“Just call me Fitz the Entity-Buster.”
“Fitz the Fabulous.”
“That too,” he agreed cheerfully. “Oh, I hear Matt calling. I’d better get back to the party.”
“Maybe they want you to do your what? Dolly Parton imitation?”
“I’ve never tried Dolly. But—” He paused, then warbled a few lines from one of her old hits, I Will Always Love You.
Not bad! Also an interesting choice of songs, I thought, perhaps irrelevantly. “You have talents I never knew existed.”
“You have no idea, my dear,” he said airily.
“See you in a couple days.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
And what I was also thinking was that if Fitz could sound like Dolly Parton, Mary Beth probably wouldn’t have any trouble sounding like a masculine entity from another dimension.
I dozed off and woke to the hard rock blast – courtesy of granddaughter Rachel’s programming skills – of my cell phone. Tom and Mary Beth were ready for the limo.
I pulled over to the entrance and slid out to open the door for them. I gave it my full treatment, “Your chariot awaits,” with a little bow and flourish. Distracted by Trafalgar’s performance, I’d neglected doing that at the house.
“Oh, how cute!” Mary Beth gushed. “I love it. Tommy, can we do this again sometime?”
Tom beamed proudly, as if he’d produced the limo and me out of his pocket. “Sure.”
“Look what Tom gave me for my birthday!” Mary Beth opened her jacket to display a new necklace added to the lineup around her neck. It was another gold chain, but this one was much larger, with heavy, chunky links. Maybe not big enough to drop an anchor, but definitely oversized. Hanging from the chain was a bottle-cap sized stone framed in gold. It was almost black, with fiery flashes of red and blue, green and gold. I’d never seen anything like it.
“What is that? It’s gorgeous.” I’d definitely underestimated Tom’s gift-giving talents.
“It’s an opal.” Mary Beth held the stone out so she could admire it better herself. “Isn’t it absolutely fantastic? Tommy is such a love.”
“It’s her birthstone. I picked it out and had it specially set for her,” Tom said, his pride-puffed chest minimizing the belly below it.
“I didn’t realize opals came in such spectacular colors.” The only opals I’d ever seen were milky white, with shimmers of pastel colors, pretty but not spectacular.
“This one’s called a fire opal,” Mary Beth said, still admiring it.
I couldn’t imagine Tom having the initiative to check into birthstone lists on his own. Or spend what this must have cost. Neither could I see Trafalgar’s other-dimensional fingerprints – if he had fingers – here. But I could certainly see Mary Beth’s sweet manipulations. The woman knew how to hint.
A second thought was that if Tom could afford this necklace, he didn’t need any neighborly concessions on my limo price. But I just didn’t think he could afford this gift, and I felt a flicker of resentment at Mary Beth taking advantage of him this way. He and I were a long way from being big buddies, but I felt vaguely protective of him as a neighbor and didn’t want to see him hurt either emotionally or financially.
Had Tom ever done any checking up on Mary Beth? His nosy nature suggested he would have, but perhaps infatuation trumped even nosiness.
On the drive home, after Tom walked Mary Beth to the house and went inside for what I presumed was an appreciative thank-you kiss, he leaned through the partition to say, “Mary Beth loved the limo ride. We’ll do it again.”
“Tom, what do you know about Mary Beth?”
“What do you mean, what do I know about her?” He sounded indignant. “She’s a wonderful woman.”
“How did you meet her?”
“We just happened to park next to each other at Wal-Mart one time. I came out of the store, and her car wouldn’t start, so I looked under the hood and found a battery connection had come loose and fixed it for her.”
That in itself was surprising. I could be standing by my car with flames shooting out of the engine, and I doubt Tom would do more than yell that the smoke was polluting the atmosphere. But I wasn’t blonde and cute and bubbly.
“Then she said she’d like to thank me by buying me a cup of coffee. So she did, and a piece of pie too. Then we decided having dinner together would be nice.” He paused as if momentarily uncertain how that had come about, but then added, pleased, “And now here we are!”
