Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

by Steve Hockensmith

“Hey—what do you think of the book?” Clarice said when she finally came out of the bathroom two days (or so it seemed) after going in.

  “I’ve read other tarot guides, but I think this one’s my favorite,” Marsha said. “Whoever wrote it is really deep but fun, too.”

  Clarice shot me a Look again. I couldn’t blame her for it this time.

  There was a round of good nights, then Clarice went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  “Bathroom’s all yours,” I said to Marsha. “There’s an unopened toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.”

  Marsha sat up straight to stare at me over the back of the couch.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  I was starting toward the stairs to the first floor.

  “Oh, I’ll be back in a minute. I just have to prep the store for tomorrow.”

  “Prep the store?”

  “You know. Rev up the psychic vibrations, feed the spirit animals, warm up the karma. Back in a jiff!”

  I flashed Marsha a smile as I went down the stairs. It lasted about four steps.

  As soon as Marsha couldn’t see me, the smile was gone.

  I slowed down, too. I was descending into near-total darkness, and I didn’t intend to turn on the lights.

  Lights help you see where you’re going, sure.

  They also help other people see you.

  When I reached the first floor, I felt my way along the wall until I saw a dim gray glow up ahead: moonlight streaming through the windows in the office. I headed toward it.

  Ceecee had unlocked the office’s back door when she’d let herself out. I relocked it, then looked out at the small parking lot behind the White Magic Five and Dime. All I saw was the ancient, sputtering Honda Civic I’d bought Marsha and the boxy black Cadillac my mother had left me. To Barbra, the Caddy had probably looked classy. To me, it always looked like it was waiting for a funeral procession.

  Who knows? Maybe it was.

  I stepped back into the blackness and made my way to the front of the store. When I reached it, I double-checked the lock on the door, then peered out at metropolitan Berdache, Arizona.

  Times Square it was not. Hell, Sedona it was not, though it tried. The little town’s tourist traps—a sprinkling of vortex-themed tchotchke shops and restaurants and motels along Furnier Avenue—were all lightless, lifeless. Every so often a car or pickup truck would cruise past, but that was it for nightlife.

  I scanned the quiet streets. It wasn’t just Bill Riggs’s Camaro I was looking for.

  From my late, unlamented mother I had inherited $45,000 and a store and a Cadillac and a sister and a lot of enemies.

  Customers who’d been scammed. Partners who’d been cheated. Con artists who didn’t like the competition. I could expect any of them to drop in anytime.

  In fact, some already had. A family of con artists/grifters called the Grandis had taken me and Clarice for a little ride not that long ago. It was only by a miracle that we’d managed to ride back. It was not a ride I wanted to repeat.

  A block away, at the entrance to an alley, I spotted an orange pinprick. A tiny light that fell and faded, then rose and brightened, fell and faded, then rose and brightened.

  The glowing tip of a cigarette.

  I watched it until it finally flew in an arc like a shooting star and disappeared. Whoever was out there smoking had flicked it away.

  I waited to see if there would be a little flicker from a lighter, then another pinprick.

  All I saw were shadows.

  I went upstairs. I said good night to Marsha. I waited for her to fall asleep. Then I gathered up my blankets and pillow and went back downstairs.

  Here’s what staying in Berdache had got me: a night lying on a hardwood floor listening for a breakin, cell phone on one side of me, BB gun on the other, while my sister and a hapless, helpless friend I hardly knew slept soundly and safely upstairs.

  For this, I thought, I gave up a telemarketing job I could do in my sleep and a one-bedroom apartment in the Chicago suburbs and every night quiet and safe and alone?

  I smiled to myself.

  “You bet,” I said.

  There you are again, gazing off at the horizon with your giant carrots by your side. You’ve sent your ships to sea, and soon they’ll be returning with exotic treasures from distant lands. You’ve done well so far. Poor people don’t get to go around with orange juicers on their heads and bed sheets wrapped around their waists. But there’s no guarantee your efforts will pay off so well every time. All the wiles in the world won’t do much good against a typhoon.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I woke up alive, which is always my preference. No one had broken in to kill us in the night. I hate mornings, so it’s always nice to have something to be grateful for come 7 am.

  It was the sound of Clarice stomping down the stairs that had awakened me. Or at least I assumed it was Clarice. It could have been a Clydesdale.

  “You awake?” the Clydesdale asked when it reached the bottom of the staircase.

  “Suhh,” I said.

  “How was the floor? Comfy?”

  “Guhh.”

  “Maybe it’s time we finally got an alarm system.”

  “Luhh.”

  “Barbra always said they’re a scam, but I don’t know. Seems like it’d be worth the money.”

  “Juhh.”

  “Well, nice talking to you. Ceecee and I are going down to Sedona after school, so I probably won’t be home till late.”

  “Puhh.”

  “Oh, and tell Mr. Castellanos I said hi when you get together for your hot date at the Olive Garden tonight.”

  “Grrrrruh.”

  “Bye!”

  “Buhh.”

  Clarice clomped off, unlocked the back door, and left.

