The Final Catch: Book 2: See Jane Hex (The Tarot Sorceress Series) (10 page)

I really needed to find William Tell and Sia. I was getting a bad feeling about those two.
Emilia had no choice but to go and get the costume fixed.  And I had to go dance at the Swan.

Maisie also made her carry the magic costume in a brown paper bag because brown paper grocery bags don’t leak magic, or so Emi told me. Emi also told me that Maisie sent her to an old tailor who worked in the back room of a drycleaner in town. 

She described the place as decrepit with no customers while she was there, and it looked like it hadn’t seen a customer in a few decades. Clothes hung covered in plastic from an automatic dispensing rack, but the protective bags that covered the dry-cleaned clothing were covered in dust because no one had picked them up.  Well, Emilia exaggerates things, I know that now. And she doesn’t get out much because she’d never before seen a line of coin operated washers and dryers, a place where regular people take their laundry on the weekend to wash. According to Emilia, the dry-cleaner-laundry-mat place seemed deserted, as well as tired and out of date.

When she got there, she heard something in the backroom and she said she guessed that it was a large steam press that hissed in the back, presumably because someone was working on taking the wrinkles out of clothing; but no one came out to the front counter to see what she wanted, which meant she was going to have to go back there, and she really didn’t want to.

The place gave her the creeps.

“Hey, yo, magic man. Maisie sent me. Where are you?” Emilia called out.  An old guy wearing a name tag that said
Joseph Seer
slowly shuffled out of the back area. He had what appeared to be fresh wine stains on his shirt. When he finally made it to the counter where Emilia waited, she couldn’t ignore the fact that he reeked of wine.

“Whoa, you smell, like a winery. I hope I didn't interrupt your grape crushing.”

Joseph chuckled and she saw that most of his teeth had turned brown, but his smile was still somehow friendly and strangely inviting. Emilia pulled out the costume and slid it over to Joseph.  When he touched it his hand hastily recoiled, as if he’d been bitten by a snake. “This is magic!” His voice was hoarse and dry as summer grass.

Emilia nodded yes and then Joseph noticed Emi’s sword. He looked frightened and said, “Death?” Emi nodded yes as if it was no big deal that a death dealer was walking around town and needed some dry-cleaning done.

Joseph began muttering, maybe chanting something to keep Emi from leaping across the counter and taking his life, she wasn’t really sure exactly what he was saying, but he grabbed the costume and stuffed it back into the brown paper bag. He shuffled off to the backroom. He turned back to Emi and from a distance he said, “Wait right here.”

Emilia said she waited a few minutes and when he didn’t return right away, she went into the public washroom there. When she was done she was disappointed not to see the costume ready, or even the little Mr. Seer, whom she thought would be right back.  She figured he wouldn’t be too much longer and decided to get a little sword practice in.

I asked Emilia if she behaved herself and she insists that she didn’t do anything untoward.  She started with a few stretches and tested out her sword length to be sure that she wasn’t going to knock anything, or cut or bump into a washer or anything like that and at first it all seemed fine.

*

Emilia got frustrated when five minutes later she still practiced her patterns and, for some reason, Seer hadn’t shown up. When she finally got those first patterns completed, and another ten minutes passed, and Seer still hadn’t returned, Emilia got annoyed. She’d worked herself into a sweat and when a full fifteen minutes later there was still no sign of the strange little man, Emi was all fired up to do some sparing and began her practice with the clothes hanging on the dispenser rack.

She swears she was gentle, only sliding her sword between each covered outfit, pretending they were lines of soldiers, but she does a have a great imagination and admitted that a few of the suits in the back had some extra breast pockets after she got done with them. At first she was afraid Seer might notice that she’d cut up some of those hanging clothes and she went around the counter and kicked away the fallen debris, pushing it under the counter. But after another fifteen minutes, when she still hadn’t heard a sound, no hissing steamer, no sewing machine, she decided she needed to go into the back and find out what was taking so damn long.

She admitted that she was afraid. 

He seemed like a strange little man and the fact that he did business with Maisie made Emilia cautious.  I congratulated her for being in touch with her feelings and acting on them for once. When Emi finally found the courage to peek into the backroom, she saw no one.

