Digging Up the Dead (3 page)

She went out to the truck and thanked Sam for unloading the tubs, telling him to lock up when he left. As she drove off she noticed her hands on the steering wheel were covered in red blotches. Annoyed that she hadn’t taken more care with the milkweeds, and figuring she’d nicked one while planting it, she hoped her hands would be clear by the time the party rolled around.

Blair was waiting at her gate with a small folding card table and the theremin. Invented by a Russian physicist researching proximity sensors, the electronic musical instrument consisted of a small black box the size of a DVR tuner that people usually hooked up to a television set. It was equipped with two metal antennas whose ether wave frequencies were programmed to catch hand movements made near them to control pitch and volume, producing eerie musical sounds often heard in sci-fi movies.

Karma led the way into her cottage and Blair set up the table and placed the theremin on it, telling Karma to move it to wherever she’d be locating the group and their instruments for the party.

“Wait a minute. What’s wrong with your hands?” he said. “You’ll be able to play Saturday night, won’t you?”

“Of course, don’t worry. I was dumb enough to get plant sap on my hands when I was working on my customers’ yards. I nicked one or two of the stems by mistake and all this milky white sap oozed out. I read that it’s poisonous if you drink it, imagine that, but I know better than to let it anywhere near my mouth. My hands should be okay by party time.”

“All right. Let’s get down to business. Where’s the flash drive?” Blair’s frown deepened.

“Sally has it.”

“You were supposed to ask her for an extra one.”

“I’ve been too busy,” said Karma. “Don’t worry, we’ll get a copy.”

“Damn. We need to get it from her. I’m not sure I trust the woman, her being so broke. She claims the flash drive was all she got from Oliver. He refused to give her a print-out or email her the document file. Right now she has the only copy of the file, and we need it.”

“No problem. I’ll call and remind her to bring it Saturday. Everything will be on the drive, right?”

“It better be.”

“J.J., what should I wear? A dress, jeans, shorts? Arlene told me that Karma wears hippie clothes. My leather skirt? Maybe I’ll wear a cloche hat. That would be just right for Fuller’s 1920s era, no?”

Tosca paused on the second step of the spiral staircase and faced her daughter. J.J. looked up from the NASCAR team racing helmet she was cleaning at the sink.

“I’ve never met or seen Karma, so I don’t know, Mother. Some of those Newport Beach ladies like to dress up. Don’t wear a hat, and definitely not that tiny skirt or hot pants you claim are shorts. I’d suggest a sundress.”

“Perfect. Thank you,
keresik.
”

Tosca climbed the rest of the stairs that led to the attic of her daughter’s loft-like apartment in the duplex. Designed with an open-concept plan, its one large room downstairs had space for a compact kitchen and living and dining areas. Two bedrooms upstairs book-ended a bathroom. A small landing and a French door led to the roof deck with a view of the large harbor.

Tosca took a shower and spent the better part of an hour drying and styling her waist-length, dark hair. Careful not to break into any of the operatic arias she so loved to sing but didn’t to avoid disturbing their island neighbors, whose houses barely had twelve inches between their walls, she came downstairs in a pink halter sundress. She carried a pair of red high-heeled shoes. Tucked under her arm was a red and white parasol.

“Very nice,” said J.J. “Wait. Is that a new parasol? What happened to the old one?”

“The handle came off. Parasols with handles are almost impossible to find. I had to settle for this.”

“Mother, you’re not going to need it. Please leave it here. It’ll look silly because the sun’s almost down.”

Tosca shrugged, propped the parasol next to the front door and muttered, “
Bram an gath.”

“Mother! I’m shocked.”

“Now don’t get your knickers in a twist. You’re giving the cuss phrase its worst meaning instead of the one I prefer, which is ‘fiddlesticks’.”

J.J. changed the subject. “It was very nice of Karma to invite you. Did she say you could bring Thatch along?”

“The invitation came through Arlene, and I’m sure I could have brought him if he weren’t off at some godforsaken fishing hole in somewhere called Idaho. He said he was going to a nearby volcano after that, so we won’t see him for at least another week.”

Amateur geologist Thatcher MacAulay was a retired U.S. Secret Service agent who’d met Tosca when she first arrived on Isabel Island. The two shared an interest in mysteries, Thatch as an amateur geologist who enjoyed seeking out clues to the past through his hobby, while Tosca’s natural curiosity had led her to discover and solve two crimes several months earlier.

