Dead Sleeping Shaman (14 page)

Still 12 days to go

Since it was almost
four o’clock, most of the tables and booths in Burger King were empty. The three women I looked for wouldn’t have been hard to pick out no matter how full the place had been. I smiled, waved to Crystalline, with her wild, red hair, and walked toward them. The two friends were younger. One, with a large soft drink cup and Whopper in front of her, was about twenty-five. Her eyes were ringed with heavy black makeup, long liquid-silver earrings shimmering under the stark overhead lights when she looked up and tossed her straight dark hair back with one hand. She was dressed all in black. Kind of Goth—a gauzy dress far too thin for fall in northern Michigan. Three strands of jet beads hung around her neck. A single gold loop went through one of her dark eyebrows. The hands around her drink cup were thick with silver and gold rings, black-painted fingernails. The Goth girl had the face of a kid dressed up to shock—too much of everything with nothing hiding eyes that begged for something. Under all her stage makeup and dress, the girl seemed sad and needy. I’d met her kind before, and almost always liked them, no matter how they screamed “I’m scary!”

The other woman was in her thirties but maybe that was being too kind. She had one of those long, sad, ageless faces with too much chin and eyes too prominent: big, not in a pretty way, with a lot of white showing. Her neck was too long. Her shoulders too slumped. She wore a flowered sweater that hung halfway down her knuckles. Incongruously, a ring of artificial yellow flowers with yellow streamers sat atop her long and very lank brown hair. I looked at those two and figured Leetsville was in for yet another shock.

“This is Sonia,” Crystalline introduced the younger, Goth girl.

“And Felicia.” The older one nodded and sent her flowered circlet sliding. She grabbed it, searched her hair for a couple of bobby pins, and jabbed the flower ring back into place. All the while she was smiling a wide, horsey smile, and nodding.

I joined them, sliding in next to Felicia, smiling at each woman a time or two and expressing my sympathy at the loss of their friend.

“One in a million,” Felicia said, and sniffed. “I’ll never get over it.”

“I knew it was going to happen. Saw it coming. Nobody would listen to me.” Sonia, shaking her head, sent her silver earrings bobbing. Her voice was harsh, tough. “I told her I saw it, something terrible if she went to Michigan alone. But Marjory said everything would be all right and that it was just my own fear talking. Then …” She waved a hand indicating the ceiling, the windows—everywhere. “You see what happened. If she woulda listened …”

“You did not tell her that,” Felicia said, sitting back and giving the girl an incredulous look, her large eyes open and outraged.

“Did too. Right before she left. I was so nervous, pacing back and forth, and I had to tell her what I was picking up. Her aura was off. Way off the charts. I was scared for Marjory and tried to tell her not to go. All she did was say how sometimes in life we have to do things no matter what and hope the universe will protect us.” She made a spitting sound off toward her left shoulder. “Yeah, as if …”

“Was that all she said?” I asked. The girl was surprised, maybe at being singled out as special, being the one whose ESP, or whatever they used, worked best. She looked away, reluctant to share her secrets with the likes of me, then shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “She said it wasn’t something she wanted to do, but that somebody needed her help.”

“Did she say who that someone was?” I leaned over the table, hoping for a name, something to hang the thread of a story on.

Sonia shook her head. “She told me there are some things that are too private to share.”

“Nothing else?”

“Well, she did say that there are times when we have to protect other people—whatever that meant. Then she said this was one of those times for her. I think that’s what she said. Something like that. What I understood was that she didn’t want to come back here but she didn’t have a choice.”

I nodded. Felicia, who’d been nervously waiting for a chance to jump in, cleared her throat and put a hand up like a kid in school. I called on her.

“I understand THAT perfectly. She’s … well, was … always rushing in to save somebody. The woman was a saint, I’ll tell ya. If it wasn’t for Marjory I don’t know where I’d be. She came to this prison where I was staying and talked to us about worlds beyond this one and how we didn’t have to be locked in to what other people thought about us and …”

Crystalline, chin resting on her fist, sighed. “Felicia. Keep it to Marjory, ok? This is important.”

Felicia frowned, crumbled her Whopper paper and set it back on her tray. She seemed to rearrange her mind. “Crystalline says she told you most of Marjory’s story. What with her father dying, her mother running away with some guy, and having to live from the time she was twelve with people who were mean to her—that awful Aunt Cecily and Uncle Ralph. You can see why there was no reason for her to come here. Who on earth wants to go back into their own past when that past is just too toxic to be believed? I mean, what I teach is to put all that’s come before behind us and look to the future. When I do the Tarot, the way Marjory taught me, what I almost always center on is how to heal by getting rid of bad memories and concentrating …”

“Did this have to do with one of her brothers?” I had to break in. The woman barely took a breath, linking her sentences so nobody dared interfere.

“One brother. That’s all she had. Only one,” she corrected with a quick nod of her head. “And she never saw him. Too important in politics, or something.”

“I’d heard there was …” I tried to interrupt but she turned to look over at Sonia and Crystalline. Her face reddened. She was working up to something.

“It was just like Marjory to do something like that. Just had to go help somebody. Like it was an old friend or something. She had to come here and save that person, and see to it that no more evil was going to occur in this terrible place that had claimed her childhood and made her so sad. Even to say the name ‘Leetsville,’ why she would …”

Sonia rolled her eyes. Crystalline put a hand on Felicia’s arm, stopping her in mid-sentence.

“You said there were two brothers,” I said quickly to Crystalline.

