The dripping fog had thickened into a drenching rain, rendering my glasses useless. I stumbled along, brazenly myopic, until I reached the front steps to the shop.
Even in the downpour, my nose instinctively searched for a wisp of Oscar’s cooking, but only the looming ocean scent tinged the air. I stood on the sidewalk underneath the tightly shut upstairs window as cold drops of rain snuck down my collar and tried to steal the warmth from the small of my back.
The front door had been damaged by the paramedics in their efforts to reach Oscar, so the police had fashioned a temporary closure by winding several pieces of wire around the iron framing. I wrestled with the wire for several minutes before I finally disbanded it and pried open the door.
Despite its derelict condition, I had always admired the entrance to the Green Vase. Two steps led up from the street to a small, semicircular stone patio covered by a red brick archway. The door was made of thick, rectangular-shaped, glass panels mounted into a frame of curling wrought iron strips. Even before the attempted rescue, several sections of glass had split or cracked from years of use. Now, one of the panes had been smashed in and the lock hopelessly wrenched. Shards of glass were scattered on the floor inside.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the room where Oscar must have spent his last minutes. My heart dropped to the floor where a dark stain spread out like an oil slick from a sinking ship. The crimson-soaked floorboards emanated the burnt, rusting odor of Oscar’s defeated red blood cells, the ghosts of whom I imagined still hung in the dusty air of the Green Vase, searching for his spent, expired body.
Digging into my rain spotted lenses with the cuff of my sweater, I pushed further on into the store. The shadows of Oscar’s life floated all around me, in the cluttered piles of antiques, the loaded, leaning bookshelves, and the vintage cash register that sat on the counter near the door.
I took in a deep, steadying breath as I approached the stairs at the back of the showroom. Oscar had kept a drawer full of padlocks in the kitchen upstairs, and I was sure one of those would work on the front door until I could get it fixed.
The wooden crate that had snagged my sweater the night of our last dinner with Oscar still obstinately blocked the stairwell. It glowered at me with its bulky, bullying mass. Egged on by the turbulence of my emotions, I decided to move it to a less obnoxious location.
I sidled up to the side of the crate and gave it a nudge. It didn’t budge.
I stepped back for a moment to size up my opponent—a squatty, solid, rectangular cube that just topped my forehead in height. I leaned against it and gave a more substantial shove.
Still no movement—just a rude smirk that I imagined forming in the rough grains of one of the exterior planks.
My temper rising, I crouched down and propped one foot up against the nearby wall, trying to leverage my weight against the splintery surface of the crate. Straining, I devoted all of my resources into gaining horizontal motion. The bottom edge tilted up slightly—then, suddenly, the both of us slipped backwards.
I lost my balance and hit the ground with a thud, landing painfully on a flat, metal rod that dug up into my thigh.
I eased up onto my knees and leaned over to study it more closely. A metal handle, about four inches long, poked up from an oval recess cut out of the wooden floor. My fingers worked a small lever on the inside of the opening, and the handle retracted down into the hole.
An oval-shaped cover had been propped up against a nearby wall; its surface matched that of the carved out floorboard. I positioned the cover over the hole and snapped it into place. A small, pinky-sized opening was the only evidence of its location. In the dusky light of this corner of the store, the finger hole mimicked an innocuous knot in the wood.
“A handle to what?” I wondered aloud, pulling off the cover and extending the handle.
I stood up on one side and tried to pull, but nothing happened. I walked around to position myself on the other side of the handle, realizing that the floorboards I’d been standing on were subtly more springy than the rest.
I pulled up again, and this time it yielded. There was a puff of dust and the grinding of gears as a trap door emerged from the floorboards. The door was roughly square, but the surface had been modified to fit into the grooves and striations of the planks in the flooring. Sitting back on my heels, I ran my fingers along the large, buck teeth of the open edge and peered into the dark hole. An unseen mechanism had triggered rickety stairs to unwind down into the hatch.
