Moonheart (3 page)

"Would you rather I just left all this stuff in the back, then?"

"No. There's no real point in keeping it around. I'm sure Aled wouldn't have wanted me to hang onto that stuff. It was the books and artifacts that he was most concerned about. There can't be much of interest in those boxes anyway."

"Even in the desolate Arctic tundra, there are treasures to be found... "Sara said with a smile.

"What?"

"I said, you'd be surprised. I've found the most beautiful painting— pen and ink with a watercolor wash. Was he an artist?"

"Not that I knew."

"And there was something else— the neatest thing. It looks like an Indian medicine bag. You know. A little leather pouch with all sorts of odd things in it. A fox's claw, some feathers and corn kernels. But the most interesting things are a bone disc with some designs carved on it and a little gold ring."

"A
gold
ring?"

"Umhmm. It was inside a ball of clay. When I picked away at it, the ball fell apart and there it was."

"Strange. Though Aled always did have a bent for curiosities— especially anything with an anthropological slant to it. He loved old things
— really
old things— like Aztec pottery and arrowheads and the like. That weird clay demon-gourd you've got in your sitting room came from his collection."

Something clicked in Sara's mind.

"I remember," she said. "I just didn't connect it till now. I think I met him— just before I went to Europe. Was he the tall, reedy sort of fellow with a big bushy moustache like Yosemite Sam's?"

"Yosemite Sam? Such a lyrical description. For this I put you through college?"

"I never went to college, ninnyhammer."

"Well, you can't blame me for that."

There was a pause in the conversation that lasted for the space of a few heartbeats.

"Well?" Sara asked. "Was it him?"

"Indeed it was," Jamie replied. "I was just thinking about him. He used to come around the House quite a lot in the old days— to use the Library and play chess. He won fifty-three consecutive games from me."

Sara gazed idly at the knick-knacks spread across the countertop. "Did you know that he had a plastic wind-up bear?" she asked.

"Did
you
know," Jamie replied, "that I've still got to get this bloody article done? At the risk of seeming rude..."

"Very rude. But that's okay. Just don't come down to the shop or I'll toss you out on your ear like I did Miss Hathaway. I'm feeling very fierce today."

Jamie laughed. "Will you be home for dinner? Blue's been in the kitchen all day concocting some wild Mexican dish."

"Without mushrooms?"

"I don't want to look at another mushroom for at least a year."

"Then I'll be home. I think I might close up early again. It's shitty outside and the only customer I've had all afternoon's been dear Miss Hathaway."

"Okay. Bring the painting with you, if you would. I'd like to have a look at it. And bring that 'medicine bag' or whatever it is."

"Will do. See ya."

" 'Bye."

Sara cradled the phone and regarded her find once more. She finished returning everything to the pouch except for the ring. As she went to put it away as well, she shrugged, then slipped it on her finger. For luck.

Going to the front door, she unlocked it and, after looking up and down the street to make sure Geraldine Hathaway wasn't lurking somewhere, turned the sign around so that it read "Open." She might as well finish the box she was working on before she went home. She put a new tape in the cassette machine and the soft tones of Pachelbel's
Canon
drifted through the store. Humming along, she went back to her chore. The box, which grew progressively dustier with each subsequent layer, had no more wonders like the medicine bag in it. At one point she paused long enough to roll a cigarette, light it, take a couple of puffs, then set it aside as she plunged back into her work. Unlike a ready-made cigarette, it promptly went out.

As she was nearing the second-to-last layer, the bell above the door jingled. Sara started, then smiled when she saw that it wasn't Geraldine Hathaway come back for round two, but Julie Simms, a waitress who worked at Kamals, a restaurant at the corner of Third and Bank.

"Are you on your break?" Sara asked, taking the opportunity to relight her cigarette.

"Mmhmm. A big fifteen minutes. God, but it's dull today."

Sara laughed. Julie was her best friend. When Sara'd first met her, she'd thought Julie a little cynical— mostly because she had a look in her eyes that lent a certain sardonic quality to everything she said— but Sara soon discovered that this was far from the case.

