Murder on the Cliff (20 page)

“How did she look?” he asked.

“She looked beautiful,” Charlotte replied. She described how, except for her broken ankles, there were no signs of injury. “Even the camellias in her hair were still in place,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. He leaned back, his tense shoulders sinking with relief. “I know it would have meant a lot to her not to have looked”—he paused to think—“ugly, grotesque. The police couldn’t tell me. They tried, but …”

“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte.

“The camellias. The symbol of premature death.” He smiled bitterly at the irony. “The police were here this morning,” he continued. “I couldn’t tell them anything. I don’t think I can do any better for you, but I’ll try.”

“I remember the
kouta
you sang at the geisha party.”

“‘Evening Rain’? Are you asking if I was making an appointment to meet Kichi after everyone had gone home?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Yes, I was.
Kouta
are known for their hidden meanings, but the hidden meaning in that one isn’t all that subtle. Paul Harris gave me a ride home; after he dropped me off, I turned right around and came back.”

“You walked?”

Shawn nodded. “It’s only a mile and half. It was about eleven forty-five when I got back to the temple. I was supposed to meet Kichi at the rendezvous tree—the pine at the corner of the gallery. But she wasn’t there, so I left.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“Not at the house. But when I was standing at the railing, I saw a man in a kimono on the Cliff Walk. He was walking away from the temple, in the direction of The Breakers. It looked like Tanaka—he was short and slight, with white hair—but I couldn’t say for sure.”

“Did you look down? If you looked down and didn’t see the body, it would help us pinpoint the time of death.”

“I really don’t remember.” He shook his head in uncertainty. “I remember looking out: that’s when I saw Tanaka, but I don’t remember looking down.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill her?”

“No. The only person I can think of is Tanaka. But I don’t think he would have killed her. He wasn’t that upset by our relationship. In a way, I think he actually liked it. He considered it a status symbol, that his geisha was having an affair with a sumo wrestler.”

“Reflected glory?”

“Something like that. A liaison with a geisha has more to do with manners than it does romance or sex; it comes from the ambition to be known as a gentleman. It would be comparable to a gentleman’s owning a fine collection of leather-bound books or a renowned painting.”

It was the same observation Keiko had made.

“It’s not uncommon for a geisha who has a patron to have an affair with an actor or a sumo wrestler,” Shawn continued. “To use the same analogy: it would be the equivalent of a gentleman’s loaning out his famous painting to be put on display at a prestigious museum.”

“Except that your relationship with Okichi-
mago
wasn’t just a casual affair. At least, I didn’t think it was.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Shawn agreed.

“Which meant that the painting wasn’t going to be returned.”

Below, a scraggly-haired tourist in a yellow windbreaker and navy blue baseball cap, with a pair of field glasses hanging from around his neck, had lost the Cliff Walk and was wandering up the path toward the house.

“A wandering tourist,” said Shawn. “The path is hard to follow across the rocks.” He ice-skated across the grass to the head of the stairs, and hailed the tourist. “Excuse me, sir,” he shouted. “This is private property.” He pointed over at the rocks. “The Cliff Walk is over there.”

The man raised his field glasses to look at Shawn. Then he looked down at a piece of paper in his hand, probably a map. Waving an arm in acknowledgment, he headed back down the path.

Shawn ice-skated back to his chair. “The man who owns this condo told me that a tourist once walked right into his living room, and said, ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’ Where were we? Oh, Tanaka. Yes, he could have done it, I suppose. In anger over his painting not being returned. But I don’t think so.”

“Did you know that Paul was planning to make Okichi-
mago
his heir?”

“No,” he replied with surprise. “She never said anything about it.”

“I guess he didn’t have a chance to talk with her about it before she died. But it does provide a motive—several other Harris relatives have a stake in inheriting Shimoda.”

Shawn stared out at the shining sea. “I’m sorry,” he said as he caught Charlotte waiting for a response. “It seems so inconsequential to me—who did it. In the face of her being gone. I think about other things: like whether she died well—dying well is important to the Japanese—but I don’t think about who did it.”

“I understand,” said Charlotte. “Just one more question.”

“Sure,” said Shawn.

