Chapter 9
The sun had set, but a rosy glow hung in the western sky and people were still taking pictures of it and the sailboat silhouetted against it. Clearly, for some people, the sunset had played second fiddle to the juggler. The man wore grease-stained jeans and shirt with hair that hung in stiff tendrils around his face. Tourists still circled him, watching him toss seven oranges into the air, catching them before they hit the concrete. A few watchers dropped dollar bills into the hat he passed around after each round of juggling.
“Makes my head spin to watch him, Hella. How do you suppose he ever learned to do that?”
“My question would be why he ever learned.”
“Do you think he has to survive on the few dollars he gleans each night from that hat?”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. He might be a homeless guy sleeping under a bridge, or he might be some doting grandfather’s trust fund grandbaby. But let’s move on. I have a special spot near the footbridge where I like to set up my table and stools.”
“A reserved space?”
“No. On most nights, I arrive much earlier than this, but today has been an unusual one. Hope someone else hasn’t claimed my place.”
“Hella, can you really see into the future and tell people what’s going to happen in their lives?”
“Sometimes. Yes, sometimes I can do that.”
“But not all the time?”
“That’s right. Clairvoyance is a sometimey thing. Sometimes it’s there for me. Sometimes it isn’t there no matter how hard I call upon it. I study the writings of Edgar Cayce, a famous clairvoyant who lived many years ago. He, too, found his clairvoyance an off and on thing. If I depend on its being there at a certain time and place, that’ll be the time it disappears.”
“So it’s a gift—a gift that can’t be forced?”
“Right. That’s how I view it.”
“I’ve got to know this, Hella. Have you tried to see the person who killed Abra Barrie?”
“Nobody’s asked me to do that.”
“Wouldn’t you want to try to see her killer—for your own satisfaction of knowing?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
It irritated me that Hella was being so evasive. “Why wouldn’t you want to see this person? You might be able to help the police solve the case. Maybe they don’t know of your ability.”
“My so-called ability. That’s what many people call clairvoyance. If the police come to me asking for my input on the Abra Barrie case, I’ll give it, but with reservations. It’s sometimes easy for me to misinterpret the things I see. Sometimes they’re not what they appear to be.”
I dropped the subject of Abra Barrie’s murder. “So if you have a customer sitting before you and your clairvoyance decides to take a vacation for the evening, what do you tell that customer?
Hella shrugged. “Then I do the only reasonable thing. I turn myself into a common-sense counselor. The patron asks me a question and I give her a common-sense answer.”
“Her? Men never ask for your help?”
“Seldom. Around here, it’s mostly women I deal with. People could solve most of their problems by using some down-to-earth common sense.”
I giggled. “My dad told Janell and me that nothing’s more uncommon than common sense.”
“Could be that he was right. I don’t cheat anyone, Kitt. I admit to customers that sometimes I don’t have x-ray vision into the future.”
While we headed toward Hella’s special spot, we passed giddy little kids up long past their bedtimes, deeply tanned weirdoes sipping from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags, little old ladies in dressy pumps and middy-length gowns. A mime with silver-painted skin stood performing a don’t-move-a-muscle statue impersonation near a bass vocalist who droned on and on with no apparent need to take a breath.
“What happened to Tank Island?” I peered across the harbor. “I remember lots of trees—maybe Australian pines and scrub palms.
“Those times are gone. Developers have renamed it Sunset Island and they hawk the upscale houses and condos they’ve built there. And of course there’s a restaurant with an upscale menu.”
“Meaning no burgers or foot-long cheese dogs?”
Hella laughed. “Might find a burger or a dog on the kid’s menu. Tourists can take a free water shuttle over for lunch even if they can’t afford to buy a million dollar condo—or even rent one for the weekend. Lots of folks look like big money, haven’t got a pot or a window. But here’s my place.”