Cool, damp air seeped up at me as I leaned over the opening, puzzled. The stairs quickly disappeared into a pitch-black darkness.
It wasn’t surprising that the building would have a basement, but it seemed odd that Oscar had never mentioned it.
I left the gaping hole unattended and sprinted up the stairs to fetch Oscar’s flashlight from the top of the refrigerator. My uncle had been exceptionally proud of this heavy-duty implement. Made of a sturdy, camouflage-colored plastic, its high-powered LED issued a wide cone of darkness-obliterating rays. Gripping it confidently, I raced back down to the hatch.
I pushed a button on the handle and pointed the beam into the dark abyss.
The stairs appeared even less stable under illumination. The structure shuddered violently as I put my weight onto the top step, and I grabbed onto the trap door, nearly losing my balance. After the shaking subsided, I slowly eased my way down into the hole.
Something tickled my nose as my feet struck the concrete floor in the room below. I flashed my light up at the ceiling. It was so low I could almost touch it with the flat of my hand—an action which brought down a tangle of cobwebs that nested in my hair and glasses.
After fighting off the cobwebs, I glanced back up at the ceiling to see a single bare light bulb mounted over my head. A thin, rotting string swung back and forth beneath the bulb. I caught it with my free hand and pulled.
There was a tiny clinking sound; then the string rebounded and the light bulb came on. I dimmed my flashlight to test the bulb’s wattage. It emitted a thin halo of light that barely managed to illuminate the top of my shoes. I returned my flashlight to full force and trained it into the cave-like basement.
The light carved through a dusty, black haze, revealing a room similar in size to the Green Vase showroom above. The walls were made of the same red bricks as the exterior of the building, and the floor was a cracked, grimy concrete. Several crates like the one I’d wrestled with upstairs were stacked haphazardly up against the walls.
I continued on towards the back of the basement, shining the flashlight around in an arc. As I got farther away from the stairs, the dim light that had been contributed by the light bulb faded away. Even the broad beam of the flashlight failed to ease my growing feeling of claustrophobic panic.
As I reached the far end of the basement, there was a bump in the ceiling above my head. Startled, my knees collapsed beneath me, and I fell onto the hard floor, dropping the flashlight. It rolled away from me in a semi-circle, its light bouncing wildly around the room.
A man’s voice called out from above. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Groaning, I struggled to my feet and grabbed the light.
“Hallow,” the greeting echoed above me.
“Yes, yes, hello. I’m down in the basement,” I called up. “Just a minute.”
I began scrambling back towards the stairs. A curly-haired head dipped upside down to look at me through the hatch.
“Oh, hello there,” the head shouted in my direction. “I’m Montgomery Carmichael. I run the gallery across the street. You’re Oscar’s niece, aren’t you?”
I stumbled halfway up the stairs and shook his hand, which had followed his head over the edge. The strong, citrus smell of recently applied aftershave cut through the stale, moldy aroma of the basement.
“Nice to meet you, Montgomery,” I said to the upside-down torso, my nose twitching as I tried to fight off the second sneeze of the day. I was unsuccessful.
&n
bsp; “Bless you,” he laughed as my high-pitched blast echoed off the walls of the basement. “You can call me Monty. Everyone else does.”
I climbed up the rest of the stairs and back into the showroom. Blinking through my watering eyes, I tried to get a better look at my visitor.
He was a tall, skinny, stork-like man. He ambled about awkwardly on disproportionately long legs as he poked around the store. His pale green eyes stared out from under thick, curly brown hair, still damp from the rain smattering down outside. It was styled short on each side, longer in the middle, with frizzing curls that bounced wildly off the top.
A tightly wound bow tie garroted his long, stringy neck, topping off his light-colored suit and suspenders. A pair of whimsical, carrot-shaped cufflinks accented his crisply starched, button-down shirt.
I watched, perplexed, as he slid across the floor on highly polished wingtips and skid to a halt in front of me. The pores on his closely shaven face shone from the recently applied aftershave.
