The Fortune Teller's Daughter

by Lila Shaara

  “Where do you go? When you’re not at home, and you’re not at Crane’s, and everyone says you’re working? They’re very cagey, Josie and Miss Baby. They’re never going to tell me.”

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she stopped on the path under a clematis-choked trellis that arched over them, acting as a doorway into one of the gardens, the one with the galloping horse fountain. She kneeled on the path where the dirt and pine needles gave way to the brick of the path around the fountain and pointed to a cluster of ivy. “Do you see it?” she asked.

  “What? No.” He bent down, squinting, trying to see what was so interesting about the clump of green leaves. She reached a slow, careful hand into the ivy and took something between her thumb and forefinger, then pulled it out, bringing it toward him. It looked like a twig at first until he saw that it had legs no more substantial than thread, waving around in buggy alarm.

  “What the hell is that?” said Harry.

  “It’s called a walking stick.”

  To Harry, her ability to distinguish the insect from the foliage was nothing short of miraculous, and he said so. She gently put the walking stick back in the vines. “If you know they’re there, it’s not so hard.” She stood up, then moved toward the fountain. Harry followed her.

  “I don’t know why I can talk to you,” she said, pausing for a moment to look at the fountain, water droplets landing on her face and on Harry’s arms, cool and fragrant. “Mostly I know that what’s going to come out of my mouth will be all wrong, so I just don’t bother.”

  “That’s me,” Harry said. “Everyone’s kindly uncle Harry.” Her smile was so beautiful that he bent over to pick up a twig and quickly dropped it as though it had bitten him, pretending it was alive, just to make her smile again.

  “Thanks for your advice before about Dusty. Living apart is hard. I don’t feel necessary to him.”

  “It’s not his job to make you feel necessary. Or real.”

  “You’re right,” he said, looking up through the canopy to where the sun was poking through in slender gold shafts, almost hot enough to melt the ground below. “Wait till you get to the teenage years. I hear girls are worse. Where’s Charlotte’s father?”

  She looked up as well, stopping again when the sound of a woodpecker battered the air. “I don’t know. I never knew him.”

  “How could you not know him?” The images this conjured up in his mind were so lurid he grimaced.

  Her face was puzzled under the straw hat. “Charlotte is Miss Baby’s granddaughter.” Her face cleared in understanding. “You must have heard her call me her mamma.”

  “Sorry, I assumed she was yours.” You shouldn’t feel so relieved, he thought. You should just feel stupid.

  “It’s a joke we share because we’re so much alike. Her own mother’s long gone.”

  “Dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. You seem close to her and Tamara. You want kids of your own?”

  She shrugged, walking faster. She opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “Josie’s kind of like my kid anyway. She’s lost everybody else, so she kind of hangs on to me hard. She was only fifty-two when Uncle Dunc died.”

  “Was he a fortune teller too?”

  She smiled. “No. He was a plumber. That trailer may not look like much to you, but he worked nights, weekends, and holidays to save up enough to buy the land and then a double-wide. One of the things I’m most proud of is that I helped him add that porch on.” She stopped and picked up a pinecone the size of a football. “You know,” she said, peering into the big cone as though there was a story inside of it, “you can eat parts of these.”

  “No thanks,” said Harry. “I’m picky about any brown foods. I only eat the finest grained hardwoods.”

  Maggie smiled and tossed the pinecone to the side of the path.

  Harry said, “Josie lost her daughter, too?”

  She nodded, the hat brim bobbing. “Dunc had pancreatic cancer. Got him fast. No chance for any medical ‘intervention.’ ” She said the word as though it were a bad joke. “Dee was gone less than a year later.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her last boyfriend drove in the demolition derby, so she followed him around the country. One night, she had a bad pain.” She stopped again, lifted a leaf to look at a caterpillar that was vigorously destroying another, little black mandibles moving back and forth with great speed, reminding Harry of a paper shredder. “He had somewhere to go, so he dropped her at a Baton Rouge emergency room.” Maggie put the leaf back down and continued walking. “It was an ovarian cyst that had ruptured. If they’d gotten to her sooner, she’d still be alive.”