  I lay there a moment, listening for more footsteps upstairs. I didn’t hear any.

  Somehow Marsha had managed to sleep through the Clydesdale’s departure. Or she was lying on the couch just like I was lying on the floor—awake but hating it.

  “Cuhh-fuhh,” my brain said.

  Coffee.

  I started to push myself up. It wasn’t easy. My legs were aching, my back sore, my neck stiff.

  An alarm system, huh? I thought as I hobbled off toward the coffee maker in the office. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea…

  Once I’d caffeinated myself, I went upstairs to get dressed.

  For the last fifteen years I’d rocked the I Don’t Give a Crap look: T-shirts and jeans and Chuck Taylors and short fifteen-dollar haircuts. But that wouldn’t do for the proprietor of the White Magic Five and Dime.

  I put on a purple dress with a floor-sweeping skirt, black boots, hoop earrings, and a necklace with a silver pendant shaped like a rose. I topped it all off with rings on every other finger and a touch of actual, honest-to-god makeup just to show that I did give a crap—though there was a bit of misdirection as to what I gave it about.

  Put it all in a plastic bag and the label you could slap on it would be Fortuneteller.

  For me, every day was Halloween.

  Marsha slept through my trick-or-treating prep. She’d been lonely and scared out at the remote motel I’d been putting her up at while she (hopefully) made her separation from Bill permanent. This was probably the deepest, most restful sleep she’d had in two weeks.

  Infinite Roads to Knowing lay splayed out on the floor beside the couch, as if Marsha had put it down intending to pick it right back up again the second her eyes were open. I was tempted to snag it and take it with me.

  The clothes and jewelry and makeup were only part of my costume; knowledge of the tarot was the rest. I was getting better at faking it. In fact, there were times I couldn’t tell if I was faking at all. But I needed to know more…and to my surprise, I wanted to know more.

  Still, I left the book where it was. There were other tarot guides downstairs in the store—ones not written by con women and their teenage apprenti
ces. Why was I reading Infinite Roads to Knowing over and over anyway?

  I headed down to the White Magic Five and Dime, unlocked the front door, turned on the open sign, and positioned myself behind the display case.

  Then I took out a fresh copy of Infinite Roads to Knowing and started reading.

  Would-be customers came and went.

  A tourist with a French accent bought a package of incense sticks. A tourist with a Southern accent took a picture of Infinite Roads to Knowing with her phone, presumably so she could order it from Amazon later. A teenage tourist tried to steal a bag of rune stones. (“I think something just fell into one of your pockets,” I whispered to her after her parents announced it was time to leave. “Why don’t you make sure they’re empty before you go.”)

  Then the door opened, and a woman marched in with such steely determination and distrust on her face there was but one thing for me to think.

  Bingo.

  “I’ve come for my freebie,” she announced.

  “You’re a returning customer?”

  She nodded brusquely.

  I believed her.

  It was obvious what kind of customer she’d been. The kind that had seen through my mother’s BS.

  “Welcome back,” I said. I stretched an arm out toward the hallway behind me. “You remember where to go?”

  “I remember,” the woman said.

  While she went striding toward the dark little nook where I did readings, I went to the front door, locked it, and flipped around the sign that said back in 15 minutes. When Clarice was there I didn’t have to close up while I read, but most days I was on my own. I knew I was losing business because of that, but I didn’t particularly care. The people I really wanted to see would come back.

  Like the woman I found sitting across from me at the reading table. She was sixty-ish, stout-ish, swarthy-ish. There was nothing -ish about her expression, though.

  She already hated me, which wasn’t fair. Get to know me, then hate me—that’s the way it ought to work.

  “I’m Alanis.”

  I held out my hand. The woman took it by the fingers and shook it limply for all of second.

  She didn’t introduce herself.

  “Your mom used to run this place, am I right?” she said instead.

  “That’s right.”

  The woman looked like she regretted even the flaccid, unfriendly handshake she’d given me.

  I nodded at the tarot deck sitting on the table.

  “Why don’t you shuffle,” I said, “while thinking about what you’d like to ask the cards.”

  “I know how it works. And I know what I want to ask.”

  The woman snatched up the cards and shuffled them roughly.

  “Here’s the question,” she said. She never looked down at the cards in her hands; her eyes were locked on mine. “Am I looking at a con artist?”

  She slapped the cards back on the table.

  For a second I wondered if I should act shocked. Look hurt. Feign taking offense.

  I decided against it. The woman suspected I was a phony. Playacting would simply confirm it.

  And it wasn’t an unreasonable question. I’d asked it myself a thousand times—sometimes even while staring in the mirror.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see what the cards say.”

  I took three cards and placed them facedown in a row between us.

  “Just three cards?” the woman said.

  “It’s a straightforward question, so we don’t need a lot of input,” I said. “And anyway—this reading’s a freebie, right?”

  I smiled.

  The woman scoffed.

  I tapped the card in the middle of the row of three.

  “The present.”

  I moved my hand to the left and tapped again.

  “The past.”

  I moved my hand to the right and tapped the card on the opposite end of the row.

  “The future.”

