The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  “Why?”

  “Modern times,” she said tiredly. She rubbed her eyes.

  “She didn’t keep it there,” I said, acting on a decision I didn’t know I’d made. “Cocaine,” I added baldly.

  “There was none on her body, either.”

  “She carried it in a heart-shaped locket.”

  She pulled her notebook out of her shoulder bag with her free hand. “Can you describe it?”

  “I can draw it for you.” She handed me her pencil and I sat on a bench, balancing the notebook on my knee. “It was chased and engraved silver, quite large, with a clasp at the side. The engraving was of a cupid wreathed in roses; it appealed to her sense of humor,” I said as I sketched. “She usually wore it on a black silk cord.” I finished the drawing and handed her the notebook.

  “Did she always wear it?”

  “Nearly always. She wasn’t wearing it on Friday. She wasn’t really an addict,” I added, feeling an obscure need to defend her. “It was fairly new.”

  She looked at my drawing. “We didn’t find a locket in her things. How long have you known?”

  “About the cocaine? For a couple of months, give or take.” I wondered for the first time where Nicole’s cocaine had come from. I had always connected it somehow with her art school contacts, but I had never asked. Now it occurred to me that her dealer might be more local than that. Didn’t drug dealers make examples of deadbeats to frighten their other customers? I started to mention the theory, but we arrived at Nicole’s apartment and I suddenly had other things to think about.

  The apartment had a musty smell, even though the police must have spent hours there the day before. I asked Lichlyter for permission and when she nodded, I threw open a couple of windows before opening the door to the studio.

  Most of her rooms relied on light wells for illumination, being on the ground floor and sandwiched between the buildings on either side, but the studio jutted out at the back. It had skylights and windows on three sides overlooking the garden. Nicole once told me those windows were her reason for taking the apartment.

  I had been at her apartment for pizza and wine two weeks before, but I hadn’t been in the studio. The portable paint box she used to take with her on excursions into the Marin Headlands lay open and crusty with dried paint. Her big wooden easel leaned against one wall. A jumble of baskets on a central worktable spilled over with foreign-language newspapers, colored rags, chunks of driftwood, small pieces of machined metal, even strips of animal fur. Several of her newest collages stood propped with their faces to the wall. I tipped a couple back to look at them. She had told me a few months back that she had begun a series called Extinctions. There were three of them here: huge animal-like shapes, elephants perhaps, splattered with bloodred paint and shreds of hide and lettering that didn’t spell anything but that looked vaguely malevolent. As I stood them back against the wall I abruptly made a connection to the strange conversation about rhino horn.

  Odd coincidence.

  Fine arts magazines were piled on an armchair. I leafed through one and found the small review of her work I’d been looking for. Praise from a distinguished critic. We had both been so sure it would mean the launching of her career. I showed it to Inspector Lichlyter.

  “I sat in that chair and watched her work the day the article came out,” I said. I could almost see her at her easel—her canvas work apron and her hands daubed with paint, her curly hair escaping its confining ribbon. She’d been excited, busy, and fulfilled, looking forward to the recognition she was sure was coming. Except it hadn’t, quite. A year after the review her art was still an avocation, not a career.

  I dropped the magazine back on the chair and left the studio, followed by the silent inspector. Everything was exactly as it had always been in the rest of the apartment. She had three of my photographs in frames in the hallway, famous faces in candid close-up. The computer she’d used for Aromas’ books was swathed in plastic covers in the small room next to the studio. I looked out the window at the garden and felt my eyes prickle with tears.

  “I’ll need to get at the computer fairly soon,” I said. “It has Aromas’ books and records on it. She always said we should keep them separate from the shop in case anything happened and we needed to reconstruct everything after an earthquake or a robbery or something.”

  “I’ll let you know when,” she said briefly. “We removed the hard drive yesterday and gave it to our forensic computer guys.”

  The bathroom was neat on the surface. Nicole used our hypoallergenic line of soaps and cosmetics and she had them all jumbled into the drawers. Lichlyter said, picking up a bottle of hand lotion: “She seems to have more than the usual quantity of things like this.”

