The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  “Oh, go jump in the ocean!” one of the witches yelled at the true believer they called John the Baptist. But John wasn’t doing his ocean baptisms tonight. Instead the robed disciple had made his baptisms portable. He carried a bucket and a huge sponge, more suited to a student car wash than a soul-saving mission. Rafferty thought he should change his placard and offer a free Harley wash with every conversion. Some of the bikers had traveled a long way to be here tonight, and their bikes were very dusty.

  In the last few weeks, Rafferty had run background checks on most of the Calvinists, particularly the robed ones and the women who reportedly had gone after Angela the first time. John the Baptist’s real name was Charlie Pedrick. He wasn’t from Jerusalem, as he had insisted when Rafferty had questioned him. Actually, he was from Braintree. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens, Charlie’d had his share of run-ins with the law. But not since he was “saved.”

  In a controversial ritual that Cal named “pharmacopeia exorcism,” mental patients were encouraged to throw their medications into the harbor. They then endured a purification ritual not unlike the kind that took place in a Native American sweat lodge. In his endless stealing of doctrine from other faiths, Cal had even called this ritual a vision quest. It seemed appropriate. After two days with no food and little water, not one of these former mental patients failed to have a vision of some sort. Likening it to his time lost at sea, Cal directed his followers to listen for the voice of God and let that voice direct their lives.

  Among those women whose belief systems favored such things, there were three Virgin Marys and two Joans of Arc. The voices that Charlie Pedrick had heard during his own vision quest had informed him that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist.

  Rafferty had been told about the ritual when he arrived in Salem, but he hadn’t really taken it seriously until he saw the orange prescription bottles floating in Salem Harbor one morning. He’d spent several hours fishing them out, then made his first arrest of Cal Boynton. For littering.

  The two groups were in front of the casino now, and things were really heating up.

  “Take your pagan idols and go home!” one of the Calvinists shouted.

  “Free enterprise!” one of the witches yelled back. She pointed to the side of the booth where the name of Ann’s store was prominently displayed on the license. “Freedom to get a business license!”

  Freedom to eat my dinner, Rafferty thought. “Hey, take it down a notch,” he said. “You’re giving me indigestion.”

  The Calvinists took this as an invitation to turn their venom on him.

  “God save your immortal soul!” John the Baptist yelled at Rafferty. “And the woman you live with in sin!”

  “Redheaded harlot!” yelled one of the Calvinists.

  “Unrepenting demon!” yelled another.

  A fight broke out on the sidelines. One of the Virgin Marys took a swing at one of the witches.

  “All right,” Rafferty said, putting down his sandwich and standing up. “Enough.”

  The park went quiet. People held breath, turning, waiting to see what he was going to do.

  Then he saw the fear on the faces of the Calvinists. It surprised him. He’d never known them to back down from any kind of confrontation. But it wasn’t him they were looking at—it was something behind him. Rafferty turned to see a woman all in black, her arms raised. Voice deep, eyes steeled at the Calvinists, she began her incantation.

  “‘Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres…’” she chanted, in a voice so deep and rich it seemed not to come from her but from somewhere else entirely. It was a voice that lifted the gulls into the air and left them suspended and riding on the wind.

  The Calvinists froze.

  The witch took a breath. Then she pointed an accusing index finger at the group and lowered her voice again. “‘…quarum unam incolunt Belgae.’”

  It did the trick. The Calvinists scattered and slid out of the park like tiny balls of mercury.

  Everyone stared at the looming figure of Ann Chase in full witch regalia. She was impressive.

  “And another thing…!” she yelled after them in her now normal-pitched voice. Then she giggled, breaking the spell. She wiped her hands together as if washing the whole scene away, spread her robes behind her, suddenly every bit the lady, and sat down on the bench next to Rafferty.

  “Very nice,” Rafferty said. “Let’s see, the nearest I can remember from high-school Latin is that you were reciting a passage from Jason and the Argonauts.”

  “Caesar’s Gallic Wars,” she said. “But you’re close. Saved your sorry ass, though, didn’t it?”

  “At least my dinner,” he said, laughing.

  “I saved you and you know it.” Ann laughed, too. “And again I ask…what kind of weak, lily-livered god are they worshipping if they’re afraid of a few witches?”

  “They weren’t afraid of a few witches, they were afraid of you. Hell, I was afraid of you.”

  “Really?” Ann seemed delighted.

  “You bet.”

  They sat in silence for a minute.

  “So what are you doing down here all dolled up?” Rafferty wanted to know.

  “Just checking on my girls,” she said, gesturing to the booth of witches that had had the confrontation with the Calvinists. Now they were celebrating their giddy victory, flirting openly as they helped the bikers try on pentacle necklaces and charms. The bikers were all too happy to have such attention from the pretty young witches.

  “Should we be worried about them?” Rafferty asked, looking at the bikers.

