The last category, the niece flagged for City Hall security.
Even on a heavy mail day, the niece could generally complete her secretarial duties within the first hour. That left plenty of time for reading.
So far, she’d perused several chapters in the history book dedicated to the San Carlos, the first European vessel to pass through the Golden Gate, but it was slow going. Her uncle had marked up many of the pages, and she’d spent hours trying to decipher his cramped handwriting.
She was still puzzling over the comments he’d left in the margins, but she gathered he thought the writer had missed several important elements in the recounting.
—
AS FOR HER primary purpose for taking the admin position—that is, keeping an eye out for Mabel or any valuable information she might have left behind—the niece had little to report.
She had explored every inch of the mayor’s office suite, but she’d found nothing of use. No evidence remained of the woman who had staffed the reception area for the last six years.
Mabel’s desk had been wiped clean, the filing cabinets purged of all but the most routine documentation. There were no trinkets or mementos, not even a stray bobby pin wedged into the corner of a drawer or a seam in the carpet.
The woman who had left her last murder weapon strapped beneath the center planking of the mayor’s desk had wiped the rest of the office space completely clean.
The niece had all but given up on her assigned mission. She was on the verge of suggesting that she return to the Green Vase and cede her position to the wretched Wanda—until she took her seat in the reception area that morning.
—
THE MOMENT THE niece settled into her chair, her nose began to tickle. At first, there was just a faint trace of odor, difficult to identify.
But the scent quickly intensified, increasing in potency.
Soon, an aromatic cloud of lemony-sweet perfume swirled around the niece, clogging her sinuses.
“What is that smell?” she demanded, fighting off a sneeze. “And where is it coming from?” She pulled open each of the desk drawers and dug through the contents, to no avail. She was soon on her hands and knees, crawling beneath the center console, searching for the source.
Isabella glanced down from the filing cabinet. She blinked knowingly and then meted out a cryptic reply.
“Mrao.”
—
UNABLE TO FIND any scent-emitting object within the desk or its immediate radius, the niece switched tactics. She dug into a sack of cleaning supplies from an office closet and began attacking the invading smell with a can of air freshener.
She sprayed the desk’s top surface and inside each of its drawers, but the aerosol’s application had no effect.
She was puzzling at the product description written on the canister when Hoxton Finn walked through the reception’s main door.
The reporter was one of the few regular visitors to the mayor’s office suite—despite being allergic to cats.
Hox looked sternly down at the wire cage as Rupert strutted out of the igloo-shaped litter box. He took a step back as the cat shook loose litter from his fur, sending a few sandy particles out onto the floor.
Isabella called out a warning to the niece, who was still fixated on the label for the apparently ineffective air cleaner.
Stifling a sneeze, the niece looked up.
Hox nodded to Isabella with a grudging half smile and then wrinkled his nose.
“She’s back, isn’t she?” he said dourly.
Frowning, the niece set the canister on her desk. “Who?”
With a grunt, Hox popped his notebook against his left leg. “I’ve only known one woman to wear that particular perfume.”
The niece cringed as he sniffed the air and scowled.
“Mabel.”
Chapter 22
THE WEDDING PLANNER
DIRECTLY BELOW THE mayor’s office suite, in a foyer outside the City Hall office that issued marriage licenses, a small group gathered for a morning wedding ceremony.
The bride wore a sleeveless white silk dress whose length fell just below her knees. Kid gloves covered her hands, and a short mesh veil had been stretched over her face. She fiddled nervously with her matching white purse, opening and closing the clasp.
Standing beside her, the groom started to sweat in his rented tuxedo. He shoved his hand into his pocket, thumbing the velvet cover of a tiny ring box, checking and rechecking that the box and its contents were secure.
The rest of the wedding party milled about nearby as the group waited patiently—or in some cases impatiently—for the wedding planner to arrive.
—
AFTER THE GRUESOME murder of the mayoral intern last November, there had been a temporary lull in City Hall weddings. The previous flood of daily nuptials had slowed to a trickle. The ceremonial rotunda at the top of the central marble staircase, which had held up to fifty ceremonies over the course of a busy Friday afternoon, had been left vacant.
No couple wanted to risk jinxing their marital future with such a macabre association.
But once the Knitting Needle Ninja was identified as the intern’s murderer and the bizarre nature of the crime propelled it into nationwide celebrity status, City Hall regained its popularity with the wedding crowds. The notoriety tipped the scales and, if anything, the ceremonial rotunda was now a more popular location for tying the knot than before.
The building’s elaborate interior and the low cost of getting hitched beneath the public dome, combined with the infamous setting, made for an irresistible locale.
The reasoning had apparently shifted: if the marriage was destined for acrimony and divorce, at least let the union ceremony be memorable.
—
THE BRIDE’S FATHER checked his watch. Their fifteen-minute time slot was rapidly approaching, but the wedding planner was still nowhere to be seen. The woman had come highly recommended, particularly for City Hall weddings, but he was starting to worry. If today’s ceremony fell through, he feared he would be on the hook for a formal church service and a much more expensive reception.
