The Bohemian Murders (23 page)

W
ithstanding anger is not so difficult if one realizes that the angry person is not likely to be careful of what she says, and therefore one might learn something that otherwise one would never know.

Presuming that Mimi didn’t really want to know who I thought I was, just for the sake of response I mumbled, “I’m terribly sorry—”

And she interrupted: “We don’t need busybodies in Carmel, poking their noses into people’s privacy. It’s despicable!”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Oscar came through the door, asking, “What’s the matter?”

I spoke up. “Mimi seems to think I’m meddling, I’m not sure into what, but I was just trying to get to the bottom of something that may have to do with Phoebe’s disappearance.”

“Phoebe!” Mimi exclaimed.
Oscar shook his head and trudged over to the sink. “Don’t understand what all the fuss is about. People in this country have a right to go where they want to go, when they want to go. Farking bang-bang shoot-’em-up deputy sheriffs …” His voice trailed off.

“What does the woman in the picture have to do with Phoebe?” Mimi asked. Her eyes looked round and scared, and her anger was gone.

“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps it’s only a coincidence, but Phoebe was trying to help me identify her and then all of a sudden she—I mean Phoebe—was gone.”

“Somebody else gone besides Phoebe?” Sitting next to his wife, Oscar removed his glasses and began to polish them on his shirt. Without the glasses his face looked worn and defenseless.

“This woman.” Dead and gone, I thought. I held the photograph toward Oscar. “Do you know her?”

He craned his neck and squinted while continuing to polish the lenses of his glasses. “Never saw her in my life. But then, I don’t pay much attention to people.”

“That’s true,” said Mimi, leaning affectionately into her husband, “he doesn’t. Oscar only just barely lives in the real world. I’m the one who has to keep up with things, and I can tell you for sure the woman in that picture isn’t one of our circle. I’m sorry I jumped all over you, Fremont. It’s just that Oscar and I have a mania for privacy.”

I slipped the photograph back into my bag, saying offhandedly, “Really? You always have so many people around here I’d never have guessed you to have such a mania.”

They looked at each other. “Not personally,” Mimi qualified, “for Carmel. For the whole community. Having the police here—”

“Sheriffs,” Oscar inserted.

“—was difficult for all of us. We just want to be left alone.”

“Amen!” Oscar said emphatically. Then he put his glasses back on, carefully adjusting the earpieces.

I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder. “I
quite understand, and so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”

Both Petersons mumbled separate versions of thanks-for-stopping-by. In the doorway I turned back. “Oh, one last thing I’d like to ask you. Was Phoebe in the habit of taking off abruptly, with no warning? Did she have someone in particular in whom she might have confided?”

“That’s two things,” Oscar observed mildly, without offering to answer either one.

“We didn’t know her well enough to say.” Mimi, of course, filled the gap. As a helpmeet sort of wife, she went more than halfway. “Phoebe kept to herself a good deal. She was very absorbed in her work.”

“I see. Well thanks, and good-bye for now.”

I left with my mind abuzz from the Petersons’ odd dynamics. Even so, I could not fail to notice that the out-of-doors smelled wonderfully fresh after all that rain. I fancied I could almost hear trees and bushes and flowers responding, growing.

Bessie raised her head and whuffled as I came up. “One more stop, old girl,” I said, giving her neck a pat, “and then we’ll go back home.” With a curious mixture of reluctance and anticipation, I turned her head toward Casanova Street, and Xanadu.

Michael had obviously done absolutely nothing in the way of afterstorm cleanup. His yard looked much worse than the Petersons’. I picked up my skirt so as not to drag the hem in the dirt as I went up the walk.

The front door was already open; as I approached, Artemisia’s shapely form materialized on the threshold. “Oh, Fremont!” she wailed. “He’s gone!”

“Gone? What exactly do you mean?”

She sniffled. Her eyes were swollen, so I assumed she had been crying. “I mean he left this morning, at a beastly early hour. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t, and he wouldn’t take me with him either. He said he needed to be alone, and he went as soon as the storm was over. On that wretched yacht of his!”

