The Body in Bodega Bay (29 page)

We took another look at the storyboards and the triangular composition they delineated. “So now we need to look for two cypresses that are up here near the road and are more or less equidistant from the big old guy,” Toby said.

And there they were, only two yards in from the fence and about three yards apart from each other. Without crossing the barrier, it was hard to tell if the big tree was set at the correct distance to be the apex of a triangle that was approximately three yards on each side. But it seemed about right.

We looked around for other candidates to match the storyboards, but with every passing moment I became more confident. We were anxious to dig, but where exactly to begin? “The area inside the triangle isn't that huge, but it's too big to dig the whole thing up,” I said. And something else was nagging at me, too. “How deep do we have to dig before we decide we're at the wrong spot?”

Toby replied, “I thought about that problem last night, and just as I was falling asleep, the answer came to me.”

“Don't tell me you had a vision too.”

“No, it's just logic. If Peter buried the icon out here during the filming, he wouldn't have had much time to do it. There'd be people around. He'd have to come out at night and dig in the dark, using a flashlight. And he wouldn't want to leave a big pile of dirt nearby or leave the ground looking obviously torn up. Ergo, he didn't dig too deep a hole.”

“I hope you're right.” I was losing heart, standing in the damp with a storyboard in one hand.

“Besides,” Toby continued, “I'm beginning to see the way this guy's mind worked. On top of everything else, he was superstitious. There was a pattern to everything he did. He was obsessed with the number three.”

That struck a chord. I sensed that Toby was on to something. “Go on,” I said.

“Three panels. Three hiding places. Three trees,” Toby ticked off on his fingers.

I saw he was right. “Three storyboards. The rule of thirds. The Holy Trinity,” I added.

“There you go. Everything comes up three. It was like a magic number for him, some kind of good luck charm.”

“But how does that help us now?” I asked.

“We start at the center of the triangle and dig three feet down. The center, I admit, is a guess.”

“It's worth a shot. Let's call Dan and see if he's getting permission for us to dig.”

Toby phoned and found Dan in the middle of a call with the security officer at the marine lab. Toby asked Dan to tell the security man that we hoped to limit our digging to a couple of holes no more than three feet deep. Of course, we would fill in any dirt we removed when we were through. Dan put Toby on hold and came back shortly with the needed permission. “This is your lucky day,” Dan said. “The guy I talked to was a drinking buddy of your partner. He said if this was related to Charlie's murder, he wanted to be of help.”

“So we can go ahead.”

“Yes. Go ahead and get started. But the security guy—Joe's his name—will be coming down to check you out. Be nice to him. He's doing you a big favor.”

We bent down and crawled under the fence's lower cable. Then together we mapped out the triangular area between the trees. Toby walked toward the center of the triangle, while I checked around from different positions to see if it looked like the center from every side. Finally I gave a nod, and Toby made his first thrust with the big shovel. The rain had indeed softened the earth, and the work went rapidly once we were working together, Toby with his shovel, me with my smaller one.

By the time the security man pulled up in a pickup truck, we had a hole about two feet deep and wide. He rolled down his window and rested a beefy hand on the side-view mirror. We had a friendly chat with Joe, who wanted to talk about Charlie and the good times they used to have with a poker group at the Guerneville Tavern. Joe was the outgoing sort, in his midthirties, with a ruddy complexion and an easy smile.

“So you used to play poker with Charlie,” said Toby. “Was Arnold Kohler running that game? We heard Charlie was in debt to him.”

“I heard the same thing. But no, those stakes are too rich for my blood. Kohler is one of the big boys. The guys at my table play for dollars and change. Why do you ask? You think Kohler had anything to do with Charlie's murder?”

“The sheriff's still looking into that,” I said. “What we're hoping to do is find out what Charlie was doing out here the night he was killed.”

