“I see you brought supplies,” he said, nodding to the shoe box under my arm and the backpack slung over my shoulder.
“A few. Salts and a basic brew, a few crystals. Just the usual; I try to keep the backpack ready to go.”
“In case you need to cast in a hurry?”
“I’m sure you can imagine. With the way life is unfolding lately . . .” I trailed off with a shrug.
He grinned. “Let’s give it a go. You really think they’ll let us in?”
“Trust me.”
“Always, my friend. But just to be sure, why don’t I wait out of sight while you ring the bell?”
I saw his point. I wasn’t all that intimidating in my floral cotton dress—better suited to a summer picnic than a midnight assignation—tangerine cardigan, turquoise Keds, and ponytail. Hervé was another matter altogether.
The Hotel Marais was a tall, thin Victorian-era building, squashed in between a large residential building and a small theater advertising a midnight all-nude male revue. Along the facade, several flags wafted lazily in the night breeze: those of France, the United States, and California with its iconic grizzly bear, and a blue one with stars that I didn’t recognize.
I climbed a short set of stone steps and rang the after-hours bell.
As a child who was shunned by the larger community of Jarod, Texas, I had developed a bit of a complex about having doors slammed in my face. But since moving to San Francisco, I had been so embraced by my friends that I had started to relax. Right now, though, the old feelings of rejection came rushing back, and I was grateful to have a friend like Hervé by my side. Hidden and crouching, but by my side nonetheless.
A thin man peered through the glass door. Young, probably a college student working a second job. He was dressed in dark slacks and a plaid shirt, but his brown hair was tousled and his eyes puffy, as though he’d been asleep.
“May I help you?” he said through the locked doors. He wore a name tag: Shawn.
“Could you open the door, Shawn?”
He sized me up, then buzzed the door open. Shawn’s eyes widened in alarm when Hervé joined me at the top of the stairs. Shawn was forced to step back as the three of us crowded into the small foyer.
“Are you . . . I’m sorry. Are you guests?” Shawn asked nervously.
“No, we—”
“Sorry, but we don’t have any rooms to let.”
“We’d like to see room two seventeen, please,” I said, stroking my medicine bag and focusing my intent.
“That’s a . . . That room’s not available.”
“I understand. We just want to take a quick look.”
“There’s crime scene tape up.”
I took his hand in mine, gazed into his eyes, and concentrated. I wasn’t always able to influence others, but in general I had good luck with people in the hospitality business, probably because their job was to accommodate their patrons.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Shawn. I’m sorry to have awakened you so late. We’ll only need a few minutes. Why don’t you give me the key to room two seventeen, and then you can go back to sleep? I’ll leave the key at the desk on my way out. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Shawn relaxed. “Um . . . okay, I guess it’d be all right.”
The foyer led into a narrow hall; to the right was a cozy parlor, and to the left a small chamber filled with tiny café tables; a coffee machine, a stack of newspapers, and a platter of cookies rested on a counter. Beyond that was an office crammed with two desks topped by computers.
A statue of Joan of Arc in full armor stood at the end of the hallway; another flag and several maps of France added to the Gallic flavor of the boutique hotel. But what really caught my eye were the delicate, colorful paintings of mythological creatures along the tops of the walls, on the door panels, and winding up the columns. There were allegorical and humorous figures and animals, along with a framework of garlands, borders, fans, piers, and cartouches with landscapes or narrative scenes. Unless I missed my guess, these were copies of the ceiling frescoes from the Uffizi museum in Florence.
“Grottesche,” I said. Hervé raised an eyebrow, and I nodded at the paintings.
“Yeah,” Shawn said. “They’re kind of cool, right? The hotel’s former owner was enthralled with these things. When his wife died, he started painting, and didn’t stop until he’d painted just about every flat surface he could find.”
“They’re beautiful. Oh, one more thing,” I said to Shawn as something occurred to me. “Did you meet the victim?”
“Sure.”
“Did he say anything, do anything odd?”
“He didn’t say much. He came down to the office at one point and said he wasn’t feeling well, asked for the name of a pharmacy.”
“Where did you send him?”
“To the drugstore around the corner. But he said he preferred natural remedies, so I told him to talk to Quan.”
“And who is Quan?”
“The day manager. I don’t know much about Chinese medicine, but Quan swears by it. She says it’s the only thing that really works.”
“And was she able to help him?”
“She told him about an herb store, the Lucky something, on Sacramento.”
“The Lucky Moon?” I suggested. That was Sailor’s favorite apothecary, the one Maya had “seen” him in. It was a popular shop, not far from the hotel, so perhaps it was simply a coincidence.
Shawn nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“Did he go, do you know? Any idea what he bought there?”
Shawn shrugged. “Said he felt sick to his stomach and stuff. Gotta say, he looked kind of pale.”
“And what about the man”—my voice wavered, as though railing against the idea of Sailor standing accused of murder—“the man people saw leave the scene?”
“He’s on our security tapes,” said Shawn.
“So I hear.”
“I told everything to the police. No one saw him come in, but a bunch of people saw him leave. It was hard not to notice.”
“Anything strike you as odd?”
“Besides the fact that he had blood all over him?”
My stomach quailed.
“Yes, besides that.”
Shawn shrugged. “People were freaking out at the sight of him, but he was totally calm. He stopped and looked at an old-fashioned pocket watch, and then kept on going. Weird, right?”
“Yep, weird. Okay, thanks. The room key?”
“Oh, yeah,” Shawn said, foraging behind the desk and handing me the key. “The forensics people left about an hour ago. I’ll be here if you need me.”
I thanked Shawn again, encouraged him to go back to sleep; then Hervé and I hurried toward the narrow circular stairs that wound around the elevator.
“Does the pocket watch have any significance to you?” I asked Hervé.
“Maybe he was late for a very important date?” Hervé suggested. “Seriously, the only thing it brings up for me is the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.”
Well, that seemed apt. I felt a lot like I’d fallen down a rabbit hole lately.
The elevator was the old-fashioned kind; riders had to pull the grate closed manually, and the shaft was open to the center of the building, with the stairs wrapping around it. As we mounted the stairs, I noticed that even the interior walls of the elevator shaft were covered with the paintings.
“You’ve got to give the artist props for diligence,” I said to Hervé.
“I never knew you were a student of art history.”
“I’m not. But I spent some time in Florence, and used to hang out at the Uffizi. The art on the wall is great, of course, but it was the ceilings that really captured my interest. In English they’re referred to as ‘grotesques,’ which sounds like something bad or ugly. But I think they’re charming. Bizarre, but charming.”
One of the painted grotesques seemed to move, swimming before my eyes.
“Did you see that?” I asked Hervé.
“See what?”
“One of the paintings just seemed to move.”
“It’s the energy of this place. There’s a spirit here, no doubt about it,” said Hervé.
But it wasn’t necessarily Tristan Dupree’s spirit. In a hotel of this age, a resident ghost was practically a foregone conclusion.