Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

“You said he told you wild stories. These don’t sound so wild.”

“Oh, you know. I hate to pass them on. The whole thing is probably ridiculous. But”-she shrugged-“nobody’s ever asked me before, and I don’t really think he would mind if I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Oh!” she said, so delighted she put her hands together in a silent clap. “I even have a picture! I just thought it was so absurd, and nothing he could say convinced me.” She started rummaging around. “Let’s see. Now where would that thing be?” After searching the central drawer in the desk, she moved down the left side, then down the right, while Paul fidgeted with frustration.

“Let me help?” he asked.

“No, you just drink your tea!” she said. “I know it’s here somewhere.” She moved to one of the file cabinets. “Could I have put it in here? Over the years, I’ve been moved to do a little spring cleaning. Let’s hope I didn’t throw it out. Really, I’m an appalling pack rat, that’s the truth. Look at all this stuff.” Papers piled up on the desk behind her. A few stacks had settled on the floor. “I simply have to get better organized. It’s not as though I have a particularly demanding clientele most days.”

Driven to it, laughing with her in spite of himself, Paul drank his tea.

“Maybe I was teasing him back a little,” she said, working through the second drawer as if all day and all night lay ahead with nothing better to do, “because he took it so very seriously, and the whole thing seemed just ridiculous. So he brought this picture, which he found in a book in the library. He actually had a copy made for me. He said this would prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“Eureka!” she said, pulling out a tatty-edged print. “Thank goodness I’m not at all the compulsive housekeeper Harry always accused me of being. It’s just, he never really looked in the drawers. He never really saw all I could pack in there.”

She showed him the picture. The fuzzy black-and-white showed an impressive procession of black-booted men in uniform, light-colored shirts buttoned slightly to one side, flat, round caps with brims pulled neatly down over their foreheads. Toward the end of the procession rode a solemn young boy on horseback, dressed like a sailor, with a round white cap.

“These men are prerevolutionary soldiers, the Russian imperial army. Their allies called it the ‘Russian Steamroller.’ And that’s him,” she said, pointing at the boy. “That’s Constantin, or so he told me. It could be him.” She smiled. “He was older when I knew him.” At the front of the marching group stood a man in a tall fur hat, with a neat beard and a heavy, drooping mustache, obviously the most important person there.

“Nicholas the Second,” she said to answer Paul’s inquiring glance. “The last Romanov tsar. They ruled for three hundred years, until 1918.”

“What was Constantin Zhukovsky doing there?”

“He made up so many stories,” she said, “but who knows? He claimed he was a page to the tsar. The last one, as he used to say.”

Paul asked to borrow it so that he could make a copy.

He left, map in hand, walking the winding strips of road until he ran into Wish. They headed toward a square plot, marked off by a low concrete berm. Inside it, below a spreading shade tree, they found the place where Constantin Zhukovsky had been buried.

“It’s a gathering of Russians,” Wish remarked, “dead ones.” Each headstone there was marked with an unusual cross with two straight horizontal crossbars at the top, and below them, a short slanted one. “Do you think people care if they’re hanging with their ethnic brothers and sisters when they are dead?”

“I can’t speak for them, but obviously their relatives do,” Paul said. “It’s just like a community meeting here, only nobody’s hell-bent on overthrowing the mayor.”

The cross marking Constantin Zhukovsky’s grave was made of wood splintered with age. No remaining sign of disturbance in the gravel covering the grave exposed Stefan Wyatt’s activities of several months ago. Wish stared at the headstone. “Constantin Zhukovsky, 1904-1978. That’s all it says.”

“What should it say?” Paul asked.

Wish thought. “It should say, Beloved Father and Husband. Or something. Don’t you think at the very least your headstone ought to summarize you somehow? It should mark some special achievement, I think.”

“Maybe they hated him and kept it short to avoid embarrassing him.”

“I don’t get the impression that he was a creep, do you?”

“No,” Paul admitted. He took the picture out of his pocket and studied it. What did Mrs. Peltier’s story mean? And if it was true, why hadn’t the family commemorated Constantin Zhukovsky’s fascinating background on his headstone?

Sunday 9/21

ON SUNDAY MORNING, PAUL FOUND ERIN O’TOOLE WATERING A corner plot near the off ramp from Highway 1. While she watered, she crouched now and then to dig up the occasional weed, cut off browning flowers, and check inside her flowers for bugs. She had very long black hair done in two braids that intersected halfway down her back. Her clothes were practical. The minute she spotted Paul, she turned off the hose, and walked lightly toward him.

“Here you are again,” she said, pumping his hand. “Never saying die.”

Paul enjoyed Erin’s energy. You could almost see the billions of molecules bouncing around inside her, pinking her cheeks, pumping those toned legs. He just wished he could get something out of her. He had spoken with her once already, but she had been too upset to say much. Today, she seemed a little more accessible.

“Ms. Reilly’s secretary called to let me know you were coming again, Paul. Sorry about last time. I hope I didn’t put you off, but I wasn’t myself.” She lifted her eyes above the frown that had formed. “So let me help you today. What do you need from me?”

“Well, I have some more questions.”

“Anything to help Stef.” Her voice, with its high, young pitch, held a stalwart firmness in it.

“Is there a better place to talk?” Paul asked loudly, to beat the traffic noise.

“I’m done,” she said. “Mind following me home? I’d love to get the sweat situation under control before we get into life stories.” The fog had burned off early that morning. Even in Monterey, September could be hot, and unlike yesterday, the day already simmered.

He didn’t mind following her. She drove a white van with the name “Green Plant Haven” on its side. They didn’t have to go far. She lived in a dinky house not far up from the bay, adorned with flowers. A border along the white picket fence sported a crazed collection of color. The yard had a tidy sprawl to it Paul could not help admiring. Nina’s cottage would benefit from Erin’s touch, no doubt about it. Erin sat him down in her living room with a can of soda, then disappeared.

When she returned, she gleamed in a dazzling white T-shirt and jeans. She sat down in a striped yellow armchair that tipped into a recliner when she leaned back. “Something to eat?” Erin offered, taking a long drink of her soda. “I’ve got tuna, even some homemade soup.”

“No, thanks,” Paul said, even though he was, in fact, hungry. “I just have a few minutes.”

“So?”

“So tell me a little more about you and Stefan.” He looked at his notes. “You told me before that you met at a restaurant?”

She looked reluctant, but decided to answer. “Yep,” she said. “We met at the bar of an old restaurant in Carmel, the Pine Inn. Stef was bartending. This is back when he had a job. They have a cute bar. I used to go there to drown my sorrows,” she said, remembering.