I tell you all of this so you can understand my frame of mind as Sally and I drove up to Xavier and Gina’s pyramid a few minutes before midnight. By no means was I expecting the spirit of Queen Hatchepsut to tell me who really killed Lauren Rogers. I wasn’t even curious to see if Xavier could actually summon the Queen’s spirit. I didn’t think for a split second that he could. Still, the whole idea of the séance intrigued me, because it made me wonder what the ulterior motive was behind it. Or was there even an ulterior motive? Maybe it didn’t matter what I believed at all. What really mattered is what Xavier believed, and quite possibly this crackpot thought he actually could turn himself into a three-thousand-year-old pharaoh.
I pulled into the gravel driveway and noticed there were several other cars already present. Apparently Xavier would have no problem tapping into lots of energy tonight. Then I noticed Detective Hu’s car in the front of the pack. Was I worried that Alana would see me at the séance and accuse me yet again of interfering with her investigation? Not one bit. Was I worried that Alana would see me arrive with the busty Sally? Absolutely. What is that saying? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Did I forget to mention that Sally had changed into an even more revealing outfit for her first séance?
The front door was wide open, so I gave a soft knock on the door frame and walked inside. In addition to Alana, Ray and Stephanie London had also been invited. Stephanie was busy reading Gina’s fortune with the Tarot cards. It looked like she had messed up again because she had just finished frantically collecting the cards and was now reshuffling them.
Alana was talking to Ray when Sally and I sat down on the sofa across from them. Alana looked briefly at me, then panned her eyes over to Sally’s ample bosom, then back to me. She gave me what was perhaps the most complex smile I’ve ever received. All at once it managed to say, “I think you’re a raging asshole, and I’m going to thoroughly enjoy killing both you and the woman, slowly and painfully.”
“Well hello there, Poe, Sally,” Ray London said. What a nice guy this man was.
“Hello, Ray,” Sally and I said in complete unison. I felt like a moron. Apparently Alana thought I was a moron, too, because she was doing her best not to burst out laughing.
“Is this your first séance, guys?” Ray asked.
“It certainly is,” Sally replied. “I can’t wait for it to get started.”
“Where’s Xavier?” I asked.
“He’s upstairs preparing himself,” Gina said, as she and Stephanie walked over to join us. “He’ll be down when he’s ready.”
“When will that be, Gina?” Alana asked.
“Hopefully not too long, but you never can tell with Xavier.”
Flash forward to two a.m. The last two hours had passed with unbearable slowness. I had let Stephanie read my fortune two more times. Much to Alana’s delight, I had drawn the Death Card both times. Meanwhile, Sally and Ray were locked in a nonstop discussion about the existence of fairies. Stephanie finally left me alone and went back to try Gina’s fortune once more. I decided to try to break the tension between Alana and me.
“How did you find out about the séance?” I asked.
“Gina called me. Told me they were going to try to find out who really killed Lauren.”
“But you already think you’ve got the right guy, so why show up?” I immediately regretted asking this, for I knew it would come out as an accusation, which I did not want it to. My tone was harsh and too biting. I immediately saw hurt in her eyes. Man, this chick had expressive eyes.
“I’m sorry. I appreciate you keeping an open mind,” I said. But was she really keeping an open mind about either Foxx’s innocence or Bernard’s death? She didn’t seem to think Bernard’s death could have been anything but an accident. Did she still feel that way? Had she always felt that way? Maybe she was keeping her thoughts close to her chest so as not to get my hopes up. But the man had been accused of having an affair with the murder victim and then he shows up dead. Coincidence? Maybe, but highly unlikely, in my book.
All of a sudden Gina stopped talking and looked up as if she had heard a booming voice from Heaven. I heard nothing. Had she and Xavier agreed on a prearranged time for her to receive his telepathic message? Probably. Let the show begin.
“He’s ready for us,” she said. “Please follow me to the chamber.”
Chamber, I thought. What chamber?
Gina led us down a long narrow hallway that was only the width of a man’s broad shoulders. The hallway was lit by several torches mounted on the wall, but the hallway was so narrow that we had to turn sideways whenever we walked past one. I saw thick spider webs attached to a few of the torch mountings. Whether they were the real things or just placed their for the spookiness factor I’ll never know. For a split second I felt like Indiana Jones. There were no windows or doors to be seen. But at the end of the hallway was a giant Egyptian seal. The seal had a life-size carving of a man with the head of a cat. Gina pushed against the cat’s head, and the door pivoted open. We all entered a small, circular chamber.
My guess was that we were somewhere on the middle level of the pyramid. I had seen dozens of shows on the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In that pyramid, there is a long, windowless hallway that leads to the burial chamber. Xavier seemed to have deliberately duplicated that hallway to lead people to his séance chamber. I imagine it was designed to put people in the proper mood to talk to the dead.
The chamber was dark, with only a single candle throwing flickering light on the walls, revealing intricately carved hieroglyphics from floor to ceiling. The air was stale, and I had trouble breathing. Maybe the trick was to get everyone lightheaded so they would be more susceptible to trickery.
