The Body in Bodega Bay (27 page)

“That's true. Tell me more about what happened at the angel reading yesterday.”

This time I gave Toby a fuller account of our session with Sophie, complete with that moment during the meditation period when I'd pictured Angie with her supporting angel behind her.

“Oh, come on, after all these years, you're not telling me you're having visions of angels,” Toby protested.

“It was a very strange experience,” I said. His eyes widened. “It's a matter of semantics,” I continued. “The images I remember from parochial school are stored away up here,” I said, tapping my temple, “the same way phrases are from all those classes I took in French and Spanish.”

Toby continued looking at me as if I had changed into a witch before his eyes.

I didn't let that bother me. “So for example,” I said, “since I know French, if I were meditating on French history, I might hear ‘
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
' in my head.”

“Go on,” he replied.

“And since I know Catholic iconography, I saw in my mind's eye an image of St. Michael protecting Angie. Just as if it were a message spoken in French, that image was telling me whether Angie is up to figuring out what her own life's purpose is. The message was: Yes, it's as if she has the protection of the archangel Michael, who helps people sort out their purpose in life.”

“So you don't really believe an angel flew into the room and stood there behind Angie.”

“You don't have to be so literal about it. The experience I had was powerful. It helped me come to a decision about Angie. You might say it reinforced my faith in her. That's what faith is, anyhow.”

“You've lost me there.”

“All I'm saying is that faith is choosing to believe what your heart tells you, what your inner spirit intuits as true.”

“Why call it faith, then? How is that different from woman's intuition?”

“Don't tell me you're belittling woman's intuition,” I said.

Toby smiled. “Perish the thought. How about applying your woman's intuition to the storyboards? Are you ready for another try?”

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

W
E CLEARED THE TABLE
and laid out the storyboards again. This time it seemed to me that one felt thicker to the touch than the others. I ran my fingernail along the edge and felt a slight indentation, like a tiny groove. “Look at this, will you? Am I right that this one's thicker than the others?”

Toby held a corner of the board between his fingers, rubbed them, squinted at the edge, and confirmed my guess. “I think these may be two illustration boards pasted together. If so, I may be able to pry them apart.” He fetched his toolbox and came up with a box cutter. Inserting the sharp edge of the razor blade into the groove, he exerted pressure in a smooth downward-slicing motion. To my surprise, the two sides separated easily, as if they had been pried apart recently and then squeezed back together. Yellow gobs of hardened old paste dotted the exposed interior surfaces. Sticking to one of the sides was a newspaper article clipped from the
San Francisco Chronicle
. It was dated April 16, 1962. The headline read: “Hidden Treasures of Russian California.”

I'd seen it before on microfilm in the Santa Rosa library. It was the story that outlined the legend of a lost Andrei Rublev triptych and encouraged descendants of Russian immigrants to search their attics for forgotten heirlooms. It was the story that had spurred Andrew Federenco to renew his campaign to get the family triptych back from his cousin. And that was when Peter took the triptych apart, gave each of his girlfriends a panel, and hid the remaining one.

“Okay, I think I know what happened. Peter must have pasted this story between the illustration boards, and Charlie must have found it when he got the boards home from the auction. The story about a valuable long-lost icon sparked his curiosity. He went back to the auction catalog and noticed that a Russian icon was for sale the next day and guessed it was from the same consignor. He figured there was a connection, so he bid on it and then confirmed the connection when he spoke to Rose Cassini on the phone.”

“That sounds right,” said Toby.

“Then this Russian thug shows up and pressures Charlie to sell him the icon, probably threatens him and scares him into hiding it, along with the storyboards. Meanwhile Charlie was trying to work out the relationship between the icon and the Hitchcock set, just the way we are. He checked out the DVD of
The Birds
on the day before he was killed.”

Toby agreed. “That explains why Charlie was at the site of the old Gaffney house on the night of the murder. Either the Russian forced the story out of him and made him go there, or he followed Charlie to the site. I think Dan figured that part correctly. A fight broke out, Charlie was stabbed, and the killer stowed his body on the abandoned boat in the harbor. It all fits.”

“Which brings us back to the storyboards,” I said. “They hold the answer to the missing panel, but we just can't see it. Yet it's there right before our eyes.”

“You said earlier that we have to find another way of looking,” said Toby. “How else can we look?”

Yes, I thought, how else? Already I had looked at the drawings every which way—up close, from a few steps back, from each side—every which way except one, I realized. Now I walked around the table and looked at them upside down. It was a trick I'd learned in graduate school while studying art composition. If you're trying to analyze the formal construction of a work, it sometimes helps to disorient yourself from your normal point of view. Seen upside down, the abstract forms and volumes become more obvious. That's because the eye isn't distracted by the subject matter. And that was the case now. Something I hadn't seen before became obvious.

There's a principle of composition known as “the rule of thirds.” The artist or photographer who wants to use it is told to imagine a tick-tack-toe board imposed over his picture. Where the lines cross to establish the middle box is the center of interest. That's where the subject goes. It's called “the rule of thirds” because that focal point will be about a third of the way from the top or bottom and left or right.

