by Amy Isaman
The Maxwell’s paused and smiled at them as they headed toward their room. “Did you change rooms?” Brian Maxwell asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, no. We didn’t. Darius was kind enough to show me some of the paintings his grandfather did years ago. Apparently, the room upstairs that I’m staying in was his studio. This was his office, and Darius uses it as a storeroom.”
Brian took a step toward the open door and Laurel. “We’d love to see it. Would you mind?”
Tricia pulled the door to the small room closed. “You’d really have to ask Darius. I’m sorry. But it’s his Inn. And, it’s filthy in there.”
Brian took a step back and glanced at his wife before turning back to Tricia. “Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. Everything in the Inn is so put together and displayed with such care. That’s a bit of a mess. Looks like you two opened up every box and ransacked the place. Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked with a grin.
“Well, we found the paintings that he wanted to show me,” Tricia repeated. “It was nice seeing you again. We’ve got to get cleaned up now.” She turned the lock on the door and pulled it shut behind her before grabbing Laurel’s hand and pulling her up the stairs. “Let’s go, sweetheart. I really need a shower. Then, I’m thinking a good meal.”
They climbed the stairs in silence until they reached the top floor and Tricia’s room. “I’m not sure about those two. He’s nosy.”
“Mom, how on earth would they have figured that out? We went to Darius’ apartment when you showed him the card.”
“Well, there were some other guests seated in the garden when Darius told me the story of his family’s connection to the Tarot cards. They could have heard that whole story. I have no idea. And, we first met them at the V & A when we saw the exhibit, and we talked about the cards with them, so they obviously have some sort of interest. Do you think they might have figured out that I’ve found a card?”
“No. There’s no way they figured that out. You’re getting paranoid.”
“Rightfully so. These cards are worth a fortune. The fewer people who know about them, the better. But let’s not think about the cards right now. We need to clean up. Aren’t we going to the theater tonight?” she asked Laurel.
“Yep. Would you like to invite Darius to dinner before the show?” Laurel grinned and winked at her, but she shook her head.
“One step at a time, young lady. I want to spend time with you.” She paused and smiled, “but Darius and I were thinking of visiting his aunt to ask some questions. He’s going to call her to find out when it’s a good time. Apparently, she lives a little over an hour out of the city. We also thought we might have Collin look at the letter to see if he can translate it. And, Darius wants to meet with Tori the tarot reader to ask some questions and maybe get some sort of direction. She loves tarot history and might know something that can help us.”
“Didn’t you just say that the fewer people who know about the cards the better? You just listed a whole bunch of people you’re planning on telling.”
“I know. You’re right. But I trust Collin. And Darius trusts Tori. The rest are family.”
“It sounds fun. I’m up for a visit to his aunt.”
A loud ringing from the old phone on the bedside table made them both jump. Tricia reached for the phone, and Laurel could hear Darius’ voice through the handset.
“I just spoke with Tori. She has time now. Any chance you’ve got time to go? It’s not far and won’t take too long.” Laurel smiled. He was into her mother.
“Uh, I’m not sure about today. Hang on.” Tricia turned to face Laurel. “What time do we need to leave here for the play tonight?”
“Oh, you’ve got time, Mama. It’s what, 3:30 now? The show starts at 7:30. We’ll need to eat, but you’ve got a few hours. We don’t have dinner reservations, so we can get something quick if we need to.”
“Would you like to go with us to meet Tori again?” Tricia asked her. She raised her eyebrows as she looked at Laurel.
“Nope, you two go ahead,” Laurel answered.
Tricia spoke into the phone and told Darius she’d be ready in thirty minutes before hanging up.
“What are you going to do then? I feel terrible leaving you again. I don’t have to go, you know.”
“Mom, go. It’ll be fun. And I’d like to go, but I have plans.”
“Plans? What plans?”
“I met someone on my run this morning, and he invited me to tea.” She grinned, “I’ve never been on a ‘tea date.’”