“So sorry about your uncle,” he said, bending towards me. One of his long arms reached over to brush a cobweb from the top of my head. “It was so sudden—shocking, really.”
I took a wide step backwards, dodging his gangly arm. “Yes, yes it was,” I replied uneasily.
Monty turned to lean over the open hatch. “I didn’t know Oscar had a basement over here,” he said curiously. “How big is it? There’s only a small one in my building—barely holds the water heater.”
“Oh, it’s big enough, I guess. It’s full of shipping crates, just like up here.” I gestured to the crowded room around us. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of this.”
“So, you’ll be taking over the place?” he asked, jumping on my allusion. Monty, I would quickly learn, was the gossip of the neighborhood. Few comings and goings escaped his close attention.
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said, feeling far less certain than I’d been in Miranda’s office. I was starting to realize how much work this was going to be. “I don’t know where to begin.”
Monty’s face lit up. “I think I can help you there,” he bubbled enthusiastically. “I’ve consulted on the renovations for most of the places up and down the street.”
It turned out Monty was inevitably a consultant on almost every renovation project in Jackson Square. His guidance was persistently offered—if rarely solicited.
I don’t actually remember accepting his assistance, but, ten minutes later, we were sitting at the upstairs kitchen table, sketches of various options accumulating on its surface. Monty, whose gallery across the street was filled with a wide variety of local artwork, turned out to be a fairly decent sketch artist.
“Wow, this is really good,” I said a short time later, complimenting an illustration he’d developed for one proposal we were considering.
“Oh, no, no,” he gushed, soaking in the praise like a puppy. “I’m just an amateur.” He picked up one of the sketches and held it towards the light, admiring it.
“You’re not much like your uncle, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Monty’s expression was masked by the sketch he was holding in front of his face.
“How do you mean?” I replied cautiously, not sure how to interpret his comment.
“Well,” Monty said, grinning as he laid the sketch back down on the table. “For one thing, I’ve been here for nearly half an hour, and you haven’t thrown me out yet. I don’t think I ever made it past the two minute mark when the old . . .” He coughed unnecessarily. “I mean, your uncle, ran the place.”
“You didn’t get on that well then?” I asked, visualizing my grouchy uncle leading the pretentious Monty out of the store by the ear.
Monty’s face confirmed my mental image. He rubbed his earlobe absentmindedly as he spluttered, “It wasn’t for lack of trying, let me tell you. I stopped in several times to tell him about my ideas for the Green Vase. You know, ways he could make improvements. He just wasn’t interested.”
Monty threw up his hands in disbelief as I smothered a guffaw with my own fake coughing spell.
“I got the distinct impression that he didn’t want my help,” Monty continued, shaking his head as I hid my face behind my hands.
Monty returned to his sketches, while I tried to regain my composure. The table was silent except for the scratching of his pencil as he filled in more details on the most recent picture. When he looked up again, his face was strangely serious.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” he said, fixing me intently with a penetrating stare, “but I had the impression Oscar was hiding something over here. Like he didn’t want me nosing around.”
He pointed a forefinger at his left eye and winked dramatically. “You should keep an eye out.”
Chapter 5
FIRST THING THE next morning, I phoned the contractor listed on the business card Miranda had given me. The line rang several times before a static laden connection picked up. A sound like tires crunching on gravel rolled out of the earpiece as the voice on the other end cleared his throat.
“Miranda mentioned you’d be calling,” he responded to my introduction. “You’re Oscar’s niece then?”
It felt strange to meet people who saw me through Oscar-tinted lenses. Except for my weekly dinners at the Green Vase, our worlds had never overlapped.
“He and I used to play dominoes with a group every other Thursday.” The voice paused, as if considering. “Guess we’ll need to find another player for this week’s game.” He suggested we meet at the Green Vase that afternoon.
A couple of hours later, I popped the cats into their carriers and loaded them into my car. They wouldn’t have allowed me to leave them behind on a Saturday afternoon outing to Oscar’s.
