Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

by Steve Hockensmith

“Oh.”

  “That’s why he used to leave such big…well, anyway. He disappeared. And Tom was sure Riggs was behind it. Called the cops on him and everything, but nothing came of that. So Tom started talking about taking matters into his own hands.”

  “And you told all this to Detective Burby?”

  Paul nodded.

  “He didn’t seem to take it very seriously, though. Whenever I started talking about Tom, he’d give me a ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ vibe, you know?”

  I knew. Because Burby’s mind was already made up.

  “Thank you, Paul. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. And his smile told me that wasn’t just an expression.

  Of course, neighborhood gossip is a two-way street. We’d gone my way. Now I was supposed to go his.

  Meaning: it was time for me to dish.

  “So how was Riggs killed, anyway?” Paul said. “Do the cops think it was just one person or more than that? Could it have been a gang thing? Do you think we should we set up a neighborhood watch?”

  I opened my mouth to say the modern equivalent of “I think I hear my mother calling me”: “Excuse me—I just got a message.”

  And then a miracle happened.

  I got a message.

  “Excuse me—I just got a message,” I said.

  I turned away and pulled my cell phone from my shoulder bag.

  The message was from Victor.

  Hey Alanis just wanted to thank you for last night. Mom had a lovely time—and so did I. Talk soon. V.

  Well, how about that? A follow-up from Victor Castellanos. And now, apparently, we weren’t just on a first-name basis. We were on a first-letter-of-first-name basis.

  Coming from Victor, that was like a dozen roses.

  I typed a response.

  I had a lovely time too. Let’s do it again sometime. A.

  Short and sweet—but not too sweet. That might send Victor running for the hills again. And who feels up for “sweet” when they’re at a crime scene?

  I hit send, then started to put my phone away.

  “So how often do you see this kind of thing, anyway?” Paul said. “I mean, is this normal for an insurance investigator? I didn’t think you guys handled murders.”

  “We don’t. I’m just here to make sure the car’s all right,” I said. “Excuse me again. I’m vibrating.”

  “You’re what?”

  I waggled my phone.

  “Gotta take this. Sorry.”

  I turned, speed-dialed Eugene Wheeler, put the phone to my ear, and went striding off toward Tom Nord’s house.

  “Dana Tanna here,” I said. “Don’t worry—the Camaro’s fine. Tell the boss we just saved Geico $500.”

  Eugene picked up four rings later. By then Paul was a good forty feet behind me, so I didn’t have to keep up any act.

  “Alanis,” Eugene said.

  “Eugene,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Working. What are you doing?”

  “Getting out of an awkward conversation.”

  I peeked over my shoulder at Paul.

  He was standing in the Riggs’s driveway looking like a dog watching someone walk off with his favorite bone.

  “Well, I’m glad I could be of service,” Eugene said. “I’ll send you a bill.”

  “There’s more. Bill Riggs was murdered two nights ago. They just found his body this morning.”

  “Jesus. Is Marsha all right?”

  “I hope so. I still don’t know where she is.”

  “Jesus! Are the cops sure Riggs was murdered? He didn’t kill himself?”

  I knew what Eugene was thinking. The old, old story.

  Wife leaves psycho husband. Psycho husband kills wife. Psycho husband kills self. The end.

  I told Eugene the good news: Riggs was beaten to death.

  “Thank god for small favors,” he said. “That’ll make it harder for the police to pin it on Marsha, too. He was the one with the army training. She doesn’t look like she could beat a gerbil to death.”

  “Anyone can get lucky with a baseball bat.”

  “Is that what he was killed with?”

  “That or something like it.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I think Jesus is out of town right now,” I said. “You’re stuck with me. Look—I need you to do me a couple favors.”

  “Favors?”

  Eugene said the word as if he’d never heard it before.

  “Billable favors,” I told him. “I need to know the name of the state trooper Bill Riggs tangled with when he was arrested. And it looks like Riggs got into some kind of fight when he was in jail, too. Left him with a shiner. I want to know who popped him.”

