As yet, the commentators had little information about just who would be coming into town at the front of the peloton. The helicopters were scrambling to return to the skies, but the race would be nearly over before any overhead shots were available. Scattered radio reports indicated that the original breakaway group of ten riders had been whittled down to a much smaller posse, but the number of riders and the size of their lead over the peloton remained a mystery.
It had been a long rainy slog through the wine country hills for the waterlogged cyclists, a particularly dismal stage for the sprinters. The World’s Fastest Man, who had thoroughly enjoyed the hot, flat finish into Sacramento the day before, now trailed in a straggler group at the back of the race. His only goal for this stage was to ensure he finished close enough to the main pack to avoid being eliminated from the overall competition. The yellow jersey would change hands at the end of the day, but who would be wearing it remained an open question.
Harry Carlin fiddled with the console of his computer, tapping keys and twisting dials as more and more data came in from the field. Suddenly, he pushed away from the counter and pressed his hands against the earphones he wore over his head.
“Oh, this could be interesting,” he said eagerly as he listened to the static-laden voice coming through his headset. “We’re starting to get some more concrete details.”
Will Spigot looked up from the chessboard and cocked an intrigued eyebrow at Carlin.
“There are three riders remaining in the breakaway,” Carlin reported to Spigot. “They’ve got an eight minute lead, and—your little friend from yesterday is leading the bunch.”
“The one who got blown out at the Sacramento finish line?” Spigot asked, his interest piqued. He leaned back in his chair, considering. “Eight minutes is a good lead, but the peloton might still have time to reel them back in. What does the computer think?” he asked, an edge of excitement creeping into his voice for the first time that day. “Will they be caught?”
Carlin’s face pinched with concentration as he returned to the keyboard and began frantically punching keys. “The computer is struggling to process all the new data coming in. It isn’t sure what to think at this particular time,” he reported, his voice perplexed.
The television monitor that had been pushed to the side of the booth suddenly burst into color with a shot of three muddy riders. The chessboard fell clattering to the floor as Spigot leapt across the broadcast booth to swoop in on the screen.
“That’s him,” he yelled, enthusiastically pointing at the video picture. “Harry,” he demanded, spinning around to face Carlin. “How far out are they?”
Carlin was now pounding the keys to his computer. “I believe they’re about fifteen kilometers from the finish line,” he replied.
“And the computer can’t tell you whether they’ll be caught?” Spigot asked again.
Carlin threw his hands up in exasperation, “The computer appears to be completely befuddled by the situation.”
“We’re back in action!” Spigot called out. He jumped into his broadcast chair and whirled it around to face the cameraman, who had just resumed filming. With a wink, he confided, “And not a minute too soon. I was about to lose that chess game.”
THAT AFTERNOON IN San Francisco, a small group gathered behind the locked doors of Wang’s flower shop. An impromptu meeting of the Vigilance Committee had been called to address the unexpected events that had taken place in Sonoma earlier that afternoon.
Dilla Eckles paced back and forth beside the makeshift lab table, nervously wringing her hands. Behind her, the cages stacked up against the back wall were busy with activity from the ninety-nine bald creatures spinning and scurrying inside.
“Well, that’s it, then,” Dilla said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Frank’s stolen the last Bear Flag clue. She won’t know where to go. We’ll have to call the whole thing off.”
Wang sat calmly in his wheelchair, his fingers twiddling with his oxygen tubes, his thoughts silently turning.
Harold Wombler looked uncomfortable as he surveyed the scene. He reached up to his green baseball cap and smoothed his fingers over the gold-threaded stitching of the cycling bear. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I understand there’s another clue.”
Hands on her hips, Dilla squared up in front of him, the fierce expression on her face demanding further explanation.
Harold’s shoulders slumped forward as he dug his hands into the frayed pockets of his overalls. His thin lips squiggled uneasily. When he finally spoke, his scratching voice was the only sound in the flower shop.
