“So you drove out into the desert on walkabout,” I said. “And you were out there for…?”
Marsha squinted, obviously doing the math.
Eugene had already done it. And he didn’t look happy with the answer.
“About thirty hours,” he said.
“Did anyone see you?” I asked Marsha.
I already knew pretty much what she’d say. It’s why Eugene was so unhappy.
“A few tourists,” Marsha said with a shrug. “Nobody I knew or could ever find again. I was mostly walking around Juniper Mesa, which isn’t very popular, I guess. When I wasn’t down by the parking lot, I didn’t see anybody at all.”
So as her husband’s bloodied body lay spread out in her house, Marsha was supposedly on a spiritual journey in the desert with no one but coyotes and vortexes and untraceable just-passing-through visitors around to notice.
Detective Burby must have loved that.
Speaking of which…
“How did Burby find you?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I assume he had someone watching the motel. I’d only been back about twenty minutes when he showed up. I knew it wasn’t good news as soon as I realized what he was. I assumed Bill had been arrested again or something. But then he told me that Bill had been…had been…”
Marsha swallowed hard, fighting back more tears.
“…murdered,” she said firmly, as if accepting the truth of it for the first time.
“And then he suggested that you come in with him,” I said. “Just to clear up some questions.”
Marsha nodded. “When we got to the police station, he started asking if we’d been fighting. So of course I said that we had. A lot…though our fights were never really fights. They were Bill yelling and me waiting for it to be over. Because of Bill’s temper, you know? And Detective Burby seemed to find that real interesting. He asked me what I thought about the arrest and the drugs and gun in Bill’s car. Did I think he could have been set up, like he kept saying?”
“And what did you say to that?” I asked, keeping my expression blank, my body still, my tone calm. I was working so hard to seem placid, I could have qualified to be a yogi.
“Well, I told him it was possible. Bill wasn’t exactly popular,” Marsha said. “He didn’t get along with some of our neighbors. Or anyone at Oak Creek.”
My wall of calm cracked a bit—not because of nerves. Because of excitement.
I smelled a new lead. “Oak Creek’s where Bill sold timeshares, right?”
“Yeah. Oak Creek Golf Resort. It wasn’t an easy place to work. There was always so much pressure to bring in new buyers and close deals. I’m surprised Bill lasted as long there as he did, actually. He hated Harry Kyle, his boss. And Harry knew it.” The corners of Marsha’s mouth twitched. “Bill wasn’t very good at hiding his feelings.”
“How did Burby react when you talked about Oak Creek? Did he seem interested?”
Marsha shrugged listlessly. Suddenly she looked very, very tired.
“Not particularly. He went back to asking me what Bill and I had been fighting about, why I was leaving him, whether I”—Marsha’s eyes began to glisten—“loved him…”
The tears returned.
I patted Marsha’s bony shoulder and looked at Eugene.
I didn’t expect a happy wink and a thumbs up, but I didn’t expect what I was getting either. Eugene was giving me a steady, stony stare. A glare, almost.
He knew. About my mother, about me. It must have come up when he was in the police station with Marsha and Burby.
Great. Mr. Straight-Laced knew I was Ms. Crooked. Just what I needed right then.
I didn’t know what to say. So it was almost a relief that I didn’t get a chance to say anything.
“It’s time I spoke with Marsha privately, Alanis. Attorney to client,” Eugene said. “After that, I think, Marsha should get some rest.”
“Of course. Good idea. Do you want me to wait outside until—?”
“You’ve done enough waiting today. I can drive Marsha back to her motel when we’re through here.”
“Oh. All right.”
I’d been about to suggest that Marsha stay at the White Magic Five and Dime. I looked over at her to see if she’d bring it up herself.
She didn’t. She just wiped at her eyes and sniffled and gave me another tentative, tremulous smile.
“I’ll call you later,” she said. “I…have some questions for you.”
Eugene kept glowering at me in a way that said yeah, me too.
I gave Marsha’s shoulder a squeeze, then left.
Back at the five and dime, the open sign was still glowing in the window, and Clarice was behind the counter where I’d left her hours before.
“How’s Marsha? Are the cops holding her? Has she been charged? What does Eugene think?” she asked quietly as I stepped inside.
“Marsha’s fine and free. No charge for now. As for what Eugene thinks, I don’t know…except that I’m some kind of scumbag.”
Clarice looked confused for about three-quarters of a second.
I’d told her about the conversation Marsha had overheard a couple days before, and the kid was quick with two plus two.
“He was gonna find out the truth about us sooner or later,” she said, voice still strangely low.
“Yeah, and later would’ve been my choice,” I said, matching her hushed tone. “By the way—why are we whispering?”
Clarice jerked her head toward the back of the store. “Your five o’clock is here. He’s waiting in the reading room.”
It felt like I’d swallowed a bowling ball pulled out of a freezer.
I didn’t have a “five o’clock.”
“Oh, right. Almost forgot,” I said, perfectly calm. On the outside, anyway.
No reason to spook Clarice. Yet.
I sorted through possibilities as I headed for the reading room.
