The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) (14 page)

“How did it affect her mood? She put us both on the Atkins Diet when I was, like, twelve, and it turned her into a real zombie. She stumbled around glassy-eyed for months. Then one day she just said ‘screw it,’ drove to the nearest Pizza Hut, and that was that.”

“Yeah, it was kind of like that again. She looked tired a lot. There were a few days she didn’t even open the shop at all, and that never used to happen no matter how sick she was. She’d rather give twenty people the flu than miss out on one day’s cash.”

I nodded.

I bought it. For once, Clarice wasn’t evading, dodging, or snowing me. She really had no idea Athena had been dying.

“That sounds like Mom,” I said, smiling in a pseudo-wistful
oh, that wacky lady
kind of way.

No sale for me. Clarice furrowed her brow, frowning, and I knew that she knew that I knew something she didn’t.

She wasn’t going to ask me about it directly, though. She’d spent enough years with my mother not to do something as straightforward and sincere and boring and dumb as that.

“She was really something, wasn’t she?” she said.

“That she was.”

“A real original.”

“Yup.”

“One of a kind.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Clarice gave me a full-on scowl now.

“Why do you think she never talked about you?” she said. “Not one mention in all the years I knew her. It was like you didn’t exist.”

I shrugged. “We didn’t part on good terms.”

“Why not?”

“She wanted me with her. I had to change her mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I made things unpleasant.”

“Why? You couldn’t just leave? Move out or run away or whatever?”

“My mother wasn’t someone you could just run away from. So I made sure she wouldn’t
want
to find me.”

“But then she did, supposedly. After all those years, suddenly she was thinking of you. And not long after that, she was dead and you got everything. Weird, huh?”

“Utterly frakking unbelievable,” I said. “What about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Didn’t you ever want to get away from her? I know what she could be like. The kinds of things she could expect of someone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Then you can count yourself lucky. It sounds like you never really knew my mother at all.”

“I knew her better than you! That’s why I can’t understand why she gave you the house and the car and whatever else. You keep calling her ‘mother’ and ‘mom,’ but until a few days ago you didn’t care if she was alive or dead.”

“I care that somebody killed her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I wish certain people wouldn’t act so cagey when I ask questions.”

“Oh. Yeah. Because you’re so open and honest yourself. How crazy not to trust
you
.”

That shut me up.

I don’t mind when other people are right. I just don’t like it when they’re so right about
me
.

Clarice glared at me. This much she wasn’t hiding: she hated me. It almost felt like she was daring me to throw her out.

I was about to give her a touché when she picked up her plate and stood.

“I’ve got homework to do. See you later.”

She walked to her room and closed the door.

I finished my dinner with
Infinite Roads to Knowing
for company. I had homework to do, too.

It had
been the Lovers and the Two of Cups that had convinced Ken Meldon he and my mother had a long, happy future ahead of them. The Lovers needed no explanation. The Two of Cups—aka the Two of Chalices—did.

Then I saw it.

Oh yeah. Josette Berg had turned it up when she’d read for me the day before. Her reaction (more or less): “
Ooo la la
!” It was easy to see why.

The hovering bat-lion I still didn’t get, but the couple and their Big Gulps was obvious.

A man and a woman face each other, offering what they have to share.

This is a hook-up. Or “the beginning of a be-YOO-tiful friendship,” as Miss Chance put it in her book. According to her, the Two of Cups was all about “partnerships commenced” and “the nurturing of fruitful symbioses.” (For someone who threw in references to Bugs Bunny and Conan the Barbarian, the woman sure could be pretentious.)

I could understand the appeal of the card, especially to someone like Meldon. The poor man had lost his two true loves: his wife and his guns. He was totally alone. What did he have to cling to if not some companionship and a (carefully cultivated) dream of new romance?

Smooth one, Mom. For someone with no soul, you sure knew how to mess with other people’s.

