My smile weakened to a cringe.
Harold jabbed the bottom shelf of the bookcase with the ragged toe of his boot, smacking his lips together derisively as the white bullet that was Rupert leapt out from behind the row of books.
“Old books and cat,” he cried out with a sudden impish delight.
I bit back a retort on the scent Harold was contributing to the room. I was, unfortunately, familiar with his surly nature and even more objectionable smell.
For reasons that still escaped me, Oscar’s attorney had recommended Harold for the remodel work on the Green Vase. The renovations were now complete, but he still stopped by every now and then to grumpily deliver his negative assessment of my progress with the store.
“What brings you by today, Harold?” I asked, forcing the pleasantry out through tightly clenched teeth.
Harold leaned across the cashier counter, whisking more of his rank body odor in my direction.
“Seen your next-door neighbor around lately?” he asked, his voice rasping creepily as he tipped his knobby head toward the far wall.
“No,” I replied briskly, the two-letter word taking the brunt of my discomfort. “No, of course not.”
I got up off of the stool and slipped around the counter, pacing quickly into the showroom to put as much distance as possible between us. Harold sure knew how to give me the heebie-jeebies.
Frank Napis had run an Asian-themed antique shop in the building next door, but no one had seen him since the night, almost two months ago, when he had nearly killed me with a spider venom poison. The police had arrested his accomplice, but the man known as Frank Napis—among many other aliases—was still on the run.
Frank’s face was a flat, featureless landscape that he frequently altered with the skilled use of facial putty. He could thicken his nose into a bulking beak or plump out a heavier brow to darken his eyes. Overlaying the makeup, he often applied a distracting layer of facial hair—most memorably, a feathery orange mustache.
Shuddering, I turned back toward Harold. He was still leaning against the cashier counter, drumming his stubby, knotted fingers across the stack of books. The edges of his mouth curved upward, lifting the loose, pouchy skin of his cheeks.
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said, the coarse grinding of his voice incongruous with his curious, grinchlike smile.
The statement did little to ease my anxiety.
Harold waved a dismissive hand in my direction and turned toward the exit. Numbly, I watched him gimp out the door to the street.
I stumbled back to the cashier counter, trying to ignore the odor that now hung in the room like the pungent aftermath of a startled skunk. I scrunched up my nose, trying not to breathe it in.
As I sank back onto the stool, my watering eyes lit on the scattered pile of books. On the top of the pile, the worn cloth of an emerald green cover glimmered in the afternoon sunlight. Despite the wear evidenced by its frayed corners, the surface of the book was almost the same shade of green as the vase that had, until just that morning, stood on the edge of the cashier counter.
This book had not been there before.
“Harold must have left this here,” I said out loud, trying to make sense of it.
“Mrao,” Isabella confirmed from the top of her bookcase.
I rounded the counter and stepped out the front door, craning my neck to look up and down the street, but Harold Wombler had already disappeared.
Chapter 2
A FAVOR FOR DILLA
I WALKED BACK inside the Green Vase and picked up Harold’s conspicuously discarded book from the counter, examining it more closely as I turned it over in my hands.
It was small, rectangular-shaped, and tightly covered in a bright green cloth that, despite the dulling effects of age, still shone when a direct ray of light hit its surface. Gold-colored script embossed into the cover identified the contents as a collection of Mark Twain essays from his early years in San Francisco.
I cupped the spine in my right hand and thumbed open the cover with my left. The adhesive binding creaked as I turned the yellowed sheets of brittle paper. It had been a long time, it appeared, since this book had been read.
I scanned the pages, trying to recall the tidbits I knew about Mark Twain’s adventures in San Francisco.
Twain headed west in the early 1860s, besotted by the get-rich Gold Rush tales that had inundated his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. One of his first stops was Virginia City, Nevada, a silver mine boomtown near present-day Reno. Twain worked in the mining trenches for less than a year before he gave up on the mirage of easy riches and returned to his true talent, writing.