  Harry said, “Dee was short for what?”

  “Delores.”

  “Margaret and Delores. So you were close, growing up.”

  Maggie gave another small smile. “Magdalene. Not Margaret.” She fanned away a mosquito. “Dee was named after sadness. Me, after a sainted whore.”

  They were approaching their cars, the heat making the asphalt of the parking lot shimmer. Harry said, “You never answered my question. About where you go when you’re not working.”

  “Sometimes I’m at the Laundromat.”

  “Uh-huh. You don’t want to tell me.”

  She dug her hand in her jeans pocket for her car keys.

  “What’s his name?” said Harry.

  She looked up, startled, then smiled wide and, for the first time since Harry had known her, started to laugh. The sound was wild and indescribably beautiful. Her face was lit with the closest thing to joy he’d seen in her, and he couldn’t do anything but stare at her as she said through her laughter, “You think I’m somebody’s mistress, maybe a geisha?” She laughed some more, leaning over a little, supporting herself with her hands on her bent knees. When she looked up, she said, “If I were, I’d have my own washer and dryer.” Her laughter stopped and her smile faded, and she reached her hand up and patted his cheek. “Poor Harry. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.” She looked at her keys in her other hand and separated the car key from the others on the ring. “I’m not that interesting.” Harry was surprised to see that she was blushing. “I’ll see you later,” she said as she got into the Celica. As she drove away, Harry got into his own ferociously hot car, thinking, I still don’t know where she goes.

  19

  TEMPERANCE

  REVERSED

  A bad combination. Competition

  “He’s lost his second iPod,” Ann said. It was Saturday morning. Harry had been awake for hours, preparing his final exam for one class and grading papers for the other. It was the last week of the term.

  “Don’t buy him another one,” Harry said.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said, sounding angry. Harry didn’t have any idea what response she’d wanted from him.

  That afternoon he was back online, reading about Charles Ziegart’s receiving the Presnell Award for Achievements in Applied Physics. Harry wondered how much of the work had actually been done by Ziegart. His eyes were starting to water from reading on the screen when his doorbell rang. He looked at the clock; it was three p.m.

  He peered through the window on his front door. Lawrence had died at 9:47 in the evening; Harry knew the exact time from the police report. A neighbor had been working on her computer and had glanced at the clock at the bottom of her screen when she heard the shots. Harry wasn’t really worried that anyone was going to shoot him in his doorway, but he no longer opened his door to anyone in haste, even though, in this neighborhood, home invasions were unlikely. He spared a thought for Maggie and Josie and hoped that his visitor didn’t throw up on his porch.

  It turned out to be a young man, mid-twenties, in jeans, blue cotton shirt, and a tweed sports coat. He was good-looking, high cheekbones and dark curls extending a little too far down over the back of his collar. “Can I help you?” Harry said through the screen door, still securely latched.

  “Am I addressing Harry Sterling?” s
aid the young man. His voice was that of a singer, strong and confident with full tenor undertones. His hands were in his pockets, which made Harry uncomfortable.

  “Who are you?” Harry said.

  “I’m Jonathan Ziegart. Charles Ziegart’s son.”

  It was an embarrassment that he asked Ziegart Junior to flash his driver’s license before he was allowed in the house, but he did it anyway.

  Harry Sterling was not what Jonathan Ziegart had expected. He’d thought he would be short and round, someone who wrote his books on an old manual typewriter with a glass of scotch on one side, no coaster, and an overflowing ashtray on the other. He’d imagined someone unshaven and bent, a squinty eye with thick glasses and a harsh voice. Instead, he saw a tall man, light brown hair short and badly cut, clean-shaven, no glasses, wearing worn khakis and a short-sleeved NFU football jersey. He looked like he’d been strongly built at one time but had gone slightly soft, almost blurry. He didn’t look at all dangerous.