“Wait,” her mom put her hand up. “I’m confused. You met someone while you were running? How does that happen? Because aren’t you… running?”
“Well, I asked another runner for directions, and we started chatting and running together. He was so nice. He ran back here with me.”
Mom’s eyes widened in panic. “So, a total stranger knows where you’re staying? Who is it? You don’t know him. Should you be meeting strangers?”
“Mom, relax. We’re meeting at a public place. I’m not dumb. I’ll be fine. You go have fun. You loved your tarot reading, right?”
She glared at Laurel and sighed a deep mom-sigh, the kind every kid ever has heard and knows exactly what it means, before reaching out and wrapping Laurel in a big hug. “I’m sorry if this isn’t the touristy trip you planned. I feel like I should feel terrible for hijacking this whole thing. But I’ll admit it. I’m having fun. Thank you for pushing me.”
Laurel squeezed back. “Mom, it’s an adventure. I actually think we’re seeing a side of London that we wouldn’t ever get to see, so let’s go with it. I’m good if you are. And,” she leaned toward Tricia’s ear and whispered, “we both have dates. I wasn’t expecting it, but how cool is that?”
Tricia took a shaky breath and smiled back. “Right, but humor me, keep your phone on and stay in public.”
Chapter 12
LAUREL TURNED TOWARD her room to get ready for her date, while I got ready to go see Tori with Darius. I tried not to worry about Laurel. For her entire college career, she went on dates without me even knowing she was going out. But I always worried about her more when she was with me than when she was away. It didn’t make sense, but that’s the way it was.
I checked myself in the mirror one last time, decided I liked what I saw, and began the trek downstairs to meet Darius. He waited at the bottom, and we walked together to Tori’s apartment where he pressed the buzzer to alert her that we’d arrived.
“Darius, is that you?” Tori’s familiar voice asked.
“Yes, it is.” A buzzer rang, and the gate clicked, allowing us entrance. I followed Darius up a flight of stairs to a door painted a deep teal color which was cracked open. Darius pushed the door open and walked right in.
Tori greeted us carrying a tray with two teacups. Today she looked more like I imagined a tarot reader to look with black leggings and a flowing caftan style top. “Oh,” she said when she saw me, surprise covering her face. “I hadn’t realized you were bringing a guest.” She turned away. “Let me get another cup.”
I couldn’t think of a time I felt more awkward and thought momentarily about excusing myself. Clearly, she thought she would have Darius all to herself. I thought, hoped, he’d invited me to spend time together. But maybe it was merely because I found the card, and he wanted Tori to “read” that. Honestly, I had no idea.
Darius, obviously familiar with the space, led me into a small sitting room. We sat silently until she returned with the tea and got settled.
Darius leaned forward, “Can I trust you, Tori?” he asked, a small glimmer in his eye.
She studied him from across the old trunk she used as a coffee table and raised one of her eyebrows. “And why wouldn’t you trust me, Darius?”
He grinned, the slow sexy smile that I’d noted immediately after meeting the man. “Let’s not get into that.”
Yes, let’s not. Though I never counted myself an experienced woman when it came to dati
ng since I married the first man I fell in love with, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Tori would rather leap across the table and molest Darius than sit and chat with him. I wondered how recent their relationship had been. I assumed it was years ago, but maybe not. I sat back. I was going home in a week and a half after my conference. She would have him all to herself to search out these cards.
Tori leaned her head back and laughed, a loud deep laugh that somehow belied her small frame. She turned and raised her eyebrows at me. “Tricia and I had an interesting reading yesterday. Didn’t we?”
“Yes, fascinating,” I answered quickly. Heat began to creep up my face, and I prayed she wouldn’t mention my question about the card with the phallic-looking stick on one of the final cards in the reading.
She turned back to Darius. “Are you finally going to let me read the cards for you?”