  I looked again, sorting through all of the drawers carefully, but it was the same as always. “She was always trying out new lines and had a lot of stuff around.”

  There were a few serious-looking books I hadn’t seen before on finance and investing, which I mentioned to Lichlyter; small heaps of magazines and catalogs, but little clutter in the rest of the flat. A pile of unopened bills from credit card companies told its own tale.

  She had a few pieces of good furniture, more inexpensive fill-ins from Ikea, most of them improved in some way with more skill than money. She’d gold-leafed and lacquered the coffee table. I’d always liked its ditzy grandeur and she’d promised to do one like it for my renovated apartment. The secondhand sofa was covered in airbrushed canvas. A couple of wood and canvas director’s chairs at a Formica table in the kitchen served her for a dining room. I used to think her surroundings were simply a reflection of her taste. I realized for the first time that the cocaine must have been costing a good deal of money.

  “Is there anything about the apartment that seems different or out of place?” Lichlyter spoke formally. “Anything that should be here that isn’t, or vice versa?”

  I hesitated, took a last look around, and shook my head, filled with useless regret for a wasted life, for a friend in need. “Everything else seems about right.” Which was ridiculous; there was nothing right about it. “Did you know she was once married to Tim Callahan?”

  “We knew that. How long have you known?”

  “Since a couple of days after he died.”

  “Do you know about any other relationships she might have had with the people here? We’re trying to build a picture of her life, not only here and now but in the past.”

  “She and Derek Linton and Tim Callahan were at art school together,” I said. “Professor D’Allessio was one of her professors at Berkeley. She used to say San Francisco is like a small town in some ways.” I hesitated. “She was close to Derek and to Dr. Kurt Talbot.”

  “She and Dr. Talbot were lovers at one time, I understand.”

  I was genuinely startled. “Who told you that?” Lichlyter pursed her lips and didn’t say anything. “She never mentioned it,” I said. Not even when Kurt and I were lovers.

  That felt weird.

  When we got back to my flat she went into an immediate huddle with her two minions. One of the men handed her a clear plastic bag and she held it up for my inspection.

  “Do you recognize this, Ms. Bogart?” she said.

  A heartbeat of incredulity was followed by a leaden and, to me, audible thump as my heart fell into my shoes. My drawing had been accurate; the silver cupid in its wreath of roses winked at me from its plastic shroud in her hand.

  “It’s Nicole’s locket, the one I was telling you about.” And then, because I had to know: “Where did you find it?”

  One of the men consulted Lichlyter with his eyes and she nodded.

  “In the laundry room,” he said.

  “But Nicole hasn’t been in the flat for weeks,” I said distinctly. I felt my face redden. Even I felt as if I was lying; I’m sure it looked that way.

  Lichlyter folded the plastic evidence bag into her pocket. “Yes, I remember you saying that. Any idea how it might have gotten there?”


  “None! I’ve no idea at all. The last time I saw her she wasn’t even wearing it. It’s impossible!”

  “So it would seem,” she said aridly. “Thank you for your help. I’ll be asking you to come downtown to make an official statement later today or tomorrow.”

  As they left down the back stairs—and I was closing the door emphatically behind them—the front doorbell rang.

  Inexplicably, a rolled-up carpet was propped against the wall outside. A man with a clipboard ran up the steps.

  “Delivery for Bogart? Sign here, please.” He proffered the clipboard.

  “Bogart’s my name, but I wasn’t expecting anything. I think this is a mistake,” I said. How had that locket found its way into my utility room? Someone must have dropped it there. But who? Nearly all my friends had been in and out of the apartment for the past few days. Dear God, was Nicole murdered by someone close to me?

  He checked the clipboard. “Nope. Right address. Deliver to T. Bogart. Sign here, please.”

  “But I’m sure you’ve got the wrong person,” I said in exasperation.