  “Anything else?” Eugene asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah. You can look up Huggins Construction for me, too. Find out how it was connected to Riggs.”

  That’s what you get for being sarcastic with me.

  Eugene sighed. “You know, Alanis, I usually do wills, estates, trusts—nice, quiet, boring stuff.”

  “Then you should be grateful I’m bringing you something interesting.”

  Eugene sighed again. “You’ll hear from me soon,” he grumbled.

  He hung up, which was perfect timing. I’d reached the front door of Tom Nord.

  My first suspect.

  So you’re cornered and you’re outnumbered and your enemies have breadsticks just as long and crusty as yours. There’s going to be a fight, and the odds aren’t in your favor. But don’t throw down your baked goods and start begging for mercy yet. You’ve got the high ground and can see the bad guys coming. That means you’ve got a chance…well, so long as there aren’t more bad guys sneaking up the other side of that hill.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I walked up to the small, drab home of Tom Nord and, once upon a time, Son of Kong. Before I knocked on the door, I did what Biddle told me you should always do when you might be facing a killer.

  I smiled.

  No one answered, so after a minute I knocked again. And kept smiling.

  I heard a gruff, muffled voice from somewhere inside, the words indistinct but the meaning unmistakable.

  I’m coming, but I’m not happy about it.

  I brought up my notebook, readied my pen, and took a deep breath.

  The door opened, revealing a tall, broad hulk of a man. If the cat was Son of Kong, this must be Kong.

  The guy could’ve snapped Bill Riggs in half—forty years ago. Now he looked like He-Man after two decades of retirement and two thousand visits to the Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

  If he’d killed Riggs, he hadn’t done it with a baseball bat. He’d done it with a walker.

  I stifled a sigh behind my smile.

  “Tom Nord?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said suspiciously.

  “Human companion of…” I glanced down at my notepad. “Son of Kong?”

  Nord’s craggy, saggy face sagged even more. “What’s this about?”

  “Today is Son of Kong’s lucky day,” I said. “You’ve won a free three-week supply of Puss’n’Boots Gourmet Supreme Canned Cat Feasts. All you have to do is agree to keep an easy-to-use customer satisfaction log tracking Son of Kong’s reaction to the new Puss’n’Boots flavors he’ll be—”

  Nord held up a hand and shook his head. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “You won’t be saying that when Son of Kong gets his first taste of Puss’n’Boots Surf’n’Turf Medley. Hearty chunks of genuine imitation crab, lobster, and Chilean sea bass with succulent soy steak in a creamy—”

  “Son of Kong is gone,” Nord said. The last word came out quivering.

  “Gone?” I said. “As in…passed on?”

  “As in killed,” Nord said, his voice hardening.

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

 
“He was killed by devil worshippers.”

  Well, whadaya know? I thought. The guy was right.

  I didn’t believe him.

  “Devil worshippers?” I said. Not in a challenging way, though—a tell-me-more way. Which worked.

  Nord pointed at the Riggs’s home across the street.

  “The guy who lived there. Bill Riggs. He was a Satanist. I think he snatched Son of Kong for one of his black masses. Son of Kong had his revenge, though. The sick son of a gun got himself killed.”

  “By Son of Kong?”

  Nord looked at me like I was the crazy one.

  “No. By other Satanists, I assume, which would be just what he deserved.”

  “And how is it you know Riggs was a Satanist?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. He started coming over here raving about Son of Kong, waving around big baggies full of cat doo, making threats. Then Son of Kong disappeared. The cops wouldn’t do anything about it, so I decided to investigate myself. Went over to Riggs’s place at night with a shovel. Looking for—”

  Nord paused for a long, ragged breath. He was winded just talking about going to the Riggs’s place. There was no way he could have gathered enough breath to kill somebody there.

  “—looking for fresh holes,” he went on. “I didn’t find anything, but before I left I took a look inside the house. Just, you know…in case Riggs was keeping Son of Kong prisoner or something.”

