Speed Dating With the Dead (12 page)

“Is he cheating?” whispered a woman in the back of the room.

“Probably,” said a man in a black turtleneck. “But it’s a good act.”

“I checked the cards myself,” Wayne said. “He’s legit.”

As far as I know.

Wayne had found Cristos Rubio through an Internet search, figuring a psychic would round out the conference and give some of the low-energy types a reason to skip out on the hunts.

“One more,” Rubio said. “I should be good to pick at least 50 percent.”

The man went through the routine again and this time Rubio correctly guessed three of clubs. This elicited a few “oohs” and “aahs,” as well as a little muttering. Gelbaugh, leaning against the wall wearing his patented smirk, offered, “Hardly a controlled experiment.”

The man who was dealing the cards, whose face was pointed like a weasel’s, though he had gambler’s eyes, said, “Why don’t you try one?”

Good theater
, Digger thought.
I might have to make this a regular part of Haunted Computer Productions.

Gelbaugh eased his way through the crowd, strolling like a motion-picture sheriff headed for a showdown. “Let’s try my deck,” he said, fishing inside his sports jacket. “Then we’ll know it’s clean.”

Unless you two varmints is in cahoots
.

Gelbaugh pulled out a deck with an elaborate, mystic design on the card backs, replete with stars, moons, comets, and other celestial bodies against a midnight-blue background. He set the deck on the coffee table, cut it, and said, “Try the top one.”

Rubio touched the deck, closed his eyes, and frowned, the deep creases of his forehead as eroded as the Andean Mountains of Peru, his country of origin. His thick, dark eyebrows worked up and down in concentration. “These are not playing cards,” he whispered after a moment.

“Sure, they are,” Gelbaugh said. “We’re playing a game, aren’t we?”

“Don’t push it,” Wayne said.

“What’s the matter?” Gelbaugh looked around at the assembled audience, several of whom appeared to be silently supporting him. “You don’t want anyone to peek behind the curtain?”

Wayne was resigning himself to another verbal shootout with Gelbaugh when Rubio cut in with renewed strength in his voice. “I see.”

Gelbaugh’s smile dropped into an O of surprise, and Wayne’s pulse leaped at the cheap victory. If Gelbaugh were left dead in the street, his trigger finger cold and limp, then the conference attendees might be able to relax and enjoy themselves.

“Okay,” Gelbaugh said. “Wing it.”

“Is Tarot,” Rubio said.

Gelbaugh’s face went impassive. “Obvious,” he said. “The design gives that one away.”

“From India.”

“Wrong. These are from Poland.”

“Designed in Poland. Printed in India.”

Gelbaugh remained inscrutable. “Much of the world’s printing is done in India.”

“It’s moving to Hong Kong and China,” said a man in a tie that featured a ghost drinking a martini and bearing the logo “Blithe spirit.” “I’m in advertising. All those crazy chemicals and no regulations, plus there’s more merchant ships.”

“Thank you for the trivia quiz,” Gelbaugh said. “But I’m sure you folks want to get back to chasing figments of your imagination, so let’s get this over with.”

“Fool,” Rubio said.

“Sticks and stones. But don’t let your name-calling break your concentration.”

“The Fool. Turn it.”

Gelbaugh gave a deft flip and the card showed a dancing jester who wore an idiot grin. “Ah, nice work. Odds are one in 70, so you should head for Vegas after the conference.”

“It is upright, meaning the beginning of a journey. Spiritual, emotional, or physical. Decisions and unexpected occurrences await.”

“As vague as any daily horoscope or fortune cookie. Does that apply to me or to you?”

“Me. You have the down side: Rash choices, impulsive actions, reckless behavior.”

Gelbaugh grinned and look around the room. “Any ladies in the house want to see how reckless my behavior can be?”

One woman blushed, but most of them scowled. The energy in the room was taking on a brittle edge, the anticipation melding into impatience. Wayne didn’t want to interfere, but he felt obliged to play the tolerant host.

“Next card,” Wayne said. “If he can get two out of 70, then Cristos–and clairvoyance–wins.”

“The
senor
just called me a gambler,” Gelbaugh said. “Anyone want to put $500 on the next guess?”

Rubio shook his head in dismay, but the advertising executive raised his hand as if he were a bidder at an estate auction. “I’m in, asshole.”

