The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) Page 2

  “I have a feeling,” she said, “that you’ve come here with questions.”

  “Wow! How did you know?”

  I expected to hear that her spirit guides had told her. Or maybe it was my troubled aura.

  “You were staring at the store across the street for a long time,” she said instead. “It looked like you were trying to work up the nerve to go in.”

  The lady wasn’t just good, she was very good.

  Short con or long, it has to start with trust. And what better way to begin building that than with a little dribble of truth? Just enough to clear the way for the snake oil.

  “I was,” I said.

  “Thought so. I’m afraid the White Magic Five & Dime isn’t open anymore.” Josette’s smile grew a little wider. “But I do readings, too.”

  “So the Five & Dime went out of business?” I said as I shuffled the cards Josette had handed me.

  We were at a table in a curtained-off nook at the back of the store. Before sitting down, Josette had locked the front door and hung up a sign saying back in 15 minutes. So we wouldn’t be disturbed, she’d said, but I figured it had more to do with sticky-fingered tourists who might wander in and help themselves to handfuls of healing crystals and pentagram pendants.

  “Focus on your question,” Josette said. “What is it you’d like to ask the cards?”

  What the hell was my mother up to around here? I thought.

  “How do I become a happier, healthier person?” I said.

  Josette held out a hand.

  “Good. Now give me the deck.”

  I handed it over. I’d paid in advance (naturally) for a seven-card reading. I didn’t feel like shelling out thirty bucks for the “standard ten-card spread” when with three cards and five dollars less I could get the same old crock.

  Josette laid the cards out like this:

  “Looks like an airplane.”

  Josette seemed pleased with herself. “It’s a spread of my own. I call it the Weather Vane. It’s good for showing which way the wind’s blowing.”

  “You can just make up a ‘spread’ yourself?”

  “You can do anything with the tarot.” Josette reached out and touched the card at the center of the crisscrossing rows of three—the middle of the airplane. “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  “All right, then. Let’s begin.”

  “Ahhh,” Josette said as she turned over the first card. “This is your present—your current situation—and we’ve got the Two of Swords. A sword is an instrument of war—of conflict—but it can also bring liberation. It cuts through the things that bind us. The woman here has two swords, but look: She’s not using them. She’s just holding them over her chest, blocking her heart. She thinks she doesn’t need her emotions and her instincts, but that’s blinded her. She can’t truly see herself or her situation, so she’s paralyzed. Stuck.

  “Moving up to the next card, we see what’s in the conscious mind.

  “More swords! Only the swords on the Six here aren’t being used as weapons. They’re going with someone on a voyage. Does that boat remind you of anything? The boatman? The dead being ferried across the River Styx, maybe? Perhaps someone close to you has died—though it doesn’t have to be that. It could refer to any important life passage. A painful time is being put behind you. You’re continuing on to someplace new, but the pain goes with you.

  “Moving down now, we see what’s going on in your subconscious.

  “Swords again! The Eight. In this card, the swords form a wall. A pen. A prison. But see that gap? The wall’s incomplete. She could walk away anytime, yet she doesn’t because she can’t see the way out. Swords is the suit of intellect, of the mind. Here that’s a trap, though. This woman—she’s imprisoned by the things she thinks she knows.

  “Going back now, we look at the past.

  “Interesting. The Queen of Wands. Wands is the suit of energy, will, ambition, action. But the Queen’s reversed, so what we have is a strong, intelligent, creative woman who’s turned herself to unproductive pursuits. She’s a powerful influence, but not a good one. Whoever this is, she’s a bit of a…well.

  “Moving forward, we step into the future. And what do we have?

  “Oh! Lovely! The Two of Cups! (Some people call them Chalices, but I like Cups. More down to earth, don’t you think?) Anywho, Cups is the suit of love. That can be all kinds of love, of course, but would you just look at that couple there? Aren’t they adorable? I think you might have something special to look forward to. Someone special.

  “Now, in the last row, hopefully we’ll find a little guidance for you. Going up, we’ve got the energies you should be trying to harness. And what we find is…well, well.

  “The Fool. Now don’t get the wrong idea about him! The Fool’s actually someone we should respect. He’s brave. He trusts his impulses enough to take what looks like a dangerous step. He could be going right off that cliff, but at least he’s taking the first step toward something. Don’t give in to fear is the message here. Do something.

  “Finally, moving down, we’ll see what energies you should avoid.

  “The Four of Pentacles. Hmm. I see two possible meanings here. First, the obvious. Here’s someone who’s clinging to something—a big coin. That could be money or it could be material things or it could be a belief in material things and material things only. A rejection of the spiritual side of life. Do you see the other pentacle over his head, though? It’s almost like a halo or a crown. That’s some achievement of his—some gift; a special ability, maybe. But he’s hording it; keeping it to himself. He should share it, use it, not hide it away. He needs to be more like the Fool. He needs to just go for it! And I think that’s what you need to do, too.

