The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery)

by Steve Hockensmith

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that. You never know who’s going to go next, but it’s never who you want it to be.”

  She threw a glare at the snoring man in the wheelchair. Then she looked back at me.

  “But your mother—she was so young.”

  “It was very sudden.”

  “Stroke?”

  “No.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “No. It—”

  “Pulmonary embolism?”

  “No. It was—”

  “Hit by a car?”

  The old woman looked strangely hopeful.

  “No. She had pancreatic cancer,” I said. “Then there was an unexpected complication.”

  “Oooo, pancreatic cancer. That’s a bad one. Mr. Garratt and Mr. Hilton and Mrs. Hettle and Mrs. Cohn all went with that. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

  “Not for long.”

  “That’s good. I used to hope for the car myself. Or getting struck by lightning. Pow, sizzle and you’re done. It never happened, though. Last year I thought the carcinoma might get me, but it let me down in the end.”

  Lucia shook her head sadly.

  “Remission.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Better luck next time”?

  “Your mother was supposed to be helping me with all that, actually,” Lucia went on, “but I guess nothing will come of that now.”

  A look of sudden, panicked horror came over the old woman’s face.

  “Please tell me you’re not here to give me my jewelry back!”

  “What jewelry?”

  Lucia relaxed.

  “You had me worried for a second there,” she said.

  “Worried I’d bring you jewelry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jewelry that belongs to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which you gave to my mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which you don’t want back?”

  “Of course not,” Lucia snapped, exasperated. “Not if it’s still cursed!”

  Here’s something they never told you on Antiques Roadshow: jewelry can be haunted.

  Lucia Castellanos’s was. The rings and necklaces and chokers and lockets she’d inherited from her mother were befouled by a vengeful spirit—the ghost of a woman Lucia’s father had once spurned. When Lucia brought the jewelry into her home, she brought the woman’s evil with it. That was why her husband and her daughter had died not long after, while Lucia was cursed to live and live and live. It was why her son Victor couldn’t find love. They were doomed to be alone. Forever.

  Fortunately, Athena Passalis came along and discovered the true root of all Lucia’s sorrows. And Athena knew what to do about it, too. Take the jewelry far away from Lucia and Victor. Starve the evil inside it. Cleanse it, purify it. Then and only then could it be returned, and Lucia and Victor would be free.

  Yes. People actually believe this stuff.

  Some of them, anyway. Victor Castellanos hadn’t believed.

  He’d gone to the police. He’d moved his mother into a new home—one that wasn’t so welcoming to the likes of Athena Passalis. And he’d confronted Athena and demanded the jewelry back.

  “What jewelry?” she’d said to him.

  Because she was selfless like that. She was willing to keep cursed objects near her, putting herself at risk, rather than let them fall back into the hands of those they might destroy.

  Lucia understood. That was why she’d told the police “what jewelry?” too. She was protecting Athena just as Athena was protecting her.

  Her son wasn’t very happy about that. In fact, he was still mad at Lucia about it. And oh—the things he said about Athena! The things he’d do to her if he could. It actually scared her sometimes.

  It was a good thing Victor and Athena never met face to face.

  It wouldn’t have been pretty.

  “What does Victor do, by the way?”

  Lucia beamed. “He’s a teacher.”

  “Oh. How nice.”

  How boring. How nonviolent.

  “At the high school in Berdache.”

  “Lovely.”

  And unhelpful.

  “He teaches physical fitness and health enhancement. Coaches the basketball teams, too. Boys and girls.”

  Wait.

  “He’s the gym teacher?”

  “I don’t think they call it that anymore.”

  “Does he coach any of the other teams? Football? Soccer? Hopscotch?”

  “No, just basketball. Oh, and field hockey. And…another one. For the boys.”

  “Wrestling?”

  “That’s it,” Lucia said. “He’s the wrestling coach.”

  I asked the old woman to describe the jewelry she’d given my mother to be “purified.”

  “I’m not sure you should mess around with it if you find it,” she said when she was done. “Would you know how to cleanse it yourself?”

  “Absolutely,” I told her.

  Windex.

  As I drove away from the Verde River Vista Senior Residences, I spotted a pay phone at a gas station. That reminded me: time to give the cage another rattle.

  I stopped and called Star Bail Bonds.

  Press 0 to speak to a customer service representative (if she’s awake).

  Press 1 to speak to Anthony Grandi.

  I pressed 1.

  “Grandi,” a man said. He had a rough, gruff voice I remembered well.

  There was no doubt about it now. It was him. My fifty-cents-a-call stalker.

  I exhaled. Loudly.

  “Hello?” Grandi said. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

  I exhaled again. Then again.

  “Call back!” Grandi shouted. “We’ve got a bad connection!”

  I exhaled as hard as I could.

  Turns out heavy breathing isn’t easy. I was starting to feel light-headed.

  Fortunately, he finally got it.

  “Who is this?” he growled.

  But he knew. Otherwise, he would’ve just hung up.