Julie worked hard, dividing her time between Kamals, two morning courses at Carleton, and supporting an eight-year-old son. She had a madcap sense of humor and a willingness to give just about anything at least one try. They'd taken all sorts of artsy crafts courses together and took a perverse delight in giving each other their latest creations for Christmas and birthdays. This peaked last year when Julie gave Sara a four-by-two-foot macrame wall hanging of an owl with big polished wooden beads for eyes. Sara had yet to forgive her and was still planning her revenge.

"You look busy for a change," Julie said, shrugging off her raincoat. "Jamie been cracking down on you?" She looked around for a place to hang it and settled on the knob of the door that led to the storerooms.

Sara shook her head. "I'm just sorting through junk." She pushed aside her work and set two coffee mugs down on the counter. "Want some?"

"Anything. So long as I can get off my feet for a few minutes. God, I hate the day shifts. You stand around just as much, only you don't get nearly the same tips."

"I haven't any cream. Forgot to pick some up on my way in this morning."

"That's okay." Julie settled down in the visitor's chair behind the counter and stretched out her legs. "Ah! I think I'll just vegetate here for the rest of the afternoon. Mind?"

"Be my guest." Sara poured coffee from her thermos, handed Julie a cup, and relit her cigarette for the third time. "The tips are even shittier here, though."

"Talking about dung— I saw old Miss Hathaway stomping by the restaurant earlier. Was she in to visit you?"

"I threw her out."

"You...?" Julie broke into laughter and spilled her coffee before she could set it down on the counter. "I don't believe it."

"It's true. She drives me crazy."

"She drives everybody crazy."

"This time I had to do it. It was either that or wring her neck."

"I think I'd settle on wringing her neck. It's so much more permanent." She waited expectantly for a moment, then added: "Well? Aren't you going to give me the scoop?"

Sara moved her chair conspiratorially closer and did just that.

"Serves her right!" Julie Said when Sara was done. "And what a find! Can I have a look?"

Sara tugged the ring off and passed it over.

"It's definitely gold," Julie said, turning it around in her palm. "It looks old."

"The box came from the estate of a history professor that Jamie knew."

"But this looks
really
old. And look at the color. It must be eighteen karat at least."

She held it up beside the wedding band she wore to forestall being asked out for dates while she was on the job. It had a fifty percent success rate. Beside the wedding band, Sara's ring had a positive glow of richness to it.

"It looks kind of brassy," Sara said.

"That's because the gold content's so high. Mine's only ten karat." Julie hefted the ring before passing it back. "It's heavy, too. I wonder how old it is?"

"A hundred years?"

Julie shrugged. "You should get it dated. I wonder where you can get that done. At a jeweler's, I suppose. Or the museum."

"I'll ask Jamie," Sara said. "He'd know."

Julie nodded. She picked up her coffee, then glanced at her watch. "Oh, no! Look at the time?"

She took a gulp and bustled to her feet, pulling a face as she dragged her raincoat from the doorknob.

"I don't know if I'll last the day," she moaned, then brightened. "What're you doing on Saturday?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"I've got the night off. I thought I'd spring for a sitter for Robbie and take in a couple of sets at Faces."

"Who's playing?"

"Who cares? I just want to go out and have somebody get me a beer for a change. I can't stay late though. I'm taking Robbie to my mum's on Sunday."

"I'll let you know before the end of the week. Okay?"

"Sure. See ya."

The doorbell jingled again and she was gone.

Sara stared at the clutter that was taking over the countertop and wished she'd asked Julie what the time was. She went on a quest for her clock and found it behind her typewriter. Three-thirty. She'd give it another half-hour and then go home. Flipping over the cassette to the side with Delius on it, she got back to work.

When she'd reached the bottom of the box and put everything away on its appropriate table, it was four-thirty. She stuffed the painting and medicine bag into her knapsack, buttoned up her coat and left the store.

Halfway down the block she paused, trying to remember if she'd tested the front door after she'd locked it. Whenever she left the store she invariably stopped somewhere in the first few blocks to think about it. Convincing herself that she had, indeed, tested the door, she went on. By the time she reached home, the momentary sensation of dislocation she'd experienced with the painting had been relegated to a cobwebby corner of her mind. But the painting itself and the medicine bag were still fascinating curiosities and she was looking forward to showing them to Jamie.

