From Herring to Eternity

by Delia Rosen

  That thought brought back the taste of the banana I’d eaten. I’d put him on the list.

  I wondered if the witches could help. Or are psychics the only cuckoo bloodhounds who chase killers using objects like a shoe or a Kleenex?

  That’s not fair, I told myself. Neither was another homicide involving my deli. Maybe it was time to draw some kind of imaginary line in the karmic sand. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.

  It wasn’t until after lunch that I’d managed to talk to all the staff about who they could recall having seen around Lippy yesterday.

  “Didn’t we already do this?” A.J. complained. “I told Detective Daniels everything I could remember.”

  “Remember harder” was all I had to say.

  I didn’t tell her or anyone else the latest. I didn’t need more gawkers coming to a murder site the way they did when my bread delivery guy was butchered out back—or, worse, shunning the place because they were afraid of being poisoned.

  With some arm and brain twisting, A.J., Raylene, Luke, Thom, and I came up with seven counter names. In addition to Robert Barron, we had mail carrier Nicolette Hopkins, bus driver Jackie and her auto mechanic girlfriend, Leigh—Thom was as uncomfortable with them holding hands as she was with women who had body parts tattooed on their faces—bank teller Edgar Ward, advertising executive Ron Plummer, who handled our very modest account, and the CEO of Cotton Saint Tunes, whose name was Fly Saucer. Today he was on his iPad, but Mr. Saucer usually played his iPod too loud and had to be asked to turn it down. It was my belief that he did that on purpose because he liked Raylene. He made it a kind of gag to write his number on things for her: a napkin, a place mat, her apron, his business card. In his defense, the lady was attractive and had zero musical ability; a music business exec could be sure she wasn’t trying to get ahead by dating him. And, I guess, at some point, even some men get tired of a succession of one-nighters.

  Some. Not all. Not most. But maybe Fly was one of them.

  Unfortunately for Fly, she already had a beau: FM talk show host Michael Hunn, who I had heard but never met. I don’t think Raylene was trying to keep him from us, it’s just that his waking hours coincided with our sleep time. I lived in fear of the day my ace server opted to set her clock by his.

  I added the staff to the list, myself included, not because I thought any of us would have poisoned Lippy, but I knew that if Grant asked—and he would—I’d be especially unhappy with him. I e-mailed the list to him so he wouldn’t have to stop by. It wasn’t just a courtesy; I wasn’t entirely sure he had accepted the breakup and I didn’t want to do anything that would allow him an opening, like a late in the day drive-by that included the phrase, “I haven’t eaten yet—wanna grab something?”

  Some days fly by, others drag; this one wriggled. I was fine one moment, distracted the next—by Lippy’s death, by the still-evolving plan to turn my basement into a Wiccan temple, by customers who seemed unusually needy, and by snarling inside at Grant and Robert “You People” Barron. I knew they were just convenient targets for my general frustration, but I didn’t care. They deserved it.

  I was in my car and headed home at dusk on Nolensville Road when a motorcycle passed me, too fast and too close. Swinging in front of me, the back tire spit a cloud of dirt and pebbles at my windshield. Through the tawny haze, I saw it was a Yamaha, not a Harley, so I didn’t feel my life was in danger as I jammed on the gas and headed after it. The biker, too, was a case of transference, but once again I didn’t care. I needed to race something out of me and the Wild One was it.

  The rider turned onto Edmondson, which happened to be the way I was going. We were both doing fifty as we passed Wentworth Caldwell Senior Park. The bike stayed close to the shoulder, spitting more sand and gravel back at me, so I was forced to keep my distance. It was a clever tactic, but doomed; they’d be pulling over somewhere, and I’d be pulling up behind them with a passenger’s seat tire iron and glove compartment can of mace in my hands. A single lady, and a New Yorker, I never left home without protection.

  God was with me as the bike turned onto Bonerwood. I knew the road, I knew the dips, I knew the turns. I knew when I could pull to the left and avoid the barrage. I closed the gap from three car lengths to one. My house was coming up on the left, but I was going to . . .