Hella stopped beside a seagrape tree near the edge of the dock and sighed in relief when she slipped off her backpack and began digging into it. A mountain of muscles. My first impression of her returned. Right now in this shadowy place, I could be in as much danger from Hella as from any of the men at The Poinsettia. But Janell wouldn’t have suggested my accompanying Hella tonight had she thought I’d be in danger. Right? Right. Once more I decided against being afraid, telling myself there was a big difference in wariness and fear. I took careful note of my surroundings.
“Can I help you unpack?” I asked.
“Better watch this time.” From her backpack, Hella pulled a small round table with folding legs and two matching stools. She removed a lacy gold and silver cloth and flicked it onto the table, anchoring it with a crystal ball, a purple scepter, and a deck of tarot cards. With her fat braid of hair, her dark caftan, her heavy shoes, she looked the part of a seer. Too bad she’d left Voodoo at home. A black cat would have completed the picture most people associate with a true fortune teller.
“You look very professional, Hella. If I wanted my future read, I’d choose you to do the reading.”
“The things I’ve brought with me tonight are common props to attract customers. Visual props do nothing to help my clairvoyance. I either see or I don’t see. But few people understand that. If you want to help my business tonight, you can pretend you’ve come to me as a paying customer.”
“How? A few instructions, please.”
“Sit on the stool and pull it close to my table as if you want no one to overhear our conversation. I’ll lay out the tarot cards. Your acting as a customer will attract the curious to us.”
I sat on the stool while Hella spread out the tarot cards and began arranging them in some esoteric fashion known only to her—and perhaps other seers in the tarot-reading business.
When she flipped through the cards, I saw one that said The Devil, others that said Temperance, The Empress, The Hermit, The Chariot. I couldn’t help wondering what the pictures and words meant. When she turned up a card depicting a white horse and a black-clad horseman along with the word Death, I looked up at her.
“What do you see, Hella?”
“What I see is in my mind, not in the cards.” Hella had a glazed look in her eyes and she stared at a space on my forehead, avoiding my gaze. If this was an act, she was a good actress.
“Kitt Morgan, I see a cold winter night. Much snow and ice and slush. I see you in a car with another man, a policeman. Then I see a store—a very small store in a run-down part of a town. My head aches from the tension of the scene. I smell animals. I hear shouts. I smell gunpowder. I see more policemen…”
“Ho!”
I jumped at the sound of Phud’s voice coming from behind us. Why had he followed us here? How long had he been trailing us? Why had he interrupted us? I wanted to hear what else Hella might have to say. But I didn’t want Phud to hear, too. No way. In a few short sentences, Hella had convinced me of her clairvoyant ability. I shivered in spite of the warm evening.
“Ho, yourself,” Hella said, glaring at Phud. “The bad penny returns.”
By now a small group had gathered around Hella’s table. One woman flashed a twenty-dollar bill, insisting in a nasal voice that she was next in line.
“Come on, Kitt,” Phud said. “Let’s leave Hella to her patsies while I show you around. Lots to see here tonight.”
“We’ve already seen what’s here.” Hella took the twenty th
e woman thrust toward her, motioning her to take the stool I had vacated when Phud arrived.
“Bet you haven’t seen the trained pigs or the crystal gazer.” Phud twined his arm through mine and urged me toward the dock. “I’ll have her back safe and sound in an hour or so, Hella. Janell won’t mind.”
“Go ahead.” Hella gave me a nod. “But I’m watching the time and I expect you to do likewise.”
I resented both Hella and Phud treating me like a child. I could take care of myself without either of them enforcing a curfew. My mind twirled in a spin. Hella had seen some things from my past that were correct. At first I had been mesmerized and I’d wanted to hear more. But now I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes she was wrong. She’d admitted that. What if she told looked more deeply into my life and told me the perp was recovering? What if she told me the review committee had ruled that I shot in self-defense? And what if she was wrong? For the moment, I welcomed Phud’s intrusion and I gave him my full attention.
“We’ve missed the sunset,” Phud said. “But no matter. It’s partly illusion, you know.”
“Illusion? No I didn’t know.”
