How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) (22 page)

FULL CIRCLE

THE FOLLOWING MORNING,
the rain returned to full force, beating down on the city as if it were a ship out at sea. Wild whips of water lashed San Francisco’s hilly streets, pelting the peninsula with a drenching downpour. Pedestrians perfected their stormy weather sprint, leaping over flooded potholes and gutters as they raced between points of cover.

Outside the Green Vase showroom, an abandoned umbrella scuttled down the sidewalk, its protective cup turned inside out, the waterproof fabric shredded from its round metal frame.

Upstairs in the kitchen, a much warmer—and drier—scene prevailed.

The niece sat at the breakfast table, studying her increasingly worn reference text on San Francisco’s New Deal art. Isabella perched on a chair beside her person while Rupert hunkered on the floor beside his diet cat food–filled bowl, protesting.

“I think the Beach Chalet in Golden Gate Park is the next logical place to look,” the niece said, raising her voice to be heard over Rupert’s mournful howl. “The Chalet’s first floor has a series of San Francisco–themed murals that were done by one of the Coit Tower artists.”

She glanced over at the empty takeout carton. Other than the distinctive
O
printed on the lid—and the rapidly consumed fried chicken that had been inside—the carton had failed to yield any additional clues.

With a sigh, she buried her head in her hands. She was no closer to sorting out the cryptic message than she had been at the Rincon Center the previous day.

“Follow the murals,” she groaned. “What does it mean?”

Isabella shifted her weight, trying not to convey the skeptical thoughts in her head. No need to pile on to an already hopeless situation, she reasoned.

Suddenly, the niece straightened her posture. Her face assumed a resolute expression.

Monty’s inauguration ceremony was scheduled for later that afternoon, but they had plenty of time to check out the Beach Chalet before the event at City Hall.

“Who’s up for a trip to the ocean?” she asked, flipping the book’s cover shut.

Isabella’s furry eyebrows crinkled with concern. The weather outside was definitely inhospitable for cats.

After a disbelieving look up at his person, Rupert sprinted to the living room and hid under the couch.

• • •

WAVES CRASHED ALONG
the wide beach that fronted the Great Highway at the western edge of Golden Gate Park. The ocean raged like an intemperate child, casting fistfuls of sand onto the embankment with each swamping surge of water.

The Beach Chalet’s rectangular block faced the ocean monster head on. A Spanish Colonial designed by Willis Polk, the two-story structure had outlasted many a storm. Built in 1924 as a public beach house, the first floor had once provided changing rooms for Ocean Beach’s intrepid swimmers. Over the years, the building had been used as a VFW social hall and, during World War II, as a dormitory for soldiers.

Currently, the Beach Chalet housed two separate restaurants, one in its rear garden area and one on the second floor overlooking the beach and the petulant Pacific.

The main room on the first floor, however, was dedicated to a display of the building’s New Deal–era murals.

• • •

A TAXI-VAN CARRYING
the niece and the cat-filled stroller pulled into the Beach Chalet parking lot and stopped adjacent to the front entrance. After paying the driver, the niece lifted the stroller out of the van’s sliding side door.

Battling the wind and rain, she reached into the passenger compartment to fluff up the blankets so that Rupert and Isabella would be less visible. Then she propped open the Chalet door and rolled the stroller through the entrance.

Just inside, a hostess stood behind a counter, taking reservations for tables in the upstairs restaurant. A passage to the ground-floor eating establishment led away from the rear of the room. A small gift shop occupied a narrow space at the north end.

The rest of the lobby was dedicated to the murals.

Avoiding the hostess, the niece pushed the stroller around the room’s long circumference, studying the colorful images plastered across the walls.

Her uncle, she thought, would have felt right at home here. From the selection of the artist to the way in which the local scenes were presented, the influence of the Bohemians was readily apparent.

The Chalet’s murals were all painted by Lucien Labaudt, a prominent member of the Bohemian Club—and a Coit Tower alumnus.

Quotes from noted Bay Area poets and writers framed the arches of the windows and inner doorways, one for each nautical direction. Bret Harte, George Sterling, Joaquin Miller, and Ina Coolbrith—each author was either a well-known Bohemian or had been closely associated with the group.

“I have a good feeling about this,” the niece whispered down toward the stroller. “I know I’ve said this before, but I think we’re on the right track.”

Isabella grudgingly concurred. Beside her, Rupert was more interested in the smells emanating from the two restaurants. His nose sniffed into overdrive, hoping to pick up the scent of fried chicken.

The niece stopped near the Chalet’s front entrance, her attention drawn to a mural depicting famed architect Arthur Brown Jr. standing in front of his seminal achievement, City Hall.

Brown was shown as a serious-looking businessman in a fedora, red-striped tie, and suit. In his hands, he held the blueprints for another of his noted works, Coit Tower. The scrolled plans had been unfurled just enough to reveal a sketch of the tower and its square base.

In front of the image of City Hall, a fountain shot up a single stream of water, which arced and fell in such a way as to appear that the entire spray was reversed—and coming out of the sketched tower’s fluted top end.

Either Labaudt hadn’t believed Brown’s protestations that the tower’s nozzle shape was merely a coincidence or he was poking fun at the stuffy architect, the niece thought with a smile.

Then she paused, struck by the realization that with the Coit Tower reference, her route had just come full circle.

THE MURAL-ED MESSAGE

STANDING INSIDE THE
Beach Chalet, staring at yet another wall of murals, the niece puzzled over the path she and the cats had taken through San Francisco over the last two days.

