a witchcraft mystery 08 - a toxic trousseau (16 page)

“But the cool thing is he’s not even on-site. He gets to work from home, and so do I,” Eleanor added. “That way, we hardly ever have to be apart from each other, or Mr. Bojangles. Just our own nice little family.”

“Speaking of work,” said Cody, checking an old-fashioned wristwatch, “I really should be getting back.
Working from home means I get to set my own schedule, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have to show results.”

I thanked them for their time and watched as they leashed their dog and walked away.

Loretta sniffed lazily at a scruffy bush, and I sipped my now nearly cold coffee.

“Do you think that much togetherness could really work for a couple?” Maya asked. “I mean, wouldn’t it be hard for you and Sailor to work
and
live together?”

I choked on my swig of coffee and quickly dissolved into a full-fledged coughing fit. Maya patted me on the back ineffectually, but she couldn’t hold back the chuckle.

“Sorry,” she said, trying to stifle her smile. “I’m guessing this theme’s a little . . . fraught?”

“I just hadn’t really thought about it,” I wheezed. “It would take a lot. On both our parts.”

“It’s not a
terrible
idea, you and Sailor moving in together,” mused Maya as we headed back to the car. I considered putting Loretta’s leash back on as law declared, but she was so mellow it was hard to imagine the necessity.

“I mean,” Maya continued, “you two are pretty darned cute together.”

“Yes, you mentioned that before.” I tried to keep the images at bay, but they flooded my mind: waking up in Sailor’s arms every morning, cuddling in bed, gazing at each other over steaming cups of coffee; him coming home at the end of the day as I was closing up shop, tending to the receipts and the cash in the register; locking the front door and climbing up to the apartment, fixing dinner together for us and Oscar; the sounds of Oscar’s snores emanating from his cubby
over the fridge while Sailor and I shared a last glass of wine . . .

Or, I supposed Sailor might not want to live in my apartment. I surely wouldn’t want to live in his dreary place in Chinatown. So then would we have to look for rentals . . . ? As the dog park group had pointed out, finding a place to rent in San Francisco—especially with a pet pig—would be a challenge. I wouldn’t shy away from using some magic to increase my chances, but it was still a long shot. And would I be willing to leave my terrace botanical garden behind and start again?
No.
There was no way I was going to move.

So that left Sailor moving in with me, into my apartment above the shop. And that would mean him being there. All the time.

Unlike some ex-boyfriends I could mention, Sailor wasn’t thrown by my witchy ways, but what if he got tired of distinguishing my bags of cemetery dirt from garden soil, or the raw goat milk for new moon ceremonies from the milk for the cereal? Or what if the sometimes noxious smoke from my brewing got on his nerves? I wasn’t about to hold back on my brewing and spellcasting, so if he dared to imply—

“So, did our trip to the dog park tell us anything?” asked Maya, interrupting my flight of fancy and bringing me back to the here and now.

At the sound of her voice, I tried to focus my mind on the matter at hand. Sailor and I were nowhere near ready to move in together, no matter the locale. I pushed it from my mind and turned my thoughts to Autumn and Scarlet, the Rodchester House of Spirits, and an allegedly cursed trousseau.

“I don’t know. The idea that the trousseau might be cursed is new. Sailor and I both felt there was something off about those items, but as to whether there’s an actual curse behind all this, that’s something else altogether.”

I unlocked the car, we climbed in, and I started driving across town.

“I’d like to look up this story about the shoeshine boy and the curse,” I continued. “Eleanor mentioned it was pretty well-known.”

“And by that you mean you’d like
me
to look up this story about the shoeshine boy and the curse?”

“I think you’re becoming a mind reader yourself. You sure you’re not psychic?” I teased. “Unfortunately, as you know, Aunt Cora’s Closet is still closed, pending the forensic team’s investigation, so we can’t even use the computer.”

“Bronwyn told me they’d made a huge mess. What a drag.”

“This won’t be the first time we’ve had to put the shop back together.”

“That was sort of my point.”

“Sorry. I know. We’re a problem store. And I’m probably a problem boss. Want me to take you to your apartment, or back to the loft? Or somewhere else?”

“I take it Loretta’s still hanging out with me?”

