My Deja Vu Lover (38 page)

Stupid doesn't even cover my case. He'd been all charm and flash, fancy restaurants, tickets to a country western concert, jeez, even roses, can you believe it? Roses, delivered in a white van with a mushy note attached.

He had been really charming me with a two-week pursuit, until he leaned over the table of a dimly lit booth in a way too pricey restaurant and said, “I need you to make me a chart.”

“Sure,” I said, not giving a second thought to that request, because it's a sideline that pays more than my temp job at the bank.

I'm a part time astrologer, and I also work at the Mudflat Neighborhood Center, but it's the individuals who want fortunes told who raise my income up above “squeak by the necessities, buy a few goodies” level.

I was wearing an almost-there black dress, killer heels, and I'd even had a friend twist my long dark hair into a style that scraped it back behind my ears to show off my dangly earrings. Okay, so only the shoes were mine, bought at a discount store, and the dress and earrings were borrowed. Glamour, that's me. I was looking way too good to think clearly.

 
“Do you have a birth certificate handy?”

Everybody knows their own date of birth, or that's what I presumed. I learned better later, but most folks don't have a clue as to the hour and minute, very important, and an amazing number don't even know the latitude and longitude because they presume they were born in the town where their parents lived at the time. Nah. Not nowadays, maybe not in the past hundred years for all I know.

Most people get born in a maternity wing of a city hospital anywhere from across the street to hundreds of miles from their home address. And, oh yes, that makes a difference.

Except not to Darryl. “Not that kind of chart, honey. I know you're so good at charts, you give career advice, marriage advice, and you're bang on right.”

Odd. He knew what I did, of course, but this was the first time he questioned me about it and, honestly, I thought he wasn't interested. So how did he know all that? Small neighborhood, friends of my grandmother who liked to do puff job descriptions of their friends and grandchildren.

“Umm, so if you don't want a horoscope, what do you want, Darryl?”

“Numbers. Scores. Winners. For sports events, honey. Sonics, Seahawks, UDub games, whatever you come up with.”

Ho-Kay. This took thinking. I leaned back in the booth and made a big deal of sipping my wine, buttering a roll, carving a narrow strip of the salmon filet. Score and winners? For one game? For one office pool kind of bet? Wake up, stupid Claire, look at where you're dining, look at his beautifully tailored clothes, salon styled hair, and was that a Rolex? I'd been thinking it was one of those knock-off imitations, but whoa. I don't think so.

“You can do that, can't you,” he said and it wasn't a question.

“Uh, I don't know. I never have.”

“Not yet, but you can, right, with whatever information you need. I can get birth date info on players and coaches, franchise times, the minute the ink soaked into a contract, whatever you need.”

“I do horoscopes for people,” I muttered.

“Yes, fine, do the players. Figure it from there. Scores are best, but win-loss is good, if that's all you can do. Not that I think it is. Jimmy told me you tipped him on some stocks, the exact date they'd peak and the price.”

More butter on the potato, until it ran in hot yellow streams around the plate; more peas tucked into the mash I was stirring up inside those salted potato skins, more carefully carved salmon, a top-off on my wine glass, and not one swallow of anything making it to my mouth.

Jimmy. Right. I never did financial stuff, way too tricky, sure to backfire, but Jimmy had been in a bind with foreclosure breathing down his whatever, and he was a cousin and family and all that and I made a bad mistake, gave him this stock tip based on a string of math formulas and hit it right on.

“That was a one shot thing,” I said and looked up and met Darryl's gaze, hoping I'd see something there that said this was some kind of casual suggestion.

I knew when I said it I'd been lying to myself. Every tightened muscle of his expression gave him away.

Then the glossy con man smile. “It's really important to me, honey, and I know you can do it. For me.”

Man, had I heard that line before.

I did a lot of fast talking, made a few vague promises. And as soon as we'd done the kiss goodnight thing and I'd shooed him out and closed my front door, I grabbed my phone and called that rotten Jimmy.

He did a lot of throat clearing, the bum.

“You're the one who introduced me to Darryl!” I shouted. “You set me up! You know I don't do gambles, never have, never will. I've turned down enough offers. You know that!”

“Darryl's kind of persuasive,” Jimmy whimpered.

Was that how he'd got so far down in the hole, and, now that I thought about it, what did I know about Darryl except that he had a brother living in my neighborhood? Darryl lived in a classier part of Seattle and our paths hadn't crossed until my lying cousin introduced him to me and told me he worked for some perfectly respectable Seattle business, something to do with cruise ships.

 
“What do cruise ships have to do with betting? Does he deal blackjack to tourists or something?”

“I wish,” Jimmy said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Uh Claire, I kind of don't think I want to talk on the phone.”

When I told him which of his body parts I was going to remove, he said, “Meet me tomorrow, lunch at McDonald's, the one down at the ferry dock.”

McDonald's? Right, definitely my budget level, although I had kind of forgotten that in the past two weeks of Darryl wining and dining and strewing rose petals in my path. Two weeks. Constant attention. Very few kisses. No tries to hit on me. And I'd thought he was very proper, very gentlemanly, when all the time he was very unreal and I do hate that too-good-to-be-true cliché.

