The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) Page 16

  “But—”

  “Are they following us?”

  The girl looked out the back window again. She didn’t see any headlights.

  “No. I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Her mother never took her eyes off the bald man.

  “We’ve got a gun,” the girl said. “We could go back and get him.”

  Her mother said nothing.

  “Or we could find a phone and call the police. Maybe they could get out there in time to save him.”

  No response.

  “We can’t just leave him!”

  “Shut up.”

  “But we’ve got to—”

  “Shut up and let me think, dammit!”

  The gun wasn’t pointed at the bald man anymore. It was pointed at the girl. Just for a second. But long enough.

  The girl shut up and let her mother do her thinking. She assumed none of it was about Biddle.

  They drove on and on, taking random turns, until the bald man said, “You know, I’ve got no idea where we are. It’s three in the morning, there’s hardly any houses around here. Just let me out anywhere and no one’s gonna hear from me for hours. What do I know that they don’t know already anyway? And really, you gotta believe me, I didn’t want anything to do with this in the first place. They brought us in to pick you up ’cuz you wouldn’t know us. Me and Phil, we’re not even…”

  The thought of Phil—the dark-haired man—shut him up for a moment. When he started talking again, his voice was a throaty warble, and the girl could see sweat glistening on his smooth scalp.

  “Look. Really. I can’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. You may as well let me go.”

  Carol nodded slowly.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe you’re right.”

  She looked out the window, scanning the dark countryside around them.

  The girl had been weeping silently. Now she felt like throwing up. They’d be stopping soon, yes. But not just by the side of the road to let the bald man out.

  The girl knew what her mother was looking for.

  Another cornfield.

  Talk about an angel—this one’s fixing us a drink! A martini, perhaps? A cosmopolitan? Cool, refreshing pond scum with a dash of yummy mud? It doesn’t matter. The important thing is the angel’s a mixologist—in more ways than one. Just check out the feet. One’s on land, one’s in water. True balance is found by having a toehold in more than one place, more than one world, more than one outlook. Who cares if they’re supposedly incompatible? What do gin and vermouth have in common? But throw them together with an olive and you’ve got something that’ll rock your world.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I went to Clarice’s room again. Finding my mother’s pictures of Biddle had got me thinking.

  Teenage girl + jock boyfriend - pictures = no way. And I hadn’t seen a single picture of Matt Gorman when I’d searched Clarice’s room for the missing jewelry.

  Not that I knew what the kid looked like. I knew the type, though. Homo sapiens male. They’re fairly recognizable. I didn’t see any in the few pictures scattered around Clarice’s room. Just her friend Ceecee and a few other girls, all of them always screaming at something hysterical that was happening just off-camera.

  Maybe high-school girls don’t bother with printed pictures of their boyfriends anymore. They just snap shots of them with their cell phones all day, then start over with a new phone when they run out of memory. How would I know? The last time I’d had what you could call a boyfriend, the only pictures I had of him were painted on a cave wall with mashed berries and mastodon blood. Ba-da bing.

  Still, I found no “I ♥ M.G.” doodles either. No dried-out prom corsages. No Trojans tucked in with the Strawberry Hill in the dresser. No sign of a boyfriend at all.

  And no sign of a family. Clarice was half black, by the look of her, yet all the girls in her pictures were either white or Latino. Where were her parents or her favorite aunts and uncles? How about the black cousins who probably lived somewhere more racially diverse than the Arizona desert? Had Clarice’s childhood really been so horrific she’d want nothing to remember her relatives by at all?

  I heard a rapping sound downstairs. It was soft and timid at first, but it grew stronger, more insistent.

  I went down and found Marsha Riggs knocking on the back door. It was a bit of shock to see her out of her house, in the sunlight. I’d thought of her as her husband’s hamster. Something small and meek he could keep caged until he wanted to play with her.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said when I opened the door. “It took me twenty minutes to walk over from my house. It would’ve killed me to walk all the way back without seeing you.”

  “Why didn’t you just call first?”

  Marsha looked at her toes and shrugged.

  Fear, that was the answer. Fear that someone would find out she’d made the call.

  “Well, anyway, it worked out,” I said. “Come on in, and I’ll make you some tea. You like Red Zinger?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  Marsha forced herself to look up again.

  There was a bruise under her left eye, and her bangs were combed down over what looked like a welt on her forehead.

  “Didn’t I mention it?” I said. “I’m running a special for all Mom’s old customers. First reading’s on the house.”

  Marsha smiled. She did it tentatively, warily, as if smiles were something she couldn’t trust. Maybe because they always ended so soon.

  She followed me down the hall to the reading room.

  I had Marsha shuffle and think about what she wanted to ask the cards. Then I took the deck and laid out a Celtic Cross: a card, another over it sideways, four cards clustered around them, then four more in a straight line along the side.

  All the reading I’d done in Infinite Roads to Knowing was starting to pay off. I’d remembered the pattern easily, instinctively, without having to pause and think it through.

