The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) (12 page)

“What did your husband do in the army?” I asked.

“Not much. Sometimes people think that’s why he’s so…intense. But he was never in Iraq or Afghanistan. He never got out of Fort Benning. The only battles he was in were with MPs.”

“I see,” I said.

And I did see. I saw a lot.

“What does Bill do now?”

“He works for Eureka Resorts International. He started with them back in Orlando, where we’re from, but last year he was transferred to the Sedona office. He’s a sales manager there. He and his team do timeshare presentations out at the Oak Creek Golf Resort.”

I nodded, smiling. Now I
knew
Bill Riggs was an asshole. He was in the same business as me.

“Berdache is actually closer to the resort than Sedona, so…” Marsha shrugged, slumped, shriveled just a little bit more. “Here we are.”

“Well, I’m glad my mother could make your time here a little easier, even if it was only for a while.”

“She truly was a godsend. I miss her every day.”

“It must have been a shock when you heard what happened to her.”

“Oh, it was. I just couldn’t believe it. Poor Athena. How could anyone have done something like that to her?”

“That’s what I keep wondering.”

Marsha looked away for a moment, then met my gaze again.

She heard it. The question I was asking without asking.

“Of course, I hadn’t seen her in weeks,” she said, “so in a way I felt like I’d lost her already.”

Fair enough. She was answering without answering.

Translation:
No, I don’t think my husband killed her.

Alternate translation:
No, I’m not going to admit that my husband might have killed her.

“Oh, just listen to me!” Marsha moaned, flapping her hands like a bird that can’t quite get off the ground. “What a horrible, selfish thing to say when you’ve lost your mother!”

I reached out and put a hand on her knee. Instantly she went still.

“It’s okay. I understand.”

New tears welled up in Marsha’s eyes.

“You are your mother’s daughter,” she said. “You’re every bit as sweet and kind and thoughtful as she was.”

I forced myself to give her a smile as if she hadn’t said something I’d prayed all my life wasn’t true.

When I
said “I’ve taken up enough of your time,” Marsha began talking about how she and Bill met.

When I said “I really should be going,” she started asking questions I didn’t want to answer about my mother.

And when I stood up and said “I’d better get back to the White Magic Five & Dime,” she jumped up and hurried off down the hall.

“There’s something I want to show you,” she said.

I thought she might come back with manacles and clamp me to the couch. The woman needed company.

When she came back to the living room, she was carrying a deck of cards.

“I bought these from Athena. I have to keep them hidden or…” Her shoulders jerked up and down in a way that was half-shrug, half-shiver. “Hey. You said you read, right?”

She offered me the cards.

Tarot, of course.

I didn’t take them.

“I’ll pay you,” Marsha said.

“I’m sorry. Now really isn’t a good time. There’s so much to take care of while I’m in town. You know. Arrangements to make.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. How thoughtless of me to even ask.”

“It’s okay. No problem. Really. You know, you spent so much time watching Athena work, you could probably read the cards as well as I can anyway.”

“You mean do a reading for myself?”

“Why not?”

“But I thought that wouldn’t work. That you need somebody else—someone separate from your situation, with an unbiased point of view—or you’d miss a lot of the messages. That’s what Athena always said.”

“Of course she did,” I said. “But really—there’s nothing wrong with giving it a try on your own. You might be surprised at what you find.”

Marsha looked dubious. The hand holding the cards fell to her side, the arm limp, dead.

Trying didn’t seem to be her strong suit.

I started toward the door again.

“Pop into the Five & Dime sometime, if you can swing it, and I’ll do that reading for you. I’d love to talk some more.”

Marsha smiled sadly.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

I assumed I’d never see her again. But I didn’t stop thinking about her.

That was one way I knew I wasn’t like my mother.

“Don’t you
ever feel sorry for them?” I asked Biddle once.

I knew better than to ask Mom.

“Who?” Biddle said.

“You know who. The people we get money from.”

“Do you feel sorry for
that
?”

We were in a Godfather’s Pizza in Louisville, Kentucky. Biddle was pointing at my plate.

