A Toxic Trousseau

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Was Autumn Jennings’s death ruled accidental?”

  “It is no longer considered a homicide,” Stinson said in a curt tone. “I can’t discuss it any further at the moment, until her relatives are notified.”

  “Oh, okay. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Speaking of relatives, would you have any idea how to get in contact with Jennings’s family? Her maiden name was Autumn Clark, if that rings a bell?”

  “Not really. As I said, I barely knew her. I’ve heard she didn’t have much family.” Clark. Wasn’t that the name of the family cursed by the shoeshine boy? On the other hand, it wasn’t an unusual name. . . .

  “Where did you hear about her family?” Stinson demanded.

  “At the dog park. I seem to have inherited Autumn’s dog. I don’t suppose—”

  “Have a nice evening, Ms. Ivory.”

  “You, too.”

  As soon as I hung up, I realized Oscar had shifted into his natural form and was looming over me from the top of a tall walnut display cabinet. He was doing his gargoyle impression.

  “Wait just a goldurned minute,” he said, his voice a strident growl. “You’ve inherited her dog?”

  “We’ll try to find a better place for Loretta, somewhere with a yard,” I said. “I’m hoping Maya’s parents will decide they’re in love. But I feel ultimately responsible for placing her somewhere if they can’t take her.”

  “Why you? Just take her back to where you found her, let ’er be someone else’s problem.”

  “Oscar, you don’t mean that.”

  He shrugged. “Or you could drop her off in Golden Gate Park, let her make her own way in this world, toughen her up a little.”

  “Now, just how do you think you would feel if I did the same for you?”

  He waved one oversized hand and grimaced, which was his way of smiling. Soon his bony shoulders began to shake as he started to cackle, quietly at first, and then raucously. I was going to assume he was pondering the hilarity of the idea that he wouldn’t be able to make his own way in Golden Gate Park. Oscar was tough. His breed was probably like cockroaches: They would be living on this earth long after the rest of us had made it uninhabitable for humans.

  “My point is, Loretta’s a perfectly nice dog. She deserves a home.”

  Oscar harrumphed.

  “Anyway, I guess we should start cleaning up the store,” I said, my voice unconvincing even to my own ears.

  “But . . . what about dinner?” Oscar asked, outraged.

  “You’re right,” I said with a smile. “Let’s go upstairs and fix some dinner, and then afterward we can start cleaning up.”

  “Or tomorrow.”

  I sighed. “There’s always tomorrow.”

  Chapter 15

  Oscar was right; by the time we’d made dinner, eaten, and done the dishes, we were both plumb tuckered out. Oscar absolutely needed to find out whodunit in the book he was reading, and I was pondering a hot bath. Tomorrow sounded like a better option to tackle the mess on the shop floor.

  Besides, that way I could call on friends for help. I sat on the edge of my bed and phoned Bronwyn and Maya, asking if they would be free to come in tomorrow to get the place in order, and maybe even open for business depending on how long it took us. They both agreed; Maya said she would bring Loretta.

  As I hung up, my gaze settled on Aidan’s satchel, which sat on the bed beside me. I stroked the soft leather, pondering the bag’s significance—and more importantly, why Aidan had left it with me. Had he, indeed, merely needed someone to take over his bureaucratic duties while he was out of town? And what was so important to keep him away from San Francisco? It wasn’t as though he went out of town often. . . . I didn’t approve of keeping people’s markers and forcing them to do one’s bidding. That sounded way too much like what Carlos would call organized crime. But if we were dealing with a supernatural threat, then maybe Aidan was simply doing what was necessary to keep everyone safe.

  I felt a headache coming on. I should have brewed willow bark tea after dinner.

  My eyes alighted on the note the woman had written earlier when she came into Aunt Cora’s Closet, asking for help with the mayor. The missive was long and involved and made references to prior events I had no way of knowing anything about. It seemed like an ongoing story. I had promised to call the mayor on her behalf . . . but I had no idea why, or what to say. Also, it was after hours.

  Still . . . what good was having the mayor’s private number if a witch was afraid to use it?

  Mind made up, I opened the bag and pulled out the mayor’s card, then dialed the number scribbled in pencil on the back.

  “What is it?” answered a man’s voice I recognized from press conferences. But when speaking in public his tone was forever patient, ready with a quick joke or folksy story. Now it was terse and impatient.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” I began. “I needed to talk to you about—”

  “Tomorrow, at your new office. Six?”

  “Sure. I—”

  He hung up.

  I stared at the phone for a long moment. That was . . . odd. He didn’t ask who I was, much less what I was calling about. And he said we’d meet at “your new office”—did he mean Aidan’s place in the recently rebuilt wax museum on Fisherman’s Wharf? Didn’t he notice he wasn’t actually speaking to Aidan?

  What in the Sam Hill?

  I guessed my questions would be answered tomorrow when I met the mayor face-to-face. Maybe I really was moving up in the world, from vintage clothes dealer to someone with the mayor’s ear. I made a mental note to mention the streetlight in front of the store was out when we spoke.