The months spent suffering in the mines were not wasted, however. Twain’s experiences in the Sierra mountain communities provided ample fodder for many of his early publications. These essays found a receptive audience in San Francisco, the unofficial capital of the mineral-crazed West, a town that came to love Twain’s caustic wit and sarcasm. Even in its youth, San Francisco was a city confident and secure enough in its identity to enjoy a laugh at its own expense.
A muffled ringing from beneath the stack of books and papers interrupted my Mark Twain musings. Isabella hopped down from the bookcase as I dug through the pile on the counter to find the phone buried underneath. She nosed roughly through the heap, trying to beat me to the jingling creature hiding within.
On the fourth ring, I managed to swipe the receiver out from under a pouncing Isabella.
“Hello, this is the Green Vase,” I greeted the caller while keeping a close eye on my cat. Undeterred, she hunched near the phone’s base unit. The whip of her tail swung back and forth, taunting the machine to ring again.
“Oh, hello dear,” a woman sang back in a cheerful, warbling tone. “It’s Dilla.”
Not a customer, I thought ruefully.
The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Dilla Eckles—a friend, I believed, of my late Uncle Oscar. The details of their relationship were still a bit murky to me, but then I hadn’t known much about any of Oscar’s acquaintances.
I had assumed, incorrectly, that Oscar had always lived the hermit lifestyle I’d observed in the last years of his life. Even now, months after his death, I continued to stumble across unexpected insights into my uncle’s previously undetected social activities. The essence of Oscar was inextricably enmeshed within the bricks and mortar of the Green Vase, but the once sharp edges of his memory had begun to blur as facets emerged of a much more complicated life.
I’d first met Dilla in the days immediately following Oscar’s death. She had stopped by the Green Vase to convince me to let my cats model some rather unique jewelry for a benefit auction at the showcase Palace Hotel. A grand matron in the most elite circles of San Francisco society, Dilla loved to put on high-profile charity events, particularly if they gave her a chance to try to lure the city’s handsome, young Mayor to attend.
Unfortunately, the evening had not gone according to plan—it had ended with my admittance to the hospital for treatment to clear Frank Napis’s poison from my system.
Nevertheless, I’d found a close confidant in Dilla. Despite her eccentricities, she had an indulgent, grandmotherly way about her that was comforting and refreshing. More importantly, I had the feeling that she knew a lot more about my Uncle Oscar than I did.
The thing to watch with Dilla, however, was her tendency toward wild, elaborate schemes, which almost always fronted as a ruse for her to flirt with the Mayor. You never knew what kind of crazy circus she might have in mind. I had learned my lesson from the Palace Hotel cat auction.
“How’ve you been, Dilla?” I asked cautiously. “I haven’t seen you since right after . . .”
I let the silence fill in the blank. I hadn’t seen Dilla since I checked out of the hospital. She’d brought my cats back to the Green Vase from their temporary living quarters at the flower shop down the street.
She’d been wearing a memorable outfit—a strange but co
nvincing costume disguising herself as an elderly Asian woman. A thick rubber mask had covered her face, concealing all but her distinctively Dilla voice. The drab, frayed clothing she’d worn on her body had been a shock compared to her typically bright, colorful garb. I hadn’t quite known what to make of it.
“Yes, well, I had some things to take care of,” Dilla replied evasively. “I did some traveling, visited some old friends.”
Her bubbling voice deflated to a hushed whisper. “I thought it best to lay low for a while, so I took myself out of circulation for a couple of weeks. There hasn’t been any sign of . . . ?” She paused, letting the question hang in the air, unfinished.
“Nope,” I popped in the answer. There was no reason for her to complete the sentence. I could empathize with the strain in her voice; we both knew her reference was to Frank Napis. The poisoning event had really shaken up Dilla; for some reason, she’d been certain that he would be coming after her next.
“It’s been nothing but quiet here.” I sighed, glancing at the stolidly silent cash register.