  He complimented Sterling’s house, which got a shrug and a nod. The latter said, “This is quite a surprise. You’re on my list of people to contact, actually, so this saves me a phone call. What brings you here? It’s a long way to come to be interviewed.”

  “Believe it or not, I was in the area.” Harry motioned him into the living room and to a sofa across from the front window as Jonathan went on. “I was on my way to Gainesville. There’s a conference at the University of Florida and I’m giving a paper. I hate to fly, so I drove down. Gillian DeGraff told me you were writing a book on my father. Stoweville is more or less on the way, so I thought I’d stop and see if you wanted to talk to me. Sorry I didn’t call first. My cell phone battery died during the last leg. I found a motel room outside of town and figured I’d just drop in and try my luck. I found your address online.”

  Harry asked if he’d like something to drink. Jonathan said, “Got any beer?”

  “Sorry. I’ve got some ginger ale and iced tea. Water. You’re welcome to any of it, but that’s all there is.”

  Jonathan looked at him for a moment. “In recovery?” he said.

  “No.” Harry looked as though the question irritated him.

  Aha, Jonathan thought. “Iced tea would be great.”

  Harry got them both drinks from the kitchen, handing one to his guest. He put his own down on the coffee table. Jonathan noticed with some disapproval that he didn’t use coasters; pale rings on the wood attested to the fact that it probably never occurred to him to protect his furniture. Not that it was particularly nice furniture, but it still said something about the man.

  Harry sat in a chair across the room in front of the window. Too late, Jonathan realized that Harry was largely in silhouette but could see his face clearly. Harry said, “I wasn’t sure a trip to Pennsylvania was going to be necessary anyway, but I appreciate your taking the time to see me.”

  “I knew you’d talk to me sooner or later, so as I said, I thought I’d save you the trouble of coming to Lucasta.”

  Jonathan had the impression that Harry didn’t believe him, which was galling since he was speaking the truth.

  Harry said, “Was there anything in particular that you think I should know?”

  “Whatever.” Jonathan opened his hands wide. “I’m an open book.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself? I know very little, other than that you’re Charles Ziegart’s son.”

  “I’m also a scientist.”

  “Oh? Are you continuing your father’s work?”

  “I shouldn’t say it myself, of course, but I have to admit that I’ve been called a chip off the old block more than once.”

  “Well, good for you, Encyclopedia Brown.” Harry paused, and Jonathan got the impression that the reporter was reining himself in. “Tell me about your father. Was he a good dad? Play catch with you, tuck you in at night, that sort of thing?”

  Jonathan felt himself getting angry; he tamped the feeling down and bolstered the smile on his face. “It might surprise you to know that he took quite a bit of time out of his incredibly busy schedule to be with me. He took me to the lab all the time. I was kind of a pet of everyone in the department.”

  “You were close.”

  “Unusually so, I think.”

  “Were you close to your stepmother as well?”

  Jonathan leaned back in the chair and waved the words away as though they were gnats. “Emily wasn’t my stepmother.”

  “She was married to your father.”

  “Briefly. But even my father realized it was a mistake before long. I’m sure you’ve heard this from others. She was a bit rapacious, and went after him the moment she got to Cantwell. I try not to speak ill of her, but she caused my mother a great deal of pain.”

  “It sounds like your father helped.”

  Jonathan could feel the anger flicker up again, biting him like a small but fierce bug. His opinion of Harry Sterling was deteriorating. “He was busy, and didn’t always pay attention to what was going on with the people around him. Emily was very good at manipulating him, and eventually she manipulated him into marriage. She had his interests in common. My mother is an academic, but she’s not a scientist. Well, she thinks she is. She’s a sociologist.” He couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

  “Did you know Doug McNeill?”

  Jonathan thought, Where did that come from? “Why do you want to know about him?”

  “He was on the Ziegart effect paper initially. Then he was taken off. Why?”

