by Lind, Hailey
But suppose Cindy had mentioned to Billy her conversations with Mrs. Henderson and her suspicions about La Fornarina? It had been my experience that older men don’t pay much attention to what young women said, but what if he had put two and two together and realized that if the columbarium possessed a genuine masterpiece, they would be fully independent and have no need of possible real estate deals? Would he have been ruthless enough to kill Cindy in order to ensure her silence? Could he have tricked Mrs. Henderson into eating a Twinkie?
I found myself heading for Cindy’s apartment, wondering if the garbage had been picked up.
The building looked exactly as it had the other day. It was unsettling to think that the death of a young woman had so little effect on everything around her. I circled to the rear of the duplex. A large green Dumpster smelled like sour milk, rotting vegetables, and day-old Pampers.
Shawna pulled up on her bike just as I was standing on tiptoe, peering over the metal side into the abyss. Behind her was another girl, this one with white-blond hair astride a bright pink Barbie bike.
Every neighborhood should have such a ten-year-old squad on patrol.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” Shawna’s solemn eyes watched me. “This is my best friend, Hannah. Whatcha doin’?”
“I think something valuable might have been thrown away by accident.”
“You goin’ in there?” Hannah asked, a frown worrying her pale forehead.
Not if I could help it. “I’ll pay you a dollar to go in for me.”
“No way,” Hannah laughed.
Shawna looked disapproving. “You crazy, lady.”
“Five dollars?”
“Mama said not to take money from strangers,” Shawna said with the air of an outraged ethics professor. “Plus, it’s stinky in there.”
She was right. It ranked pretty high on the noxious fumes quotient.
Two teenage boys ambled over. They wore jeans that hung loose and low, and huge T-shirts that fell to their knees. Their hands were shoved deep in their pockets in what I could only assume was an effort to keep their pants from falling down around their ankles.
“ ’S’up?” They lifted their chins at Shawna and Hannah, who returned the greeting.
“What’s she gonna do, go in there?” the taller boy asked.
“This is Kareem and Anthony,” Shawna said, the neighborhood’s Welcome Wagon.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Annie.”
“’S’up?” they answered. “You gonna go in there?”
“How much money would it take to get you to go in there for me?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“More’n you got,” mumbled Kareem.
“Nuh-uh. These are new Nikes,” explained Anthony.
Since when had young people become so fastidious? When I was their age I would have happily gone into a Dumpster for cash. Then again, maybe that said more about me than about the youth of today.
“All right, fine. Great.” I marched back to my truck, uneartheda pair of latex gloves that I use for faux-finishing, and returned to the Dumpster. “Anybody know where I can get a ladder?”
My audience shook their heads, so I looked around and spied a crate by the back fence. I brought it over to the Dumpster and climbed on it, but still needed some serious athletic prowess to lift myself up and over.
What a day to wear a skirt.
Snapping on the gloves, I managed to hoist myself onto the side, but couldn’t get my rear end far enough onto the ledge. Moved by a spirit of gallantry—or fearing embarrassment if I fell backward with my skirt flying over my head— Anthony of the bright white Nikes stepped onto the crate, placed two broad hands on my waist, and lifted me onto the side as if I weighed no more than Shawna.
With a smile of thanks I swung my legs over the side, closed my eyes, and let go. One sandal-shod foot sank into something soggy, while the other plunged straight to the bottom of the Dumpster, burying my right leg up to my thigh. I forced my thoughts away from what I was standing in, and started searching.
The Dumpster must have served more than just Cindy’s duplex, because there was a whole lot of refuse in there, much of which was in flagrant defiance of Oakland’s green recycling program. I pushed aside moldy coffee grounds and blackening banana skins, mounds of potato peels, and an open container of gloppy yogurt. Numerous plastic bags had ominously squishy contents, and I could have sworn one was moving. A paper grocery bag contained used Kleenexes, about a mile of dental floss, and an old tube of toothpaste. I poked around a bit and finally unearthed a plastic garbage bag neatly sealed with a plastic twist-tie. That looked promising. Using the back of my wrist to push my hair out of my eyes, I managed to leave a smear of something I didn’t want to know about on my upper cheek.
