The Man on the Washing Machine (19 page)

“Seriously? Why?” I was tucking my shirt into my jeans and felt less than ready to face the world.

“A matter of elimination mostly,” she said blandly. “I could get a warrant, but I thought I'd ask first.”

“But what are you looking for?” God, I needed a cup of tea and a bagel or something.

She screwed up her face a little. “There may be some small thing.”

“But Nicole hasn't been here. I only moved back in myself a few days ago. It's been a construction site forever.”

She didn't say anything.

I shrugged uneasily. “Fine. Why not? Be careful of Lucy, that's the dog,” I explained to the two men. “She's little; but she's fierce. Don't upset her, okay?” They nodded without speaking. I couldn't imagine it would take them more than five minutes to hunt through the entire flat.

I tried prospecting for a glimmer of humanity in the inspector. “Can we walk past the coffee shop? I need help waking up.”

“I haven't been to sleep yet,” she said neutrally. “The first thirty-six hours in a homicide investigation are usually nonstop.”

There was a sign on the door of Aromas reading Closed Due to Illness. A knot of people with too much time on their hands stood gazing from across the street, from which I deduced that the neighborhood bloggers and Facebook posters were in full cry.

She wouldn't let me buy her a cup of coffee and punctiliously paid for her own. Helga gave me my usual mug and asked the inspector if she'd prefer a return-deposit ceramic mug or a disposable cup. She took the paper cup, which raised my hopes a little. Maybe she didn't expect to be around long enough to need a mug of her own.

“How are you doing?” I asked Helga as she handed over our drinks. “You were pretty close to things at the sale table yesterday.”

She shook her head. “Why bury her there? Why do that?” She sounded genuinely puzzled and I understood how she felt. It was disrespectful, making the murder even worse somehow. “Here,” she said, “have a doughnut. On the house,” she added awkwardly. “Fresh this morning.” No wonder she looked shattered; after the emotional day yesterday I'd barely been able to drag myself out of bed at ten o'clock. She offered Lichlyter a doughnut, too, but the inspector refused, so I breakfasted alone as we left through the back door of the coffee shop and walked across the garden.

After a quick glance I avoided looking at the compost pile. Most of it had disappeared and when I mentioned this, Lichlyter said: “Evidence,” as if that explained it. And perhaps it did.

“We didn't find any drugs in her apartment,” she said suddenly. “It was one of the first things we looked for.”

“Why?”

“Modern times,” she said tiredly. She rubbed her eyes.

“She didn't keep it there,” I said, acting on a decision I didn't know I'd made. “Cocaine,” I added baldly.

“There was none on her body, either.”

“She carried it in a heart-shaped locket.”

She pulled her notebook out of her shoulder bag with her free hand. “Can you describe it?”

“I can draw it for you.” She handed me her pencil and I sat on a bench, balancing the notebook on my knee. “It was chased and engraved silver, quite large, with a clasp at the side. The engraving was of a cupid wreathed in roses; it appealed to her sense of humor,” I said as I sketched. “She usually wore it on a black silk cord.” I finished the drawing and handed her the notebook.

“Did she always wear it?”

“Nearly always. She wasn't wearing it on Friday. She wasn't really an addict,” I added, feeling an obscure need to defend her. “It was fairly new.”

She looked at my drawing. “We didn't find a locket in her things. How long have you known?”

“About the cocaine? For a couple of months, give or take.” I wondered for the first time where Nicole's cocaine had come from. I had always connected it somehow with her art school contacts, but I had never asked. Now it occurred to me that her dealer might be more local than that. Didn't drug dealers make examples of deadbeats to frighten their other customers? I started to mention the theory, but we arrived at Nicole's apartment and I suddenly had other things to think about.

The apartment had a musty smell, even though the police must have spent hours there the day before. I asked Lichlyter for permission and when she nodded, I threw open a couple of windows before opening the door to the studio.

Most of her rooms relied on light wells for illumination, being on the ground floor and sandwiched between the buildings on either side, but the studio jutted out at the back. It had skylights and windows on three sides overlooking the garden. Nicole once told me those windows were her reason for taking the apartment.

