The First Prophet (10 page)

That, Sarah reflected absently, was true. Sales techniques aside, Margo did genuinely
enjoy the thought of the beautiful things she valued giving pleasure to others.

“My husband will shoot me,” the customer said with another groan. “He expects me to
come home with a plain old desk, not an antique. I just stopped by here on impulse.”

“Sometimes,” Margo said, “impulse is the best way to find the nice surprises in life.”

“Yeah.” The customer frowned. “Look, give me a few minutes, will you, please? I want
to think about this.”

Her meaning was clear, and Margo smiled brightly. “No problem. Just call me when you’re
ready.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Margo turned and headed toward the back of the shop where Sarah waited.

Sarah rose to her feet, anxious to warn Margo and get her out of the shop as soon
as possible—sale or no sale. But before she could leave the desk, the phone rang.

“Good morning, Old Things, this is Sarah,” she said as she answered automatically.

Without preamble, a man said, “I was in your shop the other day looking at an Irish
mahogany breakfront wardrobe, and I think I absentmindedly left a small black notebook
inside. At least, I hope I did. Could you look for it, please?”

“Sure. Hang on just a minute.” She put him on hold, then winced as the phone immediately
rang again. Answering the second line, she found one of their shippers upset because
he couldn’t find the armoire he was supposed to be picking up. Sarah put him on hold
as well, then began searching through the folders on the desk.

“Need a hand?” Margo asked cheerfully.

Sarah found the relevant folder. “Oh, you noticed?” She smiled at her partner. “Guy
on the other line lost a small black notebook here the other day. He says maybe inside
that Irish breakfront. Could you check, please?”

“You bet.”

Sarah turned her attention back to the aggravated shipper, relating the address where
he was supposed to be and soothing him when it developed that the mistake had been
his. She listened to his sheepish apologies, her gaze absently following Margo across
the shop to the huge wardrobe, one of their most massive pieces.

“No problem, Mike,” she murmured, hanging up the phone just as Margo reached the wardrobe
and swung open the heavy doors.

All Sarah remembered thinking afterward was,
That candelabra on top shouldn’t be wobbling like that
. And then, in a terrifying instant, she realized why it was.

“Margo! It’s falling!”

Sarah was too far away to help, and the wardrobe was so huge and heavy that even though
Margo was reacting to the warning, turning, her face white with shock, there was simply
no way she could get out from under the thing in time.

Sarah knew that. There was nothing she could do but watch, totally helpless, the scant
few seconds that passed stretching into a lifetime she lived paralyzed with dread.

Then she saw Tucker lunge from between two tallboys
and grab Margo’s arm, both of them now in the path of the toppling wardrobe.

It was the last thing she saw, her eyes closing instinctively, as the wardrobe crashed
to the floor with a force that shook the entire building.

“I keep telling you, it wasn’t at all unusual. Customers leave things in here often
and call us in a panic. I didn’t think twice about it.” Sarah kept her voice even
with an effort. “I didn’t notice anything in particular about his voice. Just a man,
that’s all. Very polite and worried about the notebook he’d lost. I thought.”

“But you believe his call was designed purely to cause you to go to the wardrobe and
open it?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Not to me, Miss Gallagher. It could have been a simple coincidence.” Sergeant Lewis
frowned at her. “But even if the call was placed with such an intention, what do you
expect us to do about it?”

“Find him,” she said, with a very faint snap to the words.

“Miss Gallagher, according to the Call Return on your phone, the call came from a
pay phone near here—one of the very few left—at a busy service station where at least
a dozen people and quite likely more have made a call today. Nobody working there
noticed anything or anyone unusual. There are no prints on what’s left of that wardrobe,
except the prints that should be there. Your security system was active until Miss
James came in here this morning, and shows no signs of tampering, so how anyone could
have gotten in here and rigged this, leaving no evidence behind—”

“Are you saying we imagined it?” For the first time in all this, Sarah’s overpowering
emotion was anger. It felt good.

“I’m saying…maybe the wardrobe just fell. It’s an old piece with a shallow depth,
and the doors are heavy. Maybe it was just unbalanced.”

Sarah drew a breath. “That wardrobe, Sergeant Lewis, has been in this shop for nearly
a year. I’ve opened both doors countless times, and so has Margo. So have numerous
customers. It never fell before.”

He glanced back over his shoulder at a couple of his men who were standing near the
overturned and seriously damaged wardrobe, and from both he received faint shrugs.
Sighing, he looked back at Sarah. “There are no signs that anyone tampered with it,
Miss Gallagher.”

“In other words, you’re not going to do a thing about this.”

“There’s nothing I
can
do.” He sighed again. “Look, Miss James wasn’t hurt—”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Margo said. She was sitting near Sarah with an ice pack
pressed to the back of one shoulder, which had been dealt a glancing blow from the
falling wardrobe. She was still rather pale, but composed—and uncharacteristically
quiet. “But at least I wasn’t smashed flat as a waffle. Thanks to Tucker.”

Lewis looked mildly troubled for a moment but didn’t comment on Margo’s unusual simile.
“I’m not discounting what happened to you, Miss James, believe me. But it could have
been—probably was—an accident. That’s all I’m saying.”

Tucker spoke up for the first time. “What about the customer?”

