Blue Twilight (12 page)

I shook my head, and tried to speak over the lump in my throat. “My mother hired someone to search for Rebecca, but she was never found. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead to this day.”

“You were just a kid, chère. You can’t hold yourself responsible for your sister’s actions.”

“But I do. Rebecca’s disappearance broke my mother’s heart. She was the favorite, the one that was clever and beautiful. I sometimes wonder if I was happy that she left, so I could try to take her place. I think my mother knew it, too, and resented me for it. No matter what I did, it was never quite good enough.”

I hated revealing so much, detested feeling this vulnerable. Yet once having started, I now couldn’t stop myself.

“I spent my teenage years attempting to prove that I was equally worthwhile. Hell, I’ve been doing that my entire life. What I finally discovered is that it’s fruitless to try and compete with a ghost. Especially one for which I feel so responsible.”

Santou pushed a jumble of curls out of my eyes and held me at arm’s length.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you, Rachel Porter? Someone who has the gumption to act on what she believes in and is willing to stand up to the world. I see a woman who’s strong, courageous, and smart. You’ve got enough spirit to take on battles that you probably won’t win, all because you’d rather go down fighting than to ever give
up. The only thing you’re guilty of is not appreciating who you really are. So see yourself through my eyes, Rachel, and realize there’s no one more beautiful that I could possibly love.”

I cried once again. Only this time it was because I knew how lucky I was to have Santou in my life, and just how easy it would be to lose him. I’d learned all too well that the world is an increasingly dangerous place in which things can change in a brief instant.

That’s also true of butterflies
, I mused.
Only they have one big advantage over us. They get to be born twice.

I lay awake awhile longer, listening to the rhythmic pattern of Jake’s breathing, unwilling to close my eyes and slip into dreamtime. Only when the sound mixed with the mournful lament of a fog horn to become a gentle lullaby, did I grudgingly fall asleep, temporarily leaving this existence.

I
felt sure I’d barely closed my eyes when something jabbed into my side, accompanied by the sound of footsteps shuffling near the bed. But it was a warm breath drifting across the back of my neck that had the hairs rising on my head.

I slowly worked my fingers under the pillow to where a .38 was lodged between the wall and the mattress. Grabbing hold of the gun, I rolled over in one lightning quick move, prepared to face down a bad-ass intruder. Instead I found my landlady inscrutably standing there in the dark, dressed in the loose garb of a tai chi master.

Mei Rose didn’t appear to be the least bit fazed by my gun. Rather she kept prodding at me as if I were a chicken being sized up for dinner.

“What are you doing?” I wailed, pondering how hard it would be to find a new place to live.

“Shh!” Mei Rose hissed like a pissed-off snake. “Be quiet or you wake up Jake. He needs his sleep.”

I glanced at the clock: 6
A.M
. Or in my world, the crack of dawn, considering that I didn’t have to get up for another hour.

“What about me?” I grumbled and lay back down, only to have her fingers poke again into my ribs.

“You don’t need so much sleep. Besides, this is the time we go shopping.”

Terrific. I wondered how much jail time I’d be sentenced to for punching out a senior citizen.

I reluctantly rolled out of bed and splashed some water on my face, deciding that was all the personal hygiene Mei Rose was going to get. Then I followed her downstairs and through the front door, noticing that not even Tony Baloney was up and about at this ungodly hour.

Heading down the hill, we came to Washington Square Park, where a cluster of elderly Asians was already practicing their tai chi. The group looked completely at home, though they were in the heart of North Beach, surrounded by Saint Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church, Italian coffeehouses, and social clubs.

The women wore colorful quilted jackets of bright yellows, reds, and pinks, which turned them into a resplendent bouquet of flowers. They gossiped amongst themselves while performing the ancient Chinese exercise in a series of slow, flowing movements. I chuckled, having realized what they reminded me of: an octogenarian group of John Travoltas. Each struck a pose, as though having been caught in a freeze frame of the movie
Saturday Night Fever
.

“
Jo Sun, Nay Ho
,” they sang out in greeting to Mei Rose, as we quickly walked by.

She cheerfully waved, but didn’t come to a halt.

The smell of freshly baked sourdough bread made my stomach grumble as we passed a bakery, where a worker shoveled loaves in and out of a brick oven. I would have been tempted to stop if it weren’t for the anxious clucking of Mei Rose’s tongue.

“Hurry, hurry,” she urged, moving me along.

“Why? What’s the rush?”

“We want to get there before all the best stuff is gone.”

Considering the hour, I didn’t imagine that would be too big of a problem.

We crossed into Chinatown, and were immediately swept up in a flurry of activity.