The rains of the previous evening had skittered away, leaving behind a city full of freshly bathed buildings. Row after row of tiered, bay windows were temporarily wiped clean of nose prints, so that the people looking out were once again clearly visible to those of us looking in.
I parked on the curb next to the front door of the Green Vase and unloaded the cats, one week to the day since our last dinner with Oscar. The cold metal of the padlock clinked against the iron framing of the door as I fed the small key into its mouth and released the teeth of the U bend.
I set the carriers down on the floor in the front of the shop and opened the doors. Somehow the cats sensed that the world was now irretrievably different. They crept slowly out into the room, their eyes wide, their whiskers twitching.
I’d tried to wipe the bloodstain from the floor, but Oscar’s imprint was indelible. Isabella took one round of it; then she charged to the back of the store and up the stairs, searching the premises for the source of the blotted mark. Rupert simply sat down on the floor and looked up at me with bewildered, blue eyes. I swept him up in my arms and carried him towards the stairs at the back of the store, burying my head in the soft, fluffy fur around his neck.
The soles of my feet sprung slightly as I crossed over the trap door near the foot of the stairs, and I wondered why Oscar had kept its existence a secret. What other shrouded elephants, I wondered, lurked in the closets of the Green Vase?
Isabella circled back as I carried Rupert up the stairs to the kitchen. She dodged nervously in and around my feet, nearly tripping me in her anxiety. No small dishes of food waited under the table. No pots steamed on the stove. The kitchen was cold and empty. I flicked on the light switch and dropped down to the uneven tile floor, trying to console the furry pair of worried heads.
The shiny red litter box gleamed in the hall just outside the kitchen. Oscar had proudly shown off his new purchase the night of our last dinner. Rupert slid towards it, sniffing loudly with obvious intent. I stepped in front of him before he could jump in and carried it up the next flight of stairs to the bathroom on the third floor. I didn’t think a litter box should be visible from the kitchen, even if it was fire engine red.
After relocating the litter box, I began to wash my hands with a
grimy bar of Oscar’s soap. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Isabella jogging past the open door carrying a shiny metal object in her mouth.
“Hey, what’ch you got there?” I called out after her as she leapt down the stairs. She didn’t stop for an inspection—a sure sign she’d just snitched something.
For years, I had waged a losing battle against Isabella’s acquisitive impulses. Anything that she could pull, drag, or carry off in her mouth was fair game. Once she’d squirreled away her prize, it was almost impossible to find. Over the years, I’d lost a wide array of toothbrushes, hair clips, pencils, dice, tweezers, matches, bathtub stoppers, and who knows what else to Isabella’s klepto-cravings. This time, I was determined to intercept her.
I chased Isabella down the top flight of stairs and around a corner. She zoomed across the kitchen, slaloming between the legs of the kitchen table. I chased after her, nearly nabbing the tip of her tail, but she slipped past my grasp and launched down the steps to the first floor. Whatever item of Oscar’s she’d latched on to was about to be lost forever in the Green Vase showroom.
I clambered headlong down the stairs after her, nearly striking my forehead on a large, splintering beam that hung low over the sixth step. My fingers raced along the uneven wallboards like piano keys as my toes gripped the slick, worn steps with less and less success.
I hit the bottom step, my feet sliding wildly. There was a flash of white fur and a bloodcurdling—human—scream.
I tried to pull up, but I’d gained too much momentum. I tumbled out into the Green Vase showroom, plowing straight into a tall, stick figure wearing a white, strangely familiar, fur cap.
“I saw you come in from across the street,” Monty said, trying to straighten his bow tie as Isabella teetered back and forth on top of his head. “Thought I’d try to catch you. I came up with a few more ideas this morning.”
I reached up and plucked Isabella out of the brown nest of curls. With a triumphant look, she leapt gracefully from my arms up to the top of a nearby bookcase. She’d already disposed of her trinket.
How to Wash a Cat Page 4
