Karen Mercury (3 page)

“I know. I did just order a new lavender gown.”

“It would set off your beautiful blonde hair.”

“Ladies!” barked Jeremiah. They both looked at him with vacant eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, because you’ve been too occupied gossiping like fishwives.”

Tabitha giggled. “Whatever a ‘fishwife’ is.”

Jeremiah glared at her. “The board has been spelling out a sentence.”

Both Tabitha and Liberty gasped and looked at their fingers on the planchette, which had paused on the letter
G
.

“We haven’t been looking!” Tabitha looked back to Montreal Jed. “What has it been spelling?”

Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “If you weren’t so busy babbling on about lavender gowns and creepy college alumni, you’d see that it has already spelled ‘Your husband is bring.’”

“And it stopped on the
G
,” said Tabitha with wide eyes. “Let us continue. O, Spirit Board! What is my husband bringing?”

“You don’t need to talk to it like that,” scoffed Jeremiah. “The board is hardly an animate being. It’s the
spirit
you really want to address.”

But the planchette had already sped on, spelling out BRINGING YOU A. Tabitha had heard of people’s hearts actually stopping during moments of great shock, but she had never believed it possible until now.
Bringing me a what?

“O Spirit,” she whispered, less assured now. “What is my husband bringing me?”

Everyone seemed to hold their breaths as the planchette began to move again. A MESSAGE.

Exhaling loudly, Tabitha pushed her chair back from the desk and strode to a sideboard to pour herself a glass of sherry. “I can’t believe this!” she cried and drank the whole tumbler in three swallows. Whirling to face her companions, she said, “Parker could hardly be coming to bring me a message when he died of typhus a year ago!”

Liberty gestured. “Come, come! Let’s finish it. It could be telling us that he’s bringing you a message from the other side.”

“Yes.” Jeremiah shuddered. “The other side of
hell
.”

Tabitha poured and gulped another sherry glass. Then, nerves steadied—or at least dulled for now—she returned to the desk and placed her fingers on the planchette. “Oh. What’s this flower doing here?” Sitting on the table before her seat was an enormous sunflower. “Where’d you get this, Liberty? I haven’t noticed any sunflowers in your garden.”

Liberty stared at the flower wide-eyed. “I don’t
have
any sunflowers in my garden.”

The two sisters’ eyes landed on Jeremiah’s innocent face. “Oh, come now!” he protested. “I was hardly concealing this enormous flower under my waistcoat, just waiting for the right moment to slap it onto the desk.”

“You
were
in the circus,” Tabitha pointed out. “And everyone in town once thought you were the Cinnabar Murderer.”

Liberty added, “And you called yourself the Great Wizard of the West.”

“But I
wasn’t
the Cinnabar Murderer!” Jeremiah cried. “Look, let’s be reasonable. Besides, what is the significance of this sunflower? What does it symbolize? Perhaps it has something to do with your dead husband.”

Tabitha said, “I’d be more curious as to how it materialized here while I was drinking sherry.” The flower was freshly cut and not even noticeably wilted.

“Yes, that is a conundrum,” Jeremiah allowed. “Let us continue. O Spirit, what is the message Tabitha’s husband is bringing her?”

The planchette sped to spell out MARRIAGE.

Oh, this is just ridiculous!
Tabitha murmured, “Well. I was already married to him. O Spirit! What is the significance of the sunflower?”

Again, the basket tore about the talking board to spell FIND PHINEAS. Then it rested, as though content with its message.

Slowly, everyone withdrew their fingers and rested their hands in their laps, Tabitha fiddling with the sunflower.

“Well,” said Jeremiah. “The logical question is, of course, does anyone know anyone named Phineas?” The sisters shrugged and shook their heads. “Neither do I. All right. Perhaps we can find out more about the nature of this spirit. I’ve got an idea. Something we used to do when in the show business.”

