The Fortune Teller (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 5) (6 page)

He offered to come to Cadbury House, and I said no, why don’t I just come over to your place. Somehow, I wanted to talk it over with him first, and I didn’t want anybody else listening in.

Ed lived in St. Augustine Beach, in a little gated enclave on Anastasia Island. From Tropical Breeze, it was a nice, wide-open, 30-minute drive up A1A across barrier islands and bridges. I hoped the drive would settle me down.

It didn’t, but by the time I pulled up in Ed’s driveway, I at least had my thoughts organized.

Ed’s house was the first one on the left as you pulled into Santorini Drive. There were only eight houses in all, and the development had its own private walkover to the beach. They were imitation Greek villas, but had been beautifully done. The ones on the ocean end were downright palatial. Ed’s house, being at the roadside, was a tidy little ranch with a screened-in lanai at the back.

He was waiting for me in the doorway when I got out of my car, and he came forward solemnly and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Ed. I didn’t really know her all that well, but she did seem like she enjoyed life. It’s just so sad.”

“And shocking. Please. Come inside.”

He ushered me into his office and I sat down and looked around. It had been a few months since I’d seen it. His office was painted a fresh, light blue, which he called Haint Blue. I loved the color, but naturally, since Ed had chosen it, it had some folklore behind it. It was the color of cool water, and was supposed to exclude ghosts, as a water barrier would. He had hung some spirit portraits around the walls. I don’t believe in that kind of thing, but still, they made me uneasy.

He saw me frowning at them and said, “I’ve grown rather fond of them, in spite of the way that investigation went.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I had been there. “Kinda went sideways.”

“You put things so colorfully. Still, the portraits have a certain sentimental value, I suppose. Like souvenirs.”

Most people collect tee shirts or coffee cups, but Ed wasn’t most people. His travel adventures usually involved running around abandoned insane asylums with a video crew, calling for the spirits of the deranged dead to come forth and be exorcized. Like they’d just come on out. The fact that he enjoyed having pictures of a ghost staring at him all day was typical. I had to make myself look away from the blackened eyes of the misty figure in the painting to my right, and when I looked at Ed, I could still feel those painted eyes staring at me.

“Bastet was upset last night, and she still wasn’t herself this morning,” I said. I didn’t go on. I didn’t need to.

“Indeed?”
He came forward a bit, resting his forearms on the desk and clasping his hands together. “So you were already aware that something was wrong last night.”

I looked away to my left, but once again I found myself staring into the eyes of a spirit painting. In my agitation, I stood up and walked over to the window. As always, I was wearing the Egyptian cat amulet I had received at the same time my cat, Bastet had come into my life. It had become a good luck charm. No, more than that. I was putting it on automatically every morning when I got dressed, like my underwear and flip-flops. When I wore it, I felt . . . safe. Complete.

“It’s difficult for you, isn’t it?” Ed murmured behind me. He was genuinely sympathetic, and I knew it. “Your encounter with the paranormal came too late in your life for you to be able to accept it easily. And it has changed you, in a way that I think may well be permanent.”

I lifted my head but said nothing, and I continued to stare blindly out of his office window. I could hear him settling back in his chair behind me.

“We’ve explored this before, Taylor, but I think you’re still resisting the obvious. Your cat . . . you’ve suspected from the very beginning that she’s not simply a cat who came into your life at random. I suspect the same thing. In fact, I’m quite convinced she is a ‘familiar.’ Should I explain the concept of the ‘familiar?’”

I turned. He had removed his wire-rimmed glasses and was playing with them on the blotter. They were always his focal point when he was uneasy. Without the glasses, his eyes looked weak.

“I looked it up myself,” I said shortly. I came back and sat down. “The first word in the definition was ‘demon.’ Do you think my cat is a demon, Ed?”

He smiled, tapping his glasses a few more times, then putting them back on. “Of course not. The definitions vary, and you happened onto an unfortunate one. Other words you could have found are ‘companion,’ and ‘assistant,’ and even ‘pet.’ Do
you
think Bastet is a demon?”

“I think Bastet is a cat. And before you start talking about denial, take into account that sometimes we’re uneasy about things before they even take shape in our own minds, and maybe when I got home last night, I already suspected that something was wrong about our Madame Domani, and the cat picked up on it. I was tired. I was thinking about a thousand things, not just the fortune teller’s tent. I was even too tired to ask Michael how much money we’d made until this morning, and you know how I am about fundraisers for Orphans.”

