by Hailey Lind
“Kill two birds with one stone, eh?”
“Something like that.”
Victor nodded his shiny bald head and stared at me.
“So,” I said, pulling the case file out of my satchel. “Could you go over the basics of the case with me?”
“I believe my statements—both the one to the police at the time, and the more recent one to Preston—are in the report.”
“Oblige me,” I said, now trying to channel Inspector Annette Crawford. I even attempted to do her one-eyebrow-lifting thing, but I only managed to twist my forehead, which I felt sure made me look more crazy than intimidating.
“Cathy and I had gone out for the evening, it was a Saturday.”
I glanced down at the file. “You were at the Power Play?”
“Have you been there?”
“Me? Um, no... Nope. Uh-uh. Nosiree...”
I really am not a prude. I love that the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the few places in the world where people are, by and large, allowed—encouraged, even—to explore their fantasies and pursue what is so coyly referred to as their “lifestyle.” Still, there are certain aspects of said lifestyles about which I am just as happy to remain ignorant. It’s sort of like thinking about your parents’ sex life: you may know they have one, and are glad for it, but it’s really best not to dwell on the specifics.
I was getting to know a little too much about Victor and Cathy already. I wasn’t near ready for their club outfits.
“You should go,” Victor was saying. “It would be an eye-opener. People unfamiliar with the lifestyle tend to think of us as sickos, aberrant. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
He curled his arm around his wife. Their eyes met and held, and they shared a smile.
I cleared my throat. “So you were at the club until...”
“They close at two, so we probably got home about five.”
“And the intervening time...”
“We joined some friends at their home.”
“Oh.” Clear the mind, Annie.
“When we returned, we found the place ransacked. It was terrible.”
“It says in the report that there were signs of forced entry?”
He nodded. “A crowbar in the window.”
“You owned some very valuable artwork. Why didn’t you have an alarm system?”
“We did. This is a safe neighborhood, but the insurance stipulated we install a security system. But as you probably know, with a smash-and-grab job the thieves are gone long before the police arrive. The neighbors witnessed the whole thing, even saw a quick flash of the painting.”
“Yes, I read that in the original report. How many people knew the artwork was here?”
“I told the police everyone I could think of. It was a long time ago, Annie.”
“It would stand to reason that household employees would be high on the suspect list,” I said.
“The only help we had at the time was our houseboy.”
“And who was your...er...houseboy?”
“A young man named Kyle Jones. But the police cleared him. They searched his place and everything, but found nothing.”
“Any idea where I could find Kyle?”
There was a slight hesitation. Cathy opened her pink-lipsticked mouth to say something, but Victor silenced her with a look. I thought I saw a strange flicker in his easy eyes.
“Kyle’s often at the Power Play.”
“At the...um...”
“The sex club. Right downtown.”
“Oh, okay. Do you have any idea how Elijah Odibajian wound up with the painting in his possession?”
“Not at all.”
“Do you know him?”
He shook his head.
“Aren’t you both members of the Fleming-Union?”
Victor’s eyes were growing more distant, his relaxed mien less so.
“No.”
“No?”
“In any case, the members’ list is private.”
“I realize that, but we’re talking about a crime—”
“It’s not relevant. I have no association with Elijah Odibajian.”
“How about Anton Woznikowicz?”
“Sure. Anton did some restoration work for me years ago.”
“On the Gauguin?”
He nodded, then smiled down at a vague, distressed-looking Cathy, whose hands were tapping her knees. Victor put his hand over hers to stop their nervous fluttering. “You know, that painting was in Cathy’s family for generations. Great-granddad Halstrom bought it in Amsterdam. We always hoped it would turn up somehow. And it did.”
“You mean a forgery showed up.”
Victor’s gaze snapped up to meet mine. Already pale, he looked as though all the blood had drained from his face.
“A forgery?” he asked.
Oops. Was I not supposed to tell him that?
My phone rang again—Annette Crawford. I put it on Silent.
“Um, were you certain the painting was real when you owned it?”
“Of course it was real.” He squirmed in his seat. “That’s how we insured it for its worth. When can we get it back?”
“The insurance company owns it now, since they paid out for it.”
“They don’t want it. I do.”
“You would have to return their money.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“In any case, the painting that showed up at auction was a forgery, not the Gauguin you lost.”
“That makes no sense,” Victor protested, though his voice had lost its booming self-assurance.
“I’ll leave those discussions to you and Jarrah Preston,” I said, standing. I was anxious to have this interview over with. “Thanks for talking to me.”
“Before you leave, don’t you want to see the faux-finishing project?” Cathy asked.
No.
“Oh, right. Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.”
She and I descended a narrow flight of stairs into the basement. Intricate Indian tapestries adorned the walls on either side.
“I see you like Indian art,” I said.
“Oh! I lo-o-ove it! It’s so brash, so overtly sensual, don’t you think? I spent some time there as a student. Even attended an ashram.”
“Really? That must have been fascinating.”
“Oh, it was. I traveled all about. Believe it or not, I was a science major in college, but after my time in India everything changed.”
