It was while staring at the mismatched monuments on the Victor Arnautoff mural that the niece first encountered the sneakered footprints—the same footprints that had just left a trail through her kitchen beside the cryptic painted message instructing her to “Follow the Murals,” signed with a capital letter O.
Now the Previous Mayor of San Francisco was at her door. She suspected he hadn’t come to Jackson Square to buy antiques.
Her uncle was definitely up to something. Who knew what was coming next.
Sometimes, I wish he’d just pick up the phone, the niece thought in frustration.
Out loud, she said politely, “Hello, Mayor. How can I help you?”
• • •
AS THE NIECE greeted the Previous Mayor, she noted his perfectly tailored outfit, classy from head to toe, and suddenly became aware of her own disheveled appearance.
Her sweaty running clothes were spattered with flecks of paint. More than half of her hair had escaped her ponytail holder. Her bare feet stood next to the soggy socks and running shoes she’d slipped off when she returned from the run.
Not exactly the best first impression, she thought ruefully.
But if the PM was offended by her bedraggled state, he didn’t show it. His neatly trimmed mustache spread evenly over a pleasant smile.
“Hello, little lady,” he said smoothly. “I’m looking for your uncle.”
She glanced away, averting eye contact, before responding. “I’m sorry. My uncle passed away almost two years ago.”
The PM leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “I think we both know that’s not true.”
The niece opened her mouth as if to protest, but then seemed to think better of it. She shrugged noncommittally.
The PM motioned toward the showroom. “Why don’t we step inside,” he said, neatly stepping around her. The skilled politician had maneuvered his way through many a half-shut door.
“I’ve got something to show you.”
• • •
THE NIECE FOLLOWED the Previous Mayor into the Green Vase showroom. He looked down at the trail of painted paw prints and pumped his eyebrows in an amused fashion, but did not comment. Instead, he reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
Isabella crossed the room, her tail pointed up inquiringly, the bright red tip waving like a paintbrush. Rupert, who had moved his nap to the recliner, cracked open a single furry eyelid.
The PM laid the paper on the cashier counter and folded it so that the left half was visible. Isabella leaped gracefully onto the space beside the page and leaned over it, closely studying the details of its printed image. After a moment, she issued her report.
“Mrao.”
The niece peered over the cat’s shoulder, trying to get a line of sight to the paper. Gently, she moved Isabella to the side, revealing a photocopy of a colorful mural—the same one she’d seen earlier at Coit Tower.
She turned her head ever so slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of the Previous Mayor out of the corner of her eye. Did he know where she’d been that morning? And that she had just spent an hour staring at the real-life mural?
Unsure of how to respond, she decided on a cautious approach.
“Hmm,” she said, thumping her chin with her finger. “That looks familiar. Where have I seen it before . . .”
“You’re a horrible liar,” the PM said kindly.
“It’s City Life from Coit Tower,” the niece quickly conceded, clearing her throat uncomfortably. “A Depression-era work, part of a New Deal program to employ artists.”
She glanced across the showroom to a row of bookcases. “I think I’ve got a book on San Francisco painters from that time frame.” She added a muttered aside: “I had planned to look for it when I got back from my run.”
Isabella dropped lightly from the counter, following her person across the room to one of the bookcases. As the woman began scanning the shelf, Isabella balanced on her back legs, providing guidance by pawing the air with her front paws.
“So, Mayor, what’s your interest in this mural?” the niece asked, running her fingers along the spines as she skimmed the titles. “And what’s it got to do with my uncle?”
The PM removed his hat and thoughtfully stroked the brim. “You’re aware of the recent events at City Hall?”
With a weary sigh, the niece nodded toward the art studio across the street. “Montgomery Carmichael is my neighbor. He’s extremely excited about becoming the interim mayor. We’ve heard about nothing else for the past two months.”
With her attention focused on the bookcase, she didn’t notice the PM’s pinched expression.
“It’s this one, Issy,” she said, pulling a book from the shelf.
The cat issued an agreeing “Mrao,” as the woman flipped through the contents to a two-page spread. Carrying the book, the niece returned to the front of the store.
“Here it is. City Life by Victor Arnautoff. This picture is a little clearer than your photocopy.”
The PM cleared his throat. “Actually, I was referring to the murder of the City Hall staffer.” His voice cracked as he added, “A young man named Spider Jones?”
“Oh yes,” the niece sputtered, her face flushing with embarrassment. “You meant that event. That was, well, that was tragic . . .”
She stopped, the unwanted suspicions she’d been harboring for the past two months instantly resurfacing. If the PM was about to give her another piece of evidence connecting her uncle’s disappearance with the intern’s murder, she didn’t want to hear it.
Outwardly, she managed an apologetic smile and asked, “Have they figured out who killed him?”
“James Lick is at the top of the suspect list,” the PM replied dryly.
The niece tried to gulp down her anxiety as her visitor tapped the folded paper still resting on the cashier counter.
“I found that picture in a box of Spider’s research materials. He had been working late at City Hall in the weeks before his death. He told me the project had something to do with the outgoing mayor, but that wasn’t the case.”