An old, stained dress dummy stood idle. On the floor she saw a ripped and rumpled sleeping bag, empty wine bottles, scattered food containers and some empty cat food tins.

No sign of Joseph Seer or the brown paper bag.

When I asked Emi what she did next she said the only thing she could.  In frustration she stabbed the bare dress dummy with her sword.

While I waited at the Curio shop for Emi to return with the fixed costume, I stared out the window. The old train yards in Meadowvale are still there.  They run behind the town in the backlands and the areas that were settled over a hundred years ago, a time when the first settlers from the south and the east made their fortunes in gold. They came to scratch a living out of the ground and built the rails over a community which existed before their arrival, the native community which was Maisie’s community. Her family’s heritage went back at least five hundred years, maybe more.

The tracks can never be removed because they belong to the federal government; a group of evil spirits that negotiate in boardrooms no one else is privy to except those that can do favors and line the governors’ pockets with the tricks and traps that help them practice their sleight of hand. 

On a sunny day the train yard backdrop was gorgeous with the low distant mountains that promise friendly nature hikes and picnics. In cold, dark November evenings it makes the perfect backdrop for intrigue, crime and even murder. In this mechanical and rusty part of town hoards of rats party and get squashed by metal wheels.  It’s also called home by some of the sketchier members of the community, a favorite place for teenagers to make out on Friday and Saturday night. I didn’t know it at the time, but a few of Maisie’s tarot servants liked to hang out there, too.

Maisie makes each of us report in great detail the goings on of our days, if she asks. It’s interesting to me that we can each recall our days in such detail, but there’s no doubt in my mind there’s magic involved. Of course Emilia asks her why she doesn’t use a crystal ball and have a look at what’s going on anytime she wants.  Maisie says it’s not accurate and she prefers the permanence of writing in a book. She keeps a journal called the Knowitall Journal in the front area of the shop, and it’s full of hand written notes. I watched one day as Devon filled out pages of activity, most of it boring, stupid stuff that he does.

On the day that I spied on him, he appeared possessed especially his writing hand because his fountain pen went at break neck speed.  When Devon was done, he put the journal back under the front counter and left the store. I went there to pull the journal out and couldn’t find it.  Since that time I have found it, but there are times when it seems to completely disappear into the shadows and hoards of boxes and paraphernalia Maisie keeps on the shelves under there. I discovered that if I touched the page embossed with the ink, I didn’t have to read. I only had to watch the scenes unfold in my mind’s eye and I saw everything Devon did or said, as if I were right there, a bug on the wall, spying on him.

Devon walked into the train yard
with his hoodie up, and underneath it he wore a toque. On his back was his trashed-out camo-backpack. It was a descent twilight evening, and he looked like he’d come to relax and maybe think about things, if Devon ever really thought about anything.  Perhaps being a conjured minor demon made him feel out of time because instead of using a pod and headphones, he carried a big old fashioned boom box he’d lifted from one of the local vintage stores, and he walked with it hoisted up on his shoulder. He approached a parked freight train and when he got close enough, he put down the boom box and turned it up loud, flooding the yard with heavy metal, head banger noise.

He flipped off his pack and let it fall to the ground. Where he pulled it open and from it he grabbed three cans of spray paint and wasted no time getting to work on the train car in front of him. He began with an elaborate outline of a cartoon character I didn’t recognize and then he used a variety of colors to fill it in and give it dimension.  It was a joy to watch him at work. He was a real artist if anyone ever bothered to watch. 

All this I got from the Knowitall Journals. I’d forgotten I was reading back at the shop.

Sleeping beneath the train car that Devon had chosen to adorn with his art was old Joseph Seer from the dry cleaner shop. It seems the space beneath the car was his bedroom; a rumpled sleeping bag and a sealed wine bottle were evidence that Joseph lived, at least part of the time, under that train car. The wine bottle that stuck out of a brown paper bag was a bottle of red wine. Sleeping Joseph was suddenly roused by Devon’s noise.

