The Man on the Washing Machine (4 page)

I tugged at another leaf, stabbed myself on a thorn, and irritably sucked the small spot of blood. Resting my tea on the planter wall, I unlocked the door and sidled past a carton of new stock from an English supplier in the middle of the floor. Scent is evocative and their soaps and lotions were my mother's favorites. Nicole must have dropped them off earlier that morning or the evening before. She was still occasionally conscientious, just not reliably so.

It hadn't taken me long to learn that Nicole's enthusiasms tended to be short-lived as she leaped to the next bright, shiny thing, which is why both my apartment renovations and Aromas were currently in my less-than-competent hands. When she'd learned I was living with eighty-year-old bathroom fixtures and a stove from the 1970s, Nicole had taken the lead on my renovation. She found out I had money to spend and she spent it with the energy and enthusiasm I conspicuously lacked. She was a good artist with a knack for design; she and my architect were soul mates. But she gradually lost interest.

I'd also realized that Nicole's hectic, 24-7 life relied on artificial stimulants. Her triple espresso grande latte phase had passed, and lately she was relying on occasional cocaine. I had secrets of my own; I didn't feel justified, or qualified, to poke around in her life. But in the past few weeks she had simply dropped out for days at a time, and I was keeping Aromas afloat by myself. I could have let it wither on the vine—I hadn't intended it to be my life's work—but I was proud of it and didn't want to let it go yet. It was making a small profit, Davie and Haruto relied on us, I was making friends in the neighborhood, and most of all, Aromas gave me a comfortable place to hide in my Potemkin life.

The shop was small, but packed tight. Unguents, lotions, creams, shampoos—we carried every beauty and bath aid we could find a customer for. Much of our merchandise was in plastic gallon jugs sent to us by Nicole's chemist friend, whose name was Alex. Nicole called him Smart Alex. We kept the jugs in a dedicated alcove, so the open shelf space could be devoted to the more attractive jars, bottles, and boxes.

High on the walls above the top shelves were some of my sepia-tone photographs of wildflowers, hand-colored and embellished by Nicole. She won an art show prize with a series of them. There was the faintest scent of turpentine on her hands the day we met, and I wondered later whether I had been attracted to her because of the pleasant memories it raised. My father had been an artist.

I tied bunches of dried flowers and herbs to the rafters when we opened up—more to hide the exposed pipes than anything—but we added to them over the months so that now the “ceiling” is a patchwork of lavender, basil, dried roses, statice, straw flowers, hydrangeas, and others so jammed together that it's a game with our regular customers to identify them. They bring us sage and Indian paintbrush and other flowers from their vacations; every now and again someone brings in a herb or wildflower book and points out what they've discovered in the ceiling. It was fun for a while.

Nicole and I were on the schedule together, which meant I was almost sure to be alone all morning. Remembering that Davie wouldn't be in until noon gave me a sudden pang of anxiety for him. I didn't like the way Lichlyter had harped on his relationship with Tim Callahan.

I counted out $150 in various denominations to place in the cash drawer and broke open four fresh rolls of quarters—people often came into the store to ask us for change for the parking meters—wondering what the hell I was going to do about Nicole. It wasn't only the cocaine; we were disagreeing about every little thing.

I was only half paying attention as I served my first customer of the day. I hadn't seen or heard anything new about my high-profile English family for months. I was beginning to think I might be yesterday's news at last. Which meant that I could maybe come out of hiding—if I could find a way to explain a change of name and appearance and personal history to everyone who had befriended me since I moved to San Francisco. For the time being I was stuck with my lies—a classic case of being, not only hoist on, but crushed under the weight of my own petard.

“Thanks so much. Hope you enjoy the herbal bath salts,” I said with a friendly shopkeeper's smile in my carefully cultivated trans-Atlantic accent. The woman's expression changed to thoughtful speculation as I handed over the turquoise-and-white-striped bag and I braced myself.

“Has anyone ever said you look like that girl—what was her name? You know, the photographer, the daughter of that artist who murdered his wife—remember? Except she was blond, wasn't she?”