Standing, he went to the sideboard where a copy of the Laramie
Frontier Index
newspaper was sitting. Jeremiah brought the newspaper to the desk and set it down on a stack of Liberty’s school papers. “This used to be a trick, of course. We showmen would choose a decoy from the audience, someone we had planted there, of course. We’d point to a word on the rag, and the decoy of course would guess it correctly, having planned it all out beforehand. Only now I am going to see if the spirit can guess. Let me ask. O Spirit, are you all-seeing, all-knowing? Can you see things in this room that our physical eyes cannot?”

The pointer moved to the word YES.

Jeremiah continued, “Can you see things outside of this room that our physical eyes cannot apprehend?”

The planchette meandered around for a bit before returning to YES.

“All right, then,” said Jeremiah with satisfaction. Sticking a stiff index finger onto the newspaper off to his side, without looking at it, he asked in a showman’s tremulous voice, “O Spirit, can you spell out which word my finger is pointing to?”

Tabitha stared at the planchette as though fixing to move it with her mind. It was immobile for what seemed like many long minutes, during which Jeremiah repeated his question. Tabitha was about to give up when the pointer started moving.
S, C, I, N.
Is that even the beginning of a proper word?

“Scintillating,” Liberty exhaled in a sudden rush. “Scintillating!”

Tabitha asked, “Is that even a word?”

They both looked to Jeremiah, who removed his finger from the newspaper slowly, with exaggerated import. He lifted the newspaper closer to his face, and his eyes widened. “Scintillating,” he repeated in a ghostly tone.

Tabitha snatched the paper from him. “What? Does it actually say that?” Indeed, her eyes quickly found the word, right there in the middle of an article about a debutante’s party. She read aloud, “‘The conversation among the high muckety-mucks and big fish was very scintillating.’”

Liberty tossed her head. “Oh, it’s that Henry Zuckerkorn, our local scribbler. He gets very emotional and flowery about things.”

Jeremiah cried, “Yes, but isn’t it altogether too much? What are the odds that I’d point to such a strange word, and then the planchette spells it out?”

“And then this sunflower appears here,” Tabitha breathed, cradling the flower to her breast. For some reason, the flower’s manifestation seemed vastly more important to her than the “scintillating” conversation of debutantes. “Maybe this Henry Zuckerkorn is a key?”

Liberty said, “Henry Zuckerkorn has been a key to many things,” but she didn’t elaborate.

“I’ve always entertained the notion of scribbling myself,” said Tabitha, rising and going back to the sideboard for more sherry. But first she poured water from a pitcher into a champagne glass and stood the flower in it, propped against the wall.

“Oh, Zuckerkorn, that old windbag,” said Jeremiah with disgust. “He’s supposed to be a very good journalist, but I just find him full of blabbing blather. He can talk the hind leg off a donkey. But I can introduce you to him, if you wish to become a scribbler yourself. I have to deal with him quite often in my work for your sister Alameda, and in making announcements for Senator Spiro.”

“Would you?” Tabitha brightened up. “I think it’s time I was allowed out into the world. Don’t you agree, Liberty?”

“Oh, yes,” said her sister. “High time. I know you’ve been getting some recreation in taking riding and shooting lessons from Rudy—”

“Which is acceptable because we’re out on the prairie away from prying eyes,” Tabitha pointed out.

“—but I definitely agree you’ve mourned long enough and can take up some useful occupation. And scribbling would give you an excuse to attend all these functions.”

Tabitha knew the implication underneath her sister’s words. Liberty had been hinting lately at introducing her to some new eligible men. Tabitha simply wasn’t interested. True, she had not known Parker for long before they married. They had only known each other perhaps one entire year when he’d been struck down by typhus. But she had sincerely loved him. That was not a thing one could easily forget or “get over.”

“All right. Jeremiah, bring me to this Zuckerkorn fellow. Once my new gown arrives, and I can get out of these widow’s weeds.”

“He’ll probably only let you write about society or women’s issues like gardening and sewing,” Jeremiah warned.

Tabitha shrugged. “That’s fine for a start.”

Liberty traced an outline on the desk with her finger. “And Tabitha, I think I should introduce you to Caleb Poindexter.”