I had been at her apartment for pizza and wine two weeks before, but I hadn't been in the studio. The portable paint box she used to take with her on excursions into the Marin Headlands lay open and crusty with dried paint. Her big wooden easel leaned against one wall. A jumble of baskets on a central worktable spilled over with foreign-language newspapers, colored rags, chunks of driftwood, small pieces of machined metal, even strips of animal fur. Several of her newest collages stood propped with their faces to the wall. I tipped a couple back to look at them. She had told me a few months back that she had begun a series called Extinctions. There were three of them here: huge animal-like shapes, elephants perhaps, splattered with bloodred paint and shreds of hide and lettering that didn't spell anything but that looked vaguely malevolent. As I stood them back against the wall I abruptly made a connection to the strange conversation about rhino horn.

Odd coincidence.

Fine arts magazines were piled on an armchair. I leafed through one and found the small review of her work I'd been looking for. Praise from a distinguished critic. We had both been so sure it would mean the launching of her career. I showed it to Inspector Lichlyter.

“I sat in that chair and watched her work the day the article came out,” I said. I could almost see her at her easel—her canvas work apron and her hands daubed with paint, her curly hair escaping its confining ribbon. She'd been excited, busy, and fulfilled, looking forward to the recognition she was sure was coming. Except it hadn't, quite. A year after the review her art was still an avocation, not a career.

I dropped the magazine back on the chair and left the studio, followed by the silent inspector. Everything was exactly as it had always been in the rest of the apartment. She had three of my photographs in frames in the hallway, famous faces in candid close-up. The computer she'd used for Aromas' books was swathed in plastic covers in the small room next to the studio. I looked out the window at the garden and felt my eyes prickle with tears.

“I'll need to get at the computer fairly soon,” I said. “It has Aromas' books and records on it. She always said we should keep them separate from the shop in case anything happened and we needed to reconstruct everything after an earthquake or a robbery or something.”

“I'll let you know when,” she said briefly. “We removed the hard drive yesterday and gave it to our forensic computer guys.”

The bathroom was neat on the surface. Nicole used our hypoallergenic line of soaps and cosmetics and she had them all jumbled into the drawers. Lichlyter said, picking up a bottle of hand lotion: “She seems to have more than the usual quantity of things like this.”

I looked again, sorting through all of the drawers carefully, but it was the same as always. “She was always trying out new lines and had a lot of stuff around.”

There were a few serious-looking books I hadn't seen before on finance and investing, which I mentioned to Lichlyter; small heaps of magazines and catalogs, but little clutter in the rest of the flat. A pile of unopened bills from credit card companies told its own tale.

She had a few pieces of good furniture, more inexpensive fill-ins from Ikea, most of them improved in some way with more skill than money. She'd gold-leafed and lacquered the coffee table. I'd always liked its ditzy grandeur and she'd promised to do one like it for my renovated apartment. The secondhand sofa was covered in airbrushed canvas. A couple of wood and canvas director's chairs at a Formica table in the kitchen served her for a dining room. I used to think her surroundings were simply a reflection of her taste. I realized for the first time that the cocaine must have been costing a good deal of money.

“Is there anything about the apartment that seems different or out of place?” Lichlyter spoke formally. “Anything that should be here that isn't, or vice versa?”

I hesitated, took a last look around, and shook my head, filled with useless regret for a wasted life, for a friend in need. “Everything else seems about right.” Which was ridiculous; there was nothing right about it. “Did you know she was once married to Tim Callahan?”

“We knew that. How long have you known?”

“Since a couple of days after he died.”

“Do you know about any other relationships she might have had with the people here? We're trying to build a picture of her life, not only here and now but in the past.”

“She and Derek Linton and Tim Callahan were at art school together,” I said. “Professor D'Allessio was one of her professors at Berkeley. She used to say San Francisco is like a small town in some ways.” I hesitated. “She was close to Derek and to Dr. Kurt Talbot.”

“She and Dr. Talbot were lovers at one time, I understand.”