The old guy crawled out from under the train and attempted to turn off the boom box’s screaming noise. Devon whipped around and caught Joseph messing with his boom box.

“What the eff-- hey, get away from that.”

“You get away.”

“I'm creating art, you old farting fool. Get the hell outta here, or I will hurt you.”

“Oh, a poet too, I guess.” Joseph picked up the boom box and threw it against the train. It shattered but kept playing.

This infuriated Devon and he snorted over and over like a bull and kicked at the dirt under his feel, he gulped air as if to inflate himself. His demon powers started to heat up the can of spray paint he held. It turned red hot and he tossed it at Joseph and the can blew up like a bomb, blinding poor old Joseph as well as dousing him in pumpkin orange paint.

Devon chuckled like a demon, which actually sounds like the cry of a cat with intermittent owl screeches – a sound I wished he stopped making.

“Aaaaahhh.” Joseph stumbled about for a moment, and then began to keel over.

The train started to shunt and that was when Devon showed his real demon roots. He grabbed the blinded Joseph and tossed him beneath the train's wheels. But old Joseph Seer had a thing or two up his tattered sleeves. He blew a big hot breath (Devon wrote in the journal that it was hot) at Devon and it was full of sand, and now Devon was momentarily blinded while Joseph turned into a puff of smoke and disappeared from the scene. He seemed to go under the train but before he succumbed to those metal wheels, Devon was left holding only an old jacket. The train stopped moving. It was pretty clear to me from this report that Devon had revealed Joseph’s identity as an escapee from the tarot deck.

“Crap! F#%king fool of a tarot creature!” Devon yelled at the jacket which he threw to the ground and stomped on.

Devon crawled under the train, probably checking to make sure the old guy really wasn’t under there, and he found a half bottle of excellent wine, somehow, in the scuffle and movement the top hadn’t come off. Devon managed to save the bottle and pulled it out with him.

The label read, CHATEAU D'OR.

He grinned and using his slightly pointed teeth he eased out the cork.“Can’t let that go to waste.” He tipped back the bottle and glugged it down, but clearly the wine didn’t have the kind of taste he anticipated. He spit it out and made a face like he’d bitten into a lemon, so he said in the journal, but knowing Devon he probably drank it all and grinned. The journal ended there.

*

I flipped through chapters of the Knowitall – I went backwards to the beginning to see how this book worked and near the end of the first chapter which was incredibly thick, I found a page entitled The Cheshire society, Theodosia and Anesthesia.

Emi never did get the dance costume repaired, so we went with plan B—the magical swimsuit and everything seemed to be working.  There I was at the Wild Swan on the pole doing my audition dance for the job Maisie wanted me to get. I imagined myself as something right out of Cirque du Soleil and the magic Maisie put into my bathing suit seemed to be working, too.  I was rocking the pole. As I was about to make my major move, a side saddle superman, I did my spin to get myself into position when my bathing suit top once again popped open at the back.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  And I couldn’t have been more mortified.  I hadn’t heard a peep from any audience that might be out there beyond the bright lights. When the house lights came up slightly, I saw more men than I’d expected to be sitting in an audition audience. My top threatened to leave me, and I grabbed at it with both hands which sent me sliding awkwardly down the pole.  The men watching seemed to think it was all part of the act, clapping and cheering and having drinks.

I also saw Emilia sitting in the shadows taking in the entire scene, and behind her, in the deeper shadows I noticed Mr. Whitman, my principal, sitting in the back of the room. That made me nervous and I began to screw up my dance even more than I already had. I continued to slip like an unglued gecko down the pole while at the same time I tried to refasten my unhooked top.

Then I heard the audience heckle a little as I tried to do up.

I heard one young guy, who was probably under age say, “Hey lady, don’t break a hip!” Everyone around him laughed heartily.

Vince Cabria, about forty, dark and stocky stepped out onto the dance floor then. He was a fiery, hot tempered hairy guy, and the bar manager, and in charge of hiring and firing the dancers.  “Stop,” he yelled out at me.  I crawled and slithered along the floor away from the pole. I sat up, ankles crossed, knees together to try to prevent myself from exposing all my girly secrets. I spun around on my bum to face Vince.