Tabitha exhaled with irritation. “No more potential beaux, please, Liberty!”

“Caleb Poindexter?” said Jeremiah, perking up. “I’ve heard of the fellow. He’s some kind of master conjuror who was expelled from Rome on charges of sorcery. Lives like an Indian out in a tepee, or some such.”

Liberty’s eyes flashed at this description of her friend. “The only part you have correct is the part where he’s a master conjuror.”

“And that he’s a charlatan with a mesmeric personality. I heard that he sleeps with a great number of cats so as to create static electricity. That’s how he creates the rapping people hear in his presence.”

“Well!” said Tabitha. “It definitely sounds as though you’ve chosen well for me, Libby!”

Liberty slammed her palm on the desk. “I’m not thinking of him as a beau, Tabby! I’m saying he could definitely shed some light on the results we got here today. He’d probably even know who Phineas is. Aren’t you curious?”

“Oh, of course I’m curious. Especially if this Phineas has something to do with Parker. Oh, my. There’s a giant black dog sitting in your yard. At first I thought it was a grizzly bear.”

“A dog?” cried Jeremiah. “A wolf, you mean?”

“No, it’s definitely a dog.”

As Liberty and Montreal Jed raced to the window to view the dog, Tabitha strode to the front door. The black dog was still sitting calmly on the lawn side of a row of rosebushes. She turned her enormous skull to grace Tabitha with her serene, placid expression. Her tongue hung out under immense jowls that flapped comically, and her square, fluffy ears were set high on her massive head. Her little round eyes had a gentleness, and the silken ruff of her chest encouraged Tabitha to run over and kneel down, sinking her fingers into the fluff. She brought to mind their old family dog, a Newfoundland named Stormalong.

“Who are you?” she asked, patting the head that was soft as a rabbit’s. The feathered ears were slinky between her fingers. Tabitha knew it was a female dog, although covered as it was by rippling fur, one couldn’t easily tell.

The dog woofed once. Tabitha interpreted it as trying to tell her something, so she stood and put her hands on her hips. “Do you want to show me something?”

Woof
.

Now Liberty was on the front porch, calling out, “Caleb? Is that you, Caleb?”

Had her sister gone off her head? “Why are you calling this dog Caleb? Isn’t Caleb a person?”

Liberty leaped down the front stairs and came toward them while Jeremiah lingered, clutching a pillar in fear. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t suppose I could convince you that Caleb has the ability to enter the bodies of animals?”

Tabitha chuckled. “No, I don’t suppose you could.”

Liberty was on her knees holding the serene dog’s head in her hands. “Caleb? Is that you? Father has seen Caleb do it. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” She sat back and told the dog, “Caleb. If that’s you, lift your paw.”

The dog sat immobile, smiling.

Tabitha laughed and ruffled the dog’s head. “I’m going to follow this giant puppy. Maybe she’ll lead me back to her owner. Come, girl. Come!”

The dog did stand then and trotted off toward Ninth Street. Tabitha shrugged and followed. Her sister Alameda lived a block away at Tibbles House. She wanted to go there anyway to see if Rudy was available for some more trick riding and shooting. It was her only thrill in life anymore, going onto the prairie and honing her skills to shoot an apple off a fake Indian’s head from underneath a horse’s flank. It was all a widow was allowed to do outside of her home, mainly because no one ever saw her do it.

On the front porch, Jeremiah shaped his hands into a cone and shouted, “Maybe the dog is named Phineas!”

“Oh, how silly!” Tabitha said under her breath. But it wasn’t any sillier than following a giant fluffy black dog down Ninth Street.

Bam!
Horatio Ross had just ordered them to “make this a good clean fight,” someone squeezed off a round from their revolver to signify the start of the round, and that lowdown scout Foster Richmond had already slammed Worth in the gut with his stupid skull!

Taken by surprise like this, Worth was shoved stumbling back against the feeble ropes of the makeshift ring the soldiers had cordoned off. Instantly, all the soldiers who had bet on Foster were roaring with glee, and the ones who had apparently staked their gold dust on Worth were crying foul.