With that, Patty received general laughter and applause.
“Thank you, thank you. None of what I’ve just told you is true, of course. My grandfather Bob from Cork did kiss the Blarney Stone, and passed its gift of gab down to me. It’s in my genes, but we won’t get into that. Anyhow, this is the Beast House Bus. If you want the facts about Golden Gate Bridge, take a Gray Line Tour—though I don’t recommend it. I took the Gray Line city tour recently and found myself sitting in a rear seat, which was uncomfortably close to the bus’s toilet. But you don’t want to hear about that. I don’t want to think about it. Let’s get to the serious stuff. You must all be wondering what you’re doing here...”
“She’s sure got that right,” Monica whispered.
“...overview of what’s ahead. We have a fairly long ride, to begin with. It’s something more than a two hour drive up the coast to Malcasa Point. And—guess what?—two or so hours back to San Francisco.”
“Two hours of this?” Monica whispered.
“We’re scheduled to reach our destination at about ten-thirty. At that point, you’ll be free to disembark and enjoy all the creepy delights of Beast House. Your price of admission will include a self-guided audio tour which usually takes people about an hour to complete. But feel free to spend as long as you wish in the house. Some people enjoy lingering around the murder sights and emersing themselves in the ambiance.”
Several riders chuckled about that. Monica rolled her eyes upward.
“In fact, you’ll have plenty of time not only to tour Beast House, but to visit the gift shop and enjoy a leisurely lunch on the grounds. Beast House has a very good snack shop with great chili cheese dogs. I love them chili dogs!”
“And it shows,” Monica whispered.
“You should definitely check out the snack shop’s menu. If nothing suits you, though, there are several good places to eat along the main street of town, easy to walk to. The bus doesn’t leave Malcasa Point until 1:30 p.m., so you’ll have three hours. That’s a pretty fair amount of time. Make sure you don’t miss Janice Crogan’s Beast House museum on Front Street. If you still have time left over, you might take a stroll down to the beach. The beach is only a few hundred yards from Beast House. You might order a take-out lunch from the snack shop, and have yourselves a picnic. Just make sure to keep an eye on your watches. You’ll be amazed at how fast those three hours fly by, and we don’t want you missing the bus back to town. We like to pull out at 1:30 on the nose. That gets you back to your hotels by about four, so you’ll have time to rest and clean up before you go out for your evening fun. I hope you all have big plans for tonight—maybe a nice dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf. Now, I have some matters to take care of. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes, and we’ll talk a little about the history of Beast House.”
With a smile, Patty lowered her microphone and turned away.
“My God,” Monica said, “it’s the whole day.”
“We knew that,” Owen told her. “The brochure...”
“I know we knew it. It’s just now sinking in, that’s all.”
“If you didn’t want to do this, I wish you would’ve spoken up. I mean, it’s a bit late to be changing our minds.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It just seems like sort of a waste, when we’ve only got a week in San Francisco, to spend one entire day doing something like this. And our first day, too. We haven’t even had a chance to see any of the city yet.”
Owen was tempted to remind her that, after checking into their hotel late yesterday afternoon, they’d spent several hours roaming Fisherman’s Wharf. They’d eaten a fine dinner at Fisherman’s Grotto, inspected souvenir shops, visited the Wax Museum, and hiked to Pier 39 where they’d gone on a couple of rides, watched a juggling show, and explored more souvenir shops. It seemed to him that they’d seen at least something of San Francisco. But pointing it out to Monica would be a big mistake.
So he said, “If I’d known you felt that way, we could’ve done something else. We didn’t have to do this.”
“Well, that’s all right.” She smiled gently and patted his leg. “We’ll get it over with today, and then we’ll have the whole rest of the week for other things.”
Get it over with.
Oh, man.
“We didn’t have to do it at all,” he told her. “If you’d only let me know that you didn’t want to...”
“Why would I want to? What’s the big attraction of going to some crummy old house where a lot of people got murdered? In fact, I think the whole idea’s a little sick. They shouldn’t even allow tours of a place like that. And if they do, people ought to have the good sense not to go. It’s perverted. And it’s four hours on a damn bus.”
Owen stared at her. He felt as if he’d been bludgeoned.
“Are you calling me a pervert?” he asked.
She laughed and said, “Don’t be a dope,” and gave his leg a pat. “I didn’t mean you.” Mouth close to his ear, she whispered, “I love you, silly. Do you think I’d love you if you were a pervert?”
“I am, you know.”
“Oh, ho ho. You’re so funny. You’re such a dope. But I love you anyway.” She kissed his ear, then eased away and treated him with her wanton growl.
God only knows where she’d picked it up. Probably from some movie.
Monica’s wanton growl.
A soft grumble in the throat, accompanied by a slight baring of her teeth and a sultry gaze.
Owen hated it.
He’d hated it from the first time she tried it on him, six months ago.
Like Owen, Monica was a first-year teacher at Crawford Junior High School in Los Angeles. He’d met her .at the start of the fall semester, back in September of the previous year. And he hadn’t liked her one bit. His friend Henry, another teacher starting out at Crawford, hadn’t liked her either. He’d said, “She’s such a fucking know-it-all,” and Owen had agreed. “She acts like she thinks her shit smells like roses.” Owen had agreed with that, too. “Too bad,” Henry had said, “‘cause she’s sort of a fox. I wouldn’t mind playing a little hide-the-salami with her, if you know what I mean.” To that, Owen had responded, “Not me. Hide the salami, it’ll probably freeze and break off. And there you’d be, salamiless-in-Gaza.”
Though conceited, condescending, stiff and humorless and generally annoying, Monica was almost beautiful. She looked very similar to the way Elizabeth Taylor had looked in her early twenties. Similar, but different.
The differences were not to Monica’s advantage.
But nobody ever mentioned them to her.
What they pointed out were the similarities.
It had probably been going on since Monica’s early childhood—friends and relatives and teachers and kids in school and strangers stopping her on the street to tell her, “Do you know, you’re the spitting image of Elizabeth Taylor? It’s absolutley uncanny. I can’t believe my eyes.”
It must’ve been constant.
And, of course, she’d bought it.
In spite of the evidence of mirrors.
Owen figured it was little wonder that she’d grown up thinking she was the queen of the universe.
Henry had said, “To know her is to loathe her.”
And Owen had agreed.