  I thought about hanging up myself. Or maybe huffing and puffing some more. Or asking if his refrigerator was running.

  “I think you might have killed my mother,” I finally said. “If you want me to think otherwise, you’ll meet me at Celebrity Roast in half an hour. And you’ll be ready to do some convincing.”

  Grandi said nothing. I said nothing.

  I could hear him breathing. He could hear me breathing.

  We were playing phone chicken.

  He hung up first.

  Excellent. I had a date with a man who’d threatened to kill me. What did I have to worry about? It couldn’t turn out much worse than my last “date” two years before. I keep expecting to see that one turned into a Lifetime movie: Barf in the Lobster Tank: A Date That Will Live in Infamy.

  And I had just been thinking about trying to connect with people more. Why not Anthony Grandi? Potentially murderous scumbag-bully bail bondsmen are people too, right?

  Maybe not.

  I showed up at Celebrity Roast ready for anything…almost.

  I wasn’t ready for Detective Josh Logan. He was leaning against the counter chatting with Kathleen the Cop-Loving Barista. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “I thought you didn’t drink coffee,” I said to him.

  “I still don’t. Wanna get some lunch?”

  “Well, I—”

  “He’s not coming, so you may as well let me buy you a burger.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a little round patty of beef grilled and served on a bun. Usually with fried potatoes.”

  “Thanks for the explanation. I was actually thinking of the ‘he’
s not coming’ part.”

  “I’d rather discuss that over a little round patty of beef.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Yours can be over a little round patty of tofu.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I could tell the badinage was getting on Kathleen’s nerves, and who knew when I might need to tap her for more local gossip?

  “I hope this means there’s been a break in the case, Detective,” I said as we headed for the door.

  See, Kathleen? I was really saying. Strictly business.

  And of course it was. Though I had to wonder.

  Logan had just inserted himself between me and Anthony Grandi. Between me and answers.

  So why wasn’t I pissed?

  I assumed Logan was going to take me to one of those old greasy spoons cops love so much. The kind that still have toadstool seats along a grimy counter and fry cooks in wife-beaters and, if the place is really fancy, half-frozen flies and week-old wedges of lemon meringue slowly circling on a refrigerated pie merry-go-round. In fact, we walked past just such a place, and two uniformed cops were sitting at one of the tables.

  “There we go,” Logan said. And he pointed across the street at a touristy French bistro called Café Vortex.

  “That’s where you go for a burger?”

  “Best in town. But if you’d rather have authentic local flavor, we could go to Smitty’s Grill here. I think the special of the day is salmonella.”

  I glanced back at the diner. “Doesn’t look very vegetarian friendly.”

  Logan nodded. “Even the coffee’s got grease in it.”

  “Café Vortex it is.”

  Café Vortex didn’t even have hamburgers on the menu.

  “I was going to take you to Smitty’s,” Logan said sheepishly, “but I changed my mind at the last second.”

  “Because you were suddenly in the mood for foie gras?”

  “Because I like the atmosphere here better.”

  “It is charming. Very Euro.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. More touristy, too. Less eavesdroppy. The booths are so nice and cozy and private.”

  Logan sighed a guilty-as-charged sigh. “I thought it was your mother who was supposed to be the psychic.”

  “I keep telling you: Tarot readers aren’t psychic. We’re just highly intuitive.”

  “Well, your intuition’s right.”

  “You didn’t want to talk about Anthony Grandi in front of a bunch of locals.”

  Logan nodded.

  “Especially now that you’re running errands for him,” I went on. “Why couldn’t Grandi make it himself? Another drug dealer jump bail?”

  “I’m not running errands for him,” Logan snapped.

  I gave my inner bitch a whack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Down, girl! Remember—we like this guy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You take me out to a nice restaurant and then I won’t let you explain…”

  I started to say “why you’re making public appearances on behalf of a murder suspect.”

  What can I say? My inner bitch is really poorly trained.

  I tried to put a muzzle on her.

  “…why you were at Celebrity Roast,” I said instead.

  “Grandi called me this morning,” Logan said. “He and I had an agreement. He’d leave you alone and I wouldn’t have to charge him with assaulting an officer for breaking my hand with his face. So what was he supposed to do when you started harassing him?”

  “He admitted that he’d been threatening me?”

  “Not outright, no. He’s not dumb enough to do that. But we were able to talk around his non-denial denials and come to an understanding.”

  “Well, I really appreciate the police brutality on my behalf, Detective, but—”

  “And what do we think we’ll be having today?” said the waitress who came gliding up to our table, pad in hand.

  Logan thought he’d be having steak frites.

  I thought I’d be having the onion soup and the tarte du jour.

  The waitress went gliding away.

  “But,” I said, “there’s something pretty big I still don’t understand. Why was Grandi messing with me in the first place, and why hasn’t that made him your number-one suspect?”

  “He’s not a suspect, number one or otherwise, because he has an airtight alibi—”

  I rolled my eyes. As if a crooked bail bondsman wouldn’t know how to cook up a phony alibi.

