vials of pills lying on the bedside table.
Cindy lay on her stomach, one arm dangling off the side of the bed so that her fingers lightly touched the floor.
Lurleen leapt from my arms and bolted from the room.
“Cindy?” I whispered. “Are you okay?”
As though in slow motion, I reached out my hand and brushed the hair from her face. Her eyes were closed, but a trickle of vomit trailed from her open mouth and pooled on the sheets. I touched her arm. It was cold and rigid.
I yanked my hand away and jumped backward, tripped, and fell on my butt. Black spots danced before my eyes. I heard someone choking and making unintelligible guttural sounds, and it took a few seconds to realize it was me. Staggering to my feet, I made it out of the room and stumbled down the stairs to the front stoop, where I sank onto the top step. Lurleen climbed into my lap with a feline air of entitlement. I stroked her sleek black fur, took great gulps of fresh air, and tried to clear my mind and get my emotions in check.
I hated finding dead bodies. I really hated the fact that finding dead bodies had become an all-too-common occurrence in my life.
There was a clicking sound. Shawna sat on her bike on the sidewalk.
“Hey, Lurleen,” she said. “You okay, lady?”
“Yeah.” I managed a shaky smile. “But the lady upstairs isn’t so good. Have you seen anybody go in there lately?”
She shook her head. “She sick?”
“She, uh—well, she needs a doctor. Would you do me a favor, Shawna?”
“ ’Kay.”
“Run home and call 911? Tell the operator you need an ambulance.” I’d read in a library brochure called Safety Is No Accident! to call from a landline so the address would show up on the 911 operator’s computer.
“Mama said to do that only in a ’mergency.”
“This is an emergency, Shawna.”
“ ’Kay.” The girl’s eyes widened, and with a push of a sandal-clad foot she headed off on her bike.
I called 911 on my cell phone just in case, wondered at the beauty and grace of cats, and tried to pull myself together.
It took only a few minutes for the emergency vehicles to arrive. A squad car was the first to pull up, followed by paramedics and a fire truck. I moved out of the way as uniformed personnel swarmed up the stairs. A potbellied, mustached cop listened to my story with a weary but compassionate air. We both fell silent as the EMTs came downstairs, shaking their heads. The cop thumbed his shoulder mike and requested that detectives be dispatched. I saw black spots again and sat down suddenly, leaning against the metal rail.
Disembodied voices spoke of a bottle of booze and vials of pills. Lurleen had abandoned me when the newcomers arrived, and I already missed her. I tried humming to block out the voices, but the only song I could think of was “Oops, I Did It Again.”
A middle-aged paramedic with a kind, no-nonsense manner squatted in front of me and said she needed to check me over. I smiled at her. I liked paramedics. They helped people and never threatened to take them to jail. The woman wore her hair in a short, practical bob that Mary called a “man-cut.” She gave me something sweet to drink, and I started to feel less spacey.
Twenty minutes later an unmarked car pulled up and two suit-clad detectives got out. They chatted with the uniformed cops, who pointed at me. I braced myself.
“I’m Detective Hucles,” a tall, soft-spoken detective said. I noticed his partner interviewing Shawna and a woman I assumed was her mother. “You found the body?”
“Yes.”
“Name and address?”
I told him.
“You a friend?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I drove up about, I don’t know—maybe forty minutes ago? I went upstairs and found Cindy. Came back downstairs and asked Shawna, the little girl, to go home and call 911.”
“You have a key to the apartment?”
“No, the door was open.”
“Wide open?”
“Um, no. I meant it was unlocked.”
“So you just walked on in?”
“Shawna said I could.”
The detective smiled. “See anyone when you got here?”
“Just the little girl. And Lurleen.”
“Who’s Lurleen?”
“The cat.”
As if on cue, Lurleen strolled over, and I scooped her up. Her rusty purr put me at ease.
“Ah. You feeling okay?”
“I’m all right.”
“Okay, then. You touch the body?”
“I moved her hair aside. And touched her arm.” My skin crawled at the memory of Cindy’s cold flesh.
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Name of the deceased?”
“Cindy Tanaka. She is—was—a graduate student at Berkeley. Anthropology. A Dr. Gossen is her professor.”
“Looks like she had a roommate.”
“She’s out of town.”
“Name?”
“I don’t know—I think it’s on the card next to the door.”
“Contact number?”
I shook my head.
“Know when she’s getting back?”
“No. I’ve never met her. I didn’t know Cindy all that well, either.”
“Any reason Ms. Tanaka would want to kill herself?”
“You think she killed herself?”
“The medical examiner will make the final determination, but so far there are no signs of foul play.”
“I can’t imagine her doing such a thing.”
“You said you didn’t know her that well,” he said with a shrug. “It’s often hard to figure these things out.”
