1
When about to hand over the keys to something important, seeing doubt is never reassuring.
I raised my helmet visor. “You don’t park motorcycles, do you?”
The young valet eyed my red Aprilia like it might rear back and kick him. “I can try,” he offered. “I have a bicycle. Two wheels. That’s kind of the same.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“There’s street parking down the block,” he suggested. In answer I pulled up next to the row of polished brass luggage carts, the motorcycle’s big engine echoing under the confines of the covered entrance. I cut the engine, used my bootheel to flip the kickstand down, swung a leg over, and pulled my helmet off.
“I’m not sure if you’re allowed to leave it there,” the valet said, watching me with mild interest.
I headed for the revolving door. “Call me an optimist.”
It was my first time at the Grand Peninsula in Nob Hill. A storied San Francisco hotel, white stone, colonnaded like a palace, partially rebuilt after catching fire in the 1906 quake. Presidents and movie stars had stayed here; weighty matters discussed by important people in tomb-silent suites. My motorcycle boots clicked through a marble lobby of soft peaches and grays, chandeliers spilling golden light. Whoever handled decorations had a healthy flower budget. Vases of careful arrangements spurted like bright fountains. The clientele seemed to be largely what someone had once described to me as WORMs: white, old, rich men. If there were other five-foot-eight women in leather bomber jackets and motorcycle boots, I wasn’t seeing them.
A bony manager type in a funeral-black suit approached. “Can I help you find something?”
“I could use an elevator. Got one?”
He didn’t smile. “Are you a guest?”
“In the next life, I hope.”
“In that case, who are you here to see?” he prodded.
“I thought that was my concern,” I said.
“If you’re sticking to the lobby. But the hotel’s concern—if you’re going up.”
I smoothed hair that had been mussed by my helmet. “Martin Johannessen asked me to meet him here. He should be expecting me.”
The manager took a deferential step back, as though a scowling, ten-foot-tall Johannessen might pop up in front of him. “My apologies.”
Apparently, the person I was about to meet could open doors. About five seconds later, I was in a very nice elevator, headed up to the penthouse level. The gilded door and ornamental bars made me feel like a bird in the world’s most expensive cage.
* * *
“Nikki Griffin. Thank you for coming on short notice.”
Martin Johannessen was in his mid-fifties, clean-shaven and fastidious, dressed in a navy suit. I didn’t know much about men’s fashion, but he didn’t seem to shop in the clearance bins. I followed him into a spacious living area scattered with plush couches and polished furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the San Francisco Bay. It was a mirror-clear day and I could see Alcatraz Island and, beyond that, the Golden Gate.
“Coffee? Tea?” he offered.
“Coffee, please.”
Martin pressed a button on the wall. “They’ll bring some. Come, sit.”
We sat. I crossed my legs and got comfortable. “What’s the problem?” I asked him.
He frowned. “How do you know there’s a problem?”
“People don’t hire me for wedding planning.”
“True enough, I suppose.” He seemed to be thinking about where to start. A distracted man who, even in the midst of his distraction, meant to be careful about what any speech might cost him. “There is, as you surmise, a problem,” he finally admitted. “Rather a substantial one, in fact. It has to do with Mother.”
He fell silent as a waiter rang and entered, pushing a linen-covered service cart. The waiter poured coffee for us out of a silver urn, then set the urn down and left. Johannessen fiddled with the creamer as he continued. “Mother is quite elderly, at eighty-one, but still insists on staying in the same Russian Hill duplex she’s occupied for the past twenty-five years, since my father passed. She can be quite fixed in her ways. It was only after she backed into a gas station attendant last year that we got her to finally agree to a chauffeur.”
“Better late than never,” I observed, since he seemed to expect me to say something.
“That’s quintessential Mother,” he went on. “As her son, I feel I can use the word ‘stubborn’ with both affection and accuracy. And Mother insists on maintaining a rather high degree of control over her affairs.”
“I like her already.”
Johannessen gave me a thin smile. “Many people like Mother. She is undeniably vivacious. She is also undeniably wealthy.” He offered a meaningful look. “Some people like that, too.”
I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t done.
“After my father passed, she never remarried, but she continued to see a series of … well, gentleman friends, for lack of a better term. Dalliances, affairs of the heart, whatever you want to call it. Which is fine, of course. She should be free to see whomever she likes.” He added sugar to his coffee, sipped, then added more.
I had already lapped him. I helped myself to another cup. Seeing he had fallen quiet, I prompted, “Except.”
As I had hoped, the word seemed to wind the music box back up. “Recently, this past year, she began seeing a younger man,” Martin resumed. “A much younger man. An Englishman, an Oxford-educated psychologist in town for a lecture series. Mother became quite … enamored of this fellow. Not that she shared a great deal of this with us, God forbid. She plays her cards close, Mother does.”
“Us?”
He looked surprised at the question. “Myself and my three siblings. William and Ron—my two older brothers—and Susan, my younger sister.”
I took advantage of the moment to ask, “Are you close with them?”
Martin stirred his coffee. “Maybe close is the wrong word. My sister maintains a certain remove from our family. As for my brother William, he was in a rather awful accident almost a month ago. It left him in a less than communicative state.”
“And Ron?”
“Ron?” He seemed to be thinking how to phrase something. “At no time in my life would I have called us especially close.” Family was not a topic that Martin seemed to relish discussing.
“So, Dr. Oxford, on the lecture circuit,” I said.
Martin nodded. “Except it turns out that the fellow is neither a doctor nor an Oxford man.”
As the saying went, a stitch in time saved nine. “How much?”
He stared. “How much?”
Copyright © 2021 by S. A. Lelchuk