The Atheist's Daughter (13 page)

“I said it was.”

“There has to be a catch.”

Liz caught at Kristin’s sleeve. “Be honest.”

The solemnity of her tone caught Kristin by surprise. She looked at her friend with concern.

“Am I dying?” Liz asked.

Hawkins said, “That could be the explanation.” On Kristin’s expression, he added, “Kidding.”

“I’m not cheap.”

“Never said you were.”

Liz said, “What you are is unemployed.”

“No paycheck, no money. Forced to live off your meager life’s savings.”

“Vis-
à
-vis, broke.”

“You want lunch or not?” Kristin asked.

“Food is a welcome thing.”

“We are not ungrateful,” Liz added, “only the tiniest bit suspicious.”

Liz wasn’t the only one uneasy about their afternoon excursion. As Kristin mounted the steps of the porch, the rail-thin ghost woman she’d seen before –
Alice Poe
,
that’s her name
  –  stepped from the entrance. When she saw her newest customers, she nearly fell over herself, trying to return inside.

Hawkins said, “There’s the famous Piotrowski customer service everyone raves about.”

Almost immediately, another woman came through the door. Every bit as translucent as Alice Poe, she seemed not nearly as nervous at meeting them.

In fact, she didn’t appear nervous at all.

“Welcome to my café,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Norton.”

* * *

Entering the building, Kristin felt as if time had stood still.

Piotrowski’s Café was reborn. Its wall decorations were unchanged and, curiously enough, they’d been placed in nearly the same locations as the originals. The furniture had reappeared from storage, white linens draping down the sides of the tables, and even the menus appeared to have survived the transition in ownership. It was as if Martin Piotrowski had hoarded every bit of his failed business, keeping it intact in the hope it might someday be reborn.

If this was his ambition, it had been realized. From the silverware with the stylized ‘
P’
on its stems to the Art Deco numberless clock hanging over the cash register, this version of the café was a close copy of the original.

Glancing at the customers in the room, Kristin saw some of the same regulars who populated the place in its heyday. With the lunch rush over and only five tables occupied, even the first café’s impending failure had seemingly been duplicated.

There’s one big difference
, she thought.
There’s no Martin, no Chandra, no me. No sign of Linda Sullivan, the weekday waitress, either.

The friendly faces of my former co-workers have been replaced by the ghost people. The ghost peoples’ faces aren’t friendly at all.

Four crystal faces watched her as she trailed behind Mrs. Norton. The group huddled together in a tight knot at the rear of the restaurant, not far from the doorway leading into the kitchen.

She didn’t know what to make of it. Try as she might, she couldn’t read these people – if anyone so empty of flesh could even be called a person.

The tall, unpleasant Mr. Locke was at the front of the group, an odd expression on his face. Alice Poe held onto his arm, as frightened as a doe. Beside her, a chef’s smock knotted around his waist, was Mr. Brass.

An old woman lingered by the kitchen door. Her features were softer than the others, her skin molded from colorless plastic instead of crystal. Hunched forward, her twisted left hand clutched the head of a wooden cane. Inside the folds of her face, a pair of dull gray eyes regarded Kristin warily.

“Miss Sweet, aren’t you needed in your room?” Mrs. Norton asked.

The old woman shrank back as if she’d been rebuked. Dragging a leg behind her, the crone left.

“Mr. Brass, Mr. Locke?”

Mr. Brass dipped his head obediently. When Mr. Locke responded too slowly, the bigger man gripped the apron over his chest and tugged it sharply. Anger flashed across the thinner man’s face but he moved forward. Picking up a plastic tray, he started collecting dirty dishes.

From somewhere in the restaurant, Kristin heard a
thump...thump...thump
sound. At first, she couldn’t place it. Then she realized it was the sound of rubber striking wood. Miss Sweet was dragging herself up the interior stairway, her cane striking each step as she climbed higher.

Without waiting for her employer to speak, Alice Poe collected three menus and brought them to the corner table. Mrs. Norton rested a hand on the table’s linen, smoothing a wrinkle which didn’t exist. “Can I start you with an appetizer?”

