How to Wash a Cat (35 page)

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Authors: Rebecca M. Hale

BOOK: How to Wash a Cat
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The high heels on Miranda’s feet stamped across the increasingly wet floor of the basement. The pool of water trickling into the basement from the tunnel seemed to be spreading.
“I suppose they were happy for a while, but the trouble that had started in New Orleans eventually followed them here. Leidesdorff never really kicked his gambling addiction. The seed of that sickness was always in him.” Miranda shook her head. “Everything went downhill when Leidesdorff met Joseph Folsom.”
“Ah,” Monty interjected. He raised his forefinger as if he were about to contribute a thought, but Miranda silenced him with a throttling glare.
“Captain Folsom came to California to make a name for himself in the war with Mexico. But while there was plenty of fighting in other parts of the state, Northern California was relatively quiet. Folsom found himself stuck in an un-glamorous, low paying customs officer assignment. He grew frustrated standing by while everyone around him made fortunes buying and selling real estate. Even before the Gold Rush, the value of land in San Francisco had begun to dramatically appreciate—no one made more money off of that rise than William Leidesdorff.”
Miranda’s courtroom persona had taken over from her otherwise abrasive personality. For a moment, I found myself lost in the story, detached from the unpleasant harshness of the speaker.
“Folsom scraped together every penny of his meager earnings, trying to purchase a piece of land in the growing town, but he couldn’t compete with the loads of money Leidesdorff could bring to the table. Folsom lost bid after bid.”
Miranda paused to take a breath, and the silent room waited anxiously for her to continue. I brushed my fingers against my cheeks—they had begun to pulse with a faint inner heat. I must be coming down sick, I thought, swallowing thickly as Miranda resumed the story.
“When Folsom found out about Leidesdorff’s gambling addiction, he knew he’d found his way in. It wasn’t long before Leidesdorff lost his house, his warehouse, and most of his savings—all of it in games of chance.”
A dull pounding began building inside my head. I
thought wistfully of the aspirin bottle in the kitchen, two stories above.
“Hortense finally convinced Leidesdorff that they had to skip town. Leidesdorff collected a much gold as he could from his last piece of land up in the Sierras. They planned to sell it and hop aboard one of the sugar cane steamers en route to Hawaii. They’d have enough of a nest egg to start over somewhere new.”
Miranda and her sweet, flowery perfume circled behind me, fueling the sickening wave of nausea in my stomach. My head swooned with lightness, and I grabbed on to the furry shoulder of the kangaroo.
“But Folsom was relentless. He organized a horse race and named Leidesdorff as the honorary sponsor. It was an historic event—the first one to be held in Northern California. Leidesdorff couldn’t refuse.
“The race was held out by the Mission Dolores. Leidesdorff quickly got caught up in a bet on the main race. Despite the vast amount of gold sitting on it, Leidesdorff was about to ante up his land in the Sierras on a bet with Folsom when Hortense intervened.”
Miranda drew up her breath, ran her tongue over the pasty coating of her lips, then continued. “Leidesdorff often wore a pair of tulip-shaped cufflinks. They were a present from Hortense. She’d bought them at a voodoo shop in New Orleans. You see,
she
was the one with the tulip fixation.”
Miranda swung her curvy figure in front of the balding man standing in the corner of the basement. “The cufflinks had been specially designed, so that the interior of the stem was hollow. The head of each tulip could be twisted off to access a vial of sleeping potion inside the stem.”
The balding man’s pudgy fingers tugged on the tulip-free cuffs of his shirt. His thin lips curved up in a confident smile as Miranda pushed herself closer in towards his flat, featureless face.
“Leidesdorff never knew what hit him. His temperature jumped up; his face turned a bright, tomato red. He crumpled to the ground from the throbbing pain inside of his head. They carried him into the Mission to wait for a doctor, but he slipped into a coma before one could be summoned.”
I was feeling more and more sympathy for the drugged Leidesdorff. My own head felt as if a dozen firefighters had pushed their way in to quench a five alarm blaze.