“What about Takafuji as the murderer?” Admittedly it was farfetched, but why not ask as long as she was here?

“What would be his motive?”

“He hates you.”

“Yes, he hates me, but I don’t think he’d kill Kichi on account of that. If he were, going to kill anyone, he’d kill me. I’ve always suspected him of sending the
chommages
. He’s going to hate me even more if I win the fall tournament and become the first foreign
yokozuna
in the history of sumo.”

“Are you going to win?”

For a moment, the fighting spirit flashed in his dull green eyes. “Yes,” he replied softly. “For Kichi.”

The next event on the busy Black Ships Festival program was a reenactment of Perry’s landing at Shimoda. A black-hulled steamship similar to Perry’s flagship, the
Susquehanna
, had been borrowed from Mystic Seaport for the occasion. Drama students from the University of Rhode Island would be reenacting Perry’s presentation of the letter from U.S. President Millard Fillmore to the shogun’s representatives. The reenactment would be followed by a Dixieland jazz concert and a display of Japanese fireworks. But Charlotte decided to skip this event and visit Aunt Lillian. Her brief exchange with Aunt Lillian that afternoon had left her curious: what had she meant by saying that Paul had known Okichi-
mago
for years? And if this were so, why had he gone to such great lengths to make the point that he had met her just last year? He had said so when he’d spoken with Connie at the geisha party, and had reiterated the point in the speech she had just delivered. Then again, Aunt Lillian was nearly a hundred years old. Maybe she was mistaken. But it was worth a visit to find out. After leaving The Waves—it had been a long shot anyway, but she was now convinced that Shawn had nothing to do with Okichi-
mago
’s death—she returned to Briarcote, and called Aunt Lillian. She was in, and she would be delighted to have a visitor. Connie gave Charlotte directions.

A few minutes later, Charlotte was headed down Bellevue Avenue once again. Aunt Lillian’s house was located at the other end of town, near the Newport Bridge. It was the un-chic end, but it was also the oldest part of town. Her house, which was called Old Trees (did every house in Newport have a name? Charlotte wondered), was a gracious old Greek Revival mansion dating from the early nineteenth century. “One of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in America,” Connie had said. Rather than rattling around in the big old columned mansion, however, Aunt Lillian rented it out, and lived instead in a former porter’s lodge at the rear. Driving down the driveway to the rear of the mansion, Charlotte caught her breath at the sight of the porter’s lodge. It was the most perfect little house she had ever seen: a single-story Greek temple in miniature, encircled by a colonnade of Corinthian columns. The house had an air of weathered antiquity that went with, its owner: the paint was peeling and the property, as the name implied, was studded with huge old trees.

It was, quite literally, the house of Charlotte’s dreams.

She had dreamed of it when her third marriage was falling apart. It had been one of those vivid dreams that the dreamer recognizes as being out of the ordinary, what Carl Jung had called an archetypal dream. She had been carrying it around with her for more than thirty years.

In the dream there were two churches: one was large, ornate, and overrun with women. The other was Aunt Lillian’s house, a little white temple, simple and pure. She had to make a choice, but it was a clear one. She would choose the temple; it was so lovely. By contrast, the cathedral looked tasteless and vulgar. She started heading toward the temple, but then noticed that it was deserted. Why wasn’t anyone there? Did all those women at the cathedral know something she didn’t? She reconsidered. Yes, the cathedral was tasteless and vulgar, but its complex façade and baroque embellishments had a warmth and richness that the other temple lacked; it spoke of history and tradition and ritual. Was the little white temple too regular, too austere? She didn’t think so, but everyone else seemed to. She was torn—charmed by the simplicity, but seduced by the ornament.

In her interpretation, the two churches stood for the state of being single and the state of marriage. In her dream, she had chosen the baroque cathedral.

She had tried to patch that marriage up, to no avail. He had been one of her leading men and was widely considered to be one of Hollywood’s most charming. That he was also a drunkard and a womanizer she hadn’t discovered until later. Her first marriage—to her hometown sweetheart—had fallen apart when she went to Hollywood; her second, to a New England blueblood, had been her most successful. She had had ten happy years with Will before he died of a heart attack in his forties. After her third husband, there had been a succession of lovers—Line Crawford among them—before she had dared to enter that ornate cathedral for the fourth time, only a few years ago.