  I nodded as if that made sense.

  Guy gets mad about giant cat turds in his yard, so he takes the cat hostage in his house. Sure, why not?

  “And do you know what I saw Riggs doing?” Nord asked.

  My nod turned into a shake of the head.

  “The guy was sitting there at his kitchen table”—Nord leaned forward, looming melodramatically, which was a little scary, actually, since it was pretty easy to imagine him losing his balance and falling on me—“painting a human skull.”

  “Oh,” I said. As bombshells go, this one seemed like a pretty big dud.

  “And you think Riggs was going to use his painting in some kind of satanic ritual?” I asked.

  “‘His painting’?” Nord said, looking confused.

  “The painting of a skull.”

  “No no no. I don’t mean he was painting a skull. I mean he was painting a skull.” Nord opened his eyes wide and waited for the bombshell to go off.

  Boom.

  It finally did.

  “You’re saying Riggs had an actual human skull?” I said.

  Nord nodded.

  “And he was painting it?”

  Nord nodded again. “With Son of Kong’s blood,” he said.

  “Blood” came out Vincent Price–style: buh-luuuuud. All Nord needed was a flashlight to hold under his chin, and the moment would’ve been perfect.

  “How horrible,” I said. “So you saw Son of Kong’s body?”

  Nord blinked at me and straightened up, the campfire ghost-story spell suddenly broken.

  “What? Oh. No. I didn’t see Son of Kong.”

  “So how do you know Riggs was painting the skull with Son of Kong’s blood?”

  Nord shrugged. “Well, it just stands to reason. The guy’s painting a skull with some kind of sticky-looking red stuff, Son of Kong had just gone missing—it’s the only logical explanation. I mean, this town’s lousy with devil worshippers. Right downtown we’ve got three or four stores for ’em. House of Whatever and that other place and…what’s it called? The White Magic Something Something Something?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  A sign began flashing in my mind like the Eat. At. Joe’s. you used to see in old cartoons.

  Wasting.

  Your.

  Time.

  I needed to wrap this up and move on to leads with more potential and less cray cray.

  “So you went home and called the police but they didn’t believe you and now you figure Riggs’s coven turned on him and maybe even killed him as a sacrifice to their dark lord Lucifer, prince of darkness and father of lies.”

  Nord blinked at me. “Yes. Exactly. How did you know?”

  I shrugged. “It just stands to reason.”

  I thanked Nord for his time, told him how sorry I was about Son of Kong, and turned to go.

  “Mew,” someone said behind me.

  It didn’t sound like Nord.

  I looked back and saw Nord leaning down laboriously—he had to brace himself in the doorway—and scooping up what looked like a grapefruit-sized cotton ball trying to slip past his feet.

  “Mew,” the cotton ball said.

  “Son of Son of Kong?” I asked, nodding at the kitten Nord was cradling.

  “Her name’s Mothra,” Nord corrected me. “Hey—could we sign her up for the free food deal?”

  “Sorry. She’d need Puss’n’Boots Junior. It’s a whole different division. Have a good one, Mr. Nord!”

  “You, too.”

  I hurried off before Nord could think of the question he really should have been asking.

  How did the people at Puss’n’Boots know he had a cat named Son of Kong?

  “Mew,” Mothra said one more time, and I heard the door close behind me.

  Back in the Caddy, I tried not to think about Martha sporting an orange jumpsuit. Sweet, mousy Martha in prison. She wouldn’t last past breakfast.

  It was too bad Nord hadn’t panned out, but there’d be plenty of other would-be murderers for a guy like Bill Riggs. The challenge would be finding the right one before Martha was modeling the new black.

  I couldn’t push the image of Martha behind bars out of my head. Then something pushed it out for me.

  A Berdache police cruiser was parked in front of the Riggs’s house—a cruiser that hadn’t been there ten minutes before. Amazing what can happen behind your back when you’re busy flogging Puss’n’Boots Gourmet Supreme Canned Cat Feasts.

