How to Wash a Cat (19 page)

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Authors: Rebecca M. Hale

BOOK: How to Wash a Cat
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I shifted Rupert’s weight in my arms as I struggled to take all of this in. “Leidesdorff’s tunnel—you mean William Leidesdorff?”
Mr. Wang nodded solemnly, then amended. “Technically, the brick section that now connects to the basement of the Green Vase is all that remains of the original tunnel. Most of it was torn out in the early 1900s when the city installed the downtown sewage system. Someone arranged to have one of the sewage lines taken out of use and joined to the remaining brick section. I daresay a number of people have made their way through that passage over the years.”
My nose crinkled, remembering the slimy walls and rank odor.
Mr. Wang noted my expression. “Water occasionally backs up into it. Leaves kind of a bad smell in places.”
I puzzled on his explanation. “But, Leidesdorff—he couldn’t have built the tunnel. The Green Vase was still under water when he died. That section of landfill hadn’t been filled in yet.”
Mr. Wang scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully and tilted his head towards me. “Death—is a relative concept. It depends a lot on your perspective.”
I stared at the small, wrinkled man, my brow furrowed.
“Tell me, dear,” he said, his gray eyes studying me closely. “What date of death are you using for your calculations?”
“The date,” I stopped, stuttering. “The date all of the guidebooks give.” I felt like a pupil in a classroom. “1848.” I gave the number tentatively, almost as a question. “Just before the Gold Rush hit.”
“Consider,” Mr. Wang replied, his voice even and unemotional. “An alternative possibility.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
Mr. Wang took a puff on his cigarette as he stroked Isabella’s smooth white coat. “Mr. Leidesdorff was a very
resourceful
man,” he said slowly. “The city was engulfed in unprecedented chaos right after his funeral. Minus those enormous lamb chop sideburns, I don’t think it would have taken too elaborate a disguise for him to slip under the radar—and into his new place of employment.”
“You mean he faked his death?” I asked incredulously, trying to recall facts from my research on Leidesdorff. “What about the encephalitis? He fell sick with fever. Everyone saw him pass out . . .”
“Yes,” Mr. Wang replied, his eyes twinkling. “They all
thought
they saw him die.”
“There was a funeral procession through town,” I protested. “He was buried in the floor of the Mission Dolores chapel.”
Isabella purred loudly as Mr. Wang’s bony fingers rubbed the space on her head just behind her orange-tipped ears.
“You’ve heard of the famous architect, Willis Polk?” he asked. “Back in 1916, he was commissioned to do a restoration of the Mission to try to protect it against future earthquakes. He put steel girders into the walls, supports into the ceiling, and laid tile over the dirt floor.” Mr. Wang paused and ran his tongue over his nicotine-stained teeth. “In order to sink the footings for the tile, Polk had to move Leidesdorff’s grave—it was located too close to the wall. The workers dug down underneath the marker, looking for the body. They dug and dug, but they never found him.”
I sucked on my bottom lip, still skeptical. “What do you mean by new place of employment?” I asked. “
Here
, in San Francisco?”
Mr. Wang nodded. “There have always been rumors and speculations about William Leidesdorff, particularly his suspicious death. According to one story, Leidesdorff picked up a special sleeping drought during his travels . . . one that would mimic the symptoms of a heavy fever, then induce a deep, almost undetectable sleep.”
Mr. Wang smiled indulgently. “Your uncle tracked down writing samples from the ledger for Leidesdorff’s warehouse and that of the Tehama Hotel. They were an exact match.”
At any second, I felt as if I might fall backwards into the begonias. “The hotel that Joseph Folsom built—where Leidesdorff’s warehouse used to stand?” I asked.
Mr. Wang nodded appreciatively. “Ah, you’ve been doing your homework. You see, Captain Folsom wasn’t really around much.” A whimsical expression flickered across his thin face. “What with all of his trips to the Virgin Islands trying to prove that Anna Spark woman was Leidesdorff’s rightful heir.”