Those last words were still zooming through the telephone line when a thudding plunk sounded at the back of the showroom.
Isabella leapt off of the counter, her ears alertly perked. The hair along her backbone spiked up as her tail stretched out behind her, both indications of the seriousness of her inquiry. I leaned over the counter to watch her stalk across the floor toward the stairs at the back of the room.
On the other end of the phone line, Dilla relaxed back into a perky chatter. “Did you hear about Monty’s new position?” she asked conversationally, sounding more like her buoyant self. “I ran into him the other day. He told me all about it.”
Montgomery Carmichael—Monty to everyone in Jackson Square—ran an art studio across the street from the Green Vase, but he spent little time manning its sales counter. He was far too busy nosing around in other people’s business. His well-intentioned but often ill-fated efforts of assistance were a constant nuisance to his neighbors, me in particular. Monty’s ubiquitous presence was a fact of life in Jackson Square, a daily vitamin with a strange aftertaste whose dosing it was pointless to protest.
It had been a couple of days since Monty’s tall, stringy figure had stopped by to poke around the Green Vase showroom. Counting my blessings, I hadn’t gone looking for him.
“He’s so excited,” Dilla reported cheerily. “The Mayor has appointed him as City Commissioner for the Historical Preservation of Jackson Square.”
She spun the title out slowly, as if trying to make sure she remembered it correctly. “It’s a new position. The Mayor’s just created it—to replace the old neighborhood Board.”
The Jackson Square Board had been responsible for managing the historical preservation of the buildings in our neighborhood. Uncle Oscar and his attorney, Miranda Richards, had tussled with it numerous times over the last couple of years, the result of the many complaints raised about the decrepit condition of the Green Vase.
The Board had disbanded a couple of months ago, following the mysterious disappearance of its disgraced chairman, Gordon Bosco. I was one of only a handful of people who knew that Gordon Bosco had actually been an alter ego of Frank Napis. It was information I would just as soon not have acquired.
There had been months of speculation in Jackson Square about how the Mayor would handle the Board’s replacement, and I couldn’t imagine how Monty had landed this position, but, at that particular moment in the conversation, I was far more interested in what creature my cats were chasing at the back of the store—Rupert had bounced down the stairs from the kitchen to join Isabella in the hunt.
I stretched the cord of the receiver to its furthest uncoiled length, trying to get a better view. I could just make out the orange tips of two furry tails swishing in the air as Dilla continued to rave about Monty’s new appointment.
“They’ve given him an office in City Hall—that’s why you haven’t seen him around Jackson Square the last couple of days. He’s been settling in, learning the ropes. I understand it’s a really important position.”
I hardly heard her. My eyes were fixed on the two white streaks of fur thundering laps across the back of the showroom. A moment later, both cats landed with a loud thump on the trapdoor to the basement.
Dilla regained my attention as her tone suddenly took a more serious turn. “I need you to go visit him, dear,” she coaxed. “To pick up a package for me.”
I felt my eyelids retract in rebuke to the suggestion; Dilla correctly interpreted the reluctance in my silence. Her voice trembled slightly.
“It’ll be nice for you to get out of the showroom for an hour or two, won’t it? You can see Monty’s new office. I’m sure he’d love to show it to you.”
“I can only imagine,” I muttered under my breath before quickly clearing my throat to mask the comment.
“What’s in the package, Dilla?” I asked with a faint hue of suspicion. Of all people, Dilla was the least likely to pass up an opportunity to visit City Hall, given the off chance that she might run into the Mayor.
“Oh, it’s not very big at all,” she replied, overtly dodging my question. “It’ll fit right into your pocket.”
A static of wind or water, it was impossible to tell which, crackled through the phone line.
“I’m sorry, dear, the line is breaking up. It must be the connection.” Dilla’s voice was barely audible over the roar of what sounded more and more like a waterfall. “Please, as a favor to me. Won’t you?”
“All right—” I sighed, starting to concede.
