The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) Read online

  Clarice hadn’t said a thing since I’d started my story, and she seemed in no hurry to say anything now, so we drove in silence for a while. All I could see ahead were a starry sky and our headlights on the road. The desert around us had disappeared into nighttime darkness. We could have been driving through a black hole.

  “What did you do next?” Clarice finally asked. “After you ran off?”

  It seemed to be a question she’d thought about a lot.

  You run away…and then what?

  “I bounced around, got into trouble, wriggled out of it. Looked for a boring life to bury myself in. Tried to stay honest, play nice. I guess I eventually got close. Kinda-sorta.”

  I looked over at Clarice. Her eyes were glittering moistly in the dashboard’s dull glow.

  “My mother wanted you to do the same thing, didn’t she?” I said. “She wanted to use you as bait to trap a man. That’s why you told her you’re not a whore.”

  Clarice nodded.

  “It wasn’t as bad as with you, though,” she said. “There was nothing in person. It was just Web stuff. Old pervs online. At first it was her stringing a few along, getting money out of them. But then she wanted me to help ‘expand the operation,’ ‘cater to different tastes.’ I tried it once, on my laptop, with her standing on the other side of the screen watching. Like, directing. It was awful. I couldn’t believe she’d ask me to do something like that. And then she kept pushing me to do it again and again…”

  Clarice turned away and put her head against the window glass. Though she’d been fighting it, she was starting to cry.

  “I’m sorry she did that to you, Clarice,” I said. “So, so sorry. It’s obvious she was like a mother to you.”

  I reached out to touch her gently, cautiously on the shoulder. But then she was suddenly whipping around to face me again, her tear-streaked face full of frustration and fury, and I snatched my hand back.

  “Christ, Alanis—how can you be so smart and still be so dense?” the girl raged. “Athena wasn’t like a mother to me! She was my mother!”

  I hit the brakes.

  “Whooooaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” Clarice cried as we skidded to a stop.

  Fortunately, the road was deserted, so no one slammed into us from behind.

  I eased the car onto the gravel by the side of the road, then shut it off and opened my door.

  The overhead light came on.

  “You don’t believe me?” Clarice said.

  I was staring at her. Studying her face in the dim light.

  Obviously the skin and hair were different. The shape of the face and the nose, too. But there was something about her eyes and ears and neck…

  “Get out of the car,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Come on. Out.”

  I was already swiveling around and springing from my seat.

  “Alanis, I’m not lying!”

  I walked quickly around the hood to Alanis’s side of the car. The girl was slowly, reluctantly standing up.

  I wrapped my arms around her.

  She was stiff, wary at first. Maybe she thought I was trying to pick her up and throw her.

  She figured out I wasn’t when I started sobbing.

  She hugged me back. She cried with me, too.

  So there I was, in my second hug of the day. A tearful one under the stars this time. Not my style, I would’ve thought.

  But you know what? Who needs style?

  I had a sister.

  “I’m an idiot,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

  We were on our way to Berdache again. After the initial shock wore off, I could trust myself to not drive us into a canyon.

  “You just met me,” Clarice said. “There are people I’ve known for years who never guessed.”

  “Why keep it a secret?”

  “Athena used to say she had to ‘maintain her womanly allure’ and a kid would kill that. But I always assumed the black thing was a big part of it. She never thought about anything but money money money, and some of the people she was trying to cozy up to around here were pretty racist. And it’s not like being a mother was a big deal to her anyway. It was more like…I don’t know…”

  “You were just a prop for her cons?”

  “Yeah. That’s it exactly. It wasn’t as bad after we moved here. She didn’t really need me once the store took off, so I could actually go to school and make real friends and have my own life. Then she had to start in with the online stuff…and then she was dead.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Beats me. You may as well ask who’s my father ’cuz I don’t know that either. I think I’ve seen him, though. I found old pictures of some guy stuck in Athena’s Bible. I used to pull them out when she wasn’t around and stare and stare and stare at him. He was always smiling. He looked happy. He looked nice.”

  “He was, in his own weird way,” I started to say. “But that’s not your dad.”

  I stopped myself.

  She thought she’d seen her father’s face, and it was a kind one. Why take that away from her? It was more than I ever had.

  “Well,” I said instead, “no wonder you weren’t thrilled when I showed up. You don’t even know I exist, then I roll into town and scoop up everything Mom had to give. Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”

  “I didn’t trust you. Even if you were Athena’s daughter—and I wasn’t sure at first if you were—that might just make you another Athena. I missed her and I was torn up about what happened to her, but I didn’t need that. So I figured I’d be better off just waiting till you were gone.”

  “Makes sense. But I hope you see now that I’m not Athena. Not the evil parts, anyway. Well…not all of them.”

  “Sure,” Clarice said.

  She didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  “Hey, I hug people,” I said. “And I use my superpowers for good.”