  “Poor Doug. He was horribly fat. That sounds terrible, but it was such an overwhelming fact about him, so it’s the main thing I remember. He didn’t have very good social skills either, unfortunately.” An image came to Jonathan’s mind, so powerful that it threatened to overwhelm his attention. One of the worst days of his life, and one of the best. He pushed the memory out again and closed his hands around his glass to keep them from shaking.

  Harry was saying, “He was taken off the paper because he wasn’t attractive?”

  Jonathan’s heart was still hammering; he collected himself. “No, of course not. I think it was a mistake that he was on there in the first place. His name was removed as a correction.”

  “It didn’t have anything to do with his death?”

  “Of course not,” Jonathan repeated. “He choked to death on a piece of cheese.”

  This seemed to surprise Harry, but he recovered quickly. He said, “What about Emily’s name? Same issue; she was on in the first place, then she wasn’t.”

  “Like you said, same issue. Or sort of the same. She wanted credit for my father’s work. But she didn’t deserve any. At most, she did some grunt work for him, like a lot of his students. It was fair that her name didn’t wind up on the final version.”

  “Which was published posthumously?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  Harry shifted in his chair, leaning his head forward a little. Like a prosecutor, Jonathan thought, and knew his agitation was starting to show in his face. He deliberately relaxed it, letting his cheeks go soft, his forehead smooth out. This man’s an asshole, he told himself. He knows nothing but thinks he knows so much. Well, that’s why you’re here, to give him the real skinny. He was about to add that Doug was an opportunist, and that his father was impossibly kindhearted, easily victimized by those less attuned to academic courtesy, but before he could speak Harry said, “How do you know this? You weren’t very old at the time, surely?”

  “I was seventeen. I was exposed to my father’s work every day, Harry. I grew up knowing practically everyone at Cantwell. I certainly knew who’d helped him, and how.” He thought for a moment, then thought, No point in holding anything back. He leaned forward. “I’m not sorry that Emily killed herself. You see, Harry,” he said, “she murdered my father.”

  Harry put down his glass, but he showed no other reaction. All he said was “That’s the first I’ve heard of this.”

  Jonathan didn’t believe him. “It was kept quiet.
There wasn’t any proof that could be used in court. But she might as well have shot him with a gun.”

  “I thought your father died in a car accident.”

  “He didn’t die from the crash itself. I’ll tell you the whole story in exchange for a refill.” When Harry returned from the kitchen with a full glass, Jonathan was relieved that his hands were under control and settled back in his seat. “They were at one of the faculty teas that the DeGraffs have at the beginning of every term. Gillian’s husband, Wesley DeGraff, is Cantwell’s chancellor, and they have the teas outdoors at their house. My father and Emily left early because Dad had an interview to do that evening. She claimed later that yellow jackets somehow found their way into the car. My father was allergic to bee and wasp venom. He’d almost died from a sting a few years before, so he always carried a disposable syringe of epinephrine. But Emily said she couldn’t find his EpiPen anywhere. He was driving, and she said he panicked and got stung, and then they ran off the road. They were both banged up pretty badly, but she managed to call 911 on the cell phone. He wasn’t breathing by the time the paramedics got there.” Again, Jonathan’s breath shortened and his heart raced; he told himself to calm down. His eyes had adjusted somewhat, so he could make out Harry’s face. The latter seemed almost bored by the story, which Jonathan found puzzling.

  “Did they ever find the missing EpiPen?”

  “They didn’t find it in the car. Turns out it was in some bushes on the grounds of the DeGraff house.”

  “Were Emily’s fingerprints on it?”

  Jonathan laughed again, and then Harry’s shadowed face flickered with a quick something, an expression gone so fast that Jonathan didn’t have time to decipher it. He said, “No one checked, Harry. The police never treated it as suspicious. They ruled it an accident, and that was that.”

  Harry paused, then said, doubt flowing from him, “You think Emily tossed his EpiPen in the bushes and somehow planted yellow jackets in their car?”