“Do I feel sorry for pizza?” I asked.

“For the pig that pepperoni used to be.”

I thought it over.

“Yes. I guess I do.”

My mother was sitting across the table from me, next to Biddle.

“Oh yeah?” she said. “Well, let me help you out then.”

She swiped the pizza off my plate and took a big bite.

“The salad bar’s over there,” she said as she chewed.

It had
been a long day of pot stirring. Time to step back and let things simmer. See what boiled over. Burned. Set the place on fire.

I headed to the Five & Dime.

Clarice was there, doing homework upstairs with the gothy girl I’d seen her with at school. They looked a little disappointed that an anvil hadn’t fallen on me that day.

After introductions—the friend was Ceecee or Seesee or C. C. or ¡SíSí!, I didn’t ask which—I offered to spring for dinner. The girls managed to set their dislike for me aside long enough to say yes. The consensus: Mexican again. Vegetarian burritos for me and Clarice, carne asada for the friend.

I wondered if Ceecee/Seesee/etc. was on the wrestling team. It didn’t seem likely.

“I just wish Matt Gorman was here,” I said after phoning in the order. “I’d love to meet him.”

Ceecee looked surprised.

Clarice looked completely disinterested in a way that told me she was surprised, too.

“How do you know about Matt?” she asked.

“He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? It’s the talk of the town. So what’s he like?”

“Oh, you know. Cute. Nice. Funny. Everything I’ve always wanted in a man.”

Ceecee snorted, then went back to looking spooked.

“And athletic, too,” I said. “He’s a wrestler, right?”

“And a runner. Long distance. And let me tell you, honey—that boy can
really
go the distance.”

Clarice threw me a big wink.

Ceecee looked like she wanted to crawl under the table.

It was a nice move on Clarice’s part. Make the conversation so unbearably awkward I’d drop it.

I nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that’d be one of the fringe benefits of dating a jock,” I said. “Stamina.”

“Oh yeah!” Clarice enthused.

“Him love you long time, huh?”

“Quadruple overtime.”

“Hubba hubba, huh?”

“Hubba hubba
hubba
.”

“Oooookay,” Ceecee said, pushing back her chair and practically jumping to her feet. “Why don’t
I
run over to El Zorro Azul and get the food?”

Have you ever seen a goth blush? It pretty much kills the whole bloodless/undead thing they’re going for, so I’m sure they hate it.

Clarice grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back down. “Alanis was going to get it, remember?”

“You know what?” I said. “I’ve been running around town all day. If Ceecee wants to pick up the food while you tell me about Matt, that’d be great.” I pulled out my wallet. “Make sure they don’t forget the guacamole and the—”

There was a distant, muffled
thump-thump-thump
.

Someone was knocking on the front door.

“—chips,” I said. I handed Ceecee a twenty-dollar bill. “This ought to cover it.”

The someone thumped again. Harder and longer.

“But maybe you ought to wait till whoever that is goes away.”

“Aren’t you gonna go down and let ’em in?” Clarice asked me. “Someone might need an emergency palm reading.”

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Would Anthony Grandi really knock on the door before he killed me? It’d be the most polite murder I’d ever heard of.

Nah.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Whoever it was, they weren’t going away.

I snatched the twenty back.

“All right, I’ll see who it is. And I might as well get the food while I’m at it.”

I headed for the stairs.

The thump-thump-thumping
was coming from the front of the building. I moved toward it slowly in the dark, careful to keep my footfalls light.

“Come on! Open up!” I heard a man shout. “I know you’re in there! I see the lights on upstairs!” He pounded on the door again. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me!”

I tiptoed to the picture window and peered out around the curtains. It was dark outside and I didn’t have a good angle, but I could make out the man’s back half. As back halves go, it wasn’t particularly scary.

He was wearing sweatpants and a cardigan and a baseball cap and walking shoes so white they practically glowed in the dark. Not what you usually picture the busy killer on the go throwing on when he heads out for an evening’s homicide.

No, it looked more like Josette’s geezer—the one she’d seen stomping around the White Magic Five & Dime that morning.