Home was Tamson House.

It took up a large city block and was designed at the turn of the century by Anthony Tamson, Jamie's grandfather, who, according to his journals, had been looking for "a curious home, reminiscent of a labyrinth, if you will, but with a sense of warmth. Gothic, but not severely so. And it must have towers." It had, in fact, three of them. Sara's rooms were in the northwest tower, where Patterson Avenue first touches Central Park.

From O'Conner Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares that as it approaches Tamson House takes on a more residential attitude, the House appeared to be a block of old-fashioned townhouses set kittycorner to each other with not so much as a fraction of an inch between them. They were a facade, for inside the House ran the length of the block in one long tumble of rooms and hallways, two stories high (in some places three, not including the attics), with steep gables from cornice to ridge, well worn eaves overhung in places with vines, and the odd dormer window. Each front door was serviceable and opened into a hall.

Along the sides of the block, following Patterson on the north and Clemow Avenue on the south, similar facades were presented. The House was not so wide here and, though only one or two of these doors opened, all the mail slots worked. Jamie delighted in the use of many names for his correspondence and used an equal number of addresses with them. Behind these facades were still more rooms that ran the length of the block, connecting the front of the House facing O'Connor, with the back that looked out on Central Park and beyond it, Bank Street.

Central Park was a curiosity in itself, though the Tamsons weren't responsible for its vagaries. It was a riverlike width of green that had its start at Chamberlain Avenue near the Queensway, and ran southeasterly towards the Rideau Canal, broken only once by Bank Street and again by Clemow, before diving under O'Connor to the canal. Because of the purposefulness of its route, it cut a corner from the rectangle that Tamson House would have made, giving it, from a bird's perspective, the semblance of a crookedly cut piece of pie with the point end broken off.

The park was home to pigeons and sparrows, joggers, sunworshipers, winos, at least one bag lady and shrill-voiced children in the summer. In the winter it took on an austerity that was both lonely and contemplative. Snow covered the benches and trees like the white sheets on a deserted house's furniture, and the few hardy birds that managed to eke out a living subsisted more on the neighborhood's generosity in the way of bread crumbs and bird seed than through any particular talents of their own.

There was a park in the center of the House's block as well, though this wasn't open to the public and, indeed, few even knew it existed. Tamson House was one of those curiosities that was only noticed by out-of-towners. Locals rarely gave it a second glance. The park took up four acres, surrounded on all sides by the walls of the House. There were birch and oak growing in it, juniper and cedar, some apple trees and berry bushes, tended undergrowth that included hawthorns, lilacs and roses, a vegetable garden, and a plethora of flowering plants.

The whole of it was lovingly cared for by a live-in gardener named Theodore Burchin who insisted that everyone call him Fred. He was a tall, awkward-looking individual, cut from the same cloth as Cervantes's Don Quixote, complete with an unruly mane of grey-white hair and a wispy handlebar moustache, stork-thin neck and limbs, and a proclivity to tilt at his own personal windmills— which included anything and anyone who didn't tender plants the considerable respect he felt was their due.

The garden had the disconcerting tendency, once one was in it, to appear much larger than its actual acreage and Fred was the only person who knew it thoroughly. He could often be seen apologizing to shrubs as he was trimming them, or wandering along the cobblestoned paths that connected the House's many garden-side doors. The paths met together at a grassy knoll in the center of the garden where a fountain was surrounded by benches, like royalty surrounded by its courtiers. Statues hid in amongst the greenery, gnomes and nymphs and fabulous beasts that peeped out from between the leaves or appeared suddenly around a turn in a path to startle a newcomer.

Sara had grown up in Tamson House. Her parents, Jamie's sister Gillian and John Kendell of Kendell Communications, had died in a car crash when she was six and left a stipulation in their will that she was to be left in her uncle's care. Jamie, once the initial shock of their death, and the fact they had entrusted Sara to him, had worn off, had taken to his new duties like a doting father.