“Look under P,” Lusk told him. “‘Personal Advisors’.”
Keegan found the section and folded back the paper. The ad was small, not even a full column inch. How had Lusk even known it would be there?
*Mme Lena*
Reader & Advisor on all matters. Has the
power to help humanity. Can influence
the actions of anyone, anywhere. Will
answer one question by phone.
1692 Nella Vista Dr. AX5-2124
“Thanks, Kip,” Keegan said. “You really know your newspaper.”
Lusk shrugged. “Not a hell of a lot to do in here all day,” he said.
“Still,” Keegan said, “it’s a small ad. I’m impressed you remembered it.”
“I’m no fancy detective,” Lusk said. “But I’m observant.”
Keegan nodded, thought a moment, and then grinned. “You called her,” he said, “didn’t you?”
Lusk looked off down Hill Street toward Sixth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“It was your jinx, wasn’t it?” Keegan said, his grin widening. “You broke a bunch of lousy mirrors, and then you called a fortune teller to see if she could reverse the curse.”
“She’s not a fortune teller,” Lusk said sulkily, “she’s a personal advisor.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “So, okay, maybe I talked to her on the phone,” he admitted. “Just the once.”
“Calling a fortune teller because you broke some mirrors,” Keegan said, still smirking. He tucked the classified section under his arm with the rest of the paper and tapped the side of his head with a finger. “You’re a man of rare insights, Kip. A real intellect.”
“Go ahead,” Lusk said dourly, “laugh all you want. You’re the one who came sniffing around my newsstand to find out about the woman.” He sighed and shook his head, arms still crossed. “This right here?” he said. “The way you treat an old friend? It’s eighteen-and-a-half pounds of pure bullshit.”
IN HIS OFFICE, Keegan clipped out Madame Lena’s ad with a pair of scissors, a scrap of newsprint smaller than a matchbook cover. He tucked the paper in the corner of his desk blotter and then stared down at it. Personal advisor. The idea seemed even more promising than Keegan had hoped. If anyone knew what private worries Ida Fletcher had about her nephew, it would be this woman. He picked up his desk phone and dialed. He listened while it rang a few times, and then an answering service picked up.
“Tell the Madame I’d like her to call me at her earliest convenience,” Keegan told the woman on the line. “Though I’m sure she already senses that.”
The woman on the line didn’t seem to get the joke. “I’m sorry,” she said, all business. “I should say what?”
“Nothing,” Keegan told her. “Just tell her to give me a call. Today, if she can.” He gave the woman his name and office number and then waited while she wrote it down and repeated it back.
THE PHONE RANG after Mrs. Dodd had left for lunch and Keegan picked it up, assuming it would be Madame Lena. It was Sue Belk up in Portland.
“Found the daughter out in Saint John’s,” Belk told him. “But she hasn’t heard from Lillian in a few months. Said she thought she was still down there in LA. Didn’t know anything about a retirement.”
A dead end. But if Lillian Colle was still in LA, Keegan could probably track her down himself. Word of Ida Fletcher’s demise would reach her eventually—hell, even Bruno the Barkeep had heard the news. Lillian Cole would come out of the woodwork, especially if she thought there was a chance she was in the old lady’s will. “Did you tell the daughter there was money involved?” Keegan asked.
“I didn’t say how much,” Belk told him. “But I said it would be in her mom’s interest to give you a call right away.”
Keegan could hear the crumple of papers on the line. Belk had done what she could. He’d make sure Dion paid her well.
“Say, what’s the weather like down there these days?” Belk asked, her voice suddenly a little wistful. “I miss the sun.”
Keegan glanced over his shoulder at the window. “Bright,” he said. “Clear and windy. What’s it like up there?”
“Showers and downpours with a chance of rain,” she said. “Why I ever came up here, I don’t know.”
THE CALL FROM Madame Lena finally came early Friday morning. Mrs. Dodd sent it through to Keegan’s inner office phone without complaint or commentary. She seemed eager to pass the woman off to him and wash her hands of any involvement with the occult. No dabbling with the spirit world for her.