Hearing muffled giggles, I glanced up to see Shawna and Hannah, no doubt held aloft by their teenage accomplices. But it would take more than the ridicule of little girls to daunt me. I’d grown up with an artistic soul in a small provincial Central Valley town; I had been inured to derision and mockery at a young age.
I gave them a bright smile as though to prove how much fun I was having. Hell, it worked for Tom Sawyer. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”
This sent them into peals of laughter.
I turned back to my search. Opening the garbage bag, I found several tiny cassettes, but the metallic tape had been torn out and creased, and I doubted they could be salvaged. A stack of notes beneath them seemed like a better bet. I started sorting through them, tossing aside seminar notes and discussions of research materials. At last I uncovered a composition book, which fell open to a page of notes on Rosicrucianism. A sketch of a cross with a flower in the center was titled MAY THE ROSES BLOOM UPON YOUR CROSS. Flipping through the book, I saw Louis Spencer’s name and a discussion of the pyramid structure of his crypt. Tucked between the pages was a receipt for a digital copy of La Fornarina, by Raphael.
Aha!
“Found something!” I sang out.
No response.
“Guys?” I called. “Hello?”
Nothing.
I had registered the clicking of Shawna’s bike a few minutes ago, but was so caught up in the discovery of Cindy’s notebook that I hadn’t paid attention. With a sinking feeling I realized I had no plan for getting out of this reeking hellhole. I reached up and latched on to the side of the Dumpster, searching for a foothold. I upended a plastic diaper bucket and stood on it so that I could peer over the side.
A car sat in the alley. A dark sedan. The kind detectives drove.
I dropped back down, muttering to myself about young hoodlums who didn’t have the courtesy to warn a person to cheese-it when the cops showed. What to do, what to do . . . In all of my years of training at Grandfather’s knee, not once had he offered a lesson on Dumpster diving.
On the plus side, my olfactory sense seemed to have given up the ghost, and the little delinquents were unlikely to tattle to the authorities. As long as I hunkered down in the trash, I would be safe. No way would anyone think to look in the—
“Fancy meeting you here,” Detective Hucles said as he squinted down at me.
“Detective.” I nodded, casual as one could be while standing thigh-deep in lumpy yogurt and soiled diapers. Hucles looked tired, his eyes red and lined, his tie loose at the collar.
“You look terrible,” I blurted out.
“This from the woman in a Dumpster. What’s that on your cheek?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“I don’t blame you. Ms. Kincaid—”
“Call me Annie,” I replied. No point in standing on ceremony.
“Annie. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing in there surrounded by garbage? And not just any garbage, but Cindy Tanaka’s garbage?”
I drew a complete and total blank.
“The Oakland PD doesn’t look fondly on citizens interfering in an ongoing investigation, Annie.”
“I thought you were convinced it was a suicide,” I said
. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
I heard a police radio crackle. It sounded as if reinforcements had arrived. Hucles held my gaze a moment longer, but he had hard-to-read cop’s eyes. Was he about to ticket me? Arrest me? Burst out laughing?
“Find anything?” he asked.
“I think so. Cindy’s notes.”
“A suicide note?”
“No—research notes.”
He held out his hand, and I reluctantly surrendered the composition book. He flipped through it and handed it to someone I couldn’t see.
“What’s with the gloves?” he asked.
“Have you seen what’s in here?”
“I can only imagine. You always carry latex gloves with you?”
“Usually. I—” Wait a minute. Did the detective think I was trying to avoid leaving fingerprints? Try acting innocent for a change, I scolded myself. Especially since this time you are. “I’m a faux finisher. I use these gloves for work, and I was just trying to stay clean. This place is disgusting.”
