The Fortune Teller's Daughter

by Lila Shaara

  His eyes were starting to adjust again; even in this deep blackness, the light from above was enough to begin to see dim gray patterns in the rock around him. He thought again of Emily, remembered her telling him about experiments involving infinitesimal amounts of light shooting through tiny slits in paper barriers. “Light acts as a wave or a particle, depending on what question you ask it,” she had said, as if she was revealing something wonderful to him. He hadn’t understood then how you could have so little light, a beam consisting of one photon at a time, something she said you could even see if you had a dark-adapted eye. He thought, My eyes are as dark-adapted as you can get, and he wondered if that was what he was seeing, one goddamned motherfucking particle of light, taking its goddamned time wafting down to him. He could hear her correcting him. “It won’t take any time at all. It’ll move at the speed of light.” Haha, he thought. “I’m going to kill you, you know,” he said aloud and was terrified by the sound of his voice, so faint, so weak, so hoarse. He sounded like a dying monster.

  Now in the light from the few photons that had made their way into the hole, he could see something largish and dark pushed against the side of the sink farthest from him; it looked like a log, and for a moment he wondered if sinkholes had alligators in them and in his terror he felt his bladder let go, which was awful but warmed the water directly around him, which felt horribly good. Then the knowledge came to him from somewhere in his underappreciated brain, alligators were cold-blooded, they wouldn’t want to live in a place like this, and sinkholes were fed by underground streams and rainwater; alligators didn’t live in underground caves and rivers, he was safe, he wasn’t about to be food, thank God, thank God.

  His relief threatened to weaken him, so he made himself move to the big log. He thought, It must be a fallen tree, rotten maybe, but something that will float, that I can rest on. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be stuck to the side, maybe even give me some purchase out of the water. He reached it, his feet still doing most of the work of keeping him afloat because he didn’t want to thrust his weight onto the log and be disappointed. He reached out an icy hand and touched it. It felt soft and unpleasant, but as if it had some solidity under the squishiness; it didn’t move much, just bobbed a little in the wake he’d made. It was attached in some way to the rocks, caught on something. It appeared to be a small rotting tree, a few small branches protruding from it, one of which fell off as he searched the surface of the log for a place to get a better grip. He found a narrow spot above the waterline that he could get his arms around, and he lifted himself slightly, his shoulders coming out of the water into the warm air. The smell of the water and the rotting log was getting worse. I’ll never eat seafood again, he thought. Not anything that once lived in water.

  “She said she was fine and not to worry,” Harry said. “She was just checking on us, to make sure that everything had gone well today.” “That was awfully sweet of her,” Maggie said.

  There was a sound from above, a long way away, a faint sound, a door creaking, footsteps, the light from the hole so far above him growing stronger. He started so hard he almost lost his grip, but he pulled himself up higher, trying to make a sound, trying to yell for help. Finally he managed a sound, a croak that he feared wasn’t loud enough, but then the light brightened further and his happiness was boundless. He found his voice again and managed to yell, “Help me! Help me!” It sounded as though he’d been crying, as though he was begging for something. He could see the silhouette of a head over the rim of the hole, indistinct in the weird light, impossible to tell anything about it. The light pooled around the head, making a halo; an angel, Jonathan thought, and his relief was such that he would have laughed if he’d had the strength.

  The beam of a flashlight, a real one, shone down on him, blinding him for a moment, but then the light seemed to call to itself, although it could only have been a reflection, some eerie property of the beam bending in the bottomless water; it looked as if a ball of light of incredible beauty was coming down to him. He felt like praying when it seemed to come together with its mate, its reflection appearing to come from the water itself, and the image and the reflection seemed to merge somewhere in the warm air above him, giving birth to sparks that fell around him like rain. He blinked to get his eyes to work properly, and that was when he saw that the log was in fact a corpse, an empty and ruined head inches from his own. The branches were arms, one now knocked loose into the frigid water; he was gripping the greasy and raddled torso, and he screamed and screamed as he lurched away from the horrible thing. He screamed some more, and then the light went away altogether, taking the angel with it.

