by Kate Wilhelm
"I kept dreaming of magic tricks," she said at the table with her coffee and toast.
"He's good, isn't he? There's a show that comes on now and then on TV, they explain how some of those tricks are done. We should watch it sometime."
She shook her head. "And spoil the fun? I'd rather think it's magic." She began to read the comics section as she ate, and he went back to the section he had been reading. Neither spoke again until she got up to pour another cup of coffee.
"Abby," he said then, "I can take the notes and the manuscript to the office and mail them there. You won't have to bother with the post office. But what next? When will you finish the rest of the stuff you brought home?"
"I don't want my notes put through a postage machine," she said, thinking of the many handwritten notes she had read, the ones she had written in response. "That seems so institutional. I'll do them." More slowly she said, "It's going to take some time to finish the short stories and story notes, all this week maybe. I don't know. And I'll have to go back to the cabin and sort through the rest of the files. As literary executor, that's my job now. I just don't know how long it's all going to take."
He stood and crossed the kitchen, got more coffee for himself, and brought it back. "Next weekend," he said, "let's go together, early Saturday, box up everything you think you have to look over and bring it all home. Close up the place for the winter. Bury your father's ashes. It's time, Abby," he said gently. "It's past time."
She felt herself stiffen with his words, and she couldn't help it. "Not yet," she said through tight lips. "I'm not ready yet."
"You asked me a few days ago what's bugging me, and I told you part of it. There's another part. Those ashes in our house, in the same room with you day after day. Maybe I'm superstitious and never knew it before, but it's bugging me to the point where I dream of them. And if it's doing that to me, I can't imagine how it's affecting you. It's like he's haunting us, a presence here all the time."
"Oh, God, Brice—"
He held up his hand and said, "Hold it a minute. You know that the Halburtsons will take off by the end of the month and no one will be anywhere near you, not for miles. You can't go up there alone, and next weekend is the last weekend I'll have free until after the first of the year. We have to do it then, Abby."
He was being reasonable, she knew, but this had nothing to do with reason. "I just can't right now," she said.
"Can you tell me why not?"
Miserably she shook her head. "I'm just not ready. Give me a few days to think about it. Don't push me right now. Maybe I have to wait for the police to come up with something. I don't know why. Just not yet."
He regarded her for a moment with a bewildered expression, then his mouth tightened and he turned away. "I told you how I feel about having his ashes in my house. It's more than grotesque, it's obscene, like you're becoming a member of the cult of the dead. How I feel apparently doesn't mean anything to you. Think about it then. But next weekend I want it to end, Abby. I want our life back." He left the room, taking his coffee with him.
A few minutes later, up in her room, moving mechanically, she began to put her notes in a box, to be stamped, mailed. Three rolls of stamps, she thought distantly, and remembered how touched she had been when she first started to read the letters and cards that had poured in. How grateful for those that had no return address. And grateful for those that implored her not to respond, those that acknowledged her grief and the burden of responding. Grateful for the illegible ones that she couldn't respond to.
Gradually the room would be cleared of all these things, she thought, gazing at the box of cards and letters that had come in, the box of his private papers she had not yet read, the early drafts she had extracted from his novel, and the finished manuscript.... Her gaze came to rest on the mahogany box; she shook her head violently. Not yet! First she had to know who killed him and why, and who had blackmailed him and why, who he had known in San Francisco....
The novel had not given her any clue. But of course he wouldn't have written about a blackmailer, or a possible murderer. There had been no mention of San Francisco.
Suddenly she shifted her gaze to the box of cards and letters she had answered. Some of them had come from San Francisco. She had stopped reading every word; again and again the message had been the same, how much his books had meant, how important they had been to the writer....
Frantically she began to go through the box, searching for a San Francisco return address. She found one, another.... Fourteen in all. Seven from Oakland. Nine from Berkeley. She sat at her desk and opened the top one: "Dear Mrs. Connors, I feel I have to express my sorrow over the loss of your father.
His books were so important to me personally that I felt he was my friend, someone who understood me as no one else could...." The next one was very like that, and the next. Most of them had been like that. She opened another one. "My Dear Mrs. Connors, Please accept my deepest most heartfelt sympathy for you in this time of grief. The world has lost a very fine writer. I have lost a dear friend." The handwriting was old-world, spidery, difficult to read, with words that she could not decipher at all. There was something, something, "... such hope as they never dreamed of. He will be sorely missed, but never forgotten." There was something else that she couldn't make out. Then the spidery signature: Fr. Jean Auguste. She read it again, then studied the envelope. A different hand had addressed it in clear, bold script, and the return address didn't include a name, merely a street number and city.
Father, she thought. She had addressed her response Fr. but it meant Father. A priest. A dear friend. She examined the spidery writing again; the writing of someone very old, maybe sick. Hastily she scanned the other notes from the San Francisco area, but she knew this was the one she had been looking for. Father Jean Auguste. A dear friend. Her hand was shaking, she realized with surprise, and put the letter down, rubbed her hands together as if they were chilled. She had to go see him. He would know about the money, or tell her who to talk to, tell her something. He would know something.