“The sun always looks larger as it sinks behind the horizon, but it’s really the same size it always is. The sudden largeness people think they see is an illusion. Makes one wonder what’s real and what isn’t.”
Phud’s comment about the real and the unreal made me wary, but I let him ease us into the crowd. We walked through the soft night to the Hilton Hotel’s bricked patio where some acrobats were performing. They looked like teenagers dressed for a gymnastics party. Their leader, dressed in a red leotard, held a lighted baton that she twirled then tossed to the sky, catching it seconds before it splashed into the harbor waters. Her followers performed hand walks, splits, knee crawls. Where were these kids’ parents? Or maybe they were older than they looked. One girl performed with a white parrot on her shoulder. Had PETA checked her out? There was lots of applause, and the girl gave the parrot an ample treat.
“This whole scene is amazing,” I said. “I remember seeing performers here years ago.”
“You probably did,” Phud said. “Maybe some of the same ones.”
We strolled a while longer, then Phud bought us popcorn and we sat on hard chairs around a wrought iron table to rest.
“Your leg, Phud. Thoughtless of me to let you wear yourself out showing me around.”
“No problem. I’m a willing volunteer and I’m doing fine. Would you like a limeade?” He nodded toward a vendor nearby.
“Yes, but let me go get it. You rest for a few minutes.”
Phud smiled and thrust a bill into my hand. “Okay. I’ll be fine in a minute or two. Get large drinks, right?”
I brought the limeades to our table and dropped the change into Phud’s hand. We’d been enjoying the sweet tartness of our treats for a few minutes before a guy walked behind our chairs and tossed a cigarette into the harbor.
“The jerk,” Phud said when the man was out of earshot. “Guess he doesn’t know what trash receptacles are for.”
“Some people don’t, I agreed.”
“Maybe I should follow him around,” Phud said. “I don’t smoke and I need a few cigarette butts.”
Whatever for?” I asked.
“Really, I need three whole cigarettes. I’ve developed this garden pesticide. Need to take a bottle of it to the Lighthouse Museum when I do my plantings there. Told you I was doing an exhibit for them, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you mentioned the lighthouse, but nothing about a pesticide. Is it something special?”
Phud grinned. “Oh, it’s nothing all that special—except to me. Haven’t been able to find anything like it in the garden shops.”
“Maybe you can play entrepreneur, bottle it, and market it to the public. Is it a complicated formula?”
“No. It’s simple. I shake the tobacco from three cigarettes and soak it in water overnight, instead of just for an hour or two. The next day I strain that water through a sieve, add it to a pint of warm soapy water. And that’s it. It’s easy to use—either as a spray on or a wipe on.”
Who was pulling my leg, Phud or Janell? I’d heard this idea twice in the same day. My wariness kicked in again and I stood, trying to recall exactly what Janell had said about the pesticide. Had she said she’d developed it? Or had she said it was an idea of Phud’s she was using. I made a mental note to ask her more about it.
“Ready to go?” Phud glanced at his watch and carried our drink glasses to a trash container. “Guess our hour has more than passed.”
I relaxed as Phud led the way back to the spot where Hella stood folding her small table and sliding it into her backpack.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Hella said. “About time you showed up.”
I wondered if she had worked as long as she wanted to, or if she was making it clear that she wanted to be ready to walk me back to The Poinsettia without Phud’s company. A tension twanged between Hella and Phud that I didn’t understand. I felt that it involved more than Voodoo.
I helped Hella slip on her backpack before I picked up her tote bag.
“I want to be back in plenty of time to play the last number with the combo,” Hella said, “so I called a cab.” She patted her cell phone, then dropped it into the pocket of her caftan. “It should be waiting for us on the corner at Front Street.”
“Thanks for the tour, Phud. I enjoyed seeing the dock activity at night again. It’s been a long time.”
“Pleased to be your guide.”
Phud walked alongside us, and I expected Hella to invite him to share our cab. But when she didn’t, he left us, wandering into the crowd. The cabbie sat waiting in a pink taxi, and when he saw Hella, he came to take her backpack and tote. We slid onto the back seat.
