Ice Maiden

by Dale Mayer

“Well, they’re just not,” she said lamely. “I don’t know. They’re … they’re just a way to talk to … A Ouija board’s a way to talk to dead people supposedly, and tarot cards are like reading … getting a reading about your future.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” he said. “I don’t know then. I really don’t know. Maybe, … maybe this ghost has some connection to you that we can’t see.”

  “Well, that’s even scarier,” she muttered. “Who wants a ghost to have any kind of connection to them?”

  He smiled. “The good news is,” he said, “apparently this ghost has some connection, and, if he does, then surely we can find it.”

  “That’s not very reassuring,” she snapped. She glared at him, as she tried to think her way through this. But then she couldn’t. It just didn’t make any sense. “Can Stefan do anything to follow or track this person?”

  “Follow or track?” he asked curiously. “Like, in what way?”

  “I don’t know. All that comes to mind is the damn Ghostbuster movie,” she said, and then she started to laugh. “And I don’t think he’d take kindly to that.”

  “I’m sure the joke’s been made many times,” he said. “Stefan didn’t strike me as somebody who would get offended by a joke like that.”

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but we don’t … We seem to be completely in the dark here.”

  “So how do we learn more?” he asked.

  “The internet,” she said instantly. “That’s where everybody learns everything.”

  He nodded slowly. “Is that something you want to take on?”

  “Hell no,” she said, “but I’m not sure we have a choice, do we?”

  “I’m not sure either,” he said, “but we can do some digging.”

  “We really need to talk to Stefan again.”

  “Not until we know more,” he muttered. “We really need to do our homework before we get there.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “and I guess you’re right. I don’t know. It just … It all feels wrong.”

  “Well, it might feel wrong,” he said, “but, if we can get any answers for Stefan, you know that will help us.”

  She nodded, picked up her phone, and started researching tarot cards and possession. “Not even the internet has anything to say about it,” she said.

  “You were supposed to check on how they got ripped. Remember?”

  “Right,” she groaned. “I can ask Jerry, but I don’t even know if I’ll work tomorrow.”

  “Well, you’re going,” he said, “because you need the job.”

  “Right. Well, in that case,” she said, “I’m off to bed. I’ll say good night, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.” He got up and left her soon afterward.

  With her head still spinning, and confusion reigning as the utmost thought process, she headed to bed. But when she woke the next morning, she had not a single ounce of more clarity. Neither were there any strange or ghostly visits, so she was happy with that. She got up and looked around a little uneasily to see if she’d been dancing in the nude or something, but everything in the apartment looked and appeared normal.

  She wished that, prior to that dancing-on-the-bridge event happening, she’d had some kind of warning. That was the troubling thing, the fact that it had happened without any warning. That really disturbed her because she felt like it could happen again without any warning. She wasn’t comfortable with that. As she got dressed and raced to work, she thought about how she felt just before the event.

  It was the heat. It had been the heat that sent her out of the house because she was looking for the cold. So was this spirit bound in ice or something? Why would the heat bother it? And, if she stayed in the heat and resisted, would that do the job? She frowned as she walked into the store.

  Her boss looked quizzically at her. “Another bad night?”

  She looked up, shrugged, and said, “It was okay.”

  He nodded. “Time to get to work then.”

  She started immediately unpacking the parcels that had just come in. When she got a chance, she asked him about the cards. “Remember that tarot deck I used originally? You said the package was ripped, and so you couldn’t sell it. Do you know how it got ripped?”

  “No clue,” he said, “it was an old set in the back, down on the bottom shelf underneath the cash register there.” And he pointed down behind the counter.

  She squatted down and took a look. “Hmm, I wonder what it was even doing back here.”

  “No idea,” he said, and he carried on.

  She didn’t know if she believed him or not because something odd had been in his voice. But then lately all she could see was odd everywhere. At lunchtime she asked him again.

  He looked at her and said, “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just … I just wondered because I kind of felt a connection to whoever it was who had the deck.” He snorted at that and didn’t say anything. She wondered about bringing it up again, when he got an odd look on his face and walked over, bent down, and started digging into the crap stored in the back underneath the front counter.

  Then he pulled out a small notebook and tossed it on the counter. “This notebook was with the cards, but I don’t know where either of them came from,” he said, “but they were both together in there. I looked at the notebook briefly and realized I couldn’t sell it. I got the cards out and got mad because I couldn’t sell them either, damaged like that. But they also shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.”

  She picked up the little notebook and said, “Do you think it was a special order, set aside for somebody?”

  “Well, if it was, who opened each one? Nobody came and picked them up, though I certainly don’t remember taking a special order for any of this stuff,” he said. “But who knows?”

  “No, that’s … that’s quite true,” she said, trying to ease back some of his tension. “Have you had a lot of people work here?”

  “For a long time, I had a lot of different people,” he said. “And then, well, I stopped it.”