I was genuinely startled. “Who told you that?” Lichlyter pursed her lips and didn't say anything. “She never mentioned it,” I said. Not even when Kurt and I
were
lovers.

That felt weird.

When we got back to my flat she went into an immediate huddle with her two minions. One of the men handed her a clear plastic bag and she held it up for my inspection.

“Do you recognize this, Ms. Bogart?” she said.

A heartbeat of incredulity was followed by a leaden and, to me, audible thump as my heart fell into my shoes. My drawing had been accurate; the silver cupid in its wreath of roses winked at me from its plastic shroud in her hand.

“It's Nicole's locket, the one I was telling you about.” And then, because I had to know: “Where did you find it?”

One of the men consulted Lichlyter with his eyes and she nodded.

“In the laundry room,” he said.

“But Nicole hasn't been in the flat for weeks,” I said distinctly. I felt my face redden. Even I felt as if I was lying; I'm sure it looked that way.

Lichlyter folded the plastic evidence bag into her pocket. “Yes, I remember you saying that. Any idea how it might have gotten there?”

“None! I've no idea at all. The last time I saw her she wasn't even wearing it. It's impossible!”

“So it would seem,” she said aridly. “Thank you for your help. I'll be asking you to come downtown to make an official statement later today or tomorrow.”

As they left down the back stairs—and I was closing the door emphatically behind them—the front doorbell rang.

Inexplicably, a rolled-up carpet was propped against the wall outside. A man with a clipboard ran up the steps.

“Delivery for Bogart? Sign here, please.” He proffered the clipboard.

“Bogart's my name, but I wasn't expecting anything. I think this is a mistake,” I said. How had that locket found its way into my utility room? Someone must have dropped it there. But who? Nearly all my friends had been in and out of the apartment for the past few days. Dear God, was Nicole murdered by someone close to me?

He checked the clipboard. “Nope. Right address. Deliver to T. Bogart. Sign here, please.”

“But I'm sure you've got the wrong person,” I said in exasperation.

“Lady, I don't have time for this. Look. Delivery to T. Bogart. That's you, right?”

I nodded. “Yes, but—”

“Thirty-two Fabian Gardens. That's here, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Sign here, please.”

His smugness was infuriating. “Who sent the damn carpet?” I snarled.

He sighed and flipped over a couple of pages. “Pryce-Fitton.”

Grandfather?

The man officiously held out his clipboard. “Will you sign here?”

I signed.

“Jack!” he bellowed over his shoulder. Another man dog-trotted up the stairs and between them they bullied and cajoled the carpet into my living room. They cut the strings and unrolled a soft, glowing, and majestic Persian rug that covered almost the entire floor in deep reds, blues, and golds.

“Nice, huh?” the first man said as if he were responsible for the gift.

“Yes. Beautiful,” I said blankly.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Because I couldn't think of what else to do after they left and Grandfather's housekeeper said he was out when I called, after giving the carpet a last incredulous look I went down to Aromas. Davie was sitting on the front step spinning the wheel on his bicycle as it lay on the sidewalk. The yellow rose was dropping petals on his massive shoulders. He leaped to his feet when he saw me.

“Hi, Theo,” he said cheerfully.

“Hi yourself. I'm keeping the shop closed for another couple of days.”

He shuffled his feet and looked shifty. “I know. Can I come in and feed the butterflies?”

He keeps a small butterfly habitat in the shop and feeds them sugar nectar by unrolling their tongues carefully with a pin, the way a botanist at the Academy of Sciences showed him. He's starting to recognize what kind of butterflies he'll get from where he finds the eggs. I helped him to write a letter about it a few weeks ago. The botanist sent him some pamphlets and invited him for a tour, which thrilled Davie to the core.

While he fed them, I mechanically dusted shelves and rearranged merchandise. All I could think of was that damn locket. I was positive—as positive as I could be, anyway—that Nicole hadn't been in the flat for at least a month and I'd noticed her wearing it after that; so how had the wretched thing arrived in my utility room? Had Lucy found it in the garden? And if so, when? I wished a thousand times that I'd never mentioned it. Or drawn the damn thing.