“It’s in the apartment above the Green Vase.”
“In the kitchen?” Wang asked softly from his chair.
Harold nodded somberly as Dilla’s head whirled around to look at her husband. A stern look on her face, she slowly returned her gaze to Harold.
“Where did you get this information?” Dilla demanded.
Harold stared down at his mud-crusted construction boots, avoiding Dilla’s stare. After a deep gulp, he finally answered.
“From the man who hid it there.”
A figure appeared on the sidewalk outside the flower shop and knocked on the window. Dilla strode purposefully around the front rack of flowers, twisted the lock, and swung open the door.
A man in a wide-lapelled suit and walrus-inspired side-whiskers stood on the opposite side.
“Hello, Dilla.”
Chapter 49
THE SLIVER OF THE MOON
AS MONDAY’S DAYLIGHT dimmed on a damp San Francisco, the sun made a brief appearance, casting up and down shadows across the hilly metropolis. The Embarcadero filled with a dense scurrying of antlike activity as the approaching sunset threw a flickering flash against the mural of rain-soaked windows, masking the city in a collage of dusky pastel colors before it sank into the western horizon beyond the blue of the bay.
The moon arrived early at its post, crawling stealthily over the Golden Gate Bridge, whose fiery steel burned red against the pale gray sky. On this night, its size was reduced to a thin sliver of illumination; the knife-edge of its curve sliced across the landscape.
With the cloaking cover of darkness falling in around its sharp shoulders, the moon sped along the city sidewalks, cutting a direct and deliberate path toward Jackson Square. It stopped in front of a familiar red brick building with crenulated iron columns and focused a pointed prick of light at a front windowpane, honing in on a tinted vase shape embedded in the glass. The image glowed an eerie green of resistance before allowing the moon’s light to pour through.
Once inside, the flow of photons zoomed across the wooden floorboards to the stairs at the back of the showroom and then surged up the staircase to the second floor kitchen.
Two white cats with orange-tipped ears and tails played hide-and-seek on a floor full of shredded wallpaper. The curling scraps bore the printed images of purple tulips in various sizes and arrangements.
A woman with a metal scraper tackled the last bit of paper that remained pinned to the wall. She wore an oversized pair of orange plastic coveralls that crinkled as she walked, but she had long since removed her face mask and goggles. As the scraper dislodged the final piece of paper covering, she leaned in toward the framing with a broad-beamed flashlight and anxiously searched the wall’s interior.
Thirty minutes later, after a lengthy but fruitless examination of the framing of all four kitchen walls, the woman sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, temporarily defeated, but not dejected. She tapped her chin with the handle of the scraper as she watched the cats pounce on each other in the piles of discarded wallpaper.
The moon had been waiting, somewhat impatiently, for just this moment. Carefully, it slid a finger of light across the tile floor to the dishwasher mounted next to the sink. The dormant appliance had not been operated in over a year. A mysterious plug in its plumbing had rendered it useless to the woman now living in the apartment above the Green Vase.
With the
lightest touch, the moon planted a shimmering kiss of light on the rusted chrome handle.
As if a lightbulb had turned on inside the woman’s head, her eyes traveled to the glinting metal handle. She stood up, crossed the room to the dishwasher, and cranked open its door to look inside.
Chapter 50
THE BOWELS OF THE BEAST
TWO CURIOUS CATS joined me as I pulled out the dishwasher’s lower rolling rack and crawled into its square tub. It was a procedure I’d performed many times before, searching for the source of the blockage that caused the machine to cough up a soapy tidal wave every time I turned it on. After several forays into the bowels of the beast and a couple weeks’ worth of emergency mopping sessions, I had given up and resorted to hand-washing my dishes.
It had been almost a year since my last futile attempt to troubleshoot this cranky appliance. During that time, the dishwasher had sat pushed against the wall next to the sink, its only useful contribution being the additional counter space provided by its top surface.