“Yeah, Dan told me about it. Well, you go ahead. As long as the sheriff's okay with it, it's all right with me.” For Charlie's sake, Joe was prepared to go out on a limb with his bosses, letting us dig for whatever Charlie might have been looking for when he was killed. Joe took our names, address, and phone number as well as our car license and advised us that if anyone stopped and questioned us to have them call him in the security office. We thanked him, and he gave me his card. We promised to call him when we were through digging. He wished us luck, returned to his truck, and drove back up the road toward the lab.

Digging was harder now that we were deeper into the earth. Thankfully, this was well-mulched earth, thick with the loose debris of a grove undisturbed for decades. We ran into tendrils of root, but they were tender enough to cut through with the smaller shovel, which had sharp edges. When the hole was three feet deep and no box had turned up, Toby moved over a little and started again—with the same result. Next he moved over in a different direction and tried once more. Again, nothing but dirt. He continued, gopher-like, in this vein while I labored with my shovel and the hand spade, trying to widen the girth of the several holes. By now both of us had worked up a sweat. I took out a handkerchief and mopped my brow. The gray light of the afternoon was growing dimmer. It was going to rain again.

“Too bad, Toby. It was a great idea.”

“It still is,” he said. “Let's try a variation on the theme.” This time he marched over to the big, gnarled Monterey cypress that was the storyboards' most prominent landmark. It stood at the apex of the imaginary triangle that connected the three trees. Toby leaned his back against it, facing the harbor and the two smaller trees that stood at the triangle's remaining corners. With ceremony, he paced off three steps and started to dig. At two feet, with a thwack, his shovel struck something solid.

“Could be a root,” I said.

“O ye of little faith!” Toby shouted, grinning. “Come over here and give me a hand.”

Kneeling over the hole, I poked with the spade and felt a thump that seemed promising. Moving around, I poked again, this time feeling just the same thump at the right depth. “Feels like you've hit a box,” I said triumphantly.

“Then we need to be careful not to punch the shovel through it.”

Working carefully, we finally dislodged the box from the surrounding earth. It was covered in plastic, so it was somewhat slippery, though the dirt on it, as well as the effects of long-term burial, gave it just enough texture to allow for a grip. We knelt facing each other. We dug our knees and toes into the ground, dropping our heads and arms down into the hole. I got a purchase on my two corners, and we gave it a heave-ho. Up it came, and we moved over to place it on the ground. The box wasn't heavy, but my shoulders, arms, legs, and back were going to ache tomorrow.

We had before us a rectangular shape, maybe 24" × 14". It was still thick with dirt, but a little scraping showed that the outer surface was a black plastic bag, tightly wrapped over the box. I had been working in gardening gloves, but I took them off to untangle the wire closure. Sometimes a woman's fingernails come in handy. Toby was watching expectantly, and as soon as I had the tie undone, he began pulling at the bag from the bottom. All this revealed was another layer of plastic bagging, also tightly tied. But once we had struggled to get both bags off, we were looking at an extraordinarily well-preserved box, really a small trunk.

Top, bottom, and edges were strapped with metal, while the body of the trunk was painted wood. All surfaces of the rust-red paint were stenciled in white and blue with bands of flowers, vines, and fruit. The front of the box bore a keyhole and, above it, a small ring for lifting the top. It was probably a foolish thing to do, but I gave a tug on the ring. Nothing budged, which was just as well, since we should get the box into a safe environment before we looked for the treasure we hoped would be inside.

Intent on our task, we paid no attention to a car driving by until it slowed to a crawl and left us with the uneasy impression that we were being spied on. By the time I looked up, it had passed us, heading in the direction of town. All I could see of the driver was the back of his head. I had a glimpse of gray hair. The car sped up and disappeared around a bend.

“Who was that?” asked Toby.

“I think it was Andrew Federenco.”

“Uh-oh,” said Toby.

But I couldn't be sure.

We stayed on the site until it was nearly dark. First we wrapped the box in our tarpaulin and set it in the front seat so that I could carry it in my lap. Then, as promised, we were dutiful about filling in the dirt holes and restoring the area to something like its previous state. It was certainly easier moving the earth back into the holes than it had been getting it out, but still it took some time to do it right. Finally, we called Joe and thanked him again for allowing us to search, and yes, we told him, we had found what we were looking for.

