Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (18 page)

But meeting the woman was different. I asked Josh if we could do it next week and he said yes. Wednesday at four we’d meet at a coffee shop in Berkeley.

I lay in bed and thought about the woman. The woman Paul had slept with. Or had an affair with or spent too much time with or whatever they’d done together. There were as many ways to cheat as there were marriages.

I couldn’t sleep. I thought I knew who it might be—the woman Paul had cheated with. I’d seen Paul talk to her at a show one night. You can tell. I kept thinking about Paul and the woman from the show. It was another band playing—Lydia’s band? No, a friend of Paul’s. Josh? Not Josh. I couldn’t remember. The Swiss Music Hall. The girl was in a white vintage dress from the sixties with a boat neck and a full skirt and a trim waist. Who was playing? They had a stand-up bass and a snare drum. The girl in the white dress was dancing by herself, skirt spinning like a dervish. A tattoo of a tree on her calf. Birds on her arms. Her hair was short and white, a lot like mine. I’d come to the club with someone else. On my way to the bathroom I’d seen Paul and the girl in a corner, whispering. Paul was leaning on the wall next to her, standing too close. Nothing illegal, but you could tell. I figured he’d fight it off. I guess not.

In bed in Sonoma I stood up and turned the lights back on and rummaged in my purse until I found a stale half-joint tucked into a book of matches from the Shanghai Low. I lit the joint and looked out the window at the velvety black nothing outside. With the fog outside, the house could have been a ship, an island.

After I finished the joint I went back to bed and closed my eyes. The girl in the white dress spun on the dance floor, in front of the band. On her face was a smile that looked like bliss. I watched her from the balcony. Andray stood next to me and we leaned on the railing, watching her.

“She ain’t your problem,” Andray said. “Your problem is getting right with your case.”

“You always act like you know me so well,” I said.

“’Cause I do,” he said. “You wearin’ your heart on your sleeve, Claire DeWitt.”

I looked down at my arm, stained with a big smear of blood.

“You think your problem is her,” he said. “Your problem is
her.
”

He pointed toward the dance floor and I saw the girl in the white dress, still spinning, dancing alone. But it wasn’t her anymore. It was Lydia. She was crying and screaming, furious. She choked on her tears and howled.

“If you know me so well,” I said to Andray, “why won’t you talk to me?”

“That exactly why, Claire DeWitt,” he said.

The next morning was foggy and cold. A hawk circled overhead. Some poor little mouse or snake was gonna get it soon. You were reminded pretty quick around here that nature was a losing game.

“It clears up by noon,” Lydia said.

We sat on the porch and drank coffee. A family of deer came out from the woods to eat in the clearing. A mother and two children. We watched them for a while, vanishing in and out of the fog like creatures from a fairy tale.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you remember that band? I think we saw them at the Swiss Music Hall a few times. They have a stand-up bass? And I think a snare drum?”

“Oh, I think that’s the Salingers. Female singer?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Yeah, I think he uses a little cocktail drum. Same thing. When did we see them together?”

“That time,” I said. “That time when . . . Wait. Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was Tabitha.”

“I think so,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it was me. They’re really good. Paul was good friends with the guitar player, Nita. Come on. Let’s go get breakfast before you go.”

She seemed a little more cheerful today, a little less bitter. I imagined the long lonely day stretching ahead of her.

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds fun.”

The sky cleared up just like Lydia said it would and we went for a drive south. The roads were filled with slow-moving tourists, and Lydia was quick with the horn. In between each town were thick woods and clear, open pastures.

In Petaluma, a town that was almost a tiny city, with a densely plotted Victorian downtown, we parked and walked around a bit and got a big Mexican breakfast of eggs and beans and tortillas. Lydia bought a few things in an antique store; a lamp in the shape of a Geisha, a metal nutcracker in the shape of a squirrel. I bought a vintage fingerprinting kit—some good dust left and an excellent magnifying glass.

