“Maybe you should give that some more thought, Ed,” said Emma.
“What’s to think about? You heard them cheering back there, didn’t you?”
Emma had to admit that the Chihuahua had a lot of personality. The audience had screamed with laughter when Emma had pulled the drape from the trick cage to reveal Lionel where Sergio had been. The tiny dog had yapped happily, then jumped right through the bars of the cage into Emma’s arms. The crowd had gone wild. A dozen people had appeared after the show asking for Lionel’s paw print in their pieces of cake as a souvenir. Even the two comatose stagehands, whom the union required Emma to hire, had made a fuss over him.
Only Sergio had seemed unhappy, his dignity ruffled by having to be transformed into a pint-sized Chihuahua instead of the usual manly Saint Bernard. He had quickly found a peroxide of blonds to console himself with, however, at the party.
“You don’t want that kind of life for Lionel, believe me,” said Emma as the waitress brought their margaritas.
“He’s gonna be a star!”
“He’s going to be stranded in the middle of Kansas because somebody cancels a booking at the last minute and refuses to pay. He’s going to spend Christmas watching television in a Holiday Inn in Fort Worth.”
For the next half hour Emma recounted horror story after horror story of just how unglamorous a life in show business could be until Big Ed finally got the message.
“Well, I guess I don’t want him fritterin’ away his best years if it ain’t no fun like you say,” said the Chevy King, gently scratching Lionel’s ear. It was clear that he adored the little dog, who was presently taking a nap in the big man’s pocket.
“It’s a life I wouldn’t wish on a dog,” said Emma. “As you can tell.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Very good question.”
After another drink Emma found herself talking about having wanted to be a dancer and what it had been like for her growing up in San Francisco with only her grandfather. After the fourth margarita she promised to consider a Chevy from Big Ed for her next car. After the fifth, he declared he was going to name his first child after her, provided he ever found the little lady of his dreams.
On Sunday morning Emma awoke with a headache the size of one of those great Chevy trucks Big Ed had told her all about. Somehow she managed to make her way downstairs to one of the restaurants. The coffee wasn’t as hot or as strong as she liked it, but Emma figured that this wasn’t the time to try to cut down. Judging from the condition of her head, she would probably die soon anyway.
“Hi, Emma,” whispered a thunderous voice. “How you do?”
Emma struggled to pry her gaze off the piece of toast she had just buttered and which seemed to be throbbing. It was Sergio with one of the blondes from last night on his arm—a leggy girl of about twenty with a chest that rivaled his own and real-looking diamonds in her pierced ears. She was still wearing her dress from the night before—a seriously wrinkled designer original.
“I’m just great,” Emma croaked. “How are you?”
“Sergio going to be married,” he declared. The blonde smiled guiltily and looked at the floor.
“Don’t lead the poor girl on, Sergio,” said Emma, rolling her eyes. They seemed to make a clanking noise. Or was that the butter melting?
“No, is true.”
Sergio’s voice was strangely subdued and he wasn’t wearing his usual morning-after smirk. In fact, he looked almost frightened. Emma suddenly realized that he might be telling the truth.
“That’s great, Sergio,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say. “Congratulations.”
“This is Kiki,” said Sergio proudly. “She can do hundred onearm push-ups.”
Kiki stepped forward and shook Emma’s hand. She had a grip like a nutcracker.
“I work out a lot,” said Kiki happily.
“Kiki think Sergio sensitive guy,” said Sergio.
“I know it’s kind of sudden,” the girl went on, “but Sergie’s what I’ve always dreamed about. And he really knows what he wants, don’t you, Sergie?”
“Her father own big chain of supermarkets,” said Sergio, his normal cocky expression returning. “Drives Jaguar. You okay, Emma? You look bad.”
“No, I’m fine. I just had too much to drink last night and I’m not used to it. I’m very happy for you both. Really.”
“Don’t worry, I get you other big lug to replace Sergio. Make calls. Not leave you up shitcreek.”
“That’s okay, Sergio,” said Emma, turning her attention back to her throbbing piece of toast. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire, anyway.”
“You not be magician?”
“It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Ha, you kid Sergio,” said the giant, laughing. “You always be magician. You like when everything go wrong and you go crazy. But you please to come visit us between shows sometimes. Kiki’s father have big ranch. Sergio learn to ride horse, yippy kai yay. Time to pack up crates now?”
“I think I’m going to need a few more minutes and about eight more cups of coffee.”
“You stay. Sergio no need help.”
“That’s very nice of you, Sergio,” said Emma. The salt and pepper shakers were beginning to throb now, too.
“Sergio nice guy,” said Sergio. “Has great body and good looks. Soon will be rich, too.”
“Nice meeting you,” said Kiki as Sergio moved away, gesturing for her to follow. “And I really liked your show last night. You shouldn’t retire just because of Sergie and me. You’ve really got talent. You could do this the rest of your life.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” whispered Emma as the girl ran to catch up with her dreams.
When Emma finally pulled into the driveway of Jacques Passant’s Potrero Hill house on Sunday afternoon, the sky was the color of plums, and bright fingers of lightning laced through the heavy rain every few minutes.