"What on earth are you talking about?" Brice demanded. "You can't just take off and go see someone you never heard of. Tell that lieutenant his name, let him investigate it. That's his job." She had opened his study door without knocking; he was at his desk before his computer, which was scrolling lists of numbers. He blanked the screen and jumped up, crossed to her and grabbed her arm, nearly shoving her out of the room, into the hall.
"I'm going," she said, jerking away from him. "I have my reservation, sevenish in the morning. I'll come home on the eleven o'clock flight tomorrow night."
"For God's sake, Abby! This is craziness! Who is he? Call him on the phone. You don't have to go down there."
"I do have to." She hadn't told Brice the priest's name, and now she was glad. Brice might decide to tell the police, but she might learn something that could never be told to anyone, not the police, or Brice, or anyone else. Jud had kept his secret until he died, and she would do the same thing if necessary.
"Let's sit down and talk about this," Brice said, his face flushed with anger.
"I'll sit down, but there's nothing to talk about. I'm going to see that priest tomorrow. My father met someone in San Francisco, and this is the only hint so far of who it might have been."
She walked downstairs and he followed; they went to the living room, where she sat on the couch and he walked back and forth jerkily.
"You don't know a thing about him. He might not even be there now. Wasted effort, and expensive. You scare me, Abby. You really scare me acting like this. He could be a loony-bin candidate, a cult leader or something. I just won't let you do this!"
"Do you really think you can stop me?"
He stopped pacing and stared at her. "This is what I mean," he said hoarsely. "I can see you changing day by day, changing into someone I don't know anymore. You're having a breakdown or something."
She jumped up from the couch. "Oh, for heaven's sake! Shut up, just
shut up! And stop telling me what I can or can't do. I'm going to take Spook for a walk."
She had Father Jean Auguste's letter in her purse, and her response to it; she took her purse with her when she left the house. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow.
14
Abby stood outside a Victorian house on Geary Street and checked the address once more against the note she had received. There appeared to be two entrances to the house, one up a flight of steps, the other at a lower level, with a winding ramp leading to it. Slowly she climbed the steps, drew in a long breath at the top, then rang the bell. She thrust the note into her pocket.
The door was opened by a plump, middle-aged woman in a gray long-sleeved dress with a white apron. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun, but a few tendrils had escaped to curl over one ear. She could have been typecast as a servant in a play set at the turn of the century. "Yes?" she said.
"I'm looking for someone," Abby said hesitantly. "Father Jean Auguste. Is he here?"
"Father Jean? Yes. Please, come in. He'll be happy to receive a guest."
The smell hit Abby then, medicinal, mixed with floor wax, antiseptics, cleaning fluids. ... Hospital smells, she realized, gazing about the foyer she entered. Many flowers on low tables, a few easy chairs arranged in conversation groups, a highly polished, wide-plank floor, broad carpeted stairs, and a hall partly visible with closed doors on both sides.
"What is this place?" she asked in a low voice.
"You don't know?" The woman had started walking toward the stairs; she turned to look at Abby. "It's a hospice," she said. "I'm Sister Monique. Father Jean Auguste is upstairs. Are you a friend of his?"
"No. I've never met him. My father was a friend. Father Jean Auguste wrote me a note a few weeks ago when my father ... when he passed away."
A doubtful look crossed the sister's face, and she came back the few steps she had taken. "He wrote to you recently?"
Abby pulled out the note and handed it to her. Sister Monique read it and handed it back. "I'm very sorry," she said. "I was surprised that Father Jean had written to anyone these past few months. He's very ill, my dear, and very weak. His mind is lucid, but his medication causes him to lapse into sleep frequently. If that happens, you must leave. Now, come along. I'll take you to his room, and if he's awake, I imagine he'll be glad to see you."
As they went up the stairs, Abby's dread grew. They reached a hallway with many doors, a few of them open to reveal small rooms, hospital beds, flowers on windowsills, people who had come here to die. A nurse with a tray entered a room and closed the door.
Sister Monique stopped walking. She glanced at Abby, then said, "If you're going to be ill, or start crying or anything, it would be better not to pay a call. For his sake," she added crisply.
"I'm all right," Abby said.
After a searching look, the sister tapped lightly on the door and opened it a crack to peer within. "Ah, Father, you're awake. How fortunate! You have a visitor!" Her voice had become cheerful, and she had a wide smile on her face as she entered the room, motioning Abby to follow. "Mrs. Connors has come to see you, Father."
He was so shrunken, his body barely raised the comforter over his frame. Music played softly, Berlioz. He had been facing the window; slowly he turned his head to gaze at Abby. His skin was so thin and translucent that his bones showed, his veins. His sparse hair blended into the white of the pillow. One skeletal hand rested on top of the comforter. It appeared that he was trying to raise it, but he succeeded only in moving his fingers slightly.
