The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) (10 page)

“As a lodger?”

“More like a housemate.”

“Athena never mentioned it to me.”

“So there’s nothing about Clarice in the will?”

“No. Like I’ve been telling you, everything went to you.”

I
hmm
ed
again.

“It’s not that out of the ordinary,” Wheeler said. “I’ve seen it a million times. Someone’s nephew forgets to send a Christmas card, and
wham
—he’s out of the will. Or your best friend keeps that jet ski he borrowed just a little too long, so he’s not your best friend anymore. And then when you dive drunk into Apache Lake and never come up for air, the houseboat goes to your cousin twice removed instead of him. You hadn’t seen your mother in years, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, maybe that’s why she suddenly decided she needed a will. She and this Clarice had some kind of falling out, and she wanted to make sure the girl didn’t get anything if she died. Maybe she was even afraid Clarice would—”

Wheeler cut himself off.

“There’s really no use speculating,” he said.

“Let’s keep going anyway. Just for one more second. Do you think my mother told anyone about the will?”

“I have no way of knowing. She never indicated one way or another.”

“Okay. Thank you.
Now
there’s no use speculating.”

I got up to go.

“We’re not done yet,” Wheeler said. “We still have unfinished business.”

“Can’t you just bill me? All I’ve got on me is twenty bucks.”

Wheeler pouted. I guess I’d hurt his feelings. Who knew lawyers had any?

“We never finalized plans for your mother,” he said.

“Oh. That. What’s the rush? She’s not going anywhere.”

“Actually, she is. To a crematorium picked by the county. Unless you make other arrangements.”

“They can’t fire up the oven till the autopsy’s done, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I’ve still got time to think about it. You can’t rush these things, you know. What to do with your mother’s remains is a big decision.”

I tapped my lower lip and looked thoughtful as I walked out of Wheeler’s office.

“Stuffed or bronzed?” I muttered. “Stuffed or bronzed? Stuffed or bronzed…?”

I was
halfway back to the White Magic Five & Dime when Fiona Apple started wailing in my handbag. My ringtone. “Criminal,” of course. What can I say? A chick starts her twenties in the nineties and certain things stick.

I fished out my cell and saw that the call was from LOGAN BPD.

I took the call.

“Tell me you’ve got those names I wanted.”

“Uhhh, hello,” Logan said. “Names?”

“Oh my god. You’re
that
kind of guy? Disgruntled customers. From my mom’s shop. You said you were going to look into it. Is that what happens when you say, ‘I’ll call you, babe’?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot all about that. I got busy with something else.”

Logan sounded somber, subdued. The “something else” was bad news.

“What is it?”

“The autopsy report’s in, and…everything’s not as straightforward as we would have liked.”

“What does that mean?”

“The medical examiner says cause of death was strangulation, like we thought. But the killer wasn’t facing your mother, and he didn’t use his hands. He was behind her, and he probably used his forearm wrapped around her neck. It’s sometimes called a sleeper hold.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Then maybe I don’t need to tell you it gives us less to go on. Bruises from his hands would have told us a lot, but now I don’t even know if I should be calling him
him
. And it’s harder to fight off someone who’s behind you like that, so it’s a lot less likely the killer ended up with wounds we can look for now. I’d been hoping the ME would give me enough for a warrant. We could have had this wrapped up by the end of the day, if we were lucky. Unfortunately, we weren’t.”

“So the autopsy’s a dead end.”

“Pretty much.”

I wondered for a second why none of this bothered me. A second was all it took.

I hadn’t been counting on the autopsy to wrap everything up nice and neat anyway. This was my mother. There wasn’t going to be anything nice and neat about it.

“Thanks for letting me know, Detective,” I said. “
Now
do you think you could get me those names?”

Logan sighed.

“There’s one more thing—something else the ME found. It doesn’t help me any, but I thought you’d want to hear it.”

