Faye had been trying to figure out why Toni signaled them to look at Willow at this point in the show. Amande must have had the same question, because she asked it. “He’s telling Dara which cards to pull by using body language, isn’t he? That’s why you wanted us to watch him work that suit like a runway model.”
Toni laughed out loud. “The man does have style, I admit. Yes, I think he’s using body signals, but I haven’t cracked his code yet. There are four suits in a tarot deck, so he could easily signal one of those. For example, moving his right hand might be his way of saying, ‘Wands.’ His left hand might say, ‘Cups,’ his right foot could mean ‘Swords,’ and his left foot might be ‘Pentacles.” Each suit has fourteen cards. That’s a lot, but I’m sure there are ways to position your body to communicate the numbers.”
“All the numbers are two digits, and the first digit is going to be one or zero,” Faye pointed out. “It wouldn’t be that hard to come up with a digital system.”
“No, it wouldn’t, but I want their system, so I’m buying a lot of fifteen-dollar tickets trying to crack it. Remember, there are also twenty-two trump cards, and Willow would need an individual signal for each of them.”
Toni reached in a drawer behind her and pulled out a tarot deck. She turned them face up and fanned them across the table. “In case you haven’t done the math, Debbie—or Willow—pulled two trump cards and an ace. No boring little twos or fives for the Reigning Couple of Showmanship. The odds against that special combination are high. Not astronomical, but high. So how did he tell her what those unlikely cards were? I didn’t see him slash his finger across his throat to signal the Death card, so their code is something more subtle.”
Amande reached out and used her left hand to sweep half the cards into her right hand. “There. I just divided the number of signals by two. We don’t know that he was holding a full Tarot deck. Maybe he was holding two identical half-decks. Two Death cards. Two Aces of Swords.”
Toni considered the idea. “He’d have to be able to control his victim’s draws. Otherwise, somebody would pull Death twice.”
“And then they’d drop dead of fright.” Faye looked at the other two women, both sitting silent. “That wasn’t even funny, was it?”
Amande shook her head in her mother’s direction and went back to studying the cards. “So maybe he’s got a limited deck and maybe he doesn’t. Unless he’s forcing the person to draw three specific cards, he has to signal the actual cards to Dara, and then she’s gotta pull them out of a face-down deck. Her cards have to be marked. His probably are, too.”
Faye started to laugh. “Of course, they’re marked, and I think we have proof. How old is Dara? Mid-forties?”
Toni joined her in laughing, while Amande looked blank. Faye reached in her purse for her brand-new reading glasses. “Was Dara wearing glasses when we met her?”
The girl shook her head.
“And she wasn’t wearing glasses on any of the other times I’ve seen her perform,” Toni said, triumph in her voice. “She has just now reached the age when she can’t see the markings on the back of her cards. I remember when that happened to me.”
“The camera…” Amande said.
Faye nodded. “If she makes the markings on the cards bigger, the camera will pick them up. Dara is too vain to wear those glasses unless she really needs them, and she probably doesn’t need them yet at any other time—only when she’s cheating at cards. Look at these.” She waved a tarot card in the air that was bigger than her hand. “Even without my glasses, I can see that this is the Two of Cups. Dara doesn’t need glasses if she’s doing an honest trick.”
Amande yanked the Two of Cups from her mother’s hand and studied it, back and front. “You’re right. Dara’s cards have to be marked. The glasses prove it. Now you just need to decode Willow’s part of the trick, Toni, and you’ve got the whole thing.”
Toni said nothing, but she had a victorious air as she shuffled the oversized tarot cards. Deftly cutting the deck, she flipped a card in front of Faye.
“The Queen of Swords. She is independent, resilient, and calm in times of trouble. When a decision must be made, she makes it as surely and quickly as a falling sword.” Toni cocked her head in Faye’s direction and asked, “She is you. True?”
Faye couldn’t argue.
