Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran Read Free Book Online Page B

herbalist. But if I were smart I would have done a lot differently.
    The world didn’t hire me to be smart and happy. It hired me to be a detective, and solve mysteries.

9
    P AUL NEVER SAT STILL ; he was always drumming his fingers or nodding his head or standing up or sitting down. But it wasn’t anxiety, just a little too much energy for the boundaries of his own skin. Paul seemed to be at peace with himself, to have reached some type of truce with his demons, in a way that I figured was rare and hard-earned. He’d put down roots here and now; made a commitment to inhabit this body, this life, demons and all.
    The third or fourth time we went out we met for coffee in this place on Valencia.
    “They take their coffee way too seriously here,” Paul said, and it was true. You had to read a lot before you could order a coffee. He took our too-serious coffee from the counter and grabbed us a table. I went out to take a call—always a call, always a case—and when I came back in I felt his eyes on me as I walked through the crowded coffee place to our table, felt them in a way that made me feel like someone else. Someone better.
    “I could watch that all day,” he said when I sat down, and he said it like he meant it. And then he said “Hey,” and he leaned over and kissed me—not for the first time, but it still felt like something. Like something I didn’t remember having felt before, or at least for a long time. Like a door had been opened that had been shut so long ago that I forgot it was there, and whatever was behind that door was brighter and less burdened than what I’d become.
    It was just one kiss and a minute later we were back to our coffee.
    “You’re smiling,” he said. He said it a little shyly, and I looked at my coffee and wondered if we were both blushing a little. And I thought but didn’t say
Because you make me smile
.
    But then I felt tense, and the moment turned yellow and eerie, like the moment when the clouds have gathered and the light turns before it starts to storm. Like in a movie when you see a couple looking so happy and alive, but you knew when you bought your ticket: This wasn’t a story about love. This was a story about murder.

10
    L YDIA HAD PAUL BURIED in a private ceremony, for family only. She said she couldn’t handle a big crowd, which made sense. She had the funeral at a cemetery up in Sonoma County, near the Bohemian Highway where Paul owned a house and spent much of his childhood. He’d been gone a week. At the same time as the private funeral there was a public memorial service in Delores Park. His murder had been big news in the neighborhood. He’d been well liked. Since his death secrets had come out: he’d given a substantial piece of money to the local arts group that put on the Day of the Dead parade; he’d given more cash to an outreach program for kids to bring them into the strong Mexican American culture of the Mission. Paul was very public with his appreciation of the Mexican/Missionion/San Franciscan culture of the neighborhood. He never wanted to change it, never wanted a Starbucks or a Pinkberries to replace the taquerias and botanicas.
    I don’t know who organized it. Maybe no one did; maybe it just happened. Later I couldn’t remember how I’d heard of it, or how I knew to go to Delores Park that day.
    A hundred people were already there, milling about. More people were building a kind of ersatz altar around a big old live oak, hanging pictures, CDs, records, and even instruments from the tree. Someone hung a bunch of small Mexican sugar skulls, someone else hung up ticket stubs from dozens of his shows. A lot of musicians were there, of course, and soon enough people started playing. Everyone knew “Danny Boy” and “Auld Lang Syne” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
    People started crying and a few broke down completely. I saw Paul’s bass player, Phil, sobbing. Maryanne, his drummer, stood