Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(61)
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.”
Because the silversmith seemed to invite the question, Bibi asked, “What happened?”
After a hesitation, he cocked his head and regarded her with greater interest than before. “You are not like the others, are you?”
“What others?”
He studied her for a moment, and then said, “Any others.”
“I’m just me. Like anyone.”
“Different,” he disagreed. “Yours is not just cheap curiosity.”
Sensing that he was analyzing her and not yet finished, Bibi said nothing, concerned that pressing him would silence him.
“You do not pity me. Compassion, yes, I see your compassion. But no pity, none of the quiet disgust or contempt that comes with pity.”
She waited.
Faulkner closed his eyes and, after a moment, nodded as if in response to some conversation with himself. When he opened his eyes, he said, “A young man clubbed me with a length of steel pipe. While I was unconscious, he raped my wife, my lovely Beth, and stabbed her twenty-three times. As I lay dying…” He corrected himself. “As she lay dying, he poured acid in her face. And then in mine. The burning acid, the fierce stinging, woke me as he was leaving. I lived. Beth did not.”
Bibi would have settled into a chair if one had been available. “Who was he?”