Merchants with pushcarts scurried about, wasting no time as they darted in and out of stores selling their wares. Meanwhile, an army of elderly women crowded the streets, each engrossed in shopping for the evening meal. They were as intently focused on their mission as if they were cops pounding a beat.

I dodged an ancient woman that dashed out of Ming Kee’s Game Shop with a live bird in tow. Its beak pecked away inside its paper-bag prison, demanding to be released. I peered into the store and spied cages stacked one on top of another, each containing tightly packed fowl. There were roosters, squabs, and silken chickens with long white feathers. Little did they know that their fate was to be tonight’s dinner.

Ming Kee’s used to butcher the birds for customers right on the spot, cleaning, gutting and taking out the gizzards. However, it created an ungodly mess with feathers littering the streets and blood running into the sewers. The health department finally had to step in and crack down. Now women carried live birds home on the bus, satisfying their urge for freshness by killing the creatures themselves.

Mei Rose chuckled at my apparent fascination. “What? You never knew where your chicken dinner came from before? Maybe you thought chickens were born already packaged and wrapped in plastic at the grocery store.”

But I paid little heed, too caught up in all the action going on.

Old men were gathered in Portsmouth Square, where they played games of Chinese checkers. Even so, the loud
clack, clack, clack
of thousands of mah jongg tiles could be heard coming from a nearby alley. Adding to the open-air symphony was the whine of sewing machines, humming like a hive of busy bees—only these workers were women who sat
hunched over mounds of garments and pieced them together in darkly sinister factories.

“Come. There’ll be other things to look at,” Mei Rose prompted, as we cut up to Stockton Street.

Here was where the real Chinatown existed, without tourists, McDonald’s, or ticky-tacky souvenir stores. It was here that the locals came to do their shopping twice a day.

I was immediately swallowed up by throngs of pedestrians and pulled along, as if magnetically drawn, toward outdoor bins brimming with bitter melon, litchi nuts and lotus root. The vibrant colors of figs, mangoes, oranges, and durian fruit looked too intense to be real. I stood in awe and watched as Mei Rose jockeyed for position with the rest of the pros, grabbing the freshest produce that she could reach.

Then it was off to the fish market, with its display of snails, conch, and grouper. Had I been alone, I’d have been tempted to liberate all the traumatized turtles and frogs that were piled high in water-filled tubs. As it was, the frogs crawled over and on top of one another like a gang of desperate stowaways crammed inside a ship’s hold. They futilely attempted to escape the grasping hands that held them up and roughly prodded and poked at their bellies. The lesson clearly was that it didn’t pay to be among the fattest frogs in Chinatown.

Our last stop was a bakery where I joined a pigeon standing on line with the rest of the customers. The bird patiently waited for a few crumbs to fall from the mooncakes and sesame balls that they bought. I eyed the pigeon in silent warning, having become hungry enough to wrestle the bird for the crumbs myself. Mei Rose looked away in embarrassment as my stomach loudly rumbled, pretending not to know me. It was only when we walked outside that she took pity and led me toward a
juk
shop.

We sat at a booth and each ordered a bowl of rice por
ridge, after which Mei Rose happily chattered on about tonight’s meal. Only I wasn’t paying attention, my mind having wandered.

“What wrong? You don’t feel well?” Mei Rose inquired, unhappy that I hadn’t been listening. “Or maybe it’s the food.” She immediately motioned for the waitress to bring something else.

“No, the porridge is fine,” I assured her and proceeded to eat.

“Then what the problem? You let me know. I can always help.”

There’d obviously be no peace until I told the woman something.

“Remember Eric from dinner last night?”

“Of course I remember. What you think? That because I’m old, I’m senile?” Mei Rose responded, clearly insulted.

Oy veh.

“Well his fifteen-year-old daughter recently ran away.”

I drew the line at telling her that it felt as if my own past had come back to haunt me. Ever since last night I’d found myself staring at every young girl that passed by, wondering if I’d seen her face on a poster as a runaway.

“That no good. Too many problems are entering the house,” Mei Rose declared, and seemed to shiver. “There must be bad
chi
coming from Su Lin Fong across the street. We’ll have to stop at a shop on Grant and buy small octagonal mirrors to hang in the front windows. That will send the bad
chi
flying back to the Fong house, where it belongs.”

Mei Rose was still huffing and puffing about the nerve of Su Lin Fong sending bad
chi
our way when her cell phone rang, playing a poor rendition of the
William Tell
overture.

I finished my porridge while she conversed at breakneck speed in Cantonese, sounding as if she’d taken an Evelyn
Wood course on rapid-fire speaking. Then Mei Rose hung up and shook her head.

“That my niece. She always need help with something. What can I do?” she asked, with a put-upon shrug. “I have to go see her right away. But don’t worry. I’ll buy mirrors and hang them up later. I think some feng shui might help, too. Everything in your place is facing the wrong way. But that’s okay. I take care of that, also. Meanwhile, you carry all the groceries home for me.”