“For you,” she said, squinting through her bifocals at Amande as she flipped another card. Above a floating, unearthly being was a caption that read “The World.” “Of course. There could be no other card for someone of your youth and abilities.”
Then she handed the deck to Amande, who seemed far more interested in the filigreed designs on the backs of the cards than in the phantasmagoric art on their faces. Setting three of them side-by-side and studying the designs for differences, she said, “Those two cards were too perfect. They suit my mother and me too well. Are these marked?”
All Toni would say was, “I’m not talking,” but she shoved her glasses absent-mindedly up her nose with her middle finger. Faye wondered if Toni’s subconscious was saying, “I need these stupid things to read my marked cards.” Maybe magicians weren’t always able to squelch the unintended signals of a subconscious that knew all their secrets. Or maybe Toni touched her glasses on purpose, to help Amande figure out the cards’ secrets all by herself.
Toni let Amande study the cards for a moment, reaching into the bag of cookies and handing Faye two more. Faye was glad to see that they were heavily studded with pecans and chocolate chips. Toni might not make her own cookies, but she bought the good stuff.
Leaving Amande with the cards, Toni came to sit beside Faye. “Is there any chance of talking my way back into that museum, or do I have to wait until you and Amande finish your work? I’m quiet, and I clean up after myself.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but…” Faye paused, hesitant to say no to someone who was in the act of showing her some gracious hospitality. “I just can’t. I still haven’t unpacked everything. I keep finding new stashes of old junk. It wouldn’t be professional to let someone else come in and stir up the very artifacts and files I’m trying to organize. It just wouldn’t work.”
Faye could tell that Toni wasn’t happy about this, but the woman had far more than minimal social skills. Her only gracious option was to say that she understood Faye’s position, so that’s what she did.
After disappointing Toni, Faye moved away from the dining table, sitting in a comfy armchair to watch Toni entertain Amande by teaching her to palm cards and do false shuffles. Her daughter was frighteningly adept at sleight-of-hand. While they shuffled and dealt and giggled, Faye amused herself by wondering why the former physics teacher cared about the history of this little town so much. She also wondered why the chicanery of Dara and her husband made Toni mad enough to buy a stack of fifteen-dollar tickets that was already tall and was still growing.
Chapter Fifteen
“Mom. Mom.”
Faye realized that her daughter was trying to get her attention, and that she’d been doing so for some time now. Amande couldn’t be blamed for being bored by the current topic of conversation—health insurance options for retired and self-employed people. Neither could Faye and Toni be blamed for finding them fascinating.
“Mom. The diner’s still open. I think I’ll walk down there for a cappuccino.” Anticipating Faye’s response, she said, “It’s only a block and there are lots of streetlights.”
Toni, who had offered them a very hospitable variety of beverages, jumped up to make a pot of coffee, but Faye held out a hand to stop her. Amande didn’t want coffee. She wanted to escape the tedious company of grown-ups.
“Go. Have a banana split. Text me when you get there.”
“It’s not even ten and I’m walking one block.”
“A text is a small price for freedom. And a banana split. Go.”
***
As so
on as Amande knew she could no longer be seen through the bay window of Toni’s living room, she pulled her phone from her pocket. Its bright screen displayed the two-sentence text message that had arrived while her mother and Toni were deep in boring money talk.
Meet me in my aunt’s garden. I have something to show you.
How did Ennis get her cell number? Maybe from Samuel but Amande would say Myrna if she had to guess. Myrna would probably adore the chance to be a matchmaker.
As Amande walked past the diner, she made good on her promise to text her mother when she got there. Then she kept walking.
***
Amande lingered at the garden gate. It was covered with vining plants, and the thicket of leaves on the other side was so dense that she wasn’t sure it would swing open when she pushed. The sense that these vines were reaching out for her kept her from taking the last step toward the gate.