“Hmm. Doesn't sound familiar.”

“It was a huge deal a couple of years ago. He used the one name, Theopold. He painted all those London street scenes with rock stars and actors in them—you've seen them. There was a PBS special. He did a famous portrait of the Queen, too. The one she didn't like and then Paul McCartney bought it.” She looked at me inquiringly.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Now I remember.” Because it was ridiculous to keep denying I knew about one of the most notorious murder trials since O.J.

“Anyway, his wife was a cousin to the Duke of, I forget where, and he shot her and hanged himself during the trial. There were articles in
People
and
Us
and
Vanity Fair
and one of the books made the best-seller list.” I listened as if she was telling me something mildly interesting instead of something that tore my life to pieces.

“Are you talking about that artist who murdered his wife?” Another customer joined us and came to the counter with four large jars of shea butter. Seriously, what do people do with it all? Is there some new kink I don't know about? “What an ordeal for the family.” He shook his head sympathetically.

“I was saying to this gal I thought she looked like the daughter.”

He tipped his head, considering. “Well, a little. But wasn't she a blonde? And a hot-shit photographer or something? Always jumping into fountains and getting arrested. A real airhead with more money than good sense. Not like this lady here.” He smiled kindly. I rang up his purchases. “Have a good day, you guys,” I said, emphasizing the American part of trans-Atlantic.

I felt partly responsible for my mother's death—she and I had both known my father was emotionally unstable and getting worse. After their separation she often said that if anything happened, I was to try to help him. She thought he might try to hurt himself; neither of us expected his rages and madness to result in murder.

My broken nose was a legacy of the moment of his arrest when I'd tried to intervene. The police apologized afterward.

Except for conversations like this one, I mostly managed to keep from thinking about it too much. All the same, I felt my stomach clench and made it to the bathroom in time to empty it of my morning muffin.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't quite as ready to come out from hiding as I thought.

When I came back into the shop I saw Inspector Lichlyter approaching outside. She raised a hand in salute and I waved her inside, reflecting that even a bad day can always get worse.

“Good morning. I happened to be passing,” she said. Unlikely. She took off her shaded glasses to clean them on a crumpled tissue and before replacing them she looked directly at me. For the first time, I saw that one of her eyes was blue and the other was brown. The disparity gave her expression a built-in skepticism, like a permanently raised eyebrow. She settled the glasses on her nose and the anomaly disappeared; both eyes looked brown.

I expected her to ask me more questions about Tim Callahan, so her opening was a surprise.

“I'm looking for a gift for a friend,” she said. She stirred the contents of that Coach shoulder bag and came up with several notebooks and a pile of used envelopes held together with a rubber band. She spread them out on the counter and read aloud from one of them.

“She's into alternative treatments and natural vitamins. Can you think of something?”

I tried to settle my stomach by force of will. “We have a line of natural lotions and cosmetics without preservatives. They have to be refrigerated, otherwise they spoil, but they're very popular.”

A middle-aged couple wandered in and started to browse; I gave them a friendly smile.

“She doesn't have a refrigerator.” She picked up a small muslin bag from a basket on the counter. “What's this?”

A man came in alone and started to read lip balm labels. He was wearing purple running shorts and nothing else, not even shoes. I gave him a quick once-over, but he was absorbed by the lip balm labels so I left him to it.

“You can fill the bag with your choice of herbs from those tubs next to the window,” I said.

“Like what?”

The tubs were labeled, but I launched into my act anyway. “There's chamomile to use in a rinse after you shampoo to bring out blond highlights in your hair; or rosemary for brunettes. Or a combination of several herbs that you can use as a sort of
bouquet garni
in the tub. Lavender, lemon verbena, rose petals. Pennyroyal if you have fleas. Just kidding,” I added as her eyelids flickered.

She didn't smile. “She doesn't have a tub. Showers. What about face treatments?”

“Avocado? Strawberry? Lemon astringent?” I pulled an assortment off the shelves and lined them up on the counter.

“Sounds like a supermarket produce department,” she said, and sighed heavily. I tried to imagine what her friend could be like—a frothy, bubbly type or another depressive like herself?