She had felt strangely sad as she had given Sergio a final kiss on the cheek at the hotel before getting into a cab for the airport. It was hard to believe that she would probably never see the big ape again, never have to ad-lib a joke while he picked himself off the floor in the middle of a performance, never hear his headboard pounding endlessly against the wall in the next room after a show.
It was harder still to believe that she could really retire from performing and find another way to make a living. Emma was certainly ready to try. Just the thought of stepping out on another stage with a phony smile on her face and a brassiere full of colored handkerchiefs made her sick.
Only what else could she do? She’d wither in an office, and she hated people telling her what to do. Charlemagne Moussy, Jacques Passant’s lawyer and oldest friend, had told Emma last week that there was some money in her grandfather’s estate. Maybe she could buy a little flower shop or something. But what did she know about running a shop? What did she know about flowers, for that matter, other than how to make them pop out of her sleeve?
The flight up from Phoenix in the thunderstorm had been frightening. Emma was glad to be home.
Potrero Hill was a quiet neighborhood in San Francisco’s southern half, where working-class people still made their homes despite soaring real estate prices and creeping gentrification. Emma’s grandfather had bought the house years ago, when things were cheap. The two-story shingled structure featured three bedrooms, a sliver of yard, and an attached one-car garage, where Jacques Passant had parked the Plymouth he would never use again.
Emma parked her own car in the drive as usual. Then she ran to the house through the pouring rain but was drenched before she managed to unlock the front door. The telephone maliciously stopped ringing the moment she got inside.
With the lights off and the storm roiling, the empty house felt lonely and menacing. Emma dropped her suitcase on the floor and went into the kitchen to check the answering machine. Nothing but hang-ups. A blast of thunder pealed outside in the storm. She reset
the machine and went up to her room.
Occupying the back corner of the second floor and with windows on both sides, Emma’s bedroom was normally the sunniest room in the house. Now rain beat on the windows and the dark fury of the storm made everything—the wicker dresser, the Eastlake chair, even the embroidered white duvet on her brass bed—look gray and lifeless.
The room was a mess, as usual. Emma automatically started to pick up a few of the paperback books that littered the floor by her bedside, then stopped. Jacques Passant wouldn’t be poking his head in today, telling her to straighten up.
From every wall the eyes of children stared at her in the dim light. She had found the framed, hand-colored etchings in antique stores and thrift shops, though why she collected them she didn’t really know. Both Emma’s mother and grandmother had died in childbirth, so she wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of motherhood.
Emma snapped on the light. The shadows disappeared, and the room suddenly became friendlier. She stripped off her wet clothes, wrapped herself in a white terry-cloth robe, and was drying her thick black hair with a towel when the phone rang again.
“I’m glad I finally caught up with you, Miz Passant,” drawled a man when she answered. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
The raspy mellow voice belonged to Detective Benno Poteet of the San Francisco Police Department, who didn’t sound nearly as short, fat, and bald over the telephone.
“I’ve been out of town,” Emma said, bracing herself. “Why didn’t you leave a message? I would have called you back.”
“I hate them things. It’s like you’re having this stupid little conversation with yourself. You always rattle on like a idiot, and you know someone is going to hear the whole damnable thing. Hell, I don’t even like the phone. I like to talk to folks face-toface.”
Detective Poteet had been the man who had broken the news to Emma about her grandfather, coming over to the house so he could tell her in person. He had been more than decent during all the trauma that followed—making runs to a diner so she wouldn’t have to drink the police station’s coffee, telling her all about his childhood in New Orleans—but Emma hadn’t really wanted to hear his voice again. Had they found her grandfather’s killer? Would there be a trial now, a filthy affair that would go on forever? Couldn’t all the painful memories just be put to rest, as she had put Jacques Passant’s ashes to rest in San Francisco Bay?
“So what can I do for you, Detective?” Emma asked in a very quiet, very tired voice.
“How long have you known Henri-Pierre Caraignac?” said Detective Poteet.
It was not a question Emma had expected, and it took her a moment to figure out who the policeman was talking about. The Frenchman. The man who had helped her on the ferry.
“I met him a few days ago,” she finally stammered as thunder clattered in the skies above and lightning lit up her windows. “Why?”
“Mind telling me the circumstances of your meeting?”
“We struck up a conversation on the Sausalito Ferry.”
“When exactly was this?”
“This past Friday morning.”
“Did he seek you out, approach you first?”
“No, I went up to him.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Nothing really,” said Emma, getting a little nervous. She certainly wasn’t going to mention dropping her grandfather’s ashes in the bay to Poteet and get busted. Had there been a witness? Was the handsome and elegant Henri-Pierre Caraignac a fink? What the hell was going on?
“You must have talked about something,” drawled Poteet. “Did he ask you about your grandfather?”
“No.”
“Your grandfather never came up in the conversation at all?”
“I may have mentioned something. He didn’t bring it up, though. Like I said, we were strangers. Look, what’s this all about?”
“And all you did on the ferry was talk? Nothing else?”
“He bought me some coffee and a doughnut. I drove him back to his hotel. Is that a crime? What’s going on here, Detective? Why are you asking me all these questions about this guy? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“He’s dead. Murdered.”
