The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery)

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Chuh?” I said.

  “She wanted to sell tarot books in the shop, but she didn’t like the idea of paying anyone for them. So she copied stuff from other books and websites and linked it together with her own BS. She had me go through it before it was printed up, to make sure everything fit together, and I ended up adding a bunch, too. It was fun, actually.”

  “So Miss Chance is Mom?”

  “Mostly. With a little bit of me and whoever she ripped off. That’s why I wanted to read that part of the book. That ‘Life’s a bitch, but isn’t she beautiful’ line—I thought that was her talking about herself.”

  “God knows it fits. That’s probably why Biddle used to say it. Still…” I put my hands to my head again just in case it was about to spin off my neck and fly into the canyon. “This is too weird. My mother wrote Infinite Roads to Knowing? Unbelievable. I mean, it gets all snarky sometimes, but it seems sincere, too. And Mom didn’t do sincere. Not sincerely, anyway.”

  “I know what you mean. But by the end I think she did kind of believe in the tarot. She used to say that anyone who knew the things she did about people could do amazing things with the cards. At first I thought she just meant a con artist could make a lot of money. But when I read what she wrote…?”

  Clarice gave her bony shoulders a shrug.

  I looked down at the box of person powder in my hands.

  Okay, Mom: Which was it? Did you believe or not? Was the White Magic Five & Dime a gift or a trap? Were you trying to destroy me or show me a new road?

  Of course, it’s a little late for a heart to heart when one of the hearts is half a cup of ash.

  I’d never get an answer. And that was okay.

  Life’s a bitch, but she’s beautiful, too.

  Clarice turned to look back down at the parking lot.

  “Tour van’s pulling in,” she said. “Five minutes and there’s gonna be another fanny pack powwow up here. We’d better get this over with.”

  “Right.”

  I loosened the lid of the TCC.

  I hadn’t decided on what I was going to say. “All we are is dust in the wind” maybe, and I’d chuck Mom into the gorge, takeout box and all. Blatantly illegal, yeah, but wouldn’t that be apropos for my mother? The last act she had any part in: desecration of hallowed ground and a violation of public health codes. If only there were some way to scam money out of it, we’d hit the trifecta.

  “They’re coming, Alanis. Do it. Fast.”

  “Let’s keep her,” I said, blurting it out like a kid talking about a stray dog.

  “What?”

  “Let’s keep her. Let’s take her back to the White Magic Five & Dime and put her on the mantle.”

  “The Five & Dime doesn’t have a mantle.”

  “We’ll buy one. Or build one. Or we’ll just keep her on top of the john, next to the Kleenex. That way, if we ever change our minds about having her around, we can give her a quick goldfish funeral and start using the cremains container as a napkin holder.”

  A small, guarded smile puckered up one side of Clarice’s mouth.

  “You make it sound like you’re staying.”

  “I am.” I gave the plastic box a hug. “Mom talked me into it.”

  Clarice’s smile widened.

  “All right,” she said. “But I think she should go downstairs in the display case. You know—so she can be close to the cash register.”

  “Perfect! That’ll keep her restful.”

  “Yeah. The last thing I want is her haunting me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” I turned away from the chasm and started toward the trail. “It doesn’t last.”

  We walked down the hill and drove home.

  The End

  Steve Hockensmith (California) is the author of the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies novels Dawn of the Dreadfuls (Quirk Classics, 2010) and Dreadfully Ever After (Quirk Classics, 2011). His book Holmes on the Range (Minotaur Books, 2006) was a finalist for the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel. He also writes a series of middle-grade mysteries with “Science Bob” Pflugfelder. For more information, visit his website at stevehockensmith.com.

  Lisa Falco (Los Angeles) received her first tarot deck at the age of eight years old. She holds degrees from both Northwestern University and Cal State University Northridge, and is the author of A Mother’s Promise (Illumination Arts, 2004).