“If you don’t mind, at least until we can settle this.”

“Then let’s go back to my folks’ house. That way she has a yard so she can go outside. And I can use their computer and look up this alleged curse for you.”

I headed south toward the Bayview. On the way, we stopped for take-out Thai food for lunch, to make up for
the dinner we’d missed the evening we found Autumn. The van soon filled with the delectable scents of lemongrass and curry, making my mouth water.

As we drove, Maya noticed the show catalog I had picked up from the Legion of Honor. “Cool, did you check out this Vintage Victoriana show? I keep seeing the posters but haven’t made it over yet.”

“Sailor and I went yesterday.”

“Really. Sailor’s into vintage clothing shows, is he?”

“Sailor’s been a little . . . surprising lately.”

“In what ways?”

“He’s more open to things than before. Haven’t you noticed? It’s probably all the work he’s doing with Patience Blix.”

“What I’ve noticed is that he seems like a much happier man than before. Still moody, but nothing like he was. I assumed it had to do with
you
.”

By then, I felt on the verge of hyperventilating at all the relationship talk, so I just shrugged and concentrated on my driving.

Maya studied the catalog. “
Huh
, I recognize that name: Parmelee Riesling. It was on the Web when I first looked up Autumn Jennings, remember? It rings a bell because Parmelee’s not a name you hear very often, and then it’s paired with a last name that sounds like wine.”

“I met her once, actually, with Carlos. She’s a clothing conservator at the Asian Art Museum. I’ve been meaning to give her a call, see if she can tell me anything about Autumn, or maybe even Scarlet.”

“Why would she know them?”

“I don’t know that she would, but there was some paperwork at Autumn’s store that suggested she lent some items to that show, and Scarlet volunteered there.
So there’s a possible connection between the three. Maybe.”

Maya rented a room not far from Aunt Cora’s Closet, in the Haight, but her childhood home was a humble Victorian in the Bayview, dating from a time when a working-class family might have been able to afford to have a home built in San Francisco. Lucille’s parents had owned the home since the thirties, and I knew Lucille had been raised here with several siblings, one of whom still lived in the home with her, as did Maya’s oldest sister, her husband, and their two children. The result was a multigenerational, somewhat chaotic and crowded, loving home. I had been invited to a few holidays and cookouts in the yard, and it always smelled of pot roast or barbecue.

I found the home’s cheerful bedlam charming, if a tad overwhelming. It wasn’t exactly what I was used to, given my own strained relations to family. But it warmed my heart to be welcomed into such a cozy environment.

When we entered the house, Loretta seemed already very much at home. She trotted over to a little oval rug placed in front of the fireplace and lay down with a moan. All worn-out from her big outing at the dog park, I was guessing.

We said hello to a few family members, then served ourselves plates of Thai food. Then Maya sat down at a computer atop a little desk and logged on while I called the Asian Art Museum to ask Parmelee Riesling if I could come by to talk later in the afternoon.

“Listen to this,” Maya said as I hung up the phone. “The society woman ‘
must have one or two velvet dresses which cannot cost less than $500 each; she must possess thousands of dollars’ worth of laces, in the shape of flounces, to loop up over the skirts of dresses . . . ; ball-dresses are frequently imported from Paris at a cost of from $500 to $1,000. . . . Then there are traveling-dresses in black silk, in pongee, in velour, in piqué, which range in price from $75 to $175 . . . evening robes in Swiss muslin, robes in linen for the garden and croquet playing, dresses for horse races and for yacht races . . . dresses for breakfast and for dinner, dresses for receptions and for parties
 . . .’”

“What are you reading?”

“It’s from
Lights and Shadows of New York Life
, by James McCabe, 1872. He’s writing about what was considered proper for a high-society lady’s trousseau. All sorts of ball gowns and croquet attire, too?”

“For the wealthiest women, I suppose so. I get the sense there were a lot of wardrobe changes, back in the day. And as you know, I love old clothes, but it is amazing to think how constricting the clothes were, especially for the upper classes. Corsets that restricted one’s breathing, and you should have seen the narrow shoes in the show; I swear their feet must have been bound to have remained so slender. They weren’t supposed to be able to move easily; it was all about showing off their husband’s or father’s wealth and social class.”

