Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (2 page)

But there is a human flavor to Laguna Beach
that is uniquely its own—and there is something else too: there is
charm. Think of that. In Southern California. Charm. It's a resort
area, sure. Items with visitors throughout the year, depends on
those visitors for its livelihood, but here is a town that has
remained true to itself, and you pick up on that very quickly.
There are no Hiltons here, no Sheratons or Holiday Inns or Ramadas.
The hotels and motels are smallish, intimate, colorful. There are
no McDonald's or Wendy's either; some casual dining, sure, sidewalk
finger-foods and courtyard cafes, but there are also many fine
restaurants and most are quite cheap, with graciousness the keynote
whatever the scale. You'll never go hungry in this town.

With all that, the heart
of Laguna Beach is her creative community. This is an art center, a
craft center, a fashion center, a music center. Charm center, yeah.
She's a town that knows herself and loves herself, and she's
fighting like hell to be herself. The resident population
stabilized some years back at about 18,000. But the big developers
have been hungrily eyeing her flanks. They want to run freeways
through her pristine hills and extend the urban sprawl to engulf
this lovely little anachronism and bring her into the late
twentieth-century reality of gridlock and greedlock. I have to bet
with the money. By the time you are reading this, greed may have
already won the battle and what I am telling you about Laguna could
already be no more than a fond memory of things gone by.

I knew all that before I'd
heard of Francesca Amalie or Pointe House. I'd been to Laguna many
times, loved to prowl the art galleries and browse the funky little
shops, take in some jazz, or just stand on the corner and watch the
cars go by. Great car town—if you like cars, and I do. Rolls,
Bentley, Excalibur, Ferrari, Maserati—I'm talking
cars,
as artform instead
of mpg, and you'll see all the car art on any afternoon in Laguna
Beach.

So, yeah, it was no great sacrifice for me
to tear myself away from the affluent ghetto that is Malibu for a
quick trek to the charm center of California. I was between cases
anyway and getting restless with my research studies. So I was
primed and ready for Laguna, even without an angel on the shoulder,
and even before I met Francesca.

Think of Gina Lollobrigida at about
twenty-five, give her Bergman's haunting eyes and Bacall's quick
humor, MacLaine's introspective smile, Monroe's vulnerable
sensuality. Package it with a unique feminine awareness, call the
vision Francesca, and you've got her in sight as I did that
afternoon at Pointe House.

It should have been called Pointe Mansion,
and even that is understatement unless you think of a sprawling
seaside estate perched atop the sheer rock face of a narrow
promontory. The point juts out maybe two hundred yards into the
Pacific at an elevation of several hundred feet. The house and
grounds occupy the whole thing, which is about a hundred yards wide
at the base and triangles out to a width of maybe twenty feet at
the point. The main house is built at the extreme tip; part of it
even hangs out over the cliff, and that part has glass walls on
three sides for spectacular views. The whole thing is cleverly
designed to fit the land, has many levels, and—I am
told—thirty-four rooms.

The grounds look like a
Japanese park—gardens everywhere, artificial stream with
waterfalls and footbridges, exotic trees and flowering bushes,
several acres of that. All in all quite a package, and I would not
hazard a guess as to its fair market value. But I can tell you that
beachfront property in this area can go as high as a million bucks
for just an ordinary cottage-size lot.

The gates were open so I
drove right in and followed a winding country lane through the
gardens for what seemed a couple of minutes before I reached the
house. A young Oriental woman in black silk pajamas who seemed to
recognize the sound of my name greeted me at the door and
graciously ushered me inside. She put me in a holding area and
offered me tea, which I declined, then gracefully withdrew. The
room was larger than my whole house at Malibu. The walls were
paneled in teak I think, and the floor was something like marble
tile with heavy Oriental carpets scattered about in an eye-pleasing
arrangement. There were lots of flowers and tables and sofas, some
statuary, heavily framed paintings tastefully displayed on the
walls, a breathtaking view of Laguna Beach through the only
window.

I was still interestedly checking it out
when Francesca appeared. She wore an artist's smock over blue
jeans; barefoot; dark hair pulled carelessly back in a loose
ponytail—an expectant, quizzical smile.

I'd never put much stock
in the idea of love at first sight. Lust, maybe; sure, many times,
but this was different—a sort of quiet excitement wriggling up
from somewhere deep in the mind, something bordering on
recognition or remembrance, an almost déjà vu feeling coupled with
a lifting of the heart.

I just stood there staring at her for a long
moment, probably with a very stupid look on my face. She must have
been feeling something too though, because her smile was frozen in
place and she was staring right back at me. We stood like that for
maybe half a minute and a room apart, then she caught her breath
and laughed softly, came on into the room, told me in a very
pleasantly modulated voice: "Forgive me for staring at you like
that. I thought at first I knew you, and I was trying to place
you."

I handed her a business card as I replied,
"Guess we both made the same mistake."

She dropped the card into
a pocket of the smock without looking at it. "I was told to expect
you," she said quietly. "Please make yourself completely at home.
Hai Tsu went on to double-check your suite. She will be back down
in just a minute, and I'm sure she would be very happy to show you
where everything is. My only request is that you do not disturb me
while I am in my studio. I'm afraid I'm terribly behind in my work,
and I'm trying to prepare for a show next week."

She was moving out, backpedaling as she
spoke, but I was moving right with her. I said, "Uh, I think
there's been some...I don't understand what...what the hell am I
doing here?"

She gave me a blank look; replied, "Don't
you know?"

I tried to mimic that look as I spread my
hands and told her, "All I know is that I was virtually ordered to
show up here with all possible haste."

She showed me a soft smile, touched the back
of her neck with exploring fingers as she said, "Yes, that seems to
be the way it works."

"The way what works?" I inquired.

"That's the way I got here."