Liz scooted her chair forward. “Dare we?”

Kristin shot her a look.

“We dare not,” Hawkins said. “Water all around, thanks.”

Alice Poe darted forward with a pitcher. She filled their glasses, a slight tremor in her hand. When the water had been poured, Mrs. Norton touched the server’s arm to lightly draw her attention.

Kristin lifted her menu. She peeked over its top edge, her eyes following the pair as they walked off.

Hawkins asked Liz, “Any word on Mouser?”

“Not yet.” She opened her menu. “Stupid cat.”

“You know, Miss Boots is missing, too.”

“Your cat’s always missing,” Liz told him. “Little slut.”

Kristin let her gaze drop to the menu selections. The first inside page offered appetizers. On the back, there was a page listing the café’s drinks and desserts. The other pages consisted of entrees and specials.

“Just like before,” she said.

“Almost exactly like before,” Hawkins agreed. “But ‘before’ was excellent.”

“What I meant was, there’s lots and lots of beef.”

Liz released a huge sigh. “Not the vegetarian thing again.”

“It’s not ‘again’. I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly four years.”

Hawkins scanned the page in front of him. “Didn’t they use to serve tilapia?”

“Fish still count!”

“Kristin, listen to me,” Liz said earnestly. “Woman doesn’t live on ferns and berries alone. It’s not natural.”

Mrs. Norton returned to their table. “Is there a problem?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Hawkins said.

“It’s our beloved Saint Kristin of Winterhaven,” Liz told her. “She eateth not of the flesh of the beast.”

Kristin buried her face into the menu.

“Kristin?” Mrs. Norton asked. “Would you be Kristin Faraday?”

“That’s our girl.” Hawkins pointed to a line item on the menu. “They have side salads.”

Mrs. Norton folded her hands around the order pad. Suspended in nothingness, her green eyes remained on Kristin’s face.

“Martin told me about you,” she said. ”He mentioned you were special. A very special girl.”

“Not really.”

“He also said you needed a job.”

Liz lifted her chin, studying the older woman. Mrs. Norton brought one of her hands from the order pad. Tucked between two fingers, she held a white business card. When Kristin made no effort to take the card, she laid it on their table.

Liz scooped it up. “Ashfork Imports and Oddities.”

“Some friends of mine run the business,” Mrs. Norton said. “It’s quite high end.”

“I don’t know anything about imports,” Kristin said softly.

“They’re willing to train the right person. They’re trying to find someone they can trust. Someone they can train to be an executive assistant.”

“I don’t know.” Kristin felt a sharp stab of pain as Liz kicked her from under the table. Reluctantly, she took the card from her friend’s hand. “It’s over a hundred miles from here.”

“Not too far for someone with ambition.”

She let her eyes run over the embossed lavender printing. “There’s no telephone number.”

“They deal with an exclusive clientele. Monied people. They wouldn’t dare leave their unlisted number on a card.” She leaned closer still. “I’m certain you understand.”

“
I
understand,” Liz said. She gave Kristin a sharp look:
What’s wrong with you?

Holding the card, Kristin thought:
It’s not me, Liz, it really isn’t.

This kindly middle-aged woman, the one smiling down at us? For me, her teeth aren’t white. They’re see-through rectangles. Inside her mouth, hidden behind her smile, is a barely visible tongue. Behind that, there’s a blur at the center of her throat.

Something’s
moving
in there.

“Mrs. Norton?” Alice Poe edged closer to the restaurant owner. She brought her mouth to the other woman’s ear, whispering to her.

“Did he?” A hint of unhappiness touched Mrs. Norton’s reply. “I’ll take care of it in a moment.”

Alice Poe dipped her head, a worried expression on her face.

Taking the business card, Mrs. Norton unclicked a pen and wrote across the card’s face. “Let me give you the telephone number.”

“Why?” Kristin asked. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“Martin recommended you. Good help really is hard to find.”

“But you don’t even know me.” She flinched as her ankle suffered from another of Liz’s kicks.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” the café’s owner said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?  An exciting job that pays well?”