You want to know what was running through my head at this exact moment? It wasn’t “wow, this is really cool” or “wow, this is really spooky.” It was a question and a practical one: How do you find a contractor to build all this stuff? I guess that’s the architect in me.
A round table sat low in the center of the room. Seven plush pillows were spread around the table. Xavier was already sitting down. His eyes were closed, and he was swaying slightly back and forth as he mumbled a chant that I could not make out. Gina motioned for us to sit down and hold hands. Somehow I ended up between Alana and Sally.
“Who seeks Queen Hatchepsut?” Xavier asked, still swaying back and forth.
“We do,” Gina replied.
“What do you ask of her?” Xavier asked, his voice growing louder.
“We want to know who killed Lauren Rogers,” Gina said.
Xavier began to violently shake. He grabbed hold of the table to steady himself but all he managed to do was knock the candle over and throw the entire room into absolute darkness. I had to admit, Xavier and Gina certainly had their act down to a science. I half expected a stiff wind to blow through the room, but considering there weren’t any windows, I didn’t think there was much chance of that.
Then I heard a voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was the high-pitched screechy voice of an old woman doing her best imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West. Both Alana and Sally squeezed my hands at the exact same moment. Although I couldn’t see who was talking, it came from the direction of Xavier.
“Who seeks Queen Hatchepsut?” the shrill voice asked.
“We do,” Gina replied. At least I could recognize her voice.
“What do you ask of her?” the voice asked.
“We want to know who killed Lauren Rogers,” Gina said.
There was a pause of several seconds. Then the most pleasant-sounding, sophisticated voice came forth.
“Why do you ask that which you already know?” the voice asked.
It was clearly coming from the direction of Xavier. But the voice was distinctly female, and it didn’t possess one single trait of Xavier’s. He was clearly gifted in imitating the voices of others.
“Why was Lauren killed?” Gina asked.
“Hate,” the voice
said. “Jealousy.” The voice was growing more distressed.
“Hate. Jealousy.”
“Who killed Lauren Rogers?” Gina demanded.
Then Queen Hatchepsut said something that will stay with me till the day I die.
“Five beers,” the sophisticated voice proclaimed. “Five beers did this to me.”
The table shook some more. Then I heard Xavier collapse.
“Xavier!” Gina cried. You could hear her trying to work her way around the table in the dark, bumping into people as she went.
Ray lit a cigarette lighter and then relit the fallen candle on the tabletop. I looked over at Xavier. He was unconscious, or at least pretending to be.
Alana looked me dead in the eye.
“Who’s Five Beers?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You’re lying. Your left eye twitched again.”
“No, I’m not.”
Gina kindly asked us all to leave to give Xavier time to recuperate. It was my pleasure. The whole experience had given me the creeps. Yes, Xavier could have heard of the nickname from Lauren. But he supposedly hadn’t talked to Lauren in years. And isn’t that a fairly obscure thing to mention to a guy? “Hi, Xavier, I know we haven’t spoken in years. But I just wanted to tell you that my new boyfriend’s nickname is Five Beers.” I seriously doubted that even Lauren had heard the name before. Foxx absolutely hated it. I couldn’t imagine him telling Lauren or anyone else about it.
We all gathered outside by the cars. Sally was talking to Ray and Stephanie about the shrill old woman’s voice. Gina told her it was the voice of Queen Hatchepsut’s high priestess. You apparently had to go through the high priestess before you could talk to Hatchepsut.
I was staring up at the moon when Alana approached me.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You looked pretty shaken in there. In fact, you still do.”
“I’m fine, really.”
“It wasn’t what you were expecting, was it?”
I turned to her in anger. “No, detective, it wasn’t. Of course I’ve never been to a séance before, so I can’t say I really knew what to expect. But I certainly wasn’t expecting the Queen of Egypt to know a nickname that only a few people in the entire world know about.”
“So you had heard the name before,” she said.
“Five Beers is a nickname of Foxx’s. I don’t know how the hell Xavier would have known that, though. Now I’ve told you the truth, so you can’t accuse me of withholding evidence again.”
“Maybe Lauren told him,” Alana suggested.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think so.”
I walked away from her, not knowing how I should be feeling.
CHAPTER 24
T Land
Sally and I didn’t speak for the entire drive back to her tree house. She seemed shaken by the whole experience, and I certainly wasn’t feeling much better. I couldn’t get the voice out of my head shouting “Five Beers.”
I pulled into William’s driveway or maybe I should say his lawyer’s driveway. I thought about honking the horn just to wake the bastard up. Sally didn’t make any moves to get out of the car.
“Would you like to come inside for a little while?” she asked.
“Inside the tree house?”
“Yeah.”
My initial instinct was to say no. I was still pretty shaken by the séance, not to mention the fact that it had been an extremely long day (by now it was four a.m.) and I was dead tired. But if there was one thing I knew, it was that Sally had done a hell of a job in making me feel better today. I felt comfortable around her. Maybe it was because I wasn’t trying to impress her. Maybe she just had a way of making people feel at ease. I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
I was also somewhat intrigued by the prospect of seeing the inside of William’s tree house without having William there to gush all over it. But it was disappointing to say the least. I guess I was expecting to see something somewhat lavish. Okay, a lot more lavish. Something that would attract a young, beautiful woman like Sally to William. But there was nothing of the sort.