He smiled. “Well, you know I’m the last one to call you crazy. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? When you could be home talking it over with Michael?”

He had me there, and I looked away, avoiding the eyes of the ghost this time.

“How can I help you, Taylor?” he said gently. “There’s no question of a haunting this time, is there? Somebody killed that girl, and it would seem it was a flesh-and-blood killer. Did she have a boyfriend? I know very little about police investigations, but I believe their first instinct is that love has turned to hate, and violence has ensued.”

“I think you’d have to pluralize ‘boyfriend.’ Eden had a guy named Rusty she seemed to consider her property, but these days, young people run around in packs, not duets. She had lots of friends, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she changed partners all the time. But Bastet
knew
. And as soon as I saw her pacing around in the great room, I knew, too. That’s really why I went to Eden’s sister this morning. I didn’t even try calling Eden herself. I was telling myself I wanted to ask about some computer guy, but really, I was worried about Eden. And then things began to fall into place, and still, I tried to ignore it. I talked to Bernie about it and asked for her opinion, and when she wanted to wait to do anything about it, I was happy to let it go. But I knew.”

“Because Bastet knew.”

I couldn’t say it out loud, but he was right.

When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “I noticed her agitation while I was at the house earlier, but decided I’d wait until you said something about it. Because I knew you would. You ignore these things as long as you can, but you always find yourself having to deal with them in the end. Taylor, I think you should discuss this with Michael.”

I glared at him. “He’ll think I’m crazy.”

“You don’t know that. Give him a chance.”

“He’s a lawyer, Ed. Did you forget that?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s a machine. He’s actually decidedly human, in my opinion, and I think you should trust him. After all, he lives with Bastet too. He’s probably noticed more than you realize. And if he tells you you’re crazy, just tell him it was all my idea, and laugh it off. I’m used to people laughing at me. I can take it.”

I had to smile. Ed is actually very sensitive about his paranormal researches, and he has no natural defenses against bullies. Ridicule actually hurts him much more than it does most people. Yet he was willing to lay himself open to more, if it would help me.

“You’re a good guy, Ed,” I said quietly. “A good friend.”

“I’m not such a crackpot, once you get to know me,” he said.

I drove back to Cadbury House slowly. The coastal road is a scenic drive, and even though I’ve been up and down A1A a thousand times, I never get tired of the glimpses of aquamarine and sapphire beyond the low dune that runs beside the road. I automatically counted a string of pelicans flying past me as I drove. It’s a habit of mine. This time, there were only nine.

As I came into the house, Michael could see from across the great room that something was wrong.

“It’s Eden, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

“How did you know?”

He shrugged. “A guess, but not a shot in the dark. You were saying last night that something was off about the fortune teller. Come and sit down. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I went and sat down on the sofa in the living room, facing the TV, which was off. Through the French doors behind it, I could see the river shimmering. The sun was setting earlier every day, and the pink glow from the sunset behind us was reflected on the water. I gazed at it blankly until Michael came back with a glass of white wine for me.

“Have some of this,” he said, handing the chilled glass to me.

I took a sip, then said, “She’s dead. She’s been dead. That wasn’t her last night.”

I told him everything Kyle had told me.

“Michael, while we were talking in the car last night, you said something about Eden being a liar. That nobody took anything she said too seriously. What did you mean?”

“She was one of those little girls who were always making things up. I seem to remember that she’d been telling people she’d been adopted, and that she was really a princess. At one point, she wanted everybody to call her Anastasia – you know, like the island Edson lives on, just up the road – because she’d heard that Anastasia had been a Russian princess. Actually, Anastasia Island was named after a saint, but she probably didn’t know that.”

“Or care. Anastasia is a pretty name. That’s all a little girl would care about.”

“Right. Anyway, she was always telling whoppers, and it was always something to make herself grand somehow.”

I nodded. It fit. Being able to tell the future would make you very special, indeed, and that may have been where the whole fortunetelling idea came from in the first place.

We talked for a while longer, but though I’d made my mind up to talk to Michael about Bastet, I just hadn’t been able to do it.

But I would. As soon as I was really ready, I would.