“There’s just one more thing,” Dilla cut in, her words suddenly crystal clear. “Monty’s been acting a bit . . . odd lately. I don’t want you to be surprised when you see him. I’m sure it’s just a phase he’s going through.”
“Odd?” I asked with growing alarm, sensing, too late, that the fix was in. “Odd in what way?”
With thick, curlicue locks that bounced like springs off the top of his head and a curious collection of vanity cufflinks, Montgomery Carmichael had been “odd” since the day I met him. You could call him quirky, I guess, if you wanted to be charitable, but he had always been odd.
Each time Monty wandered into the Green Vase, he greeted me with the same question. “How’s your uncle?” he would ask, a smug, impertinent look on his face. Monty had developed a bizarre and, I believed, irrational theory that Oscar had faked his death and was hiding out somewhere in San Francisco.
“Still dead,” was my standard reply, usually accompanied by the strong impulse to throw something at him.
The static returned to the phone line as Dilla signed off. “That’s wonderful, dear. You’ll need to go over there this afternoon. If you can leave in the next couple of minutes, that would be fine. I’ll be in touch soon.”
And with that, the line went dead, leaving nothing but a droning dial tone in my ear.
“Great,” I said resignedly to the empty showroom, already dreading this assignment.
I hung up the receiver and ambled to the back of the store in search of the cats. Whatever they’d been chasing was now long gone. Rupert was flopped sideways on the floor, his legs flung out into a tummy-stretching sprawl. Isabella sat on the floor next to him, carefully licking one of his ears.
I searched the entire area, peeking behind the nearest bookcase, searching for any crevice where a trapped creature might be hiding. I couldn’t identify anything out of the ordinary.
“What was going on back here?” I asked, wondering if I should set a couple of mousetraps. “What were you two trying to catch?”
Isabella glanced up from her grooming project. “Wrao,” she replied noncommittally.
I shrugged and shook my head. “I have no idea what that means.”
Isabella gave me an appeasing look, as if to placate a clearly less intelligent creature, and then returned her attentions to the hair in Rupert’s ear.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I headed out the door for City H
all.
Let’s get this over with, I thought, pausing for a moment at the cashier counter. Harold’s green-covered text still lay on top of the pile of books. I picked it up and scanned through the index.
The featured essay in the volume was one of Mark Twain’s more famous California pieces, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
Chapter 3
REDWOOD PARK
DILLA ECKLES HUNG up the pay phone and nervously scanned the area surrounding the booth. She stood at the edge of a small park tucked in behind the TransAmerica Pyramid building, a few blocks away from Jackson Square.
The outer struts of the Pyramid’s massive concrete base flanked one side of the half-acre park, almost all of which shivered in the perpetual shadow of the building’s cold, lumbering mass. A formation of redwoods ringed the park, their long, straight trunks rocketing skyward, racing against the Pyramid’s pointed skyscraper to reach the warmth of the sun.
The vertical plumes of a fountain caught the few splashes of sunlight that filtered down to the ground level of the park. The statues of a half dozen gangly legged frogs hopped amongst the fountain’s stone lily pads, their bronze, green-tinged legs outstretched, the wide span of their webbed flippers flying through the air.
The fountain’s frogs were San Francisco’s tribute to Mark Twain, who manned a newspaper desk in the downtown Montgomery Block building during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In addition to providing office space, the Monkey Block, as it was affectionately called, also featured bars, restaurants, and, in the basement, a series of steam baths where Twain allegedly met a San Francisco firefighter named Tom Sawyer.
The historic building was torn down in the 1950s; it was replaced first by a parking lot and later by the towering Pyramid structure.
Redwood Park was all that remained of San Francisco’s former downtown artist haven. In modern times, the park was frequented primarily by early morning tai chi practitioners and lunching office workers. The two groups used the space in peaceful, noncommunicative coexistence. Consequently, no one in that day’s crowd of lunchers took notice of the elderly Asian woman using the pay phone near the fountain.
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