Celestial Bodies

by Laura Leone

  “I’ve asked Mrs. Bouvier to come right over. She mentioned to me yesterday that she thought she knew Nick from somewhere. Today I’m going to find out for sure.”

  “Why don’t you just ask Nick?”

  Felix gave her the first impatient glance she had received from him in years. “I think that should be obvious.”

  “Felix, are you sure Jora knew what she was talking about? Are you sure this distress you feel originates from Nick?”

  “I’m sure.” Without another word, he went into his study to meditate and await Mrs. Bouvier.

  The woman arrived a few minutes later. Diana showed her into the study and immediately realized from Felix’s preparations that he intended to hypnotize Mrs. Bouvier.

  Diana left them alone, apologized profusely to the person whose appointment Felix had just canceled, and spent the morning alternately waiting on customers and pacing back and forth outside the door of Felix’s study.

  Last night she’d felt confidence, trust, and affection where Nick was concerned. Was she going to let her father’s mumbo jumbo overturn all that? Didn’t Nick deserve a little more faith from her?

  Diana ran her fingers through her tumbled hair again and again, muttering to herself as she stalked in and out of the building, through the courtyard and into the street, looking up and down, wishing Nick would return.

  Whatever secrets he was keeping, Nick would have to come clean in order to put Felix’s worries to rest, even though the matter might be very private or painful. Things had suddenly gotten out of hand. Diana didn’t like her father thinking that her lover was obscuring cosmic truth.

  She groaned aloud and stomped back inside the shop. It was disturbing to realize how much she believed, after all. If Felix and Jora both thought something was wrong, Diana couldn’t shrug it off. She had seen and heard too many strange things in a lifetime of being Felix’s daughter, and his portentous comments split her loyalties between her lover and her father, between rationalism and the world of shadowy mysteries that Felix inhabited.

  Maybe if her father weren’t so uncannily accurate most of the time, she would find these silly superstitions easier to shake off. Her sister Sheila had always been a confirmed skeptic, but Diana had just enough of Felix in her to be vulnerable to his influence.

  The ringing of the phone nearly made her heart jump out of her chest. Thinking that she really had to calm down, she answered it—praying it would be Nick. Where was he?

  “Diana, it’s Sheila.”

  “Sheila! I was just thinking about you!”

  “Don’t even start that nonsense,” Sheila ordered. “I assure you, I received no cosmic messages urging me to call. I have a perfectly good reason for phoning.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you expanding the business? I thought you were—”

  “Expanding the business?” Diana repeated. “Oh, come on, all I’ve done is hire one guy to help out in the shop.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  Sheila asked, “What about Felix? Is he expanding the business?”

  “No, of course not. He hasn’t given a single thought to business since I came down here. You know that.”

  “Then why is a backer inquiring into your business affairs?”

  “What?” Diana blurted.

  “I happened to contact Felix’s lawyer about the inheritance... Why you can’t convince him to hire someone more reputable is beyond me—”

  “Never mind that. What did the lawyer say?”

  Sheila said, “He mentioned that you were apparently expanding your business to a considerable degree, because a financier approached him with numerous questions about your professional reputability and financial viability. The financier was also apparently very interested in what happened when Mom died and how Felix had spent the money.”

  “I ... I...” Diana plopped gracelessly onto a stool. “It’s a hoax.”

  “I’m relieved to know that our father hasn’t convinced you to do anything foolish. But I’d like to know why someone is asking so many questions about the two of you.”

  “So would I,” Diana said, her thoughts whirling. “Look, Sheila, I’ve got to go now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to phone a few of my clients and colleagues and find out if anyone’s been questioning them about us.”

  “Good idea. This sounds fishy. Get back to me if you need any help, Diana.”

  “Thanks.”

  By the time Mrs. Bouvier came out of Felix’s study, Diana had confirmed that someone had indeed, discreetly but thoroughly, gathered a great deal of information about Felix and herself. And she knew with a terrible certainty that it all had something to do with Nick.

  As soon as she had shown Mrs. Bouvier out of the shop, Diana went into Felix’s study to talk to him. “Well? Did you find out where she’s seen Nick before?”

  Felix nodded. A frown creased his brow. “It’s most peculiar. The last time she saw him, he was the young heir to somebody’s Texas oil fortune.”

  “Nick?” she said incredulously.

  “Spoke with a drawl and everything. He was hanging around some high society weekend at the Montreaux family’s country estate.” Felix rubbed a hand across his chin. “Evidently someone tried to steal the family jewels that weekend. Mrs. Bouvier was a little vague about that.”

  “A jewel thief? But Felix, what would a jewel thief want with us?” Diana started pacing around the room. “I can’t believe I’m even talking this way.” She paused and looked at her father. “There’s something else you should know. Someone’s been asking around about us.” She told him about her conversation with Sheila and her subsequent discoveries.

  “What could such a man want from us?” Felix mused.

  “I don’t like talking about him like this,” Diana said uncomfortably. “Let’s wait until he gets back, and then—”

  They both jumped when they heard the door chimes sound.

  “It’s Nick,” Felix said with certainty.

