A Toxic Trousseau Read online

  He let out an exasperated breath. “And you say I’m acting out of character? Seems to me you prided yourself on being a solo act. Held yourself apart from others, did your own thing. Or did I imagine all that?”

  “It’s my new approach to life: I’m supposed to ask for help, remember?”

  “All right, then. What do you need?”

  “Come be our bodyguard?”

  He let out a little groan. “I suppose I can’t very well say no, now, can I?”

  “Not really.”

  “When is this little shindig?”

  “On Saturday. Unless I can somehow put a stop to it.”

  “Is this in lieu of our Mystery Date?”

  “It is our Mystery Date.” I had considered booking tickets to Alcatraz, the former federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, but wasn’t sure how much Sailor would enjoy it. Alcatraz was historical and fascinating, but the place had seen so much pain and sadness. Tortured souls roamed the forlorn island, and you never knew with psychics. Sometimes the spirits just wouldn’t leave them alone, so that an experience others enjoyed could become harrowing.

  “No offense to you or Bronwyn, Lily, but spending the evening with you and thirteen coven sisters isn’t exactly my idea of a great date.”

  “Sounds awesome to me,” said Oscar, rubbing his hands together. “Woo-hoo! I can’t wait!”

  “Oscar . . . ,” I began, searching for words. It’s tough to explain to a gobgoyle why he can’t come on an overnight with a coven in a haunted house. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t something for pigs.”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed.

  “I doubt the Rodchester House is a pet-friendly place.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You can’t come,” said Sailor bluntly.

  “B-but I love the Rodchester House of Spirits! It’s an awesome haunted house!”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Sure. It’s a major attraction in these parts. Haven’t you taken the tour? Course, there’s the normal tour, and then there’s a special tour. Take my word for it: You want the special tour.”

  “I—no, I haven’t been.” Oscar had a way of throwing me. How on earth had he managed to go on a tour—a special tour—of the Rodchester House of Spirits? But then, he wasn’t a standard witch’s familiar; he had his own life, and sometimes he disappeared for hours or even days at a time. For all I knew, he was touring local attractions, taking in a play, and stopping off for a three-martini lunch at John’s Grill with his gang of ersatz witches’ familiars.

  “Anyway, Oscar, the point is that the Welcome coven has arranged for an overnight stay, but the Rodchester House doesn’t permit animals.”

  He scoffed and waved his oversized hand in my direction.

  “I’m serious, Oscar.”

  “B-but the Laaaady, and all her coven sisters?” His eyes were huge, his tone tragic.

  I looked to Sailor for help. He shrugged and splayed his hands out, helpless.

  “I’m really sorry, Oscar,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you. How about mac ’n’ cheese for dinner tonight? With fried okra?”

  This was a new gobgoyle favorite. Okra was technically a vegetable, but since it was breaded and fried, Oscar made an exception to his carbs-and-cheese-only rule.

  “And fried green tomatoes, too?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mm-kay,” he mumbled; then he turned and dragged his talons into the kitchen. I could hear him grumbling under his breath about being kept out of all the fun stuff, and I felt bad.

  “How much you want to bet he shows up anyway?” said Sailor.

  “No.” I blinked. “Seriously?”

  “Ten bucks says I’m right.”

  “But how would he get there?”

  “How does he get anywhere? Besides, didn’t you give him a travel cloak a while ago?”

  “That’s right. I did.” Not that Oscar needed the cloak to travel. Sailor was right. I had no idea how Oscar managed to get himself anywhere, but manage he did. I sighed.

  Sailor laid a heavy hand on the back of my neck and emitted a low chuckle. “Oscar can take care of himself. I would worry about Bronwyn and her coven, however.”

  “Why? Have you been to the Rodchester House? Is it dangerous? I mean, it strikes me as a bad idea, but I don’t have anything concrete as justification. Merely a general feeling of dread.”