Chrissie didn’t call back until I was getting ready for bed that night. Actually, I hadn’t expected her to call at all. Her day must have seemed like a nightmare, talking to Eden’s friends, being interviewed by the police, and trying to find moments of peace to grieve for her sister.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m okay. My daughter, Asia, came home from school to be with me, before we even knew the worst. I had called around to all of Eden’s friends to see if they knew anything, and one of them called Asia. So she was here with me when I found out. She says she’s going to stay with me until they find out who killed Eden. It’s sweet of her, but she really can’t. I won’t let her. Police investigations can take months, years. Even if it only took a few weeks, she’d have to drop all of her classes, and I would never stand for that. She’s got a 3.85 G.P.A.” she added proudly.

“Well, of course she wants to be with you,” I said. “Was she very close to Eden?”

“The two of them were just getting to know one another. After Eden went away, we didn’t see much of her. She was up in Atlanta for ten years. That’s half my daughter’s life. I was afraid Asia was going to decide that Eden was her Cool Aunt, and start partying like her, but that would never have happened, really. Asia is a pretty level-headed kid.”

“I’m sure she is.” I’d seen Asia once or twice, but I hadn’t actually met her. “Listen, I’ll be in town tomorrow morning. I always come in and check on the resale shop on Mondays, and I think I’ll drop in on Rita. I need to talk to her about something. Do you need anything? Should I come over?”

“Thanks, Taylor, but I don’t think so. Everybody’s being so nice. I didn’t even need to find a sub for my shift at Perks. Ronnie called me and told me to take as much time as I needed.”

“That’s great.”

I knew it wasn’t as great as it sounded. Ronnie couldn’t afford to give her part-time employees compassionate leave. She wouldn’t fire Chrissie, but she wouldn’t be able to pay her either, and Chrissie needed the money. But it would be all Ronnie could do, of course.

We left it open that Chrissie would call if I could help her in any way, and hung up.

The next morning I got to Girlfriend’s before Florence opened the shop, parked behind the building and went in the back way.

Florence was in the back room at the little shipping desk, getting the weekly bank deposit ready. Even though Girlfriend’s was closed on Sundays, her busiest day of the week by far was Saturday, and she usually made the deposit on Monday. I had the cash from the Halloween event, and I gave it to her to add to the deposit. Even though we’d made a bundle, the money wasn’t what was on our minds that morning.

Florence looked up at me with troubled eyes and said, “Who was that in the fortune teller’s tent on Saturday, Taylor? Everybody’s talking about it. Some people are even saying it was Eden’s ghost.”

“That was no ghost, Florence. That was a flesh-and-blood woman. She took hold of my hand, and she was warm and solid.”

“She read your palm?”

“Actually . . . she just looked at my palm, now that I think about it. She didn’t start giving me my fortune until she looked into the crystal ball. I suppose whoever it was didn’t know the rules for fortune telling, and got it wrong.”

“That is odd,” Florence said. The pile of lovely cash we’d made sat on the desk, spotlighted by the green-shaded desk lamp, forgotten. “I had my fortune told by Miss Purity out in Spuds a few years ago.
She
knows what she’s doing. She told me about my life line and my health line and explained exactly why it was I never married, all before she even looked into her crystal ball.”

“Florence! You paid a hundred dollars to have that drama queen swoon over your hand?”

“You know me better than that. The Breezer Geezers had an outing, and she gave us a group rate.”

The Breezer Geezers was a group of her friends, who have little adventures together, like the Red Hat Society. All natives of Tropical Breeze call themselves “Breezers.”

“I should have known. You’re nobody’s fool. Was it fun?”

Her eyes gently wandered. “You know, it was a little . . . spooky. I went in expecting to just have a little fun, like you say, and joke around with the girls about it at lunch afterwards. But she was actually right about some things. A lot of things. And she wasn’t flat-out wrong about anything. We did spend a lot of time talking about it at lunch afterwards, but we weren’t laughing.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Like Ed, I try to be skeptical, and Purity LeStrange’s particular brand of delirium didn’t appeal to me. I decided not to say anything about it. Florence might not appreciate having her fortune debunked anyway. People are funny about these things.

Instead, I said, “You know, one of the reasons I’m smacking myself now for not calling out the fake fortune teller on the spot was that she practically forced me to see that she wasn’t Eden. It was like she was hoping I’d realize it. She had make-up covering a mark on her left hand, and I think she deliberately smeared some of it off on me. And then she didn’t even bother to read my palm. Here, give me your hand,” I said.

She held out her knotty little hand and I took it gently and turned it palm upwards. She never complained about arthritis, but at her age, with those knuckles, she had to have it.