Emma nearly dropped the phone. She was so stunned that she couldn’t talk for a few moments. When she finally tried, she found herself breathless, her eyes full of tears, her heart pounding.
“Are you all right, Miz Passant?”
“Yes,” said Emma after a moment. “It’s just the shock of it. Are you sure?”
“An acquaintance of his from a local auction house identified the body. Staff at the hotel knew him pretty well.”
“But he was … I was just …”
Emma suddenly found herself crying uncontrollably. What was the matter with her? Poteet waited a long time before speaking again.
“I know this is hard for you, Miz Passant, coming on the heels of your grandfather’s death and all,” he said quietly. “It sort of builds up, is my experience. I’ve seen it before in folks in your situation. You think you’re all grieved out, but your nerves are all raw and anything’s likely to trigger stuff you didn’t know was left in there. I’ve seen people go to pieces ’cause a can of beans falls off a shelf. This thing with Caraignac’s bound to get to you, so unexpected and all.”
“I didn’t know him, you know,” said Emma, wiping her eyes, grateful for the time to pull herself together. “We just met, that was all there was to it. We were just passengers together on the same ferry.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
Why did he seem not to believe her? Emma wondered. How many people really fell apart at news of a stranger’s death? For all his soft voice and good manners, Poteet was still a cop. But why should she feel guilty? She didn’t have anything to do with this. She could see Henri-Pierre in her mind’s eye, tall and smiling. The soft hair, the beautiful blue eyes. She could see him sweeping her into his arms and kissing the daylights out of her. Now he was cold and gray and dead in some shelf in the morgue. Just like Pépé had been.
“What happened?” Emma finally managed to whisper.
“The maid found Mr. Caraignac in his hotel room this morning. He’d been shot in the head at point-blank range.”
“Oh my God. Do you know who did it?”
“I’d very much like to find that out.”
“Was it a robbery?”
“Maybe a bungled robbery, yes. There was no money on the body or in the room, though Mr. Caraignac was known to be someone who carried considerable cash. He was wearing a mighty expensive watch, but a robber could conceivably have overlooked something like that in his haste to get out of there.”
“Why did you think to call me?” said Emma, suddenly frightened. How could the police have known that they had even met?
“We found your name and address written on a candy wrapper in his wallet.”
Of course. That’s all there was to it. She still had Henri-Pierre’s engraved business card in her own wallet. The late Henri-Pierre. It was still so hard to believe.
“We exchanged phone numbers,” Emma explained, her voice still dazed and quiet. “He said he wanted to take me out if I ever got to New York. I’m sorry I can’t be more help, Detective, but like I said, I didn’t really know him.”
“Like you said,” agreed Poteet. “It is some wild coincidence, though, don’t you think?”
“Coincidence? What coincidence?”
“Oh, didn’t I say?”
“Say what?”
“We ain’t recovered the weapon yet, but according to ballistics, Mr. Caraignac was killed by the same gun that killed your grandfather.”
At a quarter to two in the morning, Emma finally gave up trying to fall asleep and turned on her bedside light. The storm was still blowing outside, but at least there was no more thunder and lightning now, only rain.
Emma put on her glasses and padded downstairs in her flannel pajamas and bare feet, wincing as she caught a glimpse of
her reflection in the mirror in the hallway.
“Maybe I can get a job as a lumberjack,” she muttered.
After fixing herself a cup of decaf—it would hardly do to have real coffee, though that was what she wanted—Emma fiddled with a crossword puzzle, watched a rerun of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on television, and tried to understand what could have happened to Henri-Pierre Caraignac.
How could have it been a coincidence, she asked herself over and over, both Jacques Passant and Henri-Pierre being killed with the same gun?
Detective Poteet had said that, as unlikely as it seemed, coincidence probably was the explanation. A mugger shoots a man in the park, then shoots another man in a botched robbery in a hotel a week later.
“Your perpetrator is in the business of robbin’ and killin’, after all,” he had said. “Either that, or he was smart enough to throw the gun away after he used it on your grandfather. Then someone else found it and used it to kill Mr. Caraignac or sold it to the man who did.”
Emma still found it hard to believe, however.
She had spent another ten minutes with Poteet on the phone, trying to help him find some connection between the two victims, but other than their both being French, her grandfather and Henri-Pierre didn’t seem to have anything in common.
To Emma’s knowledge, Jacques Passant had never been to New York, and this was apparently Henri-Pierre’s first trip to San Francisco. Jacques Passant was not someone who had any interest in antiques, and Henri-Pierre wouldn’t seem likely to have needed the services of a carpenter—Emma’s grandfather had retired from full-time work a few years before but still took odd jobs occasionally. The two men certainly hadn’t moved in the same social or business circles. There was no evidence that they had ever met.
The policeman had promised to phone Emma if anything broke in either murder case, after extracting her pledge to call him if she should come across some connection between her grandfather and Henri-Pierre. But what connection could there be?
“This is getting me nowhere,” Emma finally muttered aloud.
The Girl Who Remembered the Snow Page 4