The couple also shared a mutual, if opposite, attraction. Thatch’s background trained him to be necessarily reticent as a result of his service protecting American presidents, while Tosca’s career was at the other extreme as a garrulous gossip columnist. Nevertheless, they managed to complement each other.

J.J. finished wiping the racing helmet, set it on the small table near the door and turned to her mother.

“Is this the fundraiser party for the Fuller Sanderson library?” she said. “A few wealthy people should be there, and certainly some of Karma’s clients. I imagine she hopes they’ll be donors. Maybe some of the guests will be crime writers or in the publishing industry, so you’ll feel right at home.”

“Not sure if my kind of reporting qualifies,” said Tosca, grimacing. “Everyone here knows me as that Brit gossip columnist who’s always snooping around and cussing in the Cornish language.”

“Mother, if you hadn’t been digging around in the professor’s garden, we’d never have known he was a murderer. Everyone read about the island killings you solved. Don’t be so modest.” She came closer to Tosca and scrutinized her face. “Thank goodness you’ve left off that awful blue eye shadow. You look a lot younger without it. You could pass for, oh, maybe forty.”

Tosca grinned, her blue eyes sparkling. “
Meur ras!
Thank you. I’ll take that, since my fiftieth rolls around next month, as you keep reminding me. And I’ll return the compliment. You look about eighteen, not twenty-eight. ” She walked into the kitchen. “Where’s that mead I’m bringing to the party? It’s the last jug of gooseberry I made with Acacia blossom honey, but I suppose this anniversary of Fuller Sanderson’s death merits it. I hope Karma will realize its significance. I read that her grandfather devoured gooseberry pie every chance he got when he visited England.”

“Quite a difference between the pie and your mead,” said J.J., “but do you think you should you even be taking any, considering what happened to the last lot you gave to our neighbor?”

“Not my fault that murderous excuse for a musician deliberately laced the mead with poison and died in his cell. Must have ruined the taste. Oh, gollywobbles, look at the time.” Tosca picked up the heavy jug. “See you later.”

Holding her high-heeled pumps, Tosca stepped carefully down the wooden staircase that led from J.J.’s Dutch door to the front gate of the house, glancing again at the windows of the ground-floor apartment as she passed. She wondered when it would be rented. J.J. had said the owners were very fussy about tenants, and so far no one had qualified.

Tosca put on her shoes and walked to Karma’s cottage. Arlene had told her that the address was two blocks south and to look for a bright green bungalow with purple window frames. It was, thought Tosca as she reached it, only too easy to spot, despite being almost hidden between the two-story homes that towered over it on each side. Isabel Island was famous for its eclectic architecture styles that ranged from modest bungalows to several marble mansions totally out of place at the beach.

The main street was filled with restaurants, boutiques, ice cream parlors, cafes, a post office and the firehouse, and it ended at the seawall and Newport Harbor. Those who wanted to cross the bay to the peninsula took the old ferry, which held three cars and several dozen passengers.

Karma’s front yard was strung with red and yellow Chinese lanterns, their flickering candles mere pinpoints in the darkening sky but managing to cast shadows on the miniature palm trees leading to the open front door. Tosca tried to place the guitar music she heard from inside and determined it was the final chords from Rodrigo’s haunting “Concierto de Aranjuez” composed as a tribute to his young daughter after she died.

Almost immediately Tosca heard the mournful opening chords of the Berceuse from Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite.” She couldn’t figure out which instruments the musicians were playing. Definitely a guitar, and not an electric one, but what on earth was that other weird sound? She hurried through the rickety garden gate to satisfy her curiosity.

Arlene had mentioned that some of the guests would be Newport Beach socialites who were underwriters for Orange County’s Performing Arts Center, where a massive sculpture of a Firebird hung above the main lobby. No doubt Karma was hoping her musical nod to their choice of décor would persuade them to write similarly large checks for the Sanderson Library she planned to build.

A cool easterly wind had picked up, and only a few people stood about on the outdoor patio, holding cocktail glasses. Two men were arguing loudly while a tall, elderly blonde woman lingered nearby, her narrow face etched into an expression of displeasure. Tosca wondered if they were some of the same people that Arlene said she’d heard arguing in the restaurant.