“Hortense confessed what she’d done to the Mission’s priest, and he took pity on her. The priest pronounced Leidesdorff dead, and they hastily arranged the funeral. Hortense and the priest dug a rabbit hole under the wall of the church to feed ventilation into Leidesdorff’s shallow grave. As soon as the funeral was over, the two of them hefted Leidesdorff’s comatose body into a small dingy, and Hortense began rowing it through the bay.”
Miranda’s long, crunchy eyelashes were now only inches away from the balding head.
“She was a small woman. It took her all afternoon to get the boat back around to the small inlet cove near the entrance to the tunnel. She was planning on pulling in there for the night to let Leidesdorff recoup from the potion; then the two of them could row out to one of the steamer vessels the next morning.”
Miranda’s voice intensified sternly.
“Needless to say, the potion didn’t perform as advertised. Leidesdorff did come out of the coma—but he was consumed by a delirious, drug-induced hallucination. The boat was just inside the cove, only about forty to fifty yards from the bank when all of Leidesdorff’s thrashing about flipped it over. Hortense tried to save him . . . but it was all she could do to get to shore herself.”
Miranda’s sharply outlined eyes stared into the inky blackness of the tunnel. “It was just as well. Leidesdorff drowned before the toxin could kill him.”
Across the room, Ivan glanced uneasily at me, a flicker of emotion cluttering the strong lines of his face.
The sharp, eagle eyes of the de-turbaned, un-mustached man narrowed skeptically.
“Of course, Hortense blamed herself—but she never forgave Folsom for his role in Leidesdorff’s demise. Hortense haunted him for the rest of his life. Folsom never understood why his luck took such a precipitous downward turn.
“Hortense sent Folsom on a wild-goose chase to the Virgin Islands to look for Anna Spark, the woman Hortense had paid to pose as Leidesdorff’s mother. Folsom mortgaged everything he had to purchase the Leidesdorff land in the Sierras from the woman posing as Leidesdorff’s mother, presumed to be his sole surviving heir.
“Hortense took on a disguise and obtained a position at the Tehama Hotel. She began spreading the rumor that Leidesdorff had faked his death—the mere thought of it nearly drove Folsom mad. Of course, the endless years of litigation over the Leidesdorff estate pushed him completely over the edge. By the time it finally concluded in Folsom’s favor, he was bankrupt.”
Miranda’s dominating voice leveled the basement with its steely, shoveling tone.
“Folsom eventually died at the age of thirty-eight, the exact same age as Leidesdorff on his passing—from the sudden onset of a mysterious fever and unexplained brain swelling.”
Chapter 45
“WHAT ABOUT THE tunnel?” Monty could stay quiet no longer. A squeaking peep piped out of his mouth as Miranda spun around at him and spiked the underside of his bouncing chin with one of her razor sharp nails. The turban teetered on his head as he stretched his long neck towards the ceiling. “Was Hortense responsible for that, too?”
“Yes,” a deep, confident voice sounded through the basement before Miranda had a chance to respond. The balding man stepped forward into the center of our circle, his self-assurance apparently un-rattled by Miranda’s revelations. Despite his altered appearance, I still thought of him as Gordon Bosco.
“Hortense never really accepted Leidesdorff’s death. She always held on to the hope that the potion worked—that he might be revived—if only she could find him.”
Monty collapsed against the wall of the basement as Miranda released him from her hooking fingernail.
“Hortense met William Ralston while she was working at the Tehama Hotel,” Gordon continued. “She knew he could help her. He was one of the few people with the influence and capital to extend the tunnel through the landfill towards the area where Leidesdorff had drowned, where he was now buried.”
My feverish vision blurred as I stared into the flat, rolling contours of Gordon’s face. Dizzying, I glanced down at my feet where the icy pool of water seeping in from the tunnel had begun to soak my running shoes.
“Ralston was intrigued by Hortense’s story—particularly when she told him about the underground tunnel. Ralston purchased the Tehama for the site of his new bank. He had the old building lifted up from its foundation and carted off, so that the substructure remained undisturbed.”