“But you’ve never—” How to put it tactfully? Spied, snooped, and investigated were the tactics I’d normally think of Tom using. This was the man who had a police check run on the teenager who did some yard work for him. “I mean, you’ve never checked into her background?”
“Of course not. She’s told me everything I need to know. She was born in Arkansas and came out to college in California. She got married, which was a big mistake, and then divorced. She sold real estate for quite a few years, but now she does this house staging thing.”
That seemed straightforward enough. But straightforward didn’t necessarily mean true or all-inclusive. There were enough gaps in Mary Beth’s history to allow for anything from time in a psychiatric ward to multiple marriages to a stretch in the state pen for women.
“No children?”
“No, but she has a lot of family, cousins and stuff, back in Arkansas.”
“She said she usually invited Trafalgar to come. Does she do this for other people? Groups or meetings or something?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Trafalgar likes to help people get rid of the negativity in their lives and reach their full potential.”
Which sounded like the blurb from a New Age pamphlet someone had once handed me at a yard sale.
“Does she charge for this?”
“People can make a love gift if they want.”
Love gift. An interesting concept. “Does she worry about what she might be saying when she’s—” How had Mary Beth put it? “—not here?”
“She isn’t saying anything,” Tom insisted. “It’s Trafalgar speaking.”
“Does anyone ever record what he’s saying?”
“Trafalgar doesn’t allow recorders. He says they interfere with the inter-dimensional vibrations.”
A wise move on Mary Beth’s part if this was all a scam. But what kind of scam? Could the “love gifts” add up to big bucks?
“Did she ever tell you how she got into channeling?” Maybe there were books: Channeling for Dummies. The Idiot’s Guide to Other Dimensions.
“She said she went to some meeting where the people were interested in it. She thought it was all ridiculous, that they’d all be better off spending the evening playing bridge or watching Vanna White turn letters. But then Trafalgar spoke through her, and she realized there was something to it.”
“Didn’t you have some doubts when you first found out about Trafalgar?”
“Doubts about what? Mary Beth or Trafalgar?”
“Either. Both.”
“I was surprised,” Tom admitted, “but then I asked him about my great-grandfather.”
“But he says he doesn’t talk to the dead, that they aren’t where he is.”
“He doesn’t talk to them. They’re in a different place. But he can look into the past or future.”
“He predicts the future? Like what numbers are going to win the lottery or when T-bone steaks are going on sale?”
“No, no, no. Whatever he says is not a prediction. He looks into the future and sees it. He says it’s like walking down an endless hallway with doors, and he can go either way on the hallway and open a door and see into that time period, past or future. Because he’s outside time. Except he said once he opened a door, and he couldn’t figure out how come this woman was wearing a bikini and using a microwave in 1899. Only he’d made a mistake and it was actually 1999. He said he got a lot of kidding about that.”
An entity with a lousy comedy r
outine. Or maybe it was one of those you-had-to-be-there things.
“Anyway, like I said, I asked him about my great-grandpa who just disappeared way back when I was a boy. Left the house one morning and never came back. It was a big family mystery. Gossip was he ran off with a neighbor widow.”
“But Trafalgar knew differently?”
“Trafalgar opened the door on that time and saw great-grandpa hunting in the woods. He fell down an abandoned well and was just never found. So I feel much better about that. I liked my great-grandma and didn’t like to think of him abandoning her for a neighbor lady.”
Call me cynical, but I’d lay money on the neighbor widow. But what did I know? How can you dispute an all-knowing entity?
“But Trafalgar is very careful about revealing anything about the future. He says most things are not for us to know ahead of time.”
An entity with a conscience? Or Mary Beth carefully not predicting herself into a corner?
Maybe Tom wasn’t inclined to check up on Mary Beth, but I was. I had about as much faith in her “channeling” abilities as I had in my own ability to put a new transmission in the limo.