When we were almost back at her house I said, “I know you don’t like to talk about this stuff. But the list of guitars you gave me, guitars that had been stolen—one was wrong. The Favilla. Paul actually sold it back to Jon, up in Marin, before—well,
before.
”

Lydia wrinkled her forehead. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that explains where that is.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But there were five empty stands in the house when the police found Paul. And we know of four that are missing. So I’m wondering. Was there an empty stand? Or is there another missing guitar?”

Lydia looked confused.

“God,” she said. “I have no idea.”

I let it go. Her memory for details had never been good, and as she moved forward, putting Paul’s death behind her—or trying to—it was all getting hazier.

When we got back to her house she invited me in again.

“You want a tea?” she asked. “One for the road?”

I could tell she didn’t want to be alone, but I had things to do. Things to do like go home and wash the death off me. Maybe I wasn’t so different from everyone else.

When I left Lydia I didn’t go straight down 101 into the city; instead, I veered off at the 580 and drove to Oakland. I pulled off the highway and drove to the woods and parked at the first entrance.

The ground was soft with redwood needles, which smelled strong where I stepped on them. I hiked up to the top of the mountain and down the other side. Then I took a kind of rabbit trail off the main path, deep into the woods. Spruce and oak and then redwoods again as I went downhill, which made for easier walking, just soft oxalis and ferns and a few orchids and mushrooms underfoot.

I walked around for a while but I couldn’t find the Red Detective. Maybe he’d moved, or maybe I’d gotten lost. I didn’t feel like going home. Instead I went to a bar I knew in Oakland. When a man asked me if he could buy me a drink I said yes, and when we went home together he smelled like lavender and soap. When I woke up in the morning he was gone. I made a cup of tea, looked through the medicine cabinet, took what I wanted, and left.

S
EVENTY-FOUR DAYS
after Paul died, I started again. I called Claude and asked him to come over. We sat in my living room. I had two big overstuffed red sofas I’d found on the street in Pacific Heights, and Claude sat in one sofa and I sat in another. I gave him new instructions. We had three potentially fruitful roads to explore: the poker chip, the missing guitar, and the keys. He would keep trying to research the poker chip, and he would go through Paul’s credit card bills, eBay sales, photographs, and anything else he could think of to find the missing guitar. There was nothing to do about the keys.

When he left I called Carolyn, the friend of Lydia’s I’d called from the police station the day after Paul died. Carolyn met me in a café on Solano Avenue in Albany. She lived nearby in El Cerrito. I asked her some questions like they would ask on TV: Did Paul have any enemies? No. Did he have a drug problem? Anyone want him gone? Not that she knew of. Shocking.

After a few more minutes of warmups I started the show.

“Between Lydia and Paul,” I asked, “was there anything? I mean, I know they were an amazing couple. But I’m just wondering—were there any issues? Any issues at all? Just, you know, normal stuff.”

Carolyn made a face. “To be honest,” she said. “They were, things were not—well, not so good. They were definitely having a rough patch.”

“Really?” I said. “What was that all about?”

“To be honest,” she said again, “it had been going on for a while. Like, the first year or two was really good. The beginning. Then, you know. Fighting and fighting and fighting. Just about dumb stuff. Jealous stuff.”

“Why didn’t they break up?” I asked, concern furrowing my brow.

“Oh, they still loved each other,” Carolyn said. “They were trying to work it out.”

“Trying how?”

A look passed over Carolyn’s face as she debated with herself for a few seconds.

“Well,” she said, reaching a decision. “Telling you—I guess it’s like telling a doctor, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Okay, so,” Carolyn said. She thought she hated telling me this. But she loved it. Loved releasing it and passing it on to someone else. I couldn’t blame her. “Paul had been seeing someone else. I don’t know who. I wouldn’t say serious, but I wouldn’t say not serious. And the girl, he gave her up to try to patch things up with Lydia.”

I nodded nonjudgmentally, fake sympathy on my lips, concern in my eyes. It was a fragile moment and I didn’t want to spoil it. Besides, I was pretending I was like a doctor.

“When did it start?” I asked.

“Well, jeez.” Carolyn made a face. “It started with Lydia. She cheated on him. With this guy. When Paul found out, that was when—when things took a turn. When they became less nice. And then, you know, he had an affair, which was not a big deal, I think, and then this other one.”

“Two?”