“She had
i heart my daughter
tattooed on her ass?” I almost said.

I went with “all right” instead.

“There were signs of recent weight loss and jaundice, so the ME expanded the scope of his examination. Just to be thorough.”

“Yeah? And?”

“It looks like your mother had pancreatic cancer,” Logan said. “If the killer had just waited a few months, it would have done the job for him.”

Is the woman closing the lion’s mouth, opening it, or giving the lion a handful of tuna Pounce? You decide. What’s important is that even the King of the Jungle is just a big pussycat if you approach him without fear.
warning
: This applies to metaphorical lions only. The author of this book is not responsible for attempts to give real live lions handfuls of tuna Pounce.

Miss Chance,
Infinite Roads to Knowing

Detective Logan
kept talking. Next of kin, the deceased, cremation, state law, a decision, today, sorry. I heard it and I didn’t.

Mom had cancer. Which meant the killer actually did us both a favor. No long, drawn-out, agonizing death for her and—bonus!—no stack of unpaid hospital bills for me.

So why was I upset?

“Thanks,” I said, and I hung up though Logan wasn’t done talking.

My phone rang again almost immediately.

I didn’t answer.

It’s not
like I’d have wanted my mother to contact me. She handled it just right, actually.

I’ll call you when I’m dead.

Then I could be there for her. Not before.

So I told myself it was just my pride that was wounded. The hidden pills in the bathroom, the change in dress size, the sudden desire to make out a will. I should’ve seen it coming.

And now my theory was all messed up, too. I’d pictured the killer lunging across the reading table to grab my mother by the throat. A crime of passion of the how-dare-you-bitch variety. But no. She was strangled from behind, and the killer didn’t even use his/her/its hands.

It seemed colder. Calmer. Less spontaneous. More businesslike.

That’s what was bothering me. Yeah, sure.

I noticed a sign across the street.

STAR BAIL BONDS

Anthony Grandi’s office. Perfect.

When life gives you lemons,
Biddle used to say,
steal some sugar and make lemonade.

Screw this
feelings
crap. I had work to do.

The star
on the sign had a tip pointed straight down, pentagram- style. You’d think that’d be a tip-off.
deals with the devil our specialty!
Then again, most of Anthony Grandi’s potential customers wouldn’t be walk-ins and they wouldn’t be choosy.

It had been a long, long time since I’d been in a bondsman’s office. Ahhh, good times. I felt all warm and fuzzy. Then all clammy and nauseous. The memories were hitting me like a plate of bad oysters.

I went inside anyway.

A round-faced, red-haired young woman sat slumped over the front desk, texting. She glanced up at me with heavy-lidded eyes, found me nothing worth waking up for, then turned her attention back to her phone. It looked like she was sending an urgent message to her narcolepsy support group.

“Is Mr. Grandi in?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you know when he might be back?”

“Uh-uh.”

“I need to speak to him about Athena Passalis.”

“Who?”

She wasn’t bluffing. Contemptuous disinterest that profound is almost impossible to fake.

“Someone Mr. Grandi’s done some work with,” I said. “Would it be okay to leave him a note?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

A moment went by.

“Do you have a piece of paper I could write the note on?”

The woman jerked her head at a tray six inches from her right elbow. It was filled with forms and ballpoint pens.

“Use one of those.”

Her eyes stayed on her phone.

She was the perfect receptionist for a skeevy operation like this. When she told the cops “I never noticed anything suspicious,” she’d really mean it.

I picked up one of the forms.
bail bond application & contract
was printed across the top. The back was blank.

I sat in a cheap plastic chair covered with cigarette burns and graffiti and wrote my message using a copy of
Rolling Stone
for backing. I didn’t notice the date on the magazine, but the fact that Hootie and the Blowfish were on the cover said a lot.

This is what I wrote:

Dear Mr. Clean,
(I got to use it after all!)

