Chapter Ten
Ten
Over coffee the next morning, Harper sat at the table to research her book manuscript on the history of being buried alive and the widespread fear of being buried alive in the turbulent nineteenth century.
She planned to elaborate on her published article linking the pervasive anxiety over premature burial and the many newspaper stories alluding to it to the fear in the antebellum era not only of the difficulty of knowing when someone was truly dead, but also of failure itself: financial, social, moral.
It was an inherently dramatic topic that she usually enjoyed writing about, but this morning her prose fell flat. Digging up someone who actually had been buried alive made the intellectual argument much too real, dampening her enthusiasm.
After several false starts, she gave up and went downstairs to collect the newspaper.
The top stories today concerned a measles outbreak in a local elementary school, a new farmer’s market near Cannery Row, and efforts to save the steelhead in the Carmel River.
A short follow-up article on Delilah Mason’s death contained mostly unsourced speculation and empty quotations from Joel, who never failed to mention his tours.
What was his story? Harper had disliked the tour guide from the start because of his wild tales, but he had seemed truly distraught when they discovered Delilah Mason in the garden. And yet now he felt no compunction in cashing in on the drama.
Harper pushed the paper aside and drummed her fingers on the table.
What happened had to have been personal, right?
A home invader was extremely unlikely to take the time to bury their victim in that person’s garden.
Somebody must have hated Delilah enough to not only stab her but then bury her while she was still alive.
Had the murderer intended to kill, or might the burial have been a ghoulish form of torture?
Could the murderer have known the ghost tour would be coming by, and might save her in the nick of time?
Whoever the killer was must have had knowledge of local history.
It stretched credulity to think it was a coincidence that the murderer just happened to bury Delilah under the Witch Tree alongside the spot Isabel Perles had been found more than a century and a half earlier.
So that pointed to the killer being someone local, though that hardly narrowed down the possible suspects.
The morbid history of the Perles family and the Perles Mansion was no secret.
Anyone now living in town, or who had lived here in the past, might be familiar with it.
But who would be motivated to stab Delilah and copycat Isabel’s death scene?
Harper sat back and blew out a long sigh.
On the kitchen counter sat the bag of dog goodies she had bought at the grocery store last night, hoping to entice the black dog the next time she saw it.
They were Paul Newman treats, which put her in mind of Newman’s famous blue eyes—and that reminded her of the eyes of the man in the bar last night: Delilah Mason’s brother, Asher. What was his story?
You’re thinking about the eyes of a man you saw at the bar, Harper? A stranger to whom she hadn’t spoken even one word. Was she entering a second adolescence? Was forty the new fourteen?
Frustrated with herself, Harper pushed away from the table, dropped a few of the jerky-style dog treats in her pocket, and pulled on her walking shoes.
As she grabbed her keys from the porcelain bowl by the door, she spied the pepper spray Tariq had given her and strapped it onto her wrist, just in case.
The streets of Monterey were hushed with the calm of early morning.
As she walked toward the water, Harper spotted only a couple of joggers and a man who appeared to be building himself a cardboard shelter.
In Cannery Row John Steinbeck had portrayed Mack and the boys as happy-go-lucky, but life on the streets didn’t sound very appealing to Harper.
Toying with the dog jerky in her pocket, Harper peered down alleys as she walked along, hoping to spy the big black dog. Unless it really was a hellhound or a Nahual, as Sigrid had suggested, in which case she supposed she should…what? Run the other way?
Sigrid had also suggested that Harper’s aura was dark and muddy, which struck her as unfair. She certainly didn’t feel “dark and muddy.”
Well…maybe a little muddy. And okay, a little dark. But she was working on that.
Harper headed toward the wharf, then turned south along the water.
As always, the sea lions were loud and raucous and smelly, brimming with life.
They climbed atop and over one another, barking and nipping, but the showy squabbles never seemed to devolve into a genuine fight, just a lot of bluster.