  I didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  I was going to have to prove it to both of us.

  We traded mommy war stories for a while. Mine I’d never told anyone before. Who could’ve heard them without thinking my god, what a messed-up weirdo? While looking at me.

  With Clarice it was different. She told me about her screwed-up childhood, I told her about mine, and instead of horror on her face I saw something like relief.

  At last! she seemed to be thinking. A freak just like me!

  I know that’s what I was thinking.

  “There’s something I should show you,” Clarice said when we were upstairs again at the Five & Dime.

  She went to the refrigerator, dug around in the freezer, and pulled out a large plastic container. When she brought it to the counter, I saw that there was a strip of masking tape on the lid. One word was written on it: meatloaf.

  I groaned.

  My mother was not the meatloaf-making type, and Clarice was not the meatloaf-eating type.

  Whatever really was in there, I should’ve found it already.

  When Clarice took off the lid, I was expecting to see a bunch of frozen jewelry. Instead there was a big wad of tinfoil. Clarice peeled it back to reveal a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  “We found it five months ago,” she said.

  “We?”

  Clarice grinned sheepishly. “Ceecee likes meatloaf.”

  “Lucky for us. Otherwise someone might have thrown out ten grand.”

  “Twenty—but it used to be forty. It dropped five thousand a month every month until a few weeks ago.”

  “You sure were keeping a close eye on the meatloaf.”

  “I used to look at it and dream…”

  “You have amazing willpower. When I was your age, I would’ve done more than dream.”

  “Oh, I will, too. I’ve just been
waiting for you to go away.”

  “So why are you showing it to me now?”

  “It seemed like…you know.” Clarice shrugged, embarrassed by what she was about to say. “A clue.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s really good timing.”

  I helped myself to a quarter of the stack.

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got some shopping to do.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s nothing open but the 7-Eleven.”

  “Exactly. Once I get going on those jalapeño cream cheese taquitos, I just can’t stop.”

  Clarice glared at me, looking betrayed.

  “Look,” I said, “thanks for showing me the money. I do think it might be important, and I do need to take some of it right now. But I’ll pay you back, I promise. As far as I’m concerned, the meatloaf’s all yours. Okay?”

  Clarice narrowed her eyes, then sighed and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Now, I’m going to be gone for a while. All night, maybe. And I don’t think you should be here by yourself. Any chance you could go to Ceecee’s?”

  Clarice shook her head. “Her parents don’t like me anymore. I think their lesbian gaydar’s better than yours.”

  “Do you have any other friends you could stay with?”

  “I could call around. Why, though? You weren’t worried the last couple nights.”

  “Actually, I was. It’s just that you were one of the things I was worried about. Now I’m gonna be worried for you.”

  “Well, thanks, but I’ve been doing okay on my own so far.”

  “That was before I showed up. If you’re going to stay, do me a favor: make sure all the doors and windows are locked, and look under the mattress on Mom’s bed.”

  A strange chill ran through me—strange because it actually felt warm.

  On Mom’s bed, I’d said. For the first time, I didn’t mean my mom. I meant our mom.

  “I was going to get the gun anyway,” Clarice said. “It might not be real, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Sure. I was spying when that crazy old guy left it here last night. Sorry I didn’t call the cops or try to help you, but…well, I was worried about you.”

  “And how did you know where I’d hidden the air gun?”

  “Hey, if you’re going to search my room, it’s only fair for me to search yours.”

  Touché. Obviously I needed to brush up on my stealth snooping skills.

  “I know you’ve been playing Nancy Hardy,” Clarice said. “Why? Don’t you think Logan can catch the murderer?”

  “It’s Nancy Drew. And I think Detective Logan is a nice man and a fine police officer.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s not supposed to.”

  “Come on, Alanis. I want to help.”

  I took in a deep breath.

  It was tempting. It might actually be fun—in an unwholesome, totally irresponsible way.

  And it would still be wrong. I kept insisting I was not Mom. Here was another chance to prove it: I wouldn’t put a teenage girl in danger.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Why don’t we bake cookies together sometime instead?”

  Clarice looked like she wanted to flip me the bird.

  In a sisterly way, though.

  I wasn’t lying about shopping, only about where I was going to do it.

  I drove to Phoenix. Certain things are easier to find in a bigger town, and I didn’t want to be window-shopping where I might bump into Josh Logan or anyone else who might recognize me.

  My shopping list looked like this:

  1. Meth

  2. A stolen handgun

  3. Bullets

  4. 2% milk

  All Clarice had in the fridge was skim. Bleah.

  Once I hit Phoenix, it took me two hours to get the meth and fifteen minutes to get the gun and bullets. (Meth dealers and stolen guns go together like rama-lama-lama-ka-dinga-da-dinga-dong.) The milk I picked up at an all-night truck stop on the way back to Berdache. On a whim, I bought a couple bumper stickers there, too.