“Not a chance,” he replied. “But as I told you on the phone, this is about cards. Do you remember the story about my family’s history with the tarot?”
“Of course. We looked for them. Remember?”
Darius nodded. “Yes. We did, and I think we might have found a card, but I need some guidance. You’re one of the few I’d trust with this.”
Tori snorted. “Ah, you’ve decided to trust me, have you?” She took a sip of tea, but didn’t wait for his reply before continuing. “Exactly how old do you think this card is? I thought it was from the late 1800s? Wasn’t your great-grandfather a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn or a Freemason or some such thing?”
“He was, but this card,” Darius paused and pulled a leather bifold folder from the inside pocket of his blazer. “I think this one is quite a bit older. Tricia agrees, though it hasn’t been officially authenticated yet.”
Darius lay the folder on the trunk and opened it up. He then unfolded the cotton cloth he’d wrapped around the card. The gold flecks glimmered in the soft light, and Tori’s jaw dropped open, her mouth a perfect O. “Is this what I think it is?” She whispered, reaching for the card but clenching her fist, stopping herself from touching it.
“Yes, it is,” Darius said.
“You sound so sure.” Tori leaned over the table and studied it. “This needs to be authenticated.”
“Of course, but trust me. It’s the real thing.”
“How long have you had this?” She leaned back.
“Tricia found it last night, hidden in an old wardrobe in her room.”
Tori cocked her head at me in confusion, her eyes boring into me. “How? Darius has been looking for years. I helped him search, but we had no direction. And we had no idea that we were looking for one of these. One of the missing cards from the original Visconti-Sforza deck.”
“I, well, I had a dream when we first got to the Inn,” I stuttered. “And later, I dropped an earring which rolled under the wardrobe. I ended up sitting down in the wardrobe after trying to move it. That’s when I saw it, hidden behind a panel.”
“Wait, you had a dream? Didn’t you take a picture of your tarot spread the other day?” Tori reached her hand toward me, I assumed she wanted my phone to scroll through my pictures. Why did I mention the dream?
“Uh, that was my daughter who took the picture.” I had it on my phone too, but I didn’t want to dive back into the reading with Darius sitting here. This was awkward enough.
“And, where is she? Does she know about the cards?”
“Well, yes, but—“
Darius interrupted to my great relief, “Tori, not now. We need help because we think there are more cards.”
“Yes, of course. There are four cards missing from this deck. Well, actually three now. But maybe only two. One theory was that only two cards were missing, the Knight of Coins and the Three of Swords, and the Tower and the Devil were never made at all as they might not have been appropriate for a wedding gift. But since you found the Tower card, perhaps the Devil card is missing as well.”
“It is,” Darius said.
“You know this for sure?” Tori asked.
He nodded.
Tori seemed to know a ton about this tarot deck, and I hoped she could give us some insight.
“This is all so exciting.” She turned to me, “And, if I recall your reading, Tricia, the cards showed the eight of wands. I know you doubted the entire thing, but this is it, the excitement, the movement—”
Darius interrupted her again, trying to keep her on track. “Tori, we need some more information if we’re to find the other cards. We need to know if the cards have the same meanings today that they did at the turn of the century.”
“You mean during the era of the Golden Dawn? Late 1800s?”
“Yes.”
Tori leaned back. “Generally, I think that they do. But I’d have to look into it a bit more. Everything evolves, right? But why do the meanings matter?”
Darius pulled the letter that Anna Teresa had written from behind the Tower card and unfolded it for her. “We were hoping you could help with that.”
Tori scanned the letter several times. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “This is incredible. If you find them, it’s a major discovery. They’re also worth a fortune.” She raised her eyes to Darius, ignoring me. “You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. It would be pretty amazing. But we have to figure out this letter and her riddle first. Do you have any idea what she might have meant?” he asked. “We’re stumped. Obviously, the card’s meanings relate to her riddles, but looking up the contemporary meanings wouldn’t help if they’ve changed through the years.”