  “Lady, I don’t have time for this. Look. Delivery to T. Bogart. That’s you, right?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “Thirty-two Fabian Gardens. That’s here, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sign here, please.”

  His smugness was infuriating. “Who sent the damn carpet?” I snarled.

  He sighed and flipped over a couple of pages. “Pryce-Fitton.”

  Grandfather?

  The man officiously held out his clipboard. “Will you sign here?”

  I signed.

  “Jack!” he bellowed over his shoulder. Another man dog-trotted up the stairs and between them they bullied and cajoled the carpet into my living room. They cut the strings and unrolled a soft, glowing, and majestic Persian rug that covered almost the entire floor in deep reds, blues, and golds.

  “Nice, huh?” the first man said as if he were responsible for the gift.

  “Yes. Beautiful,” I said blankly.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Because I couldn’t think of what else to do after they left and Grandfather’s housekeeper said he was out when I called, after giving the carpet a last incredulous look I went down to Aromas. Davie was sitting on the front step spinning the wheel on his bicycle as it lay on the sidewalk. The yellow rose was dropping petals on his massive shoulders. He leaped to his feet when he saw me.

  “Hi, Theo,” he said cheerfully.

  “Hi yourself. I’m keeping the shop closed for another couple of days.”

  He shuffled his feet and looked shifty. “I know. Can I come in and feed the butterflies?”

  He keeps a small butterfly habitat in the shop and feeds them sugar nectar by unrolling their tongues carefully with a pin, the way a botanist at the Academy of Sciences showed him. He’s starting to recognize what kind of butterflies he’ll get from where he finds the eggs. I helped him to write a letter about it a few weeks ago. The botanist sent him some pamphlets and invited him for a tour, which thrilled Davie to the core.

  While he fed them, I mechanically dusted shelves and rearranged merchandise. All I could think of was that damn locket. I was positive—as positive as I could be, anyway—that Nicole hadn’t been in the flat for at least a month and I’d noticed her wearing it after that; so how had the wretched thing arrived in my utility room? Had Lucy found it in the garden? And if so, when? I wished a thousand times that I’d never mentioned it. Or drawn the damn thing.

  Eventually I settled in the office staring mindlessly out into the shop and beyond to the yellow roses nodding over the front window.

  “I’ve finished,” Davie said from the office doorway.

  “Okay then,” I said, and got up to let him out.

  “I could stay if you need me.”

  “Not really,” I said thoughtlessly. His face fell and I had a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t you see if Ben could use some help over at the group home?”

  He chewed his thumbnail. “Will you ask?”

  “Uh, okay.” I listened to the phone ringing, rehearsing what I’d say when they put me through, but he flummoxed me by picking up himself.

  “This is Theo Bogart,” I said.

  “I found your gift on my door.”

  I’d forgotten about the bag of herbs. “Good will from the local chamber of commerce,” I said casually, hating myself for needing the pretense.

  “Thanks anyway,” he said.

  “Davie wondered if you needed any help over there. We’ll be closed here for a couple of days and he’s at a bit of a loose end.”

  “He couldn’t ask me himself?”

  “He’s shy, that’s all.”

  “Sure, I could use some help.” He paused. “How are you doing?”

  “I spent the morning with Lichlyter.”

  “Next time call me; I’ll come with you,” he said gruffly, and went on in a different tone: “I wouldn’t normally bother you about this, but—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Except I promised the kids yesterday they could play in the attic here; I want to keep them away from outside, so I wondered if I could bring this stuff of yours over to get it out of here.”

  My head felt packed with rags. “What stuff are you talking about?”

  “The wooden crates marked with the name of your store. Everything else is gone; people came by on Saturday to get the things they had stored here.”

  “Wooden crates?”

  “Right. Crates. Made of wood,” he said slowly, as if to a deranged person. “You know—wooden crates.”

  “Of course I know what wooden crates are, but—forget it. If they belong to the store, I’ll come and get them.”

  “They’re too heavy to carry over. I’ll bring them over in the van. Send Davie; he can help me load them.”