“You heard the man,” Gelbaugh said to the room, cutting the deck again and sliding the Fool card to the side.

Rubio reached out a hand and placed his index finger on the deck. One corner of his mouth twitched. The room was so silent that Wayne heard the distant elevator grinding toward the bottom floor.

“Pull something melodramatic like the Hanging Man,” Gelbaugh said. “Or the Devil.”

“Please no joke about these things,” Rubio muttered through tight lips. The finger on the card trembled. “Knight of Cups.”

Gelbaugh turned the card and was grinning before he laid it on the table for all to see. The ad man drew in a deep breath. “Seven of Coins. Guess that means coins for me.”

“Okay, he’s batting .500,” Wayne said with feigned joviality. “What say we cash in our chips and move on?”

“Double or nothing,” the ad man said.

“Please,” Rubio said.

“Fine, I could use a grand, considering how expensive these conferences are,” Gelbaugh said, splitting the deck once more. “Maybe I can afford an autographed publicity shot of Digger Wilson.”

Rubio, resigned and slumped, put his palm over the deck and closed his eyes. His dark complexion had gone pale and sweat beaded his forehead like jewels. The people in the room shifted uncomfortably.

“No good,” Rubio said after a strained moment.

Gelbaugh, without looking, held his hand out toward the ad man. “Sucker’s game.”

“Wait,” Rubio said. His shoulders shook, as if low-voltage electricity were flowing through him. Two women, who had been whispering to one another, leaned toward the table. The entire group had crowded together so that the air around the table had become stale and warm.

“I see a curving shape,” Rubio said. “An ‘S.’“

“Swords, coins, cups, wands, empress, priestess, sun, star, strength...have I forgotten any? Ah, yes, justice. That hardly narrows it down much.”

The man knew his Tarot, Wayne had to admit. Gelbaugh was well-read on any subject he sought to ridicule.

“No, no, this is a different card,” Rubio said.

“Something in the major arcana?”

“Are those the cards without Roman numerals?”

“Nice. Pretending ignorance.”

“I don’t know these cards well. It is not good to know the future.”

Gelbaugh winked at the ad man. “Especially if the future sucks.”

“The shape moves against a field of green.”

“Could be the sun,” one of the onlookers said.

“Shh,” said another.

“It’s not going to help,” Gelbaugh said. “Any guess has the same odds as any other.”

“Snake,” Rubio said with force.

“Ha. Your odds just went from long to zero. There’s no snake in the Tarot.”

“Snake,” Rubio insisted, his eyebrows lowering and his face setting in hard resolve.

“Final answer?”

“Snake.”

Gelbaugh turned the card, revealing an illustrated snake that curled up from a meadow and into a tree. It was done in the same art style as the other cards, though Wayne had never heard of such a card in the Tarot.

Gelbaugh’s grin had frozen on his face, as if he had tasted live worms and found them bitter. “A trick,” he said.

“No trick,” Rubio said. “Your deck, remember?”

“That card’s not part of my deck.”

Rubio turned the card over, face down. “The design matches.”

“I’ve had this deck for years. That card isn’t in it.”

Wayne wondered who would go to such lengths for a prank. Gelbaugh was genuinely angry, overlooking the fact that Rubio had made a correct guess. Or perhaps “guess” was the wrong word. The wizened Peruvian had delivered his earlier readings with a studied equanimity, but his insistence on the answer of “snake” had projected passion and pride and a little bit of fear. Now Gelbaugh owed acknowledgment but all he had was rage.

Gelbaugh drove the bottom of his fist onto the table top, shaking the remaining cards. “Someone’s been in my room,” he said. “I had the deck locked away.”

“Only the hotel staff has room keys,” Wayne said.

The ad man slapped Gelbaugh on the back and said, “Even Steven.”

“He cheated,” Gelbaugh said, furiously counting the deck. “There should only be 70 cards.”

“Maybe he changed the card with his mind,” said a woman in a rumpled silk jumper.

Wayne moved closer to examine the card as Gelbaugh picked it up. The wax had the same amount of wear as the other cards and was clearly not new. It matched the other cards in all other aspects besides its depiction. Wayne wondered what the snake would mean if it were one of the arcana. Probably would imply all the historic and psychological metaphors of serpentine behavior—temptation, poison, and cold-bloodedness, with the flip-side attribute of shedding old skin. And, of course, there was also the Freudian interpretation of male genitalia.