I knew Darryl's brother, knew he was scum, but I really try not to judge people by their relatives because do I want to be judged by Jimmy's behavior?

I headed for my computer and was up so late googling Darryl that there wasn't any point going to bed. Amazing how much is out there and how much is hidden, but I collected enough information to make some guesses.

By dawn's annoying light I showered, dressed, headed for the bank where I temp cashier and asked a loan officer how to run credit checks.

“Thinking about promotion, Carmody?”

“Can't hurt to learn.”

“True, the more you understand, the wider your job opportunities, though in your case, I don't see you as advancement material.”

Okay, so by the end of any working day my very long hair has escaped the clasp and is sticking out in odd directions, as well as trailing down my face. For some reason, my shirts never stay tucked in and it's good I work in the computer room, because my pantyhose are always full of holes and runs, and, even as I stood there talking to him, I wiggled my foot a little too hard and the four-inch heel snapped out from under my left shoe.

We both knew I was employed because they had three women gone on maternity leave and the bank was desperate and I did have experience. Glowing references, no, but my resume verified that I was honest and did not make mistakes, and when the unemployment numbers drop, what's a human resources department to do?

He gave in, showed me how to pull up credit reports, and I didn't bother to tell him that once I am pointed in the right direction, I am wicked good on a computer. Anyone who has ever downloaded an astrology program and then checked for errors knows what I mean.

I found so much to worry about, I didn't need more from Jimmy so I stood him up. Served him right. A forty minute lunch hour later on the computer and I knew I was dead.

It started that night, the string of phone calls, first wheedling, then threats, because Darryl wasn't just doing a little sideline betting, or even planning something as straight forward as knocking off one of the Indian reservation casinos. Oh no.

Did I mention that I live in Mudflat, not a place that shows up on any Seattle map. It's more like a mindset. The city is divided into numerous neighborhoods, each with a name, and the names do appear on maps and in conversation, but Mudflat is a winding trail of blocks of property that cut through several neighborhoods and is considered off limits by those who know. Because Mudflat is where old magic lives.

It's where I grew up. It's why my horoscope predictions are right-on. There's no big magic in my family's genes, just glimmers and traces that kind of give a boost to anything esoteric in our lives. It's why I limit advice to career, romance, health, safe stuff, and even when I can see a clear answer, I always couch it in vague terms. I know.

People think the “meet-a-tall-dark-stranger-someday” line is a cover-up for faking. Nope. Just the reverse.

I could say, “You'll be running off with your best friend's husband on the second Tuesday of next June,” but what for? How would that help anybody? Instead I say, “You may be tempted to betray a friend, all in the name of love, but you're a good person and will make the right decision.”

And I cross my fingers and know darn well that on the second Tuesday of next June, her friend is going to be crying her eyes out. Or buying a gun.

That's how good I am, except I can never read my own future, which is why I was now being stalked by a wizard's brother who planned to put me in the middle of a bad deal going down, some kind of national gambling ring, and for sure I would end up dead or in jail, which is the same thing, right?

I was absolutely not going to help him. First, he was into felony territory. Second, he'd up the demands until I was so twisted in the net of lies, I'd never get my life back. And third, there's not much you can't figure out with the help of a horoscope, a computer and access to news files, and his brother the wizard was a very bad dude, leaning on politicians, trying to control Mudflat and then branch out.

Which is why, when my sort of buddy, Roman, said he and a couple of friends were heading over to the Olympic peninsula on a camping trip, I said, “Wow! I love camping!”

Yah, like I even go in the backyard to pull weeds. Sorry, I live in the heart of tree-hugger country, but give me city traffic and smog to breathe any time. Still, it was a small lie which earned me an invitation. Skip town for a week, spend boring camping time thinking up another destination and, who knew, I could be out of town for maybe a month or so, at which point my credit card would do the spontaneous combustion thing.

With any luck, Darryl would give up on me and move on to his next scam.

Really good plan, really bad timing, because at somewhere around midnight I was stuffing stuff in my backpack when I heard Darryl's car pull up outside. I left the lights burning and ducked out the back door, cut across the small yard, rolled over the wood fence and did a dive into the alley, landing on my hands and knees. I tore the knee (both the denim one and the flesh one), grabbed my pack and started to hobble away.

That's when I heard the gate scrape open and I wedged myself behind the dumpster.

Darryl shouted, “Claire? Honey?”

He moved slowly down the alley, peering into shadows, while I tried not to breathe. Looking behind the dumpster apparently wasn't on his list of possibilities because he moved past me and I saw the reason instinct had sent me running. He was carrying a roll of duct tape. Somehow I didn't think he'd stopped by to repair my leaking gutters.

Fortunately he was a spoiled brat and lacked fortitude. Those of us who are self-supporting know how to hang in there, which this time meant staying stuffed behind the dumpster, silent and not puking, until boredom sent Darryl back through my yard to his BMW.

When I heard the engine purr, I slipped through the gate and back into my yard but I didn't go near the house. I went to a back corner of the garden, crouched down on damp earth between the fence and an overgrown bush, and waited.