“No,” I said. “You wouldn’t necessarily rub that part of your hand against somebody if you were just looking at their palm. And I’d swear the make-up was covering a tattoo. Why would she cover it up, then deliberately wipe it off on me?”

Florence was staring at me. “At tattoo on her left hand? What kind of a tattoo?”

“I couldn’t quite make it out. It was kind of a roundy-pointy shape, in the skin between her thumb and forefinger.”

Her face paled. “Could it have been a star?”

“Y-es, I think so. Yeah. It could very well have been a little star. What made you guess?”

She gasped, and said,
“Kendra!”

“Who?”

“Kendra. She’s a teller at the bank. I see her every Monday. I can’t believe she’d be involved with anything . . . awful. She must have just been doing Eden a favor.”

“Now don’t get yourself worked up,” I said. “There could be a perfectly rational explanation.” Still, I felt like something was wrong. Mysteries are never solved this easily. You wonder who the lady is, and practically the next person you talk to just happens to know? Doesn’t happen. Ask your local police detective.

While I pondered, Florence started getting her dander up. “Well!” she said, a little fiery for a woman her age. “That young lady has got some explaining to do! I’m going right over to the bank now and ask her what in the world was going on Saturday night!”

“I’m coming with you. I want to see that tattoo. I think I’ll know if it was her.”

“Don’t you think we should call Kyle?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess we should. But let’s get this deposit into the Orphans account first. I don’t want the police to sweep in and grab her and shut down the bank or something, today of all days, when we have beaucoup bucks to deposit.”

“I don’t think they’ll shut down the bank,” she said doubtfully.

“We’ll call Kyle as soon as the money’s in the bank. I promise. That’ll be ten minutes from now. I think that’ll be soon enough.”

“All right, but if Kyle’s upset, I’m letting you take the rap.”

“I can handle it. Kyle’s been mad at me before.”

We did get the money into the bank, but we didn’t see Kendra. She hadn’t shown up for work that morning. There was a wide-eyed look to all the other employees, and a strange, electric silence snapping around underneath the gentle layer of Muzak. A nice little woman named Biddy took our deposit, and when Florence asked about Kendra, she looked afraid and wouldn’t tell us anything.

And when I called Kyle to tell him, he already knew, of course. Eden’s friends turned out to be Kendra’s friends, and in the course of interviewing them, the detectives had asked about the mark on the hand. They found out right away who the lady in the tent had been.

Kyle wouldn’t tell me anything either.

We got back to Girlfriend’s and Florence opened the shop on time. It looked like it was going to be a slow morning. Even the shop cat, Wicked, couldn’t be bothered to play his usual game of stalking me. He just lay there on his favorite display stand (an old entertainment center) and blinked at me lazily. “Oh, it’s you again,” seemed to about sum it up. I told him hi, and he closed his eyes, insultingly bored, and went back to sleep.

“I think I’ll rearrange the glassware,” Florence said. I looked at the display of random glassware. It didn’t need rearranging. As usual, she had intuitively set out satisfying shapes and groupings, and it looked just fine, but Florence was worried, and fussing around with it would settle her down, so I left her to it.

I was suddenly at a loose end. She didn’t need any help in the shop, and it was a slow time for donations, so there was no pile of stuff in the back room to be sorted and priced. So I decided to go see Rita. I needed to tell her not to bother calling that computer guy.

When I came around the corner of 5
th
Street, I saw that I was too late. A nice commercial van with artwork that simply said “I.T.I.Q.” was sitting at the curb. Information Technologies, and a reference to himself being a genius. Modest. Rita had not only gone ahead and called the guy, he’d actually taken the job. Well, he’d just started his business up, and he was new in town. Maybe he was desperate for customers, no matter how small the job.

When Rita invited me in, he was apparently already done setting up her Wi-Fi, because he was having a cup of good coffee with Justine’s lousy sweet rolls in the kitchen. I was able to avoid Justine’s most recent crimes against the culinary arts by saying I’d had a big breakfast. But I came in for coffee anyway. I wanted to meet Victor.

I made up my mind then and there that he must have been Eden’s happy tomorrow. He was not only so handsome he made my eyes water, he was the classic Italian Stallion: Dark, well-cut, perfectly groomed, even in casual clothes, and all polished up with pretty manners. His eyes were a fascinating golden color – not quite brown, not quite green, with long, dark lashes. He was just formal enough to be disarming, but not enough to be off-putting. And a little probing convinced me that Eden had followed him home from Atlanta. He had arrived before her.