Of course, here I was thinking
I
was the soulful one—the
human
one—and I was more alone than my mother had been. After I’d made my escape, she’d picked up a replacement daughter, somehow or other. I don’t know how nurturing or fruitful it had been, but at least she and Clarice did seem to have some kind of symbiosis. Yet if Anthony Grandi suddenly popped in to take me out, nobody would miss me but my boss back at the call center—and that’d be because our sales team probably wouldn’t make its quota for the month. I didn’t even have any pets to leave starving when I didn’t come back. I was a cat lady without the cats.

If I did have a soul, I guess I hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet.

I studied the Two of Cups again. The more I looked at it, the more I thought the man looked kind of cranky.

Maybe he didn’t like what was in his cup. Maybe he was pissed because his gal pal was reaching out to take it. Maybe he’d had a rough childhood.

Yet there he was anyway. Commencing a partnership. Nurturing a symbiosis. Hooking up. Connecting.

If he could do it, so could I.

Maybe.

Lucky guy. Really. Usually when you get hanged it’s by your neck, and that’s not known for its health benefits. The Hanged Man is dangling by his ankle, though, which is an inconvenience for him, yes, but one that’s paid off. He’s been forced to stop and look at things from a whole new perspective, and that’s given him insight into how the world really works. His frown hasn’t necessarily been turned upside down, but his outlook on life sure has been.

Miss Chance,
Infinite Roads to Knowing

I woke
up. I unlocked and unbarricaded the bedroom door. I got coffee. I pulled out Detective Logan’s list. Two of the names were crossed off.

I got to work on the third.

“Red Rock
Elder Care Center. How can I help you?”

“Hi! I haven’t been in Berdache since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lucia Castellanos.”

“I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”

“Awww, too bad. Thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck.”

“Oak Creek
Canyon Residential Living. How can I help you?”

“Hi! I haven’t been in Sedona since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lucia Castellanos.”

“I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”

“Awww, too bad. Thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck.”

“Verde River
Vista Senior Residences. How can I help you?”

“Hi! I haven’t been in Cottonwood since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lucia Castellanos.”

“Oh yeah—she’s here. Something, isn’t she?”

“A real pistol. Does Victor ever come by to see her?”

“That’s her son, right?”

“Right.”

“He’s in here pretty regularly.”

“Great.”

“Will you be coming by, too?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Wonderful! I’ll tell Lucia. She’ll be thrilled. What’s your name?”

“Mallory Keaton.”

“Mallory Keaton? Really? Wasn’t that what’s-her-name’s character on
Family Ties
?”

“I said Valerie Keaton.”

“I’m sorry. I must have misheard you.”

“Big
Family Ties
fan, are you?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

Verde River
Vista Senior Residences was big and white and sterile. Lucia Castellanos was little and brown and wrinkled. A woman guided her into the Social Center (aka the Overlit Room with a Lonely-Looking Bumper Pool Table and a TV with a Screen Big Enough for a Drive-In Blasting Fox News at an Old Man Dozing in a Wheelchair) where I’d been waiting.

“Is that her?” Lucia said, stabbing a gnarled finger my way. She was somewhere between 80 and 4,000 years old.

“That’s her,” the woman said. “You two have a nice visit now.”

She handed Lucia off to me like a football, smiled, and left.

“Well, how about a hug?” Lucia said.

I bent down (and down and down—she was
teeny
), put my arms around her hunched back, and patted. It was like trying to burp a fire hydrant.

“All right, that’s good,” Lucia said. “Now help me sit down.”

A minute later, she was on a couch. It hadn’t been easy to arrange. She seemed to have lost the ability to bend her knees, so the act of sitting was a sort of semi-controlled backwards fall. It was a good thing she was small and the couch was soft.

It was going to take ropes and pulleys to get her on her feet again.

“So,” she said, “tell me what you’ve been up to, Valerie. Goodness, it feels like it’s been forever!”

“I think there’s been a mix-up, Mrs. Castellanos. My name’s not Valerie.”

“But they said a Valerie was here to see me. An old friend.”

