The Murder Book

The gray-haired woman finished her meal just as Aimee brought me my plate, a mug of coffee, utensils wrapped in a heavy yellow linen napkin. She returned to her vegetables and the gray-braided woman said, "Here you are, dear," and paid her cash. No change exchanged. No credit card signs anywhere in the café.

I unfolded the napkin, looked at my plate. Two crepes.

With her back to me, Aimee said, "You only have to pay for one. I had lots of cheese."

"Thank you," I said. "They look delicious."

Chop chop chop.

I cut into the first crepe and took a bite and flavor burst on my tongue. The coffee was the best I'd had in years, and I said so.

Chop chop chop.

I was working on the second crepe when the front door opened, and a man walked in and headed for the counter.

Short, chubby, white-haired, he wore a purplish red polyester jumpsuit, zipped in front, with big floppy lapels. Crimson clogs and white socks clad stubby feet. His fingers were attenuated, too, the thumbs little more than arced nubs. His ruddy face was impish but peaceful- an elf in repose. A leather-thonged bolo tie was held in place by a big, shapeless purple rock. Flashing on his left hand was a huge, gold pinkie ring set with a violet cabochon.

He looked to be in his midsixties, but I knew he was seventy-seven because I knew him. I also understood why he wore a single color: It was the only hue he could perceive in an otherwise black-and-white world. A rare form of color blindness was one of a host of physical anomalies he'd been born with. Some, like the shortened digits, were visible. Others, he'd assured me, were not.

Dr. Wilbert Harrison, psychiatrist, anthropologist, philosopher, eternal student. A sweet and decent man, and even a murderous psychopath bent on revenge had recognized that, sparing Harrison as he conducted a rampage against the doctors he believed had tormented him.

I hadn't been spared, and I'd met Bert Harrison, years ago, trying to figure all of that out. Since then we talked occasionally- infrequently.

"Bert," I said.

He turned, smiled. "Alex!" Holding up a finger, he greeted Aimee. Without making eye contact, she poured him tea and selected an almond-crusted pastry from the glass case beneath the blackboard.

A regular.

He said, "Thank you, darling," sat down at my table, placed his cup and plate in front of him, and grasped my hand with both of his.

"Alex. So good to see you."

"Good to see you, too, Bert."

"What have you been up to?"

"The usual. And you?"

Soft gray eyes twinkled. "I've embarked on a new hobby. Ethnic instruments, the more esoteric the better. I've discovered eBay- how wonderful, the global economy in its finest form. I find bargains, wait like a child on Christmas Eve for the packages to arrive, then try to figure out how to play them. This week my project is a one-stringed curiosity from Cambodia. I haven't learned its proper name, yet. The seller billed it as a 'Southeast Asian thingamajig.' Sounds dreadful, so far- like a cat with indigestion, but I have no neighbors, per se."

Harrison's home was a purple cottage, high on a hill above Ojai, bordered by olive groves and empty fields and nearly hidden by snarls of agave cactus. Bert's old Chevy station wagon sat in a dirt driveway, always freshly waxed. Each time I'd visited, the house's front door had been unlocked.

"Sounds like fun," I said.

"It's great fun." He bit into the pastry, let loose a flow of custard, licked his lips, wiped his chin. "Delicious. What have you been doing for fun, Alex?"

Figuring out how to answer that must have done something to my face, because Harrison placed his hand atop mine and he looked like a concerned parent.

"That bad, son?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Oh, yes, Alex. Oh, yes indeed."

I told him about Robin. He thought a while, and said, "Sounds like small things have been amplified."

"Not so small, Bert. She's really had it with my risk-taking behavior."

"I was referring to your feelings. Your anxiety about Robin."

"I know I'm being paranoid, but I keep flashing back to the last time she left."

"She made a mistake," he said. "But she bore the brunt of it, and you might think about disco

"Her pain," I said. "Think it still bothers her after all these years?"

"If she allows herself to focus on it, my guess is she feels a good deal worse about it than you do."

He'd met Robin twice, and yet I didn't feel him presumptuous. A few months after our house had burned down, we'd driven up to Santa Barbara for a change of scenery and had run into Bert at an antiquarian bookstore on State Street. He'd been browsing through eighteenth-century scientific treatises. In Latin. ('My current hobby, kids.') Dust had speckled the front of his jumpsuit.

"She loves you deeply," he said. "At least she did when I saw her, and I have my doubts about that depth of feeling just vanishing." He ate more pastry, picked almond slivers from his plate, and slipped them between his lips. "The body language- the mind language, was all there. I remember thinking, 'This is the girl for Alex.' "

"I used to think so."

"Cherish what you've got. My second wife was like that, accepted me with all my irregularities."

"You think Robin accepts me, no matter what."

"If she didn't, she'd have left long ago."

"But putting her through more of my risk-taking would be cruel."

He squeezed my hand. "Life is like a bus stop, Alex. We map out our route but linger briefly between adventures. Only you can chart your itinerary- and hope God agrees with it. So what brings you to Ojai?"

"Enjoying the scenery."

"Then come up to my house, let me show you my acquisitions."

We finished our food and he insisted on paying. The old station wagon was parked out front, and I followed him into town and onto Signal Street, where we climbed past a drainage ditch paved with fieldstones and spa

The front door to the purple house was open and shielded by a well-oxidized screen. Bert climbed the steps with agility and ushered me into the living room. The space was exactly as I remembered: small, dark, plank-floored, crammed with old furniture, shawls, throw pillows, an upright piano, the bay window lined with dusty bottles. But now there was no room to sit: A gigantic, hammered-bronze gong nudged the piano. Every couch and chair bore drums and bells and lyres and zithers and Pan pipes and harps and objects I couldn't identify. The floor space behind the piano bench was taken up by a six-foot dragon-shaped contraption topped with corrugated wood. Harrison ran a stick along the ridges and set off a percussive but melodic scale.

"Bali," he said. "I've learned 'Old MacDonald' on it." Sigh. "One day, Mozart."

He cleared instruments from a sagging sofa, and said, "Be comfortable."

As I sat, something metallic behind the couch caught my eye. A folded-up wheelchair.

Bert said, "I'm storing it for a friend," and settled his small frame on a hard-backed chair. The fingers of his right hand brushed against a pedal harp, but not hard enough to make a sound. "Despite your stress you look well."

"As do you."

"Knock wood." He rapped the rim of the harp, and this time a note rang out. "G sharp… so you're just passing through? Next time, call and we can have lunch. Unless, of course, you need solitude."

"No, I'd love to get together."

"Of course, we all need solitude," he said. "The key is finding the right balance."

"You live alone, Bert."

"I have friends."

"So do I."

"Milo."

"Milo and others."

"Well, that's good- Alex, is there anything I can do for you?"

"No," I said. "Like what?"

"Anything, Alex."