Bound by Mystery

by Diane D. DiBiase

  “So tell me what’s happened. Officer.”

  He spooned another dollop of sugar into his coffee. This was how he always did it, a teensy spoonful at the time, until he had a quarter cup of sugar in there. No milk, black as midnight and sweet as a pocket of rock candy.

  “I got a call this morning to what I thought was a routine break-in.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What made it non-routine?”

  “The tarot card stuck on the living room wall.”

  “Stuck?”

  “With a butcher knife.”

  I winced and shook my head. “It was Death, wasn’t it? It’s always Death. The Tower is a much more terrifying card, all that lightning, bodies tumbling to the rocks below—”

  “It was Death,” he said. “And a butcher knife.”

  Something in the way he said that too. I’d been thinking that this was a courtesy call, that I might get to play divination CSI with the sexy cop. But he was looking at his coffee again. Not good.

  I sighed. “You’re not here for my professional opinion, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m here because the victim seems to think that it might have been you who stuck that card on her wall.”

  “And who might this victim be?”

  “Trixie Daniels.”

  I stared at him over the rim of my mug. Trixie. I wondered if she knew how lucky she was I took the “harm none” part of the Rede very seriously.

  “Now what makes her think that?”

  Officer William flipped open his notebook, but I knew it was just for show. He had the details in his head, as always.

  “Well. There’s the fact that she just moved in with your ex-fiancé.”

  I blew lightly on my coffee. “So she’s living at his place now? Interesting.”

  Thomas owned a disheveled Victorian on Habersham that kept him on the edge of bankruptcy, since his English professor status barely covered the upkeep, insurance, and taxes. But being a young good-looking academic had its perks, Trixie being the major one. It was such a cliché—the professor and the grad student—but then, Thomas didn’t have much imagination sometimes.

  I missed that old house. On summer evenings, the moonflower twined and the jessamine bloomed and the air musked up with the smell of the salt marshes coming in from the coast.

  “Yes, ma’am,” William said. “It happened sometime last night between seven p.m. and one a.m. The thief broke in through the back porch, hidden from the street. The victims came home to discover the front room ransacked and the knife and card stuck into the wall.”

  “Well, that lets me off the hook,” I said. “There’s no way I was out on Sunday night. Anybody who knows me knows that.”

  He tapped his notebook, but his eyes dipped to the pentacle around my neck. “Would that be…ah, religious reasons?”

  I smiled. “Season finale of Game of Thrones. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.”

  “Anybody with you to verify that story?”

  “No, just Pythagoras here, but he’s totally unreliable.” I peered into Will’s mug. “You’re not drinking your coffee.”

  He took a dutiful sip.

  “So why does Trixie think it was me? Surely I’m not the only tarot aficionado that she’s pissed off?”

  “It’s not just the card. There’s also the dagger.”

  “Dagger? You said it was a butcher knife.”

  “The knife in the wall was a butcher knife, yes, but Ms. Daniels also reported that she’d been robbed of several items, the most valuable of which being a ceremonial dagger.” Will consulted his notes for real this time. “Civil War-era, with silver and onyx handle and a serpent-twined eagle on the hilt.”

  He looked up, and I noticed that his eyes slid toward the glass-fronted display case on the back wall. It looked like a weapons stash right out of Braveheart, all blades and hilts and pointy metal, a stark contrast to the rest of the shop, which tended toward oils and incense and bowls of gemstones.

  I followed his gaze, then returned it evenly. “And because I sell ceremonial daggers, including some antiques, that’s motive? Do you really think I’d be that stupid? To steal something from someone I supposedly have a grudge against and then try to sell it in my own shop?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re stupid. But I would understand if you had a grudge.”

  “I don’t have a grudge. Thomas made his choice, and I made mine. I didn’t even know Trixie collected daggers.”

  “It was a gift, she said, for her altar.”

  I sighed again. So Trixie had an altar now. Big surprise. She’d been a lapsed Presbyterian when she’d taken up with Thomas.

  “Have you considered this might be someone with something against Pagans and not against Trixie specifically?”

  “Of course we have. Unfortunately.”

  Unfortunately, indeed. I knew it happened. I’d gotten my share of looks over the years, had lost friends. But I’d never been the target of malicious willful criminal conduct, not like this, anyway. Breaking and entering, trashing sacred tools, threats. It hurt to think about, even if the victim had been Trixie, who, in my opinion…

  The door jangled open again. Py hissed, and William put his notebook down fast. It was Trixie. And she looked steamed.

  “Ms. Daniels,” Will said, stepping right in her path, “what are you doing here?”

  Trixie stopped short. She was a lovely girl, with milky skin and black hair chopped in a wild child mop. I noticed that she had a pentacle around her neck—which she hadn’t purchased from me—and black nail polish on her bitten-down nails. A black tee-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Goth Witch” erased any possible misconception that Trixie was in the broom closet.

  “They told me you were investigating,” she said, looking directly at Will. “I guessed this might be your first stop. I guess I guessed right.”