“Well, I guess that was good timing for me. I’m not sure they’d have let me see you otherwise.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A nice place like this—they’re not going to let just anybody waltz in and start talking to residents. Not like at Dry Creek. That’s where you lived before, right?”

“That’s right.”

I would say the woman squinted at me, but she was always squinting at everything. Still, she seemed to squint even harder.

“So you’re not Valerie?”

“No.”

“Well, I hope she’s still coming. I want to find out who the heck she is. I don’t remember any Valerie. But they could’ve told me Adolf Hitler was here to see me and I’d have sprayed on some perfume and come out to say hello.”

I nodded, smiling. That’s what I’d been counting on.

“My name’s Alanis. I think you knew my mother. Athena Passalis.”

“Yes, of course! How is she?”

“I’m afraid she’s passed away.”

Lucia reached out toward me. After a little groping, she found a hand and patted it.

“I’m truly sorry to hear that. You never know who’s going to go next, but it’s never who you want it to be.”

She threw a glare at the snoring man in the wheelchair. Then she looked back at me.

“But your mother—she was so young.”

“It was very sudden.”

“Stroke?”

“No.”

“Heart attack?”

“No. It—”

“Pulmonary embolism?”

“No. It was—”

“Hit by a car?”

The old woman looked strangely hopeful.

“No. She had pancreatic cancer,” I said. “Then there was an unexpected complication.”

“Oooo, pancreatic cancer. That’s a bad one. Mr. Garratt and Mr. Hilton and Mrs. Hettle and Mrs. Cohn all went with that. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

“Not for long.”

“That’s good. I used to hope for the car myself. Or getting struck by lightning.
Pow, sizzle
and you’re done. It never happened, though. Last year I thought the carcinoma might get me, but it let me down in the end.”

Lucia shook her head sadly.

“Remission.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Better luck next time”?

“Your mother was supposed to be helping me with all that, actually,” Lucia went on, “but I guess nothing will come of that now.”

A look of sudden, panicked horror came over the old woman’s face.

“Please tell me you’re not here to give me my jewelry back!”

“What jewelry?”

Lucia relaxed.

“You had me worried for a second there,” she said.

“Worried I’d bring you jewelry?”

“Yes.”

“Jewelry that belongs to you?”

“Yes.”

“Which you gave to my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Which you don’t want back?”

“Of course not,” Lucia snapped, exasperated. “Not if it’s still cursed!”

Here’s something
they never told you on
Antiques Roadshow
: jewelry can be haunted.

Lucia Castellanos’s was. The rings and necklaces and chokers and lockets she’d inherited from her mother were befouled by a vengeful spirit—the ghost of a woman Lucia’s father had once spurned. When Lucia brought the jewelry into her home, she brought the woman’s evil with it. That was why her husband and her daughter had died not long after, while Lucia was cursed to live and live and live. It was why her son Victor couldn’t find love. They were doomed to be alone. Forever.

Fortunately, Athena Passalis came along and discovered the true root of all Lucia’s sorrows. And Athena knew what to do about it, too. Take the jewelry far away from Lucia and Victor. Starve the evil inside it. Cleanse it, purify it. Then and only then could it be returned, and Lucia and Victor would be free.

Yes. People
actually believe this stuff.

Some of
them, anyway. Victor Castellanos
hadn’t
believed.

He’d gone to the police. He’d moved his mother into a new home—one that wasn’t so welcoming to the likes of Athena Passalis. And he’d confronted Athena and demanded the jewelry back.

“What jewelry?” she’d said to him.

Because she was selfless like that. She was willing to keep cursed objects near her, putting herself at risk, rather than let them fall back into the hands of those they might destroy.

Lucia understood. That was why she’d told the police “what jewelry?” too. She was protecting Athena just as Athena was protecting her.

Her son wasn’t very happy about that. In fact, he was still mad at Lucia about it. And oh—the things he said about Athena! The things he’d do to her if he could. It actually scared her sometimes.

It was a good thing Victor and Athena never met face to face.

It wouldn’t have been pretty.