  I went back to the other end and turned the card over.

  “The Two of Wands.”

  “I know what it is,” the woman said.

  “Good. Then maybe you know what it means?”

  “Sure. Wands is the suit of fire. It’s all about…well…”

  For the first time, the woman looked unsure of herself.

  “Doing things,” she said. “Taking action and…stuff. That guy’s looking for something to do—or waiting to see how something he tried is gonna pan out.”

  “But this is the past,” I reminded her. “This is something that was tried. A risk was taken that may or may not have paid off.”

  “What does that have to do with whether or not you’re a crook?”

  I shrugged, keeping my expression pleasant.

  “Your question is about me, but the cards are about you. What experience do you think this one might reflect?”

  The woman looked blank for a moment, then smiled for the first time.

  It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a gotcha!

  “I’ve been to this store in the past,” the woman said. “And I know what I think based on that.”

  “All right. But that was then. This is now.”

  I turned over the middle card.

  I was hoping the cards would have my back—that I’d flip over something that was obviously positive: the High Priestess or the Empress or the Two of Cups or the Ace of Trust-Us-She’s-Really-Not-Going-to-Screw-You.

  No such luck.

  As far as I was concerned, the Moon was the shrug of the tarot deck. The “go figure.” The “what were they smoking when they came up with that one?”

  Not that I was about to admit it.

  “Ahhh, the Moon,” I said. “A card of deep emotions and unforeseen opportunities. You see the road there? The path between two towers? Look how far it goes—all the way to the horizon. That’s a rewarding journey one could go on, but you have to be unafraid to take the first steps away from the past. You have to trust.”

  I thought it was a pretty good spiel…until I looked up from the card into the woman’s eyes.

  There was no gloating triumph in them now. There was fury.

  “You’re a liar,” she spat. “Madame Jezebel has told me all about that card. It’s not about trusting people, it’s about fooling them.”

  “Yes, that’s true. The Moon card can be about deception. But—”

  “But nothing! What was gonna happen next? You were gonna tell me someone put a curse on me? That you could lift it if I only trusted you…and gave you all my money?”

  “No. I wasn’t going to say anything like that.”

  “Yes, you were. You’re a fraud, just like your mother.”

  The woman snatched up the last card and threw it faceup on the table.

  “Ha!” she barked.

  This is what she saw:

  “You’re a liar, but the cards aren’t,” the woman said. “There I am giving you my money—if only I was dumb enough to believe you.”

  “That’s not you giving me money. That’s success. That’s things working out as they should.”

  She spat out another bitter “ha!” before pushing her chair back and standing up.

  “Madame Jezebel was right about you,” she said. “I don’t know why I even gave you a chance.”

  She turned to go.

  I said the only thing that I thought would stop her.

  The truth.

  “I am a fraud,” I said. “And my mother was a con artist. But that doesn’t mean I won’t help you.”

  It worked.

  The woman turned to face me again, her expression both puzzled and distrustful.

  “Obviously, she swindled you somehow,” I went on. “She swindled a lot of people—one scheme after another across the country. I don’t know how she got into tarot reading, but I sure as hell know why: it was her last scam. But I’m not here to keep it going. I’m here to wrap it up. Tell me what she took from you, and I’ll give it back.”

  “Why wou
ld you do that?” the woman asked. She didn’t look convinced, but she looked—maybe, by some miracle—open to convincing.

  Then I blew it.

  “Why?” I said. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  I knew it wasn’t as simple as that, and she did, too.

  “Well, isn’t that sweet?” she sneered. “What do you need to send me the money? The routing code for my bank account? My PayPal password? My social security number?”

  “Give me a day, and I’ll hand it to you in cash.”

  “Yeah, right. Nice try.”

  The woman turned away and stepped out into the hall. Something she saw off to her left stopped her again.

  “I hope you haven’t given these crooks any money,” she said. “Because—news flash—we’re not getting it back.”

  Then she spun to her right and stalked off toward the front door.

  I jumped up to see who she’d been speaking to, though I already knew. There was a knot in my stomach so big it felt like I’d swallowed a bowling ball.

  Marsha was sitting on the stairs. I didn’t know how long she’d been there eavesdropping on the reading. It was clear it had been long enough, though.

  Her eyes were wide, her face pale.

  “Listen,” I said.

  But she didn’t. Before I could say another word, she jumped up and scrambled up the steps. By the time I was halfway up the stairs after her, she was already coming back down, with her purse and her keys in her hands.

  “I was going to tell you eventually,” I said as she squeezed past, refusing to look at me. “It just didn’t seem like the right time. Maybe once everything with Bill was sorted out—”

  Marsha stopped when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “So you just let me keep believing lies?”

  She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

  Tears began to stream down her gaunt cheeks.

  “Now I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “I don’t know who to trust.”

  “Marsha—”

  I took a step down the stairs toward her.

  She bolted down the hallway toward the back door. A moment later, I was watching her speed off in her rusty old Civic.

  She’d let me explain later, after the shock wore off. I hoped.

  In the meantime, I had to hope something else, too: that she didn’t cross paths with her husband.