When she looked up from the book, Bibi thought more time had passed than just a minute or two. She felt as though she was rising from a kind of waking sleep that had held her for long hours, and in fact she yawned and blinked and worked some saliva into her dry mouth. But the sensation of having been in a trance, of sloughing off the grip of some hypnotic power, had to be a misapprehension, because she still felt full from breakfast and because she was not stiff and achy from having sat for a long period behind the wheel. According to her wristwatch, only a few minutes had passed.
Nevertheless, she closed the volume rather than gaze into it again. And when she returned it to her purse, she said, “Something’s very wrong here.”
This was one of those days when the fog mimicked the wave action of the sea but in slow motion, gradually receding in the weak warmth of morning light, though never pulling entirely off the coast, then surging inland after an hour or two, reaching not quite as far as previously, retreating once more before returning.
When Bibi drove back into Newport Beach, she had to turn on the headlights long before she reached the bridge to Balboa Peninsula. Once she was cruising on that long arm of land that bulwarked the sea and embraced the harbor, she set the windshield wipers on intermittent to wipe away the insistent condensation.
Kelsey Faulkner’s address was in the commercial zone before the super-pricey real estate of Peninsula Point. A tourist destination in warmer months, this district varied between two and three blocks in width, oceanfront to harborfront. It was a fabled piece of ground that brought to mind Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, who created surfer music there in the 1950s, though its flatness inspired in nervous types occasional visions of the obliterating power of a tsunami.
Bibi parked in a metered lot and walked through sea-scented fog to the address, which was an unlikely location for the home base of a cult of homicidal lunatics. The shop, Silver Fantasies, offered handcrafted silver jewelry that ranged from inexpensive souvenirs such as leaping-porpoise pendants to exquisite necklaces and bracelets that sold for a few thousand dollars. It was open on an off-season weekday morning, which meant they enjoyed a large local clientele.
Bibi had often seen the place in passing, but having little interest in jewelry, she had never ventured inside. The cheaper items hung on brass racks. The better pieces were displayed in glass cases.
The thirty-something woman sitting at a corner worktable, polishing a bracelet, might have been cast forward in time from the late 1960s. In a long swishy cotton skirt, tie-dyed blouse, crocheted dog collar, and dangly silver peace-symbol earrings, she could have gotten on the stage with any band of that period and been taken for one of them as long as she held a tambourine.
She looked up from her work, smiled, and said, “Not the kind of day they’re dreamin’ about when they’re California dreamin’.”
“Better than a tsunami,” Bibi replied, though she had never before been one of those nervous types. “Is Kelsey around?”
Pointing to a door at the rear of the shop, the woman said, “In his studio. Just go on back.”
Although it was unlikely that she would be dismembered in the workroom of a jewelry shop, Bibi hesitated.
“It’s okay,” the woman said. “He’s not smelting or anything, just designing some new pieces.” She frowned. “You do know him?”
Bibi hesitated. “My dad knows him.”
“Who’s your dad?”
“Murphy Blair. He owns—”
“Sure, Murph. He’s cool. Go on back.”
Faulkner’s studio was more industrial than she expected of an artist-slash-craftsman. Small but arranged for efficiency. Clean but smelling of metal polish and machine oil. Four small high windows at which the fog pressed its blank face.
About fifty, with a mane of white hair that reminded Bibi of Beethoven’s, Kelsey Faulkner perched on a stool at a draftsman’s table. He was sketching a necklace.
He looked up and smiled. “Now, here’s a sudden light in a dreary day.”
If the woman in the front room had prepared Bibi, she might still not have been ready for his face. Half of it was handsome. The other half was out of Phantom of the Opera: a gnarled mass of keloid scars and furrowed flesh, blister-red twisted through with greasy-looking white tissue. The scars distracted from—but didn’t disguise—underlying problems with the structure of cheek and jaw, as if he had suffered a hard impact at speed. Most of his left ear was gone, and the remainder resembled a crust of fungus.
Although Bibi told him that he made lovely jewelry, and though she thought that she concealed her shock, Faulkner read her reaction correctly. He spoke a bit slowly, with precise diction, as though calculation must be required to avoid speaking with an impediment. “I’m sorry. Rita did not prepare you, did she?”
“The saleslady? I said you knew my father. She just assumed….”
“Who is your father?”
“Murphy Blair.”
“Nice man. So enthusiastic. He buys my jewelry for your mother.”
“That’s how you know him?”
“It has been many years since I chose to meet anyone new, other than those customers who insist on expressing their regards to the artisan.” He indicated the sketch. “I have my work, my apartment upstairs, my books. That is enough. Sometimes too much.”