The other detective walked up, and the two huddled. Detective Hucles turned back to me. “I’d like the EMTs to check you out again. Then you can go.”
“I’m fine.”
“Humor me. The first time you see a dead body can be quite a shock.” He gave me an encouraging smile, and I thought, If only the nice detective knew. . . . He signaled the paramedic with the man-cut, who checked my vital signs again and confirmed I was safe to drive.
Shawna and her mother approached.
“Nice to meet you, lady,” said Shawna.
“Are you all right?” Shawna’s mother asked, her voice gentle. “What a terrible thing.”
“Thanks, I’m okay. It was nice to meet you, too, Shawna.”
“We’d be glad to care for Lurleen until Brianna, Cindy’s roommate, gets back,” Shawna’s mother said. “That is, unless you’d planned to take her.”
“I’d better not. I don’t know anything about cats,” I said and regretfully passed Lurleen to Shawna.
Detective Hucles glanced up from his notebook and handed me a business card. “You think of anything else, give me a call. We have any questions, we’ll call you. Take care, now.”
I drove straight t
o the cemetery. Someone there must know Cindy. She had a key to the gates, after all. A grave-robbing ghoul, wild speculation about a mistaken masterpiece, and now the death of a vibrant young woman . . . how did all this fit together? Did it fit together?
The minute I walked into the stone cottage that housed the cemetery offices I felt assaulted by the huge Tim O’Neill painting. The downside of my sensitivity to art was that it was almost physically painful to be around something I found distasteful. At the moment my nerves were so jangled that the painting brought tears to my eyes, and the walls seemed to close in on me.
The only employee in the room was the curly-haired man, who sat at a desk talking to two young men.
“Excuse me, do you know someone named Cindy Tanaka?” I interrupted.
He shook his head, his pale eyes expressionless.
“Is Helena around?” I persisted.
He shook his head again and turned back to his clients.
I spun on my heel to leave. Big mistake. I swayed, and my knees started to buckle.
A strong hand grasped my elbow. “Why don’t you have a seat for a moment?” a man’s sympathetic voice suggested.
The kind-eyed stranger led me to the Naugahyde sofa and sat beside me. The gray pinstripes in his subdued, well-cut suit complemented the spray of silver at his temples. He gave me a sad smile, and white teeth flashed in a distinguished, tanned face whose wrinkles suggested he’d seen his share of sorrows. I imagined working in the funeral business took its toll.
“You’re pale,” he said. “May I get you some juice?”
“No, thanks.”
He took my hand in his fine-boned one. “Has someone passed?”
I nodded, and realized I’d come to the right place to mourn. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I hardly even knew her. I don’t know why I’m reacting like this.”
“Death is always a shock,” he said. “No matter how much you’re around it. Every once in a while a case really gets to me, and I wish I could have done more.”
I stared at him. “More how?”
“Often I think that had I been called in earlier things might have turned out differently.”
Turned out differently? What was this guy talking about? Dead was dead, and no funeral director in the world could change that.
The eyes that had seemed so warm and reassuring a few minutes before now took on a sinister cast. What kind of a pervert was this guy? Did he have some kind of Dr. Frankenstein complex?
“Just what do you do to them?” I demanded.
“To whom? My patients?”
“You call them your patients?”
The man looked bewildered. “My dear, I’m a physician.”
“You don’t work here?”
“You thought—oh my.” He gave a hearty laugh. “No, though I do hang around often enough. My wife, Helena, is the head docent. I’m a gastroenterologist.”
“A gastroenterologist?”
“A guts n’ butts man, as we say in the biz.”
I decided gastroenterology was even scarier than proctology.
“I was here looking for my wife. Did you know that Russell over there”—he nodded toward the curly-haired man at the desk—“is something of a cemetery savant? He wrote this.” He handed me a picture book from the coffee table. Its cover read Bay Area Cemeteries.
I presumed the good doctor was trying to distract me, but I appreciated his efforts. Intrigued, I flipped through the glossy photos. There was a section on modern cemeteries, but most of the book was devoted to the funerary history of the San Francisco Bay Area.
“You’re that artist working next door? Annie something?” I looked up to see the curly-haired cemetery employee, Russell, standing in front of us. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s looking for Helena,” the doctor said. “I was just showing her your book.”
“You wrote this?” I asked Russell, impressed. “It’s really something.”
“He certainly did,” the doctor replied. “Russell knows everything there is to know about the area’s cemeteries.”
“It’s self-published,” Russell mumbled, blushing, and I realized he was more shy than unfriendly.
“What an accomplishment,” I complimented him. “And what a fascinating topic. I’ve been working on a construction site in the City, and we found some gravestones being used as stepping stones in the garden.”