Her fourth husband, Jack Lundstrom, had built a small, family-owned mining company into one of the country’s biggest conglomerates. She had always thought her best chances for marital success would lie with someone whose achievements matched hers, but in a different field, someone who wouldn’t be threatened by being Mr. Charlotte Graham. When they’d met at a mutual friend’s, they’d recognized themselves in one another, and been immediately attracted. Such is the power of narcissicism. She should have known better at her age.

They’d separated after two years. Now she suspected that he was about to ask her to come back. She had dreamed the dream again two nights ago. Actually, it had been in the early morning, the morning she had found Okichi-
mago
’s body. She wondered which church she would choose this time.

She parked the car behind an old Dodge in the driveway. As she got out of her car, she noticed that the huge old oak growing next to the driveway bore a plaque that said the tree was alive at the time of the signing of the Constitution. It described the tree as being fourteen feet around and the largest of its species in Rhode Island. Old Trees, she decided, was a fitting name for the residence of a woman who was nearly a hundred.

Past the oak, a mossy path led through a gap in a stone wall to the house. Charlotte followed the path to the front door, which was flanked by a pair of monumental Japanese temple urns. Above the door, pigeons nested in a transom window above the cornice. Their droppings littered the porch floor in front of the door. The door itself had a gigantic keyhole, which made Charlotte feel like Alice after sampling the liquid in the bottle labeled “Drink me.”

The feeling of the house was one of lyrical decay, of a place that was lost in time, out of a mossy, tree-shaded dream. Newport was full of such places. A house such as this would be a treasure in Burbank, but here it was just another old crumbling edifice. The city had sometimes been compared to Troy, with its layer upon layer of history. In places like this, she felt as if she had broken through to one of the earliest layers.

Aunt Lillian met her at the door, her blue eyes shining. She had changed out of her kimono, and was again wearing a white kerchief on her head. She looked like a Normandy peasant. She showed Charlotte into the living room, which took up almost the entire first floor.

“I see why the house is called Old Trees,” said Charlotte.

“Did you see the plaque on the bicentennial tree by the driveway?”

“Yes,” said Charlotte.

“The National Arborists Association put it there in 1987,” Aunt Lillian said. She gestured toward the back of the house. “I was just putting the kettle on for tea. Would you like to sit down?”

“May I help you?” asked Charlotte.

“If you’d like.”

Charlotte followed her back to a tiny kitchen, which looked as if it hadn’t changed since the turn of the century. A toaster oven sat on a counter next to an old gas refrigerator. The sink was made of soapstone. A steep, narrow staircase led up to the attic bedroom.

“Do you live here alone?” asked Charlotte as Aunt Lillian put the kettle on the old gas stove and set a Japanese lusterware teapot and two cracked cups on a battered old toleware tray.

“Yes,” she replied. “I moved here when I was forty, into the big house. When my husband died, I moved over here. My son was grown and I didn’t want to take care of that big place by myself. I never liked it anyway. Too pretentious. I prefer my little temple.”

Charlotte was getting to the point in life where she was beginning to think of herself as old, but she could have been Aunt Lillian’s granddaughter. If she had moved to Old Trees when she was forty, she must have lived here for fifty-six years—more than many lifespans.

“Where did you live before you moved here?”

“On the road. Tokyo for many years. That’s where I met my husband. Peking. Canton, Seoul, Hanoi, Moscow, Reykjavik, Gothenburg, Havana, Trinidad, Lima: you name it. My husband wrote travel books.
On the Road in Mongolia, On the Road in Chile, On the Road in Mandalay, On the Road in the Balkans
.”

“I’ve read some of them,” said Charlotte. “I enjoyed them very much. In fact, Edwin Harvey had been the most prominent travel writer of his generation.”

“Just about everyone has. Everyone of a certain age, that is. No one under fifty ever heard of them. He wrote thirty-six. I wrote one myself,” she added. “It was called
I Married a Gypsy
. I hated the title. But the movie
I Married a Millionaire
was a big hit, so everything had to be ‘I Married a Whatever.’”