“I’m definitely interested,” Liz said.

Mrs. Norton returned the business card to the tabletop. Written in red ink, the unlisted phone number ran along the bottom of the white rectangle.

“There’s a little apartment on the premises, directly above the shop,” she said. “For the right person, I doubt they’d even charge rent. Think about it. You could stay right there in Ashfork.”

Hawkins lowered his menu to see what Kristin would say.

“Promise you’ll call,” Mrs. Norton said. “Please.”

“I –” Kristin forced the words out. “All right, I promise.”

Schhhct! 
The familiar stab of pain burned her face. Her mouth disappeared behind its mask.

Mrs. Norton’s lips curled at the edges.

She can tell! She knows I’m lying!

“Never mind.” Lifting the card, Mrs. Norton tore it in half. “Perhaps it’s not what you really want, after all.”

“No,” the word was faint and blurred to Kristin’s ears, “not really.”

Schhhct! 
Her mouth returned to her.

“Alice Poe will be with you shortly,” Mrs. Norton said pleasantly. “The tilapia is excellent. You might want to avoid the salads, though. The greens are a little bit off.”

She left for the cash register. Quickly, Kristin raised her cell phone and took a picture of her.

Hawkins leaned over to see the phone’s screen. “A fifty-year old woman in the middle of a restaurant. Great pic. You’ve gotta post that on your Facebook page.”

Liz said, “You and I have to talk, girl. Are you nuts?” Her face changed, stricken at her choice of words. “I mean –”

“I know what you meant, Lizzer. It’s okay.” She surveyed the room. Mrs. Norton was talking softly and urgently to an unhappy Mr. Locke. Alice Poe fluttered behind them, listening while pretending not to do so.

Kristin dropped the menu to the table. “When the waitress comes back, find out if the pea soup has ham in it.”

“You want something else to drink?”

“Diet cola.”

Hawkins said, “Live a little. Try something without carbonation.”

“Diet cola.” She grabbed her purse. “I’ve got to use the little girl’s room.”

“It’s all that diet cola.”

`Liz said. “I’ll go, too.”

“Not this time,” Kristin said, her voice low but forceful.

Liz dropped into her seat. “Whoa. Somebody seriously needs her private time.”

Kristin walked toward the
Restrooms
sign on the far wall. Entering the corridor leading to the bathrooms, she turned toward a small alcove.

A closed door blocked her progress. The sign on the door read:  STAFF ONLY    ALARM WILL SOUND!

Since when?
she wondered.

“The alarm doesn’t work,” Piotrowski told her on her first day on the job. “The sign, that’s what works. Nobody comes through here, anyway. Why would they? To go into the kitchen, be chased out by the cook?”

She hoped Mrs. Norton shared Martin’s philosophy on alarm repair. Tentatively, she pushed the door open. The alarm remained silent as she entered the kitchen.

Silver preparation tables and service counters gleamed up at her. On one of the large commercial stoves, an aluminum stock pot roiled with boiling water. Beside the pot, a stainless steel double boiler puffed softly, red blisters of tomato sauce breaking and reforming as they heated. From one of the ovens, she smelled the odor of baked cinnamon.

There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Kristin was impressed. Each of the utensils hung from a post, arranged in order of size. All of the unused cookware was stored and there wasn’t a scrap of food on the prep table. Martin Piotrowski, at his tidiest, couldn’t have produced such a spotless kitchen.

What did it mean?

Probably nothing
, she conceded.

In the midst of weirdness, an effort toward good sanitation shouldn’t have left her uneasy. But it somehow did, a little.

Directly to her left were the wooden stairs leading to the building’s second level. Upstairs, someone murmured soothingly.

This first voice was immediately answered by a second, louder voice. “I don’t care about health issues. You’re a fortune-teller. Tell me what I want to know. Tell me about my investments.”

It sounded like Al Gerhardt’s voice. But what was her old high school biology teacher doing on the upper floor?

Then:
Did he say fortune-teller? There’s a fortune-teller here?

From above, she heard
murmur, murmur, murmur
in response.

