The First Prophet

by Kay Hooper

  Without preamble, a man said, “I was in your shop the other day looking at an Irish mahogany breakfront wardrobe, and I think I absentmindedly left a small black notebook inside. At least, I hope I did. Could you look for it, please?”

  “Sure. Hang on just a minute.” She put him on hold, then winced as the phone immediately rang again. Answering the second line, she found one of their shippers upset because he couldn’t find the armoire he was supposed to be picking up. Sarah put him on hold as well, then began searching through the folders on the desk.

  “Need a hand?” Margo asked cheerfully.

  Sarah found the relevant folder. “Oh, you noticed?” She smiled at her partner. “Guy on the other line lost a small black notebook here the other day. He says maybe inside that Irish breakfront. Could you check, please?”

  “You bet.”

  Sarah turned her attention back to the aggravated shipper, relating the address where he was supposed to be and soothing him when it developed that the mistake had been his. She listened to his sheepish apologies, her gaze absently following Margo across the shop to the huge wardrobe, one of their most massive pieces.

  “No problem, Mike,” she murmured, hanging up the phone just as Margo reached the wardrobe and swung open the heavy doors.

  All Sarah remembered thinking afterward was, That candelabra on top shouldn’t be wobbling like that. And then, in a terrifying instant, she realized why it was.

  “Margo! It’s falling!”

  Sarah was too far away to help, and the wardrobe was so huge and heavy that even though Margo was reacting to the warning, turning, her face white with shock, there was simply no way she could get out from under the thing in time.

  Sarah knew that. There was nothing she could do but watch, totally helpless, the scant few seconds that passed stretching into a lifetime she lived paralyzed with dread.

  Then she saw Tucker lunge from between two tallboys and grab Margo’s arm, both of them now in the path of the toppling wardrobe.

  It was the last thing she saw, her eyes closing instinctively, as the wardrobe crashed to the floor with a force that shook the entire building.

  FOUR

  “I keep telling you, it wasn’t at all unusual. Customers leave things in here often and call us in a panic. I didn’t think twice about it.” Sarah kept her voice even with an effort. “I didn’t notice anything in particular about his voice. Just a man, that’s all. Very polite and worried about the notebook he’d lost. I thought.”

  “But you believe his call was designed purely to cause you to go to the wardrobe and open it?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Not to me, Miss Gallagher. It could have been a simple coincidence.” Sergeant Lewis frowned at her. “But even if the call was placed with such an intention, what do you expect us to do about it?”

  “Find him,” she said, with a very faint snap to the words.

  “Miss Gallagher, according to the Call Return on your phone, the call came from a pay phone near here—one of the very few left—at a busy service station where at least a dozen people and quite likely more have made a call today. Nobody working there noticed anything or anyone unusual. There are no prints on what’s left of that wardrobe, except the prints that should be there. Your security system was active until Miss James came in here this morning, and shows no signs of tampering, so how anyone could have gotten in here and rigged this, leaving no evidence behind—”

  “Are you saying we imagined it?” For the first time in all this, Sarah’s overpowering emotion was anger. It felt good.

  “I’m saying…maybe the wardrobe just fell. It’s an old piece with a shallow depth, and the doors are heavy. Maybe it was just unbalanced.”

  Sarah drew a breath. “That wardrobe, Sergeant Lewis, has been in this shop for nearly a year. I’ve opened both doors countless times, and so has Margo. So have numerous customers. It never fell before.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at a couple of his men who were standing near the overturned and seriously damaged wardrobe, and from both he received faint shrugs. Sighing, he looked back at Sarah. “There are no signs that anyone tampered with it, Miss Gallagher.”

  “In other words, you’re not going to do a thing about this.”

  “There’s nothing I can do.” He sighed again. “Look, Miss James wasn’t hurt—”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Margo said. She was sitting near Sarah with an ice pack pressed to the back of one shoulder, which had been dealt a glancing blow from the falling wardrobe. She was still rather pale, but composed—and uncharacteristically quiet. “But at least I wasn’t smashed flat as a waffle. Thanks to Tucker.”