“Do you have a question you would like to ask?” Madame Lena said as soon as Keegan picked up the line. She spoke with a faint accent, like an actress in a B-movie tasked with sounding exotic. Come with me to the casbah. “The first question is free,” she went on, “and I can answer it over the phone.”
Keegan tugged out the clipped newspaper ad he’d tucked into the corner of his blotter. Will answer one question by phone. As far as gimmicks went, it wasn’t half bad. It had, after all, worked on Kipper Lusk.
“You can spare me the spiel,” Keegan told her. “I don’t have a question. That’s not why I called.”
“But of course you have a question, Mr. Kee-gon.” She pronounced the name all wrong, but she plowed on with such confidence that it didn’t occur to Keegan to go back and correct her. “Everyone has questions. It is only human to wonder.”
“That might well be,” Keegan said, “but I’m calling on a different matter. I need some information about one of your former clients.” He slipped the ad back in his blotter and picked up a ballpoint pen. His notebook was already open and waiting.
“But you do have a question,” Madame Lena insisted, brushing his words aside. “It is a question that can only be answered by someone who communes with other realms. There is no reason to hold it back, Mr. Kee-gon. I already have the answer you need.”
She was good, Keegan had to admit. There was something to her headlong self-assurance that came across as compel-ling—and, if he were being honest, it put him a little on the defensive. He set the pen down on his desk, tipped back his chair, and swung his feet up. “So, you have an answer,” he said, “even though I don’t have a question?”
“In fact, I do,” Madame Lena said, unfazed.
Keegan smiled and ran a hand back through his hair. “An answer from other realms?”
“You are not fooling anyone,” she said. Her voice sounded impatient now, as if Keegan were the one wasting time with tiresome mind games. “And here is your answer, Mr. Kee-gon,” she said. “The young woman wants you to know that she forgives you. She knows that what happened was not your fault.”
Keegan swung his legs down from his desk and rocked forward in his chair. He pictured Eve sitting in the big chair in the cottage living room, her feet tucked up under her. They had sipped that good Bordeaux from his mother’s Royal Doulton teacups. They had talked glibly of travel and romance and wine cellars. Neither of them had imagined the blind, deadly turns just ahead of them.
“Did you hear me, Mr. Kee-gon?” Madame Lena was asking.
Keegan stared blankly down at the empty page in his open notebook. It would be pure folly to give this woman’s words any credence. This was the same cheap gimmick any carnival soothsayer might use. It was the stuff of horoscopes—the good-chance guess. What man Keegan’s age wouldn’t have a young woman in his life he’d want forgiveness from?
Still, she’d caught him off guard, and he didn’t like it. Don’t go messing with her, Mrs. Dodd had warned him. Well, damn that Mrs. Dodd and her haunted elevators. Keegan rubbed his face and willed his thoughts to slow down. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said—but his voice sounded timid and tinny, even in his own head. “I don’t know any young women.”
Madame Lena paused on the other end of the line. He could only hear her breathing. It was as if she were listening while someone whispered into the woman’s ear. “She is in your house,” the woman said
finally. Her voice was a little more tentative now, as though she were relaying a message that she, herself, didn’t quite comprehend.
Keegan opened and closed his free hand. “I’m afraid you’re all wrong,” he said. “I live alone.”
Nora trotted into view in the open doorway, looking like she’d just wakened from a nap on the oval rug next to Mrs. Dodd’s desk. She sniffed the air in Keegan’s inner office and then backed away, out of sight again.
“Yes and no,” the psychic told him airily. “You live alone, but also you do not.”
“It’s a tiny house,” Keegan said. “If there was a young woman in it, I’d probably have noticed her by now.”
Again, a long pause and the woman’s breathing over the line. She seemed to be listening to a voice Keegan couldn’t overhear. “You refuse to see her,” Madame Lena reported. “But she visits there nonetheless.”
Keegan picked up the pen again and tapped it on his desktop. This phone call was getting away from him. “Look, I’m not really a customer,” he said. “I’m an investigator. I just need some information about one of your clients, that’s all. It’s the only reason I called.”
