Brush With Death

by Lind, Hailey

  “That’s correct.”

  “But are you sure? I saw Cindy just a couple of days before and she seemed fine.”

  “That’s not uncommon, Ms. Kincaid. Often suicides find an inner peace once they’ve made the decision to kill themselves.”

  “Did you know that someone had been stalking her?”

  “Her professor, a Dr. Randall Gossen, mentioned it, as did her roommate. But there was no evidence to suggest foul play by that particular individual or any other.”

  “But who—”

  “I appreciate your concern, Ms. Kincaid. If you think of anything pertinent, give me a call.”

  I hung up, dissatisfied but unsure what to do. This was when a person could really use a friend in the police department. In my case such a friendship seemed as likely as convincing my hair to behave on a regular basis.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that Cindy’s untimely death was connected to the Raphael, and/or the grave robbery. After yesterday’s lovely little chat with Donato Sandino, I felt like I should be tracking down a masterpiece. I glanced at the clock. Oops. No time for such things now. I had to head into the City to teach the faux-finishing class at the Home Improv. I threw on some clothes and rushed out to the truck. Traffic was light and I got creative with the speed limit. Twenty minutes later I exited at Bayshore, careened across Home Improv’s pitted parking lot, and raced through the cavernous warehouse store to the paint department, a mere seven minutes late.

  Waiting for me were two men wearing the bright red Home Improv apron and buttons reading ASK ME! One was a fortyish, short man in a Burpee cap, the other a pimply-faced, elongated teenager. They’d cleared off two large tables and brought out the prepainted boards, paint samples, and before-and-after photographs I’d dropped off a couple of days ago. Next to these were the mounds of faux-finishing supplies the store hoped to peddle to the class: brushes and paints, glazes and rags, solvent and overpriced “faux-finishing liquid.” When the store manager offered me the job he’d made it clear that he expected to sell plenty of the premixed quarts to my students even though they could mix their own, and achieve a better effect, at one-tenth the cost. I’d held my tongue and agreed to his quid pro quo. The guy had to make a living, I supposed, though it got my goat that art supplies were so expensive. The art supply house near me sold “artists’ mineral spirits” in cute little six-ounce jars for the same price as a gallon of the stuff at the no-frills hardware store down the street.

  “The great thing about faux-finishing is there’s no ‘wrong’ way to do it,” I lectured to the little crowd of eager stipplers. “It’s all about experimentation and having a good time. Remember my personal mantra. ‘You can always paint over it.’ So let your inner artist come out and play!”

  I felt a little silly talking like this, but my enthusiasm was genuine. No two ways about it, faux-finishing was a hoot.

  As the class oohed and aahed over my sample boards and before-and-after photos there was one more tardy arrival: a tall, muscular African-American man dressed in perfectly faded jeans, work boots, and a white linen shirt. He looked like a glamorous Hollywood version of a contractor.

  “Bryan!” I hadn’t seen my old friend Bryan Boissevain in ages. We hugged. “What are you doing here?”

  “You know I’ve been wanting to faux-finish the downstairs bathroom, baby doll, but your rates are too pricey for me. Besides, I never get to see you anymore, so here I am!”

  I set him up at the table, turned back to the group, and launched into an explanation of how to apply a tinted, transparent glaze to the prepared surface area, and then manipulate the glaze with rags, plastic bags, dry brushes, combs, or a combination of all four.

  “We’re using oil-based products today,” I continued. “A common mistake is to use water-based faux-finishing products. They may seem more user-friendly, but the water-based products dry too fast for beginners and are best left to experienced hands. Slower-drying oil-based products keep the surface ‘open’ longer, allowing you to start over if you make a mistake. And remember, if you haven’t made a mistake, then you haven’t faux-finished!”

  Everyone grabbed a prepainted sample board, chose paint colors, and began mixing their glazes. I was so busy answering questions and intervening in tinting disasters that I didn’t notice someone else had joined the group. Leaving Latisha mixing a burnt sienna glaze, I whipped around and bumped into Curly Top Russell—literally.