As she approached, her heels clicking on the stone walkway, the group turned toward her, suddenly silent. Tosca nodded as she walked by them to the open front door, where she spotted Arlene waiting for her. They greeted each other with a quick, affectionate, one-armed hug.

“Where’s the hostess? I’ve brought the mead.”

Arlene took Tosca’s elbow and walked her into the cottage, which was crowded with guests.

“I’m so glad you came, Tosca,” said Arlene. “Karma’s set up a bar, so you can leave the jug there. I’ll introduce you to her when she’s finished playing.”

Arlene, dressed in a long black silk gown that hugged her curves too tightly, tilted her head sideways to the back of the room, where the redhead was seated on a high stool, intent on strumming her guitar. Next to her stood a thin young man waving his hands in the air over the card table on which sat a box no larger than a small radio.

“What on earth is he doing?” whispered Tosca to Arlene. “Is he a magician or a guru performing some kind of eccentric American ritual?”

Arlene giggled, setting her chipmunk cheeks quivering. “That’s Bill Weinstein. He’s playing Graydon Blair’s theremin. I thought it was an odd instrument too when I first saw Graydon perform with it a couple of years ago. It’s an electronic instrument you don’t need to touch. It works on frequencies, I was told. Makes a really eerie woo-woo sci-fi movie sound, don’t you think?”

Tosca quietly agreed but thought that the strange contraption, combined with Stravinsky’s despondent piece of music, was an odd choice for a party. Yet it seemed to fit in perfectly with Karma’s hippie home environment. The cluttered, untidy living room with a low, beamed ceiling, small shuttered windows, and drab, olive-green rug added to a general air of gloom. The dreary atmosphere was intensified by dark blue walls covered in huge, unframed black canvasses depicting yellow and orange planets and moons.

“Those were painted by Karma’s mother, Destiny,” said Arlene. “She was always talking about the Universe and astrology.”

Beneath the paintings and along two of the walls stretched ramshackle oak bookshelves, their contents jammed together haphazardly in untidy piles. The whole room had an air of carelessness, and Tosca hoped Sanderson’s first editions weren’t treated so cavalierly, if Karma owned any.

Facing the front window was a dark mahogany desk on which sat a vintage Olivetti typewriter, a briar pipe resting in a black ceramic ashtray, a jar of pencils and a few copies of Sanderson’s books. Next to the typewriter was an open cardboard box containing several pages of what appeared to be a typed manuscript.

Tosca reflected that the entire room was probably exactly as the author had left it many decades earlier. She took a second look at the pipe, knowing Sanderson never smoked one, and guessed that Karma had added it to copy the items on Raymond Chandler’s writing desk.

The photo Tosca had seen of Chandler’s desk came to mind. It showed several more items than on Sanderson’s desk, including the movie script of
The Blue Dahlia,
a box of chessmen and a brass stamp holder. Had Karma set up Sanderson’s desk as a deliberate parody, she wondered, or was it mere hubris? Perhaps she wanted to invoke an image of Sherlock Holmes, whose long-stemmed curved pipe was mentioned often in the Conan Doyle books.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said a tall, pink-haired young woman, holding out her hand. “Charlotte Carver.”

Dressed in a low-cut taffeta gown that matched her hair, with layers of ruffles around the hemline, she swayed forward enough for Tosca to detect liquor on her breath. The woman over-corrected herself, leaning back.

“How do you do? I’m Tosca Trevant. Very pleased to meet you.”

“Do I detect an accent?” The word came out ‘assent.’

“Indeed, yes,” said Tosca. “I’m from Cornwall.”

“What’s that? Some new state we just added on? I can’t even remember the names of the twenty-seven we already have.”

“Cornwall is in the United Kingdom, at the bottom, below England. I’m from St. Ives. It’s on the left, if you look at a map.”

Charlotte gaped and tottered off toward the bar, leaving Tosca to inspect the other guests. She looked around the room and was delighted to see that a few of the women wore calf-length, tight black skirts with slits up the sides and black stockings with seams running up the back, reminiscent of the 1940s fashions in Fuller Sanderson’s books. Three of the women wore little, flat, pancake-style hats tilted to one side, recently made popular again by the Duchess of Cambridge.