A Head in Cambodia. Nancy Tingley
addiction. Unlike many drunks, he willingly turned his car keys over when he’d had too much.
“Can you put the cornbread on the table?” my mother said, breaking my reverie.
I cut three large pieces and put them on the plate she handed me.
“Four,” my mother said, “Four pieces.”
But that hopeful action didn’t prove to be enough to draw Eric to us.
“DESSERT?” my mother asked.
My father knocked back the last of his beer. “What do you have?”
“Chocolate cake.”
It was my favorite, rich and chocolaty, the second piece better than the first. Her making it more than compensated for her cooking chili for Eric. If only she’d told me what was for dessert before I’d taken my second helping of chili.
“So what have you been working on?” my father asked.
My mother and I looked at each other. “The Chinese porcelain exhibit,” I said, trying to keep the irritation from my voice. He’d asked the same question the previous week and the week before.
“Oh, right. I heard something on the radio about a stolen head that your museum bought.”
“No, we did not buy a stolen head. One of our trustees bought a head, which might or might not be stolen. We’re trying to authenticate it.” Damn Philen. My father had heard what I’d expected the average person would hear, that the museum was responsible.
“How do you do that, dear?” my mother asked me, trying to deflect the rising confrontation as she watched me watch him pull another beer from the fridge. A beer to have with his chocolate cake.
“Style, wear to the object, research.” I took a deep breath and turned my attention to my mother. If I didn’t watch his drinking, I might not be irritated. “I visited a book dealer here in Berkeley this afternoon. He bought the book collection that belonged to the previous owner. I wanted to see if there were notations in any of the books.”
I took a sip of tea and plunged my fork back into the cake.
“Were there?” She was determined to keep the conversation going.
“No, though there were a number of pages in the books I looked at, a few of which I bought, marked with Post-its, all of which appeared to relate to the head. They were in sections of books about the Baphuon period or in the plates illustrating Baphuon sculptures.” That wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t mention that I had found papers stuffed into one of the books. Tom Sharpen’s barely legible and incoherent notes explaining why he thought the head P.P. had purchased was a fake and what that meant to him.
“Why did he sell it?” my father asked.
I didn’t look up, but I felt his eyes on me. “What?”
“Why did this person sell this head and sell all his books?”
I didn’t want the conversation to take this course.
“He died. His family sold everything.” I brought another bite to my mouth. Maybe if my mouth was full he’d stop asking me questions.
He held the bottle halfway to his mouth. “How did he die?”
The thing about my father was that even when he drank, he could spot a lie or see one’s dissembling a mile away. We’d been terrified of him as kids. My mother put down her fork and watched me, aware that my father had zeroed in on something I’d said.
“He was murdered.”
My mother’s teacup rattled. “Oh, Jenna. You aren’t going to get involved in a murder?” She knew my propensity for getting involved in people’s tiffs, neighborhood disagreements—which, in my defense, I attempted to mediate. Though I seemed to have a knack for taking sides.
“No, I have no interest in his murder.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. I hadn’t had any interest in his murder this morning when I woke up, or when I went to the museum to do some work before coming to the East Bay, or even when I’d parked my car at the book dealer’s house. It was when I’d stuffed those papers in my purse that there might have been a slight shift. Now I had an interest, though I still didn’t have any plans. Not to find the murderer, anyway. Only plans to try to decipher Sharpen’s notes. Only plans to try to figure out if the head was a fake or real.
“How?” My father wasn’t going to give up. He was undoubtedly ruthless with his students.
“Decapitated. At any rate, I found—”
“Decapitated?” She jumped out of her seat and hurriedly cleared the table. I watched as the last few bites of my cake fell into the compost. I felt about ready to explode, but I would have eaten them.
“Yes, but I’m only interested in the head.”
“The head!”
“The stone head. The Baphuon-style head. I was telling you that I looked at his books, and some of them were marked.”
“What did they tell you?” my father asked, still watching me carefully, more carefully than the usual drunk can.
“I’m not sure. He seems to have figured out that the head belonged—or was a copy of the head that belonged—to a Khmer sculpture that’s in the Siem Reap museum. Well, if you knew anything about that sculpture, you would figure that out. Of course, you’d have to have recent books to come to that conclusion, since the sculpture was only excavated a few years ago.”
“And he did.”
“Yes. But what that means, I don’t know.”
“Jenna, promise me that you won’t get involved in this murder.” My mother was wiping the counter again.
“I told you, Mom. I have no interest in getting involved.”
“You say that now, but even you don’t know what you’ll do. You’re so impulsive.” Mother’s words.
“I have too many other things to do, and I’m going out of town soon.”
“To Cambodia,” my father said matter-of-factly.
“Do you think I could take home some of that cake? I should get going soon. Work early tomorrow, more to do tonight.” I got up, folded the placemats, and put them in the drawer, my father’s keen eyes giving me creepies on the back of my neck.
I came out of the house with more than I’d asked for. Half a chocolate cake, a large container of chili, a jar of pear-and-ginger jam, and a down comforter that I didn’t need but that my mother didn’t need either and foisted on me. The food was in a grocery bag, but the comforter was loose and unwieldy as I struggled to dig my car keys out of my purse.
My feet crunched as I reached to insert the key in the door, but the comforter kept me from seeing my feet, or the car for that matter. I stuffed as much as I could under my arm and saw that I was standing on glass. “Shit,” I said. “Not again.”
How many times can a person have her car broken into and not feel that she’s jinxed? A rear window had been smashed, and glass spread like snow across the backseat and onto the pavement. “Shit, shit, shit,” I repeated, setting down the grocery bag on the damp pavement, opening the front door, and tossing the comforter onto the driver’s seat. I looked nervously up and down the street, though I didn’t really expect to see anyone.
I picked up the bag, shook it to dislodge any glass, and put it in the trunk. I took out a piece of foam board that I could attach to the window with duct tape. It was the third time this year, and I was prepared. My old car invited vandalism, a key run from front to back on the driver’s side, break-ins, graffiti written in lipstick on the rear window.
The foam board was awkward, and it was beginning to rain. Luckily the rain hadn’t started while I was in the house. Luckily I hadn’t had anything in the car. Then I remembered. The books.