Chapter Four
Tom paid the limo bill without complaint. While I was unlocking my front door I noticed the light was still on over in the other side of the duplex.
Eleven o’clock probably wasn’t the ideal time for a surprise visit, but I decided it was as good as any for an invitation to church. I also decided a neighbor bearing food might be more welcome than one without, so I went inside and grabbed the sack of blueberry muffins I’d earlier picked up at the Sweet Breeze Deli and Bakery. They’d recently opened a second location downtown.
India came when I knocked, but she checked me out through the peep-hole before opening the door. Her long blonde hair was tied back with a leather thong, as usual, but she was in an ordinary, flower-sprigged flannel robe and slippers. I was relieved. I’d never seen her in anything but a muumuu and motorcycle boots, and I was beginning to wonder if she wore them 24/7. I was also beginning to wonder if India Beauregard was her real name. She just didn’t look like an India. Although that was probably unfair. Who was I to know what an India should look like?
“Hi. Am I interrupting anything? I saw your light. I brought blueberry muffins.” I held up the sack.
“I’ll make tea,” she said promptly, and opened the door wider to let me in. I could see a website with a lot of numbers on the screen of a computer in the corner of the living room. “I was just about to shut this off anyway.” She hurried over and clicked the keys. Quite hurriedly, it seemed to me.
She made tea, a nice orange-spice blend. This side of the duplex was a carbon copy of my own, only reversed, and we sat on tall stools at the counter separating kitchen and dining room. I’d been off on a several-day limo engagement when she moved in, so I didn’t know if the furniture had arrived in a moving van, or if she’d bought it here. Definitely used anyway, I decided after a surreptitious peek at the outdated brown-plaid sofa in the living room.
We small-talked about the recent windstorm, the new Starbucks downtown, and the oddity that Phreddie liked riding in the limo. I wanted to know more about her, but I had the feeling she was avoiding asking me personal questions, which probably meant she didn’t want to have to reciprocate with answers about herself. Because of the timing of her renting the unit, which was when I was wrapped up in a wedding-cum-murder limo gig, we hadn’t done the formality of a rental application, which would have supplied some information. Even though I had some doubts about her even then, I’d accepted her on a feeling that she was okay. An even deeper gut feeling that she really needed this place to live, and God was nudging me to give it to her.
I got down to the purpose of my visit. “I go to a friendly little community church out past Wal-Mart, and I was wondering if you’d like to go with me on Sunday?”
“Thank you, no.”
“No?”
“No.”
No hesitation to think about it. No reason. No lame excuse. No I have to wash my hair. Go to my grandmother’s funeral or polish my motorcycle boots. Just no. Not spoken rudely. There was even a polite smile on her lean, tanned face. But there was also a hint of inflexible steel behind the word.
A little lamely, I said, “Maybe another time, then.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Was she into some other religious belief that didn’t do church on Sunday? Maybe even some strange cult on the internet? I felt awkward and yanked up a subject I probably wouldn’t have mentioned otherwise. Although it was on my mind anyway.
“Have you met our neighbor across the street, Tom Bolton?”
“We haven’t been formally introduced, but he sat out on his deck with binoculars and watched me move in. He probably knows everything from how many muumuus I own to my favorite brand of deodorant.”
I was a little curious about the muumuus myself, but all I said was, “That’d be our Tom, all right. I’m sorry for the intrusion.”
“Oh, I didn’t really mind.” She smiled. “Although if I were a mooning type person, I’d have been tempted to give him a surprise. Fortunately I’m not, so all I did was wave.”
I smiled too. A woman after my own heart. Occasionally tempted by outrageous impulses but usually managing to clamp down on them.
“Actually, since he got a girlfriend a while back, he’s mellowed considerably. I drove them to dinner in the limo tonight.” I hesitated. I usually consider whatever goes on with the limo confidential. Maybe not on the level of doctor or lawyer confidentiality, but I didn’t discuss one client with another. Yet this evening had been so peculiar. “Something odd happened.”
