Authors: Rebecca M. Hale

How to Wash a Cat (17 page)

BOOK: How to Wash a Cat

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My fingers slid along the worn surface of the case, fumbling to unhitch the latch. The lid creaked open to rows of thumb-sized tiles lined up on their edges. I turned the lid into the light, reading Oscar’s familiar, scrawled handwriting that identified him as the owner.

I pulled one of the tiles out of the case. On one side, bold white dots counted out a numerical value against a dark background. I flipped the tile over and studied the image painted on the opposite side.

Monty, who had been leaning over my shoulder to get a better look, gasped loudly and poked me in the side of my stomach with one of his long, painful fingers.

Gordon stroked the flat plate of skin above his nonexistent upper lip. “It’s a fairly new set,” he said softly. “The tiles, that is. Oscar had the case for years.” I felt the probing, aquiline eyes studying my face as Monty tapped my shoulder.

“Thank you for giving these to me,” I responded, wincing as Monty poked me in the small of my back. “I had no idea he kept a set here.”

“Almost all of the players do,” Gordon said. One of the gold cufflinks clinked as he spread his right hand out on the surface of the bar. “It’s easier than carrying them back and forth.”

“Well, Gordon, thanks so much for inviting me to participate in the game tonight,” Monty said, his voice pitching feverishly. “I’ll have to study up for the next meeting.” He pulled on my arm. “We’ve got to go.”

Gordon smiled serenely, ignoring Monty’s antics. “Perhaps we could meet sometime soon,” he said to me, the expression on his face blankly placid as his upper lip twitched. “Your uncle and I had some business dealings that I would like to discuss with you.”

“Yes, that—would be—nice,” I said, struggling against Monty’s persistent pull. I fastened the lid, clasped it to my chest, and waved goodbye to Gordon with the tips of my fingers as Monty dragged me outside.

A hulking storm had shrouded the city while I’d been inside the bar. Its gusting wind wrapped whipping arms of air around me as Monty grabbed my shoulders and started to jump frantically up and down. “That’s it! That’s it!” he shouted. “It’s the kangaroo! You’ve got to check the pouch in the stuffed kangaroo!”

I studied the tile I’d pulled out of the case as lightening shot across the dark sky, piercing the water somewhere out in the Pacific. The personalized image painted on the backside of Oscar’s domino was of a kangaroo. In my opinion, the painted kangaroo bore a much greater likeness to the real thing than the stuffed one guarding the Green Vase.

Another flash of light flickered on the tile, illuminating the detail that had presumably sent Monty into his current tizzy. Streaming up out of the kangaroo’s pouch was a rainbow of sparkling gold stars.

“ARE YOU SURE there’s not some other pouch-like object somewhere,
anywhere
, around here?” Monty asked as he pulled a latex glove over his right hand.

It was rare to have thunder and lightening in the Bay Area, but tonight’s storm definitely carried an electrical charge. Low, rumbling reverberations followed occasional flashes of light as we stood in the showroom to the Green Vase, staring at the spooky specter of the stuffed kangaroo.

“I don’t see any way around it. You’re just going to have to stick your hand in there,” I said, amused at Monty’s last-minute anxiety.

I wasn’t at all convinced that we’d find anything inside the kangaroo’s pouch, but during the entire cab ride back, Monty had been absolutely certain of his intuition.

Rupert sat on the floor, staring up at the kangaroo. He had already exhausted himself hopping circles around it as we examined the outside of the pouch.

Monty looked more and more squeamish as he tugged on the glove. “Maybe I should put a rubber band around my wrist to hold it closed.”

I dug around in the drawer under the counter by the cash register and found one to snap around his wrist. Monty held up his gloved hand, studying it like a surgeon about to enter an operating room.

The corners of his mouth turned down as he sucked in his breath. “Right then. Let’s get this over with.”

Monty stepped in front of the kangaroo, placed his left arm on its shoulder, and looked into the pair of glass eyes. “No offense, mate,” he said solemnly. “I just need to reach in there to get whatever it is Oscar’s hidden.”

Monty moved his gloved hand gingerly to the outside of the furry flap and slowly eased it in.

I looked away. Rupert hid behind Monty’s pant leg. Isabella watched closely from on top of the cashier counter.

A bright flash of lightening lit up the room, quickly followed by a fireworks-decibel boom.

We all jumped.

Isabella jumped on the kangaroo. Rupert jumped on Monty’s leg. Monty jumped in the air, both arms still entwined with the kangaroo. I jumped out of the way as a tangled mass of Monty, white cat fur, and the seemingly possessed kangaroo fell to the ground.

“Ahhhhh,” Monty howled. A high-pitched, tortured sound emitted from the bottom of the wreathing pile. Then I heard him call out from underneath the kangaroo, “Oooh, I think I’ve got something!”

I crouched down to the floor near his face, which contorted as he struggled to grasp the object with his slippery, gloved fingers.

“I can’t—quite—get hold of it.” He jerked his hand out of the pouch and thrust it in my direction. “Oh, good grief! Take the glove off my hand.”

I pulled the glove off, and he plunged his unprotected hand into the belly of the beast.

“There!” he said triumphantly. “There, I’ve got it!” Monty pulled out his hand, which was now completely covered with short, fuzzy, brown hairs. I pulled the kangaroo off of him and righted it next to the cashier counter.

Monty stood up, holding a small plastic bag. We both looked at it silently. Isabella crawled back up on the counter to make a closer inspection.

It contained a used, scruffy-looking toothbrush.

“Your Uncle Oscar had a sick sense of humor,” Monty muttered as he dropped the bag on the counter and stormed out the door.

I leaned against the counter, staring at the ruffled kangaroo, wondering what to make of the toothbrush.