“Maybe we should have invited Phud to share our cab, Hella. I think his leg was bothering him tonight”
“Too bad. So sad.”
I said nothing more about Phud. On the ride home, I thought about the performers I’d seen. Who were they? The gymnasts? The magic man? The mime? Had any of those people planned a career of performing on an open dock? Or had they failed at some other career and accidentally found their way to Key West?
I might lose my job on the police force in Iowa. Or I might succeed in keeping it, but even so, I doubted I could continue in a career that required me to carry a gun. And, although I loved and respected Janell and Rex, I couldn’t sponge on them much longer.
When we reached The Poinsettia, Hella called to Mama G.
“Be there for the last number, guys. Don’t play it without me.”
Mama G scowled, but Ace gave Hella thumbs up and I carried her tote to the B&B. While she was finding her keys and unlocking her door, I sensed a movement in the flowerbox at the side of her door. Setting the tote down, I brushed aside the petunia plants and saw Voodoo lying there and chewing on leaves. My approach hadn’t startled him. In fact, he barely noticed me.
“Hella! Look at this. I think Voodoo’s sick.”
Hella dropped her backpack on the doorstep and joined me. She patted Voodoo’s head for a moment, then smiled. “Voodoo’s not sick. He’s just very relaxed and happy.”
“But he was eating petunia leaves. Don’t cats eat grass or green plants when they’re sick?
Hella patted Voodoo again and smiled. “Sometimes Voodoo pigs out on catnip. That’s what he’s been eating while I’ve been away. Won’t hurt him any, but I’ll send him on his way home before the owners miss him.”
I began to understand several things. Who, but Hella, would have hidden catnip in the petunia box? Maybe Phud had a legitimate complaint about her. And maybe she had a legitimate complaint about him—throwing clods at a neighborhood pet she loved.
Chapter 10
We had arrived back at The Poinsettia in plenty of time to enjoy a sandwich and a soda before the combo played their final set. A few teenage couples performed enthusiastic gyrations to a rock tune while parents sat at th
e tables enjoying the soft evening. Clearly, any bad publicity about Abra Barrie and the B&B had failed to affect business.
Suddenly, Mama Gomez thumb-nailed a loud piano glissando that silenced the crowd.
“Attention please! One and all! Attention! Before our final number, we now present Ace the Drum Bum and his laser beams.”
Rex doused the patio lights and only the glow from the torches flickered across the dance floor. The crowd gathered closer to the bandstand when the combo began playing.
A few bars into their tune, brilliant lights flashed inside Ace’s black drum sticks, lights that made him look like a phantom drummer. Gasps went up from the audience and people stepped closer to the bandstand. Ace’s entranced admirers clapped when he began an intricate solo, featuring rim shots, flams, paradiddles, and many strokes I couldn’t name. His hands moved from cymbals to snare heads, and he tossed his sticks in the air without missing a foot beat on the bass. Laser beams continued to flash as he twirled one stick above his head like a baton while keeping a steady beat on the snare head with the other stick. A triple cymbal crash ended both his solo and the lasers. Rex took his cue and snapped on the patio lights again.
“More! More! Encore!” Although the crowd whistled, stamped, and clapped, Ace offered no encore. He stood and bowed before he relinquished the drum seat to Hella. After he packed his sticks into their case, he joined me at the snack bar.
“Some show, Ace.” I smiled up at him. “Brilliant. How’d you do that? Or is it a trade secret?”
“No secret. It’s my special sticks. Got laser lights set into them. Battery operated. Lights fit in a compartment with an off/on toggle switch.”
“No wonder you take such good care of those sticks.”
“You bet I take good care of them. Made from Lignum Vitae. Paid almost two hundred bucks for ’em—and the laser lights were extra. The Lignum Vitae’s unbreakable, so I’ll probably never have to replace them.”
I was still thinking about Ace’s performance when I reached for another snack. To my surprise, customers had depleted Janell’s supply of escargot and feta cheese sandwiches.
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