  I was about to dig through the satchel a little more when I heard someone let him- or herself in to the store downstairs. Heavy boots thudded on the stairs leading to my apartment, and I was enveloped by the scent of roses. Sailor.

  I ran to meet him at the door.

  He paused; his dark eyes swept over me; a smile played on his lips. I resisted the urge to throw myself in his arms like the heroine of the novel I was reading.

  “Hi,” I finally said, feeling oddly shy.

  His smile broadened. He placed his helmet on the chair by the door and stepped toward me.

  “Hi, yourself. C’mere.” We shared a long, luxurious kiss. Then he lifted his head and said, “Don’t distract me, now. Aren’t we due to meet a man about a curse?”

  “Oh! I plumb forgot!”

  “Grab your coat and hat, madam. It’s cold out there.”

  * * *

  Pier 39 is the sort of tourist extravaganza that locals avoid like the plague. Nearby Fisherman’s Wharf at least had a legitimate history, with historic restaurants like Alioto’s, the sourdough bread factory, old fishing docks, and big steaming vats where crabs were cooked on the sidewalks by hawkers. But Pier 39 had been developed specifically for tourists, so it was crowded with tchotchke shops and chain seafood restaurants, and though it was built on an old pier, there wasn’t much left of the historic structure to be savored. Still, it had its enjoyable aspects: There was a nice aquarium featuring the life of the San Francisco Bay; sea lions entertained visitors with their incessant barking and antics as they pushed each other off the adjoining docks; the carousel featured San Francisco scenes and sent merry music to vie with the calls of the sea lions; and street performers juggled and danced and made people laugh.

  Sailor glanced down at me as we walked along.

  “You’re smiling,” he said. “You like it here?”

  “It’s gaudy and silly, but I like tourists. Always have.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t think there are a lot of locals who would agree with you on that one. San Francisco’s a tourist mecca, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.”

  “It’s their vibrations—don’t you feel it? They’re upbeat a
nd open, excited and . . .”

  “Exhausted?” Sailor suggested as a harried-looking woman dragged a screaming child toward the restroom.

  I had to laugh. “Yes, exhausted, too, of course. Look—there’s the sign for the mirror maze, upstairs.”

  I stepped on the first step, and it made a tinkling sound. So did the second. Only then did I realize the stair risers were black and white, made to look like piano keys.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “You don’t know the musical stairs?” Sailor asked. “It’s like in that old movie with Tom Hanks . . . which I’m going to assume you never saw.”

  I shook my head.

  “We really are going to have to work on your pop culture education, now that you’re a proud recipient of your GED.”

  Sailor hopped onto the stairs and starting jumping from one step to another, creating a simple rendition of a song, with only a few missteps: “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

  A semicircle of tourists formed around us almost immediately. They laughed and clapped when he finished, and a couple of kids rushed onto the steps to make noise. I reached into my pocket and threw Sailor some coins.

  He caught a quarter, then jumped off the staircase to land at my feet.

  “Don’t throw coins, milady,” he said, breathing heavily. “Throw kisses.”

  I laughed and gave him a quick kiss.

  The tourists, thinking they were witnessing an act, tried to press a few dollars into his hand, but he begged off.

  Show over, Sailor and I climbed the tinkling piano steps and made our way to the mirror maze, bought two tickets, and entered. The effect was disconcerting, definitely off-putting, but Sailor walked smoothly through the labyrinth, as though he had a map in his head.

  “You’re good at this,” I said. “Is it related to the mirror thing I witnessed you doing at Autumn’s place?”

  “No, nothing so complicated.” He pointed. “Look at the floor. There’s a tell.”

  Then I saw what he was saying: The edge of the mirror at the floor left a little line, which wasn’t there on the real path.

  “Still, I’m impressed. I find it a little . . . alarming,” I said as I headed right into a never-ending reflection of myself. “Where do you suppose this guy is?”

  “If you didn’t set a particular meeting place, it’s up to him to find us. That’s the way shakedowns usually go.”

  Just then we heard someone behind us, panting and complaining. A man ran toward us, around a corner of the maze.

  “Jeez,” he said, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees as though trying to catch his breath. “What is it with youse two? Usually I catch up to folks in the first turnaround.”

  “My friend Sailor’s pretty skilled with mazes.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he said, looking Sailor up and down. “Look, I never said you could bring somebody. I dunno this guy.”

  “You don’t know me, either.”

  “Ya got me there.” Jamie was small and wiry, with a rather rodentlike face, but it was the way he carried himself that really put me in mind of a weasel. “Anyway, you got the money?”

  “Yes. But first we have a few questions.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Here we go . . .”

  “What were you doing for Autumn Jennings?”

  Confusion entered his eyes, and then they narrowed. “Waaaiiiit a gol-danged minute. You’re supposed ta be Autumn Jennings.”

  “There was a change in plans,” I said.

  “This is what I was just saying about trusting people.” He shook his head as though lamenting the fall in morals in today’s society.

  “Anyway, we’re here now, and I think I have something you want.” I waved the manila envelope under his nose. “A lot of money. Even has your name on it. I mean, you are Jamie, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said with obvious reluctance.