“Oh?” Encouraging but not pushy.
I didn’t use Mary Beth’s name, nor did I mention Tom’s extravagant birthday gift to her. But I did use Trafalgar’s name and repeat some of his claims. Mentally adding, Okay, Mr. T, if you don’t like me talking about you, hire yourself an other-dimensional lawyer and sue me.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“I’ve never had anything to do with channeling, but I’ve heard of it, of course. My feeling is that it’s usually some sort of scam, or that it’s self-delusional.”
“Self-delusional?”
“The person honestly believes some sort of entity is speaking through him or her, but it’s really just babbling coming out of their own subconscious.”
I hadn’t considered that. “A psychological thing?”
“I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist or anything like that. But I read a lot.” India smiled. “Maybe too much.”
I considered this theory of self-delusion. Possible, but— “This woman tonight didn’t seem to be babbling. Her entity made sense—” I smiled too and then qualified that statement. “In an other-dimensional sort of way. She claims she doesn’t even know what he’s saying.”
“I’d go with a con of some kind, then. There’s money involved somewhere.”
Something in the way she said it made me say, “You’re familiar with cons and scams?”
“I’ve run into a few.”
I waited, hoping she’d elaborate, but she just broke off another chunk of blueberry muffin.
“The thing is, if it’s a scam, I can’t figure out what Mary Beth—” Oh, oh, I’d used her name. I rushed on, hoping India hadn’t noticed. Although it only then occurred to me that I didn’t even know Mary Beth’s last name. Tom’s introduction had been one-sided. “Tom says she lets people give ‘love gifts’ if they want, but I can’t think that would bring in any impressive amount of money.”
Although Mary Beth had certainly collected an impressive necklace from Tom. But I figured she hadn’t needed Trafalgar for that; her feminine charms would probably have sufficed.
“Hard to say how she’s making it pay off, then.”
“Maybe she’s just a nice lady who thinks she’s providing people with a helpful service.”
India laug
hed. “If you believe that, let me tell you about a fantastic Space Needle in Seattle that I’ll sell you cheap.”
“Does that outside elevator go with it?”
“Of course. And the revolving restaurant on top too.”
We both laughed, and I stood up. “Thanks for the tea.”
“Thanks for the muffins.” She walked with me to the door and, a little hesitantly, said, “I’m sorry about Sunday. It was nice of you to invite me, and I didn’t mean to be rude, but . . .”
“That’s okay. If you don’t want to come to church, maybe you’d like to come to one of our potlucks.” I hesitated and then added, “If you’re concerned about clothes, no one will care how you dress.”
I noted now that her motorcycle boots stood at the end of the sofa. Or maybe she had a whole wardrobe of them. Black leather, with a strap and buckle across the front. She saw the drift of my gaze.
She smiled. “No. Clothes aren’t the problem. I still have a couple of Donna Karan dresses in my closet. And a pair of Manalo Blahnik shoes and a Coach handbag too.”
A startling statement. I offered one of my own. “Phreddie has a $24,000 wedding dress as a cat bed.” She looked as startled as I felt by her statement, and I added. “Long story.”
“Mine too.” Another smile. “I never wear the clothes. I just keep them to remind myself of how unimportant clothes really are.”
A fine philosophy of life, although an unusual way to carry it out. Still, going from Manalo Blahniks to motorcycle boots was an odd jump.
“The boots are really very comfortable. And muumuus have lots of advantages. If it’s hot, you don’t wear anything underneath. Very airy and cool. But if it’s cold, there’s plenty of room for long johns. You should try them sometime.”
“I’ll think about it.” The boots did look great for stomping cockroaches or kicking anthills, but I wasn’t bothered by that many cockroaches or ants. “If you should happen to change your mind about Sunday, just let me know.”
For Whom the Limo Rolls Page 3