Like a snake in the sun, Russell came to life. He started talking. A lot.
“. . . and then between 1902 and 1917 they moved the cemeteries to Colma, and some of the remains came to Oakland. Did you know that Colma has more dead residents than live ones? It’s a city built for cemeteries.”
Helena’s husband stood up. “Well, you seem to be in good hands now . . . Annie, is it? It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Dr. . . . ?”
“Dick. Call me Dick.”
I nodded, though I would never understand why someone with the respectable name of Richard would prefer to be called a penis. I watched Dick walk down the corridor and go out the side door.
“. . . get together Saturday, I could tell you more.”
“I’m teaching a course on faux-finishing at the Home Improv in San Francisco this weekend. Maybe another time,” I dodged. “Russell, is there anyone else who might know about a graduate student doing some research in the cemetery?”
“Helena’s the one to talk to. She knows everything that goes on here.”
“Okay, thanks.” Without Dick’s presence, the cemetery office felt stifling and I was anxious to leave. I wrote my cell number on a business card and handed it to Russell. “Would you ask Helena to call me when she comes in? I’ll be working next door all evening.”
“I’ll tell her,” he said, taking the card with fingers that were clammy and cold.
I ducked out the door and headed to my truck. Through the cottage’s front window I saw Curly Top Russell watching me, his expression flat, almost reptilian. I tried to be charitable, but the guy gave me the creeps. Among other things, someone should tell him permanents weren’t a good look for a man. And if I noticed someone’s hair was bad, it must be really bad.
My visit with Dick and Russell had distracted me from the afternoon’s events, but now gloom settled over me. I unearthed a sketch pad and bag of pencils from behind my truck’s bench seat and hiked the hills of the cemetery in search of stone angels and inner peace.
One of the drawbacks of making art for a living was that I seldom had time to sketch or paint just for the sheer pleasure of it. I found a sweet-faced, melancholy angel resting her head in her hand, took a seat on a patch of lawn, and started to draw.
Unlike painting, which encourages the mingling of light and shadow, sketching requires the artist to impose arbitrary lines, dividing the world into separate and distinct planes. In nature there are few real lines, only swaths of color. Painting and drawing are thus two different artistic processes, two ways of interpreting the world. After a day like today I felt a need to impose order on my unruly reality, so I sat with the sounds of the trees and the birds and the faraway city, and focused on creating the length of lines, the breadth of curves, and the relative values of darks and lights. By the time I tossed my sketch pad into the truck and headed into the columbarium, I was relaxed and able to focus on the restoration.
The last of the columbarium’s staff was pulling out of the employee parking lot as I let myself into the Main Cloister. I was absorbed in thoughts of tonight’s restoration work, relishing the opportunity to commune with the long-dead anonymous artisans who had adorned this beautiful building so many years ago.
Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me into the empty Middle Chapel.
“Manny!” I yelled when my eyes had adjusted to the chapel’s dim light. “What are you doing? You almost gave me a heart attack!”
“I’m sorry, Annie, but I need to speak with you in private,” the accountant said, his big brown eyes worried.
> “Well, here I am. What’s up?”
“Something strange is going on. I can’t find the name of the person who appraised La Fornarina last year.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
“No, you don’t understand. The whole file is missing.”
“It was probably just misplaced,” I said, shaking off a frisson of fear. “These things happen.”
“Not in my office they don’t. It’s my job to keep meticulous records for insurance and tax purposes, Annie. I’ve never lost a file. Never.”
“Well, surely—”
“Have you spoken with Mrs. Henderson yet?” he interrupted. “The retired secretary?”
I shook my head.
“I wonder if she might know something,” Manny muttered, more to himself than to me. “I found her address, by the way. Will you ask her about the file?”
I nodded and took a slip of paper from him.
“There’s something else. A friend of yours came by yesterday and dropped off something with Miss Ivy.”
“I saw Ivy earlier and she didn’t say anything about it.”
“She said you ran past her and she ‘certainly wasn’t going to go chasing you down the hall.’ I told her I’d give it to you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s in my office. Follow me.” He stuck his head into the hall, looked both ways, and scurried out of the Middle Chapel toward the business office.
“Who was this friend?” I asked, trotting after him. “Did he leave a name?”
“It was a woman. According to Miss Ivy she blew through here like a bat out of h-e-l-l,” he spelled, and I wondered if, like me, Manny feared the karmic consequences of cursing in the presence of the dead.
I followed him through the empty reception area and down the corridor to his no-frills office. A black rolling suitcase, the kind favored by flight attendants and frequent fliers, leaned against one wall.
“You don’t know who left it?” I asked.
“I didn’t see her. You can ask Miss Ivy in the morning. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’m on the board of the Rotary Club, and we’re meeting at Inn Kensington in ten minutes.”