  60

  DEATH

  Everything dies. Everything is born

  Their flight to Jacksonville was direct; Harry had left his car at the airport, so he planned to drive back to Stoweville as soon as they’d collected their bags. Maggie said, “Is anyone renting your beach house this week?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. Why? You want to spend some time there?” He thought about it for a moment, liking the idea.

  “I’d love to, but that’s not why I asked.” She looked uncharacteristically sheepish. Harry cocked an eyebrow at her, and she said, “I put some stuff there.”

  “What? What stuff? When? How?”

  “I still had the keys from when Josie and the girls and I were there before.”

  Harry waited.

  “Josie had a feeling that Jon was planning something. Well, not a feeling, exactly. You know.”

  “She saw it in the cards.”

  She nodded, not looking at him. “I knew he was going to be after me one way or another anyway as soon as I found out he was in town.” She looked at him. “I borrowed your storeroom.”

  “For some stuff.”

  “Uh-huh. I was there between renters, so no one saw me go in.” “What stuff, Maggie?”

  “A lot of paper. Notebooks. Of mine. And some other stuff. Prototypes.”

  “Prototypes?” He forced himself to lower his voice. “Of what?” Oh God, he thought. The stun gun. He lowered his voice some more. “Not more weapons?”

  She looked startled. “Oh no. Nothing like that. A hair dryer that I was working on for Miss Baby. It’s energy efficient.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Some components of a car engine that will run on water. Another one that uses cooking oil. A card shuffler for a big deck, like Tarot cards. A few extra solar panels. Lightbulbs. A battery you can recharge with body heat. Stuff like that.”

  “Oh,” said Harry. “It’s all at the beach house?”

  “Yes. Locked up in your pantry. I thought maybe we could get it out. Your car’s not big enough, though. We’ll need to rent a truck.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Harry said.

  They found a U-Haul dealership that had a trailer Maggie decided was of sufficient size and made arrangements to drop it off in Stoweville when they returned home. They had to wait an hour for the man behind the counter to install a hitch on the back of Harry’s car.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Maggie said, patting her pocket where she’d stashed the check that Gillian DeGraff had couriered to their room early that morning.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I know you’re good for it.”

  Harry called the beach house before they left the U-Haul dealer and spoke to irritated renters. They were put out that their vacation was being interrupted by a visit from the owner. “Too bad,” he said to Maggie after hanging up. “Goddamned Yankees think they own the world.”

  When they got to the house, the sun was falling into the west and the heat had peaked for the day. The only tenant there was a fat man with a thick Brooklyn accent; his wife and children were down at the beach. He let them in with the air of one whose fun has been seriously disrupted. Harry and Maggie ignored him after a few attempts at pleasantness and went to the pantry.

  Harry opened the door with his key and found the little room crammed with mismatched cardboard
boxes and large black garbage bags. The bags might have held bodies for all they weighed and for the odd angles made by whatever was in them. The boxes were heavy, too; she told him they held notebooks.

  “There must be dozens of them. What’s in them?”

  “Notes.”

  “What kind of notes?”

  “For designs. Some calculations. Schematics. You know.”

  “When did you do all this?”

  “Over the past few years.”

  Harry thought, So much for Dan Polti’s theory that physicists burn out before thirty. Her mind was still on fire.

  They pulled into the oyster-shell driveway at noon, the trailer bouncing and hitching on the uneven surface. Before they’d reached the front door of the double-wide, Miss Baby came running across the yard to where they stood with their suitcases in hand.

  “I’ll ask how things in Pennsylvania went in a minute.” She looked at Maggie’s black eye, then at Harry. “Although I will ask right now if you’re responsible for that.”

  Harry said, “Not in the way you mean.”