  He shook his head thoughtfully. “I haven’t been there. I imagine you and I have that in common: We don’t frequent haunted houses if we can help it.”

  “So it’s really haunted?”

  “I have no idea. But even if it wasn’t to begin with, all those visitors fervently believing it is would create more than enough energy to stir things up. Thousands of tourists, day in and day out . . . Well, you do the math. Not to mention the Widow Rodchester was famous for hosting séances and inviting folks like Houdini to call on the dead. . . .”

  “You mean she might have unwittingly invited someone into her home?”

  “Someone, or something.”

  “It sounds like you know more about this place than you’re letting on.”

  “As Oscar said, it’s pretty well-known around here. I haven’t been there, but most people I know have.”

  “And is it true that the Widow Rodchester kept building onto the house, hoping to appease the spirits?”

  “That’s what they say. But if you think about it, does it seem logical that she would attempt to appease the spirits by spending the money she made from selling the guns that killed them?”

  “That sounded a little strange to me, too.”

  “I’ve also heard that Sally Rodchester was a frustrated architect who used her own house as her guinea pig. She was interested in spiritualism, but that wasn’t unusual at the time. When her husband died, she inherited a huge fortune that allowed her to do pretty much whatever she wanted.”

  “So you don’t think she was a little crazy, a prisoner of her own house?”

  “Akin to what we were discussing at the Vintage Victoriana clothes show earlier: I think this is the sort of thing history usually says about independent women.”

  “That they’re mad?”

  “Yes. In your case, of course, it’s true.” His hands settled on my waist, his head bent toward mine, and he gave me a ghost of a smile. “Mad as a hatter.”

  Chapter 10

  The next morning I called Maya.

  “How’s Loretta? Everything going okay?”

  “She seems just fine. Mom took her in to the sewing loft with her today. I think it’s fair to say that one would be hard-pressed to find a mellower dog. Still, I promised to drop by and take her for a walk later.”

  “I was thinking . . . one of Autumn’s neighbors, the cupcake lady, said there was a dog park around the corner from the shop. Dog people know each other, right?”

  “If they go to the same park at the same time, they’d probably at least recognize each other.”

  “I encountered the dog walker yesterday about now. If she keeps to a schedule . . .”

  “Tell you what: Meet me at Mom’s and we can go together.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. It just so happens I have an unexpected day off. And I think I need to check out this cupcake shop.”

  * * *

  I headed out to Lucille’s Loft to pick up Loretta. As I squeezed into a tight spot at the brick building near Potrero Hill, off Fifteenth, I rolled the phrase around in my mouth a few times, Loretta’s at Lucille’s Loft, smiling at the alliteration.

  The loft was on the second floor of an old factory building that had been divided into several work spaces. Unlike many buildings in the city, which had been renovated and rehabbed within an inch of their lives, this building was true to its roots, featuring a creaky old freig
ht elevator and ugly dropped acoustic ceilings in the hallways.

  Inside the loft, though, old redbrick walls, huge multipaned windows, and tall, beamed ceilings more than made up for the lack of outward panache. A few women stood at huge worktables cutting cloth with crinkly patterns, while half a dozen others sat hunched over sewing machines. The floor was covered in thread and scraps, and one whole wall was lined with bolts of brightly colored retro-style cloth.

  “Hello, Lily,” Lucille called out, lifting her gaze but not moving from the worktable. She held a huge pair of shears in one hand and a bolt of fabric in the other. Her short-cropped, graying hair was dotted with bits of thread and fluff. No doubt it was a professional hazard. “Maya should be here any minute.”

  Apart from the gray hairs, a few extra pounds, and a handful of wrinkles, Lucille looked almost exactly like her daughter. Both were beautiful in an understated way; strong and steady. I wondered what it must be like for Maya to know what she would look like at her mother’s age. Would it be comforting, or disconcerting? I took after my father more than my mother, which, given his character, was more than a little disturbing.