“Which begs the question, what are you doing in the Dumpster?”
Something wet and slimy fell against my bare knee. I couldn’t bring myself to look.
“Um, Detective? Do you think we could have this discussion some place else?” At this point, being taken downtown to an interrogation room could only be an improvement.
Hucles disappeared from view, and two young officers popped up. What followed was not one of my better moments. The cops grabbed my arms and pulled, but between my lack of upper body strength and their lack of coordination, I wound up banging against the front wall of the Dumpster, twice, and falling on my butt in someone’s discarded pizza. By the time I was hauled unceremoniously over the side I was smeared and slimed and bruised in places I didn’t know could be bruised.
I collapsed on the crate, peeled off my gloves, and tossed them into the Dumpster.
Hucles was waiting, his arms crossed over his chest. “Better?”
I hesitated before answering. “Hard to say.”
“Where were you on the night of the twelfth?”
“I worked late at Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium, where I’m restoring some murals. My assistant was with me.”
“Name?”
I offered Mary’s name and phone number.
He flipped through his notebook. “A Ms. Sally Granger, administrative assistant in the anthropology department at UC Berkeley, told me you lied to her to get Cindy’s address.”
“Um . . . that’s true.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Gossen wouldn’t give it to me. And I was worried about her.”
“Why? You said you hardly knew the woman.”
I fessed up and told him about the masked grave robber stealing Louis’ box, and the possibility of a Raphael at the columbarium. “And on Sunday, a woman who was secretary at the columbarium for fifty-one years went into a suspicious diabetic coma.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police right away with this information?”
“At first I thought Cindy or the cemetery management would call. And then it just all seemed pretty far-fetched, especially the bit about the Raphael. In the end . . . I was just stupid, I guess.”
“Professor Gossen spoke about test results from a valuable painting. That’s the one you’re talking about?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Detective Hucles took a deep breath and flipped through his notebook. He wrote down Mrs. Henderson’s information, read some more, then fixed me with a steady gaze. “I’m choosing to believe your version of events, for now. If I have any reason to doubt you, we’re going to have problems. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded. “Crystal.”
“That’s it, then. You can go.”
“I . . . er . . . Cindy’s notebook? Could I take a look . . . ?”
“That’s the problem with these darned homicide investigations, Ms. Kincaid,” Hucles said with a shake of his head. “Everything’s potential evidence. Forensics is on their way, and they’ll have to try to figure out what might be significant and what might be the result of a faux finisher falling on her butt in the evidence.”
I deserved that. Hucles seemed okay for a cop. And he hadn’t arrested me, so he was a good egg in my book.
The detective accompanied me to my truck, where I reached in back of the seat and extracted Louis’ box.
“Oh, Kincaid,” he called as I started up the motor. “Don’t make any travel plans.”
Civilian detective or no, I thought as I climbed into my truck, trying to ignore the items drying on my skin, I still wanted to talk with Roy Cogswell. I was in desperate need of a shower, but I’d been meaning to talk to the columbarium director for days, and it was almost quitting time. I made a U-turn and headed north to the columbarium, pulled up to the curb, and started searching for a quarter for the parking meter. I was rifling through the door pockets— usually a mother lode of loose change—when a knock sounded on the passenger window.
It was Helena, in a neat cream pantsuit and a robin’s-egg-blue paisley scarf. I leaned across the bench seat and opened the door. She climbed into the passenger’s seat, folded her hands in her lap, and stared straight ahead. I thought I noticed her nostrils flaring, but she didn’t mention anything about my appearance or aroma.
“Helena? Something I can do for you?”
“Hands off my husband.”
“Dr. Dick?”
“His name’s Richard!”
“Fine, Richard. I’m not even remotely—”
“Don’t bother denying it. I saw how he reacted to you,” she said, pursing her lips. “I’ve had experience with this kind of thing.”