Sister Monique moved a straight chair close to the bed, glanced around the room, then said, "Ring if you want anything, Father." A call button was pinned to the comforter near his hand.
"Mrs. Connors? Jud's daughter?" the old man asked in a whispery voice.
"Yes, I'm Abby Connors," she said, and sat in the chair close enough to touch him. The room was claustrophobic; it contained a bureau, the chair she was in, a bedside stand. Potted orchids in bloom filled the windowsill, gay yellow, a deep rosy red, white. A crucifix hung on the wall opposite his bed. A CD player on the bedside stand played the Berlioz.
She shouldn't have come here, Abby thought despairingly. She didn't know what to say to him, what to ask him. "I'm sorry to bother you," she said finally. "You wrote me, and I—"
"Did he find peace?" the old man asked, his voice almost inaudible.
She nodded. "Yes. He found love and peace before he died."
He closed his eyes and mumbled something, and she wanted to touch him, not let him fall asleep yet, but she didn't dare. He was praying, she realized. In Latin.
"Thank you, child," he whispered after a moment. "I prayed that he would find peace. In the bureau, top ..." A spasm shook him; the comforter rippled with his movement. "Papers," he said. "They'll tell you." He sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
This time he did not open his eyes again, and for a moment she was afraid he was dead, but his fingers twitched on the comforter, as if feeling the texture of it. Silently she stood up, put the chair back against the wall, then went to the bureau and opened the top drawer.
There was a sweater, bed socks, a few sheets of letterhead stationery and some envelopes. She looked in the other two drawers: empty. Slowly she returned to the bedside stand and opened the single drawer there. Hospital items, lotion, powder, a small basin ... There was nothing else in the room. There was no closet, nowhere else to look. She went back to the bureau, picked up a sheet of stationery, and drew in a sharp breath: Xuan Bui Institute. Vietnamese. They would tell her something. That was what he had meant. She folded a sheet of the stationery and put it in her purse, then gazed at the dying man for a moment, wishing she knew how to pray, wishing she believed it would do him any good for her to try. Quietly she slipped out.
It was nearly noon when she left a taxicab on Tenth Street and looked about apprehensively. A warehouse district? Massive buildings lined both sides of the busy, wide street, warehouses that had been converted to other uses. Some upper windows were curtained, Venetian blinds hung at some of them, and small business establishments were housed on the street level. She started to walk, passed a Korean restaurant that advertised hot pepper ribs, a Brazilian restaurant with FEI-JADA in fading letters on the window. A used-furniture store with sad-looking beds and dressers on display. And then windows with drapes, and a door that had a neat little sign: XUAN BUI INSTITUTE.
It also had an OPEN sign. A bell announced her presence when she opened the door and walked inside to a room outfitted as an office with file cabinets, a desk, telephone, a computer, another door that opened as she entered. A beautiful Vietnamese woman came into the office and smiled at her. "Can I help you?"
Staring at her, Abby said, "I was looking for an institute, a school or something like that."
"Xuan Bui Institute," the other woman said, her smile broadening. "This is the office; the school, I'm afraid, is in Vietnam. What can I do for you?"
She was dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt with silk-screened water lilies on it, Adidas shoes, no jewelry. Her hair was short and straight, gleaming; she was very lovely, her face ivory-toned like an antique cameo, with fine bones.
"I don't know," Abby said almost helplessly. This woman was too young to tell her anything she needed to know, she thought. And Americanized, not really Vietnamese. Her diction was flawless, without a trace of accent. "Father Jean Auguste said someone here could tell me something. Is there anyone else?" A nameplate on the desk had the words THANH BUI. A name? Abby didn't know.
"Father Jean? He sent you?" The woman's eyes widened, and her smile vanished. "You're Judson Vickers's daughter?"
Abby nodded.
Swiftly the woman crossed the office space and turned the OPEN sign around. "I was going to close up and have lunch," she said. "I'm Thanh Bui. I can answer your questions. I addressed the note to you, but Father Jean wrote it himself. Please, have lunch with me."
Abby hesitated only a second, then nodded again, and they w
alked from the office out to the street. Neither spoke as Thanh led the way to the corner, past a few businesses, then into a restaurant. "Vietnamese," Thanh said. "We'll have pho, my daily lunch." She smiled slightly, spoke in Vietnamese to a counterman, and went straight to a booth. There were a dozen or more other customers in the restaurant, most of them Vietnamese. Some of them spoke to Thanh as she passed, in Vietnamese, English, even in French. She responded to each in kind. "What do you want to drink?" she asked when they were both seated. "I already ordered soup for us. I'll have jasmine tea; it's very good here."
Abby shrugged slightly. "That's fine." She didn't care what she ate or drank, and doubted that she could eat anything. "You knew my father?"
"Just a second," Thanh said as the counterman approached, bringing them water. She spoke briefly to him, and he left. She studied Abby for a moment before she said, "I never met him, but I know much about him."
Abby's disappointment must have shown, she thought, leaning back, exhaling. Another dead end. Pointless.