A Grandi showing up to turn that open sign off forever?
Bill Riggs’s killer making a preemptive strike on the meddler out hunting for him?
Or maybe it was—
Yes. It was.
Bachelor number three.
“What are you doing here?” I said when I saw him.
George Washington Fletcher looked up at me from the reading table. My tarot deck was spread out in front of him.
He’d been trying to play solitaire with it.
“What does it look like?” Fletcher said with a grin. “I’m here to see my future.”
The last few cards have been pretty rough, so congratulations are in order. You’ve made it to the Knave (sometimes known as the Page). You can take a breather, strike a heroic pose, and contemplate different paths and fresh adventures. Who knows? You’re sure to attract admiring attention thanks to that bitchin’ skirt and those shapely gams. But don’t get cocky, dude. You’re standing by a cliff. You might want to glance back over that manly shoulder and take stock of what’s behind you.
Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing
“I’m sorry, but now isn’t the best time,” I told Fletcher.
“I understand,” he said.
He didn’t get up, though. Instead, he scooped up the cards in one smooth motion, shuffled them three different ways—weaving, overhand, and the riffle—then left them in a neat stack in the center of the table.
It looked like he’d been a dealer once upon a time.
I could guess why he wasn’t a dealer anymore.
“I see how busy you are,” he said, nodding languidly at the empty shop down the hall and the also-empty sofa and chairs where no customers waited for readings. “So as much as I might like to while away the time reminiscing about Athena, we can just get right to the reading.”
He patted the cards and smiled.
I sat down across from him, the smooth son of a bitch. The chance to learn more about my mother was the bait—and I was biting.
I picked up the cards and shuffled them again. I did the weave,
the overhand, and the riffle, then threw in a pile shuffle, a Hindu shuffle, and a scramble, just because I could.
Fletcher whistled appreciatively.
Then I remembered that the client is supposed to shuffle before a reading. I’d been so intent on one-upping Fletcher—or maybe impressing him—that I’d smeared my karma all over the cards for no reason.
I put the deck down in front of him. “Do you have a particular question you want to ask?”
“I do,” Fletcher said.
After that I got silence. And a smirk.
“And…?” I said.
“Oh, I’d rather keep that to myself.”
“Suit yourself. Shuffle the cards again, but this time be thinking about your question while you do it. Then cut the deck into three piles.” I paused. “With your left hand.”
He picked up the deck and started to shuffle. He started off simple, almost clumsy this time—like a seven-year-old with an Uno deck—as if he didn’t want to try to compete after what he’d seen me do.
Then he launched into the Mexican spiral mixed with the Mongean shuffle topped off with the Zarrow before cutting the deck into three perfectly even piles.
“Why the left hand?” he said casually.
“The energy’s better out of the left,” I said.
Really, I had no idea. I just remembered hearing that somewhere —probably from Josette.
Fletcher nodded as if it made sense, then just looked at me expectantly.
“Now pick one of the piles,” I told him.
He pointed at the middle one, and I picked it up with my right hand while sweeping the rest of the cards off to the side with my left. Then I began laying out five cards in a cross shape. When the cross was done, I placed a sixth card sideways over the middle card.
“Okay, then. Here we go.”
I reached toward the sideways card at the center of the cross, slipped out the card beneath it, and turned it over.
“This card represents you: the Two of Wands. Looks like you’ve had some success lately—trips to the clink notwithstanding. See this guy holding a globe? He’s got the world in his hands.”
Fletcher nodded and grunted in a neutral, unreadable way.
I flipped the sideways card next.
“This card represents the issue at hand—the crux of the matter: the Chariot. Whatever success you’ve had, you’ve achieved it through sheer force of will. See how the black-and-white sphinxes are angled in different directions? They don’t work well together. You’ve controlled them through the strength of your mind or the force of your personality, but you have to watch out. All that control can make you overly rigid.”
This time Fletcher scoffed. “I am the least rigid person you’re ever gonna meet. I’m like a Slinky or something, I’m so flexible.”
“That might be what you tell yourself,” I said cryptically, “but the cards are saying something else.”
Fletcher gave me a deadpan look that seemed to say I’ll bet you say that to all the suckers.
And the look wasn’t all that wrong. I had used the line whenever a client said something like “that’s not me at all!”
“Moving along,” I said.
I turned over the card beneath the crossed cards at the center.
“Wands again—the three this time, in the near future position. Wands is the suit of action. So what we’ve got here is someone who wants to do something—specifically, set off in a new direction—but he’s blocked. Before he can do that, he has to get beyond that wall in front of him—a wall he put there himself for his own protection. He has to step out of his comfort zone, in other words. Are you thinking about some big new project, Fletcher?”
It was Fletcher’s turn to be cryptic. “Always,” he said, and left it at that.
I flipped over the card to the left.
“The Four of Pentacles. This position shows what’s holding you back, and it’s fear again. Look at that guy. He’s scared. That pentacle over his head tells us what he wants: money. But he’s so worried someone’s going to take away what he’s got that he hoards it, cuts himself off, leaves himself alone. Sound familiar?”