  “They should be worried about me,” Ann said. She raised a hand and waved sweetly at the toughest-looking biker, who wilted a little in her presence. “That’s right, Mama’s here,” she said, continuing to wave politely, but with a protective sweep. “Be afraid,” she said in sweet singsong. “Be very afraid.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t mess with you,” Rafferty said. “You’re liable to send me to the Gallic Wars.”

  “You got that right.”

  “One question,” he said. “How come you didn’t put a real spell on that John the Baptist character?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she said. “We don’t do black magic. You’re getting witches confused with satanists. Or voodoos.”

  “‘Voodoos’? Is that the Latin terminology?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You mean the ones with the dolls and the pins.”

  She nodded and made the “on the nose” sign with one hand while grabbing what was left of his sandwich with the other.

  “Help yourself,” he said.

  She laughed. “I don’t do mean spells. It’s against my religion. I do a great business in love spells, though,” she said. “In case you’d be needing one.”

  Rafferty’s response was hard to read. It fell somewhere between a grunt and a grumble. Ann noticed him watching Jack’s boat disappear behind the Miseries on its way up the coast.

  “She didn’t sleep with him, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Towner. She didn’t sleep with Jack LaLibertie.”

  “Is that your psychic opinion?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  Rafferty looked surprised.

  “She seemed to think it was important to clarify that point,” Ann said.

  Rafferty didn’t respond.

  “Maybe I’ll say a few words for you when I get back to the shop,” Ann said. “For free.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” he said.

  “If she were in love with Jack LaLibertie, she’d be staying with him, not you. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Yeah. Well. Maybe.”

  “You’ve got it bad,” Ann said.

  Rafferty laughed. It was an understatement.

  In reading the lace, there is no wrong answer. Even so, it is easy to receive wrong results, simply by asking the wrong question.

  —THE LACE READER’S
GUIDE

  Chapter 22

  RAFFERTY DIDN’T GO HOME until he was sure Towner had gone to bed. In the morning he left early to catch the men’s AA meeting in Marblehead.

  When he got to the station, there were three messages from May.

  He took his coffee into his office, shut the door, and phoned her back.

  “I just called the hospital,” she said, “and they told me Sophya was released a week ago. My sources tell me she’s staying at your house.”

  “And?” He wished May had never gotten herself a cell phone.

  “And I want to know why.”

  Rafferty reached into his drawer. “I had an extra room. I offered.”

  “I can protect her better out here,” May said.

  “I doubt that.”

  “She needs protection.”

  “I have more guns than you do,” he said, only half kidding.

  “You can’t watch her every minute.”

  “Neither could you,” he said. “And besides, Cal’s in jail. Did your sources tell you that?”

  “Temporarily,” she said.

  It seemed to stop her. But only for a moment.

  “It’s not going to work,” she said, as if deciding something on the spot.

  “What?”

  “You two.”

  That one stopped him.

  “Opposites attract,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So you’re not opposites…. You’re the walking wounded, both of you. Neither of you is capable of handling any kind of relationship.”

  Rafferty wondered how May knew so much about him. Was she a reader, too, or had Eva told May his history? Either way he didn’t feel like discussing his lack of relationship skills with her. He was trying to think of a clever retort when she went on.

  “When you two break up, and believe me you will, you won’t just split apart like normal people. You’ll send each other flying.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, and hung up.

  He reached over the desk to put the phone back, catching his cup with the cord, spilling coffee all over the files.

  This wasn’t going to be a good day.

  The chief was coming in as Rafferty was leaving.

  “I’m going to Portland again,” he said. “To ask around.”

  The chief nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’m off tomorrow.”

  “Right,” the chief said.

  He stopped at the house to tell Towner he was going. She wasn’t there. He started to panic. Then he caught sight of her out the window heading uphill from the harbor. She was wearing cutoffs and his daughter’s bathing-suit top. Her hair was wet. She’d been swimming.

  She looked like a different person. Younger. Healthy, almost.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I stopped to tell you I have to go to Portland.”

  “Portland, Maine?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You want to come along?” As soon as he said it, he regretted the words. He was on a job; it wasn’t a good idea. Besides, he couldn’t take another no.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”

  Every Reader of lace must learn to exist within the empty spaces that form the question.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 23

  ANGELA RICKEY’S PARENTS LIVED just north of Portland in a town that was a dull blend of trailer parks and run-down factory housing. Every building faced the river and the long-defunct paper mill that occupied the only prime real estate in town. The brick factory slumped like a hammock in the middle, with some failed attempts at renovation at both ends. The trailer park where Angela’s family lived was just past the factory, at the back end of a parking lot that was shared by an Agway and the local Masonic hall. In the middle of the park, a half-finished on-ramp (part of a highway extension meant to connect the town with I-95 and the tourist dollars) cast a long shadow across the trailer that belonged to Angela’s family.

  Towner waited in the car while Rafferty went inside.

  It was a short visit. They hadn’t seen her. They hadn’t heard from her. Rafferty knew that it was a long shot—he’d been up here before—but it was worth a try.

  “She’d better not come back here,” her father said. “She owes me money.”

  Her father had put out the money for beauty school. He’d told Rafferty that several times before.

