The thing about my father was that even when he drank, he could spot a lie or see one’s dissembling a mile away. We’d been terrified of him as kids. My mother put down her fork and watched me, aware that my father had zeroed in on something I’d said.
“He was murdered.”
My mother’s teacup rattled. “Oh, Jenna. You aren’t going to get involved in a murder?” She knew my propensity for getting involved in people’s tiffs, neighborhood disagreements—which, in my defense, I attempted to mediate. Though I seemed to have a knack for taking sides.
“No, I have no interest in his murder.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. I hadn’t had any interest in his murder this morning when I woke up, or when I went to the museum to do some work before coming to the East Bay, or even when I’d parked my car at the book dealer’s house. It was when I’d stuffed those papers in my purse that there might have been a slight shift. Now I had an interest, though I still didn’t have any plans. Not to find the murderer, anyway. Only plans to try to decipher Sharpen’s notes. Only plans to try to figure out if the head was a fake or real.
“How?” My father wasn’t going to give up. He was undoubtedly ruthless with his students.
“Decapitated. At any rate, I found—”
“Decapitated?” She jumped out of her seat and hurriedly cleared the table. I watched as the last few bites of my cake fell into the compost. I felt about ready to explode, but I would have eaten them.
“Yes, but I’m only interested in the head.”
“The head!”
“The stone head. The Baphuon-style head. I was telling you that I looked at his books, and some of them were marked.”
“What did they tell you?” my father asked, still watching me carefully, more carefully than the usual drunk can.
“I’m not sure. He seems to have figured out that the head belonged—or was a copy of the head that belonged—to a Khmer sculpture that’s in the Siem Reap museum. Well, if you knew anything about that sculpture, you would figure that out. Of course, you’d have to have recent books to come to that conclusion, since the sculpture was only excavated a few years ago.”
“And he did.”
“Yes. But what that means, I don’t know.”
“Jenna, promise me that you won’t get involved in this murder.” My mother was wiping the counter again.
“I told you, Mom. I have no interest in getting involved.”
“You say that now, but even you don’t know what you’ll do. You’re so impulsive.” Mother’s words.
“I have too many other things to do, and I’m going out of town soon.”
“To Cambodia,” my father said matter-of-factly.
“Do you think I could take home some of that cake? I should get going soon. Work early tomorrow, more to do tonight.” I got up, folded the placemats, and put them in the drawer, my father’s keen eyes giving me creepies on the back of my neck.
I came out of the house with more than I’d asked for. Half a chocolate cake, a large container of chili, a jar of pear-and-ginger jam, and a down comforter that I didn’t need but that my mother didn’t need either and foisted on me. The food was in a grocery bag, but the comforter was loose and unwieldy as I struggled to dig my car keys out of my purse.
My feet crunched as I reached to insert the key in the door, but the comforter kept me from seeing my feet, or the car for that matter. I stuffed as much as I could under my arm and saw that I was standing on glass. “Shit,” I said. “Not again.”
How many times can a person have her car broken into and not feel that she’s jinxed? A rear window had been smashed, and glass spread like snow across the backseat and onto the pavement. “Shit, shit, shit,” I repeated, setting down the grocery bag on the damp pavement, opening the front door, and tossing the comforter onto the driver’s seat. I looked nervously up and down the street, though I didn’t really expect to see anyone.
I picked up the bag, shook it to dislodge any glass, and put it in the trunk. I took out a piece of foam board that I could attach to the window with duct tape. It was the third time this year, and I was prepared. My old car invited vandalism, a key run from front to back on the driver’s side, break-ins, graffiti written in lipstick on the rear window.
The foam board was awkward, and it was beginning to rain. Luckily the rain hadn’t started while I was in the house. Luckily I hadn’t had anything in the car. Then I remembered. The books. I threw down the foam board and looked in the backseat. They weren’t there, and they weren’t in the trunk either. A hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of books gone. I cursed the thief, who would have no interest in books on Southeast Asian art. I imagined his disappointment when he saw what he had. It wasn’t a consolation.
I considered going to get my father to help me. Four hands would simplify the task of securing the window. But going back to the house would mean my mother would insist that I stay, that I put my car in their garage until I could get the window fixed in the morning. I wedged one side of the foam board down the opening where my window had been and managed to jam it into place, then I taped the upper edge and sides so that it wouldn’t blow away when I drove.
I pushed the comforter onto the passenger seat, pulled off my soaking coat and threw it on top of the comforter, climbed into the driver’s seat, leaned my head back on the headrest, and closed my eyes, groaning as I thought of the work I still needed to do tonight. Once I’d collected myself, I started the car. A car parked a few cars behind me started too, its lights flashing on for an instant, then going out.
Instinctively I locked the car doors, imagining an arm crashing through the foam board and grabbing me by the throat. Or two arms. Or a machete, its curve falling and in one fell swoop breaking my window and severing my head. Then it dawned on me, my disparate thoughts catching up with each other. This wasn’t just a random break-in.
The rain pummeled the window, making it impossible to see. The street was dark, except for my headlights blurring light across the bumper of the car in front of me. I wanted to scream. Instead I reached into my purse, felt the reassuring bulk of Tom Sharpen’s notes. This must be what the thief was after. The books meant nothing, the Post-its in the books meant nothing. The notes were what was significant. Of course, the thief didn’t know there were notes, or so I hoped.
As I pulled away from the curb, I saw the bedroom light go on in my parents’ house. There they were, unaware of the danger. The thief—was he also the murderer?—knew where they lived and undoubtedly knew where I lived. This wasn’t about the notes, or the books, or the Post-its in the books. This was about frightening me off. A threat not just to me, but also to my family.
Damn Philen for bringing us to the attention of the killer. The idiot. Car lights came on behind me again, and that same car slowly pulled from the curb.
I braked and started to open the door. Then I thought of Grey and how he had tried to intimidate me with his size at the art fair. His smell and his ridiculous thinning ponytail. Damn that Grey. It had to be him, didn’t it? He’d practically admitted it. What was it he’d said? That he’d flown to the States to talk with Sharpen about a piece. That he’d been too late. Or some such. But the point was, he’d come to the Bay Area around the
