A Corpse in a Teacup (7 page)

Tuesday
had to work extra shifts at the Café to make up for the lost fees and tips during the week she spent at Olivia’s. She rarely worked Mondays, but she had told Natasha to count on her for the afternoon crowd. That meant opening the Café on time, making sure the tables were set and the garden in the back patio was in shape. The landscaping company tended it, so that part of her job easy. Just check that the sprinklers were turned off, the bird poop cleaned up and the walkways were dry to prevent slips and falls. The back of the Café opened onto a small mall and the landscapers were able to clip, prune, sweep and water without entering the restaurant.

Tuesday
walked through the patio’s French doors and unfurled the awning that shielded diners from the sun, then opened the three umbrellas on the tables out of reach of the awning’s shade. As she scooped up some stray leaves from the tables, she glanced at Chef Marco’s prized herb garden. No one was allowed to touch the garden, but she leaned over and pinched a few deadheads she knew would annoy Natasha, and for which she would be blamed. She could hear the kitchen staff arrive and get to work The servers and Peter, the sommelier, were now hunkered down at the bar discussing new wines on the menu.

Each staff member contributed to spiffing up the Café. It was a prestigious place to work and doubling down on housekeeping
duties not covered by the janitorial service, such as making sure there was no dust on window sills or smudges on mirrors, paid off in handsome tips. Tuesday might complain to her friends about the extra chores tacked on to her workday, but knew it paid off in the end. Because of the attention to detail paid by the staff, customers willingly coughed up the high prices on the menu. Happy customers were more likely to want their tea leaves read. Even Natasha wiped the bathroom sinks, filled the hand lotion dispensers and straightened the paper towels in their baskets when vacations or flu bugs left the Café shorthanded.

Today
Tuesday didn’t mind the busy work. It took her mind off the pressures that were growing by the minute. By rights, she shouldn’t have any anxiety about meeting with Detective Jameson. She had done nothing wrong. Except maybe to pick a coral lipstick this morning that, the last time she looked in a mirror, clashed with her hair color. But to get back on topic, anyone who spent more than five minutes with Holley would know her client was incapable of committing murder. So she should not be worried about Holley ending up in jail or getting tossed in the hoosegow herself.

Except that anything is possible. Innocent people were incarcerated
all the time for crimes they didn’t commit. She learned that lesson in Darling Valley. Adding it all up, maybe she was justified in having the jitters this afternoon. She tossed the stray leaves and deadheads into the trash behind the counter.

Marco was in the kitchen
, now, rattling pots and pans. Prep for the lunch menu was largely done the night before. The simple but award-winning lunch menu consisted of sautés made with farm-to-table artisan ingredients and tossed salads so fresh a member of the Mulberry Mafia, as the Café’s customers were called, joked that he felt like a cow grazing on a hillside when he ate one peppered with special herbs fresh from Marco’s garden.

Lunch was easy on Marco, though he made up for it at dinner with complicated, five star dishes and desserts that kept him and his assistant, Rowena, hopping. A big part of Rowena’s job was fending off Marco’s demands and insults
. Marco had a chef’s girth and a basketball player’s height. His size dominated the kitchen, along with his imperious demeanor. Tuesday could hear their voices climbing a decibel or two, signaling the beginning of a rumble in the kitchen.

Just then the front door opened, Natasha entered with an armful of flowers
that she placed next to the Mulberry Cat, her precious blown glass sculpture for which the place was named and which to Tuesday was ugly as sin. Tuesday always avoided looking at the piece. It resembled one of those bizarre plastic surgery disasters where women try to resemble cats. It looked neither feline nor human, but misshapen, a reject from a horror movie. Yet Natasha’s love for it was legendary.

A
nd so the Café’s day began.

Part of the thrill of reading tea leaves for Tuesday was the surprise of what she found in the bottom of a stranger’s cup. Part of the anxiety of a reading was being sure she was interpreting the symbols correctly. A basket of flowers to one reader could be an upside down ship to another, with totally different meanings. However, she had a real feel for the messages left by tea leaves, confirmed so often by clients returning to tell her that yes, the person who owed her money had finally coughed it up, or the new job had come her way or Tuesday was right to urge her to be careful of the man who had just entered her life. He was just picked up for check fraud.