  Nick approached the House of Ishtar wearily, but with a sweet sense of anticipation. It had been a horrible night. Claude Bouvier had been pompous, unreasonable, rude, and vicious.

  No matter how many times he and Peter had repeated their findings, no matter how many ways they’d tried to reassure Bouvier that his mother wasn’t being victimized, the man had not been willing to listen to sense or reason.

  He’d accused them of carelessness, incompetence, dishonesty, and laziness. He’d accused them of being in collusion with Felix, and he’d even gone so far as to suggest that they, too, had fallen under the astrologer’s evil spell.

  He’d threatened to go to another agency. They had told him he could, pointing out that any other agency would report the same findings. Felix and Diana Stewart were honest and reputable, and as long as they remained that way, no equally honest and reputable private investigator would be able to report otherwise.

  At that point Bouvier had thrown the LeCoz affair into their faces as evidence of their own lack of such virtues. He’d ended the whole long, ugly encounter by promising to give evidence of their dishonesty, incompetence, and lack of professionalism when the LeCoz hearing was called.

  Peter and Nick had done the only thing they could think of. They had opened a bottle of bourbon and spent the rest of the night wondering how they could save the agency.

  The only good thing that had happened to Nick lately, the only thing he felt optimistic about at the moment, was meeting Diana Stewart. He needed her like he needed food and air. He needed her comfort and affection, her support and understanding. He needed something only Diana could give him.

  He paused in momentary surprise when he entered the shop. It appeared to be empty. Even Ishtar was missing.

  “Hello?” he called. The door to Felix’s study opened. Diana stood there, as bright and vibrant as morning sunrise. He smiled and approached her. “Why are you...”

  He stopp
ed speaking in mid-sentence. She was looking at him with such mingled anxiety and suspicion that he went cold inside. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You’d better come in,” she croaked. She backed slowly into the room, holding his eyes, as if she were afraid to turn her back on him.

  Nick followed her into the study, then he saw Felix. The astrologer returned his gaze unblinkingly. The lack of friendly greeting was so unexpected, the piercing stare so unlike Felix’s usual serenely abstract gaze, that Nick realized his cover must have been blown. And just when he was about to confess, damn it! Why were the stars so against him lately?

  Ishtar sat on a stool near Felix. The cat regarded Nick with her usual frosty disapproval.

  “Please sit down, Nick,” Felix said.

  With one more glance at Diana, who lowered her eyes and turned away, Nick seated himself at the round wooden table that Felix used for his readings. His eyes widened when Felix picked up the tarot deck.

  “What are you doing?” Nick asked.

  “I’m going to find out who you really are,” Felix said calmly.

  “Why don’t I just tell you?” Nick suggested.

  “These won’t lie to me.” With a significant glance at Nick, Felix added, “Men often do.”

  Diana had been standing near the window, still as a statue. She suddenly burst into a flurry of movement and headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Felix asked.

  “I... I can’t stay for this,” she said, choking out the words between quick gasps of air.

  Felix looked up at her. It was the first time Nick could remember him looking at his daughter with such fatherly concern. His sympathetic but firm expression clearly requested that she remain.

  Diana made a throaty sound of protest as Felix’s eyes held hers, and the tension in the room grew so sharp that it scraped along Nick’s nerves. His heart beat faster, and the breath in his lungs felt harsh, as if he were in danger.

  For the first time since Nick had met the Stewarts, he saw Felix’s strength of will conquer Diana’s. She meekly backed away from the door and moved toward the far wall, as though she could still dissociate herself from the scene by maintaining physical distance. The shaky way she drew in little gasps of air made Nick wonder what ordeal Felix had planned for him.

  With smoothly experienced motions, Felix shuffled the cards of his favorite, well-worn tarot deck. Then he spread the cards facedown across the table in a long, smooth line.

  “Pick one,” he instructed Nick.

  Nick stared at the spread of cards. A strange feeling of unease about this procedure swept through him. “Look, Felix, this isn’t the way—”

  “This is the only way I can be sure,” Felix said. “Please pick one, Nick.”

  Nick looked over his shoulder. “Diana, please. Let’s be rational about this. I can explain everything.”

  He had never before seen her look so indecisive. She wrung her hands, shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, and looked back and forth between Nick and Felix. Her green eyes sparkled with the threat of tears.

  Her gaze finally rested on Felix, supplicating and uncertain. “Maybe I should talk to him, Felix. He and I... um...” She stopped, seeming unable to continue, and lowered her eyes again.

  Nick stared at her incredulously. All right, so he had kidded her about believing more than she would admit to, so he had recognized that she was more superstitious than she let on, but this was absurd. After last night, was she really going to let her father and his tarot deck deal with this, rather than sit down and talk things over?

  Filled with a mixture of anger, hurt, disappointment, and disbelief, Nick turned back to Felix. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Nick looked at the row of cards spread facedown before him. It was ridiculous to feel uneasy about this. He’d pick a card and Felix would mumble something cryptic, and then they could sort out this mess like normal people. After they’d waved some smelling salts under Diana’s nose. She was white as a sheet and looked as if she might faint in another minute.