I felt like a pack mule as she loaded me up, adding her own bags to those I was already hauling. It’s no wonder fast food restaurants have become increasingly popular. Who has time for this sort of thing? To hell with eating healthy. The stress from shopping was just about to kill me. I fumed all the way home, vowing to spend the rest of my life eating nothing but prepared and frozen foods. To make matters worse, no one was there to help carry all the bags upstairs.

I crammed everything into my refrigerator, not in the mood to enter Mei Rose’s place and deal with Tony Baloney.

Speaking of having to deal with things, I then placed a quick call to my boss.

“All clear on the western front?” Brad Thomas asked, by way of his usual greeting.

“Everything’s fine,” I responded. “Just thought I’d fill you in on a few details. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but John Harmon’s Jeep was found on a remote dirt road up in Mendocino yesterday.”

“That’s it? Just his vehicle?”

“Yeah. There was no sign of foul play, according to the police. But then, who knows how well they searched? I have to tell you, I find it troubling that they don’t seem to be taking the fact that he’s missing very seriously.”

“For all you know, they have information that they don’t want to give out.”

“Such as?” I questioned, unwilling to let him off the hook.

“Such as, it could be the guy’s up to his ears in debt and has decided to lay low for a while. Or maybe he’s got another woman on the side.”

How interesting. Thomas had come up with the same exact reasons as to why Harmon might have disappeared as had Santou. It was enough to make me suspicious about the way a man’s mind worked.

“I want you to steer clear of whatever’s going on. Let the police handle it. Harmon’s not your problem.”

“I have no intention of getting involved,” I assured Thomas. Not when I had my net set for a big-league butterfly poacher by the name of Horus. “Oh by the way, I’d like to take a few days personal leave.”

“This better not have anything to do with Harmon,” he again warned. “Nor are you to play vigilante queen by taking off and trying to tackle some other wildlife case on your own.”

Jeez, what
was
Thomas, anyway? A mind reader?

“Of course not. It has nothing to do with either of those things,” I replied in an indignant tone. “A friend’s daughter has run away and he’s asked me to help search for her.”

“Why, Porter, you should have told me that you’d gotten a P.I. license and were moonlighting on the side. I’d have referred some cases your way,” Thomas caustically retorted. “Don’t you think
that’s
best left to the police as well? Or are you trying to do the job of both the SFPD
and
the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, as well as your own?”

“Look, I just want to give my friend some moral support. Anything wrong with that?” I questioned, hoping to avoid a fight.

“No, I suppose not,” Thomas reluctantly responded. “There shouldn’t be a problem, just as long as it’s only for a few days and that’s
all
you’re doing. Besides, it’ll give Dan Weymer a chance to handle some of your caseload.”

I inwardly groaned, well aware that this was a dig. Weymer was more than just a rookie agent who’d been assigned to our office; he was already nipping away at my heels. Part of the “whatever” generation, he was fast becoming a favorite of Brad Thomas for being more than willing to toe the line. It was no secret that Weymer’s goal was upward mobility; the sooner he could fast-track it to the next level, the better. The result was that he had little interest in doing fieldwork and even less in ruffling anyone’s feathers, particularly when it came to protecting embattled wildlife. Rather, his focus was one of “What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll return as soon as I can,” I said and hung up, more convinced than ever that I was being put on the back-burner.

However, I had little time to sink into a funk as Terri and Eric walked through the door.

“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked Terri’s houseguest.

“My head’s better, thanks. Now it’s my back that’s killing me. That couch upstairs has more lumps in it than a middle-aged queen with cellulite.”

“Hey, watch the slurs. I’m feeling very fragile these days.” Terri sniffed.

“Oh, please. You know that’s not what I meant. How could I? You look absolutely fabulous.”

Terri brightened considerably. “For that you get a gourmet breakfast. After all, we’re going to need our energy today.”

He proceeded to whip up a feast of French toast smothered in a mango and raisin compote, as I pulled out a city map and showed it to Eric. By the time breakfast was through,
we’d decided exactly where to begin our search: the Tenderloin district.

“Are you coming along?” I asked Terri, unsure if there was something else he had to do.

“Of course I’m coming. As I recall, Eric asked both of us for help,” he chided, letting me know he had no intention of being left behind. Terri glanced at Eric, who nodded at him reassuringly. “While you may be more familiar with San Francisco, I probably have better insight when it comes to the mindset of runaways.”

“You’re probably right,” I concurred, wisely keeping my mouth shut.

Terri was clearly more interested in Eric than I might have imagined. We cleaned up the dishes and then headed downstairs.