Th
ose who didn’t find her advice helpful mostly kept it to themselves, for she received very few complaints. She was mindful that, while some of the Café’s customers bought a reading as a joke to share with their friends, Tuesday took her work very seriously. She continually took classes to hone her skills on the interpretation of symbols and sought counsel from her teachers about tea leaf arrangements that puzzled her. She took her readings seriously because she knew some people, such as Holley, depended on them. She took them as seriously as she did the advice she received from her own diviners. Doctor Darla the sandtray coach, Vera the psychic and the cloisonné pendulum she used to access her own inner font of wisdom.

That afternoon she was happy to
confirm to a repeat customer that she would deliver a healthy baby; that the house of a single mother desperate for money would sell quickly at a profit; and that yes, her anxious client who lived in nearby Hancock Park and came for a standing appointment once a week was probably going to find her lost diamond ring.

At four o’clock
Tuesday said goodbye to her last client of the day and returned the woman’s cup, teapot and sugar bowl to the kitchen. Once again, she briefly witnessed an act of terror. Marco the chef threatening Rowena that she would end up on the street if she made one more batch of cream of spinach soup with lumps in it and promising that the cost of the Kobe beef would be taken out of her paycheck if a customer returned it as overcooked.

Tuesday didn’t hang around the kitchen often enough or long enough to know if Marco
made good on his threats. But Tuesday believed that either Rowena should stand up to him or Marco should fire her and find a sous chef who didn’t cause him so much grief. Though, on second thought, maybe that’s why he kept her, as an outlet for his nasty temper.

Tuesday said good
bye and have a good night to all who were aware of her presence, which never included all of the staff. More than once a server would come to her table to take her order, because he or she had not been informed that she was entitled to spend the afternoon working in the prime corner spot. Finally, she left to meet up with Detective Jameson.

Tuesday was born with what she called the happy gene. For the most part she believed that living a life on this green and watery earth was a good thing, though she’d like to have a word with whoever decided she didn’t need a winning lottery ticket, a voice like Reba McEntire’s, or a knack like Jean Paul Gaultier’s for turning a few yards of silk and leather, a couple of industrial strength zippers and a handful of rhinestones into an architecturally significant Little Black Dress that would one day end up in the permanent collection of the Met.

But no matter how peaceful a nature Tuesday possessed, if you wanted to rattle her chains, stick her smack dab in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic. When she finally got to Jameson’s precinct, after a drive
she swore was across half the Western Hemisphere, her eyes were popping out from frustration. Fourteen minutes of circling the ‘hood for a parking space soured her even more.

She locked her ca
r and kept her head down as she headed for the precinct headquarters, threading her way through a gaggle of uniforms and, from the tattoos displayed on their shaved heads and necks, gangbangers arguing in front of the building’s doorway.

Inside
, a uniformed officer took her name and told her to take a seat along a wall lined with assorted angry, scared, weeping and sullen citizens waiting their turn for a crack at the justice system. She stared around the dreary waiting area, her eyes falling on a cabinet with several shelves and a locked, glass door displaying an array of trophies, medals and photos. They honored, she assumed, members of the department. Wait, was that . . . Tuesday leaned forward then walked over to get a better look. Yes it was him, Detective Butel, all three hundred pounds or so of him in running shorts, singlet and race bib, holding a gold medal. She read the news clippings, astonished to learn that Detective Butel had come in third in his age group in the LA Marathon the year before, and first place three years earlier. No mention if he got a handicap for his girth. Tuesday sat down.

Well, she scolded herself, so much for profiling people. Imagine the shock a burglar received when he took off with the family silver thinking he could outrun the fat bozo coming after him steering that stomach around
the corner. Go Butel.

Tuesday
looked down the line of seats to get a sense of her neighbors and saw Justin Timberlake walk through the door. He was deep in conversation with one of the officers she remembered passing on the way in. She squinted to get a better look. Well, if Justin Timberlake wore motorcycle leathers, that is, and hooked his sun glasses in the corner of his mouth. No, not Justin Timberlake exactly. More like Steve McQueen after he married the Love Story actress. Nope, not him either. A young Vin Diesel with a sense of humor. That’s it. That’s who he looked like. She cataloged the goods he had that she liked.

S
mooth, shaved head? Sleek as a billiard ball. Check

Discreet boy bling? A small
diamond stud in one ear. Check

Bit of an edge? Motorcycle leathers. Che
ck

Looked good coming and going? She couldn’t see his rear but from the front, fig
ured it was a no brainer. Check
But what sealed the deal? Sense of humor. He radiated laughter. Check, check and check!