Amande was not crazy about overgrown gardens and weedy lawns. She had the feeling that anything could be lurking in the unkempt greenery. This was stupid, because she had spent her childhood mucking about the swamps in Louisiana. These days, she could kill an entire Saturday afternoon with her dad in the pristine woodlands of Joyeuse Island, braving ticks and chiggers for the thrill of seeing the year’s first blooming dogwood.
Nevertheless, she liked the area around a house to be tidy. Not necessarily manicured, but tidy. Perhaps this vulnerable feeling went back to the days when nomadic people needed to be able to see whether a predator was creeping up to their tents. And perhaps this meditation on nomadic people might only occur to the daughter of two anthropology-types.
The phone in her hand vibrated and its screen lit up.
Where are you? I’m in the middle greenhouse. Hurry!
She could have called out an answer to him, but she was still in a cautious mood, fit for lingering. Texting felt safer.
I’m almost there.
The vines resisted, but she forced the old gate open. Using her phone as a flashlight, she crept through the lush garden on the other side. A shadowy figure stood in the second of the three greenhouses on her right. That must be where Ennis was waiting. Led by the glow of his phone, she picked her way to where he stood. He waited in a narrow walkway between the shelves where Sister Mama grew medicinal herbs that weren’t happy with New York’s weather.
“Hurry!” She wondered why he was whispering. Maybe because it felt like there was nobody else awake in Rosebower. Except, of course, for her mother and Toni, who were a good bit more than one block away.
Then she saw it. In the phosphorescent glow of his phone’s screen was a flower, large and white. It was opening before her eyes.
“I told you to hurry. You’re just in time. It’s a night-blooming cereus,” he whispered.
It seemed unnatural to watch a plant move. Without the help of a breeze or a human or some other animal, a plant is supposed to sit still. Yet here this one was, stretching its luminous white petals into the air. Minute by minute, the flower formed itself, large and lovely. It loosed a penetrating perfume as it took shape.
“Beautiful, right?” he said.
Amande could hardly breathe, but she nodded.
“If you like that, you need to see the night garden.”
Amande wondered why he thought she’d she want to leave the cereus before it finished opening, but she followed him outside into a dimly lit fairyland. The flowers in this corner of the garden, mostly white, had been chosen because they were beautiful in the dark. Ennis moved here and there, illuminating various blooms with his phone.
“Here are the moonflowers.” He pointed to a vine loaded with luminous palm-sized blossoms. “They bloom when the sun goes down. You can see them open, just like the night-blooming cereus. You should come back tomorrow at sunset and watch.”
His attention span for flowers was shorter than hers, because he quickly moved on to a bed of large-leaved plants topped with clusters of starry flowers. “See how white the nicotiana petals are? That’s the scientific name for flowering tobacco. Sister Mama designed her night garden so all the flowers show up in starlight. And the leaves, too.”
Surrounding the flowering plants were mounds of ornamental foliage, variegated in white and all shades of green. Their leaves glowed in the dark night, and they were as lovely as the flowers.
Ennis was still giving his flashlight tour. “And she picks the plants that smell the best, too, because it’s important in the dark. A blind person could enjoy this spot.”
This was true.
“Look. These four o’clocks glow like fire. Sister Mama says they got their name because they don’t open till four o’clock in the afternoon.”
The tiny trumpet-shaped flowers were magenta and yellow and white. Some of the flowers were splashed with all three colors. They looked like fireworks, and they did absolutely belong in a night garden. Bending down close, she could smell something sweet that was neither nicotiana nor cereus.
“Sister Mama loves the way her plants look and smell, but those things are just bonuses. She’s not big on wasting garden space. The nicotiana is good in poultices and you can make bugkiller out of it.”
“It kills bugs, but you’ll put it on somebody’s open wound?”
“It’s all in the dose and in how you give it. That’s true of store-bought medicine, too. Foxglove’ll kill you. Digitalis will save your life.”
“And the dose is different for different people. What would cure you, might kill me?”
