The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) (3 page)

“The Four of Pentacles. Hmm. I see two possible meanings here. First, the obvious. Here’s someone who’s clinging to something—a big coin. That could be money or it could be material things or it could be a belief in material things and material things only. A rejection of the spiritual side of life. Do you see the other pentacle over his head, though? It’s almost like a halo or a crown. That’s some achievement of his—some gift; a special ability, maybe. But he’s hording it; keeping it to himself. He should share it, use it, not hide it away. He needs to be more like the Fool. He needs to just go for it! And I think that’s what you need to do, too.

“Now…how would you like to start going for it like a Fool by buying a nice big expensive bag of healing crystals I scooped out of my fish tank this morning?”

Josette didn’t
actually say the thing about the healing crystals from the fish tank, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had.

Her advice boiled down to this: Turn off your brain. Let your emotions take over. Don’t worry about what you know or don’t know. Just focus on what you
want
.

It’s the starting point of every con.

Clearly she thought I’d turned my brain off a long, long time ago.

I respected the woman’s technique, though. Forget good or very good; she was masterful. Cold reading will only get you so far. Then you have to start asking leading questions and throwing out vague comments the mark can interpret however they want. You have to fish. But not Josette. Somehow she’d pegged me as the product of a Mommy Dearest without a single word about it from me.

I wondered if she knew who I was.

I faked my way through some follow-up questions, but Josette was admirably patient. She didn’t try to tap me for more cash. She was working Biddle-style.

A fool and his money are soon parted
, he liked to say.
So why rush it unless someone else is trying to part the fool from it first?

Eventually Josette went to the front of the store and opened the door again.

“So,” I said, “your main competitor’s gone, huh?”

I pointed at the White Magic Five & Dime.

“There are still plenty of other readers around Berdache and Sedona,” Josette said.

“So I’ve seen. But the person running that place across the street must not have been one of the better ones. If they could really tell the future, they’d still be in business. I mean, you
all
oughta be millionaires, right? Just gaze into your crystal ball until you see tomorrow’s
Wall Street Journal
, then call your stock broker and wait for the dividends to roll in.”

Josette smiled at a joke I’m sure she’d only heard a million times too many.

“I don’t believe readers see the future,” she said. “I believe they see the possible.”

I nodded as if this made sense.

“So what happened to the Five & Dime’s owner, anyway?”

Josette’s smile wavered. “I’m not really sure.”

Nice dodge. The Berdache Tourism Bureau would be pleased.

I thanked Josette for the reading—it had been so insightful, really it had—and left.

The reading
had provided some insights—into my mother.

No wonder she’d opened the White Magic Five & Dime. Twenty- five tax-free bucks for a sprinkling of Fairyland pixie-dust bullshit? It was too easy.

Only she wouldn’t have stopped there. Not Mom. All that trust being placed in her—all that pain and confusion being shared—it would add up to one thing for her: leverage. And she would have used it—to push. Until someone finally pushed back.

Mom hadn’t just met her death over in that store. She’d invited it inside, done business with it in there, tried to cheat it in there. And if I gave a rat’s ass about that, I’d go in there, too.

But did I? Should I?

I found myself standing on the sidewalk again, staring at the White Magic Five & Dime across the street. Wondering why I would avenge a woman I’d never even forgiven.

I was still wondering even as I stepped off the curb and started toward the store.

“He’s called the Magician,” you say, “but what the heck is he doing? Where’s the rabbit coming out of the hat? Where’s the
magic
?” Hey, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Are powers surrounding you right now, influencing and perhaps even controlling you, that
you
can’t see? Well, duh.

Miss Chance,
Infinite Roads to Knowing

Josette had
better inventory, but Mom’s place had all the atmosphere. Walking into the White Magic Five & Dime was like stepping into Indiana Jones’s trophy room. African masks hung on the wall beside Japanese tapestries and Indian dreamcatchers and a crucifix with a Jesus so battered and bloody he looked like he’d gone ten rounds with Freddy Krueger. There were statues of the Buddha and Shiva and the Virgin Mary and that tubby, armor-wearing warrior-guy you sometimes see near the cash register at Chinese restaurants.

My mother had always been a stone-cold atheist, of course. Churches were just competition working a different kind of con. So either she’d done a one-eighty and had gone from believing in nothing to believing in
everything
or (more likely) she’d simply overdone it with the pseudo-mystical set dressings. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Satanist—it was all the same to her.

The chintzy merchandise—crystals, candles, charms, etc.—was limited to a few tables and shelves along the walls, and the one display case was stocked exclusively with tarot cards and a cheap-looking book about them. Near the picture window at the front of the store was a waiting area: a couch and chairs that would have been at home in a stereopticon slide of President Taft and Family, a coffee table covered with
Reader’s Digests
and yellowing newspapers, a fountain (off), a lava lamp (off), and a fern (dead). Here the sheep would sit, patiently perusing year-old headlines and “Life in These United States,” until it was their turn to step through the beaded curtain at the back of the room and begin their latest fleecing.