The text of the Ralston book I’d been reading earlier that evening leapt in front of my face as I murmured, “The Tehama Hotel was later replaced by William Ralston’s bank.”
Mr. Wang gleamed, his yellow teeth even more dingy in the lamplight. “When Ralston bought the land, he had the entire structure of the hotel carted off to another lot down the street. He told people he couldn’t bare to destroy the lovely, old building. That allowed him to have the bank built directly on top of the old foundations.”
Mr. Wang stroked his chin, his grin growing wider. “Of course, the tunnel’s access to the bank has been closed off for almost a hundred years now.”
“And this,” I said, scanning the cramped confines of the flower stall. “This is where Leidesdorff’s flower garden used to be. Behind his house.”
“In the beginning, this was the start of the tunnel. It allowed Leidesdorff to travel between his house and warehouse undetected. Now, it’s just one stop along the turnpike.” Isabella looked up at Mr. Wang as he chuckled raspily. “The city engineers had a dickens of a time shoring up around that old sewage pipe when they put the BART line in underneath Market Street. They couldn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to tear it out.”
BART, short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, ran a subway line underneath the bay between San Francisco and Oak-land. The train traveled underground for several stops in downtown San Francisco, running along Market Street.
“The tunnel runs all the way to the other side of Market,” I said, trying to follow in my head the pencil line I’d studied on the parchment. “Where does it go from there?”
Mr. Wang stroked Isabella’s head and then looked back up at me, his narrow eyes squinting in the meager light. “I think I mentioned that Mr. Leidesdorff was a resourceful type. You see, while Captain Folsom was scouring the Virgin Islands for Mrs. Spark, Leidesdorff became close to a particularly influential guest at the Tehama. A man who could appreciate the value of an underground tunnel—one that could give him secret access in and out of his bank. One that could be expanded to run to the site he planned for his fancy new five star hotel.”
“William Ralston,” I said, finally understanding the connection. “The tunnel goes across Market to the Palace Hotel.”
I looked back towards the broom closet, disbelievingly. “And Oscar figured all of this out?” I demanded, pursing my lips. “Before he died?”
Mr. Wang’s expression grew serious. “I’m afraid, my dear,” he said softly. “That may have been the reason
why
he died. I think he may have uncovered something more than the tunnel in his research.”
The rain poured down steadily outside. I listened to the drops beating against the window, pondering on Mr. Wang’s revelations, each train of thought inevitably traveling to the missing diamonds, which had last been seen in the vault at Ralston’s bank.
There was a bump at the door leading to the street. Isabella leapt lightly from Mr. Wang’s lap as he dropped the remains of his cigarette on the floor and smashed it with his foot.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said.
He opened the door, and a young woman with long, black, silky-straight hair leaned in. She gave him a reproachful look, whispered something to him, and left.
“My daughter’s giving me five more minutes before she turns me in,” he said. He patted the cigarette box in his pocket and smiled ruefully. “I’m not supposed to be having these.”
“It’s a disgusting habit,” I said stiffly. I stepped closer towards his chair. “You don’t think that Oscar had a stroke that morning, do you?” I bit down on my lip, unable to voice the horrifying implication.
“That,” Mr. Wang said, pulling out a small, black wallet from his coat pocket and flashing a police badge at me, “is what I’m trying to find out. I retired from the force several years ago, but I still have some connections there. I’ve been making some discreet inquiries.”
“The autopsy?” I asked, my voice faltering.
“There was no autopsy,” he confirmed, shaking his head.
“But, someone called me,” I insisted.
Mr. Wang stroked his upper lip thoughtfully, his fingers instinctively searching for the ever-present cigarette. “What do you remember about that conversation?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “There wasn’t much to it—it took less than a minute. It was a man’s voice. He told me that Oscar had died of a stroke—and that he didn’t suffer much.”
I gave Mr. Wang a disapproving look as he pulled out a second cigarette and lit it. He puffed silently for a moment, his eyes glazing over as he savored the toxic smoke.
“You know, when Leidesdorff first came to this part of California, it was just a small Mexican outpost that few people knew about. It must have seemed like a perfect place to escape from all his troubles—to start a new life.”