You can save yourself the quarters and

call from here next time. Or better yet,

just come on over to my place and say hi

in person. I’ve told Detective Logan you

might be stopping by. My friends Smith

and Wesson are anxious to meet you, too.

Vice versa?

Insinuatingly yours,

The Object of Your Disaffection

I folded the form over once and slid it onto the desk beside the texting receptionist.

“You’ll see that Mr. Grandi gets that?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

No. She hadn’t, actually. But I didn’t bother saying so. I didn’t extend a middle finger just to see how long it would take her to notice it either. (My guess: between four and five minutes.) I wanted the note in Anthony Grandi’s hands, not in his garbage can.

I may not pack heat, but sometimes it’s good to let people know you can burn them.

Fiona Apple
started singing again. I ignored her. There was another batch of lemonade to make.

I headed back to my mom’s place and changed out of my Gypsy getup.

This was a job for Businesswoman.

It was
awfully nice of Principal Little to see me on such short notice. But when someone from the Lions Club drops by to talk about prize money, accommodations are made, even in the middle of a busy school day.

“Have a seat, Ms…McCoy, was it?”

“Please,” I said. “Call me Julie.”

Principal Little settled herself behind her desk. She was a little round dumpling of a woman you could pluck up with your chopsticks and eat in one bite.

“All right, Julie. How can I help you?”

“Well, as I said, I’m from the Sedona chapter of the Lions Club and I just happened to be in Berdache today on business so I thought I’d drop by and share the good news and see what kind of bang for the buck we can all get out of it. I assume you’re familiar with our annual Up with Academics! essay contest?”

“Of course,” Principal Little lied. God bless her.

“Then you’ll be thrilled to know that both the grand prize winner and the runner-up come from your school. Berdache High has three hundred and fifty dollars coming its way!”

“Oh,” Principal Little said. “That’s great.”

It was now obvious to her why she’d never heard of the Up with Academics! essay contest.

“And Matt and Clarice both have three-minute shopping sprees coming to them at the Fashion Den in Sedona,” I said. “Though I suppose we should probably think about giving them a little extra time on account of their…darn it, I can never remember what I’m supposed to say instead of handicaps. Special attributes?”

“Excuse me?”

“Wait, I’ll get it. Limitations? Challenges? Whatever. They’ll need more time due to their uniquely demanding life situations. But I think that’s what makes this such a great story. To be brutally honest with you, I’m hoping we can get a little ink for the Lions Club out of it. And for your school too, of course. I think people are going to be truly touched when they hear what Matt and Clarice have been able to achieve.”

“I’m sorry, Julie. Hold on. Which students are we talking about here?”

I went with the boyfriend first. The one Logan told me Clarice was out with the night my mother died. The one the girl supposedly got out of bed with a call the second she was through with 911.

“The grand prize winner was Matt Gorman,” I said. Then I watched Principal Little.

This was the whole reason for being here. Risking a pop-in instead of pulling something over the phone.

What kind of kid was Matt Gorman? It should show on his principal’s face, assuming she knew him. And in a town this small, she would.

Principal Little blinked. She frowned, but not in a scornful way. She looked puzzled but not shocked.

Interpretation: Matt Gorman was an okay kid…at least as far as his principal knew.

“His essay was called ‘Straight As and No Eyes,’” I said.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a pun. Because of his…differently abledness.”

“Julie, I have to tell you, I’m very confused. Matt Gorman is a good student, but he doesn’t get straight As and he’s certainly not differently abled.”

“You mean he’s not blind?”

“Blind? No! He does track and field! He’s on the wrestling team!”

“I know that. It was in his essay.”

“And you thought he was blind?”

“Are you saying blind people can’t wrestle?”

“No no no! But Matt Gorman
isn’t
blind.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Oh my. I’m almost afraid to ask if Clarice Stewart really is quadriplegic.”

“She’s not.”

“Is she even a cheerleader?”

“What?”