“If you have more questions, an appointment will be required,” Madame Lena informed him, her voice suddenly cool and businesslike. “I could fit you in tonight, if you would like.”
WHEN KEEGAN HUNG up, he sat in the dimly lit office with his palms pressed down on the desktop, trying to collect his thoughts. This unsettled mood he was in—it was nothing. He was just tired. Who wouldn’t feel a little unnerved after a week like the one he’d had? A dead man on a steel table. A dog barking at empty chairs. A superstitious fusspot manning the desk in his outer office. It was October, that was all. It was the season for weirdness and flights of fancy. And Madame Lena? She was nothing but a sideshow act—just a lot of smoke and broken mirrors.
Keegan got up and went to the window and pulled up the blinds to let more light in the gloomy room. Down below, Sixth Street was bright and clogged with morning traffic. A blue World Series banner hung from the awning in front of the barber shop across the way. A bicycle messenger slipped between a passing red car and van that was double parked.
It was just another bright and workaday Los Angeles morning out there. Keegan had seen a million of them. There was nothing in the least uncanny about it.
KEEGAN CLOSED THE office early that afternoon. If he was going to get to Madame Lena’s address out in East Whittier during rush hour, he’d have to give himself time.
Mrs. Dodd was only too happy to accommodate him. She was never one to complain about a weekend starting early. “You sure you can make it all the way out there and back to Jackson’s in time for your date?” she said as he was pulling on his jacket.
“There’s plenty of time,” he told her. “You just don’t want me to go.”
She nodded. “I will not pretend,” she told him. “I don’t like it at all.” She stood by the door with her arms folded, looking, somehow, both worried and petulant. “You sure you know what you’re getting into, boss?”
“It’s just an interview,” Keegan said. “I interview people all the time.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “It’s not a good idea to mess with that kind of stuff. Madame Lena’s kind of stuff.”
“What stuff might that be?” Keegan asked, just to goad her a little.
“The occult,” she told him. She spread her arms out in front of herself. “There. I said it. Make fun of me if you want. You should take it more seriously.”
“I’m a grown man,” Keegan reminded her. “Ghosts and goblins and Bloody Mary—that stuff’s all kids’ play. Stories you tell at sleepovers. You realize they sell Ouija boards at Toys ‘R’ Us, right?”
Mrs. Dodd shrugged. “They sell rat poison in grocery stores,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you should make a meal of it.” Her purse was on the corner of her desk. She picked it up and pulled the strap over her shoulder. “Don’t tempt fate, is all I’m saying.” She began to pull the door open. “It isn’t safe—whether or not you believe in it.”
Keegan took the dog’s leash down from the hat rack. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
Mrs. Dodd turned back and looked him up and down. She pushed the door shut again. “Something’s already happened,” she said. “You’ve been acting all weird since you got off the phone with that Madame this morning. You don’t think I noticed it? I don’t know what she said to you, but it definitely got you spooked.”
The dog, seer of ghosts, was sniffing the base of the door now, waiting to go out.
“She didn’t spook me,” Keegan said.
Mrs. Dodd stepped closer. “I know you, boss,” she said. “I know when something fazes you. You try to be all smooth and slick, but stuff gets to you sometimes. And you’re not very good at hiding it.”
He shook his head and called Nora over. He bent to clip the leash on the dog’s collar.
“This isn’t trick-or-treat,” Mrs. Dodd told him. She adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. “I’ve got a real bad feeling about this Madame Lena,” she said. “Nothing good is going to come from seeing her. I just know it’s going to turn out badly.”
“So now you’re clairvoyant too?” he said.
Mrs. Dodd sighed, like he was being contrary. She gave him a weary, dismissive shake of the head and went to the door. “Be nice to Helen tonight,” she said. “That girl deserves a lot better than you.”
The dog lunged forward as soon as the door was open, but Keegan held her back with the leash. He waited until Mrs. Dodd closed the door behind her. He’d just linger here a minute longer until she was on the elevator.
THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON traffic, headed out of town for the weekend, was heavy, but Keegan was driving south, and most of it was northbound. It was only a little after five now, and his exit from the 101 was coming up.
He’d dropped the dog off at the cottage, washed his face, and changed his clothes. He put on the same sports coat and Botany tie he’d worn to meet Milton Burritt. It had been years since he’d gone on an actual date, and he wasn’t sure if the apprehension he felt was because he was meeting Helen for dinner or because Mrs. Dodd had gotten under his skin with all her worry about Madame Lena.
In a few minutes, he was on Whittier Boulevard, driving through the nondescript postwar housing tracts of Montebello and Pico Rivera, with all their corner gas stations and strip mall storefronts. He’d get to Madame Lena’s early, he guessed, which was fine with him. It would give him a chance to gather his thoughts in the parking lot before he went inside her office.
The plan was simple: he’d humor the woman, see what he could find out about the old lady and her nephew, and be done with the Madame. He’d have plenty of time to head back up the 101 to Jackson’s before eight o’clock—and, with any luck, he’d arrive with a good story to tell Helen over dinner: his meeting with the soothsayer. It would be like something out of Macbeth. She’d appreciate that.
KEEGAN HAD EXPECTED Madame Lena’s place of business to be a storefront shop, or maybe a shabby office suite at the top of some stairs off a busy boulevard, but the directions he’d jotted in his notebook took him to narrow suburban streets full of modest houses. The same four models of small tract homes repeated again and again down both sides of the street. He pulled over in front of a playground and unfolded one of the glove-box maps to make sure he was heading to the right address. He was. He continued on, driving slowly.
He turned onto Madame Lena’s street, Nella Vista Drive, and slowed the MG as he checked the numbers affixed to the curbside mailboxes. And there it was, number 1692. The only thing that set this small house apart from its neighbors was the neon sign burning in the window by the door, in front of the drawn curtains: the word Psychic, written in crimson cursive script against a blue quarter moon.
Cars were parked at the curb on both sides of the road, so Keegan drove to the end of the block and make a wide U-turn in the inters
ection. He came back along the street, looking for a space, and backed into an empty spot across the street from Madame Lena’s, between two different models of station wagon. He turned off the engine and consulted his watch. He was a good fifteen minutes early. He’d have to wait.
The sun was just dipping below the horizon behind him. Tall jacaranda trees lined both sides of the street, their gaunt, arthritic branches merging above the asphalt. With all the modest, well-kept starter homes, this looked like the kind of neighborhood that would be full of young families: stickball in the streets, bicycles abandoned on front lawns, hopscotch chalked on front drives. In a few weeks, these sidewalks would be awash with trick-or-treaters.
Keegan glanced across at Madame Lena’s house, where the neon light burned in the front window. None of the interior lamps were on, despite the dying daylight. The house was close and dark and sinister. It seemed to gather in more than its share of shadows from the towering trees. What did these neighbors think of their suburban soothsayer? On Halloween night, did the children flock to the psychic house or flee it? Keegan checked his watch again. Nine more minutes.
The young woman wants you to know that she forgives you. Keegan liked to think he was immune to superstition, that he’d grown wise to every con and shortcut in the book. And Madame Lena’s trick was just another of the same. He knew how quickly the mind jumped to its own conclusions, filling in the missing details. Madame Lena was nothing more than the Zoltar machine at a penny arcade. The preprinted card says an old woman is watching over you, and your mind lunges right away to your dead grandmother. Her routine on the phone was the same ruse; it was plain as a pikestaff. Madame Lena had mumbled something about a young woman—and Keegan’s mind had plunged through the ice, plummeting straight to Eve. He’d be a fool to let such a cheap gimmick throw him off.
Keegan checked his watch. He’d be damned if he was going to spend five more minutes sitting out here in his car talking to himself. The last of the daylight had fled from the sky by now. He took the keys from the ignition and squeezed them in his fist. He got out of the car and crossed the dark, quiet street. Perhaps arriving a few minutes early would be to his advantage. Maybe he’d catch the psychic off guard.
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