“You mean Aaron—”
“I have no intention of discussing my personal life with you, young lady.”
It had been my experience that people who suspect their spouses of cheating aren’t famous for their logic. “You started it,” I muttered.
“She’s a senile old bat, you know.”
“Who?”
“Henderson. She had a thing for my husband, too. Don’t think she didn’t.”
“Helena, I swear to you that I have no romantic interest in your Dick—your husband—whatever. And even if I did it wouldn’t do me any good. He’s nuts about you. We talked about you, mostly.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Yes, I do. It’s the truth.”
She looked at me, her hazel eyes limpid and yearning. Helena was a rhymes-with-witch-on-wheels, but some men loved the idea of rescuing an unhappy, demanding woman. It was a twisted version of the Prince Charming fantasy.
“Honest. He told me he’d live anywhere ‘as long as his lovely wife was at his side.’ ”
She looked as if she were choking back tears.
“You’re a lucky woman, Helena.”
“He’s such a dear man,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I said those things to you.”
“I’m just glad we got that straightened out.”
Now that we’d built a little sisterly camaraderie, I thought I’d take it out for a spin. “Why didn’t you want me to see the painting in the tube?”
“I’ve seen how you sneer at the Tim O’Neill in the office.” She sniffed and lifted her chin. “You are rude and sarcastic.”
“I’m sorry. You have every right to enjoy whatever art you please.”
“I wish the whole world were like an O’Neill painting,” she sighed.
I glanced out the windshield and saw Curly Top Russell walking up to an old beat-up Cadillac a few meters ahead of us.
Helena looked at her delicate platinum-and-ruby watch and frowned. “Is it time to leave already? Where does the time go?”
Russell climbed into the car, pulled the door closed, and started swinging his arms in the air, as if punching the roof.
“What’s he doing?” Helena asked. “Dancing? Boxing?”
“Maybe stretching?” What a geek Russell is, I thought. “You
were saying about the O’Neill painting?”
“I wish I could follow one of his garden paths, enter a warmly lit cottage, and sit by the fire with a cup of tea. Do you remember the scene in Mary Poppins where the children and Bert the chimney sweep jump into a sidewalk chalk painting?”
I smiled. “It’s my favorite part.”
Russell was now bobbing back and forth, though not to any discernible beat.
“My son died, you know,” Helena whispered.
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
We sat in silence. The truck’s small cab started getting stuffy—and fragrant of eau de Dumpster—so I rolled down the window. I heard the muffled sound of someone crying for help. In the car up ahead, Russell’s movements had slowed.
Something was wrong.
I leapt out of the truck and ran over to the Cadillac. Russell’s body jerked and his face pressed up against the driver’s window.
His eyes were full of terror.
Chapter 17
Nudity, of course, is a problem for Americans. It disrupts our social exchange.
—Eric Fischl (1948- ), American painter and sculptor
I do not understand those who are offended by the sight of a nude body. Perhaps they have too many mirrors in their bathrooms. —Georges LeFleur
“Unlock the door!” I yelled, jerking on the handle and banging on the window. “Russell, unlock the door!”
The driver’s door wouldn’t budge, so I tried the rear door, then ran around to the passenger’s side. All locked. I pounded on the windows and yelled, but there was no response. Russell was no longer moving, though his eyes were wide open.
Helena stood on the sidewalk, wringing her hands.
“Do you have a cell phone?” I demanded.
She shook her head. I pushed her in the direction of the cemetery office. “Go get help! Call 911! Now!”
She stumbled off. My shouting had attracted the attention of one of the cemetery gardeners, a white-haired man who headed this way, pruning shears in hand. I looked around for something to break the glass with, saw nothing, and ran to my truck. Flinging my seat forward, I fumbled in the mess for the metal bar that formed the handle of the tire jack. I ran back to the Caddy and swung it against the passenger’s-side window, hard. The heavy metal bar bounced off the safety glass. Shit!