How to Wash a Cat (18 page)
Authors: Rebecca M. Hale
BACK AT THE kitchen table above the Green Vase, stray strands of rain-soaked hair dripped onto my shoulders as I stared down at the extra copy of the Ralston book, wondering why someone would have impersonated Oscar to check it out of the library. I began to read.
Ralston, it seemed, had been a controversial figure. Depending on your perspective, he was either a keen visionary or a reckless gambler. He’d come to San Francisco in the 1850s, a self-made financier following the Gold Rush. Over time, Ralston amassed an immense fortune by repeatedly taking outrageous risks that, against all odds, paid out for him. The farther he stepped over the line, the greater his success. Each spectacular gain spurred him on to more and more extravagant excesses.
Fate finally caught up to him when he bought into a fraudulent scheme purporting to sell shares in a non-existent diamond mine deep in the California wilderness. The perpetrators of the hoax had purchased raw, uncut diamonds on the open market in Europe; then they brought them back to California where they pitched them as newly discovered stones from a diamond field in the western United States.
So strong was Ralston’s belief in his own innate luck, he hardly questioned the veracity of the claims. His judgment may have been swayed, in part, by the spectacular size of one of the diamonds in the sample. When the scam collapsed, the subsequent scandal triggered the beginning of a decline in fortunes that would end with Ralston’s financial ruin and death a few years later.
The seed diamonds that had been used to lure Ralston and other investors into the scheme had been held as collateral in a vault at his bank. The diamonds went missing in the melee following the exposure of the fiasco and were never recovered. Speculation on the modern day value of the largest missing gem ranged to the millions of dollars.
Ralston’s bank, I remembered as I pulled my head up out of the book, had been built on the site of the Tehama Hotel—previously the location of Leidesdorff’s warehouse.
I tried to imagine the transformation of that pivotal piece of property. First, there was Leidesdorff’s rustic, barn-like warehouse, barrels, and crates of all sizes lining its walls, bundles of animal fur and sugar cane trundling up and down its entrance ramp.
The warehouse then provided the foundations for the dainty, doily-filled Tehama Hotel. Men in top hats and women in waist-slimming corsets had mingled in its parlor amid the scents of fancy cigars and bottles of scotch.
The same flooring later supported Ralston’s audaciously glamorous, marble-trimmed bank—and the vault, which had held the missing diamonds.
I reached across the table for the parchment and slid it towards me, focusing the flashlight beam on it again. This time, I followed the curling pencil line the opposite direction, tracing it along the water’s edge and out into a small inlet of water. With a start, I realized that the line terminated near where the Green Vase now stood.
My fingers trembling, I pulled the tulip key out of my pocket. Isabella tilted her head and chirped encouragingly.
“I hope you’re coming with me,” I replied as I started down the stairs to the first floor, “because it’s really creepy down there.”
If Oscar had discovered an entrance to a secret tunnel in the basement, it was time for me to find it.
Chapter 20
I PULLED UP on the handle to the basement door, and the stairs unfolded into the darkness, clapping loudly as they hit the concrete floor below. Isabella bounded past me as I flicked on the flashlight and started down into the hole. Rupert woke up from his nap and groggily trailed behind us.
I paused for a moment at the base of the steps, searching the damp darkness with the beam of light. The clutter of shipping crates, cardboard boxes, and cloaked furniture felt overwhelming.
“This place is a mess,” I sighed, brushing a spiderweb from my forehead.
I wandered through the room, finally arriving at the far end where Oscar had directed Ivan to stash the replacement door. The cold, dark wall stared back at me—unyieldingly blank.
I took the key out of my pocket and twisted it in my fingers, still staring at the wall. Isabella sat down next to my feet, her tail waving back and forth on the dusty floor.
I knelt down to stroke her head, and a small whisper of air grazed my cheek. I stopped in my half-bent stance and waited.
There, I felt it again.
A rank, moldy smell oozed out from the wall. The bricks were of the same vintage as the ones on the storefront upstairs. Many were cracked or chipped in places; here and there, chunks of mortar had crumbled onto the floor.
I held up my hand about an inch in front of the wall and began moving it back and forth, searching for the source of the air. Finally, at about four and a half feet off the ground, in the exact spot that had been covered up by the door, I felt the faint whisper of a breeze.
The air seemed to be coming out of a two-inch vertical gap between two of the bricks. At first, I thought it was another instance of the mortar cracking and falling out. But as I examined the wall more closely, it looked as if the opening had been tooled. The edges were smooth and rounded; the bricks on either side of the gap were slightly cleaner than those on the rest of the wall.
I took the tulip key out of my pocket and held it near the opening between the two bricks. The vertical length of the hole was about the same width as the key. I slid the key in, but it simply rattled in the space. When I yanked it back, a handful of stringy cobwebs came along with it.
Isabella stared up at the key, her blue eyes seeming to bewitch it. She rotated her head first one way, then another.
“Mreow,” she said, waving one paw in the air.
“Well, that’s just silly,” I replied, but I tried it anyway, shoving the key into the slot tulip-end first. This was a much snugger fit. For a moment I feared that the key was stuck, but it engaged with unseen metal fixtures, and the wall suddenly seemed to give.
I stepped back, worried that the earthquake earlier that day had weakened the structure of the building. Carefully, I crept back up to the wall, put my hands against it, and gave it a nudge. A four-foot-wide section started to swing, and the outline of a door emerged from the pattern of bricks. Now, I gave it a proper shove. The whole thing creaked and swung open into the basement, rotating on a hidden, interior hinge.
I leveled my flashlight into a pitch-black corridor.
Isabella leaned into the tunnel, ears pricked, nose crinkling. She walked through the opening, and I fell in line behind her.