Now
there
was a heaven my mother would believe in.

I pushed through the beads and found myself in a narrow hallway lined with oversized tarot cards. The nice ones, of course. Strength. Temperance. The Lovers. The Star. The Sun. There was no Fool here (unless you counted me). And no Death—at least on the wall.

At the end of the hall were stairs leading up to the second floor. Beside them was a door that opened into what looked like a storage room or office. There was another doorway—this one doorless—about halfway down the hall.

That was the one I went through. As I expected, it took me to a small, nookish room with a table and two chairs.

This was where my mother had done her readings.

It was also where she had been murdered.

It should
have been creepy, standing on the spot where my mother had died. But there was no sign any crime had been committed there, other than rampant fraud. The local cops had been very tidy.

Their IQs I wasn’t so impressed with. What would a burglar have been after back here? Hardened criminals aren’t going to bother with a B&E just so they can score zodiac charts and incense. And if the killer was an amateur—a tweaker on the prowl for loose cash, say—the crime scene would have been a lot messier.

Meth heads and amateurs freak out. They stab you with ballpoint pens and beat you with lamps and rip out chunks of skin and hair. They don’t strangle you unless they’ve done all that other stuff first. And Eugene Wheeler had said my mother had been strangled.

I pictured it in my mind. Mom on the floor, a man’s hands around her throat. After a moment, I had to blot out the image. My mother might have been dead to me, but I hadn’t wanted her dead to
everyone
. Thinking of her murder still sickened and saddened me.

I couldn’t let that stop me, though. I brought the image back, only with stick figures this time. I had to run through the scenario and see if it could make sense in this little closet of a space.

The room was like a confessional without a screen between penitent and priest. There was barely space for a game of Scrabble, let alone a life-and-death struggle. Two people could squeeze past the table, sure, but it wasn’t like Mom to be cornered in any way, shape, or form. It was easier to imagine her thinking she was the one in charge, looking her killer straight in the eye.

The way she’d always look at people when she was back here. Over the table.

Over the cards.

It wasn’t
hard to figure out where my mother would have been sitting. From one of the chairs, you could look down the hallway and see the waiting room beyond the beads. That would be Mom’s spot. She’d want her soft murmurs drifting out to the next patsies in line, keeping them in their seats with the promise of wisdom or solace or good news or whatever it was they wanted to hear.

I took a seat in the pigeon’s chair and stretched my arms out in front of me.

Lean forward. Grab hold.
Squeeze
.

Sure. It could work. If you were strong. And if you were pissed enough—pissed in that special way Mom could make you—you’d find the strength.

So all I had to do was figure out who in town my mother had screwed over. The population here couldn’t have been more than two or three thousand people. Once I had my list of suspects, I’d…

Something.

I sat.
I thought.

Who goes to see a fortuneteller?

Suckers
.

What kind of suckers?

Superstitious suckers. Supersuckers.

How do you find supersuckers?

You give them what they want.

What do they want?

You just said it, Sherlock. Fortunetellers.

Where do you get a fortuneteller?

You don’t get one. You make one. You become one.

Ah.

And there it was.

The killer would come to me.

I was congratulating myself on my genius when the back door opened.

There were
footsteps. Then the door closed. Then more footsteps.

The footsteps stopped.

Someone was in the room at the other end of the hall—the office or whatever.

That someone stayed still for a very, very long time.

I stayed still, too.

Eventually a thought occurred to me.
Wait—I’m not the one breaking and entering. I own this damn place.

“Who are you?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

I made my voice firm, assertive, self-assured. Yet I also got up as quietly as I could and started moving slowly down the hall toward the front door, just in case I didn’t like the answers I got.

“Who are
you
?” a woman said. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I’m calling 911, that’s what I’m doing.”

My phone was in my jacket. My jacket was in my car.

“
I’m
calling 911,” the woman said. “That’s what
I’m
doing.”

“Hello? Yes? Operator? I’d like to report a break-in.”

“Hello? Yes? Operator? I’d like to report a break-in.”

I’d made it all the way down the hall to the beads. I could turn and run for it, if I wanted.

I stopped.

It was very, very quiet.

“You didn’t call 911,” I said.

“
You
didn’t call 911.”

“Would you please stop repeating everything I say?”

“Would
you
please tell me who I’m talking to?”

“My name is Alanis McLachlan. As of this afternoon, I own this building.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“And who are
you
?”

The woman stepped out into the hall and started toward me. She was skinny and tall and pretty, in a gawky way, with frizzy hair and big brown eyes. Her skin was the color of chocolate milk—the good kind with lots of syrup.