“You mean the
Katya?
”

She nodded, so obviously miserable that I impulsively
reached out and put one arm around her. I walked with her to a grouping of chairs near the cold fireplace and sat us both down. “The
Katya
is a sloop,” I said.

“Sloop, yacht, who cares? I
hate
boats! I get
so
seasick!”

“Then it’s a good thing he didn’t take you with him.”

“You needn’t be so reasonable about it.”

“I don’t see why not. If he’s gone, he’s gone. Michael has a habit of doing this, you know.”

“Doing what?” Artemisia wiped her eyes on the tail of the red scarf holding back her wild hair. Her dress, for once, was an ordinary blue cotton flannel with buttons all the way down the front.

“Going off by himself,” I said. “Did you see him before he left?”

She nodded glumly.

“Was he, er, inebriated?”

“Hungover, maybe, but he drank gallons of coffee and ate twice as much breakfast as I’ve ever seen him eat. You may as well know, we had an awful row.”

“Really?” I tried not to sound too happy about it.

Artemisia bit her lip and a single tear dripped down her right cheek. “I just don’t understand him, Fremont. First I thought he was in love with a woman in San Francisco, who turned out to be you, but then he didn’t bring her—I mean you—back with him; and when you finally did come on your own you didn’t even take the cottage he found for you, so I thought you didn’t want him anyhow. Which meant I had a chance. Lately I really believed I’d wormed my way into his affections, but—but—” She choked up.

“I do want him,” I said quietly. It was the first time I had acknowledged this to another human being, including my very dear friend Meiling, and I went all dizzy with the risk of it.

Artemisia’s brown eyes widened. “You do? But you’re always pushing him away.”

“I know. And he is always doing the same to me.” I regarded the tips of my shoes peeking out from under my skirt. “That seems to be, at least in part, the nature of our relationship. Anyway, lately I’m not sure about
anything.” And I had begun to scare myself with this kind of talk.

“I know just what you mean!
Gawd!”
She threw the back of her hand against her forehead in a dramatic gesture and slid down in her chair with her feet sticking out pigeon-toed in front of her—a posture that even a four-year-old child would have been chided for. From this position she addressed the ceiling, as if I were not there. “It isn’t as if I wanted to
marry
the man, for heaven’s sake. I only wanted to have some fun, for us to enjoy each other, maybe even live together; but not
all
the time because of course I have to have my own space to create my art. Which reminds me,” she tilted her wrist away from her eyes and looked at me without otherwise moving a muscle, “you
are
typing my
Merchant of Dreams,
aren’t you?”

“Yes, but there have been some unavoidable interruptions. It’s a fascinating story. I’m awed by your talent, Artemisia. Truly.”

“Thank you.” She heaved a great sigh and addressed the ceiling again. “My publisher will hate it. He will say it is too sensational, and I will argue with him, and then he will make qualifications—he’ll say it’s too sensational to have been written by a
woman.
He will encourage me to apply a male pseudonym, like poor Charlotte Brontë did with
Jane Eyre
—That reminds me.” Suddenly, in one fluid motion Artemisia righted her posture. “Phoebe is rather a Jane Eyreish sort of person, isn’t she? I find I miss her a good deal. Surely she will come back on her own, don’t you think? Someone like Phoebe couldn’t
really
have any connection to this … this,” she made a dismissive motion with her hand, “
Sabrina
person, could she?”

In the face of this flurry of questions I reflected that one finds prejudice in the most unexpected places. “You surprise me,” I said. “I thought you would be sympathetic to Sabrina’s plight, as well as Phoebe’s. What I think is that they have both met with foul play, probably at the hands of the same person. I think further that this person is someone powerful enough in this locale to suppress whatever he or she wants suppressed. And further
still, I think this powerful person wants me to cease and desist from investigating, and has laid down certain threats in order that I should take the point.” I stood and hoisted my leather bag. “I had thought to tell Michael this, but as he is not here I suppose I will just tell you: I
have
taken the point. I have, if you like, been frightened off. Warned away. However one chooses to express it. Like Pilate’s wife, I wash my hands!”