“Are you drunk?” he asked me.

“I wish,” I said, under my breath.

“What's your name, again?”

I finally pushed myself up off the floor of the stage and started to walk away. I saw Emi working her way through the tables and chairs headed in my direction. I grabbed my dressing gown with my free hand and pointed toward the backstage for Emi to meet me there.  I held my top in place with the other hand, “Jane,” I called out my name over my shoulder to Vince.

“Janey, I need a dancer, not someone swimming upstream on the pole.”

That comment made me furious. I wanted to stop and turn on him, vent my pent up rage at having made a fool of myself on the pole and now to have my embarrassing moment rubbed in by this insensitive, low brow, jerk.

I didn’t say anything, though.  All I said was “I got nervous.”

“Nervous?” He repeated as if he heard the word for the very first time from me. He grabbed me by my arm.  As petite as I was, I was in rocking platform, high heeled sparkle shoes, and I looked down on his thinning hair.  He stroked my arm in a creepy kind of sexual way.  I pulled away from him.

“I'm gonna go change,” I said.

“Hey, Janey, baby, I like your outfit. It's magic under my lights.” Vince changed his tune.

I stopped then and turned on him.  Emilia had just come up behind Vince. Her sword seemed to be missing. I mouthed the words, DOES HE KNOW? I wondered if Vince knew about the magic in my swim suit. I never knew who was in cahoots with Maisie and who wasn’t.

Emilia shrugged at me. She had no idea what I was getting at. 

“
Did Vince know there was magic in the bathing suit?”
I said in a loud whisper that I’m sure Vince heard, but he paid no attention.

“I want to get a few for the girls,” he said. He pointed to my outfit and fingered a spangle hanging at my hip.

“You'll have to talk to Maisie,” I said.

“Oh? Who? She your agent?”

“Yeah, you might say that. She makes the outfit. It's got her touch.” I pulled the spangle out of his fingers. Vince took that move as an invitation to touch me a again.

“Funny, looks kinda like a swim suit.”

I danced away from him and turned once to see if he was following me.  He was, but not very quickly. 

“Janey, did you design it? I have investors I'd like to introduce you to. Guys interested in giving you money for your business,” Vince called out to me.

In the background Emilia watched us. She leaned on her sword, a look of amusement on her face. At the mention of investors I remembered why I was here giving my time to this creepy man,This was the guy that tricked Maisie out of her investments. I needed to find out fast, to sew up this case and be done with it.  I really didn’t want to stay here a minute more than I had to.

I slowed my walk. “Investors? Really?” I said as I tried to sound interested.

“No shit,” he said, catching up to me.

“What do you get out of it, Vince?”

“A dancer?”

“Sure. So, uh, I got the job?”

“On the pole?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

I nodded, wondering what he was getting at. He looked at me like I was nuts and then he laughed!

“Come on, baby. You're not serious. Nooo. You're no pole dancer.”

I was crestfallen.  I turned away from Vince. Emilia came over and put an arm around me.

“Well, I might want to take you up on that investment offer, Vince,” I said as I walked away from him.

“I’m sure I can find some other work for you. Stick around. I'll introduce you.” He was all smiles, and just when I thought I was out of his reach, he patted me on the butt cheek. “I gotta make some calls, baby Jane. Catch you later.”

“Sure, you do that,” I said to him. I turned and was about to slap him upside the head when Emilia stopped me by grabbing my hand. He was looking at his phone, so he didn’t see me when I made my screwww-you-face at him and flipped him my middle finger.

Emi stepped between us. “I think you found Maisie's Ponzie man -- can't believe she'd fall for that snake oil guy.”

“Yeah, no kidding –. “There's my principal!” I spotted Whitman in the crowd. He chatted with a few people at the bar and hadn’t noticed me, but I knew that had to be impossible. 

I just pole danced. There was no way he missed that.

“Serious?” Emi said, as she turned to look at Whitman.

“Yup. I'm gonna go talk to him.”

“Uh, do you think that's a good idea?”

“No, but I'm sure he saw me. There's nothing left to lose.”