  “Now…how would you like to start going for it like a Fool by buying a nice big expensive bag of healing crystals I scooped out of my fish tank this morning?”

  Josette didn’t actually say the thing about the healing crystals from the fish tank, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had.

  Her advice boiled down to this: Turn off your brain. Let your emotions take over. Don’t worry about what you know or don’t know. Just focus on what you want.

  It’s the starting point of every con.

  Clearly she thought I’d turned my brain off a long, long time ago.

  I respected the woman’s technique, though. Forget good or very good; she was masterful. Cold reading will only get you so far. Then you have to start asking leading questions and throwing out vague comments the mark can interpret however they want. You have to fish. But not Josette. Somehow she’d pegged me as the product of a Mommy Dearest without a single word about it from me.

  I wondered if she knew who I was.

  I faked my way through some follow-up questions, but Josette was admirably patient. She didn’t try to tap me for more cash. She was working Biddle-style.

  A fool and his money are soon parted, he liked to say. So why rush it unless someone else is trying to part the fool from it first?

  Eventually Josette went to the front of the store and opened the door again.

  “So,” I said, “your main competitor’s gone, huh?”

  I pointed at the White Magic Five & Dime.

  “There are still plenty of other readers around Berdache and Sedona,” Josette said.

  “So I’ve seen. But the person running that place across the street must not have been one of the better ones. If they could really tell the future, they’d still be in business. I mean, you all oughta be millionaires, right? Just gaze into your crystal ball until you see tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, then call your stock broker and wait for the dividends to roll in.”

  Josette smiled at a joke I’m sure she’d only heard a million times too many.

  “I don’t believe readers see the future,
” she said. “I believe they see the possible.”

  I nodded as if this made sense.

  “So what happened to the Five & Dime’s owner, anyway?”

  Josette’s smile wavered. “I’m not really sure.”

  Nice dodge. The Berdache Tourism Bureau would be pleased.

  I thanked Josette for the reading—it had been so insightful, really it had—and left.

  The reading had provided some insights—into my mother.

  No wonder she’d opened the White Magic Five & Dime. Twenty- five tax-free bucks for a sprinkling of Fairyland pixie-dust bullshit? It was too easy.

  Only she wouldn’t have stopped there. Not Mom. All that trust being placed in her—all that pain and confusion being shared—it would add up to one thing for her: leverage. And she would have used it—to push. Until someone finally pushed back.

  Mom hadn’t just met her death over in that store. She’d invited it inside, done business with it in there, tried to cheat it in there. And if I gave a rat’s ass about that, I’d go in there, too.

  But did I? Should I?

  I found myself standing on the sidewalk again, staring at the White Magic Five & Dime across the street. Wondering why I would avenge a woman I’d never even forgiven.

  I was still wondering even as I stepped off the curb and started toward the store.

  “He’s called the Magician,” you say, “but what the heck is he doing? Where’s the rabbit coming out of the hat? Where’s the magic?” Hey, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Are powers surrounding you right now, influencing and perhaps even controlling you, that you can’t see? Well, duh.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  Josette had better inventory, but Mom’s place had all the atmosphere. Walking into the White Magic Five & Dime was like stepping into Indiana Jones’s trophy room. African masks hung on the wall beside Japanese tapestries and Indian dreamcatchers and a crucifix with a Jesus so battered and bloody he looked like he’d gone ten rounds with Freddy Krueger. There were statues of the Buddha and Shiva and the Virgin Mary and that tubby, armor-wearing warrior-guy you sometimes see near the cash register at Chinese restaurants.

  My mother had always been a stone-cold atheist, of course. Churches were just competition working a different kind of con. So either she’d done a one-eighty and had gone from believing in nothing to believing in everything or (more likely) she’d simply overdone it with the pseudo-mystical set dressings. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Satanist—it was all the same to her.

  The chintzy merchandise—crystals, candles, charms, etc.—was limited to a few tables and shelves along the walls, and the one display case was stocked exclusively with tarot cards and a cheap-looking book about them. Near the picture window at the front of the store was a waiting area: a couch and chairs that would have been at home in a stereopticon slide of President Taft and Family, a coffee table covered with Reader’s Digests and yellowing newspapers, a fountain (off), a lava lamp (off), and a fern (dead). Here the sheep would sit, patiently perusing year-old headlines and “Life in These United States,” until it was their turn to step through the beaded curtain at the back of the room and begin their latest fleecing.

  Now there was a heaven my mother would believe in.

  I pushed through the beads and found myself in a narrow hallway lined with oversized tarot cards. The nice ones, of course. Strength. Temperance. The Lovers. The Star. The Sun. There was no Fool here (unless you counted me). And no Death—at least on the wall.