Whoever this guy was, crook or cop, Tuesday vowed to meet him.

But then Detective Jameson came through a set of double doors and strode over to
Tuesday, blocking her view of Mr. Gorgeous. Jameson had removed her padded suit jacket and displayed her weapon and handcuffs at her waist. She had a lush, feminine figure in contrast to her dominating husky voice. “Miss Tuesday, sorry to keep you waiting. Come with me.”

Tuesday
stood up to follow her, annoyance propelling her out of her seat. She turned her head and got another look at the guy. He was coming towards her now. In answer to her prayers, he stopped in front of her, seeming for all the world like he was going to chat her up. Tuesday was primed to give him any opening he needed, but Detective Jameson said, “We have to make this quick. This way. Now, please.”

Tuesday snapped, apropos of nothing, “Why did you make me come all the way over to this precinct? Do you know how long it took me to get here?”

She noticed Mr. G. shooting a grin in her direction.

Jameson snapped back, “If you don’t like traffic, don’t live in LA.”

Tuesday looked Jameson in the eye and said, “That was helpful.”

The guy walked past
them and disappeared down a corridor.

Heartbreak at 10 o’clock. S
he didn’t even know his name.

Tuesday turned this way and that in the middle of her living room until
a compass she once picked up at a garage sale for a dime told her she faced true north, the ideal orientation to query her pendulum. The location put her smack dab in front of her little used stationary bike, which she continued to ignore. She could not go another minute without finding out if she would ever see MG from the police station again. Mr. Gorgeous.

After a forty-five second meditation to
center herself, she stood very still and gripped the pendulum between her thumb and forefinger. She’d found the cloisonné ornament caught on a storm drain in Burbank the previous winter. Something told her it possessed divining powers, so she wrestled it out of the grid and gave it a home. Now it swung freely from an imitation gold chain missing a clasp, but that didn’t matter. For a quick yes or no answer to the thorny problems of every day life, it couldn’t be beat.

Olivia
had referred to the pendulum as a meatball because of its size and a patch of rust near the top. That hurt Tuesday’s feelings and she’d hidden it in a kitchen drawer for a while. The meatball crack touched a sore nerve. She almost never had a falling out with Olivia, and she hadn’t wanted to start one over something so silly, so she never said anything. The comment bothered her, though, because it suggested that Olivia, the most important person in her life, didn’t take Tuesday’s preoccupations with the occult seriously.

But one day she couldn’t decide if she should have the air condition repaired in her car or spring for the 1940’s Dior New Look suit with a peplum jacket and long, swinging skirt at the Designer Consider shop owned by the twins, Marci and Darci. It was probably a knockoff. Dior of any vintage was only found in private collections or museum shows these days, but it looked good enough to Tuesday.

To help her with
the go/no go decision on the Dior, she manufactured a pendulum by hanging her keys from a long piece of string. The makeshift device gave her practical advice that day, so, with great reluctance she brought her car into the shop. A week later she kicked herself when she saw an academy award nominee on the red carpet in the very suit she had craved. The next time she visited the twins’ shop they gloated about their clothes appearing in People Magazine. Tuesday never trusted the key arrangement again, though she knew that was silly. Any pendulum should work. It merely reflected what your higher self knew to be true.

T
he pendulum returned to its place of honor on Tuesday’s night table a few weeks later when Olivia agreed to use it to find a pair of opal earrings she had lost, which Tuesday had warned were bad luck anyway and she should let them go. However, after consulting the meatball, Olivia found the earrings and Tuesday’s pendulum was back in business. But a week later Olivia met Brooks and Tuesday had the last laugh about bad luck, though she never seriously laughed at the disaster that broke her friend’s heart and sent her relocating to Darling Valley.

Right now s
he opened one eye a tiny slit to make sure the pendulum was absolutely motionless before she asked her question. The wind chime on her balcony tinkled in a sudden breeze, but inside her apartment all was quiet. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes again and repeated,
Will I see him again? Will I see him again? Will I see him again?

She
had no intention of telling anyone she’d consulted the pendulum about this guy. How silly could she be? She had seen him for maybe fifteen seconds all told. Yet she couldn’t get him out of her mind.

She’d made a joke of it to the
three friends she met for a drink after the interview with Detective Jameson. They’d clowned around, coming up with schemes that would get Tuesday arrested so she could bump into the guy, either in a holding cell, or, better luck, if he was a detective who would interrogate her.

