His smile broadened. He felt better now, much better. The time he had spent in Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley, the frustration it had wrought, the specter of Don Esteban's missing artifacts, might well remain embedded in his memory. But if life had its unhappy aspects, it also had its ecstatic ones. Life could be good. Life could be very good indeed.
Sabina, dear sweet Sabina, was definitely weakening….
1986
It was a late afternoon in the middle of June, and I had fled to the conservation lab in the basement of the museum. Temporarily safe from both visitors and my staff, I perched on a stool, savoring the coolness and quiet. Above me in the nineteenth-century gallery, which had been closed to the public all week, I could hear bumpings and scrapings and occasional outraged voices.
As I sat there, Rudy's words came clearly through the floor: “I will not have that display case sitting in the middle of the space like that!”
Susana said, “It must be there. Otherwise the traffic will not flow properly.”
“Who's curator here-you or me?”
“You are.”
“Then let me set the exhibit up in my own way! I know how these artifacts should be displayed.”
“You may be the curator and know about artifacts, but I am the public relations director and I know about people. If you do not have a display case there, they won't go in the right direction-”
I tuned out the argument-one of many that had been raging for days-and looked around the lab at the Velasquez artifacts. Each one had been cleaned and restored where necessary, and now they stood awaiting their debut before the Santa Barbara art community. Just seeing them there in their timeless serenity calmed me, made me forget the turmoil upstairs.
There was the Jusepe de Ribera Madonna and Child, the faces expressing a sweetness that saved them from pious pomposity. A silver censer gleamed from an energetic volunteer's many hours of polishing. A gold statue of Saint Katherine had been damaged when we'd removed it from the wall of the apse, but Rudy's deft fingers had restored it so the break was barely noticeable. There was the El Greco, the prize of our collection. And the Bible in its jeweled cover. And many more….
Tomorrow-Dios mediante-the exhibit would open with an evening reception. Sofia Manuela would be the guest of honor, attired in a gown that she and I had picked out after numerous consultations. Susana would attend with Carlos, seizing the opportunity to display the engagement ring she never tired of flashing; Rudy would be there with his new lover, an antiques dealer he had met at one of the auctions; and I would enter on the arm of Arturo Melendez, whose own show of paintings was not far off on our calendar. There would be friends and relatives: Sam Ryder, Jesse Herrera, Mama and Nick and Carlota, who was visiting from Minneapolis. There would be champagne punch and delicacies such as spicy beef and quesadillas prepared in the manner of los ranchos grandes. A band would play the festive music of that era….
I shook my head, smiling wryly. I'd come down here to escape the pressures of overseeing and planning, and here I was making mental lists! In a way, it was ludicrous, all this fuss over a collection of religious artifacts. Especially artifacts that had brought the Velasquez family such tragedy and pain. But perhaps it was time that some good came of them.
I wondered what John Quincannon would have thought of all this.
Quincannon. In the month and a half since Sam and I had read the last of the documents from his agency's files, Pd been too busy to think much about the detective. Sofia Manuela's bequest had added much work to my days-insuring the artifacts, filling out the proper tax forms, aiding Rudy in the restoration-and my budding romance with Arturo had consumed my nights and weekends. Now I thought back to those documents-and my dissatisfaction with what they had revealed.
There had been a photograph of Quincannon, and he had looked surprisingly as Pd imagined him. And I'd been excited to discover that his partner in the agency had been a woman, Sabina Carpenter. A studio portrait of her had shown a handsome, black-haired woman who did not try to hide her keen intelligence. She looked like the sort of person with whom I would have much in common-after all, I'd done a bit of detection, too-and I was extremely interested in a woman who had broken the rules and become a detective in a male-dominated era. I wanted to know more about her and about her relationship with Quincannon, but there the documents frustrated me. For one thing, the librarian at the San Francisco Public Library had only sent items dated 1894; her letter-which I hadn't found until Sam and I had almost finished reading the materials-indicated she thought that year was the only one I was interested in.
It wasn't that the letters-which had been written and received by both of the partners-and the diary-which had belonged to Sabina-hadn't been absorbing. But apparently both of them believed in being circumspect on paper. Sabina's diary was full of notations of social engagements with “John.” There were mentions of picnics and dinners, entertainments and carriage rides, and one “walk in the rain.” But these were mixed with cryptic commentary on clients, cases, business appointments. And nowhere, both in that diary and the various pieces of personal correspondence, could I find what I really wanted to know: What had happened to Quincannon and Sabina? Had they remained partners? Fallen in love? Gotten married? Had children? Lived long and happy lives?
The romantic in me wouldn't let go of the story of these two people. I could feel my curiosity stirring even now.
From the librarian's letter, I gathered there were many more documents from Carpenter and Quincannon's files at San Francisco's California History Room. During the past two months, I'd often thought of calling there and asking if they would send copies of the remainder to me, but I'd kept getting sidetracked in the preparations for this exhibit. Now I decided maybe I should take some time off, go up there, look through the whole lot. Perhaps after Arturo's show opened, he would want to go with me; it would be a nice vacation for both of us….
Once again I shook my head. Why was I planning such a trip? Did it really matter what had happened to the long-dead detectives?
Yes, I decided, it did. John Quincannon and I had shared an adventure; our lives were forever entwined. The detective had reached out beyond the grave-mas alia del sepulcro-to me; he'd somehow enabled me to finish what he'd begun. And my life had changed for the better because of that.
There was only one more thing I wished I could do: I wished I could tell him the way it had ended….
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-ad5a16-c425-9349-8fb0-abee-fa74-e8174f
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Document creation date: 17.08.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.43, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Muller, Marcia
Bill Pronzini
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Beyond the Grave jq-2 Page 23