  They came with AnaZee, and the four of us unloaded the crates into the garage. Ben handled the crates with strong, practiced movements as if he was accustomed to physical work. He filled out his jeans nicely, too, which I may have noticed before. Clearly he worked out. It was difficult for me to imagine him in a law office.

  Davie dusted off his hands. “I’m going to inventory the housekeeping supplies over at the shelter,” he said proudly as he left.

  I looked over at Ben as Davie left and said, “Thank you.” He made a sketch of a bow. He was wearing a small gold ring in his ear, like a pirate. I admired the fit of his jeans again as he gave one of the crates a shove with his foot.

  I gave myself a mental shake and thanked AnaZee for her help. The tall black woman with the chocolate-cake hair said quietly: “You’re welcome. I’m sorry about your friend; it’s real terrible.”

  And I had allowed myself to forget for a few minutes. She said she was about to begin her shift at the ecological center on the street level of the shelter.

  She took a deep breath and glanced at Ben, who gave her an encouraging nod. “We thought of asking your association if they’d pay for, you know—sponsor—some new trash receptacles for outside the stores. We thought of a three-part container for glass, aluminum cans, and paper…” She trailed off a little uncertainly.

  “You’ll have a natural ally in one of our members, Tasmyn Choy,” I smiled. “Shall I have Tasmyn call you over at the shelter? You can work up a presentation for our meeting next month.” Maybe the project would forestall the usual argument over what to do with the proceeds from the Open Garden.

  “I’d like that.” She nodded shyly and left.

  Ben stayed, adjusting the position of the crates along the wall. Much of the wall space was already filled with neat stacks of cartons and rows of plastic gallon jugs. The three wooden crates were nearly five feet long and eighteen inches deep. They were discolored—as if they’d traveled a long distance. Indecipherable printing appeared on them at random. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. I half expected the crates to disa
ppear.

  “I think there’s been some sort of mistake,” I said.

  “There’s the name of the store along the side in black marker,” Ben said, brushing his hands on the seat of his jeans.

  “Mmm. I see it. That looks like Nicole’s writing. But no one ships our sort of merchandise in wooden crates—too expensive. They weigh more than the contents.”

  Nicole had jealously overseen the inventory, and I had seen no reason to interfere. I’d no idea why these crates were in the attic at number twenty-three. She did occasionally store stuff elsewhere when the garage was full for some reason, but there was plenty of space at the moment.

  Ben cleared his throat. “About last night.”

  I realized I had been silent for some minutes, perplexed by the enigma of the crates.

  “Don’t apologize,” I said awkwardly, when I realized he was referring to the kiss he had dropped on my hand.

  He scowled. “I wasn’t going to. I wanted to tell you—that I’d like to do something I might have to apologize for.”

  “Oh!” He had my full attention again. We exchanged wary glances, like foxes standing on our hind legs and sniffing the air for spoor.

  He gave one of the crates a needless extra push and looked at me sideways. “I’ve been married, but not for several years.” I tried to hear it as casual conversation, but I felt the warmth of awareness in my face. He touched my shoulder. A tremor went through me, followed by a tingling sense of profound surprise. Cautious by habit, I found I couldn’t speak.

  He withdrew his hand and flexed it, then frowned at it as if it annoyed him. “Do you want to look inside one of these crates?”

  “What?” I felt dazed.

  “If you’ve got a crowbar or something…” He bent down to inspect the fasteners holding the crate together, apparently fascinated by the problem of how to break it open. I collected my wits and found a claw hammer, which he used with unnecessary violence to pry the crate open, sending splinters flying all over the garage. Together we pulled the wooden lid apart, but all I could see inside was about an acre of wood shavings. I started to root around and dug out a tube nine or ten inches in diameter and over three feet long. It was very heavy. It had end caps with leather thongs wrapped around both ends and a single thong along the length of it, like a carrying strap. I shook it gently and it made a soft, slurry sound as whatever was inside fell through the tube.