The PM leaned his elbow on the counter. “He had taken up his own private investigation.”
Frowning, the niece hugged the reference book to her chest. She walked the last few steps to the counter and glanced down at the picture.
“You think there’s a connection between this mural and”—she gulped—“his murder?”
The PM dropped his gloved hand to the photocopied paper. “It’s not the mural. It’s who’s standing next to it.”
Unfolding the paper, the PM spread it flat across the cashier counter. As he smoothed the center crease with his palm, the niece drew in her breath.
The other half of the photo showed two men in overalls standing in front of City Life.
The first was a loose-jowled man, wrinkled from head to toe and with gaping holes in the fabric that should have been covering his knees. The niece knew him well. Harold Wombler, a jack-of-all-trades, had most recently served as the sous chef for Lick’s Homestyle Fried Chicken.
Standing beside Harold was a rounder gentleman, of similar advanced age, whose thinning gray hair had been combed over his balding scalp.
It was her uncle Oscar.
The niece looked up at the Previous Mayor.
“What was Spider Jones doing with a picture of my uncle?”
The PM met her gaze with a solemn stare.
“Maybe he figured out the connection between James Lick and the previous owner of the Green Vase.”
He paused and then added, “Perhaps he discovered that your uncle Oscar is still alive.”
• • •
THROUGHOUT THIS DISCUSSION, a ghostly figure stood just inside the shop’s entrance, hovering discreetly near the Previous Mayor’s left elbow.
Neither of the two humans noticed Spider’s presence during their conversation—or his exit through the showroom door. The paint had worn off his shoes during his race down the stairs
.
Only Isabella watched Spider slip through to the sidewalk and cross the street to retrieve the skateboard.
Leaping silently from the counter, the cat circled to the store’s front windows. Pressing her furry face against the glass, her blue eyes tracked the skateboard as it wiggled off the sidewalk and rolled up Jackson Street.
City Hall
Chapter 27
THE SILENT STALKER
ANOTHER ROUND OF rain swept over the city as Spider steered the skateboard toward his next destination.
Wheels clicking over the rough pavement, he threaded his way up Market, dodging buses, taxis, streetcars, and the typical flood of midday pedestrians. With the lunch hour in full swing, a mass of downtown office workers, ivory-tower dealmakers, sidewalk vendors, and ragged panhandlers converged on Market’s central corridor.
It was a zoo of swagger and grift, one in which Spider felt immediately at home.
Wary of the visual he might receive should he pass through a human being, he took care to avoid contact with any passersby. Using the skateboard, he weaved through the crowd with casual ease, nimbly whizzing around a cluster of umbrella-wielding secretaries. Giving the board an extra push, he scooted through an intersection just before the traffic light released a stream of cabs.
He’d always preferred his bike for intracity transportation, but the skateboard’s maneuverability was quickly winning him over—although he felt increasingly guilty about having stolen it from its rightful owner, who, Spider suspected, must be missing it by now.
As if on cue, a voice yelled out, “Hey, that’s my skateboard!”
• • •
AFTER DODGING CAPTURE from a mystified man who had never seen an inanimate object take off in such a fashion, Spider hooked a right at the United Nations fountain and headed up a short concrete walkway to the Civic Center Plaza.
He had arrived at a familiar location.
City Hall’s elegant gray facade stretched across the plaza’s northern flank. A giant gold-topped dome rose from the building’s center, the metallic trim gleaming against the backdrop of swirling dark clouds.
Spider stashed the skateboard behind a row of bushes and cautiously approached the front steps. It was his first return to the scene of his murder, and he was unsure how the experience would affect him.
“Suck it up, Spider,” he said, pulling on the brim of his baseball cap.
He had business to attend to. He needed to see how Mayor Carmichael was progressing with his latest sketch.
• • •
INSIDE CITY HALL’S front doors, Spider breezed through the security area, snatching an unattended donut on his way to the other side of the scanners. The floating donut hovered in the air for a few seconds before dropping back to the counter, a tempting treat that the ghost unfortunately couldn’t eat.
The rotunda loomed at the end of a wide hallway. Spider could sense the nearness of the vast space beneath the dome, the draw of the ornate interior—but his sneakered feet stayed firmly rooted to the floor in the shadowed foyer. He wasn’t yet ready to revisit the central marble staircase.
Instead, Spider slipped into an elevator carriage and rode it to the second level. The doors soon opened in front of the mayor’s office suite. Spider tiptoed across the hallway and crossed through to the reception area. Remembering the area’s layout from his previous eavesdropping exercises, he sneaked into a small supply room and crawled through its window out onto the balcony that fronted the main office.
He positioned himself so that he was standing just under the eaves, avoiding the rain pouring down off the roof. The dampness didn’t cause him any discomfort or chill—one of the few benefits, he supposed, of being dead—but he wanted to avoid the telltale disturbance his vaporous body would have created in the pattern of the falling raindrops.
A light inside the main office illuminated the person Spider had traveled to City Hall to see.
Montgomery Carmichael had moved to a chair by the balcony windows, where he sat with the sketchpad propped on his knees. Spider watched as the interim mayor ran his charcoal pencil across the textured paper, tracing out an image of the Green Vase showroom.