"When was that?"

Her eyes searched me bare before she
replied, "Nearly a year ago. Look, you get the run of the house,
nobody bothers you, you come and go as you please, the staff takes
care of all the work—what's to complain about? Just relax and enjoy
it."

I was beginning to get the lay of it now. I
asked her, "This isn't your place?"

She treated me again to
that soft laughter. "
My
place? Last year at this time I was sharing a
loft over a store with three other girls, and we were just barely
paying the rent between us. I'm here the same way you're here
probably, as the guest of a very generous man, and—"

"What's his name?"

She blinked at me. "Valentinius, I think. Or
maybe it's

Medici; I've heard both but I don't know
which is the family name."

I asked, "What do the servants call
him?"

"Only Hai Tsu speaks
English," she replied, now showing a bit of impatience with me.
"She refers to him only as
Shen,
but I believe that is some kind of Oriental title
of respect."

She was leaving me again. I walked along
with her. "You've been living here as a guest for a year and you
don't even know the guy's name?"

She said, "Look, either stay or go, makes no
difference to me. But if you can't stand a little mystery then I
advise you to go. You'll have to excuse me now. I really must get
back to work."

I told her, "The question is not stay or go.
The question is why I was asked to come here. He said something
about a crisis. Know anything about that?"

We had entered the "point" room. It was
obviously cantilevered out beyond the face of the cliff. The
vaulted ceiling was about twenty feet high and the three outside
walls were glass all the way. It was an artist's studio to end all
studios. Apparently the lady both painted and sculpted. Canvases
were stacked everywhere and there must have been twenty clay busts
scattered about.

I think she was unhappy with me for going in
there with her. She planted herself just inside the door and said,
very quietly with studied control, "The only crisis I know
anything about is my show next week. I have been trying a year for
this show. I have two more canvases to complete and twenty to
frame. So if you will excuse me, please."

But I had gone on inside, my attention
compelled to-

ward the busts. Twenty,
yeah, I counted twenty—all just alike, every damned one an almost
perfect likeness of my "angel."

I turned to the creator
and asked, very quietly, "Valentinius?"

She said, "Lousy, huh. Just can't seem to
capture it. This is all very new to me. I'd never worked with clay
before I came here. Now it seems that's all I want to do. That's
why I'm behind for my show."

I thought the sculptures were great.

And I'd already decided to stay a while.

Chapter Three: Reception

Hai Tsu is a real China
doll, tall and willowy, the very essence of Oriental grace and
dignity—very pretty, with that rose-petal skin so very lightly
tinted into the gold spectrum as seen just now and then among some
Asians and fulfilling the yellow race description of all. She has a
voice to match—soft and gentle, almost whispery—and her English is
entirely understandable, though a bit broken. Her name is
pronounced
Hi-zoo
—or that is as close as I can get—and her usual look is that
which suggests a bursting inner excitement or exuberance being
held in place by servile propriety. You get the idea that as soon
as she disappears into her own quarters, she is going to burst out
with song or laughter and do a couple of pirouettes about the room.
Don't ask her age; I couldn't peg that within five years, or maybe
even ten. I can only sum her up as a beautiful young woman with a
terrific attitude.

She showed me to my suite and steered me
around inside to point out the various amenities as though sharing
some delicious secret with me. A small but extravagantly appointed
sitting room held a couch and two easy chairs, wine cupboard and
wet bar, modular entertainment center with television and
stereo.

Another room of about the same size featured
a wall of books, library table, comfortable chair, computer desk,
and a Tandy that looked exactly like mine. Hai Tsu's eyes danced a
jig as she pointed that out. "Is very good?" she inquired, those
expressive eyes scanning my face for approval.

"Very good, yes," I agreed, not wishing to
disappoint her, but wondering also why it mattered.

The bedroom had an ocean view via French
doors that opened onto a little balcony, a king-size bed, and
king-size chairs, king-size desk—the whole room was fit for a king.
The bath featured a circular sunken tub with shower and whirlpool,
also one of those jazzy new sauna cabinets and a massage table. I
could have fitted my whole Malibu bedroom in there and still had
room enough for a normal bathroom.

"Is very good?" Hai Tsu inquired.

"Is heaven," I assured her. "When did I
die?"

She almost giggled but hid it behind
delicate fingers as she gracefully withdrew and left me alone in
the splendor.

I found the whole thing vaguely
troubling.

It was as though...you see I am a closet
hedonist. I

mean I live a somewhat
Spartan life-style. My beach house at Malibu is an ordinary
bachelor's pad furnished in modern basic and decorated to match.
The Maserati is my only luxury; everything else that forms my
personal environment is simple and fractional. I don't know why
that is, because deep down I would love to wallow in pampered
luxury—and this suite at Pointe House was like a secret dream come
true, a fantasy fulfilled. This suite was the real me. I recognized
that fact, and it bothered me—or I thought that was what was
bothering me.

But I found a lot more bother during the
next few minutes. For example, the full wardrobe that hung in the
closet—shirts, slacks, blazers, suits—all my size and my style; a
shoe caddy with a nice assortment of colors and styles for every
occasion, in my size; drawers of underwear and socks, swim trunks,
tennis shorts; anything and everything I could conceivably need or
want to clothe myself, and as I would so do.

And that was only the beginning. All my
favorite albums were racked beside the stereo. The magazines I
habitually read were all there, in their latest editions. A
paperback novel I had been reading lay on a bedside table. The wall
of books in the study included all of my most cherished titles as
well as several rare classical tomes I would have loved to own, if
love or money could have bought them.

The bother approached critical mass when I
sat down to examine the computer. It was a Tandy hard disk, same
model as mine—which is not exactly mind-blowing since it is a very
popular personal computer. But when I fired it up and consulted the
system directory, it offered me the