“I will not be ignored!” he roared. “Open that door!”

I was surprised he didn’t add “dagnabbit.”

I decided to show respect for my elders.

I decided to avoid more of a scene.

I decided to be stupid.

I opened the front door.

“Sir,” I said, “I don’t know what the problem is, but if you’ll just—”

“Back back back back back!” the man barked.

I backed up. He walked in.

Between us was the gun he’d just pulled from under his sweater.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me. It wasn’t the second or third time either.

Practice makes perfect. I hoped.

“Welcome to the White Magic Five & Dime,” I said to the man. “How can I help you?”

The wheel is spun. The ball is dropped. Will it stop on red? Black? An even number? An odd? An angel? A goose? A winged cow reading
Good Housekeeping
? There’s no way to know. All you can do is be ready for anything—and then be ready for that anything to change again with the very next spin.

Miss Chance,
Infinite Roads to Knowing

Another story.

Once upon a time—that time being morning in America, the mid-eighties—there was a girl who wasn’t quite so little anymore. She was in either a small city or a large town in the Midwest. She didn’t know the name. What did it matter?

They’d just come from another small city/large town a week before. And another a week before that and another a week before that. In a few days, they’d be someplace else.

It was a slow-motion
Cannonball Run
, Biddle had joked when it began.

The girl knew the movies he was referring to. She’d seen both of them in the theater, the second one just a week before, though pre-teen girls were hardly the target audience. Over the course of one long, dark day, she’d sneaked into
Cannonball Run II
,
Star Trek III
,
The Natural
,
Bachelor Party
, and
Friday the 13th
: The Final Chapter.
She spent a lot of days like that. Abandoned in cineplexes, wandering from screen to screen, story to story, world to world.

But she didn’t get the joke.

Biddle started to explain. Something about insurance policies they were taking out on cars that got stolen and wrecked and stolen and wrecked (and paid for and paid for and paid for) all across the country. But the girl’s mother cut him off.

She’d been calling herself “Veronica” lately. She had brand-new jet-black hair. In a few weeks, she’d have new hair again—and a new name.

“You know the rule,” she’d told Biddle.

The girl knew the rule, too.

Some quick change raising or till dipping they could use her for. The precious pet scam or the Jamaican switch, too. She was an excellent roper, a competent cap. But there were plays they didn’t need her for. A lot of them. And this was one.

So, the rule: Don’t talk to her. Don’t tell her anything she didn’t need to know. Keep her in the dark. A prop in a closet, gathering dust.

“Right, right, okay,” Biddle said to the girl’s mother. And he turned back to the girl and winked.

Biddle knew the rule. He just chose to ignore it from time to time.

Now, weeks later, here they were in Genericsville USA, and the girl was watching yet another game show on yet another motel television.

Morning TV sucked.
The Price Is Right
, talk shows, detergent commercials, news. There weren’t any
stories
, and it was stories the girl needed. Other people, other places, other lives. Anything other. Anything.

Veronica was getting ready to go to work—though her “work” wasn’t anything like what the girl saw on TV. There would be no wacky officemates, no gruff but lovable boss, no laugh track.

The girl’s mother was going to spend the day visiting every insurance agent in town. She was “dressed to impress,” as she liked to call it. Biddle said it was more like “dressed to undress.”

“Everywhere you go, you’re gonna have guys trying to give you a piece of the rock,” he said.

Veronica laughed. Only Biddle could get her to do that.

Then she was gone. She didn’t say goodbye. Why bother? She knew the girl would be there when she got back. Do you say goodbye to a chair, a lamp, the paper-thin towels hanging in the bathroom? Of course not. You use them when you use them and you don’t when you don’t.

Biddle would be leaving soon, too. He had maildrops to set up, maildrops to close down, connections to make, connections to break. But first he’d take the girl wherever she wanted to go. Almost.

One time she’d walked into a school and found a classroom of kids her age and tried to pass herself off as an exchange student from London. She did an excellent English accent, courtesy of James Bond movies and PBS, but it hadn’t mattered. Questions were asked, things got complicated, and she’d ended up running out of the place and laying low at their motel the rest of the week.