Chapter 28
AN INCRIMINATING IMAGE
HOXTON FINN SHUFFLED into City Hall, still mulling his stop at the vacant fried chicken restaurant. His reporter’s instincts told him there had to be a link between the murdered intern’s piles of discarded takeout containers and the missing proprietor of the North Beach chicken joint—the man seen fleeing City Hall in the minutes after Spider’s murder.
Hox frowned with frustration.
He was missing something; he could feel it in his bones—or his left foot, to be precise. He winced as his shoe pinched against the nub of the amputated toe. Bending to adjust his laces, he muttered to himself.
“But why would the fried chicken guy kill one of his best customers?”
• • •
AS HOX KNELT over his shoe, Humphrey and the rest of the news crew sped past.
It was a conspicuous group, the cameramen with their shoulder-mounted cameras and bulky lighting equipment, the producer with her multiple cell phones and clipboard, and the stylist fussing with his travel kit that he’d retrieved from the van when it parked outside City Hall.
Humphrey was a mobile one-man salon. His satchel-ed briefcase was filled with enough makeup, combs, and brushes to accommodate an entire high school cheerleading squad. Strapped around his waist, he wore a tool belt whose hooks and pockets had been modified to accommodate his styling equipment. One of the belt’s slots secured a portable hair dryer, allowing Humphrey to holster the hot air gun like a weapon.
The harried producer led the pack. A working mother of four, Constance Grynche ran a tight schedule. Connie, as she was known by most of her friends and colleagues, had recently reentered the workforce after taking several years off to raise her family. She was generally well liked in the newsroom, but being the newest member of the producing team, she had drawn the most difficult assignment: Hoxton Finn. No one wanted to put up with the grumpy veteran reporter.
They’d been working together for just over two months, but during that time, Hox had managed to push every one of the producer’s buttons. He’d frayed her last nerve and driven her half-mad—quite an accomplishment, given her extensive childrearing experience.
Connie had quite a few nicknames for Hox, but out loud she generally referred to him as the Demon Spawn.
Hox called her “the Grynch.”
• • •
HAVING FINISHED ADJUSTING his shoe, Hox caught up to the news team on the far side of the rotunda. He heard Connie speaking into her private cell phone.
“Hon, you’re going to have to take the boys to their orthodontist appointments.” She shot Hox an accusing stare. “My shoot’s going to run a little later than I had planned, and then I have to get it through production for tonight’s broadcast.”
Ah, it’s the husband, Hox thought. Mister Grynch, a green-skinned troll with a penchant for stealing Christmas trees—or at least, that’s how the reporter envisioned him.
As Connie clicked off the phone, he sang out in a deep baritone that echoed across the marble-floored rotunda.
“He’s a mean one . . .”
“Can it, Hox.”
Hox grinned as Connie stomped up the stairs. If he managed to crack the Spider Jones case, she would have a career-making story.
Until then, she would just have to put up with him.
• • •
MIDWAY UP THE central marble staircase, Hox slowed his pace and once more lagged behind the rest of the news team. By the time he reached the top of the steps, the group had already rounded the corner for the second-floor corridor leading to the mayor’s office suite.
Unconcerned, Hox let them proceed ahead. He stopped instead to stare at the ceremonial rotunda, the site of the murder that had consumed him for the past two months.
The marble floor showed no signs of the
carnage that had taken place there. The surrounding columns had been wiped clean. Harvey Milk’s bust gleamed a polished bronze.
Hox shook his head. It didn’t seem right that so horrifying a scene could be completely erased.
He thwacked the file he’d been carrying against his left thigh. Something about that night’s sequence of events continued to trouble him, an anomaly or inconsistency that he couldn’t put his finger on.
But before he could rehash the scene again, Connie appeared at the edge of the ceremonial rotunda, beckoning sternly for the reporter to get a move on.
Resigning himself to the inevitability of the Monty interview, he plodded toward the hallway.
“Keep your hat on, Grynch. I’m coming!”
• • •
MINUTES LATER, HOX followed the news crew through the entrance to the mayor’s office suite. He nodded to an elderly woman in a feathered hat sitting at the desk typically reserved for the mayor’s administrative assistant.
A temporary hire, Hox surmised, based on the woman’s outfit. In addition to the monstrous hat, she wore a blue sweater, green skirt, and matching striped stockings.
With the group’s arrival, the woman jumped up from her desk and ushered them toward the inner office space.
After a short knock, she pushed open a heavy wooden door and led them into the main room.
The interim mayor rested on a chair beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along the room’s south wall. His back was turned toward the door, and a sketchpad spread across his knees. Hox couldn’t see the surface of the sketchpad, but Monty’s gaze remained fixed on the paper as he waved a charcoal pencil in the air.
“Make yourselves at home, fellows. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
The producer and cameraman bustled about, arranging chairs, adjusting the floor rug, and checking the ambient light. A series of expandable metal poles with retractable tripod feet were quickly set up around the perimeter. Supplemental lighting canisters mounted atop each of the temporary stands were arranged with their beams aimed at the seating area.
How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) Page 11