  She didn’t say a word to me, just shoved a stack of photographs at Will. The top one was a close-up of the dagger. There were other shots, though, including one of a smiling Trixie in black robes, holding said dagger.

  She tapped it with her finger. “That’s the picture I was telling you about. It took me a while to find it, what with all the mess.”

  This last was said with a sidelong stab of a glance my way. Py made a throaty growl in the back of his throat. I stroked his back.

  “I was sorry to hear about that,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t acknowledge me. “And,” she said, dragging something out of her tote bag, “I found this buried in the front yard, right by the front steps. I’ll bet she put it there, some kind of black magic. Thomas said he had no idea what it was or where it had come from, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from her.”

  It was a tiny statue, not three inches tall, of a little man in robes. It was plastic, earth-toned, covered in dirt. It hadn’t been buried very well if Trixie had spotted it, or maybe a neighbor’s dog had marked it for a chew toy. Either way, Will was holding it like it might bite him.

  “That,” I said, “is a statue of St. Joseph, which people bury upside down on property that they want to sell quickly. I had nothing to do with it, but you might want to talk to the nice Catholic couple Thomas bought the house from.”

  Trixie looked mean and confused. Will tried not to smile. Pythagoras arched against my cheek and purred.

  “You took my dagger because you were jealous,” Trixie said. “And then you trashed the place.”

  “I have my own dagger, thank you. Plus a whole showcase full of extras if I feel the need for more.”

  “But not one from Thomas.”

  She was wrong there. The athame on my altar was indeed from Thomas, his first gift to me, our first Yule. I still used it, was accustomed to it, comfortable wit
h it and its history, too much to abandon it. But I saw no reason to tell her that.

  Trixie returned her attention to Will. “You can keep those photographs. I have a spare set at home, for the insurance.”

  “Smart thinking,” I said.

  She ignored me, just slammed out the door, jangling my crystals as she did. Will watched her go, a little bemused.

  “May I see?” I said.

  He held out the statue. I shook my head. “No, not Saint Joe. The photographs.”

  He obliged. I flipped to the close-up of the dagger. It was a fine-looking piece, that was for sure, a nicely chased pattern on the blade with some exquisite work on the hilt. A serpent-twined eagle. Powerful symbolism to somebody.

  Will closed his notebook and tucked it into his pocket. “Tell the truth, Callie. You have any idea what’s going on here?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I didn’t stick Death to her wall, and I didn’t wreck her altar, and I certainly didn’t steal her athame.”

  “Can you spell that?”

  I did. He wrote it down.

  “It was sacred to her,” I continued, “which means I would never touch it, no matter how much I disliked her.”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Dislike her?”

  I sighed. “Let’s just say I’ve been doing a lot of release work lately. But it’s been successful. So far.”

  He nodded. “I’m going back to the station to write all this down. I’ll call you if something comes up.”

  “Wait…do you mind if I make a copy of this photograph first? It’s a long shot, but somebody might bring it in to sell.”

  “Sure, not a problem.”

  I photocopied it quickly and handed it back to him. “Will you let me know if you find out anything?”

  “Of course. And if you come up with any brilliant ideas, you let me know, okay?”

  Pythagoras nudged my elbow, and I picked him up and tucked him against my chest. “I will. I promise.”

  ***

  There were few customers that morning, just the woman from down the street picking up her weekly order of herbs, the usual tourist or two. I stayed preoccupied, running my fingers along the photograph.

  When the final customer left, I put up the Closed sign and turned the hands of the clock to show that I would be back at two. Then I strolled down to City Market, threading through the flitting sparrows on the ground, following the smell of pepperoni to Vinnie Van Gogo’s. Sure enough, I found Thomas at one of the shaded tables, a half-eaten slice of spinach and mushroom pizza in front of him. As usual, he was talking instead of eating, and equally as usual, he was orbited by a ring of students.

  He looked like one of them, with his jeans and faded Franz Ferdinand concert tee, his riot of chestnut curls pulled into a ponytail and black wire-rims perched seriously at the end of his nose. Only the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes revealed his thirty-some odd years on this planet, but I knew you had to get really close to see them.

  He saw me coming and stood up. The other students eyed me cagily. All but one was female.

  “Officer Davis just left,” I said.

  He took my elbow. I loosed myself from his grasp. The students licked their collective lips.

  “Not here,” he said.

  He threw a twenty on the table and headed for a park bench in Franklin Square, shadowed from the strengthening sun by the oaks and the Haitian monument, its dark bronze boy soldiers marching and drumming, muskets raised. It was a heroic contrast to Thomas, who exuded only sulkiness. He sat in a half-sprawl, his long legs stretched in front of him. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “I wanted to catch you before…you know,” he said.

  “Before I got interrogated?”

  He started to protest, but I interrupted him. “Never mind. Just tell me how this started.”

  He told me the story then, that he’d bought the dagger the weekend before, when he was combing flea markets. “It was genuine Civil War-era, the real thing. I saw one just like it last week on the Antiques Roadshow marathon, and that one was two thousand dollars, but I got this one for a steal.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred. She was asking one-fifty, but knocked off fifty just for me. I said thank you, wrote a check, and took it straight home.”

