I sighed against the bench, “Unfortunately, we don’t exactly know. It’s just a theory. I’ve had some…strange dreams since we came here. Even before. Very strange. Nathaniel was in a few.”
I thought that would get his immediate attention, but Byron continued to study the ball in his hand, thoroughly absorbed by it now. “That’s funny…”
“What--? Katie stepped toward him.
Byron held up the ball for her. “See that little brown streak there, barely visible?”
She nodded. “I saw it before. Why do you think it’s funny?”
Byron shrugged, turned back to the bench. “Nothing, except I think it proves the date of the bigger ball.” He turned back to us with the nursery clock in his other hand. “Found the same stuff around the face of this clock when I first bought it. Looks like someone tried to clean it off a long time ago, not completely successfully. Rust.”
Katie’s eyes jerked to him. “Rust?”
Byron nodded, handing her the big clock with both hands. “I got most of it off myself, but you can still see a little trapped in the bezel there where I couldn’t get to it, at least not without prying the face off. Guess I’d better do that now if I’m going to sell it.”
When neither of us spoke, he searched our faces again. “Why? What did you think it was?”
“You…” Katie began tentatively, “…didn’t have the rust analyzed or anything--?”
“Analyzed?” Byron chuckled. “Why would I do that?”
I came over then, took the clock from Katie and peered closely at the face, running an index finger around the dim line of red remaining inside the bezel. “This clock, Byron…do you remember where you purchased it?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. Little shop in Kensington, right across the bay in San Diego. Purchased several pieces for my collection from the old guy that owns it.”
I looked up at him, hearing the words in my head before I said them. “Is he still there?”
* * *
Kensington is a beautiful little upscale San Diego neighborhood bordered by Interstates 15 and 8, Fairmont Avenue to the east and El Cajon Boulevard to the south, whose neighboring communities include Normal Heights and Talmadge. Its main thoroughfare is Adams Avenue, which is flanked by some not-so-upscale vintage record shops, antique dealers and the usual mini-malls.
“I love these houses!” Liz exclaimed, craning between the back seat side and rear windows of Byron’s vehicle. “We don’t have anything like them in Cincinnati! They’re adorable! What are they, Byron, you’re the architect!”
“Well, mostly Craftsman style,” Byron grinned behind the wheel beside me, “the earliest built around 1910 by a guy named William Douglas. He managed to convince the officials of the San Diego Electric Railway to extend the Adams Avenue trolley line into the area in time for the opening of its first subdivisions. The trolleys and streetcars, sadly, were retired in the late 30’s, but the place still has a nice small town community feel, don’t you think?”
“Palm-lined streets and Craftsman houses,” I said, wind in my hair from my open passenger side window, “nothing like them in Austin either.”
“Actually those are Spanish Revival style homes you’re looking at now, Elliot, the most popular style in the late 1920’s, when much of the area was built. Yeah, they’re cute, huh, very Southern California. Courtesy of architects Cliff May and Richard Requa, who built most of the important homes here. Requa, in particular, had a big influence on the architecture and character of the neighborhood. Too bad more of it didn’t spread here to Adams Avenue and the antique dealer we’re going to see.”
“I adore antiquing!” Liz cooed behind me.
“Have you dealt with this dealer a lot?” Katie asked beside Liz.
Byron pulled the car to the curb before a small, undistinguished-looking shop overhung by the hand-painted sign: ADAMS ANTIQUES. “I’m not sure ‘dealt’ is the right word. He’s kind of an irascible old cuss. I don’t think there have been three words between us since I began trading here four years ago.”
“Not forthcoming?” I asked, hand on the door handle.
“Let’s put it this way,” Byron shut off the engine, “be careful of the antiques you touch in here…one of them might be the owner!”
The paint-flaking front door dinged.
We entered un-air-conditioned darkness in an area of San Diego that could have used air conditioning. Everything smelled of must and mildew.
“The old magazines and books,” Byron noted softly, holding the door for the two women. “The smell is the price you pay for living this close to the ocean.”