The girl never told her mother, but Biddle knew. And he didn’t tell on her, though he never took her anywhere near a school again. Not the kind other kids went to, anyway.

“I think I can take the day off,” he announced as a contestant on TV hit
bankrupt
, lost it all, and had to keep on smiling. “Wanna have some fun?”

“Sure.”

Biddle’s fun and other people’s fun weren’t quite the same, but the girl never said no.

First they went to a Bob Evans and stuffed themselves.

“Can’t skip the most important meal of the day,” Biddle said. “Those chocolate chip pancakes might feel heavy in your gut now, but before long they’re going to be pure energy.”

“For running?” the girl asked.

Biddle smiled. But there was no need to run. Not then.

They left without paying and did it so smoothly no one noticed for ten minutes.

After leaving the restaurant, they went to a party supply store and bought a roll of pink raffle tickets. Then they drove around while Biddle scanned storefronts and signs.

“Jackpot!” he eventually announced.

He pulled over in front of the Boys & Girls Club of Who-Cares County. A few minutes later, he was walking out again with a stack of brochures and newsletters.

“People sure do love it when a man takes an interest in the youth of his community,” he said.

“What’s the pitch?”

“Fundraiser, of course. Raise five hundred dollars and your soccer team gets to go to Indianapolis for the state playoffs. It’d be a shame if you couldn’t make it. Your coach was going to pay for the trip out of her own pocket, but after she came down with Legionnaires’ disease—”

“
Biddle
.”

“Okay, you’re right. Too much gravy on the steak and you get no sizzle. Just stick with the trip to Indy. Now let’s see those fishhooks.”

The girl pouted and opened her eyes wide.

“Beautiful,” Biddle said. “You’ll be reeling ’em in nonstop.”

They found the right neighborhood—middle class, quiet, white—and the girl worked a few blocks while Biddle went to get cigarettes and “call a guy about a thing with some people.” When he came back, she was sitting on a curb waiting for him. Half her raffle tickets were gone, and she had almost a hundred dollars in her pocket.

“Are you going to stay now?” she said. “I don’t want to be out here by myself anymore.”

“Hey, it’s the Boys & Girls Club, not the White Girls & Big Black Guys Club. I shouldn’t even be sitting here talking to you. You just
know
the police are going to get a call about that.”

“Then let’s go do something else. Something we can do together.”

“This isn’t fun?”

“No. And I don’t need the money anyway. I can’t buy anything. My suitcase is too full as it is.”

“You liked your Atari. Don’t you want another?”

“So Mom can make me leave it behind like she did last time?”

“We have to travel light. You know that. And just look—you got the money for another, like she said you would.”

“Well, I don’t want some dumb game I have to play back in our room. I want to do something out in the real world. With you. Can’t we see if they have an amusement park or a waterslide or something around here?”

“An amusement park?”

Biddle looked thoughtful.

There are a lot of scams you can pull at an amusement park.

Movement caught his eye. A flutter of drapes in a picture window.

“Time to roll. I think someone’s about to come rescue you from me.”

“Let ’em try,” the girl said, though she often fantasized about getting caught, arrested, even kidnapped. Just a few years before, she’d become obsessed with Sasquatch and the possibility that he’d come carry her off to his moss-covered cave. It would be scary, and she’d miss movies and TV and books and Biddle, but at least it wouldn’t be another Holiday Inn. Then one day her mother walked in on her watching an
In Search of…
about Bigfoot, and the woman had laughed one of her rare laughs and said, “All this fuss over a guy in a gorilla suit? And I thought the biggest bullshitter on TV was Jim Bakker.” And the girl had stopped waiting for the missing link to steal her away.

Biddle talked to a guy at a gas station. The nearest amusement park was three hours away, and it might not open till Memorial Day anyway. So Biddle bought ten scratch-off lottery tickets and gave half to the girl.

“What are these?” she said.