  “And now I want some answers.”

  “Awright, awright. But let’s get out of here. Had clam chowder for dinner, and these mirrors are makin’ me nauseated.”

  We exited and went around to the side of the pier, where we leaned against weather-beaten gray rails. Here we could hear the lapping of the water against the pilings, the incessant barking of the sea lions, and the far-off music from a street performer playing Stevie Wonder songs on a keyboard. A few couples strolled by, but most of the tourists remained on the main part of the pier.

  “Why would Autumn seek you out?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Why does anyone seek me out? She wanted a curse removed.”

  “Too late,” said Sailor.

  “Why?” Jamie asked. He looked from one to the other of us.

  “She passed away two days ago.”

  “What—seriously? Damn. That’s one thing about this business—there’s a real issue with timing. You don’t get to someone in time . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re saying she keeled over just like that, simply from touching a cursed item? I felt some of those items in the trousseau myself, and they were definitely sad, but they didn’t feel . . . evil, or anything along those lines.”

  “What are you talking about, a cursed trousseau?”

  “You were the one who just said she was cursed.”

  “It’s got nothin’ to do with clothes. What, are you talking about that store of hers? She runs a vintage clothes store, right? But none of this had nothing to do with that. I mean, not directly.”

  “So what does it have to do with?”

  “It had to do with her family.”

  “I heard she didn’t have any family.”

  “Yeah, well, that was partly my point. She used to. Plenty. But they all died off. Her father came from a big family; everybody died young. And then in her generation, everybody died young, too. Including her kid, I guess. Always sad when a kid gets it, am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “And her husband died a coupla years ago, too. So she figured maybe she was cursed, like maybe something was following her around.”

  “But it wasn’t related to a trousseau, then?”

  “She mentioned something about that, but I got the impression she thought the trousseau was historic, like from her family. Maybe her great-grandma’s or something. Doesn’t really matter; this was a hereditary curse.”

  “That actually makes more sense,” I said to myself as much as to the men. “It’s not the clothes that are cursed, but the bloodline.”

  “And what were you promising to do for her?” asked Sailor.

  “Hey, I got skills. As do you, I can tell. I got a nose for this kind of thing. You’re a seer?”

  “What I’m seeing right now,” said Sailor, “is that you were planning on taking Autumn Jennings’s money and giving her nothing in return.”

  “Well, now, that’s not exactly true. What I do is I go back through the documents and try to see where the trouble began. Then, I got a girl out in the Avenues, Russian, they’re good at this sort of thing. She does a whole cleansing-type deal. Real convincing. I mean, the cleansing’s legit and all, but she does a whole show . . . you sorta gotta be there. Anyway, she goes a long way toward convincing someone the curse is lifted, and as you probably know . . .”

  “The belief in the curse—or the cure—is as powerful as the actual curse.”

  He nodded his rodentlike head. “Exactly.”

  I studied him for a moment. “So you’re basically the go-between for someone who thinks they’re cursed and this Russian woman in the Avenues.”

  “Basically.”

  “And for this you charge two thousand dollars?”

  “What I got”—he laid his finger on the side of his nose—“people are willing to pay for. And not for nothin’, but sometimes the more they pay, the more th
ey believe in the cure, if you catch my drift.”

  I nodded. The sad truth was that he was right. As a general rule, the more someone invested in something—in this culture it tended to be monetary—the more they valued it. It was true for cars and jewels, and magic as well.

  The wind kicked the salt off the bay, enveloping us in the night breezes. I thought about all the happy—and exhausted—tourists, the couples headed out to crab dinners and hopping onto the carousel for another ride. Autumn would never take another ride, would never have another night out. All of us would eventually cross that bridge from the lives we knew now to the beyond, of course, but Autumn’s life, tragically, had been cut short. And no matter what Stinson and Ng thought, I wasn’t buying the accidental death theory. There were simply too many coincidences and loose ends and people acting strangely.

  “All right,” I said, blowing out a breath. “You don’t happen to know a young woman named Scarlet, do you? She was an associate of Autumn’s?”

  He shook his head. “As should be obvious by now, I never met Autumn before. We talked on the telephone, is all.”

  “Which begs the question: How did a nice vintage clothes dealer get mixed up with the likes of you?”

  “Hey, I’m a legitimate businessman.”

  “Whatever. How’d she find you? Yellow pages?”

  “Nah, through her neighbor, the cupcake lady.”

  “Renee?”

  He nodded.

  “Is Renee Baker a friend of yours?”

  There was a pause. “I wouldn’t say ‘friend.’ I help her out from time to time, so she refers people to me. Like that.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what he helped her with, but it really wasn’t any of my business. People found support and solace and insight where they could, whether through religion or exercise or psychics or weaselly ersatz curse lifters like Jamie.

  Still, I couldn’t quite let it go . . .

  “Are you licensed to lift curses?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I took a copy of the licensure for fortune-telling out of my bag and handed it to him.

  “I wouldn’t call myself a necromancer, much less a fortune-teller,” Jamie hedged, looking at the regulations in his hand like they were about to jump up and bite him.