I puffed out a frustrated sigh, temporarily blowing a strand of stray hair off my grimy forehead as I peered into the tub area. There were, at first glance, no new approaches to the problem—but after having removed all the wallpaper from the kitchen walls, I had somehow got it into my head that this was the next logical place to check for a potential Bear Flag clue. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, the item causing the dishwasher’s plug had been intentionally lodged in its hiding place by the previous inhabitant of this kitchen, my Uncle Oscar.
I reached out and spun the metal spider mounted onto the tub’s base. It moved freely under my touch, and the drain below it appeared unobstructed. Craning my head upward, I checked the spigots where water entered from the washer’s roof. They were clear and clean. There was still no obvious explanation for the plug.
I closed the washer door, pulled the locking lever into place, and turned the dial to start. Isabella clicked out a vocal warning as a rushing whoosh of water entered the machine. Blue eyes bulging, Rupert backed up several feet into the kitchen.
“Wra wrao ra ra rum.” Isabella called out a warning as she retreated to a safer position on top of the kitchen table.
Sure enough, two minutes into the cycle, the first gurgling bubbles began to burp up and over the top seam. Quickly, I swung back the lever and cracked open the door.
A blast of hot air fogged my glasses. Blinking, I whipped the frames from my face and leaned into the steamy interior. Soapy water swirled in the bottom of the tub, and the sides were moist with splatter—but in the condensation pattern on the roof, I noticed a suspicious aberration. In a small square area on the ceiling’s left side, the water droplets were dramatically smaller. Something above the plastic roof was affecting its heat transfer.
Padded feet crept up behind me as I twisted my head to stare at the top of the dishwasher’s interior. Rupert’s loud snuffling whistled in my left ear as he put his front paws over my shoulders. Then, I heard the distinctive sound of hungry smacking lips.
“Hmmm,” I said, glancing back at his eager expression, which was focused on the top left corner of the dishwasher. He gulped as if anticipating a treat.
I leaned back into the washer and thumped the molded plastic of the ceiling with the tip of my thumb. A hollow empty sound echoed back into the kitchen.
I moved my hand an inch to the left. Thunk. Still hollow.
My hand slid over another inch, near the spot where the condensed water droplets changed in size. This time my thump returned a thick leaded thud.
“Aha!” I exclaimed as Rupert became even more urgent with his sniffles. Behind me, Isabella’s feet dropped lightly onto the tile floor as she abandoned her perch on the kitchen table. A moment later, she circled around to my right side, ears perked, tail stretched inquisitively in the air.
Gently, I began pressing against the plastic roof of the dishwasher with my fingers, trying to rock it loose.
“There’s definitely something . . . in here,” I said as two cats closed in on my work space.
Suddenly, the large piece of plastic that formed the roof of the tub slipped forward, releasing a burst of hot water. Rupert scooted sideways as I fell back on my rear. Isabella hissed at the dishwasher, her hackles rising in challenge.
Blowing on my singed fingertips, I righted myself and leaned forward once more into the washer’s interior. Lying on the open door where it had fallen from the hole in the roof was a small metal box.
I used a pair of oven mitts to pick it up and, with effort, pried open the lid to study the contents sealed inside. The wad of fried-chicken-infused cash was likely what had drawn Rupert’s interest. Relieved as I was to have found the money, I was far more interested in the item tucked next to it: a toy bear holding a California Bear Flag.
Slipping off the oven mitts, I lifted the bear from the container and carefully turned its paw, rotating the toothpick it held in its grasp. The gold-lettered writing on the back of the flag read: LARKIN HOUSE, MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA.
DOWN THE STAIRS from the kitchen, below the creaky wood flooring of the Green Vase showroom, an opening appeared along one of the basement’s crumbling brick walls. Three men emerged from the entrance to the tunnel that ran beneath the streets of San Francisco, connecting the Green Vase’s basement to the flower shop around the corner on Montgomery Street.