Even more intriguing, I mused, what hidden object had Monty been so convinced he would find inside the kangaroo’s pouch?

Chapter 19

GINGERLY CARRYING THE toothbrush, I climbed the stairs to the kitchen, trying to rationalize the collection of tulip-related messages, maps, and keys I’d stumbled across since Oscar’s death.

It had all begun with the tulip key and the note Oscar had left for me in the white envelope:
There are so many doors left for you to open. All you need is the right key.

The key had fit into the replacement front door that Oscar had directed Ivan to stash in the basement. Was that what Oscar had meant by his note—a last, prodding message to urge me to leave my accounting job? Or was there another, still unopened door for me to find?

I slid into a chair at the kitchen table. Isabella hopped up into the one next to me, eying me curiously as I stroked her soft, shiny fur.

It seemed like people were flashing tulip-inspired jewelry at me all over the place. There was Dilla with her tulip necklace holding a miniature picture of Leidesdorff in its locket . . . and Gordon Bosco with his tulip-shaped cufflinks—cufflinks that looked almost identical to the ones Oscar had pulled out of his shirt pocket when he’d told me the Leidesdorff story—the same cufflinks my deceased uncle had worn on the sleeves of the starched shirt I’d purchased for his burial.

Brow furrowed, I stood up and pulled the parchment with the old map of San Francisco from its storage location between the cookbooks. I spread it out on the table, focusing in on the tulip imprint on the corner. I stared at it for several minutes, and then pulled back for a wider view, my eyes walking along the streets, trying to imagine the scene as Leidesdorff had discovered it upon his arrival.

The crisp, temperate climate would have made a stark contrast to the heavy humidity of New Orleans. Sailing in through the Golden Gate, Leidesdorff would have been welcomed by the shimmering surface of a pristine bay that was surrounded by rolling green hills and lush vegetation. He would have marveled at the natural port that provided one of the few points of access to an expanse of thickly forested interior teeming with wildlife and raw materials.

For Leidesdorff, all of this natural splendor would have been even further enhanced by Northern California’s free-flowing society—as yet uncramped by traditions, stifling social structure, or entrenched dynasties. In my mind’s eye, I saw Leidesdorff standing on the shore, the wind coming up off the Pacific, whiffling through his thick, lamb chop sideburns, cleansing his shipper’s soul of the demons he’d left behind.

That was how Oscar had felt when he’d arrived here, albeit, I hoped, without the lamb chops. He’d landed in San Francisco after he returned home from the war and never left it.

“A man can make anything of himself here,” he’d told me. “Or a woman, for that matter,” he’d winked teasingly. “There’s nothing here to hold you back. You can do—or become—whatever or
whoever
you want.”

My head was still tilted towards the map, but I hadn’t actually seen it for several minutes, musings distorting my vision instead. As I refocused on the parchment, sliding my glasses back up my nose from where they’d slipped, I noticed a faint shadow of a line running across the map. I grabbed the flashlight and shone its bright beam on the paper. A barely visible, charcoal-colored mark looped along the shoreline, then cut up along the city streets.

I shifted my glasses, trying to focus through my bifocals. The line looked as if it had been drawn with a pencil.

I pulled out one of the guidebooks from the previous day and opened it up to a modern day map of San Francisco. Rotating the book’s map to align with the parchment, the closest modern day landmark that correlated to the pencil line was—Leidesdorff’s alley.

The pencil mark curly-cued out on either end of the narrow street. I traced one end as it circled up to the corner of California and Montgomery.

On a hunch, I thumbed through the guidebook, looking for a citation to the location of Leidesdorff’s house. I confirmed the correlation and planted a tingling finger on the marked corner. The tulip garden must have been right behind the house.

Isabella, catching my excitement, made a whirring sound at the map. I glanced over at her, then back down at my finger. The modern day location of Leidesdorff’s garden was smack on top of Mr. Wang’s flower stall.

The printout of the Leidesdorff article from the Internet poked out of the front cover of the guidebook. I stared at it for a moment, pensively biting my bottom lip, listening to the rain pouring down outside. Oscar didn’t have a computer here at the flat. He must have used one at the library. It was only 7:30, although it felt like it should be much later. The library would be open for another half hour.

I slid into my raincoat and raced outside to the Corolla.

I RAN THROUGH the doors of the library’s massive, fortress-like building, panting as I pulled back the hood to my coat. I’d finally found a parking spot several blocks over and had been thoroughly soaked on the sprint to the entrance.

A voice came over an intercom speaker announcing the building would be closing in ten minutes.

Drying my glasses on the edge of my shirt, I approached the circulation desk where a bookish young woman wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a “Sarah” name tag stared into a computer screen.

“Excuse me,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

She looked up, smiling warmly. “Yes, can I help you?”

My oxygen-deprived brain suddenly seized up. Instead of inquiring about the library’s public use computers, a string of awkward, panicked words tumbled out of my mouth. “Yes, um, my uncle died—a couple of weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, understandably perplexed by my pronouncement. There was a long, painful silence while I tried to think of something—
anything
—rational to say.

The librarian looked at me quizzically. “Did he have any library books outstanding?”

I grabbed on to the lifeline. “I’m not sure. Can you check?”

I gave her Oscar’s name, and she punched it into her console. She squinted at the screen, and then tilted her head, looking puzzled. “When did you say he died?”

“It’ll be two weeks on Sunday,” I replied wearily. “Why?”

She looked at me strangely, swallowed, and dropped her gaze back down to the face of the computer monitor. “Because our records show he checked out a book earlier today.”

My hands gripped the counter. “Which book?” I whispered hoarsely.

She rotated the screen, so I could read the title. “It’s about William Ralston,” she said. “He was the founder of the Palace Hotel.”

I took in a deep breath. “Do you have another copy?”