The Fortune Teller's Daughter

by Lila Shaara

  “You’re probably right,” Harry said.

  Kimble seemed to be finished with him; he turned to Serge, singing the praises of the new judge. Harry was suddenly possessed with a powerful urge to ask if Judge Thorpe was related to a Miss Baby Thorpe, proprietor of the Babyface Beauty Salon. The fact that the judge was as white as milk only made it more irresistible. Amelia caught his eye and seemed not to like what she saw there. She asked the sheriff if his daughter had accompanied him; apparently she had, and Amelia tactfully led the man away.

  “Amelia went to school with her,” Serge explained.

  “Amelia doesn’t trust me,” said Harry.

  “Of course not. She’s not an idiot,” said Serge.

  “I’m guessing he’s smarter than he looks.”

  “For years, Stoweville’s been notorious throughout the state for lousy sheriffs. Our last two have been terrible drunks. At least Mel isn’t an alcoholic, he isn’t an idiot, and as far as I know, he isn’t a crook.”

  “Good to know.” Harry looked at the crowd around the punch bowl, relieved he didn’t feel the urge to fight his way through it to get a drink. He was also grateful to Serge for not trying to tactfully steer him away from alcohol.

  Serge added, “Some of his people are idiots, though. I don’t think it’s Kimble’s fault; he just doesn’t have that much to choose from.”

  “I don’t envy him,” Harry said. “I just pray that the competence of his staff, or lack of it, is never my concern, or yours.” He felt in his pockets, making sure he could locate his wallet and keys. “Give my regards to the new judge and my respects to Amelia. I’m going home.” At least, he thought, I won’t be hungover tomorrow.

  12

  THE EMPRESS

  REVERSED

  Unstable mind; the possibility of insanity

  After his Thursday morning class, Harry sat in his office and stared at his blank computer screen. He went online to an address database to search for the whereabouts of Todd Greenleaf, the retired reporter. The only cells other than “name” that he filled in were “state” and “age range.” He didn’t know the latter, but guessed that “60–75” was probably about right. There were twenty-eight hits, and fifty-three for “T. Greenleaf.” It was also possible, he thought, that Greenleaf was unlisted, although there were ways around that. He held an internal debate that lasted two or three minutes, then called one of his former co-workers at the Post, a woman who covered the Senate. Her desk had been next to his for four years. He wondered if she’d gotten too uppity in the two and a half since he’d seen her to talk to him.

  For once he got who he was calling, not voice mail; to his relief she sounded pleased to hear from him, although she didn’t ask much about his current circumstances. The fact that he had become so uninteresting and nonthreatening was depressing and liberating at the same time.

  However, she was willing to make a phone call to the editor in chief of the Lucasta Mirror to get a number for Todd Greenleaf, or at least the city in which he currently lived. She promised to call back with whatever she could learn in a day or two.

  Harry could see Maggie Roth walking through the cemetery, heading for the opening in the trees for the path to Gunhill Park. He got out of his car quickly and followed her at a trot. He called out her name. She turned, saw him, and stood waiting until he caught up with her a few feet from the trees. Her hair was different, shorter and puffier. It looked golden in the light, like a curly halo. She put the hat over it.

  “Hi,” he said, panting a little. “Do you mind company again?”

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  “You know anyone named Emily?” he asked as the shade cooled him, even causing a little chill as the sweat on his arms evaporated. “Any friends or relatives? Any old client of Josie’s?”

  “No,” she said. Her look was curious.

  “Did Josie know anyone named Doug? Even from a long time ago?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Why?”

  Harry had been debating how much to tell her of his research. “I told you that I’m working on a book. It’s going to be about the theft of intellectual property. Well, maybe. I’m not sure yet.” Her brows knit, so he went on. “Some ideas can be owned. Or at least, owned in a way. Like if you write a book, or a song or an opera, it’s yours. You can sell it.”

  She nodded. He said, “There are a lot of ideas in science, too, that can generate a lot of money. But who owns the ideas can be pretty complicated from a legal point of view.”

  “Who’s Emily?” she said.

  “I heard a story about a woman named Emily who might have had her ideas stolen, someone that Josie knew. An old client, maybe. Same thing with Doug McNeill.”

  “I’ve never heard any rumors like that. Where did you hear this story?”

  “From one of my students. Josie said something at a reading that she did for the student’s roommate.”

  “Ah,” said Maggie. “Was Josie drunk at the time?”

  “She admitted as much to me.”

  “She fell off the wagon for a while. She’s back on it now.”

  Harry shrugged. “I thought it was unlikely, but it got me looking at this particular scientist.” His eyes moved up to the tree canopy. “I doubt that it will turn out to lead to anything worthwhile.” He suddenly felt embarrassed by his aimlessness, following a ridiculous idea, trying to find an injustice that didn’t exist rather than spending his time doing anything productive. And the perpetrator was a dead man, if he’d actually perpetrated anything. He found himself wanting to change the subject.

  “So,” he said, “how did you come to live together?”