As she got closer, I realized she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl—seventeen at the most.

“My name’s Clarice Stewart,” she said. “I guess I’m your tenant.”

“Excuse me?”

“I live upstairs.”

“I thought Barbra lived upstairs.”

“Who?”

“Sorry. Athena.”

“Oh. Yeah. She did. Her real name was Barbra?”

“I doubt it, but that’s not the point. Are you saying you
and
Athena lived upstairs?”

“Yeah. We were, like, roommates.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

My mother. “Roommates” with a high-school junior.

Riiiiight
.

“Look,” I said, “we can work all this out later. Right now, I don’t see how you can even be in this place. I mean—don’t you know what happened in here?”

The girl gave me a look so toxic I’m surprised I survived it without a hazmat suit.

“Of course I do,” she said. “Don’t
you
know who found the body?”

Clarice led
me up the stairs. The second floor was an apartment. Communal living room, kitchen, bathroom. And, yes—two bedrooms.

It wasn’t hard to guess which one belonged to Clarice. The dirty clothes covering the floor had spilled out through the door, as if the room had vomited wadded-up jeans and wrinkled T-shirts.

The rest of the place was a mess, too. Dirty plates and bowls were everywhere. From what I saw on them, it looked like Clarice had been living on Hot Pockets and Cap’n Crunch.

Clarice started scooping up the dishes and carrying them into the kitchen.

“Sorry about the mess. I haven’t been in the best mood since…you know. But I’ll do better.”

I walked to the other bedroom and looked inside. Names, identities, accents, ethnicities, hair styles, hair colors, glasses, contacts, whole wardrobes—these things came and went with my mother. But one thing had stayed the same all the way to the end.

The woman was a neat freak. A place for everything and everything in its place—so you can grab what you need quickly when the inevitable time comes for a quick, quiet exit out the back. Clutter could slow you down.

People, as well. Mom always kept that streamlined, too.

There were no pictures in her room. No mementos. No hint of a past, a family, a daughter. It was as if I’d never been born—which was what I assumed my mother would have preferred.

So why was I here now?

“How did you end up living with Athena?” I said.

Clarice was jamming glasses into an already overloaded dishwasher.

“My family’s kind of messed up. Athena took me in.”

“Out of the goodness of her heart?”

As if there was any.

Clarice glanced back at me, and there was the slightest pause—a second’s reassessment and recalculation—before she answered.

“In the beginning, yeah. But before long I had to ‘earn my keep.’ I was her little slave, basically. I cooked, cleaned, ran errands, helped out downstairs.”

“You worked in the White Magic Five & Dime?”

“When I could.”

“What did you do?”

“Took messages, made appointments, made sure no one walked off with anything, got hit on by creepy guys, dusted, vacuumed. That kind of thing.”

“How about the behind-the-scenes stuff?”

“What behind-the-scenes stuff?”

“The readings. What Athena told her clients. Her advice, guidance, services. How much of that did you know about?”

“None of it. That’s all private. Like doctor-patient stuff.”

“No one ever mentioned any special—?”

“Although you know,” Clarice cut in, “I would overhear things sometimes. Just a phrase, a few words. There was this one time I had to go to the bathroom, so I was walking down the hall during a reading, and I thought I heard Athena say to this lady, ‘What you need are llamas.’ I was like, ‘
Chuh
? Did I hear that right?’ I
so
wanted to stop and listen. But of course I couldn’t or Athena would be all up in my grill later. That lady never came back in or I would’ve asked her, ‘How’s it going with the llamas? They look like they’d smell.’”

I smiled and nodded and thought
llamas, my ass
.

“There was this other time…”

And Clarice told me about this other time. And this other time. And this other.

You want to know about the business? Sure! Let me tell you about the llama lady. And the Transformers guy. And the woman who thought Bruce Willis was following her.

It was verbal sleight of hand. A minute into it and you’ll have forgotten what your original question was. Five minutes and you wouldn’t remember that you’d asked a question at all.

I’d learned it from my mother, of course.

So had Clarice.

Mom was dead. Long live Mom!

“There was this other time all I heard was ‘never,
ever
with asparagus,’ and the guy was like, ‘How about a carrot?’” Clarice went on.

And on and on.

I let her prattle. I could’ve given her some pointers—“It’s called obfuscation, dearie, and it requires a lighter touch”—but she was trying so hard, it was endearing.

I wondered if I’d been a better liar at her age. I would’ve had more practice, certainly, but there’s a lot to be said for natural talent.

“Wacky,” I said when I’d had enough.

“Totally. The people around here…man. I could tell you stories all day.”

“I bet.”

Clarice started the dishwasher, dusted off her hands, then gave me a well-I-guess-you’ll-be-going-now look.

“There’s something else you can do for me, though,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me about the night Athena died.”