He grinned reassuringly at his daughter, and then stepped around a corner to make a phone call.
At precisely ten A.M. on the dot, not a second before, the wedding coordinator emerged from a side hallway and purposefully but politely approached the soon-to-be-betrothed couple.
“There she is.” The father sighed with relief, sliding his phone into his coat pocket.
The bride and groom registered a somewhat more startled response.
The wedding planner looked like a human cartoon. She wore an oversized blond wig, styled with retro curly waves, and a tight-fitting knit sweater stretched over a fake inflated chest. The woman’s lips were painted with bright red lipstick, and her face was covered with enough makeup to make her age impossible to determine—other than that she was middle-aged.
Her neck bore a light, barely discernible spritz of perfume, a lemony-sweet scent that lingered in the air.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to City Hall.”
She smiled through a set of gleaming false teeth that gave her mouth an eerie symmetry.
“My name is Marilyn Monroe.”
—
THE COSTUME (AND related shtick) was a not-so-subtle reference to Marilyn Monroe’s 1954 marriage to Joe DiMaggio, which took place inside San Francisco’s City Hall. Theirs was a brief union. The celebrity pair wed in January; by October, the couple had filed for divorce. But the ceremony was one of the most famous in the rotunda’s long history.
If the current bride and groom were surprised by the wedding planner’s attire, she was exactly what the bride’s father had expected.
“Miss Monroe, so glad to see you.” He pointed at the watch strapped to his wrist. “We’re anxious to get started.”
“Of course,” she replied, in a voice that sounded oddly altered. “Let’s head up to the ceremonial rotunda. The judge will meet us t
here to officiate. The photographer is already in position.”
—
MOMENTS LATER, MARILYN’S sensible soled dress shoes—the only sensible piece of clothing on her body—clicked across the smooth marble floor as she led the wedding party through the rotunda and up the central marble staircase.
Her outrageous outfit drew only a few curious glances and the occasional shrug. Such was the nature of San Francisco and, indeed, City Hall during wedding hours. The Marilyn Monroe impersonator was far from the most unusual character traipsing through the building that morning.
As the group reached the top of the stairs, the bride’s father called out, “Is this where they found the murdered intern?”
The others fell silent. The bride clutched her purse like a security blanket, and the groom’s face paled. But the father pressed on with his inquiry, undeterred by the other’s obvious discomfort.
“Is this where the Knitting Needle Ninja got him?”
The wedding planner turned, so that the light streaming through the rotunda’s upper windows cast its rays across the pancake coating on her face. Her eyes flickered with a strange mix of bemusement and intensity.
“That’s what they say.”
• • •
BELOW THE WEDDING party, on the rotunda’s first floor, the soup vendor looked up from his cart. A strange lemony scent had just floated past, the smell almost masked by those of the simmering soups.
Oscar hobbled toward the staircase and stared curiously up at the bride, the groom, the officiating judge, and their assorted family members. He studied the group standing in the ceremonial rotunda for several minutes, scratching the stubble beneath his chin, before returning to his station.
The wedding organizer, positioned at the rear of the second-floor platform, near the Harvey Milk bust and a pair of stone columns, had been blocked from his view.
Chapter 23
AN IMPROMPTU TÊTE-À-TÊTE
THE NIECE SHOOK her head as Hoxton Finn scowled at the perfume-scented air above the reception desk.
“I don’t see how Mabel could be responsible for this, this . . .” She stopped for a high-pitched sneeze. “This smell. I can assure you, she hasn’t been in here today.”
She wrinkled up her nose, fighting, unsuccessfully, to tamp down a second sneeze.
“Ah-choo!”
Grabbing a tissue, she blew her nose. Eyes watering, she announced, “That’s it.”
The niece picked up the air freshener canister and resumed her efforts to eradicate the lemony perfume. She pressed down on the nozzle and expanded the spray zone out from her desk, gradually encompassing the entire reception area.
Isabella glared down from the filing cabinet, conveying her disapproval of this tactic. Rupert scuttled inside the igloo litter box to hide.
Even Hox dove behind the desk to avoid being hit by the aerosol’s thick mist.
Monty opened the main door and took a direct spray to the face.
The niece dropped the canister. Her mouth fell open in surprise.
“Oops.”
The mayor blinked, shook his head like a dog who’d been given a bath, and smiled.
“Smells like a fresh spring day,” he said brightly, wiping a handkerchief across his cheeks.
The niece frowned, puzzling. The lemony perfume had departed, but she had the sneaking suspicion that its removal wasn’t due to her overapplication of air cleaner.
“Yeah, it does.” She craned her neck toward the ceiling, trying to figure out what had generated the smell—and what had caused it to suddenly disappear.
Monty was too excited by other matters to be distracted by the near-blinding aerosol attack.
“Hold on to your socks, folks. I just got out of a fantastic meeting. This is going to change everything!”
Brow furrowed, the niece set the canister on the desk and squinted at Monty’s blank calendar. “You had a meeting?”