  “My mother died a few years ago. Then Josie’s daughter and husband died within a few months of each other. We’re all the family each of us has left.”

  “That’s rotten, losing so many people so fast.”

  “Yes.” They came out into a rose garden, a breeze making the flowers look as if they were waving to them. Maggie moved past the flowers with some speed, and Harry followed. Once they were back on the shaded path, she asked, “Will your students find what you teach them useful when they become lawyers?”

  “I have no idea.”

  They walked onto the wooden bridge over the stream where Harry had had his first encounter with a pileated woodpecker. Maggie stopped, placed her elbows on the railing, and rested her chin in her hands. Harry joined her, expecting silence, but after a moment she said, “Do they let you do math in prison?”

  “That may be the weirdest question anyone’s ever asked me.” Maggie looked back at him with an unreadable expression. “As far as I know, you can cipher your way to the electric chair. Why do you ask that?”

  “Just curious.” Then she said, “I used to listen to music when I walked.”

  He waited, then asked, “Why did you stop?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “My Discman broke.”

  “You could get another one.”

  “The ones that don’t skip when you jostle ’em cost thirty dollars.” She was looking at a frog as it leapt from the muddy bank into the water, making a small popping sound as it hit. Harry thought, That’s a lot of money to her. She added, “I like the sounds of the woods anyway. Quiet is good.”

  Harry became aware of the heat as his body started to dampen. It wasn’t bad, but later in the spring it would be. He said, “You ever consider walking in the mall? For the air-conditioning?”

  She was examining the wood grain on the bridge railing with great attention. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Fluorescent lights.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “They make me sick.” She stared out at the black water, the non-fluorescent light making blinding puddles on its surface. “Do you see dots?”

  “What?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Never mind,” she said.

  “No, really, what are you talking about?”

  She hesitated, obviously unwilli
ng to continue. Harry waited, and she said, “Little points of light. They move so fast, you can’t really see them. Just a sort of gleaming of everything.”

  “Don’t they get in the way of what you’re looking at?” Harry remembered thinking she might be insane.

  “It’s not like that. Everything’s made up of them. They’re not in the way of anything. Like I said, never mind.” She looked at him. “I’m not crazy,” she said.

  “I never thought you were,” he lied. “Is it the same thing as seeing auras?”

  “Oh no. Auras are made up of dots, just like everything else.”

  “Oh,” Harry said. “Don’t auras get in the way then? Or can you see through them or something?”

  He could feel her gathering her patience as she said, “Do the colors of flowers get in the way of your seeing them?”

  “Oh,” Harry said. “I guess not.”

  They walked by a stand of dogwood trees that flanked the path, just starting to bloom white, a few pink. Harry said, “Speaking of crazy people, I met Miss Tokay.”

  Maggie didn’t smile and he was afraid that he’d offended her, but she said, “I think she’s just unhappy with what she sees every day. She suffered a disappointment, you know.”

  “Disappointment in what?”

  “Love. That’s what they call it, when you have a suitor, and you think it’s going to work out forever and it doesn’t.” Harry almost asked if Maggie herself had had her heart broken yet but caught himself, remembering that she had a daughter. She was saying, “A long time ago a man lived with her, which was talked about quite a bit.” She stopped and reached up to examine a dogwood blossom more closely. “The story is that he was taken up one night by people who came from lights in the sky. Well, in the ground, actually, but they came from the sky originally. No one ever saw him again. After that she went to bed for forty days and forty nights, praying and meditating. Then she got out of her bed and started writing about the Sky People.”

  “Well, Judd Lippman would certainly think I’d come to the right place.”

  “Who?”

  “Another person you don’t know. Sorry. So what were these Sky People supposed to be like?”

  “Miss Tokay says that they are like us, only better, and that from time to time they take people away in their ships. She calls that ‘ascending.’ ”

  “Like going to Heaven or something?”

  Maggie nodded. “Something like that.” She shrugged. “She published a few articles in some fringe sorts of magazines and eventually got a following. People used to come stay with her all the time. They helped her build the shrine. They held services a few times a week. Some of them lived with her.” Maggie looked up at the sun leaking through the tree canopy. “But she got old, and they went away, or died.”

  “Or got taken up by the Sky People,” Harry said.

  Maggie smiled and looked at him. It was the first real smile of hers he’d seen, and it was enchanting, dimples and lit-up eyes. He suddenly thought, I could fall in love with that smile if she were ten years older and had a college degree. His snobbishness depressed him. She said, “Maybe. Most of that happened a long time ago.”

  “She said there’s a temple, too. I guess that’s where they held these services. Did her followers help her build that as well?”

  The smile vanished. “Yes. There are two of them, actually. The first one was quite grand. Velvet curtains on huge French windows, a beautiful carved wood altar, that sort of thing. About twenty years ago, a sinkhole opened up underneath it and the floor fell in. Most of it, anyway. The walls and roof are still standing, so it doesn’t look too different from the outside. The neighbors wanted her to tear the place down, but she wouldn’t. She says it’s a monument to Warner. Her suitor,” she added at Harry’s questioning look. “She’s got it locked up to keep kids and trespassers from going in and falling to their deaths. By the time it collapsed, she didn’t have so many followers anyway. But the ones she had left helped her to convert her garage into a new temple.” Something had changed in Maggie’s demeanor, but Harry couldn’t figure out what.