“The title of her essay was ‘Give Me a Q, Give Me a U, Give Me an A, Give Me a—’”

“Okay, I get it.”

“First quadriplegic cheerleader in Arizona.”

“
I get it.
”

“We all wondered why we’d never seen her on the news.”

Principal Little buried her face in her hands.

“I am so sorry,” she said into her palms.

“We got…punked, is it?”

Somehow Principal Little found the strength to face me again.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid so.”

“Have Matt and Clarice done anything like this before?”

“Nothing like this. But there have been incidents. They’re sort of…partners in crime.”

“Ahhh.”

“Clarice has come
this close
to expulsion more than once. But we’ve tried to be understanding.” Principal Little gave me a significant look. “Difficult home life.”

“Oh. That’s a shame.”

“It is. I’d be surprised if Clarice was behind this, though. She and Matt won’t ever be valedictorian, but they’re smart. Too smart to put their own names on fake essays for a contest.”

“Do they have enemies? People who would want to get them into trouble like this?”

“Not that I know of. But I’ll be looking into it, I assure you.”

“I appreciate that. Though…well, I’m sorry, but you know this means your school won’t be getting the three hundred and fifty
dollars
.”

Principal Little offered me a tight smile.

“Yes. I realize that. Now why don’t I show you out?”

I insisted
that Principal Little stay put. No need to waste any more of her valuable time.

And no need for Clarice to spot us together and put me in an awkward spot. Which is exactly what would have happened.

She was sitting under a tree in front of the school when I saw her. A goth lite girl sat beside her—short, electric-blue hair and heavy eyeliner but no piercings or tats. They were huddled up talking so intensely they probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d tap-danced past them waving sparklers. All the same, I veered away, putting my back to them before they might notice me.

I didn’t see any sign of Clarice’s “partner in crime.” But I’d be meeting him soon.

I was going to make sure of that.

I got
another call from LOGAN BPD as I drove away. This time I picked up.

“Talk fast. I’m driving.”

“Then you shouldn’t be on the phone.”

“Arrest me.”

“Maybe I will.”

I heard the beep-squawk of a police radio.

“Hey,” I said. “
You’re
driving.”

“Guilty as charged. But I’m going to let myself off with a warning.”

“Hypocrite.”

“It comes with the badge.”

“I know.”

“This is actually good timing.”

“What is?”

“Us both being in our cars.”

“You want to drag race?”

“I want to show you something.”

“It’s not the Grand Canyon, is it? I’ve seen it.”

“It has to do with your mother.”

“Where do I go?”

I swung
by my mom’s place before meeting Logan. I wanted to slip back into the Stevie Nicks costume he’d seen me in that morning.

Consistency should be your number-one priority. Always,
Biddle used to say.
People notice something’s changed, they start asking questions. And if they’re asking questions, that means they’re thinking, and if they’re thinking, then we’re screwed.

Then about five minutes would go by, and Biddle would say something like “Why would you wear boots like that? You don’t want to be noticed. Blending in should be your number-one priority. Always.”

“But you said consistency was—” I’d start to say.

And he’d just smile.

It wasn’t
the Grand Canyon, but it was a canyon, and it was grand. Logan walked me up to a spot called Devil’s Ridge where we could look out over it. From up there, the world was just three colors: red (rock), green (brush), and blue (sky). If it hadn’t been for the plants, I’d have thought I was on Mars.

The town was behind us. The road, too. Nothing moved. We were alone.

Logan was standing close beside me. A gust of warm desert wind ruffled his dark curls. His hair was a little thick and longish for a cop, so it actually looked okay ruffled. In fact, I was tempted to reach up and ruffle it more myself. Or maybe I just wanted to give the guy a noogie. He seemed very noogie-able somehow.

I refocused on the view.

It was a good thing I’m not afraid of heights, because the ridge jutted out like a granite diving board to nowhere. Do a swan dive from there and you’d end up spread over the rocks below like jellied Spam.