  “Russell! What a surprise,” I said. Seeing the cemetery employee in a real world setting was as jarring as the time I’d run into my dentist at a bowling alley, rolling a gutter ball and guzzling cheap beer.

  “You mentioned the class and it sounded interesting.” He smiled but his heavy-lidded eyes were expressionless. “I own an old Victorian, not far from here. In Hunters’ Point.”

  “Um, great,” I said. Hunters’ Point was full of fine old houses, but had a reputation as a rough neighborhood. It was hard to imagine this anemic cemetery fan living there. “Welcome.”

  I set Russell up with sample boards, glaze, and paint at the far end of one of the tables, and tried to ignore him as his pale eyes continued to track me.

  “. . . so I said to myself, why have you never been to Coit Tower?” Bryan was regaling his tablemates with a long-winded tale of his latest passion: experiencing the tourist’s San Francisco. He punctuated his comments with a glaze-filledbrush, flinging drops of solution in the air. I grabbed his hand and repositioned it over the sample board.

  I took a spin around the other table, where Katy had gotten so distracted gossiping with Latisha about Selena’s good-for-nothing husband that her glaze had developed a hard edge.

  “It doesn’t look right,” Katy complained. “There’s something wrong with the glaze.”

  “It’s drying before you’re done,” I replied and handed her more sample boards. “Here, try again. And this time, concentrate. Selena’s husband is no-good trash, but that’s not helping you learn to faux-finish.” Katy sighed like a martyr and started over.

  “My color looks flat,” Latisha said.

  “You’re wiping off most of the topcoat.” I had her stir in more pigment. “If you take off too much you won’t get the proper color saturation.”

  “I dropped my brush,” Warren cried, staring at the floor. “It made a mess.”

  What was this, kindergarten? Teaching was clearly not a profession for the patience-impaired.

  “Accidents happen!” I chirped with a gaiety I did not feel as I handed him a paper towel. “Pick up the brush, wash it off in the mineral spirits, and get right back to it!”

  I went to assist a sweet, overweight man named Rick who tackled his sample boards with more determination than talent. Wrinkling his forehead and biting his lower lip, he dabbed on the paint with trepidation.

  “Put a little more oomph into it,” I suggested.

  “For crying out loud, Bry, I said to myself,” I heard Bryan nattering on. “You’ve never even been on a cable car! Have you ever tried Rice-A-Roni? No! Why, that doesn’t even half make sense.” His tablemates nodded in agreement.

  Margaret, a fifty-something homemaker, had brought her teenage daughter Rochelle, who wanted to faux-finish her bedroom “from top to bottom.” Their color choices made me cringe, but who was I to dissuade the duo from lilac and turquoise harlequin-patterned walls?

  I checked in on Russell, even though every molecule in my body screamed to avoid him. “Lookin’ good, Russell.” He patted at his sample boards listlessly.

  “So then my friend Annette asks me, have I ever been on the Mexican Bus?” Bryan was telling his neighbor, Katrina. “And I said—”

  “Annette?” I interjected, my paintbrush pausing in midair over Rochelle’s turquoise patch. “Annette who?”

  “Annette Crawford,” Bryan said. “You remember her.”

  “Of course I do. She stopped taking my calls.”

  Annette Crawford was a no-nonsense, supersmart, ultra-cool homicide inspector fo
r the San Francisco Police Department. A decade my senior, she was the type of woman who could dress up in a satin ball gown and four-inch heels, size up a bloody murder scene, and attend an awards dinner with the mayor without skipping a beat. Last year, we had begun a tentative friendship based on a mutual respect for each other’s ability to lie (in my case) and to ferret out said lies (in her case).

  “You can hardly blame her, Annie, after the drug bust.”

  Several heads whipped around to stare at me. I corrected Rochelle’s board and then edged over to Bryan, hoping for discretion.

  “You and Annette talk? About Rice-A-Roni?”

  “Don’t be silly. She’s a hush puppy fan, and I like to tell you I knocked her on her fine ass with my dirty rice and jambalaya,” Bryan said, his Louisiana bayou accent thickening as he spoke of the food of his childhood. He glanced over at Rick. “Don’t look now, buddy, but you’ve sprung a leak.”