The beach where they lay was encircled with a temporary cyclone fence, and although strongly worded signs warned the public to stay fifty yards away, the fence came right up to the sidewalk, so the sea lions were more like fifteen inches away.
Close enough to touch, if a person dared risk poking their fingers through the cyclone fence.
Sea lions could be fierce, but their little whiskers and big black eyes were adorable.
A trio of fat youngsters was asleep all in a row, spooning each other, as if tucked in by a fond nanny.
Occasionally one would raise its head and bark at the visitors on the other side of the fence, no doubt telling the humans to take it somewhere else.
Harper admired their moxie, reclaiming their territory from the greedy humans.
Overall, Monterey was a bit of a bust when it came to historic charm.
Harper had come here from Pennsylvania, eager to explore the oldest town in California, only to find that so much from the colonial period was gone, and what little remained was scattered willy-nilly among new restaurants and shops.
On Cannery Row, Doc’s old lab still stood and there were a few tiny fishing shacks with historical markers, but little else remained from Steinbeck’s era.
Harper glanced at the time and started to loop back toward her apartment. She took a different route and kept her eyes peeled, but spied no big black dog roaming the streets.
On one busy avenue she passed by a tattoo parlor with a sign that advertised: Woman owned!
Tattoos, antiques, and haunted items. Harper had been toying with the idea of getting a tattoo, and peeked through the window of the closed shop.
She spied a mirror hanging on a nearby wall, covered by a cloth with a note pinned to it: Allegedly haunted.
The shroud helps. So she wasn’t the only one who worried about mirrors.
She made a mental note to return during business hours.
It was still early when she got home, and Harper didn’t have class until three this afternoon. Plenty of time.
She showered, dressed, and headed to a place she had intended to visit long before now: the Monterey Antiquarian & Heritage Commission.
The archive was housed in Casa Sanchez, a historic adobe home built in the late 1800s.
It was a broad, one-story, whitewashed structure that boasted a wood-shingled roof rather than the red clay tiles more typical to the era.
The eaves overhung a wide, welcoming veranda that encircled the entire building.
Inside, there were open-beamed ceilings and two large fireplaces with carved wood mantelpieces in the main room. Wooden partitions split the space into smaller rooms, and two side porches had been walled in to create more interior space.
Harper knew only too well that properly documenting and archiving historical books and papers required specialized training and countless hours of effort.
That meant money, and plenty of it. As difficult as that was for large and well-established libraries and archives to fundraise, it was ten times harder for small, local historical societies, most of which were run by volunteers.
Not only were these societies often overwhelmed by the work required to catalog a collection, but many had more antiquarian interests, focusing on acquiring neat old stuff rather than the more scholarly approach of a university or privately funded archive.
Behind the front desk sat a woman with a sleek bob haircut, a strong Roman nose, and a physique so lean it hinted at an otherworldly hunger.
She wore a black sweater, black pants, thick black eyeliner, and crystal earrings dangling from her ears.
Had it not been for the silver in her hair and the crow’s-feet at her eyes, she would have fit in well with Harper’s students.
Harper stepped up to the desk and introduced herself.
“Ah, so you’re the new historian on the faculty,” the woman said. “May I say it was about time the college hired one? I’m Constance Bell. Nice to meet you, Dr. Grae, and welcome to Monterey.”
“Thank you, I’m very happy to be here. And please, call me Harper.”
“Have you been enjoying our fine, fair town?”
“Very much so.”
“Excellent. Now, having observed the ritual niceties of a civilized society, let me ask: What can I do for you, Harper?”
“I’m interested in anything you might have regarding witch trials in Monterey.”
The librarian let out a sigh. “I take it you went on Joel’s ghost tour?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Were you kidnapped?” Constance looked amused.
“In a manner of speaking. I lost a bet.”
“Ah, I see. Well, I’ve gone over this repeatedly with Joel, not that it does any good, but there are no documented cases of witchcraft or witchcraft trials in Monterey. None. Zero. Zip. Women in general are rarely mentioned in the early town records.”
“Not all accused witches were women.”