Rupert sat on the basement floor, looking apprehensive. He wanted nothing to do with this murky, gaping hole in the wall.
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “You can stay here—in the cold, dark basement—without the flashlight.”
Rupert gave me a nasty look and cautiously followed us through the opening in the bricks.
I tried to shine as much light as possible into the passage as we crept forward. The sides of the tunnel were made of the same type of bricks as the basement, but the surface was slick and slimy. There was no light except for my flashlight and no sound except for our feet sliding forward. I tried not to look too closely at the walls, certain they would be crawling with insects.
No matter, the bugs introduced themselves anyway. A shiny black beetle fell from the ceiling right in front of my feet. I jumped, stifling a scream. Isabella spun around, pounced, and swallowed it in one motion. She licked her lips, savoring the snack, as I turned to check on Rupert. He had flattened himself to the ground; his eyes were tightly closed.
I reached down and scooped him up. Somehow, I felt more invincible holding a terrified ball of fur in my arms.
We continued deeper into the tunnel. The passage turned several times, and I quickly lost my bearings, but we seemed to be gradually descending deeper into the earth.
The brick walls gave way to a slime-coated concrete. Corroded pipes, the same vintage as those in Dilla’s bathroom, ran along the ceiling.
“I’m in an abandoned sewage line,” I murmured, remembering Ivan’s comments.
I was starting to think that we should turn back when Isabella stopped short and chirped. I almost dropped Rupert as I goose-stepped around her.
She put her two front paws up against the wall; something above us had caught her attention. Tracing the flashlight beam upwards, I saw a column of metal rods that had been cinched into the concrete—like primitive steps to a ladder.
“Up has got to be better than down,” I said determinedly, setting Rupert on the floor and hooking the flashlight into a belt loop on my jeans.
I put my foot on the first rung and started climbing. The ladder took me up through an opening in the ceiling of the tunnel. After about ten feet, I hit a trap door similar to the one in the Green Vase. I grasped the handle with my free hand and eased the door up a couple of inches.
The room above was dark. I perched on the top of the ladder, listening, but it was deadly quiet. I lifted the hatch open the rest of the way and stuck my head up into the dark room.
Waving around the flashlight, all I could see were venting ducts and a couple of brooms leaned up against the wall. Otherwise, the space was vacant.
A furry body brushed past, almost knocking me off the ladder; Isabella had climbed up the stairs behind me. A plaintive wail echoed from the tunnel as she leapt from the top rung of the ladder and into the room.
“Hold on,” I called down to Rupert, who was not agile enough to climb the iron ladder. “I’m coming back to get you.”
I scrambled back to the floor of the tunnel and picked him up. Rupert’s claws gripped nervously into my sweater as I lumbered back up the ladder. I unhooked him at the top and pushed him through the opening. Isabella was already busy casing the room.
I clambered through the hatch, joining the cats. The best I could tell, we were in a broom closet—the upright entrance to which stood directly in front of us. I put an ear up against the door as Isabella sniffed at the crack underneath. I couldn’t hear anything, so I gently tried the doorknob.
It was locked.
“Why would someone put a lock on this side of a broom closet?” I thought. There was only one answer I could think of, and its implications made me uneasy. This lock was meant to keep out entrants from the tunnel.
After an uneasy glance at the open hatch, I trained the flashlight on the gold-plated handle of the door. It was framed with iron scrollwork—in what was now an eerily familiar design.
I pulled the tulip key out of my pocket and slid it into the lock, this time nubbed end first. There was a faint clicking sound as the handle turned.
The broom closet was the same cool, damp temperature as the tunnel below, but I felt a bead of sweat roll off my forehead. I brushed it off with the sleeve of my sweater and eased open the door.
The overpowering scent of fresh flowers rushed through my nostrils. I slid the flashlight through the opening and ran the beam over the rack of tulips in front of me.
On the ground near my feet, Isabella nosed through the slit in the doorway and, before I could stop her, pushed her way into the flower stall. With an exasperated sigh, I picked up Rupert and stepped through the door in time to see Isabella trotting past the tulip display and around a corner.
“Isabella,” I hissed. “Come back here.”
The Rupert shield pressed firmly up against my chest, I tiptoed to the edge of the rack and peered around the corner. There was no sign of Isabella. I crept forward, growing frustrated as I headed towards the front of the store.
“Isabella.”
She was nowhere to be seen.
“
Isabella
!”
Isabella
!”
The faint aroma of a clove cigarette tickled my nose as I stopped next to a stand of potted begonias. I heard the low rumble of Isabella’s purr as I turned the flashlight towards the source of the smoke.
Mr. Wang sat on a metal folding chair beside the entrance to the flower stall, smoking a cigarette while Isabella rubbed up against his knees.
Chapter 21
“JUST LIKE YOUR uncle,” the tiny Asian man chuckled from his folding chair.
I wasn’t sure if I should be terrified or amused. Light from a streetlamp outside shone a ghastly spotlight on his pale face. The cigarette teetered on the edge of his thin lips as he laughed.
“You found the tunnel,” he said. “I knew you would.”
“Just like Oscar?” I repeated his greeting as a question.
“Yes,” he replied. “Although Oscar came without cats.”
I watched, my stomach tightening, as he picked up Isabella and stroked her head with a small, bony hand. I was still holding Rupert clasped tightly to my chest, but he wriggled around so that he could see what was going on.
“The Jackson Square crowd has been looking for the entrance to Leidesdorff’s tunnel for years,” Mr. Wang continued, beaming me a knowing smile. “But Oscar always suspected the entrance was in his basement.”
Isabella curled up comfortably in Mr. Wang’s lap, still purring loudly.
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