I wondered about access to drugs in India. Wasn’t that what the Beatles discovered on their roads to enlightenment? Maybe that’s why she was so happy all the time. On the other hand, I was awfully quick to attribute Cathy’s perpetually sunny nature to chemical substances. Cynic. Maybe she was on a natural high, born from her activities at the Power Play. What did I know?
I looked around the unfinished basement. Spackled, unprimed wallboard and bare wooden beams gave it the look of half-done basements the world over. The space, though windowless, boasted a normal-height ceiling and an open floor plan that ran the full footprint of the house.
“Nice basement,” I murmured. “Lots of potential.”
“We never quite got around to finishing up in here. What I really want is for it to look like a medieval dungeon.”
“A dungeon.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Like a modern rumpus room.”
“For the kids or...”
Her laugh practically echoed in the under-furnished space. “Good heavens, no! For our grown-up play. Could you paint it to look like stone walls, like an old castle? Gargoyles, maybe, and you could paint a flag with the colors on it, like old style? Like at the Renaissance Faire—do you ever go to that?”
“Um, sure.” I had taken my nephews to the Ren-Faire last year. They wore plastic swords tucked into leather belts, and I dressed up as a tavern wench. It had been good, innocent fun. It would be hard now to see it in the same light. “I have to go...away now. I’ll get back to you on this.”
&nb
sp; When we emerged, Victor was nowhere to be found.
“That’s odd...Victor!” Cathy yelled as she ducked in and out of rooms. “Victor’s so special. An artistic temperament, you know. I don’t know where he could be. Oh well, fiddle-dee-dee.”
Fiddle-dee-dee?
“Mommy!”
I swung around to see twin boys, about ten years old, both wearing blue-and-gold Cal sweatshirts, running in through the front door. They were followed by a sweet-faced toddler, also bedecked in UC style, and a bedraggled, plump young woman laden with an overstuffed diaper bag. I assumed she was the nanny.
“My angels!” Cathy fell to her knees and hugged the children to her. “How was the piano lesson? Do tell Mommy all about your day...”
I said a quick good-bye and slipped out the still-open front door. I had enough worlds colliding at the moment. I wasn’t anxious to witness Catrina Yeltsin, Queen of the Dungeon, in Mommy mode.
13
Is there anything more beautiful than a well-rendered nude? There is no shame in such a painting; only beauty and metaphor and life.
—Georges LeFleur, “Craquelure”
What next? The last pinky-gold rays of the afternoon sun were lighting up San Francisco and making the red-painted Golden Gate Bridge appear actually golden. I supposed if I were ambitious, I could go straight on over to the Power Play and look for an ex-houseboy named Kyle. The police had cleared him in the original theft, but talking to him seemed like a logical next step.
Still, I needed company for a trip to a San Francisco sex club. Moral support. Even at my most impulsive, going into a sex club alone sounded like a classic example of a Really Bad Idea.
Speaking of bad ideas, Balthazar Odibajian’s house was around here somewhere. I had the exact address from Pedro. I looked it up. Not far, in Belvedere. Surely I could drive by without being noticed, so long as I took a few precautions. I smeared mud on my license plates, removed my magnetic TRUE/FAUX STUDIOS signs from my truck doors, donned a pair of sunglasses, and set off.
I cast my mind back to the last time I was in this neighborhood, accompanied by none other than Michael X. Johnson. He had talked our way into a private residence in search of a stolen painting, and then he had abandoned me there. Ah, the good old days.
There were two kinds of vehicles found in this sort of neighborhood: wildly expensive, and work trucks. I rolled by Balthazar Odibajian’s driveway, pretending to be one of the help on the way home. Odibajian’s place was impossible to see from the road, sealed off with iron gates and an eight-foot stucco wall. I wouldn’t be surprised if broken glass was embedded in the top of the wall. Balthazar seemed the type.
Frank had told me this place was like a fortress, fortified against all attack. That was no understatement. A guard stood in a kiosk right inside the iron gates, under harsh security lights. Remote cameras atop occasional pillars followed my truck as I passed by.
Looked to me like Balthazar Odibajian had a lot to hide.
Weariness washed over me, reaching all the way down to my marrow. The most ambitious thing I could think about doing right now was passing by the hospital to check in on Anton. Maybe, I thought, hope rising, he had awoken and was able to speak. He could tell us what had happened, who had attacked him, and why.
Or not.
Anton’s condition was stable, but he was still listed in critical condition. The doctors were keeping him sedated but retained high hopes for the effectiveness of the chelation therapy. I was glad to see that Hippo had assigned a man to guard Anton’s bed twenty-four hours a day. I sat by my ersatz uncle, dozing slightly, until they kicked me out at eleven.
* * *
I still couldn’t face going home, so I called Sam. On my way over, Annette Crawford called again. I let it go to voicemail, and then checked my messages. She said it was very important she talk to me about a development in the Fleming-Union case. Like missing paintings, perhaps? Yikes. No way.
“Apparently we were the only ones besides the regular staff who were there that day,” Sam told me as we slouched on her worn but comfy couch, brandy snifters of Nicaraguan rum in hand.