  Lewis looked mildly troubled for a moment but didn’t comment on Margo’s unusual simile. “I’m not discounting what happened to you, Miss James, believe me. But it could have been—probably was—an accident. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Tucker spoke up for the first time. “What about the customer?”

  Lewis looked at him, frowning slightly as he took in the other man’s lounging position in a very fine George I walnut wing armchair, also near Sarah. Lewis didn’t like Tucker, and it showed. “What about her?”

  Tucker, who had been curiously expressionless since the police had arrived and hadn’t said much before then, shrugged. “She vanished pretty quickly. Didn’t even say good-bye. But then—maybe she just doesn’t like loud noises.” His sarcasm wasn’t blatant, but it was there.

  With a clear air of humoring him, Lewis held his pencil poised. “Okay, did anybody get her name?”

  “Desmond,” Margo said. “Cait Desmond. I called her a miss, but she mentioned a husband later, so she’s a missus.”

  Quietly, Tucker said, “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Wasn’t she?” Margo frowned at him.

  “Some men notice. I do. No rings at all.”

  Margo looked back at Lewis. “Okay, then either she was a wife who likes bare fingers or she lied about the husband. Although I don’t know why she would have.”

  Still quiet, Tucker said, “When you left her alone and started back here, she got up and moved toward the wardrobe. I was on the other side of the shop, but I saw her. A piece of furniture blocked my view for a moment, and by the time I moved to get a better look at what she might be doing, she was returning to that chair where you’d left her. And if I had to come up with a word to describe her attitude, it would have to be—surreptitious.”

  “You are a novelist, are you not, Mr. Mackenzie?”

  The implication was clear, but Tucker didn’t rise to the bait. “I am. But I’m not in the habit of imagining things unless I’m getting paid to do so.”

  “Funny that you’re just now mentioning what you…saw,” Lewis said coldly.

  Without offering an excuse, Tucker merely said, “I started toward the wardrobe then, no more than vaguely concerned, but Margo got there before me. She and I were both knocked off our feet when the thing fell; by the time I got up, the customer was already out of the shop. It seemed more important to make sure Margo was okay, so I didn’t take the time to rush outside and see where the woman went after she bolted out the door.”

  “A gesture of courtesy I very much appreciated,” Margo told him.

  Tucker inclined his head gravely, but his gaze remained fixed on Lewis. “I’ll buy that she was startled—the whole building shook—but there was no reason why your average customer would run away without even stopping to find out if everybody was all right. Or returning to check after the first panic might have driven her outside. Goes against human nature. Unless, of course, she had something to do with the…accident.”

  Lewis drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his patience. “As I keep telling you, Mr. Mackenzie—as I keep telling all of you—there is no sign the wardrobe was tampered with. And since none of you claim this customer was standing behind it pushing, I fail to see how she could have had anything to do with the
accident.”

  “And you’re so sure that’s what it was. Even though Sarah’s house burned down yesterday, probably due to arson. Even though she was supposed to be alone in the shop today. Even though there’s no logical reason why that wardrobe would have fallen on its own. You don’t find that to be at all suspicious.”

  “Surprising, maybe. Coincidence, certainly.”

  Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Every cop I’ve ever met in my life believes there’s no such thing as coincidence. Funny that you do.”

  “Not funny at all.” Lewis was visibly stiff now. “The world is full of strange things, Mr. Mackenzie. This is just one more strange thing.”

  After a moment, Tucker looked silently at Sarah, and she said immediately, “Then we won’t keep you any longer, Sergeant Lewis. Thank you for listening.” She neither rose nor offered to shake hands.

  He hesitated, his notebook still open, then closed it with a snap. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Gallagher. About your house. We’re still investigating that, of course.” He gestured briefly to his men, and all three left the shop.