  She knew a story was behind this and desperately wanted to ask him because somehow it had to be connected. “Stopped hiring staff? But, Jerry, you’d be overwhelmed here, trying to do it all by yourself.”

  “But the business isn’t overwhelming,” he said.

  “So how do you pay for—”

  “For staff? I wouldn’t have you here either if I thought I could get by without you.”

  She felt the hurt, striking hard and swift. But she understood. “I get it,” she said carefully. “And you’re used to being alone.”

  He shook his head. “That’s got nothing to do with it. I think you’re in danger, but I don’t know what from.”

  She stopped, slowly turned to look at him, and then said, “Pardon?”

  He just glared at her, instead of answering.

  She could see that whatever was bothering him had put him in a hell of a temper.

  “I don’t get what’s going on,” he said, “but it’s something weird.”

  “In what way?”

  “These books were out of place when I got in,” he said, “but all the doors were locked.”

  She stared at him. “Which books?”

  He just stared at her mutely and shook his head.

  “Which books?” she said, her tone harder. “Come on, Jerry. You know this is important.”

  “Very difficult, yes. It’s not important. It’s all BS,” he snapped. “I shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

  “But now that you did,” she said, striving for calm and control, “which books?”

  He walked over to the front counter and picked up two books sitting just off to the side and brought them over, slamming them down on the reception counter. “These two.”

  “And where were they when you found them?” she asked, reaching for them.

  “They were on the floor over there.”

  “As if somebody slammed them a
gainst the wall?”

  He gave her a look as to say, Are you stupid? “They fell obviously.”

  As she looked at the wall he was pointing at, literally hundreds of books were on the shelves there.

  “But then why these ones, right?” she said with a shrug. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She looked down at the titles and froze. “Possession and the occult. Well, maybe it does make sense,” she said.

  “You’re back to that woo-woo stuff again, aren’t you?”

  “Well, when you tell me that something is going on and that … I’m in danger,” she said, “I don’t know what else to think. There’s been plenty of woo-woo stuff going on around this place, and I have no idea what or why.”

  “I don’t know either,” he said. “All of it’s a stretch.”

  She then asked, “But, when you’ve tried to explain everything away, and none of it’s explainable, what’s left?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, with a tired sigh, “but you’re not the first one to go down this pathway.”

  “What? Who else did?”

  “Jenny. She used to work for me,” he said. “She used to be in all that stuff too.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She left,” he said in a dismissive tone.

  “Did you fire her, or did she quit?”

  “She quit,” he snapped. “I only fire people who steal or do me wrong in some way. Otherwise the only reason I hire people is that I need help. What’s the point of hiring the help and then firing the help? That defeats the purpose.”

  She blinked at the rambled explanation but slowly nodded. “Well, it’s good to know you still need help,” she said cheerfully, “because I still need a job.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “or you’d be just like her and up and walk out one day.”

  “Did you have a fight or something?”

  “I don’t fight,” he said. “I’m far too old for that. I come into work because that’s what old-timers do.” He continued, “We know the value of a full day, and we put it in and don’t expect to get freebies out of it.”

  She wasn’t exactly sure if that was a dig at her, but she decided to keep her mouth shut on that topic. “I’m sorry that she upset you in some way.”

  “She was one of those people who always dug into mysteries,” he said, “and dug into private lives. She had no boundaries.”

  “Ah. Well, you have plenty. Lots of walls and lots of boundaries.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” He glared at her.

  “Not at all,” she said ever-so-quietly. “Everybody’s entitled to have a few secrets of their own.” He sniffed at that, and she nodded slowly. “And that’s what she was trying to do, wasn’t it? Digging into your history and your family?”

  “None of your business,” he snapped, glaring at her.

  She smiled gently. “I’m not a threat to you.”

  “Anything that brings all that shit back up is a threat to me,” he said. “I am not interested in going over old ground at any point in time.” And, with that, he turned, and he stormed off. She sat here at the front counter, watching her view of his back as he walked right outside. For him to leave the building was huge. His apartment was upstairs, and he almost never left, preferring to order in his groceries and most of the extras in life. He always got a lot of personal parcels.

  She had no idea what he did up there, all on his own, but the store was his life. She knew that and knew he would do nothing to hurt it. Not only did he need the measly income that came from it, but it was his only focus. But now, for the first time, she had to wonder just what else had been going on in his life that he was so desperately eager to keep quiet about.

  *

  It was almost lunchtime when Damon’s phone rang. He looked down to see Gabby’s number. Smiling, he answered. “Hey, how’s your morning been?”

  “It’s been pretty good,” she said, her voice low.

  “Why the low voice?” he asked.

  “I don’t want my boss to hear me. He just came back, and he’s gone into the office. I meant to call while he was out, but I didn’t get a chance. It got busy here.”

  “So what did you find out?”