“Exactly.”
“What about these other things?”
“Leaves from four o’clocks help people who are holding water. Sister Mama might make a tea or give them a poultice. Either way, they take the swelling right down. The seeds are poison, though.” He was still whispering, so Amande had to lean close to get her answer.
“The cereus? How does she use it?”
“It’s not like she’s taught me everything she knows. Not yet. But it may be that she grows the cereus just because it’s too pretty to be called a waste of garden space. Sister Mama does what makes her happy. Want to go look at it again?”
Amande did want to see it again. Very much. As they turned to go, a muffled grunt startled her. It came from an open window on the back of the house.
“Was that your aunt? We should check on her.”
“She talks in her sleep. A lot. We should stay out here and let her do that.”
The sound came again, and Amande headed for the house’s back door. Another noise came, and this one didn’t sound like a human voice. It was more like one solid thing striking another solid thing. “Don’t you hear that?”
“Hear what? No, Baby, I don’t hear a thing.”
The back door was unlocked and Amande was in the house before Ennis could take another shot at keeping her outside with him. It wasn’t hard to figure out which room belonged to the open window. Once Ennis saw that she wasn’t going to linger romantically in the greenhouse with him, he was right behind her.
Sister Mama’s bedroom held little more than a bed and a chest-of-drawers. A handful of fragrant flowers sat on top of the chest, spilling gently over the edge of a wide-mouthed glass bottle. Her wheelchair sat in the corner and she herself lay under a worn patchwork quilt. One hand picked absently at loose threads hanging from the quilt. The other pawed at her face, as if someone were trying to suffocate her. Nobody was there.
Ennis hurried to her bedside. “Sister Mama. Sister Mama, are you okay?”
The woman didn’t respond. Eyes closed, she continued plucking at her face and at the quilt. Amande tried to put a calming hand on her arm and she could feel the muscles spasming.
“Call 911,” she said. “Hurry.”
Sister Mama’s breath caught in her throat and Amande wasn’t sure she was getting any air. Maybe her throat muscles were spasming, too. She tried to lift the woman to a
sitting position, thinking it would help her breathe. Sister Mama wouldn’t bend. All her muscles seemed locked up tight, except for the ceaseless motion of her hands and forearms.
Amande couldn’t check Sister Mama’s airway, because her mouth wouldn’t come open. She noticed that Ennis had begun massaging his aunt’s abdomen, maybe to help her breathe and maybe to loosen up the muscles so that she could sit.
“911?”
He pointed at the phone clutched to his ear. He had been massaging his aunt with one hand while he thumb-dialed. He was already talking to an emergency responder, but Amande was too frantic to listen to what he was saying. What was she going to do if she couldn’t help Sister Mama breathe?
Since she couldn’t get the suffering woman’s mouth open, Amande went for her nose, trying to see whether air was coming in and going out. Something felt wrong.
One nostril was stiff and distended. The other, thankfully, seemed to be clear, but Sister Mama was still flapping her hand around her face. Amande eased her own hip onto the bed and forced the hand under it. If she needed to sit on it long enough to see what was happening to Sister Mama, then so be it.
“I think she’s getting air,” Ennis said. “Stand back and give her some room to breathe.”
Amande stayed put, palpating both nostrils. “Turn on the lights.” When he hesitated, she said, “Do it.” He did.
There was something in Sister Mama’s right nostril. Amande had heard of little children putting beans and rocks up their nose, but could a woman in Sister Mama’s condition have done that? And had she regressed to toddlerhood? Amande had spent only a single lunch with her, but she didn’t think so.
Now that the lights were on, she could see something barely protruding from the nostril. It was such an unnatural shade of orange that Amande knew it couldn’t be part of Sister Mama. She grasped it between her finger and thumb and yanked hard.
As the squishy orange thing came out, every muscle in Sister Mama’s body relaxed. Her eyes found Amande’s and said thank you.
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