“You’re getting that mixed up with Caesar’s wife. It was Pilate who washed his hands. His wife, I think, had dreams. So did Caesar’s.”

“I stand corrected. And speaking of women who have dreams, I shall finish the typing of your manuscript in another week, provided nothing untoward befalls. I hope that is satisfactory?” I began to move to the door.

“Oh, yes. That will be fine. Fremont, what exactly did you mean about Misha having a habit of going away by himself?”

“Just that he has always done it, for as long as I’ve known him, which is slightly more than two years. Don’t worry about him. He’ll come back eventually, and when he does he won’t tell you where he’s been, and you will want to strangle him but it won’t do the least bit of good.”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled at me—a rather calculating smile—and she said, “You know him very well.”

I smiled back. “I used to think I did, but I am not so sure anymore. He seems to have changed, Artemisia. You will probably be happy to know that you have had more effect on him than you seem to believe. And as for what I said earlier, about wanting him: Forget it, please. I am going back to San Francisco as soon as Hettie Houck returns to the lighthouse, which she has promised will be no later than the first of July. San Francisco is where I belong, not here; the only thing I want is to go home!”

With that I made a rather grand exit, or so I intended, but the effect was spoiled when Artemisia came running after me.

“Wait, Fremont!” she cried. “I forgot to tell you something.”
One hand on Bessie’s bridle, I forced myself to turn around. “Yes?”

“Misha—Michael, as you call him—wants you to take care of the Maxwell in his absence. He said to tell you he’s left it in Monterey by the wharf, where the boat is kept. The keys will be with this man.” The piece of paper she thrust at me was still warm—she had drawn it from her bosom.

I stuck it quickly in my pocket, then climbed into the shay. “Thank you.”

She shrugged and smiled again, more genuinely this time. “I guess that should tell me where I stand. He leaves you the car, and I get stuck with the damn cat.”

“Well, you do already have a car,” said I, the paragon of reason, waving as I drove off.

I waited impatiently for Quincy to come back from church. Yesterday I’d brought the Maxwell back from where Michael had left it near Fisherman’s Wharf, and now I was dying to go out for a spin. Poor Bessie—my affections had quite completely deserted the horse as soon as Max was mine again. And just to think: I was the person who had said to Michael some ten months ago that automobiles would never catch on because they do not have the personality of a horse!

So I was fallible—the way things had been going lately, that was not exactly news to me.

I smiled, thinking of how pleased Quincy had been when I suggested that, as I now had the Maxwell, he might as well drive Hettie’s rig to church. He’d driven off looking mighty sharp in his best suit, grinning from ear to ear, his usual laconic manner quite gone. “They will not know you,” I’d teased, “they will think a handsome stranger has come in your stead.”

When Quincy still had not returned by one o’clock, I was worried, but not greatly. He was probably doing what I wanted to do: driving around in the beautiful weather. Perhaps he had a lady friend to impress—if so, he would surely do it today, he would sweep her off her feet. I certainly didn’t begrudge him a little time off. God knew he had taken the watches often enough for me.

On watch today there was little to observe, aside from the grandeur of the scenery. People do not seem to do much recreational sailing on Monterey Bay. On Sundays when the fishing boats do not go out, the bay waters belong to the seals and fishes. It occurred to me as I went back down the spiral stairs from the watch room that I had not seen a whale for many days. Apparently the migration was over. If the whalers did not stop chasing every whale that came into sight, one of these days the migrations of whales would be over permanently. Already along the East Coast some types of whales pass by no more.

I fastened the black shawl with a brooch at the throat so that it would not blow open, then taped a note on the lighthouse door:
I WILL BE BACK SOON. F.J.
The note was primarily for Quincy, which was why I kept it simple. I checked my pockets—yes, I had money in case anything happened, and a handkerchief if I needed it.

“Well, Max,” I said as I climbed behind the wheel, “here we go again!” And we were off. I must say it was a great pleasure to drive again, and the requisite skill returned as if it had been only yesterday instead of months since Max was my companion and helper in the harrowing confusion of post-earthquake San Francisco.