No
body asked her about the real interrogation, which didn’t amount to much. Jameson queried her from every angle about why she came up with symbols for murder in the teacup of a person who turned out to be connected to an actual, possible murder. Jameson was closed mouthed about why they were pushing the murder scenario, but it made sense to Tuesday since Holley had received the phone threats. News outlets had picked it up by now because Ariel had a minor reputation as an actress. Reports were noncommittal other than saying that Ariel’s death was suspicious and under investigation. The calls Holley received had not yet made it to the airwaves, though Tuesday had warned her that she could put good money on someone coming up with that scoop pretty soon. Tuesday advised that if she wanted to keep a low profile and paparazzi off her lawn, she should keep those calls to herself.

Tuesday had
explained to Jameson and Butel, who was waiting in the interrogating room, that she had merely seen symbols in Holley’s cup when she’d examined the dregs, the scattering of leaves and stems. Jameson dismissed Tuesday’s powers of divination by saying, “If you see any more bodies, would get names and addresses, please. And preferably before they’re knocked off?”

Tuesday didn’t take the jibes
personally. She was used to that reaction from the uninformed. It was just an example of the narrow world Jameson lived in. This was LA, for crying out loud. People claimed to read navel lint for a living. Nothing should surprise them. That’s what Sharrie had said, her neighbor in whom she often confided.

Sharrie read nose hair and predicted the course of relationships by measuring the length of baby toes. Tuesday thought that was a stretch when she first saw the crystal calipers her neighbor used in her readings. But, hey. She was paying her rent with it.
Along with the sale of scented body oil she created from her own recipe that she claimed corrected astrological imbalances.

But Sharrie wasn’t any good at predicting the future. So when Tuesday knocked on her door
after Apple Margaritas with the girls and said she had to talk, and explained that she’d met the love of her life but didn’t know his name yet, Sharrie had said, “Honey, you gotta give me more than that. At least tell me what size shoe he wears.”

So Tuesday
retreated to her apartment and pulled out her trusty pendulum. Sometimes to solve a vexing problem, Tuesday would consult the iChing or Tarot cards. But she was most comfortable with tea leaves. She had studied tasseomancy in more depth and it was her medium of choice, except when she had what she called the deep dark blues. Then she called Doctor Darla, her sandtray psychologist.

A pendulum, though, was something anyone could use. It merely gave the answer to a yes or no question that was locked in
a person’s subconscious. If you misplaced your keys, a part of you knew where you set them down. Through a series of yes or no questions, the seeker could discover the lost object. Tuesday knew, though, that sometimes your unconscious, subconscious, higher self, terms Tuesday used interchangeably, didn’t want you to know the answer and then the pendulum would swing in circles, leaving the questioner to figure out the puzzle with the same tool everyone else possessed, common sense. Tuesday found this method of divination particularly useful in calming her beating heart when she was troubled with a vexing problem, needed confirmation or was just too impatient to let her life unfold naturally.

S
o, eyes closed, pendulum still as a stone, she repeated her question, all the while focusing on the dreamboat’s image. His smile came through clearly, but she was afraid her delight at recalling his broad grin and the twinkle in his eye would influence the results. She needed to bring forth an image to calm her mood and let the pendulum swing independently of her desires. Her mother popped into her mind, which sobered Tuesday’s vibe instantly.

She
stood very still. If the pendulum swung back and forth, the answer was yes, side to side indicated no and a circular motion meant her subconscious knew the answer but refused to tell her.

She
held her breath. All around her was stillness. She felt enveloped in an almost unearthly quiet, except for Sharrie’s Pomeranian suddenly barking up a storm. Tuesday tried to shut out the yipping. At first there was no movement, then, yes. Ever so slightly, the chain began to vibrate. But still she kept her eyes shut, not wanting to influence the direction of the pendulum by staring at it with a desired outcome in mind.

Yes, there was movement
. Wow, was there movement. She felt her whole being swaying from side to side. This must mean she had a powerful connection with this guy. Whoops, she was losing her balance. Something was happening. She opened her eyes and saw the pendulum swinging in a wide circle.

Uh oh. This wasn’t
her unconscious moving the pendulum, the earth was moving. She looked at the picture over her mantle sliding back and forth, then heard a glass fall in the kitchen. They were having an earthquake.