Placing a foot on the stairway’s first step, Kristin heard the wood creak softly in protest. Resting her hand on the banister, she closed her eyes.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she told herself, “It’s now or never.”

“What say, ‘never’?” a deep voice asked.

She opened her eyes as a huge meat cleaver crashed down in front of her. Splintered wood flew into the air. Jumping back, Kristin struck the side wall and fell, pieces of banister spraying around her.

Mr. Brass wrapped and rewrapped his thick glass fingers around the handle of the cleaver. “This kitchen is for employees only. Didn’t you see the sign?”

Footsteps thudded loudly from overhead. Wearing a button-up shirt and an unknotted tie, Al Gerhardt leaned over the second story’s half-wall. “What was
that?
”

“A little misunderstanding,” Mr. Brass said. “It won’t happen again.”

Her cane thumping in front of her, Miss Sweet peered over the half-wall. She was dressed in a flowing skirt and a black blouse, with colorful scarves draping down her neck. Gerhardt threw a last puzzled look at the couple below before being led away by the fortune-teller.

Kristin climbed to her feet. “I’m going.”

Mr. Brass locked his fingers over the rounded head of the stairway’s first post, his arm blocking her path. In his other hand, he raised his meat cleaver.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

Keeping his hand on the post, he brought his other arm down sharply. The blade whistled as it fell, its sharp edge striking the thick hand on the post. The cook grunted as the cleaver struck home.

From the upstairs room, Al Gerhardt cried out, “What was
that?
”

Mr. Brass raised his hand to show it to her. He wiggled his fingers. Below the fingers, where the blade had struck, there was a spider web of cracks.

“Hurts like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said, “but the marks will fade in a day or two. Want to see what happens when I try it on you?”

She put her hand against the apron over his chest. Ghost or not, he was solid. She pushed harder. The jacket went flat beneath her fingers, as if she’d pressed against brick or metal instead of flesh.

Finally, Mr. Brass allowed her to slide past. Moving quickly, she went out of the kitchen.

Hawkins and Liz looked up at her.

“We’re going,” Kristin said.

“I knew it.” Hawkins lowered his water glass. “This is exactly what happened at IHOP last summer.”

They were at the exit when a voice called out: “Kristin! Kristin Faraday!”

She turned. Waiting for a table, Susannah Guitierrez waved at her.

“Let’s go,” Liz said. “My reputation has suffered enough.”

Kristin left hurriedly, the smell of plastic filling the air behind her.

Chapter Twenty-One

Cross-legged, she sat upon the wooden floor. Beneath her, somewhere inside the building’s first level, she heard noises. The noises were soon followed by a sound of voices, both female.

Miss Sweet sighed.

Her thumb rolled against the flint wheel of a butane lighter, sending a flame from its barrel. Moving the rectangular lighter over the table in front of her, she touched its fire to the wicks of three candles. When all had caught flame, she rose and went to her closet.

She would dress as a gypsy, that was a given. Mrs. Norton insisted upon it. Not that this was anything like real gypsy garb. If she’d dressed like a real gypsy, wearing slacks and a JCPenneys’ blouse, her patrons wouldn’t have been impressed. They’d have questioned whether she could read the future.

People are so stupid
, she thought.
Was I ever so foolish?

Once upon a time, perhaps. When I was young and this body was still foreign to me. When I was my hungriest.

It was then I agreed to serve Mrs. Norton.

She shrugged the gown over her head, letting its coarse linen scratch over her breasts and belly as its hem tumbled to the floor. Reaching for the closet’s upper shelf, she found an assortment of scarves to complete her outfit.

From the landing below, Mrs. Norton said, “Up the stairs, it’s the first room on your left. Miss Sweet is waiting for you.”

“It’s so dark,” a voice replied.

“Miss Sweet likes the dark.”

Oh, yes,
Miss Sweet acknowledged,
that much is true. I love the dark and the secrets it hides. I love the anonymity it offers.

The only thing I love more is the feeding.