  “—and I know why he was messing with you, and it’s not because he killed your mother.”

  I raised my eyebrows high.

  “So,” Logan said, “you need to just steer clear of Anthony Grandi and leave the police work to the pro—

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  My eyebrows were still threatening to head north of my hairline.

  “I’m frozen in the moment you said ‘I know why he was messing with you.’ I don’t think I can leave it till you explain.”

  “It’s not a very flattering look, Alanis.”

  “I know. What a tragedy if I had to walk around like this for the rest of my life.”

  Logan sighed. “You know I’ve already bent all kinds of rules for you, and I don’t even know why.”

  I reached up to my forehead and tried to tug my eyebrows down.

  “Still…frozen,” I grunted.

  “Fine. You win. Just get that dumb expression off your face.”

  I smiled, and my eyebrows returned to the general vicinity of my eyes.

  “Better?”

  “Yes.”

  “So talk.”

  “All right, all right! Just promise me you’ll keep this to yourself.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. It’s not just your mother I’d been keeping tabs on. I’ve been investigating the Grandi family, too. Anthony’s the only one in the bail bonds business. The rest are fortunetellers. They have six shops in four counties—that I know of. And the Grandis aren’t like most of the psychics and aura readers and vortex guides around Berdache and Sedona. They’re more like your mother.”

  “Con artists.”

  “Exactly. They convince people to give them money and valuables and bank account numbers. They make them think that they’re cursed and that only a lot of mumbo jumbo—very expensive mumbo jumbo—can save them. They string them along with promises of love or better health or a better life right around the corner, and they get away with it because they know their limits. They don’t take a victim for everything she’s worth; instead, they take a lot of victims for a little bit at a time, and it adds up.”

  I was nodding.

  “It makes sense,” I said. “My mother used to have friends, air quote–air quote, who liked to keep a bent bondsman on the payroll for worst-case scenarios. What could be better than having one in the family? And I assume they don’t like me because I spread it around that I’m reopening the White Magic Five & Dime. Not only would I be competition—or so they’d assume—if I wasn’t as careful as them, I could bring heat down on every operator in the area. Which sounds like it would be a bunch of Grandis.”

  “Wow,” Logan marveled. “‘Bring heat down on every operator in the area’? Are you sure you’re not a criminal yourself?”

  “Ninety-nine percent.” I thought it over a moment. “Maybe ninety-eight. But wait. I still don’t see why Grandi’s not a suspect, alibi or not. His family had good reason to want my mother gone.”

  “Gone but not murdered. I’ve spent the last year building up a case against the Grandis, and they must know it. Now’s not the best time to start bumping off rivals.”

  “Maybe they thought my mom was helping you somehow. You said you used to dr
op in on her from time to time to let her know you were watching. Grandi could have gotten the wrong idea.”

  “It’s obvious I don’t know con artists as well as you do, Alanis. But would one help a cop take down another while running the same scams in the same town?”

  “Probably not. Unless the cop was crooked, too.”

  Logan shot me an exasperated look. “Let’s assume he’s not.”

  “Then no.”

  “Well, wouldn’t the Grandis know that?”

  “Probably. If they’re smart.”

  “They’ve been operators around here for fifteen years without getting busted once.”

  “Okay, so they’re smart. Sometimes nasty trumps that, though.”

  “Alanis. Forget the Grandis. Those names I gave you—focus on those. Do whatever penance you’ve got to do on your mom’s behalf and leave the investigating to me.”

  “I got started on the penance yesterday. It went well.”

  “Good.”

  “I learned a lot.”

  Logan’s shoulders slumped.

  “You weren’t supposed to be learning,” he said. “You were supposed to be spreading sunshine and love.”

  “I can multitask. Don’t you want to hear what I found out?”

  “I—”

  “First off, there’s William Riggs. He went to the police after his wife, Marsha, dropped a bundle on my mom for tarot card marriage counseling. Very creepy vibe in the Riggs home. Personally, I don’t think Marsha needs counseling. She needs luggage and a ticket to Anywhere Else. Her husband’s got quite the temper, according to her. Got thrown out of the army for it. Used to mix it up with MPs a lot.”

  “So maybe—”

  “Right. We don’t know if he’s ever used a sleeper hold on anyone, but there’s a fair chance he’s seen one in action—on himself. I’d say there’s no better way to find out how effective they can be.”

  “But—”

  “Then there’s Victor Castellanos. My mom talked his mom out of the family jewels, and he’s had some pretty ugly things to say about it, apparently. And guess what he does over at the high school?”

  “Isn’t—?”

  “Exactly. He’s a gym teacher—and he coaches the wrestling squad. Last and definitely least, but I’ll mention him anyway, is Kenneth Meldon, another man with a temper. He’s had more than one run-in with the police over the years, and though he acted like he didn’t even know my mother was dead, his mind is so fuzzy I could almost believe it if he’d—”