The cool water crept up over my shoes, lapping frigid shackles around my ankles.
“Hortense pleaded with Ralston to extend the tunnel through the new landfill to the area where Leidesdorff had drowned. Ralston wanted to keep the tunnel a secret, so he agreed—in exchange for her silence.”
A frigid tension crept up my legs, tightening the tendons that ran behind my knees.
“Ralston’s workers finished the Green Vase end of the tunnel without any sign of Leidesdorff’s corpse. Hortense tried to convince Ralston to dig further, but he had already set his sights on his new hotel—whose location would be on the other side of town. Ralston focused all of his resources on the tunnel’s extension to the new construction site.”
My shoulders scrunched up as the rising freeze of the water met the feverish heat of my head.
“Hortense didn’t take his rejection well. The last Ralston saw of her was right before the diamonds went missing from the vault at his bank.” Gordon stroked his thin lips thoughtfully. “Hortense used the smaller diamonds to make the cat costumes, but the larger one was too big to fit into the chain netting. Oscar was pretty sure she hid it here in the Green Vase.”
“If you figured out all of this,” Miranda sighed tiredly, “why are you so insistent that the potion works?” Her voice remained firm, but her darkened eyes had begun to betray her.
“Oh, it works.” Gordon replied slyly. “Like you, Oscar tried to convince me that it didn’t. But I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.” He strummed his substantial stomach. “Tell me, dear,” he said, leaning towards me. “I’m so curious. What’s hidden in the stuffed kangaroo?”
I stared back, unable to answer. The pounding in my head had become unbearable. I felt as if I might pass out at any moment.
Ivan pursed his lips and briskly approached the kangaroo. His roughened fingers reached into the open mouth and gingerly fished out Oscar’s wadded up handkerchief. He unfolded the worn cloth and unwrapped a gleaming wire cage.
“Hey,” Monty said, reaching over Ivan’s right shoulder to pluck the cage out of Ivan’s hands. “That’s the thing my dry cleaner found in my shirt pocket.”
I struggled to clear my throat. “It’s a spider cage,” I whispered hoarsely. “Oscar traveled all the way to New Orleans to track down the old voodoo recipe Hortense had picked up there. It uses venom from a spider that now lives in the Australian desert.”
Monty turned the glinting wires over in his hands. “I can poke my fingers through the wires,” he said nervously, holding the cage up to catch the dim light on the opposite end of the basement. “How does it keep them trapped inside?”
“It doesn’t,” Gordon replied, his eyes gleaming. “The spiders just like to spin their webs inside these wire structures. They’re kind of small. If you look closely, I think there’s one in there right now.”
Monty began bobbling the cage in his fingers as Gordon continued softly. “You know, the venom from this spider has an extraordinary effect on human beings.”
Monty gulped as Gordon crept a circle around him. “It causes a rapid swelling when injected into the skin. I’ve seen it make a person’s earlobe swell up like a grapefruit.”
The wire cage flew up into the air as Monty screeched and grabbed onto both sides of the turban, frantically pulling it down over his ears.
Miranda caught the wire cage in her hand, apparently unconcerned with the spider riding inside of it. “You can’t get hurt from just one,” she said scornfully. “It takes hundreds and hundreds of spiders to make up a small amount of potion.”
Gordon nodded as he pulled a gold, tulip-shaped cufflink out of his pocket. He held it in front of my face, so that I could read the ‘Made in Japan’ label on its back. “I think you’re familiar with my new line of cufflinks. You found the empty one I’d tossed into the bottom of that construction site across town.”
The rod-shaped gold piece flickered in the dim light as Gordon rolled it back and forth in his fingers. “I had a set of them made a couple of months ago. They’re a lot like the ones William Leidesdorff used to wear—with a slight improvement.”
Like a magician performing for an audience, Gordon flourished his fingers and wrapped them around the tulip head. Slowly, he unscrewed the lid on the small vial concealed within the stem. As he lifted the lid, I saw that it had been adapted to fit a narrow gauge needle. Hanging from the pointed tip of the needle was a drop of deep, berry red liquid.

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