  I shook my head. Thomas was gorgeous, but sometimes I wondered if there was a brain under all that hair. My antiques dealer friend said people brought in Granny’s “genuine antiques” all the time only to discover that Granny was either a not-so-clever patsy or a clever forger.

  “You know as well as I do that you aren’t getting a genuine Civil War-era dagger for a hundred bucks. It was obviously a replica. You got taken.”

  “Not really. I looked up typical prices for a replica of that quality, and it was still a bargain.”

  “Where’d you get it?

  “That old guy’s shop over on Isle of Hope. You know, the guy with the white mustache who always dresses like Robert E. Lee?”

  “The Colonel?”

  “Yeah. That’s him.”

  I knew the shop he was referring to, and the man. We’d done business. He had been curmudgeonly but fair, and I’d gotten a nice first-edition Doreen Valiente from him for the shop. There was only one problem.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Colonel died a month ago. His shop is closed.”

  “Well, it’s open now. His granddaughter is on a liquidation spree. Everything at clearance prices. She said she found the dagger in his closet with a bunch of his reenactment things. Bossy as hell, but she was cleaning the place out, and fast.”

  “Was her name Carolyn?”

  He looked surprised. “You know her?”

  “I used to, back in high school.”

  That was putting it mildly. Carolyn Graves used to slip Bible tracts into my locker, along with sweet little notes like, “Please repent, or suffer the fires of damnation!” Then she got too big for her Coastal Empire britches and moved to Atlanta. I guessed she was back taking care of her grandfather’s last bits of business and then hightailing it back to the big city as quickly as possible

  I got a prickle of suspicion. “You didn’t tell her what you wanted it for, did you?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He considered. “Well, maybe the word “altar” did come up. Why?”

  “How did she react?”

  “She didn’t, not like you’re suggesting. This was quick business, no Bible belting.”

  So maybe Carolyn had changed. Maybe Atlanta had mellowed her and she didn’t mind the Colonel’s militaria being dedicated to the Goddess and God.

  “Did the thief take anything else?”

  “Nothing big, if that’s what you’re asking. No computers, no jewelry. Just some cash I had out and the dagger.”

  “Trixie said she took the photographs for the insurance.”

  “Right. So?”

  “You never told her it was a replica.”

  A concentrated pause. Thomas appeared to be assessing the horizon, his eyes slightly narrowed. “There was no reason to tell her then, and there’s not one now.”

  “Even as we speak she is unknowingly preparing to commit insurance fraud. You have to tell her, and now.”

  He grumbled. “It could have been real. You don’t know. And neither does anybody else.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I wonder what parallel universe you and I ever existed in.”

  ***

  I took my time getting back to the shop. The dogwoods and azaleas were on their last hurrahs, but the air was still cool in the green spaces. The bake and broil of summer had yet to start.

  I decided not to go back to the shop. Instead, I drove out to Isle of Hope, to the Colonel’s store. There was
a Closed sign on the door, but I saw movement inside.

  I knocked lightly. “Carolyn?”

  The door opened a crack. Carolyn still had something of the cheerleader about her, a brightness in the eyes, a flirt in the swing of her red-gold hair. She smiled, puzzled, when she saw me. “Callie?”

  I smiled back. “Long time no see.”

  The place was nothing like I remembered. All the Colonel’s haphazard piles had been pushed to one side. The counter was cleared off, the windows thrown open. The air shimmered with dust, making the sunbeams opaque, and the room reeked of pungent air freshener.

  Carolyn dusted her hands. “You’re lucky you caught me.”

  “Clearing out?”

  “Trying to. Unfortunately, Granddaddy never saw a piece of junk he didn’t fall in love with.” There was fondness in the curve of her lips. I tried to see if it made it to her eyes, but she moved briskly around the counter, toward the back rooms. “Would you like something to drink? I made some tea.”

  I shook my head. “No thanks.”

  I heard her back there, the clink of the ice cubes, the refrigerator opening and closing. She came back, still bright, still cheerful. Her pert capri pants and boatneck top made her look like a page from women’s wear catalog. I laid the photograph on the counter, and she came over to examine it.

  She tapped it lightly. “I remember this. Granddaddy’s knife.”

  “It’s a dagger. You sold it to a friend of mine a few days ago.”

  “Tall guy, brown hair, ponytail.” She waved her hands around her own sleek head. Her eyes dipped to take in the pentacle around my neck, then met mine. “You’re still into all that, huh? Like your friend?”

  My fingers found the silver pendant. “I’m Wiccan. He’s Druid. But it’s the dagger I really wanted to talk about.”

  Her eyes went shrewd. “I told him clearance prices, all sales final.”

  “You also told him it was a genuine antique.”

  She cocked her head. “Granddaddy was a genuine antique. That dagger was a fine reproduction, and your friend got it for a good price. Too late to cry foul now.”

  Behind her was a sepia-toned portrait of the Colonel himself, in full Confederate regalia, his handlebar mustache bristling. I could imagine him leading the charge at Bull Run, the Stars and Bars battering the air behind him. I suddenly realized I would miss him.