The old wood floors of the shop held everything, from big brass tubas to tiny porcelain ballet dancers, all covered with a patina of dust. I got the feeling Mr. Adams—if that was his name and not just the street’s—never dusted. Who could blame him? You could barely navigate the narrow aisles, much less polish anything.
The proprietor, balding under snow white hair, in garter-held arrow shirt and gray slacks like a Western bartender, emerged through an Indian blanket from the darkened back room and peered at us over granny glasses. He had a turkey neck, leathery jowls and icy blue eyes and moved his puckered mouth the way people do when they’re having trouble with their dentures.
“Afternoon, Mr. Adams!” Byron hailed companionably. “Byron Sanderson, remember me?”
Mr. Adams didn’t seem to; or did and didn’t care.
“Brought these nice folks to look at your wonderful shop today!”
He didn’t seem to care about that either.
After ten minutes of watching him glare at us from behind his counter, in fact, I got the strong impression Mr. Adams was in no great hurry to actually sell any of his precious antiques, that he may have considered even the idea of parting with his possessions hateful and wished we’d hurry up and go about our business and leave him to his. Whatever that was.
Clearly Byron was not exaggerating about his minimal conversions with the old guy. And even Katie, who could charm the pants off anything with two legs, got little more than a few generous grunts and shrugs. After a while, standing beside her at the weathered counter watching her juggle those heavy onyx balls in front of the weathered face and glacial eyes, I took her arm gently and led her away to a curio cabinet for a time-out.
“Sorry,” Byron whispered, sidling up, “I told you he was a piece of work.”
“Piece of wood,” I muttered wearily, “guy doesn’t need any cigar store Indians out front.”
Liz, who until that time had been happily making her merry way all over the shop with that unflappable smile firmly in place, happened past us just then.
“He’s just constipated, dear!”
I looked over at the artic eyes, hawk’s nose jutting between, then back at my mother. “Do I even want to know how you can tell that?”
Liz beamed at a pile of dusty old hats. “Not constipated that way, dear! What the nice gentleman needs is what we used to call a hot piece of ass and a cold glass of beer!”
“Thank you, Liz, that’s a memorable image, I’ll treasure it always.” I turned to my partner. “Any suggestions, Katie?”
Katie glanced at the frigid vulture, then turned to Liz. “I think your mother has the best answers when it comes to hard cases.”
Liz poofed the back of her dark mane with one hand, checked her lipstick in a cracked-framed mirror beside her and turned, beaming. “Thank you, dear, thought you’d never ask!”
She carelessly undid the top button of her paisley blouse, exposing deep and remarkably supple cleavage, and ambled unhurriedly in the direction of the counter, round hips revolving.
She came before the bent-shouldered wedge of granite, fanned the peasant skirt absently with one hand and tilted her head in surprise as if discovering the old man was there for the first time.
“Well! Hello, there, handsome! Are you the owner?”
The old man grunted.
“I was just telling my son there what a
delightful little shop you have!”
The old man looked her up and down like he’d bitten into something sour.
“Despite the avalanche of dust and bad lighting!”
The old man frowned even more deeply, if that were possible.
“And that odor…” she sniffed the air, “…what is that, dead possum?”
“Oh God,” I groaned behind the tuba.
Katie tugged my arm. “Give her a chance!”
The old man made a deep growling sound in his narrow chest.
“Bless you!” Liz grinned. Then she stuck a long, red-nailed finger in his face. “How much for that?”
Mr. Adams blinked. Glared a moment, finally looked down at himself.
“No, dear, not your trousers, that thing holding up your sleeve. The red garter.”
The old man glanced at it, grunted. “Ain’t fer sale!”
Liz bottom lip pooched out with disappointment, red and luscious. “Oh? And I’ve been looking everywhere for one! It’s a genuine antique, isn’t it? Give you twenty-five cents for it!”
The flat chin jutted forward with bristle. “Ain’t fer sale!”