“What does
Victor do, by the way?”

Lucia beamed. “He’s a teacher.”

“Oh. How nice.”

How boring. How nonviolent.

“At the high school in Berdache.”

“Lovely.”

And unhelpful
.

“He teaches physical fitness and health enhancement. Coaches the basketball teams, too. Boys and girls.”

Wait
.

“He’s the gym teacher?”

“I don’t think they call it that anymore.”

“Does he coach any of the other teams? Football? Soccer? Hopscotch?”

“No, just basketball. Oh, and field hockey. And…another one. For the boys.”

“Wrestling?”

“That’s it,” Lucia said. “He’s the wrestling coach.”

I asked
the old woman to describe the jewelry she’d given my mother to be “purified.”

“I’m not sure you should mess around with it if you find it,” she said when she was done. “Would you know how to cleanse it yourself?”

“Absolutely,” I told her.

Windex.

As I
drove away from the Verde River Vista Senior Residences, I spotted a pay phone at a gas station. That reminded me: time to give the cage another rattle.

I stopped and called Star Bail Bonds.

Press 0 to speak to a customer service representative
(if she’s awake).

Press 1 to speak to Anthony Grandi.

I pressed 1.

“Grandi,” a man said. He had a rough, gruff voice I remembered well.

There was no doubt about it now. It was him. My fifty-cents-a-call stalker.

I exhaled. Loudly.

“Hello?” Grandi said. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

I exhaled again. Then again.

“Call back!” Grandi shouted. “We’ve got a bad connection!”

I exhaled as hard as I could.

Turns out heavy breathing isn’t easy. I was starting to feel light-headed.

Fortunately, he finally got it.

“Who is this?” he growled.

But he knew. Otherwise, he would’ve just hung up.

I thought about hanging up myself. Or maybe huffing and puffing some more. Or asking if his refrigerator was running.

“I think you might have killed my mother,” I finally said. “If you want me to think otherwise, you’ll meet me at Celebrity Roast in half an hour. And you’ll be ready to do some convincing.”

Grandi said nothing. I said nothing.

I could hear him breathing. He could hear me breathing.

We were playing phone chicken.

He hung up first.

Excellent. I
had a date with a man who’d threatened to kill me. What did I have to worry about? It couldn’t turn out much worse than my last “date” two years before. I keep expecting to see that one turned into a Lifetime movie:
Barf in the Lobster Tank: A Date That Will Live in Infamy
.

And I had just been thinking about trying to connect with
people
more. Why not Anthony Grandi? Potentially murderous scumbag-bully bail bondsmen are people too, right?

Maybe not.

I showed
up at Celebrity Roast ready for anything…almost.

I wasn’t ready for Detective Josh Logan. He was leaning against the counter chatting with Kathleen the Cop-Loving Barista. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“I thought you didn’t drink coffee,” I said to him.

“I still don’t. Wanna get some lunch?”

“Well, I—”

“He’s not coming, so you may as well let me buy you a burger.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s a little round patty of beef grilled and served on a bun. Usually with fried potatoes.”

“Thanks for the explanation. I was actually thinking of the ‘he’s not coming’ part.”

“I’d rather discuss that over a little round patty of beef.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Yours can be over a little round patty of tofu.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I could tell the badinage was getting on Kathleen’s nerves, and who knew when I might need to tap her for more local gossip?

“I hope this means there’s been a break in the case, Detective,” I said as we headed for the door.

See, Kathleen?
I was really saying.
Strictly business.

And of course it was. Though I had to wonder.

Logan had just inserted himself between me and Anthony Grandi. Between me and
answers
.

So why wasn’t I pissed?

I assumed
Logan was going to take me to one of those old greasy spoons cops love so much. The kind that still have toadstool seats along a grimy counter and fry cooks in wife-beaters and, if the place is
really
fancy, half-frozen flies and week-old wedges of lemon meringue slowly circling on a refrigerated pie merry-go-round. In fact, we walked past just such a place, and two uniformed cops were sitting at one of the tables.