  At the end of the hall were stairs leading up to the second floor. Beside them was a door that opened into what looked like a storage room or office. There was another doorway—this one doorless—about halfway down the hall.

  That was the one I went through. As I expected, it took me to a small, nookish room with a table and two chairs.

  This was where my mother had done her readings.

  It was also where she had been murdered.

  It should have been creepy, standing on the spot where my mother had died. But there was no sign any crime had been committed there, other than rampant fraud. The local cops had been very tidy.

  Their IQs I wasn’t so impressed with. What would a burglar have been after back here? Hardened criminals aren’t going to bother with a B&E just so they can score zodiac charts and incense. And if the killer was an amateur—a tweaker on the prowl for loose cash, say—the crime scene would have been a lot messier.

  Meth heads and amateurs freak out. They stab you with ballpoint pens and beat you with lamps and rip out chunks of skin and hair. They don’t strangle you unless they’ve done all that other stuff first. And Eugene Wheeler had said my mother had been strangled.

  I pictured it in my mind. Mom on the floor, a man’s hands around her throat. After a moment, I had to blot out the image. My mother might have been dead to me, but I hadn’t wanted her dead to everyone. Thinking of her murder still sickened and saddened me.

  I couldn’t let that stop me, though. I brought the image back, only with stick figures this time. I had to run through the scenario and see if it could make sense in this little closet of a space.

  The room was like a confessional without a screen between penitent and priest. There was barely space for a game of Scrabble, let alone a life-and-death struggle. Two people could squeeze past the table, sure, but it wasn’t like Mom to be cornered in any way, shape, or form. It was easier to imagine her thinking she was the one in charge, looking her killer straight in the eye.

  The way she’d always look at people when she was back here. Over the table.

  Over the cards.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out where my mother would have been sitting. From one of the chairs, you could look down the hallway and see the waiting room beyond the beads. That would be Mom’s spot. She’d want her soft murmurs drifting out to the next patsies in line, keeping them in their seats with the promise of wisdom or solace or good news or whatever it was they wanted to hear.

  I took a seat in the pigeon’s chair and stretched my arms out in front of me.

  Lean forward. Grab hold. Squeeze.

  Sure. It could work. If you were strong. And if you were pissed enough—pissed in that special way Mom could make you—you’d find the strength.

  So all I had to do was figure out who in town my mother had screwed over. The population here couldn’t have been more than two or three thousand people. Once I had my list of suspects, I’d…

  Something.

  I sat. I thought.

  Who goes to see a fortuneteller?

  Suckers.

  What kind of suckers?

  Superstitious suckers. Supersuckers.

  How do you find supersuckers?

  You give them what they want.

  What do they want?

  You just said it, Sherlock. Fortunetellers.

  Where do you get a fortuneteller?

  You don’t get one. You make one. You become one.

  Ah.

  And there it was.

  The killer would come to me.

  I was congratulating myself on my genius when the back door opened.

  There were footsteps. Then the door closed. Then more footsteps.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Someone was in the room at the other end of the hall—the office or whatever.

  That someone stayed still for a very, very long time.

  I stayed still, too.

  Eventually a thought occurred to me. Wait—I’m not the one breaking and entering. I own this damn place.

  “Who are you?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  I made my voice firm, assertive, self-assured. Yet I also got up as quietly as I could and started moving slowly down the hall toward the front door, just in case I didn’t like the answers I got.

&n
bsp; “Who are you?” a woman said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m calling 911, that’s what I’m doing.”

  My phone was in my jacket. My jacket was in my car.

  “I’m calling 911,” the woman said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Hello? Yes? Operator? I’d like to report a break-in.”

  “Hello? Yes? Operator? I’d like to report a break-in.”

  I’d made it all the way down the hall to the beads. I could turn and run for it, if I wanted.

  I stopped.

  It was very, very quiet.

  “You didn’t call 911,” I said.

  “You didn’t call 911.”

  “Would you please stop repeating everything I say?”

  “Would you please tell me who I’m talking to?”

  “My name is Alanis McLachlan. As of this afternoon, I own this building.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “And who are you?”

  The woman stepped out into the hall and started toward me. She was skinny and tall and pretty, in a gawky way, with frizzy hair and big brown eyes. Her skin was the color of chocolate milk—the good kind with lots of syrup.

  As she got closer, I realized she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl—seventeen at the most.

  “My name’s Clarice Stewart,” she said. “I guess I’m your tenant.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I live upstairs.”

  “I thought Barbra lived upstairs.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry. Athena.”

  “Oh. Yeah. She did. Her real name was Barbra?”

  “I doubt it, but that’s not the point. Are you saying you and Athena lived upstairs?”

  “Yeah. We were, like, roommates.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  My mother. “Roommates” with a high-school junior.