  . . . pull right into the driveway, just after the Yamaha.

  I was braking while the driver—a hefty woman with a leather jacket, leather pants, and long gray hair—was just pulling off her helmet.

  “That was exhilarating!” she said, turning toward me as I got out. “I’m Sally Biglake.”

  “You’re also a reckless driver,” I said.

  “Always,” she agreed. “Either the gods are with you or they are not. If they are not, you can just as easily die walking to the mailbox as you can speeding on a motorcycle.”

  “I’m not sure statistics would bear you out,” I said.

  “They never do, which is why I ignore them,” she said. “What are the chances that a Wiccan, a Native American, and a woman have anything approaching ‘fair prospects’ in this world?”

  Her logic may have been as crooked as Bernie Madoff”s books, but her conclusion was on target. And, though I should have expected it, I was still surprised as I approached her and saw, tattooed on her neck, an extra set of ears, one on each side.

  “Hi.” She offered her hand.

  It was big and powerful, like her features. She stood about five-foot-ten, with a big open face, wide brown eyes, and a large smile that caused her full cheeks to double in size outward. I put her at about fifty, though that might be high. Her dark skin, especially around the eyes, was deeply wrinkled from the sun, making her look healthy but older.

  “It isn’t the sun,” she said.

  That caused me to start. “What isn’t?”

  “You were looking at my eyes,” she said. “Most people assume they’re wrinkled because I’m out in the sun a lot. I’m not. I’m out in the moon a lot, which is what does it. Have you ever tried reading ritual texts by lunar light?”

  “Not since I was a Brownie,” I said.

  “Squinting is required. A lot of it. Then there’s the smoke from the ceremonial fires. That isn’t very kind, either.”

  “I work the grill sometimes,” I said. “I understand.”

  “Sisters.” She smiled.

  I wasn’t quite ready to go there, though I had to admit she had a kind of self-effacing charm her colleagues lacked.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “I wasn’t expecting you until midnight.”

  “I told you that’s the best time to communicate with spirits,” Sally said. “There’s prep work.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket, popped a Marlboro in her mouth.

  “If you’re going to smoke—,” I began.

  “Outside, I know. Actually, it’s only partly because I like it. I came early to walk the property, see what the smoke reveals.”

  She struck a wooden match on a stone set in her bracelet. “Lapis lazuli,” she said, holding the blue stone toward me. “The gemstone wakens the third eye.”

  “Especially if you strike a match on it,” I suggested.

  “You’re catching on.” She winked.

  I wasn’t, but that, too, made a kind of crooked sense. She lit the cigarette. Her face looked a devilish red in the glow. Her eyes snapped to mine as if she knew what I was thinking—again. She just smiled around the cigarette.

  “What does the smoke reveal?” I asked—partly to end the creepy silence.

  “Shapes,” she said. “I’ll be walking around for several hours. I want to see if any of the dead have risen. You haven’t heard or seen anything unusual, have you?”

  “Not me, but my cats were hiding under the bed this morning.”

  “That’s not a spirit presence,” she said. “If it were, they would seek high ground, like a shelf or dresser. Why get closer to where they’re interred?”

  Again—logic, ho
wever I wanted to argue against it.

  “Will you need a light or anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head and held up the glowing tip of the cigarette. “This is all I require. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  I left her to her business and went inside to feed the cats and make some split pea soup and ham. I was in the mood for pig and that was something I didn’t get a lot of at the deli.

  I could see my small backyard from the kitchen window, and it was strange to watch the little red glow moving through the dark like an evil Tinker Bell. The cigarette didn’t remain in her mouth; it moved way up, down, sideways, trailing a hint of smoke. Then it would stop as she inhaled before moving around again.