She thought a minute before answering. “There are two. I guess I was the only one she told about Paul, the younger one.”

“Well! I can’t imagine Marjory wouldn’t tell me about something as important as a brother and there wouldn’t be any reason since Marjory told me everything and I do mean ‘everything’ and …” Felicia wasn’t happy.

Crystalline nodded, first to turn off Felicia, and then toward me. “She didn’t see him either. Not since he was told to leave their aunt and uncle’s home. Once she said it made her sad, to think of him out in the world all alone but that she didn’t know how to find him. There was some kind of accident. That was the last she ever heard. I guess he was hurt bad, was what Marjory said. She wanted to go see him but didn’t know where he was. I think she heard about the accident long after the fact. Maybe that brother, Arnold, told her. I don’t know. But I do know she never got another word from him. I think she was afraid Paul was dead.”

I understood that there were things Marjory hadn’t dared share with the talkative Felicia, and probably other things she hadn’t shared with the young and vulnerable Sonia. What I’d pulled from Felicia’s diatribe was one word: friend. I hadn’t thought about people up here knowing her. There had to be someone who remembered her from high school, or felt sorry for her when her mother disappeared. There had been so little in the old papers about her, or about her brothers. Nothing like what there’d been about other women from Leetsville—parties, trips, engagements, weddings—but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a friend. Maybe her Aunt Cecily would remember. Dolly and I would have to visit her at that nursing home. If there had been friends, her aunt would surely know.

I went to the counter and ordered a salad and a diet Coke.

Back at the table I mentioned that Arnold Otis was coming to Leetsville. “He’s been notified of Marjory’s death,” I added. “I’m assuming that’s what’s bringing him here.”

“Well, big surprise,” Crystalline said. “Never wanted anything to do with her when she was alive.”

“Was Marjory ever in touch with him, that you know of?” I asked.

The three looked at each other. Their faces were blank.

“Sure,” Crystalline said. “They talked once in a while. And lately she said she saw him in the newspaper, running for office the way he was. I think I told you before how Marjory embarrassed him. Because she was a psychic, and a healer. I saw the letter he wrote asking her to lay low until the election, this November, was over.”

“Yeah, like she was going to embarrass him. Like she was shooting people on I-75 or something.” Sonia made a face.

“That’s pretty insulting. How’d she feel about it?” I asked.

“You never knew with Marjory,” Crystalline said. “She didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings so she didn’t say much. You know, like it was family so she wasn’t going to criticize.”

“Anybody mad at her? I mean, like somebody she didn’t get along with. Professional jealousy. I understand she was quite well known … in … eh … certain circles.”

“Very well known,” Crystalline said, nodding emphatically. “There was nobody like her. Not as a teacher. Not as a human being. She was the best healer I’ve ever seen. Not the laying on of hands stuff, but she could do a healing even over the telephone. Just concentrate, be with the person needing her. Get right inside of them. Use her mind’s eye to travel through their body and see what was wrong. I’m telling you, a lot of them came back to tell her how much she’d helped them.”

“So,” I pressed. “Not a single enemy.”

All three shook their head.

“Would anybody gain with Marjory out of the way?”

The women couldn’t think of a soul.

I turned to Crystalline. “What was it she said to you about the End Time group? Something like ‘somebody’s going to have to do something about the whole thing.’ You have any idea what that meant? So far we’ve got two reasons for her to come back here: the Reverend Fritch and helping somebody. Think it might be a person who joined his cult? Maybe this person was giving away all their worldly goods. Maybe it was a client of hers, asking for help.”

Crystalline shook her head. “All I know is what I told you. If I’d known she was in danger, believe me I’d have come with her. She never said a word about being afraid of anybody.”

So we were back to Leetsville and the past. Back to this mysterious trip of hers that ended in her death. All I knew was that she came to help someone and it had something to do with the Reverend Fritch, or his doomsday gathering. Maybe her aunt was bilked out of her money by the cult, though I couldn’t imagine Marjory caring too much about a woman who’d been cruel to her as a kid. Still, you never knew. Family dynamics could be weird.

“Hi, Dolly.” Crystalline was smiling and greeting someone standing beside the booth. I turned to see Dolly, with her hat in her hand. Beside her was one of the cult members, robe cinched around her waist with a white, rope belt, hood drawn down so that very little of her face could be seen.

“Dolly!” I twisted around to look up. She nodded at me. There were heavy bags under her almost colorless eyes. Her hair was dirty looking, as if she hadn’t showered in a while. I’d never seen her look so tired. She made a noise, expelling a long breath and seeming to deflate, getting shorter and squatter before my eyes.

“Sister Sally,” Dolly motioned to the woman standing a little behind her, with her hands tucked up the wide sleeves of her robe. The woman tipped her head toward us but said nothing.

We greeted Sister Sally and made a move to get up, go to another booth where there would be room for everyone, but Dolly motioned us to stay where we were.

Crystalline introduced Felicia and Sonia, who both nodded but gave Sister Sally puzzled looks.

“Only here a minute. I saw your car,” Dolly said.

“I was asking Marjory’s friends for help in her …”

Dolly put up a hand. “We’re not staying. Only dropped in to say hi.”

“But we’ve got to talk …” I insisted.

Dolly nodded. “We will. I’ll call you later. Right now Sister Sally and me got to get back out to the campground.” She drew a long, loud, breath.

“You have lunch out there?” I asked, worried about her un-Dolly-like exhaustion.