“Well, more like an impromptu tête-à-tête,” he replied with an impish grin. “I ran into the Baron at his favorite breakfast spot.”
Hox muttered a correction. “You mean you stalked him to the diner and set up an ambush.” The reporter leaned against the niece’s desk, whipped out his notepad, and began scribbling. “I bet the Baron has a new favorite breakfast joint picked out by tomorrow morning.”
Before the niece could comment, Monty propped open the reception door, stepped back outside, and retrieved a three-by-five-foot framed poster.
“Tadah!” With a flourish, he turned the poster toward the niece and Hox. “Look, I got the Baron to autograph the glass on the bottom corner.”
The poster was an advert for the upcoming America’s Cup regatta race. The majority of the frame was taken up by an image of the high-tech sailboat for the US team, its supertall sail pillowed with wind, its hulls tilted out of the water, and its wet-suited crew members clinging to the top netting for dear life.
Monty set the poster on the floor across from the niece’s desk. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.
“What do you think, eh?” He skipped to the side of the desk and gave Hox a gleeful slap across the back. “I told the Baron I was a huge sailing fan. When I showed him this poster, he couldn’t help but bring me on board. I’ve just been named an official honorary member of the America’s Cup publicity committee.”
—
RUPERT EMERGED TENTATIVELY from the igloo, curious to see what all the commotion was about. Crouched to the ground in case there was a second aerosol bombardment, he sneaked out the cage opening and across the floor to the poster. His fluffy orange and white tail whirled through the air as he sniffed the frame’s bottom corner. His snorkeling picked up the scents from the diner where Monty had lain in wait, hoping to spring his poster on the Baron.
After sifting through an assortment of bacon, egg, and coffee odors, Rupert gazed up at the mayor in disappointment. No fried chicken donuts. With a yawn, he turned back toward the cat bed.
He would speak with Monty about tracking down this delicacy—once he’d completed his late-morning nap.
—
“THIS IS GOING to be huge. Epic. Enormous.”
Monty paced back and forth in front of his audience, nodding as if they were reciprocating his comments with enthusiastic support. “This fall, we’ll print new business cards. No more Interim Mayor Monty.” He tapped the poster with confidence. “I’m going to be elected in a landslide.”
Hox cocked an eyebrow. The niece pursed her lips.
The mayor scampered into his office and quickly returned with a hammer, nail, and hanger hook. He pressed his ear against the wall and thumped its surface, searching for a stud on which to hang the poster.
“Wait—why are you putting that in here?” the niece asked as he selected a mounting location across from her desk.
Monty tapped the nail into the wall with his hammer. With the hook secured, he looked over his shoulder at the niece.
“So that everyone who enters will know that San Francisco—and its charming mayor—are sailing fans.”
The niece drummed her fingers against the desk. “It’s kind of an elitist sport, isn’t it?”
Monty wagged his index finger in the air. “No, no, no. We’re bringing sailing to the masses. There will be worldwide television coverage for the event, journalists reporting from every major news organization, and spectators from across the globe. This is now my most important initiative: showcasing our city during the regatta.”
Pausing to stick out his chest, Monty added, “I’m even going to take sailing lessons.”
“That sounds dangerous,” the niece said, only partially in jest.
Isabella had been skeptically observing the proceedings from her filing cabinet perch. She voiced her first opinion of the session.
“Mrao.”
Ignoring them both, Monty lifted the poster onto the wall.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you. We’re organizing an event for the local sponsors.” Stepping back fr
om the poster, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a cocktail napkin covered in blurry ink, and tossed it onto the niece’s desk.
The niece frowned suspiciously. “By we, you mean . . .”
“You!” Monty slapped his hands together. “Come on, let’s get busy. Chop, chop!”
Hox closed his notepad and moved toward the door. “That’s a winning idea you’ve got there, Mayor.”
Monty failed to notice the sarcasm in the reporter’s voice.
“We’ll send you an invite, Hox!”
As Hox disappeared through the exit, the niece grimaced at Monty’s ubiquitous—and misleading—use of the pronoun we.
Then she read the instructions Monty had written on the cocktail napkin from the diner and groaned.
Her workload had just increased substantially.
Chapter 24
THE RULE BOOK
THE NEXT MORNING, the niece and her cat-filled stroller set off on their regular trek to City Hall an hour early. She’d spent the previous afternoon sorting through the details for Monty’s upcoming America’s Cup event, but she’d made only a small dent in the related to-do list before heading home.
Monty’s constant pestering, questioning, and additions to the project hadn’t helped matters.
Navigating through the security line, she heaved out a weary sigh. She’d tossed and turned the night before thinking about the peculiar perfume that had infiltrated the mayor’s office suite.
She couldn’t stop wondering what had generated the odor, why it had suddenly disappeared, and if it would reoccur.
The most critical question, of course, was whether this signified the return of the Knitting Needle Ninja.
—
DESPITE THE NIECE’S early arrival, she still found herself sharing an elevator with Wanda Williams.
I can’t catch a break, she thought as the woman’s hand stopped the door at its half-closed position and forced it to reopen.
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