After spending the most of the day with her, I was more confused than ever before as to why she had moved in with William. You’re probably asking yourself why I was so obsessed with their relationship. I really don’t know, but I was.
Two single mattresses had been pressed together and were pushed against one wall. The other wall had two long shelves attached to it, which were covered by a handful of books and magazines, a batteryoperated fan, and, unbelievably, a well-stocked mini bar. I’m not quite sure I would want to be drinking in a tree house. But to each his own.
Sally offered me the only chair, a small, rickety wooden number that I was sure would fall apart under my weight. I initially declined, but she insisted. So I sat down. The chair miraculously didn’t break.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Sure, why not?” I said.
Sally walked over to the mini bar and removed two small bottles of vodka. She poured them into two red plastic cups and handed me one. I sipped the vodka. It tasted good. Sally plopped down on the floor in front of me. My height advantage gave me a superb view of her breasts. I started to sweat.
“Did you ever wonder how William and I met?” she asked.
“Not really,” I lied, taking another sip of vodka. I wanted to gulp it down and ask for another but didn’t want to be a rude tree house guest.
“Would you like to know?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I was dancing in Waikiki and he saw me one night.”
“Hula dancing?”
“No, exotic.”
“Oh.”
I changed my mind and gulped the vodka down. Sally went back to the mini bar without me asking and got me another small bottle. I opened the top and poured it all into my cup.
“William’s so eccentric,” she said. “Never a dull moment with him. But living in a tree house really sucks.”
“I imagine it can be somewhat…claustrophobic.”
“It was fun at first. I was just so bored in Waikiki. Doing the same old thing night after night.”
“Are you saying it’s not fun being around him anymore?” I asked.
“It’s okay. But he’s a little old for me. Don’t you think?”
It would have been so easy for me to agree with her, not to mention come up with a dozen other reasons why she should be with me and not William. But I’ve never been one of those people who try to look good by making others look bad. Now don’t start thinking I’m this honorable man because I’m not. I believe in the universal law of karma, and I have no intention of giving the universe any more reason to beat up on me than it already does.
“I don’t think age really matters, Sally. Do you?”
But Sally didn’t answer me. She was done talking. Instead, she pulled her shirt off, revealing the two most perfect breasts I had ever seen. And that includes in magazines. Were they real? you might ask. I’ll tell you what I told Foxx later that week: I couldn’t have cared less.
“Do you like?” she asked.
“Like what?” It’s amazing how the sight of boobies will make a normally rational and intelligent man turn completely and utterly idiotic.
“What you see, silly.”
“I’m sorry. I’m still in a state of shock right now.” I swallowed the rest of my second cup of vodka.
“All the blood flowing to the wrong head?” she asked
“Or the right head, depending on how you look at it.”
I know. It was a lame response. But that’s what was said, and I want to be as truthful as possible in the retelling of this tale. My brain was being taken hostage by a mix of exhaustion, vodka, and lust. The next thing that happened was that Sally removed her shorts to reveal a white, cotton thong. I feel like one of those guys writing to Penthouse. “Dear Penthouse Forum, you’re
not going to believe this but…”
The battery-operated fan was blowing her hair. She looked like something straight out of a teenage fantasy film. I started to sweat even more.
I thought of Alana. It was just last night that we were wrestling on the sand. Why did I feel so guilty? She and I weren’t in any kind of committed relationship. It was just this morning that she had blown me off completely. What did I have to feel guilty about? If I wanted to have hot sex with an exotic dancer in a tree house, I should be able to. Isn’t that my constitutional right as an American man?
Sally, still wearing the cotton thong, started to give me a lap dance. This had been one hell of a night. I was in T Land. That much was sure.
Sally unzipped my pants and then pulled them down my legs. I lifted myself slightly off the wooden chair to help her. She began gently massaging my penis. Then she took me in her mouth. She was so skillful that I began to wonder just how many of these she had given. It was so amazing that I grabbed hold of a nearby table to steady myself. My legs began to shake and Sally must have realized I was about to finish. She began to stroke me quickly, and I came.
“I’ll let you rest a few minutes. Then we’re going again. This time I want you inside me,” she said.
“A few minutes? I’m thirty-five not eighteen.” There’s nothing like high expectations to put the pressure on. But then Sally pulled her white thong aside and began rubbing herself and moaning with pleasure. I was ready again. Sally looked down and saw me growing.
“I didn’t think there would be a problem,” she said.
She reached over to a small cabinet beside the bed and pulled open the top drawer. She removed a condom and placed it on me. We climbed onto the single mattress, and Sally opened herself to me. I turned her around and entered her from behind. I grabbed her by her hips and tried to push myself as deeply into her as I possibly could. She arched her back and her long hair fanned out across her. Sally continued to rub herself and after several minutes I felt her orgasm. Her moaning was such a turn on that I came again. We both collapsed on the mattress, and I spent several minutes just trying to catch my breath and staring at the ceiling of the tree house.
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