Elephant Trains. Missed the shouts of barkers and the smell of Threlkeld’s Scones and early morning steam from a scorching cup of coffee. Missed Sally. Missed the girls.
She thought of Lucinda, still recovering in Dante’s Sanitarium, private hospital, where Phyllis Winters roamed the halls, shrinking in corners from men with brutal hands, while her mother the socialite threw a garden party in Alameda.
She’d paid for a week at Dante’s, what she could afford to help Lucinda.
Money couldn’t help Phyllis.
Like the girls in Spain, the ones with dried blood on their thighs and buttocks, crouching in fields plowed with shells. Afterward, cleaned up by a nun or a Red Cross nurse, by a village woman who recognized the pain and had daughters of her own.
Dead eyes, dead girls, lungs in and out, heart still beating.
Alive in name only.
Miranda blinked, brown-green eyes focused on the blurred outline of Angel Island and Alcatraz.
No time to think about Spain, about Phyllis Winters. It was a little over four months since Eddie Takahashi’s murder, four months since she’d killed Martini, and only a few weeks since she’d run in the Napa woods, dogs baying, breath coming out in stabs, waiting for the men in white suits.
Waiting to kill herself.
She arched her neck, rubbing it with her right hand, and sat up against the seat, straightening her hat.
Twenty-five hundred dollars lay crisp and cool in her rusty Wells Fargo safe, payment for chasing a Nazi spy. Mrs. Hart lay colder on a slab in the morgue, dead client, dead victim, the priceless jade, funereal green, missing once again and presumably the motive.
And somewhere in England, last bulwark against the Dark Ages, was Catherine Corbie … or at least a woman who knew enough about her to send a message.
Miranda carefully took the photo postcard of Westminster Abbey out of her purse and read it again:
Would like to meet you. Your loving mother.
* * *
The office was in a dark corner of Wheeler, down a long hall and tucked under a stairway. A small black hole, just like the ones Hatchett threw her in, attic or basement, cupboard or closet. Now he had one of his very own.
She raised her hand to knock at the door. Faded blue ink, handwriting precise:
DR. JOSEPH HENRY HARPER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Still not full professor. Nights too full of something else, liquid gold, magic elixir, making mediocre teachers into poets and cowards into men.
She knocked.
A voice. Still melodious, though not as mellifluous as when it was primed with Scotch.
“Come in.”
Miranda slid through the door and quickly shut it behind her. The thin, narrow-shouldered man with stretched and freckled skin sat behind an antique desk, mahogany polished from jackets with elbow patches and reams of student papers. He stared up at her, mouth slightly open, freckles fading into white, poised to scratch a comment on a page.
Greasy hair, parted on the left. Oiled, as always, to hide the flakes of dandruff. He blinked large brown eyes, as if sensory testimony were untrustworthy and indiscriminate, and carefully placed the fountain pen in a holder.
“What—what are you doing here? I told you years ago—”
“Ad infinitum et nauseam. Don’t worry, Pops. I won’t stay long.”
She threw herself in a chair, dark wood smelling of lemon oil. Opened her purse and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. Sat back and crossed her legs, holding his eyes, and rubbed the C-note between her thumb and forefinger.
“This should get you three days and a shot of B from Nielsen.”
His eyes darted back and forth between the bill and her face. “You dare come here—”
“I dared. I’m here. I called ahead and spoke to the department secretary to make sure I’d find you. I don’t have the time to hit every clip joint on Telegraph Avenue.”
They stared at each other a for a few minutes, her father’s breath uneven, light carpet of black and white stubbling his chin.
She thought of Lucinda, still recovering in Dante’s Sanitarium, private hospital, where Phyllis Winters roamed the halls, shrinking in corners from men with brutal hands, while her mother the socialite threw a garden party in Alameda.
She’d paid for a week at Dante’s, what she could afford to help Lucinda.
Money couldn’t help Phyllis.
Like the girls in Spain, the ones with dried blood on their thighs and buttocks, crouching in fields plowed with shells. Afterward, cleaned up by a nun or a Red Cross nurse, by a village woman who recognized the pain and had daughters of her own.
Dead eyes, dead girls, lungs in and out, heart still beating.
Alive in name only.
Miranda blinked, brown-green eyes focused on the blurred outline of Angel Island and Alcatraz.
No time to think about Spain, about Phyllis Winters. It was a little over four months since Eddie Takahashi’s murder, four months since she’d killed Martini, and only a few weeks since she’d run in the Napa woods, dogs baying, breath coming out in stabs, waiting for the men in white suits.
Waiting to kill herself.
She arched her neck, rubbing it with her right hand, and sat up against the seat, straightening her hat.
Twenty-five hundred dollars lay crisp and cool in her rusty Wells Fargo safe, payment for chasing a Nazi spy. Mrs. Hart lay colder on a slab in the morgue, dead client, dead victim, the priceless jade, funereal green, missing once again and presumably the motive.
And somewhere in England, last bulwark against the Dark Ages, was Catherine Corbie … or at least a woman who knew enough about her to send a message.
Miranda carefully took the photo postcard of Westminster Abbey out of her purse and read it again:
Would like to meet you. Your loving mother.
* * *
The office was in a dark corner of Wheeler, down a long hall and tucked under a stairway. A small black hole, just like the ones Hatchett threw her in, attic or basement, cupboard or closet. Now he had one of his very own.
She raised her hand to knock at the door. Faded blue ink, handwriting precise:
DR. JOSEPH HENRY HARPER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Still not full professor. Nights too full of something else, liquid gold, magic elixir, making mediocre teachers into poets and cowards into men.
She knocked.
A voice. Still melodious, though not as mellifluous as when it was primed with Scotch.
“Come in.”
Miranda slid through the door and quickly shut it behind her. The thin, narrow-shouldered man with stretched and freckled skin sat behind an antique desk, mahogany polished from jackets with elbow patches and reams of student papers. He stared up at her, mouth slightly open, freckles fading into white, poised to scratch a comment on a page.
Greasy hair, parted on the left. Oiled, as always, to hide the flakes of dandruff. He blinked large brown eyes, as if sensory testimony were untrustworthy and indiscriminate, and carefully placed the fountain pen in a holder.
“What—what are you doing here? I told you years ago—”
“Ad infinitum et nauseam. Don’t worry, Pops. I won’t stay long.”
She threw herself in a chair, dark wood smelling of lemon oil. Opened her purse and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. Sat back and crossed her legs, holding his eyes, and rubbed the C-note between her thumb and forefinger.
“This should get you three days and a shot of B from Nielsen.”
His eyes darted back and forth between the bill and her face. “You dare come here—”
“I dared. I’m here. I called ahead and spoke to the department secretary to make sure I’d find you. I don’t have the time to hit every clip joint on Telegraph Avenue.”
They stared at each other a for a few minutes, her father’s breath uneven, light carpet of black and white stubbling his chin.
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