Sam, living in the world of the law-abiding, hadn’t thought to duck the SFPD. She had already been questioned, but she didn’t seem particularly traumatized by the event.
“And Crawford really thinks we might have taken the paintings?”
“I don’t think so, not really, but she’s obligated to follow up on all leads. Besides, she might believe us to be innocent, but I doubt she’s so sanguine about your new business partner.”
“Who, Michael?”
“She was asking for his whereabouts.”
“Ungh.”
“So now I’ll ask: Where’s Michael been lately?”
“He wouldn’t do something like that.”
Sam gave me the skeptical, chiding Mom-look I had seen her use on her children when they were teenagers sneaking home after curfew.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I will grant you that he used to do that sort of thing all the time. But he knew I was working at the Fleming Mansion—he wouldn’t put me under suspicion like that. He’s capable of a lot, but that is so not his style.”
Sam gave a noncommittal shrug and sipped her rum.
“Besides, there’s so much more to this whole thing,” I continued. I told Sam about Anton’s possible involvement, and my encounter with Balthazar Odibajian over lunch, and Cameron House and the pawnshop and the Yeltsins. It had been a busy few days.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with Elijah Odibajian being killed in a bathtub?”
“I don’t know either, but when there are a lot of coincidences in my life things tend to go bad, fast. It’s probably nothing. Most likely my imagination running away with me.”
“Most likely.”
“There’s one other weird thing, though. Anton scribbled something about tunnels, and apparently there are tunnels under Chinatown and maybe even Nob Hill.”
“I thought those tunnel stories were discredited. They’ve never found anything real, have they?”
I filled her in on my talk with Nicole and her cousin, and what I had seen at Cameron House.
“Okay, even if there were tunnels, and they were significant historically, I still don’t get how they could be relevant to what you’re talking about. A dead man in a tub, and Anton nearly dead from arsine gas.”
“Yeah, I don’t get that part either. Though tunnels would make a convenient way to spirit things out of the club without witnesses, wouldn’t they?”
“Such as paintings?”
I nodded.
“I suppose... Still, how would you prove something like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s an obvious connection that would explain it all. Maybe there’s a secret storage place.”
“A storage unit down in secret tunnels? I think you’re grasping at straws a bit.”
“You’re right, I know. But you have to admit I tend to stumble on to things, mostly by looking in places without any good reason.”
She chuckled. “There’s no arguing with that.”
“So,” my eyes slid over to her, “want to look for tunnels with me?”
“Nooooo. Nunh-uh. No thanks. Not my kind of thing. Finding a body in a bathtub was about my quota of excitement for the year. Or the decade, more like.”
“I don’t want to go by myself,” I mused.
“I think that’s wise. What about Michael? A thief like him ought to be able to ferret out secret passages, oughtn’t he?”
“He’s claustrophobic.”
“Seriously?”
I nodded. “Got caught in a safe room once. Not a pretty sight. I doubt tunnels are his cup of tea.”
“You know, the other, sane, idea is to talk to Inspector Crawford about all this. If there are tunnels, wouldn’t the cops know about them? And if not, and there’s a secret way in and out of the Fleming-Union, maybe they should know about it.”
Good point. But that wou
ld require that I talk to Annette Crawford with her shiny SFPD badge. I know, I was working on personal growth and all, but this seemed like a bad idea, all the way around. Among other things, I didn’t really know anything beyond conjecture and wild speculation with regard to the tunnels. That was plenty good for my unlicensed investigative standards, but official police types usually wanted something concrete to go on.
I stared into my rum.
“Anyway,” Sam said, “tonight we both need to get some sleep. Reggie will be up early to make coffee and he’ll probably rouse you. The man can’t sleep past six o’clock, even on the weekends.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, myself.”
* * *
The next morning Sam’s husband, Reggie, stumbled into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and a rumpled white T-shirt. He took in my presence on the couch with the aplomb born of awakening often to find children’s college friends, relatives, and assorted Caribbean types sprawled upon furniture and pallets on the floor. Reggie brewed a pot of coffee with quiet efficiency and passed me a lopsided orange-glazed mug made years ago by their son. I joined him at the vintage green linoleum kitchen table. He handed me the Arts and Leisure section of the paper, tapped an article on the front page, and spoke for the first time.
“Check out the story about a new museum of erotica in Russia. You should paint erotica, Annie. You’d make a fortune.”
“I’m not so sure what I find erotic is what other people find erotic.”
“You paint naked people all the time.”
“Not the same thing,” I said, taking a deep drink of my coffee. “Naked’s not always sexy.”
“You’re telling me. I ran the Bay to Breakers last year. There are still a lot of naked images I’d like to get out of my head.”
The Bay to Breakers is San Francisco’s major annual footrace, where world-class athletes run twelve kilometers from the Embarcadero, on the bay, to the breaking surf of the Pacific. Accompanying the more traditional runners are thousands of cross-dressers, samba dancers, people dressed like pirates, roller-skaters, naked strollers. As befits the City by the Bay, pretty much anything goes. Spirits are high, the mood is lighthearted, and fun is had by all.