  It was almost too easy, though. I turned over the first card and said, “Let’s begin with where you’re at right now,” but I’d forgotten to stop and ask Marsha what her question was.

  It didn’t matter. I knew. And even if I hadn’t, the first card would’ve been all the reminder I’d need.

  A man on a throne, upside down.

  “The Emperor reversed,” I said. “Someone with strength and authority is oppressing you—using his power over you harshly.”

  Marsha’s lips trembled, but no words came out.

  Her eyes, though, said, “God, yes!”

  I flipped the next card and saw a blindfolded woman holding up two swords, her arms crisscrossed over her chest. I’d seen the card before. It was the first one Josette Berg had turned over when she’d done a reading for me.

  “The Two of Swords. A woman trapped, unable to take action, because she’s blinded herself to her own power. She can’t hold those swords like that forever. She’s got to either do something with them or drop them. ‘Use it or lose it.’ Now…on to the root of your problem.”

  I knew what I wanted to see. I was going to make Marsha see it no matter what card came up.

  Want happiness? Run from your husband. And in the process, stop hiding anything he might want hidden. Especially if it involved more bruises on somebody else. Bruises around her neck perhaps.

  Again, the cards made it easy for me. So easy, I had to stop and ask myself, you didn’t stack this deck, did you?

  “The Lovers reversed,” I said. “A destructive relationship. An unhappy coupling.”

  “You can just say it. A lousy marriage.”

  I nodded. “A lousy marriage.”

  The next cards weren’t so obvious. Yet I found I didn’t have to fake my way through interpretations. W
hat came up fit the situation with only a little imagination and intuition. And for the first time in my life, “imagination and intuition” didn’t just mean BS.

  The Two of Pentacles: a man awkwardly juggling two golden plates. Marsha had made an important decision—who to marry—based on worries about money.

  The Seven of Wands: a man trying to fight off unseen attackers with his staff, but the card was upside down. Marsha wasn’t defending herself.

  The Ace of Swords: a hand clutching an Excalibur-style blade with a crown around the tip. Time to take a stand. Time to fight.

  The Four of Pentacles: a man clutching gold plates to himself as if trying to keep someone from taking them. Financial troubles again. Marsha was letting anxiety about money keep her from acting on her own behalf.

  Marsha looked amazed by what I was saying. I hoped I didn’t, too. Because I sure felt amazed.

  How could this be going so perfectly when I wasn’t even cheating? How could I be getting at the truth without lying to do it?

  There were only three cards left now. Three more chances for the tarot to send me sideways just as I tried to seal the deal and turn Marsha against her son-of-a-bitch husband.

  But the cards didn’t go sideways. They liked William Riggs about as much as I did.

  The Devil. Strength. Justice.

  “What can I say? There it is,” I told Marsha. “You’re shackled by your fear, just like the Devil’s prisoners on his card. But you’re stronger than you think. Use that strength, and the result will be justice. Balance. Karma. Things as they’re supposed to be. So happiness isn’t beyond you, you just have to reach for it. Does that answer your question?”

  Marsha nodded. She still looked awestruck, shocked.

  “Athena always read things so differently, though,” she said. “She’d talk about patience and finding the willpower to persevere and helping Bill grow into his own inner peace. I see a lot of the same cards, but the way you talk about them…it’s not the same at all.”

  “Different contexts lead to different interpretations,” I said.

  My mother’s “context” being the need to keep another sucker on the hook.

  I kept that to myself.

  “The important thing is that the reading makes sense to you,” I said. “And it sounds like it does.”

  “Yes. My god, yes!”

  “Good. So do you think it’s something you could act on?”

  “I hope so. Eventually. When I’ve had more time to think about it. But I really don’t have any money. Any. I never have and I never will. Bill always tells me my only skill is…well. Anyway, I can’t go to my family for a million reasons and I’ve lost touch with whatever friends I ever had and I can’t just run away with nowhere to—”

  “Hey. Marsha. You believe in the cards, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “And what did they just tell you?”

  “That I have the power to change my life. I just have to use it.”

  “There you go. Focus on that, not the things that’ve been holding you back.”

  Marsha sighed and stared off at the big crystal ball on top of the bookshelf nearby.

  She mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said it’s not just the money. That’s not the only reason I’m scared.”

  “I know.”

  Marsha said nothing.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve been dealing with a lawyer here in town. Anytime you want, I’ll walk you down to his office and have him talk you through your options. He can help you prepare yourself before you take the next step.”

  Marsha turned away from the crystal ball. “The next step?”

  I moved my gaze to the gray smudge under her eye, then the flushed bump on her forehead.

  Marsha moved a hand up toward her mouth.

  I hadn’t noticed till that moment, and I only had another second to see it, but her lower lip looked a little swollen.

  “I should get back,” she said through her palm. “Sometimes Bill calls during the day. If I’m not there to answer…”

  Marsha stood up.