“She was always talking about Tropical Breeze,” he said when we were all seated. Apparently, he was used to females gazing at him doe-eyed and hanging on his every word, because he accepted it from me and Rita without a qualm. “And I was ready to ditch the big city and find a place to start up my own business. I did a little indie work here and there. Sometimes Eden would help me with projects. But basically I was earning a living working for big corporations. I even worked for the government for a while. Talk about a big corporation!”

We giggled. We were prepared to giggle any time he inserted an exclamation point, just as long as he’d keep talking in that velvety bass-baritone.

“A nice, small town, ocean-side, full of nice people – she made it sound too good to resist. These days you don’t have to bury yourself in the metropolis to run a business. Anywhere the Internet can reach, you’re in the metropolis.”

We nodded, mesmerized.

“So here I am. I’ve already got a reputation in the info-tech world, so I’ve got a few small corporate clients already. But I’m ready to take on any job around town, if people need me,” he added, nearly knocking Rita off her stool with a smile.

I suddenly wished Orphans was having computer problems. Huge, intractable computer problems.

The conversation seemed to be coming to a natural finish, and I could sense his next move would be to say thanks for the coffee and gracefully take his leave. I could hear his next words, almost, and more to stop them from coming out of his mouth than to be a gossip, which I’m not, I said, “They’ve figured out who the phony fortune teller was.”

He forgot about leaving and stared at me.

“It was one of the tellers at the bank. A girl named Kendra.”

“Kendra
Constantine?”
Victor asked.

“You know her?” Rita asked him.

“Yes, that’s her last name. Is she a friend?”

“Well, I know her.” He seemed blindsided. “She runs around with a group of techie-rats from around here. Naturally, when I came to town to open an I.T. business, she and her hacker buddies wanted to meet me. They’re a nice bunch, actually. Colorful, but hackers are always kind of unique. Eden introduced me to them.”

“She’s the one who told me about you,” I said. “She had nothing but nice things to say.”

His eyes became sad, and he looked away.

“Maybe Eden asked Kendra to stand in for her on Saturday night,” Rita suggested. “The way she died – it seemed like a man’s crime. Maybe Eden had a date with somebody new, and things got out of hand.”

Maybe, I thought, but Eden wasn’t all that responsible. From what I was learning about her, if she found something better to do, she wouldn’t have asked anybody to stand in for her. She just wouldn’t have shown up. And she died in the morning. I didn’t want to mention Eden’s death in front of Victor again, but I figured it was much more likely that Kendra’s involvement was more sinister than that. Why would she impersonate Eden, unless she didn’t want anybody to start looking for her yet? Who but the murderer would want to delay Eden’s body being found?

“I haven’t known Kendra long,” Victor was saying. “But she’s sharp. God, I hope she’s not in trouble. We talked about her doing some independent contractor work for me, when I got enough business together. She’s good at web design. I specialize in Internet security; I can do web design if I have to, but it’s not what I like. I asked her if she’d ever worked as an illustrator, but apparently she doesn’t do that. Her buddy Rusty does. He’s into graphic novels.” He looked at us and smiled a little. “Comic books. But he’s been kind of frosty to me. Wasn’t interested in a side job.”

He seemed to be maundering, just to get over the shock. For some reason, he didn’t seem suspicious of Kendra. He was more worried about her than anything else.

“Rusty was Eden’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?” I asked.

“Oh . . . I think so. They’d known one another since they’d been kids. Maybe they clicked when she came back to town. I’m not sure how serious they were. He’s not really in our world, like Kendra. He’s a gamer. Everybody who has a knack for tech stuff is, when they’re young. Some never outgrow it.” He shrugged. “Rusty works a day job. Something about fixing things. Refrigerators, I think.”

We came to an uncomfortable silence, and Rita and I exchanged glances. Victor seemed genuinely upset, and I was sorry I had sprung it on him the way I had.

“Well,” he said, gathering himself up, “thanks for calling me, Rita. If you ever need anything else, give me another call.”

He left a business card on the counter and handed another one to me.

“And thanks for the coffee and sweet roll,” he added.

“Well, maybe not so much for the sweet roll,” Rita said ruefully. “Justine should be getting it right soon. She’s had enough practice.”

“Oh, I never bad-mouth a client,” Victor said. “The sweet roll was just fine. I like ‘em a little crispy.”