John Wang, limping along in his bathrobe, pajamas, and house slippers, was the first to step into the basement. He was immediately followed by Harold Wombler, muttering under his breath about stiffening joints. The last man in the group exited the tunnel wearing a costume meant to emulate the historical figure of General Mariano Vallejo.
The trio moved slowly, picking their way through the piles of boxes and crates until they reached a spot beneath the closed hatch in the basement ceiling.
A tiny mouse poked its head out of the Vallejo character’s jacket pocket as Mr. Wang pulled a pencil-sized flashlight from his robe pocket and shone it at the glass eyes of the stuffed kangaroo standing silently in the corner. Then, slowly, the tiny point of light moved from the creature’s face down to its large bulging stomach.
Chapter 51
A LONE MISSION
TUESDAY MORNING, I opened my eyes to find the cats sprawled across the covers, both of them clearly pleased to be back in the familiar environs of the Jackson Square apartment.
Isabella claimed the real estate at the foot of the bed while Rupert sprawled across the middle, leaving only a narrow wedge on the right-hand side for me. The orange tip of Rupert’s fluffy tail thumped against my stomach, as if to suggest that it was I who was cramping him and not the other way around. Grumbling sleepily, I scooped him up and rotated him ninety degrees so that I could shift to a more comfortable position.
I plumped the pillow under my head and stared up at the ceiling . . . my uncle’s ceiling . . . in my uncle’s apartment . . . above my uncle’s antique store. A year’s worth of living here hadn’t changed my perspective on who really owned the place.
I had often wondered, in the nights since Oscar’s death, what he had thought about on his last night lying in this bed. Considering all his cryptic messages, hidden treasures, and secret packets of money—had he simply been preparing for a long life’s inevitable end, or had my uncle foreseen what lay waiting for him that dreadful morning?
Rupert flopped over, deliberately turning his body back into a sideways alignment. I felt the pads of his feet pushing against my hip. One thing I could be sure of, I thought wearily as I once more readjusted the persistent furry heap lying next to me, Oscar’s last night of sleep above the Green Vase showroom hadn’t been disturbed by a bedhogging cat.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I gave up the battle with Rupert and roused myself to prepare for the day’s journey. This trip would be much shorter than my previous outing; this one I would take entirely on my own.
By the time I’d slipped into a clean T-shirt and jeans, Rupert had vacated his prominent position on the covers. The
center of the bed wasn’t as appealing, it seemed, if you weren’t pushing someone else away from it.
Isabella circled around me, supervising as I tied the laces on my tennis shoes; then, tail pointed at the ceiling, she led the way downstairs.
After a stale bagel and a quick cup of coffee, I snapped up a pair of car keys from a basket on the kitchen counter.
“I’ll be back this afternoon,” I said briskly, topping off the water dish as I left the cats to their breakfast. “You should be fine here until then.”
The munching sounds coming from the food bowls didn’t register any objections. The cats had had enough travel for the time being.
A few minutes later, I stepped onto the sidewalk outside the Green Vase showroom to find Jackson Square lost in a quiet morning haze. The rainstorms that had swept through the Bay Area the previous day had left behind a thick dewy fog.
Past the empty glass-fronted shop next door to the Green Vase, I turned right down a narrow curving alley. Steep brick walls closed in on either side of me, forming an eerie, damp corridor, but no amount of spectral gloom could shake the purposefulness of my step. I refused to let my nagging anxiety about Frank Napis disrupt my next stop on Oscar’s Bear Flag trail. The location written on the clue I’d found in the dishwasher, I assured myself, would be Frank-free. There was no way he could know where I was headed—or so I thought.
About a hundred yards later, the alley opened up into a one-lane side street that angled behind the Green Vase. The road wasn’t wide enough for regular street traffic and remained basically unused, but there was enough extra space behind my building to park a modest four-door vehicle.
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