  “The tarot cards were under the front desk with another little notebook,” she said. “And he’s had lots of people work for him, but he has some drama in his past that he doesn’t want talked about. That he doesn’t want anybody to poke around in. Somebody did quit once after having a confab with him and asking a lot of personal questions.”

  “But was it related to the tarot cards?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s not speaking about them, though he did say this former employee was into all that woo woo stuff too, as he put it.”

  “What kind of notebook was it? Was it one somebody was buying?”

  “That’s what I thought originally,” she said, “but, on the very last page, a name is scrawled. Andrea.”

  “How big is this notebook?”

  “About three by four,” she said, “so purse size. Not the most common size for something like this. But I don’t know … It … I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just this little brown leather thing. It’s a little crumpled, as if it’s been sitting here for a while, maybe jammed into the back of the shelf by something else.”

  “Do you think it was something the store sold? Like maybe it was set off to the side for a customer to come back and pick up later?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I asked if the tarot cards and the notebook could have been things someone special ordered but never picked up, but Jerry had no memory of that.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Honestly I just thought that maybe it was something he found on the shelves damaged, like maybe a kid had written their name in the back, or somebody accidentally thought it was their notebook and realized what they’d done and didn’t want to pay for it. It’s a fifteen dollar notebook.”

  “A three-by-four-inch notebook is fifteen bucks?” he asked, his voice rising ever-so-slightly.

  “When brand new from a bookstore, yeah,” she said. “And the cover is leather. Remember?”

  “Is it in the inventory?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “If you ring it up, does it come up as being something you still sell?”

  She said, “Oh, hang on a minute.” And he heard the clicking of keys and a series of beeps go off. “No, the computer can’t find it.”

  “Right. So do you have access to older records? I’m just wondering how long ago you actually carried a notebook like that.”

  “If we ever did,” she reminded him. “It could also have been personal property lost by somebody.”

  “That’s true too,” he said, “so I’m not sure what to say then.”

  “I’m taking a picture of both the notebook and the tarot cards and where they were found, just for posterity,” she said, “and I’ll text them to you. But I wonder if you could look into Jerry’s background and see if you find anything there.”

  “Your boss?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I just … He gets so obviously upset every time I bring it up that I don’t want to bring it up again. But, at the same time, you know? His past is a mystery to me. And not all mysteries are murderous ones,” she said, “but the tarot cards came from here, and, of course, Jerry’s a permanent resident above the bookstore.”

  “I’ll take a look,” he said. “I’ll just add it to my list of other things to take a look into.”

  “Do you have any update on my friends?”

  “No. Wendy is still with Meghan, and I spoke to Betty this morning, and she’s still staying with her boyfriend too.”

  “Right. So it’s up to me to find a new place. I haven’t mentioned the room above the stairs to Jerry again.”

  “If you think he has anything odd or weird in his history,” he said, “you’re better off not to go there.”

  “Sure, but the streets are loo
king mighty cold,” she said, her voice rising. “And I can’t stay at your place and pay you the kind of rent you need for that.”

  “Need? It’s been sitting empty. Remember?”

  “Yeah, I’m still struggling with that,” she said. “You could be making thousands of dollars a week on it.”

  “Maybe,” he said in a mild tone. “I also hadn’t decided what I would do with it either. Remember?”

  “Nor have you said I can stay there,” she said. “So it’s a day-to-day arrangement for me as to whether I go to a homeless shelter.”

  “Okay, you can stay there for the rest of the week. How’s that?”

  “Well, that’s a start,” she said in a humorous voice. “Thank you. That gives me a few more days to find a place.”

  “Are you finding anything?”

  She sighed. “Well, I’ve tried when I have a minute here,” she said. “I’m trying to be discreet, since I’m supposed to be working, but, so far, looking in the papers and online, I haven’t seen anything even remotely affordable yet. Listen to me whining. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to bother you at work with this.”

  “It’s not an issue. Besides, Stefan needed more details, and I asked you to find out more about the tarot cards. Remember? Anyway, you’ve got this next week to keep looking for a place to live, and we’ll see what you come up with then.” At that, he watched Captain Meyer walk across the floor toward him. “I gotta go,” he said and quickly hung up.

  *

  The captain looked down at Damon. “Who was that?”

  “The friend who’s still alive after the murders.”

  “Getting anywhere with her?”

  “A little,” he said, “but not too far.”

  “She’s a weird one, from what I hear.”

  “Hey, Captain, you’ve been here a long time,” he said. “Do you know anything about the bookstore owner?”

  “Jerry?”

  Damon nodded. “Yeah, him.”

  “Odd duck. Even odder after his wife died.”

  “What happened to her again?”

  “She was murdered,” he said briefly, “a long time ago.”

  “How?”

  “She was thrown off a cliff,” he said. “We actually looked at him at the time, wondering if he had been the one who had done it, but we couldn’t find anything to prove it.”