  I did some bookkeeping in the kitchen after dinner, then answered e-mails on my laptop. I didn’t stay in touch with a lot of old acquaintances from New York, but those I did, I was pretty diligent about. I followed that with a little research. Around nine-thirty, Sally rapped on the door and caused me to start. She hadn’t found any ghosts yet, but she did want to use the bathroom. She left a lighted cigarette on the concrete stoop, but she might just as well have brought it in from the way her jacket and hair smelled. The cats ran from us as I showed her the way. When I came back to the kitchen, they were up on the counter, beside the sink—the highest spot they could jump. That was a little freaky.

  I fell asleep in the den watching the news and was awakened by the sound of the back door opening and Sally calling in.

  “Ms. Katz? We’re all here—may we come in?”

  “Yes, of course!” I shouted. “But call me Gwen.”

  I ran back, rubbing the remnants of sleep from my eyes, as Mad and Ginnifer came in with Sally and I was introduced to a fourth member of whom I had known nothing. She was a novice witch, a gorgeous young African woman from Kenya named Dalila Odinga. She was dressed in a black cotton cloak that reached to her ankles. She did not have any tattoos that I could see, but she wore two silver snake bracelets and a matching necklace.

  “She practices Damballah voodoo and is new to America,” Sally said. “She is a stockbroker.”

  “I used to be in finance, on Wall Street,” I said. I did not crack-wise about “voodoo economics” but asked in earnest, “Do the spirits guide your investments?”

  Dalila looked at me strangely. “Wouldn’t that be rather reckless? No, I use the standard indicators, though my specialty is capitalizing on the weekend effect. I do my most profitable buying on Mondays when stocks open lower.”

  “Sound approach,” I said, feeling a little silly. I looked at Sally. “So, how did it go out there?”

  “Very well,” she said. “I encountered only one spirit—and she was not from the campsite.”

  “She? Who was it?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” Sally said. “She was confused, as many new spirits are. She said she was a teepee.”

  Chapter 8

  I excused myself and went to the den. It had to be a coincidence. Or a joke. Or something other than what I was thinking.

  I went to where I’d left my cell phone to charge. There was a call from Grant Daniels—from earlier in the evening.

  “Nash, call me,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

  I took the phone into the bedroom and closed the door. I called.

  “Did something happen to Tippi Montgomery?” I blurted when he answered.

  “She’s dead,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “I was—it was a dream,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t hear your call.”

  “Well then, you’re psychic,” he said. “A witness saw Tippi pulled into the parking lot of the Kroger on Monroe around one-fifteen. She was eating pastries, apparently having a cry. She drove off about a half-hour later. The NPD found her dead in her car at two-fifteen on Jefferson. The car just stopped in the westbound lane. They also found a coffee cup from Murray’s and a half-eaten cruller.”

  “Poor girl,” I said. The sentiment sounded trite, but I meant it. She’d died because she was devoted to her brother. After that sunk in, I replayed what Grant had said: she’d been eating crullers from my deli. “Aw, crap.”

  Grant knew my moods. “Yeah,” he said. “I hate to do it, Nash, but—”

  “You need my crullers, too.”

  “And coffeepot. Just in case.”

  “I drank from that, too, Grant. All day.”

  “I understand,” he said. “But if the ME finds that she was poisoned—”

  “Fine. Hey, maybe the killer has it in for me or the deli, not the Montgomery family,” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Grant said. “Between us, whoever did this took Lippy’s belongings that Tippi picked up from the coroner. We think he or she must have been in the car when Tippi pulled into Kroger and got out before she got to Jefferson, since someone would have seen the individual get out after that. There’s not a lot of surveillance along the route she took.”

  “Do you think someone scoped out the area first?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily. The security cameras aren’t exactly difficult to spot,” Grant said. “That’s part of the deterrence factor. And who would have known which way she was going? No, the killer probably just asked her to pull over. If she was poisoned, maybe she was already feeling faint.”

  “What about her cell phone?”

  “The killer left it. The last call made to her from this area was from me.”

  That was discreet of him: “from this area.” No doubt she had calls from clients back in Atlanta.