  I stood, too.

  “Let me give you a ride.”

  “No, no, that’s okay. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. I have to go over to the high school anyway.”

  “The high school? Why?”

  “The website says there’s a wrestling match this afternoon, and I’ve taken an interest in the team.”

  Marsha looked puzzled and a little perturbed.

  I guess thirtysomething women aren’t supposed to take an interest in high-school wrestlers.

  “It’s really the coach I want to see. Victor Castellanos,” I said. “His mom sort of fixed us up.”

  Marsha looked slightly less puzzled.

  “So you’re going on, like, a blind date?”

  “In a way.”

  Victor Castellanos wouldn’t see it coming, that was for sure.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Marsha said as we drove to her house. “And the free reading.”

  “My pleasure. It’s the least I could do for one of Mom’s most loyal customers.”

  “Still no breakthrough with the investigation?”

  “No, but there are a lot of leads. I’m sure one’s going to pan out sooner or later.”

  A block went by in silence.

  “Am I a lead?” Marsha said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know what you’ve been wondering.” Marsha stopped and took a deep breath before she could say it. “Did Bill kill Athena? The answer’s no, Alanis…though I almost wish he had.”

  Marsha slapped her hands over her mouth as though trying to shut herself up a moment too late.

  “I’m sorry! I know that sounds awful! But someone did it, and at least if we knew it was Bill you’d have some peace, and he’d be taken away, and then I’d get some, too. But I didn’t lie to the police. He really was with me when Athena was murdered. He won’t let me out of his sight at night, so he was always in mine. That’s the simple truth. Bill didn’t do it. You don’t have to waste any more time on me.”

  I believed her, which made Marsha Riggs a dead-end. I had nothing to gain from her anymore.

  “Thanks. I appreciate your honesty,” I said. “You’re right. You were a lead. But not now.”

  I looked over at Marsha. She was watching me with eyes big and sad enough for a cartoon puppy.

  I put a hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze.

  “Now you’re just a friend,” I said.

  I’m old enough to remember the phrase “gag me with a spoon” from its heyday. And back then, it might have run through my mind at a moment like this. Yet I didn’t feel spoon-gagged, even though I’d just thrown myself into treacle deep enough for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

  What was wrong with me?

  I was giving empowering tarot card readings I actually kinda-sorta believed. I was declaring friendship with virtual strangers. What was next? A hug? A quick trip to Spencer’s for a hang in there! poster of a kitten dangling from a branch?

  Cynicism and sentimentality don’t mix. People like me don’t do schmaltz. I felt off, unsettled, not myself.

  Then again, I’d never felt like myself. You’ve got to have a self for that. And all I had where that was supposed to be was this: “I am not my mother.” Which meant I was still defining me based on her, of course.

  Well, screw that.

  When I dropped Marsha off, I gave her a hug.

  As a general rule, you can’t stroll into a school and start scoping out the students and teachers. But a game changes things. You could walk into the gym carrying a flamethrower, and as long as you look normal and have breasts and wear a smile
, everyone’s going to assume you’re just another mother anxious to show some school spirit.

  I was still on the young side compared to the genuine bona fide wrestling moms, but the people who noticed didn’t seem to mind. I got more than one long look from the boys doing stretches in their wrestling tights. I hoped for their sake none of them had a MILF fetish. Given what they were wearing, it was going to show, and that’s the kind of picture you definitely don’t want in the yearbook.

  Any of the wrestlers could have been Matt Gorman, so it would’ve helped if one had tipped me off by throwing kisses to Clarice. But she wasn’t in the bleachers, although half a dozen other girls were.

  Sad that Matt’s girlfriend wasn’t there to cheer him on. Or maybe sad wasn’t the word for it.

  It was a lot easier to figure out who Victor Castellanos was. A man about my age was talking to the Berdache team, and he was wearing the classic gym teacher uniform (as Grease and Porky’s had defined it for me, anyway): gray sweats, running shoes, whistle around the neck.

  He pulled the look off pretty well, to judge by the way some of the mothers were eyeing him. The guy probably needed cougar repellent at PTA meetings. He had thick black hair, chiseled features, a lean build, muscular arms and legs.

  It was the arms that interested me. And what he could probably do with them.

  He clapped his big hands twice, apparently wrapping up a pep talk, then turned and headed for the visiting team. A quick handshake with the opposing coach and the match would begin.

  I cut him off.

  “Mr. Castellanos? Excuse me. Can I have a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  He gave me an anything-for-the-moms smile even as he stole a peek at his wristwatch.

  “My name’s Alanis McLachlan. I’m Athena Passalis’s daughter.”

  The smile disappeared.

  “I’m in town to wrap up my mother’s affairs,” I went on, “and I heard through the grapevine that you had some sort of complaint about Mom. I just wanted to let you know that, if there’s any truth to it, I’ll try to do the right thing.”