  “Help!” Rick called out as he mopped up his board. I reached over and rectified the situation without blinking an eye. After my years in the business, glaze drips were a piece of cake.

  “I mean, you and Annette are still friends?” I clarified.

  “After the Chagall fiasco, we started talking. She’s a local history buff, did you know that?” Bryan gushed. “We took the Mexican Bus last night and went through tequila and limes like there was no tomorrow!”

  A few months ago I had hopped the brightly painted bus named “Lulu” with Mary and Samantha. For the cost of a ticket, the Mexican Bus drove the boisterous crowd from one salsa club to the next, ushering us inside to drink and dance, then loading us back on the bus to head to the next stop. As soon as the door closed, the booze, limes, and salt-shaker emerged, the driver cranked up the music, and the bus swayed as its tequila-soaked passengers sang and danced through the streets of San Francisco.

  That night my wallet had been stolen while I was mamboing at Rock-a-Pulco, and Mary and I had had to break into the studio through the window, nearly setting off the burglar alarm. We awoke the next day with pounding heads, queasy stomachs, and vague memories of having had way too good a time.

  “How come you didn’t ask me to go?” I said, hurt.

  Bryan looked guilty. “Honey pie, you know how much I love you, but Annette needed to let her hair down—she’s been working so hard—and you two aren’t exactly on good terms, so, well . . .”

  “That’s okay, I understand.” I felt a rush of self-pity. It was like getting stuck at the loser table at an otherwise raucous wedding.

  After another hour of questions about color choices and texture options, I sent my students home armed with buckets of glaze, pots of paint, and bags of paintbrushes, rags, and sponges. Home Improv associates rang up sales in the hundreds of dollars, and the store manager beamed at me.

  As Bryan and I made our way across the parking lot, he looped a heavy arm around my shoulders and announced he was taking me to lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “No one but tourists eat at Fisherman’s Wharf,” I protested. “I haven’t been there since I was a kid.”

  “That’s my point, baby doll. I haven’t been in years, since I was fresh off the boat from Louisiana. But tourists come from all over the world to see the sights we locals don’t take time for. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “Anything else on your list?”

  “All sorts of fabulous things.” He fished a piece of paper from his pocket. “Fisherman’s Wharf is right at the top. Ooh! Maybe we could take a cable car there, and kill two birds with one stone!”

  “If you’re buying, I’ll go to the Wharf. But we’re not waiting in line forty-five minutes for a cable car. I’ll drive.”

  Despite Bryan’s desire for what he called the “T.T.E.— Total Tourist Experience,” I nixed his suggestion to park in one of the high-fee garages near the Wharf and instead spent fifteen minutes searching the neighborhood for a metered space. As we walked the long city blocks to Fisherman’s Wharf, Bryan read aloud from a tour book.

  “Did you know that Fisherman’s Wharf is the third most visited sight in America? Guess what’s first and second!”

  “The Frick Museum in New York City. I love that place.”

  Bryan snorted. “Disney World and Disneyland. Isn’t that something?”

  “You bet.” The ocean breeze flung my hair into my mouth and I spat it out.

  “Let’s see . . . did you know that a man named Henry Meiggs built Fisherman’s Wharf to ship lumber? Doesn’t that mean it should be called Lumberman’s Wharf?”

  “Lumberman’s Wharf sounds awkward.”

  “True. Hmm, it says here that Meiggs was run out of town by a mob bent on revenge. Now, that’s interesting.” He paged through the book. “Dang it all. It doesn’t say what he did. Don’t you hate that?”

  “Probably slept with somebody’s wife,” I suggested as we neared the tourist area, its sidewalks overrun with displays of T-shirts, sweatshirts, key chains, sunglasses, and disposable cameras from the cramped souvenir shops. The wharf was not yet in sight but the caws of the seagulls and the smell of sea air said we were close.

  “Or many men’s wives. It was a big crowd. Then there were the Chinese immigrants who sold food from ‘junks,’ and of course the Italian fishermen,” Bryan read on, undaunted, weaving through the crowds that streamed out into the street. “It says when the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory was opened to the public, the area became more of a tourist destination and less of a working dock.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, listening with half an ear.