  “Grant, do you know what she did for a living?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said solemnly. “She had an arrest record in Los Angeles and Atlanta.”

  “Do you think—could she have picked someone up?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. “We’re looking into that.”

  In which case, the person may not have called her, I thought. She would have had a web presence of some kind.

  “Do you need to get into the deli now?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow morning is okay, as long as you get there before anyone touches anything.”

  I told him I’d take care of it.

  “Nash, was there a reason other than takeout that Tippi stopped by the deli?”

  “She asked about the trumpet case,” I said. “Told me it was special. I also think she wanted to connect to him somehow, visit the last place he’d been.”

  “I assume she didn’t say anything about being concerned for her safety?”

  “Not a word,” I said. “She didn’t seem anxious.”

  Sally called my name from the kitchen.

  “Who’s that?” Grant asked.

  “I have guests.”

  “I thought you said you were napping?”

  “I was,” I said. “It’s a little bit of a magilleh—can we talk about it some other time?”

  “Sure,” he said a little frostily. “Thanks for your help. I guess Anita Fong Chan will be there bright and early.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He hung up. So did I. I’m not sure who was faster on the draw.

  I trudged back to the kitchen. The women had removed various items from their bags: candles, chalk, several big books, and some kind of deep finger bowl. I hoped it was not for blood. Or fingers.

  “We should get started,” Sally said.

  “Of course,” I replied. I looked at her. “You really heard someone say she was a teepee?”

  “That’s what it sounded like, though you can never be sure,” Sally said. “The voices ride the wind and come into the smoke. The reception is not ideal.”

  “Do you ever—I mean—”

  “Imagine things? Is it live or is it Memorex?” She laughed. “Everything is real, even if you imagine it. The question is, is it truth?”

  That answer wasn’t among the more helpful ones I’d ever received, but it was all I was going to get.

  I led the way to the basement, which was down a flight of uncertain wooden ste
ps to a hollow wooden door with a wobbly brass knob. The den beyond was a long, impersonal rectangle with cheap carpet and equally cheap wood paneling that was warping from the wall. It was furnished with secondhand everything, including flea market landscapes and mismatched lamps. I had added two of my childhood paint-by-number oils of little Dutch children that had been in a trunk. The whole point of the room was the pool table in the middle. My father was a big player.

  “Nice,” Sally said.

  “You’re kind.”

  Sally grinned. “Where I live? This is ‘nice.’”

  I felt like I’d been “served,” a little. I didn’t come into contact with a lot of openly Native Americans back in Manhattan—which is kind of ironic, if you think about it.

  “We’re going to perform a consecration ceremony that combines the essence of Wiccan, Cherokee, Damballa, and Viking services,” she said.

  “Ah, multidenominational,” I remarked nervously.

  I had intended it as a joke. Apparently, it wasn’t. Sally nodded gravely in accord as she scouted for a relatively worn-out spot in the carpet. Opening a door on the opposite side of the basement, she saw the boiler room, sniffed the metallic closeness of the place, tugged on the string light under a single bulb, then said that would be a perfect place. It was a small area with a concrete floor, bare cinder-block walls, an occasionally noisy old oil burner, and a cedar closet the previous owner had built. I used it to store unopened boxes of clothes and mementoes. Like most big-city dwellers, I’d lived a possession-light life in New York and hadn’t accumulated much down here. I almost envied the Wiccans. They seemed to have few needs in order to produce what were to them big gains.

  Leaving the single bulb on, Sally drew a chalk circle on the floor and a five-sided star inside of it. It was a pentangle, not a Star of David, though I wondered what kind of spirit that would invoke; probably my tante Rose complaining about her girdle or my feder Sol looking for his false teeth.

  The bowl was placed in the center of the star and the women gathered around the circle on their knees, a candle in front of each. I was not invited to join but stood to the side and was ignored. Which was fine with me; the room was scary enough with all its dark, secretive crannies that had never seen a flashlight. Now that the candles threw more writhing shadows into the mix, I was happy to be standing in the open doorway.