  Several of the women glanced up and shouted hellos at me across the open floor. I recognized a few of the faces because Lucille preferred to hire and train women from the Haight women’s shelter whenever she could. Aunt Cora’s Closet donated professional clothes to the residents four times a year, in an event organized by Bronwyn’s Welcome coven. A new wardrobe might seem rather low on the list of resources the shelter women needed, but in fact it wasn’t. One of the many hurdles facing those trying to get back on their feet was the inability to dress properly for job interviews.

  Besides, as we liked to say at Aunt Cora’s Closet: Changing your clothes can help change your life. And the afternoon spent trying on garments was a rare, lighthearted event that helped women in difficult circumstances feel better about themselves.

  “Where’s Loretta?” I asked.

  Lucille tilted her head toward the windows. I walked farther into the space and spied Loretta in a patch of sunlight, lying on a bed of scraps. The charms on her collar gleamed in the sun, but they didn’t so much as tinkle since she remained motionless, save for a single lazy thump of her tail.

  “Well, she certainly seems at home.”

  “She’s a perfect workplace dog,” said a woman named Beatriz, working at the nearest table. “Just perfect. Except, we might lose the loft soon.”

  “Lose the loft?” I repeated. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Lucille finished with the fabric she was cutting, straightened, and shook her head. “The owner wants to sell the building. He’s been a great landlord so far but wants to move to Idaho or North Dakota or one of those. The new folks are planning on turning this building into expensive condos. ‘Lofts’ in the hipster sense of the word; essentially they’ll be condos with brick walls and nice windows, but no decent parking or other amenities.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.” In San Francisco these days, being evicted often meant having to relocate to a new town altogether. The city was becoming so expensive its demographics were changing, with immigrants and artists and artisans making way for tech folks who could pay many times as much to rent or buy an apartment. I thanked my lucky stars I had signed a ten-year lease when I moved into Aunt Cora’s Closet.

  “It’s such a shame; we were just getting to a point where the business was in the black. Now . . .” She trailed off with a shrug, looked at the women hard at work, and dropped her voice. “I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s true we don’t need this much room, but even so I haven’t been able to find a place I could even begin to afford. And you know these women don’t have the ability to commute to outlying areas. Neither do I, for that matter.”

  Just then Maya arrived. Loretta lifted her big head and gave a welcoming, muffled woof.

  “Wow, you’ve made a conquest,” I said. “Loretta gave you two whole thumps of her tail, and a woof.”

  “I have a way with animals,” Maya said with a smile. When she first met Oscar she had referred to him as “the other white meat,” but over time her attitude had changed. As was the case for many who thought themselves immune to the charms of animals, sometimes it just took one or two special interactions to change their minds.

  “So, which dog park are you going to?” asked Lucille.

  “It’s over off Buchanan, around the corner from a store called Vintage Visions Glad Rags.”

  “Checking out the competition?”

  “Not really . . .” If Maya hadn’t already told her mother what was going on, I didn’t want to try to explain it all. This was a position I found myself in fairly often, given the way my life had developed. “But that’s where we found Loretta.”

  “I just told Mom we were keeping Loretta for a friend for a few days,” said Maya.

  Lucille’s intelligent eyes settled on me for a long moment; then she nodded in a sage, patient way that again reminded me of her daughter. “I see.”

  “C’mon, Loretta, let’s go,” I said, patting my thigh. The pup didn’t move.

  Maya took her key ring out of her pocket and tinkled it. Loretta lifted her head, then rolled onto her feet, stood, shook herself, then trotted over to the door.

  “As I was saying,” said Maya, arching one eyebrow. “A way with animals.”

  * * *

  The dog park appeared to have once been a large lawn but now was a big brown space surrounded by a chain-link fence. A few oak trees and some patches of dusty ivy were the only things hardy enough to survive both the drought and numerous high-spirited canines.