  “Listen to this. Domingo Ghirardelli, originally from Italy by way of Peru, discovered that cocoa butter drips off bags of ground cacao beans. This technique continues to be the most common method for making chocolate. Huh. Who knew?”

  Bryan’s reference to the Ghirardellis turned my thoughts to Bayview Cemetery, where the chocolate mogul had built a beautiful crypt near the Locklear Memorial, and I imagined Domingo Ghirardelli watching the crowds in the square that bore his name from his eternal perch on the Oakland hillside. That thought reminded me of the masked ghoul at Louis Spencer’s crypt, and once again I wondered what was going on in that place.

  But as we walked along, I started to relax. The sights and sounds and smells—especially the smells—of Fisherman’s Wharf brought back visceral memories of childhood outings to the City, and I started to relax. I remembered one trip when Georges had insisted on going to the Wax Museum, where he chortled to himself for the entire tour. My older sister, Bonnie, got the willies and went to stand by the exit, but Grandfather and I had lingered, laughed, and critiqued the gruesome displays. Some of those wax artists are quite talented.

  The area had been built up in the intervening years, but there were still huge steaming vats of water for the crabs, and street vendors selling shrimp cocktails and loaves of fresh-baked sourdough bread. Several of the Italian seafood eateries that dated to the 1950s had been converted to upscale seafood restaurants. A few of the docks were reserved for working fishermen, but many now offered tours of the bay and rides to Sausalito, while others had been ceded to the raucous sea lions, who lolled in the sun and bellowed at the tourists. Every so often someone tried to get the City to relocate the sea lions, but visitors loved them and so they remained. Besides, those sea lions were mean.

  Bryan dropped a dollar into the hat of a man covered from head to toe in silver paint; the man did a convincing imitation of a robot. We then took a few minutes to watch a long-haired young man spin cans of spray paint to create colorful drawings of the solar system. The throng clapped to show its appreciation.

  Consulting his tourist manual once more, Bryan suggested lunch at an unpretentious diner with red vinyl booths and a view of the sea lions. We ordered the house special and iced tea, and broke open a warm boule of sourdough, slathering chunks of the fragrant bread with fresh butter.

  “Looks like you have an admirer,” Bryan said, arching an eyebrow as he sweetened his tea with two scoops of
snowy white sugar.

  “Who?”

  “That fellow in class who followed you from the cemetery.”

  “Curly Top?” I said, aghast.

  “That’s his name?”

  “His name’s Russell. I just can’t get past the hair.”

  “Okay, he’s not what one would order on the Internet, but it’s good to have admirers. Heterosexual admirers, in your case,” Bryan clarified.

  “I have heterosexual admirers. What about Josh?”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “To tell the truth, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about him.”

  “What’s wrong with Josh? He’s gorgeous, and sweet, and—”

  “Yes, he is. That’s the problem, girlfriend—he’s too sweet. We think you need someone stronger.”

  “Who’s the ‘we’ who thinks all this?”

  “Your friends, Annie.”

  The red vinyl creaked as I sat back in a huff. “And you’re suggesting I hook up with Curly Top?”

  “Course not, girl, simmer down. I’m just saying, is all.”

  “Bryan, you’re something else. You’re on my case for months to get some, and when I find a perfectly respectable boyfriend you say he’s not good enough.”

  The waitress gave me a knowing look as she delivered two hollowed-out loaves of sourdough bread filled with creamy clam chowder. The taste of the salty clams and the velvety potatoes made it official: I was on a trip down memory lane.

  “Good?” Bryan asked, blowing delicately on a spoonful of soup.

  “Great.”

  We enjoyed the meal and chatted, Bryan bringing me up to date on his life. As he signaled to the waitress to bring the check, I gazed out the diner’s picture window upon the bustling crowd of tourists. Bryan was right: we locals should take advantage of our charming tourist attractions. There were strolling lovers, excited children dashing between the arcade and the carousel, a cluster of Japanese tourists, tattooed bikers, strutting teenagers, Billy Mudd, and Randy Gossen . . .

  Mudd and Gossen?