by Dianne Day
“One presumes correctly. Haven’t you guessed? Hasn’t your colleague hinted? Don’t you have any imagination, Fremont Jones?”
“Oh, I can guess, all right. It’s a wonder you can sleep at night.”
Epilogue
———
The Emperor Is Satisfied
As difficult as it was to believe, by lunchtime the police had arrested William Van Zant, who was no more a doctor than I am, and Wish and Michael and Edna—who in the space of a couple of hours had become a great favorite of Michael’s, and vice versa—and I were having a late lunch around the kitchen table. There was more interest in talk than in food.
Wish had explained to us how for weeks he had followed the progress of someone who was opening and emptying graves in forgotten little graveyards that dotted the Richmond District, then claiming the plots as newly cleared land and selling it for development. That someone turned out to be William Van Zant, and the person who had first identified him had been none other than Indigo Swann—who either had or had not been Ingrid’s real sister. Now we would never know; I certainly didn’t intend to make any effort to find out, because Wish had been in love with Indigo. It would do him no kindness to find out the truth, if that truth (say, that the two were lesbian lovers, or worse, incestuous sisters) were damaging to the image of his love.
“Your testimony and Wish’s will put Van Zant in prison and maybe will hang him for murder,” Michael said.
“And what is more important, the J&K Agency will get a lot of favorable publicity!” I said.
“Yes, you’ve done well, Fremont.” Michael’s compliment, his approval, was what I had been waiting for. “And so have you, Wish,” he added.
“Maybe,” Wish said. He was sunk in gloom.
I was about to suggest that he go home and rest for the remainder of the day when the little bell on the front door rang out and a woman’s clear, high voice called out, “We’re back! We found it!”
We all looked at each other around the table.
“Emperor Norton’s treasure,” I explained. “I sent Patrick and Frances to look for it, following instructions she’d received from the Emperor himself in automatic writing. I really did it just to get them out of my hair, I never expected them to find anything.”
They came into the kitchen hand in hand, Patrick and Frances, both a bit disheveled, with smudges of dirt here and there, and smiles so incandescent they could have lit a goodly portion of San Francisco through the night.
Frances had obviously declared herself permanent spokesman of this pair, for she burbled on, “We saw you, Fremont, you and Wish, we were only a couple of blocks away, but then you went and disappeared into some house.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
Frances shrugged, “Who cares?” She looked at Patrick.
He said, “We were in some cemetery, where half the graves had been opened and robbed. It was really, really unpleasant and spooky.”
“We weren’t there for the graves though, we were there because of this one particular old tree—”
Patrick had caught her enthusiasm now and took over, “—which was easy to find. It’s a live oak and there aren’t too many as big and as old as that one.”
“And you’ll never guess what!” Frances said, beaming.
I said my line: “What?”
“It was where he said it was,” Frances said, her eyes open wide in amazement.
“Buried under the tree!” This they both said simultaneously, and again: “Look!”
The Emperor’s treasure was wrapped in burlap that smelled to high heaven—and I do mean high; and it shed little bits and pieces of dirt as it was unrolled on the table. Patrick Rule did the unrolling honors, and then Frances lifted out a shining object: A ceremonial sword with a gold hilt, as untarnished as if it had been placed in the ground only yesterday!
“A fine piece,” Michael murmured appreciatively.
“It’s to be given to the City,” Frances explained, “those are the Emperor’s wishes. And it should sit in a glass case in a museum with a card that says: Gift to the People of This Fair City with kindest regards from Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico.”
“But this,” said Patrick, picking up a second, larger object from that burlap nest, “is for us to keep, and for all of us to remember, courtesy of the Emperor.”
The object was a wooden sign, hand-carved, possibly by the Emperor himself. It had once been painted with red paint highlighting a surface of natural wood. And the sign said:
FOLLOW YOUR HEART.
To Ava Wilson, my dear aunt,
now in the realm of the spirits,
and to
Emperor Norton, whose spirit,
both before and after death,
made the people of San Francisco smile
Also by Dianne Day
THE BOHEMIAN MURDERS
FIRE AND FOG
THE STRANGE FILES OF FREMONT JONES
DEATH TRAIN TO BOSTON
BEACON STREET MOURNING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DIANNE DAY spent her early years in the Mississippi Delta before moving to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Fremont Jones has appeared in four previous mysteries: The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, which won the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and three bestselling sequels. Day has now completed her sixth Fremont Jones mystery, Beacon Street Mourning, and is working on a novel of suspense based on the life of Clara Barton.