Cristos Rubio leaned back, weary and slumped. “Snake,” he whispered with finality.

“...thirty-seven...38...39....” Gelbaugh counted.

“He pulled it from the bottom of the deck,” someone said.

“I don’t trust either of those guys,” said another.

“Cristos helped me find my car keys,” said a woman who now stood over the self-proclaimed psychic as if she wanted to market his movie rights.

“...sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine.” Gelbaugh touched the snake card, which still rested on the table. “Seventy. Somebody swapped one out.”

“It’s your deck,” Wayne said.

Gelbaugh stood, the Tarot cards in disarray in one hand. “All of you are in on it,” he said. “You, too, Digger.”

“Hey, you didn’t even sign up for a reading,” Wayne said.

Gelbaugh pointed an indignant finger at Rubio. “If you can read minds, then you know what’s coming.”

Gelbaugh grabbed the snake card and fled the room. Rubio smiled, and Wayne noticed for the first time that the seer’s head resembled the blunt, reptilian shape of the snake.

Chapter 17

Janey despised how shabby and cramped her suite was.

Or maybe it just seemed empty and was occupied by things beyond her vision.

She’d taken 226 at the end of the second floor as a fringe benefit, telling the owners she’d keep a better eye on the place if she were on site around the clock. She told herself she wanted to save extra money for retirement, but the real truth was that she had no real place in the world outside the hotel grounds. With the curtains drawn, old photographs gathering dust on the dresser, and the drab royal purple carpet beneath her feet, she could have been in a museum. Or a tomb.

The hunting groups occasionally passed in the hall, but they were much quieter than the usual convention crowd that drank and cavorted on corporate expense accounts. Janey found little comfort in the hunters’ mouse-like passage, as if they were nocturnal creatures who wanted to go about their business undisturbed. Though Janey had sold the owners on promoting the hotel’s supernatural reputation, the shrewd calculation now seemed silly. Dozens of adults were taking it seriously.

And Janey didn’t suffer fools gladly, most of all because she now felt like one. Chad and Stevie were cashing in their chips, and she’d never know if all her hard work would have paid off. This suite that had been her home for nearly half her life would join the rest of the inn under the weight of the wrecking ball. And beyond its walls lay a world she didn’t understand.

Janey found herself glancing into the shadows that clung to the corners of her bedroom. She’d never noticed how long and angular they were, or how they seemed to shift despite the fixed location of the bedside lamp. Janey’s paperback romance, which was so ordinary she couldn’t recall the title, couldn’t dull her into sleep.

She touched the phone, considering a call to the kitchen. The boys would be cleaning up, probably smoking marijuana with rock-n-roll blasting from their CD players. She occasionally placed a special order after hours, partly to check up on the progress and partly to flaunt her power. A couple of fried eggs would be just troublesome enough for both a cook and a dishwasher, a last command from a fading queen.

She dialed the kitchen, keeping one eye on the closet, thinking of young Cody’s suggestion that demons might live in the hotel. Obviously, it was the invention of an imagination fueled by comic books and science fiction, and probably a few sniffs of rubber cement, but the notion chilled her all the same.

“Yullo,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize.

“This is Janey. Just checking to see if the kitchen is still serving.”

“We closed it down 15 minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She affected a disappointed whine. “I was really hungry.”

“We could make you something. No problem.”

She gave a breezy, cheerleader giggle. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure. Anything for you, Miss Mays.”

“Wow. Who is this, so I can be sure to put a check mark in your personnel file.”

“It’s me, Battle Axe.”

“What’s that?”

The voice grew deeper and sounded as if it had doubled itself. “The thing under the cellar.”

Janey sat up, letting the paperback fall to the floor. “That’s not funny. I’ll have you fired–”

“Two days, Miss Mays,” the strange voice taunted. “Let them believe what they want to believe.”

She recognized the line she’d delivered to Violet earlier in the day. So the hired help was gossiping. She’d have to clean house the hard way, forcing Violet to finger this impetuous cook before Janey bounced them both out on their asses.

But how had they known the hotel was closing? She’d not told anyone.