A regular customer came in and picked up products on her way to the cash register, chatting to me as she went. She handed me one of our reusable bottles and I filled it with aloe shampoo from a plastic gallon jug. I rang up her purchases, wrapped everything, and handed her the shopping bag. She was in and out of the shop in less than five minutes leaving nearly sixty dollars behind. I gave her a cheerful wave as she left.

“What did you put in that bottle?” Lichlyter said. She was chewing the lipstick from her bottom lip.

“We have an in-house line of lotions, creams, shampoos, cream rinses, that kind of thing. If you have your own container we can fill it with any one of about a dozen different products. Or we'll start you off with one of our bottles; your friend can bring it in to have it refilled when it's all used up.”

“She doesn't get out.” Her expression sharpened. “You make your own products? Do you have a lab?”

Somehow I didn't want to mention Smart Alex. “We buy them in bulk and put our own labels on them.” She appeared to lose interest. I looked around for inspiration. The sooner her shopping was done, presumably, the sooner she'd leave. “Is your friend allergic to animal products?”

“I don't know.”

“There's a lanolin-based hand and body lotion made by Gibney Brothers; but some people are allergic to lanolin. And it's expensive.”

My other two customers were beginning to look seriously at some Gibney Brothers lotions.

“We're the only outlet in the city for those products besides Gump's,” I said to them with another professional smile. “I think I have a couple of samples here.…” I pulled out two minuscule plastic pillow packs from under the counter and held them out. The woman made up her mind and carried a couple of the ribbed glass bottles over to the counter.

“I'll take these. They're so beautiful,” she said. People often say that, as if good-looking bottles with red and gold labels are a guarantee of quality inside. For some reason I thought briefly of Kurt.

I tossed the samples into the bag, wrapped and rang up the purchases, and then watched in dismay as they left and four teenage girls, pushing and shoving and giggling, fell into the shop. They were a typically San Francisco quartet—one pink-lipped blonde; one African-American with neat cornrows; one stocky Asian girl with a ponytail; one Latina with an elaborate chignon and heavy makeup—and I knew them of old.

“No school today, ladies?” I said.

They ignored me and went on clowning, one of them splitting off from her crew while the other three knocked over a display of sea sponges.

“I'd like you to meet Inspector Lichlyter of the San Francisco Police Department,” I said, somehow keeping an eye on all four at once.

Still giggling, but empty-handed, they sidled out of the door. Lichlyter turned to me. “That looked like an incomplete pass.”

I picked up the scattered sponges. “They were in here a month ago and after they left we realized they'd lifted forty or fifty dollars' worth of small items. It's like a game for some people. Once they succeed, they come back and try again.”

“I've noticed a similar pattern in my line of work,” she said heavily. “What were we talking about?”

“Lanolin, I think.”

The man in the purple shorts left without buying anything. I went over to check on the lip balms, but there were no gaps indicating a missing tube. Not that he'd had anywhere to conceal it.

“Lanolin. It's from an animal?”

“From sheep. In its natural form it looks like something to grease an axle with—it's the stuff that makes wool water repellent.” I reached over and took a bottle of the lotion off a nearby shelf.

“Wool isn't water repellent.”

“While the sheep is wearing it, it is,” I assured her. “Modern wool processing removes a lot of it, but that's why the original Aran sweaters were so popular with Irish fishermen—they were as good as a raincoat. Warm, too.”

For some reason she looked wary. “You know some pretty obscure things.”

I felt suddenly cautious myself. Wariness so often leads to mistrust. And in this case it went both ways. “You probably know some pretty obscure things yourself,” I said. She pursed her lips in acknowledgment. I went on chatting as if nothing had changed, using my shopkeeper's cordiality as a shield: “I have to know these things. You know what it's like in this city—everyone wants to know if your products are organically grown, hypoallergenic, and politically correct. Is that handwoven Guatemalan scrub mitt from an Indian craft cooperative? Are those sponges harvested responsibly? Is this shampoo tested on rabbits?”