  Margo got up, went to the front door and locked it, and turned over the sign so that it read CLOSED. Then she returned to her chair. “Okay. You two want to let me in on this? What’s happening here?”

  Tucker said nothing.

  Sighing, Sarah turned a bit in her chair so that she faced the other two more squarely. “I knew there was going to be an accident—a bizarre accident—here in the shop today,” she told Margo. “But I thought it would happen later today, in the afternoon. And…it was supposed to be fatal.”

  Margo blinked. “I was supposed to be…dead?”

  Mildly, Tucker said, “As a writer always in search of the right words, I take issue with the phrase ‘supposed to be.’ Let’s just say that Sarah saw a future event that didn’t turn out quite as she expected it to.” He was looking at her steadily.

  Sarah met his gaze, her own startled.

  He smiled. “Somehow, you managed to change Margo’s destiny.”

  She wasn’t at all sure he was right, because she had an unnerving feeling that everything today had happened just as it was supposed to, despite the headline she had seen. But all she said was, “Not me. You. You pulled her away from the wardrobe.”

  “I wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t allowed me to be. And I wouldn’t have been wary, watching for anything unusual, if you hadn’t told me about your prediction.” He shrugged. “In any case, the point is that what should have happened—didn’t. At least, not the way you saw it happen. Fate was averted.”

  Somewhat uneasily, Margo said, “The afternoon isn’t over yet. Maybe we’d better leave.”

  Tucker immediately rose. “I agree. Not that I expect another bizarre accident to take place, but better to be safe. If you ladies will allow me, I’ll buy you a late lunch.”

  “And then maybe a movie?” Margo suggested as she got up. “I don’t think I want to come back here until the afternoon is definitely past.”

  Douglas Knox glanced at his watch for the third time and sighed as he returned his gaze to the impressive view of San Francisco visible through the hotel window. Dammit, where was she? It wasn’t like her to be late, especially since she’d asked him to be early.

  He was still a little surprised that she’d wanted him here an hour earlier than usual, but he certainly hadn’t complained; it was rare that they could spend more than a couple of hours together without taking too big a risk. If her husband found out, or even suspected, then Amy would suffer for it—losing her daughter at the very least.

  Douglas moved away from the window, frowning a little. He didn’t want her to lose the kid, but sneaking around like this was getting old. It took too much energy to do it, for one thing. And he wasn’t one of those guys who got off on taking risks, not when it came to his love life.

  Unfortunately, Amy’s husband was both possessive and a vengeful son of a bitch; he had punished her more than once in the ten years they’d been married. She still had the scars.

  “Wonder if I could give the bastard a nice little heart attack,” Douglas murmured aloud.

  No. Probably not. He didn’t know enough about the heart, where to push or…squeeze.

  Sitting down in a deep chair beside the desk, he held his hand out and watched dispassionately as a pen on the desk began to roll across the polished surface toward him. It picked up speed as it rolled, and when it reached the edge of the desk it seemed to launch itself through the air to land neatly in Douglas’s palm.

  A nice little party trick. He closed his fingers around the pen and swore under his breath. Amy said if he went to Vegas he could make a fortune, especially at craps. But Douglas had the superstitious notion that to misuse his ability to move things would be to lose it. And he liked having it.

  He liked being different.

  But what use was this ability of his if he couldn’t do anything meaningful with it? Oh, sure, he could pluck a pen off a desk when he was three feet away, or get a book off a shelf without getting up, or even move furniture with a lot less sweat and effort than most people expended. And he could open locked doors by just thinking them open. And once, just a week before, he had stopped a car when the idiot driver had left it parked incorrectly on a hill and it had started to roll.

  He’d probably saved at least one life that time, since the car had been rolling toward an oblivious window-shopper. The newspapers had blathered on about the “inexplicable” way the car had just stopped right in the middle of the hill like that, and he had enjoyed being the secret savior.