  An older couple sat on a wooden bench, and one woman stood under a tree with her head bent, reading on an electronic device. Half a dozen people stood around in a loose circle, chatting while their dogs played. Occasionally someone would throw a slobbery ball that had been dutifully dropped at their feet, but otherwise it was social hour for the humans as well as the pets.

  As soon as I undid her leash, I expected Loretta to shoot out of the car and race toward the park and freedom, but she stood by our sides, a dignified old lady checking out the scene.

  “Go on, now,” I said softly. “Go play with your friends.”

  She looked up at me with her soulful brown eyes and gave a lackadaisical swish of her tail.

  “Or not. Whatever floats your boat.”

  “I don’t think Loretta’s what you’d call a high-energy dog,” said Maya. She gestured with her head. “Want to go infiltrate the group?”

  We had stopped for coffee on the way over, and we clutched our cardboard cups as we moseyed around. Loretta followed a few feet behind, looking at the other dogs but making no move to leave our sides. Maya and I edged our way into the informal circle, nodding and trading hellos.

  Before I could launch into my story, one of the young men said, “Hey, isn’t that Loretta?”

  “It is, yes. I take it you know her?”

  “Sure. Where’s Scarlet?”

  “She’s sick, right?” said a young woman with strawberry blond hair and freckles. She turned to her companion. “I told you so. Last time I saw her, she didn’t look all that great, I gotta be honest. Didn’t I say that?”

  Both she and the bearded young man at her side looked familiar. When the man opened his mouth to speak, I realized I had seen them at the cupcake shop yesterday. They had been leaving just as Sailor and I arrived.

  “Yeah, you did say that,” he said to Freckles. Then he turned to me. “Hey, didn’t we see you at Renee’s yesterday?”

  “Yes, I was just thinking you looked familiar.”

  “Great cupcakes. Did you try the bourbon-and-bacon one?”

  The mention of this culinary delight engendered a long and passionate discussion within the group, with individuals defending their personal favorites, from red velvet to somethi
ng with the dubious moniker of Zucchini Surprise.

  “Sorry,” the young woman said. “Cupcakes are a favorite topic around here, as you can see. I’m Eleanor, and this is Cody. And that little ragamuffin there”—she pointed to an admittedly odd-looking hound that appeared to be a cross between a German shepherd and a spaniel, but with the stubby legs of a dachshund—“is Mr. Bojangles. He’s a rescue.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Lily; this is Maya. And I guess you all know Loretta.”

  Loretta was leaning her considerable weight on Maya, who braced herself and petted her patiently.

  The others went around the circle introducing themselves: George and Jessica and Ling and Graydon and Rolando, and their respective dogs: D.C. and Samantha and Jack and MacAllister and Sunshine.

  “So, seriously,” asked Cody, “is Scarlet okay?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure,” I said. I heard a bee buzzing nearby; it came and landed on my shoulder. “I saw her briefly yesterday, but the strangest thing happened: She left the dogs she was walking. Just dropped the leashes and took off.”

  Everyone in the group looked surprised.

  “That doesn’t sound like Scarlet,” someone said, and the others all nodded.

  “In what way?” Maya asked.

  “She was pretty dependable. Came here with a bunch of dogs every day, right about now.”

  Without thinking about it, I put my hand up to my shoulder; the bee crawled onto it, and I released it into the wind. Graydon caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “She must really have been sick if she took off and left the dogs like that. I hope she’s okay. I noticed the vintage place was closed, too,” said Cody. “The store owner wasn’t feeling well, either. Maybe there’s something going around.”

  “Is that why you’re taking care of Loretta?” asked Ling, a fiftyish woman with a ginger-colored Pekingese.

  “Sort of . . . ,” I began. The group started speculating about whether or not it was smart to get a flu shot. This being San Francisco, the discussion quickly morphed, with emotions running high, into a debate about requiring immunizations for school-aged children, and the perils of the pharmaceutical industry.