Liz, clearly deflated, nevertheless managed to heave a sigh that swelled her bosom considerably; I thought she was going to pop another button. She stuck both hands on her hips, swiveling a pout. “Well, perhaps you’re right. Handsome men like you usually are when it comes to knowing what looks good on a lady.” She hiked her left leg onto a wooden stool and began dragging the heavy peasant skirt forlornly over her knee, up a long, plump length of thigh. “Maybe I’m too old for that sort of thing. I was going to put it right…here.”
The icy eyes turned suddenly vivid.
Liz hiked further, bent the leg toward him. “What do you think? Can you picture the cute little red thing?”
The old man’s lower teeth became unhinged.
Liz dragged further. “How about here?”
The old man realized he was spooling out a length of drool and swiped quickly at it.
Liz sighed, shoved the skirt down, and came off the stool. “I suppose it’s hard to tell without actually seeing it! I’d ask you if I could model it but I can see it’s of considerable sentimental value to you! Well, thanks just the same!”
Mr. Adams was halfway over the counter before her back was turned. “Wait on, now! I ain’t sentimental!” He practically tore off his arm removing the garter. “Which? This one? You can model it if ya want!”
Liz spun back lazily, shyly. “Well…I don’t know…in front of all these people?”
The old man dropped the garter, picked it up, dropped it again, then jerked a frustrated thumb at the old Indian curtain. “I got a room here in back, you wanna try it on!”
Liz bent low before him to peer past the curtain. “It looks awfully dark back there…”
Adams stumbled back and forth between counters. “Well, hell, I could show you the way!”
“Here it comes…” Katie whispered, biting back a laugh behind my shoulder, “...the coup de gras!”
Liz hunched her small shoulders like a schoolgirl, cleavage plunging, cheeks pinking as if on command. “Why, Mr. Adams…”
* * *
Sometime later, Liz emerged from the back room with Mr. Adams linked to her arm, cuffs hanging to his fingernails, both his sleeves bereft of red garters, and a dreamy smile on his leathery face.
I think even Byron was impressed at the length and breadth of Mr. Adam’s vocabulary and equanimity when describing every minor dredged-up detail about the big onyx carpet ball. No question was beyond his reach, no second of his time important, not even after he spent several minutes going through the ancient black safe behind the counter, where he hauled out the faded, dog-eared ledger book dating from the 1940’s.
“Here she is, right here!” He pointed a gnarled finger at a cursive date, sale and price. “Jest like I remembered! Bought thet ball along with some other stuff at a big auction the Del was havin’ years back!”
“The Hotel Coronado?” an anxious Kate asked.
“Yes’m! Recall it like it ‘twas yesterday! They was practically givin’ the stuff away! Some of it from way back near the turn of the century! Uh—the old century, not this’n. World War One stuff!”
He lowered the grannies from what might have been a not-unhandsome face once and stuck his chin in the air thoughtfully and rubbed bristle. “Lessee, now…way I heard it, they was cleanin’ out one of the old wings the doughboys were billeted in jest before the war. Had them fellas stacked in there like sardines. Used to get pretty rowdy, some of em, like all kids, I reckon! Trampin’ around the ballroom by day, terrorizin’ the beach at night!”
He slipped the grannies back on, peered close at the carpet ball. “Yessir, pretty popular game in its day, they say! Thet there hotel—‘twas the talk of Coronado back then! Made the island, really, no Navy back then, buzzin’ their planes around! Hell, it made San Diego itself, that hotel did! High class clientele in them days! People from all over the country come to ride the ferry over to the Del!”
His shaking finger went back to the ledger book. “Lessee…what else we got from thet hotel auction? Says here we bought some old lawn chairs…some utensils from the hotel kitchen….some ole movie cameras or projectors or somethin’…”
“Projectors?” I said, looking at Byron.
“Yessir…think I even got some ole movie reels went with it…mebe even some of thet early film. What else…? Bunch of ole Liberty magazines…hotel souvenirs…wire wastebasket…clock…”
“What kind of clock?” from Katie.
