A Haunting Is Brewing
Page 11
“Looks like quite the hippie convention out here.”
“We’ve been as busy as Grandpa’s Sunday tie, as they say.”
Carlos looked amused. “Who says that?”
I laughed. “I guess we say that back in Texas. Anyway, the Haight Street Summer of Love Festival is this weekend.”
The Summer of Love Festival was held annually to commemorate one of the neighborhood’s most famous eras. It had been nearly fifty years since hippies sent out the call for “gentle people” to put some flowers in their hair and meet in the Haight Ashbury to build a new world order of peace, music, and harmony. They hadn’t quite achieved their goals, but the neighborhood had retained its willingness to accept iconoclasts and freethinkers of all stripes.
Ambitious festivalgoers had been flocking to Aunt Cora’s Closet in search of “authentic” hippie clothes for weeks now. Vintage tie-dye and flouncy peasant dresses were flying off the racks; love beads and headbands were in short supply. Bell-bottomed jeans, pants in wild colors, and embroidered Mexican blouses—most of which I had picked up for a song at flea markets and yard sales—were in great demand.
“Sure, the Summer of Love Festival,” he nodded. “I know it well.”
“It’s my first time; I’m pretty excited. So, do you have a costume?”
“I’m wearing it.” Carlos passed a hand over his khaki chinos and a black leather jacket.
“Think you look like a hippie, do you?”
“Even better. I’m a narc.”
I smiled. “You should at least wear a few love beads around your neck.”
“Maybe I’ll dig through your treasure chest before I leave.”
Recently I had started tossing cheap costume jewelry and plastic items—except for the valuable Bakelite, of course—in an old wooden chest that had supposedly came to San Francisco with the pioneers. Now cleansed of cobwebs and its sordid past, it had become my “treasure chest”: Everything in it went for under five dollars, and many items were just a quarter. Customers spent a lot of time digging through it with childlike abandon.
Which reminded me . . .
“Carlos, hold on. Didn’t you say something about a missing child?”
“Fourteen-year-old Selena Moreno. We’re not positive she’s missing . . . Weird thing is, we can’t get a word out of Ursula. But according to the neighbors, Selena used to live with her grandmother. Hasn’t shown up to school, but it looks like her attendance has always been spotty, so it’s hard to say what’s going on there. Most likely she’s staying with relatives, but I’d feel better knowing for sure.”
“Do you think something in the shop might point me in her direction?”
“You know me, Lily. I don’t think anything in particular.”
“But you’re suspicious of everything.”
He gave me a wink and a smile.
Juliet Blackwell is the pseudonym for the New York Times bestselling mystery author who also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series, the Haunted Home Renovation series, and, together with her sister, wrote the Art Lover’s Mystery series as Hailey Lind. The first in that series, Feint of Art, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. As owner of her own faux-finish and design studio, the author has spent many days and nights on construction sites renovating beautiful historic homes throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently resides in a happily haunted house in Oakland, California.