  Then I drove to the home of William and Marsha Riggs. Thirty minutes after that, I was back in the apartment over the White Magic Five & Dime. Clarice was sound asleep. Soon I was, too.

  I slept well. But not long.

  William Riggs left his house and walked out to his red Camaro at 8:23 am. I know because I was watching from half a block away with a lukewarm cup of 7-Eleven coffee to keep me awake.

  His wife did not come outside with him for a kiss goodbye. I guess she was getting ready for another busy day of cowering in the house.

  It was my first time seeing Riggs in person, and he didn’t let me down. The man even walked like a dick. Quick, short-strided strut, feet and thighs turned out slightly, head back.

  He went straight to the driver’s-side door, yanked it open, and slid in behind the wheel. Like anyone would. Why would you walk around your car first thing in the morning? Why would you inspect it?

  Why would you notice the busted headlight?

  Why would you notice the broken taillight?

  A policeman would, though. I’d made sure of that.

  i’m not drunk, i just drive like this, one of Riggs’s new bumper stickers said.

  bad cop, said the other. no donut.

  He didn’t notice those, either.

  He was halfway to his job peddling timeshares at the Oak Creek Golf Resort when the highway patrol pulled him over.

  So much the better. Local PD might cut you slack because you’re from around the corner, but not a state trooper. There would be no friendly warning. It’d be straight to license and registration.

  I couldn’t pull over to watch there on the highway, so I had to keep driving and miss the show. Like Riggs, I was on my way to Sedona, the difference being I was going to get there.

  About two minutes after leaving Riggs behind, I heard the siren. Another highway patrol cruiser went screaming past, headed in the opposite direction.

  I smiled.

  Marsha Riggs was going to get a little break from her husband. Maybe a long break, though I doubted if the charges would stick. Still, when a guy opens his glove compartment and a bag of crystal meth falls out, he tends to spend a little time behind bars. More if there’s a lighter, a pipe, and a gun jammed in with the owner’s manual.

  I hoped Marsha would use her time wisely. When I had a moment, I’d drop by and check on her. Maybe do another reading, see what the cards said. I had a feeling I knew.

  There was no time for that just now, though. I had a new shopping list.

  1. Jewelry

  2. A camcorder

  3. A killer

  Thank god for tacky. If it had been tasteful, I never would’ve spotted it.

  “An emerald as big as a gumdrop surrounded by the cutest little baby diamonds mounted in gold.” That’s how Lucia Castellanos had described her favorite ring. My mother had taken it to be cleansed of an evil spirit.

  You wouldn’t think it from the looks of the place, but apparently Jones Pawn & Loan in Flagstaff, Arizona, was a great place for cleansing. Because that’s where I found the ring (after unproductive stops at the Westside Gold and Jewelry Exchange in Sedona and the Fourth Street Pawn Shop in Berdache).

  “You Jones?” I asked the man behind the counter.

  He didn’t look like a Jones. He looked a Samoan Michelin Man with clothes but without the smile.

  “Jones is gone. I own the place now.”

  “All right. I’ve got a question for you, Mr.—?”

  “Smith.”

  “Right. Mr. Smith.” I tapped the display case glass just above the ri
ng. “Where’d this come from?”

  “We don’t release that information.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “No.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Insurance investigator?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Smith shrugged. “Then why do you give a shit?”

  It was obvious he didn’t.

  I thought of the games I could play. Give me half a week and I’d own the place.

  I was feeling magnanimous, though. And impatient.

  I’d added almost two hundred miles to my rental car in the last day. Why rack up even ten feet more than I had to?

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll buy that ring and anything else that ever came in here from the same seller—as marked, no haggling—if you’ll just answer one question to my satisfaction.”

  Mr. Smith either took some time to think about it or fell asleep with his eyes open.

  “Down payment first,” he said when he decided/woke up.

  I pulled out my wallet and counted out three hundred dollars of Clarice’s meatloaf money. It felt like normal cash now. (When I’d bought the meth the night before, the dealer had laughed and rubbed a bill against his face and said, “Damn, this is so cold. Who’d you blow to get it? Frosty the Snowman?”)

  Mr. Smith scooped up the bills and lumbered off toward the back of the store.

  “I’ll check our records.”

  He didn’t have to ask what I wanted to know.

  “Lady named Joan Evans brought it in,” he said when he came back. “Lives in Sedona, according to her driver’s license.”

  “Pretty, skinny lady in her late fifties?”

  Mr. Smith nodded.

  “So,” he said, “that to your satisfaction?”

  It wasn’t. William Riggs of Berdache—now that would have been satisfying. Ditto Anthony Grandi of same or Billy Joe Scumbag of Up the Street. But Joan Evans of Sedona, aka Mom with a fake ID, was a dead-end as dead as they come. But at least I wasn’t running into this one empty-handed.