Grasping the sides of an old cigar box, she took it from the shelf. The box itself was a worthless thing, its wood scarred from age and ill-use. Lines were cut through the original manufacturer’s name, leaving only a single word – TUCKETT – still legible.

Even the most hard-pressed thief would ignore this sad, worn receptacle. It was no one’s idea of a collector’s item.

She raised the lid gingerly, not wanting to break its remaining hinge. Inside the box, wrapped inside a satin cloth, was the blackest stone she’d ever seen. This miracle, this wonder, nearly filled the interior space.

Sliding her fingers under the stone, she lifted it up. At this moment, the rock was mute and blind. But given a taste of life, that would change.

She placed it between the burning candles. As perfect as a star, the seer stone shone with the reflected light of the flames floating above it. Miss Sweet blessed the day it had called to her.

She didn’t know why she was chosen. The others were envious, she knew, but there was nothing they could do about it. They didn’t have the gift. For all of her years, for all of her abilities, not even Mrs. Norton could bring the seer stone to life. She couldn’t make it tell her the one thing she most needed to know:
Who
has five years to give us?

Miss Sweet opened a bronze pillbox. Removing a straight pin from its velvet center, she dragged the pin’s tip across the floor.

She hoped the sharpened end would collect a bit of bacteria, some tiny harbinger of disease. She liked the thought of infection finding the needle’s tip and waiting to be shared with the guest coming up the stairs.

In her years with the seer stone, a fouled pin had spoiled only one potential victim. Only one. She kept this knowledge to herself; oh, yes, this secret was hers and hers alone. There would be punishment if Mrs. Norton ever discovered her little game.

But she never would, would she? She didn’t have the second sight.

She set the pin on the table in front of her, closing the pillbox as her patron appeared in the doorway. 

“Are you Miss Sweet?”

“Welcome.” She gestured for the woman to sit at the opposite end of the table. “Tell me your name.”

“Shouldn’t you know that already?” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’m Mary Ellen Stark.”

She was nicely dressed, this Mary Ellen Stark, an expensive purse dangling from her shoulder.  Despite the wedding ring on her right hand, there was an air of loneliness about her.

“Have you been doing this for very long?” Mary Ellen asked, sinking to the floor.

Miss Sweet pulled the straight pin between her thumb and index finger. “That’s not what you’ve come to ask.”

“I...guess not.”

She waited.

“I want to know about my children,” Mary Ellen said.

“Please. The truth.”

“That is the truth.”

“Later, you may want to know about your children,” Miss Sweet said. “Some other time, perhaps, we’ll enjoy such a discussion. Not this evening. Tonight, you want to know about yourself. On the first visit, your kind wants to know about their future, not the future of others.”

“My kind?” Under the candles’ yellow light, Mary Ellen frowned.

Miss Sweet took her hand, and said, soothingly, “It’s only natural.”

“I want to know about Jackson,” Mary Ellen said. “Jackson Lawrence. Does he still care about me?”

Miss Sweet tightened her fingers over the woman’s hand. Twisting her wrist, she stabbed the stickpin into the ball of her client’s thumb.

“Owww!” Instinctively, Mary Ellen tried to yank away from her.

Miss Sweet kept the hand imprisoned. “You want to know about love? In all of the hand, only the Mount of Venus holds those answers.”

She brought the woman’s hand closer as a bubble of blood rolled from the skin’s surface. The crimson drop melted onto the seer stone, flattening as it hit the obsidian surface.

“That’s
blood
,” Mary Ellen said. “My blood on your...your rock.”

“Did you think the future came without a price?”

“I hope the pin was sterile!”

“Tell me to stop and I will. Tell me to reach into your future and I’ll do that, instead.”

“It’s done now.” Mary Ellen stuck her injured thumb inside her mouth. “Do it. Do…whatever.”

Miss Sweet put an index finger at each side of the seer stone’s apex. She rested her thumbs at opposite ends of its base. “You wanted to know about Jackson Lawrence.”

Dropping the injured hand from her mouth, Mary Ellen peered into the rock.

They all gazed at the stone, those who came to her. What did they hope to see? Did they think the stone would talk to them?