After receiving a mandate to “Follow the Murals” on the kitchen floor, they had headed to the downtown intersection highlighted in Coit Tower’s
City Life
mural. By shifting the mural to fit the real life orientation of the painted landmarks, the trio had been directed down Leidesdorff Alley to the Pacific Stock Exchange (home to one of Diego Rivera’s famous works). From there, they had scooted across Market to the Rincon Center Post Office (site of a mural display detailing the history of California), and had now arrived at the Beach Chalet.

Other than a commonality of New Deal art, the niece had little to link the locations, and she was at a loss to explain how any of her mural-gazing could possibly help find her missing uncle Oscar—or have anything to do with the murdered City Hall intern.

She glanced down at her feline assistants inside the stroller, hoping for some insight or clarification. Isabella gazed wordlessly up at her person, while Rupert, his eyes peeled for another package of fried chicken, merely licked his lips.

With a sigh of dogged determination, the niece continued her review of the Beach Chalet’s murals.

A few of the paintings captured urban San Francisco scenes such as Union Square, Chinatown, and the Embarcadero, but most of the wall space focused on outdoor settings. A picnic at Baker Beach took up one swath of the lobby’s rear wall. The other half was occupied by people at leisure or play in Golden Gate Park.

It was as she gazed at the second of these outdoor vistas that her spirits lifted.

Just above a couple feeding a squirrel at a park bench, she spied the curiously located Conservatory of Flowers.

She stared for a minute at the juxtaposition of the conservatory vis-à-vis two other structures in the far background, the De Young Museum tower and the gate for the Japanese Tea Gardens, trying to be sure.

Just like the landmarks in the
City Life
mural, this one was geographically out of place—and the building at the center of the mismatch had a close tie to her uncle’s most recent alias.

Near the end of his life, the miserly millionaire James Lick had purchased a glass-paneled conservatory for use on his San Jose estate. He died before the conservatory’s kit could be constructed; the parts were still wrapped up in shipping crates, unassembled, at his death. The packages were eventually donated to Golden Gate Park and formed the structural basis for one of the park’s oldest buildings, the Conservatory of Flowers.

“Follow the murals,” the niece said, breathless at the discovery. “Issy, it’s the flowers! The Conservatory of Flowers!”

THE WHITE VAN

EAGER TO MOVE
on to what she hoped would be their last destination, the niece parked the stroller in front of the Beach Chalet’s front windows and pulled out her cell phone. As she prepared to call the taxi driver who had dropped them off earlier, she glanced out at the parking lot with a shudder.

Beyond the protection of the building’s outer colonnade, the water came down in sheets. The expanse of ocean across the street was barely visible.

“Wow, it’s raining dogs and . . .”

At Isabella’s sharp look, the niece cut short the comment.

“Well, it’s really pouring outside.”

She checked her watch. She wanted to get to the Conservatory of Flowers as quickly as possible, but there wasn’t enough time to make that stop before Monty’s inauguration ceremony. They were due at City Hall within the hour.

She gritted her teeth in frustration. She had no desire to watch Monty wallow in his mayoral triumph.

“Maybe he wouldn’t notice if we didn’t show up,” she said, trying to convince herself of this unlikely possibility.

“Mrao,”
Isabella chirped up from the stroller, a concise rejection of that notion.

“You’re right,” the niece conceded. “We’d never hear the end of it.”

Ruefully, she began punching the taxi driver’s number into her phone.

“Hello,” she said when he picked up on the other end. “We’re ready for you to . . . hold on, wait a minute. I’ll have to call you back.”

Through the rain, she’d spied the blurry image of a white cargo van at the far end of the parking lot.

There were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of similar vehicles driving around the Bay Area. Other than the occasional logo painted onto their sides, they all pretty much looked the same. There was something about this particular van, however, that struck the niece as familiar.

Despite the number of dents, scratches, and dings, the van looked remarkably similar to the one owned by her nosy neighbor.

She had last seen the van the night of the board of supervisors meeting. Monty had driven the niece and her two cats to Mountain Lake in a futile quest to locate Clive and bring him back to the Academy of Sciences. The rescue mission had been aborted when the alligator discovered a dietary fondness for wet suit–clad interim mayors.

The van had disappeared the next day. Monty claimed it had been stolen, but the niece had always doubted that story.

She suspected it had gone on an extended loan—to the fleeing members of the Bohemian Club.

• • •

MINDFUL OF THE
downpour they would encounter between the Beach Chalet’s front porch and the van’s parking space at the far end of the lot, the niece pulled out an extra nylon awning that fit over the stroller’s passenger compartment and attached it to the upper framing. The stroller’s nylon fabric was water resistant, and the niece had reinforced the cloth surface with a coating of water repellant spray. The combination of these measures, she reasoned, should keep the cats relatively dry.

“At least, you’ll be drier than me,” she said as she set off from the porch.

Pushing the stroller at top speed, the niece ran through the rain to the far end of the parking lot. The hood to her raincoat fell back as she peeked in through the driver’s side window.

A bobblehead figure of the Lieutenant Governor, fashioned during his term as mayor of San Francisco, had been affixed to the dashboard. That confirmed it—this was Monty’s van.

Cupping her hands, she pushed her face against the glass, trying to see through the front seating area to the rear cargo compartment.

Isabella
meowed
a warning as a blur of wild red hair suddenly popped into the niece’s view, causing her to jump away from the van.

Oblivious to the rain, Sam rolled down the window and cheerfully called out, “Need a ride? I’m on my way to City Hall.”