  “It was Fay, Miss Baby. I told you about her.” Maggie put down her case. “She wasn’t too happy to see me.”

  Miss Baby nodded. “She thought you were dead, and didn’t like to be contradicted.” She patted Maggie’s cheek and, after ascertaining that nothing else was bruised or broken, said, “Miss Tokay’s missing.”

  “For how long?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. I went over there this morning to check on her. No sign of her anywhere. All her stuff’s there, as far as I can tell. The thing that’s got me concerned is that her shawl was lying on the sofa like she’d just tossed it off.”

  “I’ve never seen her without it,” Maggie said, looking worried.

  “Me neither,” Miss Baby said.

  Harry asked, “Have you called anyone? Her niece? The police?”

  Miss Baby gave him a look. “Of course I called Gretchen. She claims to know nothing about it. Miss Tokay threw her and Hugh out day before last. Evidently there were some nasty words spoken, and they haven’t talked to her since. Hugh is way too interested, of course. I didn’t want to call the sheriff just yet. His people aren’t exactly our good friends about now. There’s a strange car parked behind her house, too. A rental car, looks like.”

  Harry said, “Jonathan must have a rental, but I don’t know what make or color. Do you?” he asked Maggie. She shook her head.

  Miss Baby said, “There’s no sign of him either. You’d think if he abducted her, he’d take his car.” She made a visor of her hand and looked through the trees toward Miss Tokay’s house. “I got a few folks walking around on her property to see if she’s out there somewhere. But there’s an awful lot of land. I checked both sinks, hollered down into the old temple. No answer.”

  Maggie said, “Oh God, if she fell in, she’s dead for sure.”

  “Maybe she was pushed,” Harry said. Maggie and Miss Baby looked at each other in horror. He went on, “We have to call the sheriff. He’s got the manpower to do a proper search.” He put his suitcase down on the grass and pulled out his cell phone. The dispatcher didn’t sound terribly interested but said that they’d send someone out shortly. Harry put the phone back in his pocket and said, “I’d like to take a look inside the old temple again. If I were her, that’s where I’d want to hide. We’d better get a flashlight.” He looked at Maggie. “A real one.”

  61

  ACE OF WANDS

  A new undertaking, grand, ambitious, and noble

  Serge had never seen Harry look so fit. He looks younger, too, he thought; he looks happy. They were meeting for lunch at Crane’s, even though Harry swore that the food wasn’t as good since Maggie stopped working there. But he said that she insisted they still patronize the place. One reason was out of loyalty to Calvin Crane; another was that she had trouble tolerating the fluorescent lights of most other Stoweville restaurants.

  Serge asked, “How many times have Kimble’s people gone diving in the sinks now?”

  “Three times into Temple Sink. It’s a lot easier to see in Tokay Sink, so one dive was enough to know that she wasn’t in there. Of course, if her body got sucked into one of the underground caves, they’ll probably never find her.”

  “You don’t think the Sky People came and got her?”

  “No, but I’m less inclined to roll my eyes about it than I once was. We live in a bizarre universe.”

  “It can be a pitiless one, too,” Serge said. “Can you imagine Jon Ziegart’s last hours? Floating around with a rotting corpse before drowning? Amelia’s had more than a few nightmares about it.”

  “So has Maggie,” Harry said. “So have I, for that matter.”

  “Have they identified the other body? There’s been nothing in the paper.”

  Harry shook his head. “I doubt they’ll ever be able to make a positive ID. Maggie thinks that it’s Warner Lefland, Miss Tokay’s old suitor.”

  “Do you think the old lady murdered him?”

  “I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. There’s not enough soft tissue left to be too specific about his death, and the sheriff’s people aren’t telling us much anyway. But I gather there’s some doubt about whether or not he drowned. He almost certainly didn’t die in Temple Sink. It didn’t even exist when he disappeared.”

  “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”

  “I’m not sure what I mean. But it’s possible that she kept him in her house for a long time before his body wound up in the sink.”