I looked across the table at Fletcher, expecting another scoff. He didn’t give me one, but he looked tempted.
“Are you telling me I’m afraid of commitment?” he said. From the look on his face, it was obvious this wasn’t the first time a woman had said such a thing to him.
“I call ’em like I see ’em,” I said.
I turned over the next card—the one above the crossed cards in the center of the spread.
“The card in this position shows us how you can overcome the things that are blocking you. You’ve got the Seven of Pentacles, which I’d usually tie to job satisfaction or a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment, but it’s reversed here. So you’re getting the job done, but you’re not satisfied. I think you need to ask yourself why.”
“Wow,” Fletcher said. “I think I’m gonna get my fortune told, and I end up getting analyzed by Dr. Phil. I can’t wait to hear how my troubled relationship with my mother diminished my ability to love.”
“You want your fortune told? Fine. Let’s look at your future.”
I flipped the final card.
“I’m going to hell?” Fletcher said. “I’ve heard that one before, too.”
“This isn’t you going to hell—not literally, anyway. It’s you giving in to something—an obsession or a destructive worldview. That’s the path you’re on if you don’t change your ways. This isn’t you being chained by the devil; it’s you chaining yourself.”
My words seemed to hit close to home. Fletcher’s expression shifted and sobered, and he nodded thoughtfully for a moment.
“Hmm. Chained by the Dark Side you are not,” he said. “Chained by yourself you are.”
He was doing a perfect Yoda imitation.
I wasn’t annoyed. I wasn’t amused. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction either way.
I just said, “Yeah. Something like that,” then changed the subject. “How did you know my mother?”
Fletcher opened his mouth to answer, and I got the distinct impression he was about to croak out something like “worked with her often I did, young Jedi.” Wisely, he changed his mind and replied in his normal voice.
“She was a colleague, I guess you could say. Never an actual partner, though. Things never got that far. But we kicked around the idea of a collaboration once or twice.”
“How did you meet?”
“Oh, you know. Word gets around about this and that. She sounded like a real interesting lady, so I made sure we got acquainted. It wasn’t hard to arrange.”
Fletcher grinned at me.
“You came in for a reading,” I said.
The grin grew larger.
“When you say word got around,” I said, “do you mean you know who some of my mother’s clients were?”
I cocked my eyebrow just enough when I said clients to make it clear what I meant.
Marks.
“I hate to tell you this, Alanis,” Fletcher said, “but you’re being awfully presumptuous.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You are. You’re acting like my reading’s over, but you never answered the question I was asking the cards.”
“The question you wouldn’t tell me.”
Fletcher nodded. “That’s the one.”
“The cards are what they are, Fletcher. You don’t get to choose your answer.”
“But I don’t feel like I got an answer at all. Your mother, she gave good fortune—you’re going to come into money, beware of a red-headed man with a limp—juicy stuff. You sound like a self-help book. It’s almost like…well…”
His words trailed off, but I knew where they led. Almost like you actually believe what you’re saying.
That was a conversation I didn’t want to have with Mr. GW Fletcher.
“Don’t want an unsatisfied customer,” I said.
I picked up the card
s again and gave them a quick shuffle. Then I spread them out in an arc on the table.
“Think of the question and pick a clarifying card. That’ll be your final answer.”
It was a move I’d read about in Infinite Roads to Knowing but hadn’t tried yet—because I hadn’t needed to.
Fletcher pulled one card from the middle of the deck. He examined it for a moment, then placed it on the table between us.
“Looks like I’ve got a new woman in my life,” Fletcher said with a smirk.
“Not necessarily,” I said, deadpan. “The High Priestess card doesn’t represent a specific person. It relates to intuition and magic and mystery and secret truths buried deep in the subconscious.”
Fletcher added a cocked eyebrow to his smirk.
“Okay, screw it—I don’t know what it means,” I said. “I can never figure out that goddamn card. You may as well have drawn from a Pokémon deck.”
Fletcher ran a finger lightly over the card, almost caressing it. “Well, I’ll just stick with my interpretation, then. After all, I did meet a magical, mysterious woman today. And I can’t believe she didn’t come into my life for a reason. What do I owe you?”
“Didn’t you see the sign? Returning customers get a reading free. I’m sorry yours wasn’t as…definitive as you wanted.”
Fletcher shrugged dismissively. “Who needs definitive? I’m Mr. Flexibility, remember?”
He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and put it on top of the High Priestess card.
“In lieu of payment,” he said.
I made no move to pick up the paper.
“Thanks for the freebie, Alanis…and good luck keeping that friend of yours out of jail.”
Fletcher stood up and started to go, then paused and flashed me another of his thousand-megawatt smiles.
“I’ll be seein’ ya.”
He left the reading room.
I heard him say goodbye to Clarice, then open the front door of the five and dime.
Only after I’d heard the door close did I pick up the slip of paper he’d left on the table.
Written on it were ten numbers. Nothing else.
The cocky bastard had left me his phone number.
I started to crumple the paper in my fist. I stopped.
Good luck keeping that friend of yours out of jail.
Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery Page 10