  The cops had already searched and sealed the house. Why were they back?

  Before I could take a guess, the front door of the house swung open and a cop came striding out. I slid down behind the wheel but kept an eye on him. No one I recognized—tall, a little paunchy, with sandy hair and a long nose. He was headed to his cruiser with a laptop tucked under his arm.

  Question answered: he’d come for the laptop, probably after he—or, more likely, Detective Burby—got a warrant to seize it.

  Either the net was being thrown wider in the search for Bill’s enemies or Doogie Howser, Homicide Detective, was trying to draw the net tighter around Marsha.

  As the cruiser cruised off, my cell phone started playing the song “The Jean Genie.” Eugene was calling.

  “That was fast,” I said. “You must not have heard me say this was billable.”

  “I could pretend to work on it some more and call you back in an hour if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right. You can tell me now.”

  “You have something to write with?”

  I picked up my pen and notebook again. “Hit me.”

  “All right. The state trooper who got into it with Riggs is one Michael LoTempio.” Eugene spelled it out. “I’ve got the name of the guy Riggs fought with in jail, too. Get a load of this: George Washington Fletcher. And Huggins Construction is…well, a construction company. Owned by a guy named Huggins.”

  “There’s a twist. Back to that Fletcher guy. Can you find out if he was still—?”

  “Locked up at the time of the murder?” Eugene cut in. “Sorry. Yes, he was.”

  “Damn.”

  I’d just lost a potential suspect.

  “What was he in for, anyway?” I said.

  “You’re not gonna believe this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Loitering.”

  “Ahhh,” I said.

  “‘Ahhh’? What does ‘ahhh’ mean?”

  “It means I do believe it when you say he was locked up for loitering.”

  “Who gets arrested for loitering?”
/>
  “Well, not you, Eugene. And not me—anymore. I think. But once upon a time…”

  “Tick tick tick, Alanis. I am still on the clock. If you’re trying to say something, just say it.”

  “The cops know him. And they don’t like him.”

  “Ahhh,” Eugene said.

  “How’d you get those names, anyway?”

  “I’m Berdache’s most successful attorney-at-law, Alanis. You don’t think I have friends at the courthouse?”

  “Of course. Tell you what—why don’t you call back your buddies over there and see if you can get me more than a name for Fletcher.”

  “What is it you want? His social security number?”

  “That’d help. But I’ll settle for an address.”

  “I think that’s doable. But, Alanis…what are you going to do with all this information, anyway? I know it looks like Martha’s in trouble, but you need to leave all that to the professionals.”

  “Eugene?”

  “Yes, Alanis?”

  “When it comes to trouble, I am a professional.”

  I knew a good exit line when I heard one.

  I hung up.

  Ten minutes later, Eugene called back with an address for the prisoner Riggs had fought with.

  Fletcher’s last known abode was the Rest E-Z Motel.

  He wasn’t there, of course. Like he was going to give the cops that address on his arrest report, then actually stay there.

  According to the middle-aged Indian woman who ran the place, he hadn’t been there in weeks. From the scowl on her face, I could tell he’d left something for her to remember him by, though: an unpaid bill.

  I was quickly getting a feel for Mr. George Washington Fletcher.

  I started making a tour of the skankiest motels in town.

  The tart Moor Log was number three on the list. I assume it was actually the Stardust Motor Lodge, but the busted-up sign out front read “-tar–t Mo-or Lo-g-.” According to the sign, there was air-conditioning and a color TV in every room. Swanky!

  Someone really should have fixed that. Someone really should have fixed a lot of things—the cracks in the walls, the potholes in the parking lot, the dingy half-filled swimming pool. But no one had or ever would. A few cars were scattered throughout the lot, parked in front of rooms with scuffed doors and windows with tattered, sun-bleached curtains.

  Barbra and Biddle and I had stayed in a hundred such dumps over the years. Home sweet home.