Back at our house, we tried to brush off the creepy feeling of being under surveillance. Really, I couldn't tell who'd been in that car. It could have been Federenco, but it could also have been a curious passerby. Instead of worrying about it, we bent our efforts toward breaking open the box, at the same time taking care not to break its contents. We were mindful of the damage we'd caused in extricating Charlie's icon from its hiding place. Toby worked for a while with a hammer and chisel on the lock. When that approach failed, he tried using the chisel to pry the lock away from its wooden support. Eventually the wood creaked and splintered, and with a little more force, the base of the lock came away from the trunk. Toby opened the lid and we peered inside.

The object in the box had been wrapped carefully in a soft cloth and cushioned by fistfuls of balled up newspaper. Toby flattened out a page and read the story's date: April 20, 1962. Gingerly, he reached inside the box again and lifted the small bundle from its resting place. He carefully unwrapped it.

Immediately I knew it was the central panel by its shape and by the side hinges, to which the wings had been attached. This panel was slightly larger than the other two. It bore a rather commonplace painting of the Virgin and Child, in a style similar to that of the angel Michael we had removed from Charlie's panel. And it matched the description in Andreyev Federenco's memoir. That's how the triptych had been disguised: the Mother of God occupied the central panel, the angel Gabriel on her left, and the angel Michael on her right. The iconography was conventional. But I knew that underneath its surface appearance, the hidden work was highly unconventional. Layers beneath this image, waiting to be revealed, was a work of genius that some might call heretical.

I was so lost in thought that for a time I didn't realize the house phone was ringing. When I picked it up, I froze. The voice on the other end was guttural and spoke haltingly in heavily accented syllables.

“We have your sister. Is pretty girl. You do what I say or I cut off ear. With no ear, not so pretty.”

Angie!

Toby, alarmed at the twisted look on my face, sprang to the phone and punched the speaker button. “Who is this?”

“We have your sister,” the man repeated. “Is pretty girl.”

“What do you want?” Toby demanded.

The voice continued with calm menace. “What you have.”

“If you mean the icon,” said Toby, “we don't have it.” He was thinking quickly. “We sent it out of town for restoration.”

“Is other one. You found today.”

So it wasn't just our imagination that we'd been under surveillance. The voice said “we.” Whoever these people were, they knew where Charlie's icon was, and they knew about the one we had in front of us.

“Bring it tonight. Come alone. No police. If you call police, I feel sorry for sister.”

I was terrified. I let Toby take over the conversation, while I wrote down the directions. We were to bring the panel to a cabin on the outskirts of Monte Rio, a small village on the Russian River. We were to come at nine o'clock, and no police—or else. If we followed the instructions, Angie would be safe and we could bring her back home with us. The man hung up, leaving us fraught.

“What should we do?” I asked Toby. “Should we call Dan?”

“No. For Angie's sake, we better do just what he said.”

“My God! If anything happens to Angie …”

“I know. We'll get her out of this, I promise. But we can't call Dan, not yet.”

What I could do was to try to call Angie. Maybe the threat was a bluff. Maybe she was safe. But she didn't pick up. “She could still be at the hospital. You're supposed to turn off your cell phone inside.”

“It's almost seven o'clock already,” said Toby. “We would have heard from her by now if she wasn't coming home for dinner.” That was true. “But I need something to eat, myself. I'm feeling weak with hunger from all that exertion. Then we'll go.”

I had no appetite at all, but Toby was right. We both needed food, something fast and easy. I threw some fish sticks in the oven and microwaved a bag of frozen peas. It made for a grim meal.

I could see that in spite of the adrenaline rush, Toby was still dog-tired from the day's digging, so I offered to drive. It would give me something to concentrate on besides Angie's danger. But I was surprised that he agreed. That meant he must really be exhausted, and we'd need all our strength and wits once we got there.