by Betsy Byars
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1 - A WARNING FROM TAROT
Chapter 2 - DANGER ON THE STAIRS
Chapter 3 - DEATH IN THE PARLOR
Chapter 4 - A CRY FOR HELP
Chapter 5 - A RING FOR MADAME ROSA
Chapter 6 - SCENE OF THE CRIME
Chapter 7 - FINGERPRINTS
Chapter 8 - THE MIME
Chapter 9 - A SUSPECT
Chapter 10 - A KEY AT MIDNIGHT
Chapter 11 - THE SHADOW
Chapter 12 - KILLER PUPPETS
Chapter 13 - WHICH WITCH
Chapter 14 - FOGGING OUT
Chapter 15 - WALK-INS UNWELCOME
Chapter 16 - FOOTSTEPS
Chapter 17 - VOODOO DOLLS AND ALL THAT JAZZ
Chapter 18 - FOOT NIGHTMARES
Chapter 19 - THE OTHER HALF OF THE PICTURE
Chapter 20 - DEAR ABBY
Chapter 21 - MEAT AND MIME
Chapter 22 - MADAME ROSA CALLS
Chapter 23 - THE BLACK ROBE
Chapter 24 - THE KNIFE
Chapter 25 - WEAPON OF CHOICE
Chapter 26 - LIVING UP TO HERCULEAH
Chapter 27 - HERCULEAH AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE
ALONE IN THE HOUSE?
The room was round and stuck off the side of the house. It held only the black-covered table and two chairs.
Herculeah noticed now that one of the chairs—the velvet chair that Madame Rosa always sat in—had been overturned.
She turned to go. Glancing down, she saw something sticking out from under the black cloth that was draped over the table.
It was a black, booted foot—a small one. The frayed shoelaces were tied neatly at the ankle.
Madame Rosa wore boots like this.
A feeling of nausea washed over Herculeah like a wave. She could barely stand. Her knees began to tremble.
She reached out one unsteady hand and drew back the worn velvet cloth....
“Byars grips the reader from the first sentence and doesn’t let go until Herculeah solves the case.”
—The Horn Book
BOOKS BY BETSY BYARS
The Herculeah Jones Mysteries:
The Dark Stairs
Tarot Says Beware
Dead Letter
Death’s Door
Disappearing Acts
King of Murder
The Bingo Brown books:
Bingo Brown, Gypsy Lover
Bingo Brown and the Language of Love
Bingo Brown’s Guide to Romance
The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown
Other titles:
After the Goat Man
The Cartoonist
The Computer Nut
Cracker Jackson
The Cybil War
The 18th Emergency
The Glory Girl
The House of Wings
McMummy
The Midnight Fox
The Summer of the Swans
Trouble River
The TV Kid
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd), Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia.
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1995
Published by Puffin Books, 1997
This edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006
Copyright © Betsy Byars, 1995
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Byars, Betsy Cromer.
Tarot says beware / by Betsy Byars. p. cm.—(A Herculeah Jones mystery)
Summary: Herculeah Jones and her bumbling pal, Meat,
investigate the murder of a palm reader.
eISBN : 978-1-101-07676-7
[1. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title. II. Series.
PZ7.B9836Tar 1995 [Fic]—dc20 95-12334 CIP AC
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
1
A WARNING FROM TAROT
Herculeah Jones was restless. She went to the window and looked up and down the street. Everything seemed normal, but she could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.
She went to the phone on her mother’s desk. She dialed her friend Meat’s number. There was no answer. She went back to the window.
This time her eyes narrowed at something she saw down the street—a flicker of motion. The binoculars were on the end table. Herculeah picked them up and lifted them to her face. She adjusted the lens. She leaned forward in her intensity.
She noticed three things:1. The door to Madame Rosa’s house was open.
2. Madame Rosa’s parrot had flown outside and was now perched on one of the porch rockers.
3. Her hair was beginning to frizzle.
She thought, Now I know something’s wrong. Her hair always did this when there was danger. Meat had once called it “radar hair,” and she had smiled. Herculeah wasn’t smiling how.
She rushed into the hall, pulling on her sweater as she ran out the door. Pausing only to check for traffic, she crossed the street.
Madame Rosa’s house was the fourth one down. There was a sign in front, in the shape of an open hand, that said:Madame Rosa
Palmist
Walk-ins Welcome
Herculeah opened the gate and paused by the sign. She often came to Madame Rosa’s to feed the parrot when Madame Rosa was out of town. It alarmed her to see the parrot loose, because Madame Rosa was very particular about him. Something had to be badly wrong.
“Tarot,” Herculeah said in a calm voice, not wanting to alarm the bird.