Mr. Wang took another pull on the cigarette. The smoke was starting to irritate my eyes, but I couldn’t turn away.
“But then the United States annexed the territory of California, and gold was beginning to be discovered up in the Sierras. Leidesdorff knew that everything was about to change—that soon this place would be flooded with people. People who might recognize him and send word back to New Orleans.”
Mr. Wang wheezed weakly, his face bluing as his body seized for oxygen. He held up a pale, veined hand as his incapacitated lungs struggled to compensate. Finally, he continued.
“Leidesdorff sold his warehouse to Folsom, but he was still using the secret room underneath it to store all of the gold he was collecting—from liquidating his assets and from what he’d been able to collect so far on the property in the Sierras.” Smoke funneled over his head as Mr. Wang crossed his scarecrow legs at the knees.
“Leidesdorff snuck in and out of the room using the tunnel. At that point, it ran along the shoreline. It opened up at a little inlet cove, away from the main center of town, so that he could come and go unseen. The tunnel was a lot less stable in the beginning. Just a hole in the mud propped up by wooden beams. Ralston financed the up-grade to brick when he built his bank building—and its extension through the landfill to the basement of the Green Vase.”
“The line on the map represents the tunnel,” I muttered, almost to myself.
“On Oscar’s map?” Mr. Wang coughed again, smoke furling out through the narrow slits in his nose. “Yes, he was quite proud of himself for mapping it out. I assume that’s what was in the package I gave you.”
Mr. Wang looked down at his watch, then glanced nervously at the front door. “There was one other person who knew Leidesdorff’s secrets. When he came to California, he brought with him a young woman to work as his maid. She ran his house, took care of him.”
Mr. Wang dropped the half-smoked cigarette near the first stump and squashed it as a stern, gray-haired woman walked quickly past the window and pounded on the front door.
“Uh oh,” he said, giving me a wink. “That’s the boss. My time’s up.” His knees cracked as he stood up and hobbled to the door. His thin voice was almost a whisper as he concluded, “The last anyone saw of the housekeeper was at Leidesdorff’s fake funeral.”
Keys clicked in the lock, and the door flew open. The withered old woman strode across the threshold like a sumo wrestler. Mr. Wang gave her a humble, apologetic look as she scolded him sharply in a language I couldn’t understand.
I scooped up the cats, struggling to arrange one on each arm, and followed Mr. Wang outside where the rain had slacked off to an intermittent drip.
Mr. Wang waved goodbye. His wife locked the door behind us and steered him down the street as I turned towards the Green Vase.
“Wait,” his wheezing voice called out behind me as he shuffled breathlessly back. “Let’s,” he said painfully between gasps for air, “let’s keep this a secret for the time being.” He patted the shirt pocket where he’d stuck his badge in behind the carton of cigarettes.
“Those things are going to kill you, you know,” I said reproachfully.
“I’m afraid, my dear, they already have.” He chuckled ruefully. “Death is a relative concept.”
Chapter 22
THE FURRY, ROUND rump of Rupert squeezed under the six-inch crawl space of a credenza in the musty showroom of the Green Vase. Several half-empty boxes stacked haphazardly on its surface swayed back and forth as Rupert wiggled along underneath, tunneling his way through the substructure’s undergrowth of spiderwebs, lint, and dust. I could just make out the apricot-orange tips of his ears as his shadowed, blue eyes peeked out the other side, stealthily tracking his target.
She sauntered past his hidden position, feigning interest in the corpse of a long-deceased cricket swinging enticingly from the frayed upholstery of the swivel-mounted dental chair. The pipe of her long, graceful tail arched into a question mark, its orange tip flashing like a lure on the end of a fishing line.
Rupert studied her carefully, hardly believing the luck of his location. The bushy end of his feather duster tail thwumped against the floor underneath the credenza as he plotted his next move. He shifted his weight back and forth, the white wires of his whiskers twitching with anticipation. His back legs coiled up, and he prepared to launch.

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