“It gives such insight into the time and customs, doesn’t it? And here I always thought trousseaus were all about lingerie, for some reason.”

“They usually included lingerie, but also things like bed linens and towels, all embroidered, of course. Often the women in the family would spend years, all through the girl’s youth, sewing and embroidering. It was part of how they showed their skill with needlework. And then
the linens would be monogrammed, once the young woman knew what her new name would be.”

“Such a different time . . .” Maya trailed off, her fingers flying over the keyboard, the muted clacking of the keys joining the sound of a news program playing in the next room, and a rap beat emanating from a neighbor’s house. “Okay, let’s see what we can find about a cursed shoeshine boy.”

It didn’t take her long. She put “cursed trousseau” and “shoeshine boy” and “San Francisco legend” into the search engine, and up popped several references. I peeked over her shoulder as she scrolled through the first couple of hits.

“Well, first off, the ‘boy’ in question was actually a twenty-six-year-old man. The year was 1882, and a wealthy young man—a ‘nob,’ as in Nob Hill—used to frequent the shoeshine ‘boy.’ Says here the two had been friends as children; the shoeshine boy was educated on a charity fellowship. The wealthy fellow was named Jedediah Clark; the shoeshine man was Thomas Parr. Parr appears to have gone a little crazy with jealousy over Clark’s intended—who was only fourteen years old, by the by. It says here that Parr sought out a practitioner of the ‘dark arts’ and cast a curse upon Clark’s intended and any issue he might have had in the future.”

“I’m betting this practitioner didn’t have the proper license for such a thing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you know there’s such a thing as a necromancy license in San Francisco?”

“Are you serious?”

I nodded. “And get this: You need a license even if you’re just going to
pretend
to be a necromancer, or
soothsayer, or any number of other things. I wonder if Patience Blix has a license . . .”

Maya scrolled through a few more tales of the vindictive shoeshine boy, but the bones of the story remained the same.

“Okay, Thomas Parr and Jedediah Clark—and what was the name of the fiancée?”

Maya leaned toward the computer and read a name: “Beatrice Beech. They called her Bee. Can you imagine, being engaged at the age of fourteen?”

I let out a long breath and shook my head. “I really can’t. But then, if you spend your childhood preparing your own trousseau, maybe that’s all you want in life. What I can’t imagine is why the fiancée was the one who was cursed—why not the nob?”

Maya shrugged. “Maybe going after the object of his affection hurt his pride or something like that?”

“Maybe. This is all a bit sketchy, but I think it’s time to call in the SFPD about this trousseau.”

Chapter 12

I phoned Carlos before leaving Maya’s house, and he suggested we meet at El Valenciano in the Mission. El Valenciano had a bar and restaurant in the front, with a dimly lit dance floor at the back. I had seen it packed to the maximum on Saturday nights, but on a weekday afternoon it was mellow, the dance floor abandoned. Two guys sat hunched over drinks at the bar, and the bartender was leaning back against the counter, checking his phone.

“You want anything?” Carlos asked as we passed the bar. I had the sense he knew the owner of this place, as we’d met in the back before and he always made himself at home. I knew from experience they mixed a mean margarita, but it was a little early in the day.

“No, thanks. I’m fine,” I said.

The bartender glanced up at us and gave Carlos a small nod; then his attention turned back to his messages. We walked through to the back, where Carlos
pulled out a chair for me at a small round cocktail table in a shadowy corner of the empty dance floor.

“I take it you don’t want anyone to see us together?”

“No sense rubbing anybody’s nose in it. As I mentioned, I might not be Stinson’s favorite person.”

“But you found out something of interest?”

He nodded. My eyes were adjusting to the low light, but it was still dim, and Carlos’s already dark eyes looked black and unreadable.

“Autumn Jennings died of arsenic poisoning.”

“Arsenic? Seriously? That’s just awful. Who uses arsenic in this day and age? I mean . . . isn’t that something the Borgias used to use to rid themselves of political rivals, way back in the day?”

“Exactly. It’s easy to trace with modern forensics—in fact, I heard someone dug up Napoléon’s remains not long ago and they were able to perform tests on his hair, even after all this time—so people don’t use it that much anymore.”