Tarot cocked his head and looked back with round eyes dulled slightly by the cold.
She glanced up at the house. “Madame Rosa, Tarot’s out!” she called.
She waited, but Madame Rosa did not appear in the open doorway.
“Madame Rosa!”
Again no answer.
Slowly Herculeah started up the walk.
“It’s just me, Herculeah,” she told the bird. “You want to go back inside, don’t you, where it’s warm? I’ll even feed you.” The bird took a side step on the back of the rocker. “You want to go back to your perch? Then don’t fly off, Tarot.”
The bird lifted his wings and flapped them but didn’t go anywhere.
“That’s right. Don’t fly off. I’m taking you back in the house. Madame Rosa, your parrot’s out on the porch!”
Herculeah slipped off her sweater as she climbed the stairs. The parrot lifted his wings in another feeble flutter.
“It’s just me. I feed yo
u, remember? I’m going to help you back in the house.”
In one lightning-fast move, Herculeah threw her sweater around the bird. “Gotcha,” she said. She felt a moment of relief because Tarot was easily startled and she could have ended up chasing him all over the neighborhood.
She carried him to the open door. She paused in the doorway.
There were no lights on inside the house. Herculeah’s feeling of relief at catching the parrot so easily was replaced by a chill of dread.
“Madame Rosa?”
The parrot struggled in her arms. “It’s all right, Tarot. I’ll let you out in a minute.”
Herculeah entered and shoved the front door shut with her shoulder. She walked into the dark living room.
The huge pieces of furniture had been in place since the house had been built seventy years ago. The velvet drapes—almost as old—were drawn against the afternoon light. Herculeah clicked on a lamp as she passed the table.
The parrot’s stand had been turned over and lay across the faded and worn Persian rug.
“You must have gotten scared when your stand tipped over, huh? That’s why you flew out on the porch?” she said, though she had the feeling that that was not what had happened.
She picked up the parrot’s stand. There was something else wrong about the room, but she couldn’t place what it was.
She unwrapped the trembling bird and placed him on his perch. He took a few steps and began to swing his head from side to side.
“Something happened in this house,” Herculeah stated. “Madame Rosa would never let you go outside—not if she could have prevented it.”
She turned, slowly looking into the shadows of the room. She remembered that the last time she had been here, Madame Rosa had tried to pay her for looking after Tarot.
“No,” Herculeah had said. “I like feeding him. It’s no trouble at all.”
“I want to pay. You do me a big favor. Here, take it. Go on. Take.” She held out some money.
“No. Oh, I have an idea,” Herculeah had said. “Give me a reading. I want to know if I’m going to get an A on my English test tomorrow.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in readings,” Madame Rosa said with a smile that showed her long teeth. Her dark, gray-streaked hair was held back with golden combs.
“Well, I do and I don’t,” Herculeah said.
“Which? You do? You don’t?”
“Well, if you tell me I’m going to get an A, then I’ll probably work real hard and I will get one. So go ahead. Read the future.”
She held out her hands, palms up. Madame Rosa leaned over them. Herculeah could smell the scent of herbs and foreign perfume.
Madame Rosa put her hands under Herculeah’s. Her touch was light, but it seemed to offer strong support. Herculeah understood why people trusted Madame Rosa’s advice.
“Ah,” she said.
“What?”
“I see a very long lifeline.”
“What else?”
“I see a boy who is in love with you—two boys, one dark, one fair.”
“Madame Rosa, all I’m interested in right now is my English grade.”
“I do see a letter—perhaps it stands for a grade. We can never be sure.”
“What is the letter?”
Herculeah really did not believe in palm readings and crystal balls, yet for some reason, she felt an excitement. It was like being part of a soap opera.
“It is—” She paused. “I must look more closely.”
“What letter, Madame Rosa? I’m getting serious about this.”
“We cannot rush the future.” Madame Rosa had bent closer. “Ah, it is becoming clearer, clearer. It is an A. See?”
With one finger Madame Rosa drew a capital A on Herculeah’s palm. Then she deftly slipped the bills on the open hand and closed Herculeah’s fingers around them.
“That wasn’t fair,” Herculeah had said.
As she stood in the living room, she realized that was the last time she had seen Madame Rosa. She had stood right here between the parrot stand and the huge old buffet that held pictures of Madame Rosa’s relatives. “All dead but one—no, I forget to count myself,” she had once said. “All dead but two.”
Again Herculeah felt a chill, and she pulled on her sweater. “Madame Rosa?” Where could she be?
She glanced in the small parlor where Madame Rosa gave her readings. The round table in the center of the room was draped with a black cloth, and a large, gold-edged book lay open upon it. The heavy curtains were drawn in this room, too.