  “If she thinks I’m supporting her and a kid…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “If you hear from her, you need to call me,” Rafferty said.

  “What kind of trouble is she in this time?” the old man asked.

  “She’s not in any trouble,” Rafferty said. “But she might be dead.”

  It stopped him. It was a cruel thing to say, but it stopped him.

  Rafferty dropped Towner off at the Public Market, then went over to Congress Street to the beauty school Angela had attended. He asked questions. Had anyone seen her? No. Did she have any friends in town? No. Yes. Well, maybe. There was this one girl, they said, Susan something. She worked over in the Old Port in a shop that sold products made from hemp. Rafferty thanked the woman, left his number. “If you see her, you call me right away.”

  He walked down Congress and over to the Old Port. He found the hemp shop. Susan was no longer there, and no one recognized Angela from her photo. Rafferty showed Angela’s photo to a few more merchants up and down the cobblestone streets. Then he drove back to the Public Market and parked his car on the second level, taking the walking bridge over to the loft, where Towner sat eating a blueberry scone.

  She held it out to him. “Bite?”

  “Thanks, but it’s past noon. I want lunch,” he said.

  They walked down the long flight of stairs from the loft to the shops. He couldn’t help noticing that she took the stairs much easier, that she no longer held the handrail as she descended. There was something lighter about her step, and there was definitely something lighter about her mood.

  “What do you feel like having?” Rafferty asked, looking around. “You can get pretty much anything in this place.”

  “You pick,” she said.

  He looked around. There were booths with cheeses and breads, and several serving chowder and other soups. He turned to her. It was time. “I like soup, do you like soup?”

  She stared at him.

  “Two of my many talents,” he said. “Lies and deception.”

  A smile started in the corners of her mouth. She tried to stop it but found she couldn’t. It spread across her face. Then she started to laugh. “Son of a bitch,” she said.

  Driving south, Rafferty got a speeding warning on Route 95.

  “I should give you a ticket,” the young state trooper said. “You were going twenty miles over the limit, but hey, professional courtesy, right?”

  Rafferty smiled and thanked the kid, then stuffed the warning into the glove compartment with all the parking tickets he couldn’t remember to pay.

  As they pulled into the driveway, they spotted the dog, tied up to the newel post on Rafferty’s front deck, a bowl of water upside down beside him. He’d obviously been trying to escape. His eyes were wild.

  “That’s one of May’s dogs,” Towner said, jumping out of the car.

  There was a note tied to the dog’s collar. “‘My name is Byzantium,’” Towner read.

  The dog bared teeth and growled. Nonplussed, Towner sat down on the deck, not looking directly at him but bringing herself down to his level. She sat for a long time, gazing out at the harbor, as if it were the most natural thing to be doing on such a day. When his breathing slowed, she reached under his muzzle and began to stroke his neck. “Hello, Byzy,” she said, her voice soothing. Finally she looked at him. He went down slowly, as if hypnotized, and rolled onto his side. She stroked his stomach. “Good puppy,” she said.

  Rafferty had been sitting in the driveway with the door open. Now he got out of
the car.

  “Why do you think May sent him?” Towner asked.

  “To torture me, I expect,” Rafferty said, and sneezed.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” Towner said.

  But Rafferty couldn’t help thinking it might be. May was right—he couldn’t watch her every minute. He’d actually feel better knowing that Byzy was there. “It’s okay, he can stay,” he said. “As long as he doesn’t eat my shoes.”

  Towner laughed. “What do you think he does eat?” she asked. “I mean, besides rabbit and rats.”

  “Purina something-or-other,” Rafferty said, grabbing the upside-down water bowl and taking it to the hose to fill it up. He put it down in front of the dog, who started to drink.

  “He looks like Skybo,” she said.

  Rafferty remembered the name. Skybo had been her first dog, the one Cal had killed. He’d read that in her journal, and Eva had told him about it as well. Skybo had been her friend and protector. So the fact that this dog looked like Skybo gave them an immediate connection.

  Rafferty started up the stairs, sneezing twice as he passed the dog, who growled as he walked by. “Hey, buddy, we’re on the same side,” he said, and Towner laughed again.

  “Down, boy,” she said to Byzantium, and he obeyed.

  Rafferty didn’t put the car in the garage. He knew he would be going to Crosby’s for kibbles in a couple of minutes. He’d have to remember to buy some Benadryl. Then he was going to bed. He needed a good night’s sleep. For the last couple of weeks, ever since Towner had gotten here, he hadn’t slept much at all.

  Rafferty took two Benadryl and slept until noon. He woke, finally, to Byzy’s low growl. He cracked his door. The dog sat nose pressed against the slider, looking out at the harbor and growling at the boats heading in and out. Rafferty could hear the water running in the bathroom. Towner was brushing her teeth.

  He turned on the electric kettle, made himself coffee in the small French press Leah had given him last Christmas. He ran his cup under hot water, warming it. Then he opened the slider and stepped out onto the deck. “Come on,” he said to Byzy, “you can get ’em better from out here.” The dog hesitated, then stepped outside.