  “Have you been inside either of them?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I peeked inside the old one a few times, with Miss Tokay’s permission. It’s mighty creepy, the huge hole in the floor leading down to blackness.” She looked up at him. “There’s nothing to see in the new one. Just old stuff in storage.”

  Harry said, “I bet there are a few geologists at the university who’d love to take a look at that sinkhole.”

  “There’s another one on her land, too. It’s been there forever. I used to swim in it when I was a little kid. The water’s real cold, and nice and clear. She’s had a few scientist-types poking around for years, but she won’t have any of it. It’s her land; there’s not much they can do without her letting them. But sinkholes are pretty common around here. It’s all limestone, and there are lots of underground caves. Sometimes the ground gives way and what’s on top just disappears.”

  “A good metaphor for life,” said Harry.

  “Ummm.” She seemed to think about this for a minute. “Miss Tokay lives alone now. We try to help her out as much as we can. Miss Baby, too. Some other neighbors.”

  “Doesn’t she have any family?”

  “Just a niece in town, with a husband.” She emphasized husband as though it should be in quotation marks. At Harry’s look, she said, “He’s a developer.”

  “So I heard,” said Harry. In this part of the world, he thought, you were either with developers or “agin ’em.” He told her about what the sheriff had said, about some people needing more money no matter what.

  “Some people would be happy with any at all,” she said. “Since no one wants to live out here, there’s no call to build a subdivision or strip mall yet. That’ll change one day; the town’s growing.”

  “I can’t believe the developer nephew would build houses where there are sinkholes. That’s got to be illegal.”

  Maggie smiled a little. “This is Florida. You can build anywhere you want if you’ve got money. The niece’s husband can’t wait for Miss Tokay to die so his wife can inherit her land.”

  “Simon Legree.” He paused, then added, “The bad guy.”

  “There wouldn’t be that type of bad guy if so many Yankees didn’t want to move down here and avoid paying any income tax.” She shrugged again. “They don’t care if the schools are broke and shitty, or if their condos pollute all the salt marshes. They’ve got theirs.” It was the first bitter thing he’d heard her say. She was slightly ahead of him, and turned to give him a look over her shoulder. “We need lawyers to fight the developers. We need journalists, too.” She smiled again.

  13

  TEN OF SWORDS

  High rank and wealth lead only to ruin

  On Friday, Harry got a call from his contact at the Post. She had a phone number. “He lives in Winter Park. It’s near Orlando,” she said.

  He dialed the number immediately and got an answering machine. He left a message, then decided to go for a walk in Gunhill Park.

  She was looking up at tree branches that met fifty or more feet above her. “Hi,” he said.

  She said nothing at first, just made that hand gesture he’d seen before, a sort of wave, her hand lifted, palm out, then down again as though no one had ever taken the time to show her how it was done properly. Or maybe, he thought, she doesn’t want to waste any effort on the petty give-and-take of human interaction.

  “You’re divorced,” she said.

  “Yes.” Here we go again, he thought. Let the conversational Tilt A-Whirl begin.

  “She divorced you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But didn’t she love you?”

  Jesus, thought Harry, just get a gun and finish it quick. “She did once. Then she didn’t.”

  “How did you know she loved you?”

  What a weird question, he thought. He was dismayed by how much distress it caused him. “I guess becau
se she told me.”

  “You believed her?”

  He started to get miffed. “Do you think I was foolish to?”

  Her face shifted subtly, flattening out. “I’m sorry. Does this make you sad? That wasn’t what I meant to do.” She hugged herself and Harry realized that she was upset, too, although he couldn’t have explained what it was in her body language that expressed it. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “It’s okay.” He ran a hand through his hair, feeling a slight dampness in his scalp, sweat from the unaccustomed exertion of brisk walking. “I don’t know why I believed her, but I did. I’m a pretty good judge of people’s honesty, usually. It’s one of my strengths as a reporter.” Her face remained wooden, her mouth a straight line. He went on. “I remember pretty much to the moment when she said it and didn’t mean it anymore.” Their pace slowed down, and he caught his breath. “Why are you asking me this? You sound like a sociologist doing a survey on the mating habits of the middle class.”

  She quit hugging herself and let her arms move with the rhythm of her steps. “There are just so many things I don’t know,” she said. “Especially about how people deal with each other. Did you love her?”

  He shrugged. “Of course. Once I thought she was the love of my life.”

  “But not now?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “What’s this about exactly?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just something I’ve never understood, how you know. I thought it would be useful to ask a man about it, but I guess I was insensitive. I’m sorry.”

  “The subject is delicate. You could be misunderstood.”

  She nodded in agreement. “I’m not interested because I want anything from anybody, but it doesn’t usually come out right.”