  “Dead?”

  Harry nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Yeesh.”

  They studied their menus for a while in silence. Shawntelle brought two glasses of water and plunked them on the table, spilling just a little. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. She took their order, then said, “You say hey to Maggie, okay?”

  “Will do.” As she shuffled off, Harry added, “Hay is for horses.”

  “Still a snob,” Serge said.

  “I’m not a snob, I’m discerning. Also complicated.”

  “Hmm. So what else has been going on? You’ve been hard to reach for the last three weeks.”

  “I got some lousy news. I told you about Dusty’s homeless friend, right?” Serge nodded. “Kimble made a call. The boy’s body was found in a canal. He was identified by a social worker. I’m hoping that there will be some forensics to connect his murder to the man Quick. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely.”

  “Will Dusty have to give evidence? If Quick gets prosecuted?”

  “Probably not. Enough people saw Jake and Quick together, so I doubt they’ll need him. I haven’t decided whether or not to tell him, assuming I have the option to keep it from him.”

  “You’re on your own. I have no idea what the right thing to do is.”

  Shawntelle brought them each a cup of soup. Serge tasted his and said, “The soup seems the same.”

  “Maggie never made that.”

  “Oh.” He took another spoonful. “I know you’ve been meeting with Amos Harper. He, of course, won’t tell me anything. But Amelia’s dying to know why you’re monopolizing a lawyer who specializes in trusts and estates.”

  Harry said, “Miss Tokay saw Amos a few weeks before she disappeared. She deeded her land and house to Maggie and Miss Baby.”

  “She what?”

  “Hugh Covington, the nephew-in-law, is madder than hell, but Miss Tokay was meticulous. She even had Amos bring in a shrink to do a psych evaluation on her so that she could be declared compos mentis, and everything’s properly witnessed, so there’s not much her nephew-in-law can do about it. It will be a while before the legal mess is cleared up, but at least Hugh can’t get the bulldozers in there in the meantime.”

  “I bet he’s having a shitfit.”

  “You ain’t just a-bumpin’ your gums.” Serge grimaced at this, but Harry just laughed at him. “Sorry. A Miss Baby-ism. Anyway, that’s the main thing I wanted to talk to you
about today, although you’re ultimately going to have to deal directly with Maggie. Amos is helping her set up a foundation. She’s got some seed money that we got out of the folks at Cantwell.”

  “That you extorted out of them, you mean.”

  “Whatever. That’ll be a start, but she’s also going to tie a few of her patents to it, which should keep it in funds for a while.”

  “Patents for what?”

  “All kinds of things.” He looked up again. “Beautiful fluorescent bulbs. Windmills. You wouldn’t believe all the other stuff she’s been building in the Purple Lady’s garage. The big-ticket items are probably the solar panels. She first worked on them at Cantwell, and Charlie filed the patent in his name, and the university’s. She’s made substantial improvements over the years, but there could be some trouble from them. But Amos knows something about patent law. He can smell money.”

  “Like any good attorney. So what’s the foundation for?”

  “Environmental issues. That’s where you come in.”

  “I’m flattered. Also, I’m not cheap. We’re thinking about having kids. They’ll need shoes. Good ones.”

  Harry smiled. “Good luck with that. I’d say name your price, but I’m not your advocate.”

  Shawntelle came back with sandwiches. After she left, Serge said, “Frank Milford’s slobbering all over himself to get her on the faculty, you know.”

  “She needs time for her main project. They’re dickering now about how to work that out within the demands of a faculty position.” Harry took a bite of his sandwich, making sure to swallow before he spoke again. He frowned at it, then said, “She’s going to build the big tower.”

  “The Tesla thing?”

  “Uh-huh. She’s talking to some folks in the biology department about the impact on migratory patterns of birds and other local wildlife and so on. Harper’s already filed the patent for the receivers.”

  “So everyone with one of those would get their electricity for free?”