Herculeah moved back through the living room and into the hall. Her feeling of unease grew. The house had never been so silent, so filled with dread.
“Madame Rosa?”
She walked back into the kitchen. She smelled something burning and she went to the stove. A pot of some kind of liquid had boiled away. Perhaps, she thought, Madame Rosa had been disturbed in the middle of cooking something. Perhaps she had rushed out, leaving the front door open and... Herculeah’s thoughts trailed off.
She turned off the burner and shifted the pot. She opened the door to the backyard and peered out. There was no one in sight.
She moved through the hall, checking the rooms on either side as she went—the downstairs bedroom, the library, the sunroom, the bathroom. All were empty.
She paused at the foot of the stairs. Again she called, “Madame Rosa?”
She glanced at the coatrack beside the door. Madame Rosa’s long, black cloak hung there. Madame Rosa never went out without that cloak. Even in the summer, she wore it slung back over her shoulders. Madame Rosa had not gone out of this house.
A shiver of fear ran up Herculeah’s spine. She wrapped her arms about herself.
She put her foot on the first step.
In the living room Tarot had warmed up and regained his strength. “Beware! Beware!” he screeched. “Beware” was the parrot’s only word.
Herculeah had always thought this was comical. She liked it when she passed the house and Tarot screeched his warning out the window. She would pause to listen. “Beware! Beware!”
She knew that all the neighbors did not feel the same way. Some of them had complained to the police about the noise. And unsuspecting strangers walked faster when they passed by, as if they took the warning seriously.
Now it didn’t seem comical at all.
Gripping the banister tightly, Herculeah started up the stairs.
2
DANGER ON THE STAIRS
Herculeah stopped at the head of the staircase. She could see her reflection in the long mirror at the end of the hall. Her hair was so frizzled that she seemed to have been electrified.
She pulled her hair back into a ponytail with her hands.
“Quit doing that. I am not in danger,” she told her hair. She hoped it was true.
She breathed deeply to calm herself. “Madame Rosa?” Her voice seemed small, lost in the huge hall.
She had never been upstairs in this house before. There was a musty smell, as if the upstairs rooms had not been used in a long time. Herculeah moved down the worn carpet, opening the doors one by one.
She saw undusted objects, beds that had not been slept in for years, toilet bowls orange and dry, faded rugs. Maybe people had once occupied these rooms, but they had left nothing of themselves behind.
She paused at the front window and looked at the street below. She saw her friend Meat crossing the street to the opposite sidewalk. Meat was one of the people who crossed to avoid Tarot’s cries of “Beware.”
She tried to open the window to call to him. But the window had not been opened in years. She rapped on the glass. Meat kept walking.
The night before, she and Meat had talked on the phone about their English assignment. “Have you done yours yet, Meat? The assignment where we have to tell who we are in at least fifty words or more. I can’t seem to get started.”
“Write about how you got your name.”
“Oh, I don’t k
now.”
“Or your radar hair.”
“Maybe. What are you going to write?”
Meat said, “I’ve already started, ‘My name is Meat, and I’m fat, obese, chunky overweight, a lard-butt, a tubbo, el blimpo—Only I’m not sure I’ll be able to think of, let’s see, thirty-four more words for fat.”
Herculeah knew that Meat frequently said things like this so that she would tell him she never thought of him as fat—which she didn’t.
This time she said, “You’re getting taller. And, Meat, if you get tall enough, you’ll be just right.”
“How tall do I have to get?” he asked. “Ten feet? Twenty?”
“How tall was your dad?”
“You know I haven’t seen him since I was five.”
“Was he tall then?”
“I was five years old, Herculeah. All adults were tall.”
“Ask your mom how tall your dad was. Surely she’ll tell you that much.”
“She goes out of the room when I even mention his name.”
“Meat, you have a right to know. I looked at you through my glasses one time”—Herculeah had thick granny glasses that turned the world into a pleasant blur and allowed her to “fog out,” as she called it—“and I saw you as six feet, four inches tall.”
Herculeah smiled a little, remembering the conversation. She turned away from the window. At that moment she heard a noise downstairs. A footstep? The smile froze on her face.
“Madame Rosa?” It was barely a whisper.
There was no answer.
Her heart began to pound. There was someone else in the house.
“Beware! Beware!” the parrot screeched below. The parrot never said that to Madame Rosa, only when he saw a stranger. And if Tarot could see the stranger from the living room, whoever it was had to be close to the staircase.
She glanced around her. Here, at the far end of the hall, she was trapped. If someone came up the stairs, the only place she could go was into one of the musty bedrooms. Then she would really be trapped.
At the other end of the hall, her mirror image reflected her fear.