Tori nodded and closed her eyes. She kept them closed as she spoke, holding her left hand over the Tower card. “If I remember the story that you told me correctly, she was furious when she hid them, almost like cursing her husband. She blamed him for her daughter’s death, didn’t she?” She didn’t wait for answers but kept speaking.
I stole a glance at Darius, who watched her with an alarming intensity.
“She didn’t want anyone finding them ever again.” Tori stopped speaking, and we watched her sit with her eyes closed for a whole two minutes. Finally, she blinked several times and looked at us. “I’m not getting anything at all, only darkness. She hid them well.”
Darius nodded, while I willed myself to stay quiet. Was she expecting the card to ‘speak’ to her? It was a piece of cardboard. But then, I had my dream. It pretty much ‘spoke’ to me, so who was I to doubt here?
“But that doesn’t mean,” Tori continued, “we can’t solve her little riddle.” She leaned over the letter and studied it. “Who did she love?”
“Why do you ask that?” Darius said.
“Well, the line right here, The Knight of Coins is watched over by a man much like himself. The court cards often represent individuals, and this makes me think she somehow gave it to whoever was like the Knight of Coins.”
“She definitely didn’t give them to anyone. I think that’s pretty clear,” Darius said.
“Perhaps he was unaware of it. Did she have a lover?”
Darius’ eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’ve honestly never thought of that. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
“We think of the Knight of Coins as representing a man of integrity. Somebody she would have trusted, maybe even loved, or who was quite pragmatic and able to take care of her. A dependable, honorable man. Any idea who that might have been?”
“Whoever it might have been has long since passed, and the card hasn’t surfaced as far as I know. How would he still ‘watch over it’?”
“That’s the riddle, right?” Tori shrugged.
“I suppose I’d have to ask my aunt,” Darius said. “She might know, though she doesn’t care to talk about anything to do with the cards and she’s older, though she’s still pretty sharp. She believed, like Noni, that the cards killed her sister, my grandmother, Rosie.” Darius rose and began pacing across the small room. I watched him walk and felt like a fifteen-year-old with her first crush.
“What about the other lines? Got any ideas?” Darius asked.
“Honestly, those lines feel like curses. The Devil card is all about depression, bondage, feeling stuck. And then there’s the traditional meaning of the Devil himself, not the card which is pure evil. That’s the feeling I get with this line. If she blamed her family tragedy on these cards, I would say that the Devil card has something to do with when the cards first appeared in her life. Do you know when that was?”
“As far as I know, they were always in her life. They came from her mother. But it was her husband who had her daughter reading them.” Darius looked at the card, a bemused look on his face. “I apparently have some family history to look into, though I’m not sure my aunt will be open to that.” He turned back to Tori. “What about the Three of Swords?”
Tori grabbed a velvet bag off the bookshelf next to her chair. She loosened the string and opened the bag, pulling a deck of cards from within it. I recognized them as the cards she read the other day with Laurel and me. She pulled a card that showed a large red heart, like one a child would draw for a Valentine’s Day project, but this heart was pierced by three red swords. Dark rain clouds hung in the sky above it.
“This is the most common image for the Three of Swords. If these cards are truly from the Visconti-Sforza deck, the card she hid would have just shown three actual swords. The contemporary interpretation is that this is a card of sorrow and loneliness. The number three is a number of completion and wholeness. And swords pierce objects. So, think of the Three of Swords as that wholeness being torn apart. I’d have to research if it had a different divinatory meaning back then, but my gut tells me that this has always been the case. Especially considering what Anna Teresa wrote about it. I feel like she might have been familiar with this image.” Tori traced the pierced heart on the contemporary tarot card.
A horrifying thought came to mind. “If she put this card with her own broken heart, would she have buried the card with her daughter?” I stared at Darius in alarm. “If so, that card is lost.”