  Nick’s hand moved toward the cards. Just as he was about to select one at random, something came over him. For a moment he felt dizzy, or maybe just weak. The next thing he knew, he saw his hand pulling a card toward him—the card he had selected during that brief second of swimming blackness.

  Before he turned over the card, he glanced sharply at Felix, wondering once more at the strange aura that always surrounded the astrologer. His heart thudding in his ears, Nick looked at the card.

  “The Knight of Cups,” he said with an inexplicable feeling of relief, glad he had bothered to do a little reading on the subject. “Scorpio. That’s me, all right.” When there was no response, he added, “A sensualist.”

  “Show it to me,” Felix said slowly.

  Nick handed the card to Felix, who took it from him carefully. Diana clutched the heavy curtains at the window and stared fixedly at her father. Felix met her eyes and said, “It’s upside-down. Reversed.”

  Diana gasped. In three quick strides, she crossed the room, fury blazing in her expressive eyes.

  “You bastard!” She lifted her arm to slap Nick.

  In one smooth movement Nick shot out of his chair, kicked it back, and grabbed her arm. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “You rotten, dirty, filthy, scheming—” She swung with her other arm. When he caught that one, too, she kicked his shins and stomped on his feet.

  “Ow! Diana, cut that out! Ouch!” Trying to protect himself without hurting her, Nick deftly pinned her arms behind her and immobilized her in an uncomfortable position.

  “Diana, please!” Felix cried. “No violence!”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Nick snapped breathlessly, struggling to hold her still. Yoga had made her agile enough to wriggle out of his usual defense holds, and he had to keep shifting his weight and position to prevent her from getting free.

  “The Knight of Cups!” she snarled.

  “What?”

  “In the reversed position—” Felix began, drawing Nick’s attention.

  Then Diana bit his wrist. Nick swore vehemently while she pulled away from him and ran to the other side of the table.

  “The Knight of Cups means Scorpio. Reversed it means fraud and deceit. And,” she added furiously, “seduction.”

  “Oh.” Nick stared at them both. Then he glanced at Ishtar. The cat stood with her back arched and her fur standing on end. She hissed at him once, then scurried under the table.

  “Oh?” Diana repeated. “Oh? Is that all you can say?”

  “I’m prepared to say a lot more, if you’ll just calm down!”

  “How can I be calm with a viper in my nest?” she shouted.

  “Don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away?” he said. “It’s only a tarot card, for God’s sake!”

  Diana looked as if he’d struck her. “How can you say such a thing?”

  He didn’t know whether he was more upset by the fact that the tarot card had hit so close to home, or by the way Diana regarded it as valid proof of his culpability.

  “Diana,” he pleaded, hoping to nudge her back to reality. Her expression, however, made it clear she wouldn’t see reason. Nick rubbed his forehead and started pacing back and forth. “I don’t believe this. I just don’t believe it.”

  “I think the important thing,” Felix said, “is that we know you’ve misrepresented yourself to us, Nick. Why did you really come to the House of Ishtar?”

  Nick sighed wearily. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “What?” Diana exclaimed in horror.

  “That explains it!” Felix declared brightly. “I knew the stars couldn’t be wrong!”

  “What does a private investigator want with us?” Diana demanded.

  “Deductive reasoning,” Felix muttered. “A bearer Of weapons. Of course!”

  “Felix, please,” Diana said impatiently.


  “My client hired me to discover whether or not your operation is reputable and honest,” Nick told them.

  Diana looked sick with shock and despair. “You came here to find out if we were... frauds? Crooks? Swindlers?” She crossed her arms in a protective gesture. “That’s why you’ve been hanging around, gaining our trust, and making friends with us?”

  “Look, I’ve delivered a full report verifying that you’re completely on the level.” He glanced uncomfortably at the tarot cards, then met her eyes again. “It’s my job, Diana. I didn’t know when I first came here that I’d... that we’d—”

  “Don’t make excuses for yourself,” she interrupted tersely.

  “Who hired you?” Felix asked.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that, Felix. Client confidentiality.”

  Diana gaped at him incredulously. “That’s just lovely,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “You lie to us, invade our privacy, betray our trust, check up on our past, inquire about our finances, then report it all to someone else. But God forbid you should violate that person’s faith in you by telling us who paid you to spy on us!”

  “This is fascinating,” Felix mused, some of the old serenity already returning to his face. “This explains so much. No wonder I’ve been so confused!”

  “Diana, I know you have reason to be angry, but I—”

  “Will you please just go,” she interrupted. “You’ve got what you came for, so just leave.”

  “And what about everything else?” he asked softly. “What about last night?”

  “Oh, it was no trouble going to Jora’s,” Felix assured him. “I’ve been meaning to visit her, anyhow.”

  Diana and Nick both turned to stare at him for a moment.

  Then Diana said, “Don’t bring up last night, Nick.” She paused before asking icily, “Is Nick Tremain even your real name?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Tremain and Lowery Investigations. But we’ll probably be out of business soon.” Suddenly he thought he had never been so tired in his whole life.

  “You’ve got ten minutes to pack your things and get out of my house. After that,” Diana informed him coldly, “I’m calling the police.”