Official lotteries were something new. Most people weren’t used to states running their own scams yet.

“Those raffle tickets gave me an idea,” Biddle said. “Scratch off the gray stuff on these cards. Here, gently, like this. Just enough to see the numbers. No words. Just numbers. Then we’ll have us some real fun together.”

“You promise?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“Right. Like you were ever a Boy Scout.”

Biddle pinched the girl’s cheek.

“That’s my girl,” he said.

All the tickets were losers, but it didn’t matter. They found two candidates. On one, a seven could become a nine after just a little careful work with a black Bic. On the other, a five could become a six.

Biddle did the seven, the girl the five. They agreed that hers looked better.

They had a winner.

“Now we just have to find the right neighborhood,” Biddle said. “We may be in the Wonder Bread capital of the world, but they’ve gotta have a wrong side of the tracks around here somewhere.”

It took them half an hour to find it.

Another half hour after that, the girl stepped up to a middle-aged man pushing a shopping cart out of a discount grocery store.

“Can you help me? I’m lost.”

The man stopped.

“I can see that,” he said.

He was black, and so was everyone in the store and the parking lot and the streets around them.

“I was on the bus and I must have gotten off at the wrong stop,” the girl said. “But I didn’t realize it at first and I started walking around and now I can’t even find my way back to where I started from.”

“All right,” the man sighed, “here’s what you want to do.”

He started giving directions. The girl nodded as if she cared. Then another man walked up.

“Excuse me, please,” he said. He had a thick accent of indeterminate pan-Caribbean origin. “I need your help.”

The older man rolled his eyes. “This is my lucky day.”

“Maybe it is, sir,” the other man said. He held up a scratch-off lottery ticket. “I think this is a winner, but I can’t turn it in.”

“Why not?” the girl asked.

“I’m not from here. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t have papers. I can’t collect a hundred dollars from a state lottery.”

“A hundred dollars? Let me see!” The girl grabbed the ticket. “Wow. You’re right. It’s a winner.”

The older man peeked over her shoulder. He didn’t get much time to look. Just enough to see that the right numbers seemed to match.

“Where’d you buy it?” the girl asked.

“Right here. In this store.”

“And it can be turned in here, too?”

“Yes. You’d get the money immediately.”

“And then I’m supposed to come out and just give it to you?”

“No. I’d give you…twenty dollars.”

“Hey,” the older man said. He had a “What am I—chopped liver?” look on his face.

“How do I know you wouldn’t take it all?” the girl said.

The man from Trinijamahaiti looked offended.

“What a thing for an innocent little girl to say! How do I know
you
wouldn’t try to keep it all? Maybe you would accuse me of being a thief when I tried to collect my money!” He snatched his ticket back and turned away. “I’ll find someone else to help me.”

“Hey,” the older man said again.

“Wait! I know how we can do this!” the girl cried out.

She jammed a hand into her Jordache jeans and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills. She counted quickly.

“I’ll give you twenty-eight dollars right now. Then you just give me the ticket, and we can be done.”

“Twenty-eight dollars? I don’t know…”

The older man whipped out his wallet.

“I can give you thirty-nine! No! Forty! That’s practically fifty percent, cash on the barrelhead.”

He thrust the money at the other man.

The other man took it and handed over the ticket.

“No fair,” the girl whined.

“The only fair’s the one with farm animals and cotton candy,” the older man said. He swung his cart around and headed back into the store. “Good luck catching that bus.”

The other man and the girl stalked off in different directions.

They met again two blocks away, on the quiet side street where they’d left the car.

“Told you it’d work,” Biddle said.

He unlocked the passenger door and let the girl in, then walked around and slipped behind the wheel.

“It’s crude, though,” Biddle went on. “There’s gotta be a way to spin it into something more than a nickel-and-dime short con. The big lotto jackpots—that’s the angle to play.”

The girl was looking out the window. The houses lining the street were small and old. A few were boarded up. The rest looked like they should be.

“I don’t like it when we take money from poor people.”

“If it’s good enough for McDonald’s and Mogen David, it’s good enough for me.”