I'd assumed the subject of the storyboards was the Brenner house. But in none of them, seen upside down, was the house at the center of interest. Instead, in each, what occupied the center was the same cluster of trees. That's why the storyboards didn't match the film. Hitchcock never would have put a subject without interest at the center of his frame—it would have made for a confusing shot. No, Peter had made these drawings for himself. They were a way of fixing a location in his memory. They pointed to a hiding place, of that I was sure. I explained all this to Toby.

The same three trees were centered in each drawing, and in each drawing they were configured as a triangle. If you were looking toward the front of the house, the three trees were off to the right. It didn't matter that the house was gone now, because that triangle of trees must still be there. If you stood at the right spot, looking toward the dunes, you'd be facing the top point of the triangle, which was marked by the largest tree.

“Run that by me again,” said Toby.

“Say you're standing on Westshore Road facing the dunes near where the Brenner house used to be. Now imagine a triangle laid out on the ground and you're standing midway along its base.”

“Okay.”

“Now look straight ahead.” Toby stood, looking straight ahead.

“Directly in front of you, say eight or ten feet, is a large tree, larger than any of the others nearby. Imagine that's the apex of the triangle. Remember, you're standing at the midpoint of the triangle's base.”

“Got it,” said Toby.

“Now look to your left. You see a smaller tree.”

Obediently, he looked left.

“Now look to your right.” He did. “You see another tree about the same size and the same distance away as the one on your left. Those two trees mark the corners of the triangle's base. That's the cluster we're looking for. Now do you follow?”

“I'll say I do. What you're telling me is, we've got a treasure map. That's where he buried the panel.” Toby tapped the triangle of trees on one of the storyboards. “X marks the spot!”

W
e were up at first light, ready to go. Toby went out to the garage to find a shovel and spade. I headed to the kitchen, to make us a quick breakfast. But I was stopped in my tracks by Angie, who was sitting disconsolately at the kitchen table, red-eyed and nursing a cup of coffee.

“Angie, what are you doing up so early?”

“I couldn't sleep. I've done something stupid. It might be really bad.”

“How much harm could you do at this hour?” Angie looked pained, so I dropped my teasing tone and waited.

“It was yesterday,” she said. “I didn't go for a walk like I told you. Instead, I went to see Rose Cassini.”

“What? I thought we agreed to wait before talking with her.”

“I know, but it was really upsetting me. I've been so worried about how Sophie will feel when she finds out that Peter had another girlfriend.”

“Sophie's a grown woman, Angie. She can face the truth.”

“You don't know what it's like. I do. I've had more than one guy make a fool of me. When you find out you've been betrayed like that, it's horrible.” Angie was starting to cry. “You don't know. You think that someone really loves you, and then you find out you meant nothing to him. It's humiliating. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, never mind a sweetheart like Sophie.” Now the tears were flowing freely.

I sat down facing her and pushed a box of tissues within her reach. When she was quieter, I said, “Okay, let's not argue about whether you should have gone. Tell me what happened.”

About then, Toby came back into the house. He started to say something, but I signaled to him not to and instead to join us. He came over and sat down at the table quietly. I popped some slices in the toaster and poured us coffee as Angie told her story.

“I know it was wrong of me, but I didn't know what else to do. I could tell that you and Toby had made up your minds to tell Sophie everything so you could get her to restore the icon, but I didn't want you to.”

“I know, we've been over that. So you took it upon yourself to visit Rose Cassini to try to persuade her in advance not to say anything about Peter once the story came out, is that it?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“How did you know where to find her?”

“Her name and address were on the tag on that shawl we bought for Mom, remember?”

Of course.

“So I only pretended to go out walking. I took the car instead and drove up to Cazadero. I rang the bell, and when she came to the door, I told her that I had bought the shawl she made and I wanted to talk to her about weaving, so she invited me in.” She paused, sniffling.

“Then what?”

“Well, we talked a little, and then I told her who I was and why I'd really come. At first she was shocked to hear that Peter had given another person one of his icons. In fact, she didn't believe me, but eventually, after I described it, she did. And then I told her about Sophie, and—oh, Nora, it was awful. She got really mad.”

“Did she?” I wasn't surprised. Angie had been so obsessed with Sophie's reaction to learning about a rival that she'd failed to anticipate that Rose would have a reaction of her own.

Angie reached for another tissue, wiped her nose, and continued. “I should never have told her that Peter was Sophie's fiancé. She just lost it when I said that. And then when I told her he was the father of Sophie's child, she flew into a rage. She wanted to know how old the son was, when had he been born? I didn't know the answers, and that made things worse. I tried telling her about Sophie's relationship with her son and why it would be really good of her if she didn't let Sophie know about her own relationship with Peter, but at that point she threw me out of the house.”

“Physically?” asked Toby.

“No, not physically, but she told me to get out. She said it was all a lie. That some other man had gotten Sophie pregnant, not Peter, and that Sophie must have claimed Peter as the father because he couldn't defend himself. She said that Sophie wouldn't get away with lying about a dead man and that she'd get the truth out of her one way or the other.”

“That's not good,” I replied. “Did she say anything else? Did you?”

“I asked her to wait to talk with you. I said you knew more about it than I did. I just wanted to slow her down and get her to cool off. But she didn't cool off. She got angrier and angrier. So I left.”

“When are we supposed to talk?”

“Today. I told her we'd call. But now I'm getting worried. I don't think she'll wait for us. She knows who Sophie is. She knows where Sophie works. I'm afraid she'll go over there on her own.”