  “Not bad,” he murmured, turning the pen in his fingers briefly and then tossing it toward the desk. So maybe he had done something useful, after all. And maybe, if he could get close enough to see the bastard at just the right moment, maybe he could give Amy’s husband a secret little shove down a long flight of stairs…

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.

  Douglas frowned and let his gaze track slowly around the room. Nobody was there, of course. Still—something wasn’t right. He could feel it. It seemed difficult to breathe all of a sudden, as if the air had grown heavy. And he could have sworn it was darker than it had been a moment before, even though the drapes were open and two lamps burned brightly. It just somehow felt darker.

  He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes after two. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky out there. It was the middle of the day. And he hadn’t turned out a light in here. So why was it getting darker?

  “Okay, so maybe I won’t push him down the stairs,” he said aloud, hearing in his own shaky voice the worry that he might have opened up a box of troubles by even thinking about using his abilities to do something bad.

  It was getting darker. And when he tried to move, terror shot through him, because he couldn’t. He reached out desperately with his mind, but the door didn’t open. The little pen on the desk didn’t even move.

  It just got darker.

  Until he couldn’t see anything at all.

  When Amy Richards opened the door of the hotel room, it was two thirty. She was early for their usual three o’clock meeting, so she wasn’t surprised he wasn’t here yet. She was surprised to find an envelope on the desk with her name on it. From Doug.

  She was stunned and heartbroken to read that he had quit his job and moved back east, that he never wanted to see her again. She didn’t believe it even when she went to his apartment and found all his things gone. Or when she checked with his boss and found he’d quit the day before, without even giving notice. But she had to believe it eventually.

  Because she never saw him again.

  “I’d just feel much better if you went back to Alexandria and finished the buying trip,” Sarah said seriously, sitting down on the edge of Margo’s bed as she watched her friend repacking a suitcase she had unpacked only that morning. They were at Margo’s house, where Tucker had dropped them off less than an hour before.

  “It’s after three;
the afternoon is pretty much shot.” Margo was still protesting, but she was packing. Her bruised shoulder didn’t appear to be bothering her, though Sarah didn’t doubt it would ache tomorrow.

  It bothered Sarah. It bothered her a lot. If Tucker was right, that so-called accident had been meant for her, and Margo had simply gotten in the way. Sarah didn’t want her to get in the way again.

  “I know, but…well, humor me.”

  Straightening abruptly, Margo directed a sharp look at her friend. “Have you seen something else? About me?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Not about you, I swear.”

  “About you, then?” When Sarah remained silent and avoided her friend’s gaze, Margo bent once again to her packing but went on, “You and Tucker were talking pretty intently when I came out of the restroom and back to our table; you two are planning something, aren’t you?”

  Vaguely, Sarah said, “Nothing unusual about dinner plans.”

  “Is that all it was? Fancy that. When he dropped us off here, he said he wouldn’t be long, so I assumed you had plans for the evening. After you crate me back to Alexandria, that is.”

  “Ship. You need to finish the buying trip, you know that.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you need to finish? And don’t say dinner, because I’m not buying it. The story, I mean.”

  Sarah began to protest, but instead said, “Look, Margo, with everything that’s happened lately, I just don’t want to worry about a friend if I don’t have to. So, you go to Alexandria, and finish the buying trip. I’ll be fine. Tucker seems determined to…to hang around, and the police are going to find out who burned down my house—and I’m okay.”

  Frowning, Margo said bluntly, “You look like a stiff breeze would blow you away.”

  Sarah shrugged, but she wasn’t happy at being told she looked that fragile. “I admit, things have been a strain. The last six months have been a strain. Hey, maybe I’ll close the shop for a few days and get away, take that vacation you’ve been after me to take for years now. Maybe I’ll go house hunting and find another fixer-upper instead of rebuilding. But I’ll be okay, Margo.”