Lewis looked at him, frowning slightly as he took in the other man’s lounging position
in a very fine George I walnut wing armchair, also near Sarah. Lewis didn’t like Tucker,
and it showed. “What about her?”

Tucker, who had been curiously expressionless since the police had arrived and hadn’t
said much before then, shrugged. “She vanished pretty quickly. Didn’t even say good-bye.
But then—maybe she just doesn’t like loud noises.” His sarcasm wasn’t blatant, but
it was there.

With a clear air of humoring him, Lewis held his pencil poised. “Okay, did anybody
get her name?”

“Desmond,” Margo said. “Cait Desmond. I called her a miss, but she mentioned a husband
later, so she’s a missus.”

Quietly, Tucker said, “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”

“Wasn’t she?” Margo frowned at him.

“Some men notice. I do. No rings at all.”

Margo looked back at Lewis. “Okay, then either she was a wife who likes bare fingers
or she lied about the husband. Although I don’t know why she would have.”

Still quiet, Tucker said, “When you left her alone and started back here, she got
up and moved toward the wardrobe. I was on the other side of the shop, but I saw her.
A piece of furniture blocked my view for a moment, and by the time I moved to get
a better look at what she might be doing, she was returning to that chair where you’d
left her. And if I had to come up with a word to describe her attitude, it would have
to be—surreptitious.”

“You are a novelist, are you not, Mr. Mackenzie?”

The implication was clear, but Tucker didn’t rise to the bait. “I am. But I’m not
in the habit of imagining things unless I’m getting paid to do so.”

“Funny that you’re just now mentioning what you…saw,” Lewis said coldly.

Without offering an excuse, Tucker merely said, “I started toward the wardrobe then,
no more than vaguely concerned, but Margo got there before me. She and I were both
knocked off our feet when the thing fell; by the time I got up, the customer was already
out of the shop. It seemed more important to make sure Margo was okay, so I didn’t
take the time to rush outside and see where the woman went after she bolted out the
door.”

“A gesture of courtesy I very much appreciated,” Margo told him.

Tucker inclined his head gravely, but his gaze remained fixed on Lewis. “I’ll buy
that she was startled—the whole building shook—but there was no reason why your average
customer would run away without even stopping to find out if everybody was all right.
Or returning to check after the first panic might have driven her outside. Goes against
human nature. Unless, of course, she had something to do with the…accident.”

Lewis drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his
patience. “As I keep telling you, Mr. Mackenzie—as I keep telling all of you—there
is no sign the wardrobe was tampered with. And since none of you claim this customer
was standing behind it pushing, I fail to see how she could have had anything to do
with the
accident
.”

“And you’re so sure that’s what it was. Even though Sarah’s house burned down yesterday,
probably due to arson. Even though she was supposed to be alone in the shop today.
Even though there’s no logical reason why that wardrobe would have fallen on its own.
You don’t find that to be at all suspicious.”

“Surprising, maybe. Coincidence, certainly.”

Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Every cop I’ve ever met in my life believes there’s no such
thing as coincidence. Funny that you do.”

“Not funny at all.” Lewis was visibly stiff now. “The world is full of strange things,
Mr. Mackenzie. This is just one more strange thing.”

After a moment, Tucker looked silently at Sarah, and she said immediately, “Then we
won’t keep you any longer, Sergeant Lewis. Thank you for listening.” She neither rose
nor offered to shake hands.

He hesitated, his notebook still open, then closed it with a snap. “I’ll be in touch,
Miss Gallagher. About your house. We’re still investigating that, of course.” He gestured
briefly to his men, and all three left the shop.

Margo got up, went to the front door and locked it, and turned over the sign so that
it read
CLOSED
. Then she returned to her chair. “Okay. You two want to let me in on this? What’s
happening here?”

Tucker said nothing.

Sighing, Sarah turned a bit in her chair so that she faced the other two more squarely.
“I knew there was going to be an accident—a bizarre accident—here in the shop today,”
she told Margo. “But I thought it would happen later today, in the afternoon. And…it
was supposed to be fatal.”

Margo blinked. “I was supposed to be…dead?”

Mildly, Tucker said, “As a writer always in search of the right words, I take issue
with the phrase ‘supposed to be.’ Let’s just say that Sarah saw a future event that
didn’t turn out quite as she expected it to.” He was looking at her steadily.

Sarah met his gaze, her own startled.

He smiled. “Somehow, you managed to change Margo’s destiny.”

She wasn’t at all sure he was right, because she had an unnerving feeling that everything
today had happened
just as it was supposed to, despite the headline she had seen. But all she said was,
“Not me. You. You pulled her away from the wardrobe.”

“I wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t allowed me to be. And I wouldn’t have been
wary, watching for anything unusual, if you hadn’t told me about your prediction.”
He shrugged. “In any case, the point is that what should have happened—didn’t. At
least, not the way you saw it happen. Fate was averted.”

Somewhat uneasily, Margo said, “The afternoon isn’t over yet. Maybe we’d better leave.”

Tucker immediately rose. “I agree. Not that I expect another bizarre
accident
to take place, but better to be safe. If you ladies will allow me, I’ll buy you a
late lunch.”

“And then maybe a movie?” Margo suggested as she got up. “I don’t think I want to
come back here until the afternoon is definitely past.”