Mr. Adams peered closer at the ledge. “Don’t say what kind…big one I recall, you know, big for a wall or over a mantle.”
“Like this?” Katie asked, holding out her cell phone, which showed a snapshot she’d taken of the nursery clock.
Mr. Adams shoved the grannies tighter, squinted close…
SEVENTEEN
“You, Mrs. Bledsoe, are a modern miracle!”
“Why, Byron, how sweet, dear!”
“You got more out of that old fart in five minutes than I have in five years. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure he even could talk. Those glacial pupils. Thought the old geezer had ice water in his veins!”
“No, he has blood in his veins, all right,” Liz said in the backseat.
“Yeah,” from Katie beside her, “in all his veins, I’d say.” And the women chuckled together behind me.
I shook my head wryly in the passenger seat.
Liz pushed the back of my seat with her foot. “Our Elliot thinks I’m an embarrassment…”
I shrugged. “Well, an embarrassment of riches, anyway. At least we can make a few connections now. Before Mr. Adams, we didn’t even have the dots.”
“Pretty loose dots,” Byron offered behind the wheel, “strung pretty far apart.”
“Somebody needs to fill me in,” Liz said.
In the rearview I saw Katie turned to her. “Nathaniel …God, where to start. The Sanderson’s boy Nathaniel went missing a couple of weeks ago. Then again just before you arrived at the house.”
“The little boy in the backseat of my Galaxy?”
I nodded. “We’re still trying to figure out how he got there.” I glanced at the rearview again. “I don’t suppose you have any theories?”
Liz tugged at her lower lip. “No…I woke up sometime before dawn and he was just there.”
“Just there.”
She nodded. “The back window was down. I assumed he crawled into the car.”
“Awfully small kid to reach a window that high,” from Byron.
“Maybe,” Katie said, “improbable but not impossible.”
“Where’d you find him the first time he ran away?” Liz asked.
Katie and I traded expression in the mirror. Ran away.
“Back in his crib where he started,” Katie told her, “in the nursery.”
“Donna found him,” Bryon told her.
“Found him missing or f
ound him turned up again?”
“Both,” Katie said.
Liz sighed. “Poor dear. And blames herself for it, I imagine.”
“Yes,” Katie and I said in tandem.
“When it wasn’t her fault at all…” Liz shook her head.
“That’s right,” from Katie.”
“…it was that silly carpet ball.”
Everyone in the car turned to her at once, including Byron, who almost rear-ended an RV as we pulled onto the highway.
Liz looked at each of us innocently. “Well, isn’t that why you brought it to Mr. Adams antique shop? To see where it came from, what it might have to do with the Sandersons’ little boy?”
Byron got back in the proper lane, peered at Liz in the mirror with hooded eyes. “Mrs. Bledsoe—“
“Liz, dear.”
“…Liz, are you psychic? Honest answer, please.”
Liz smiled, patted his shoulder from behind. “Of course, dear, just like you. We’re all a little psychic in our own ways. It’s just a matter of opening up, isn’t that true, Elliot dear?”
I grunted beside my window. “I wouldn’t know. I’m still working on it…”
“He knows,” from an impatient Katie. “And it clearly runs in the family to some degree. What do you think the carpet ball has to do with all this, Liz?”
“No more than the rest of you. That Byron got the ball, or the other one like it, among other things, from Mr. Adams and that Mr. Adams got it from an auction at the old hotel. What’s the name of it?”
“The Hotel del Coronado,” Byron told her. “And what does that tell you, Mrs.—Liz?”
Liz shrugged in the back seat. “Only what Mr. Adams says, that it’s World War I vintage. Has a bit of rust.”
“Is that what it looks like to you?” Katie pressed, “rust?”
“I suppose I didn’t get a very close look.”
Katie reached into her handbag, handed my mother the onyx sphere.
Liz weighed it in one hand. “Heavy.”
“Yes. Enough to roll across a Victorian carpet and knock another ball into a pocket.”
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 17