“That’s all I know about,” she said.

“And Lydia?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly supportive of the first,” she said. “So, I don’t think so, but she wouldn’t have told me. I don’t really go for that kind of thing. I mean, you want to have an open relationship, I’m all for it, but the lying and the sneaking—I’m not into that. I don’t think it’s right. Paul wasn’t perfect but he was a nice guy. So, there might have been others, I don’t know. She only told me about the first one.”

“Who was that?”

“This guy Eric. He puts on those horror movies at the Castro?”

I nodded. I knew who he was.

She shook her head, blond curls and red lips shaking.

“The whole thing is so sad,” she said. “They could have made each other so happy. They could have had this great life. I mean, that big kind of love, that’s what everyone’s looking for, you know? But, I don’t know. It was like they took a wrong turn somewhere and they were just, like—I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as I’m making it sound.”

“But what?” I asked.

She frowned. “The thing about Lydia is . . . I mean, she’s like my best friend, and I love her. But it’s like—”

She made a face.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like she has—
had
—this great husband, super-successful career, the house, everything. But somehow it was never enough. There’s something in her—the things that are supposed to satisfy you—they never satisfy Lydia. Not really. And after a while, you start to wonder if anything could ever really satisfy her at all.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON I WENT
home and found Claude in my apartment. Which is not strange. He works there. He was sitting at the big wooden table frowning over a big fat book.
Modern Poker Chip Collecting.

He looked sad.

“The poker chip,” I said.

He looked sadder. I’d wanted to give him a little time to find it on his own, but that didn’t seem to be working.

“I can’t,” he began. “I mean, I don’t—”

“Okay,” I said. “You looked for a mark?”

“I found a mark,” he said. “And I looked in the books. Ace Novelty in Tennessee.”

“That’s good,” I said. “You’re doing great.”

Claude wrinkled his brow. “No,” he said. “I’m not. Because that’s as far as I got.”

“Well, Ace is one of the big boys,” I said. “Where do they distribute?”

“Everywhere,” Claude said. “Plus, they sell direct online. So pretty much anyone in the world could have bought those chips.”

“I see,” I said.

“So what do we do?” Claude asked.

I sighed.

“We’re going to the poker chip man,” I said. “And you, pal, are coming with me.”

Claude laughed nervously. “You say that like it’s a threat.”

“It is,” I said.

Claude looked anxious.

“Lydia and Paul were cheating on each other,” I said.

Claude wrinkled his forehead. He mostly kept his personal life to himself but I figured he didn’t have a vast body of experience in the sex/love/emotions realm of life.

“So what does that mean for us?” he asked.

“It means,” I said. I thought about it. “It means,” I finally said, “that a lot of people got hurt. And that we might have more suspects than we thought.”

The poker chip man lived near the peak of Russian Hill, in a big apartment that from what I’d heard his grandfather had bought during the Depression. If the poker chip guy had any money, he fooled me.

There was no point in making an appointment because he would break it. Instead we rang his doorbell at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. In my wallet I had a few hundred dollars in cash and in my right hand I had a box. In the box was a pie.

You never knew what the poker chip man would want. You could guess, but you never knew.

“What do we do if he’s not here?” Claude asked.

“We come back,” I told him. “Until he is.”

There was no answer. I rang the bell again. And again and again. On the fifth buzz a male voice croaked through the intercom:

“What.”

“I have pie,” I said. “Coconut cream.”

Claude looked at me. I shrugged. It may work or it may not.

The buzzer let out a long ratchety buzz. We went in.

“It’s
you
,” the poker chip man said when he opened the door. His face fell. “I thought—”

“I have pie,” I reassured him again.

He raised an eyebrow. We’d reached a deal.

The poker chip man was somewhere between fifty and seventy years old, white, six feet tall or more. He was dressed in a tweed jacket worn at the seams and trousers and suede shoes and looked a little like Vincent Price. He was given to dramatic Price-ish facial expressions, which enhanced the resemblance. If you saw him walking down the street you might think he was a Berkeley English professor or you might think he was an alcoholic who used to be a professor. But he was neither. He wore a magnifying glass on a cord around his neck.